ARAMAIC WORD STUDY – TEMPTATION – NESA נסא    Nun Samek Aleph

Matthew 4:1: “Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.”

I remember as a child listening to a group of grown-ups sitting around a table having a very heated discussion on whether or not the enemy could have tempted Jesus into sinning.  If he could not why bother to tempt Jesus if he could sin what would have happened.  If he was God who was He sinning against Himself? Besides that, why would it have been sinful for Jesus to turn rocks into bread or jump off a high tower?  Bowing down to the enemy I could see as sin but the first two, I was not sure, neither were the grown-ups.  I was fascinated with this debate which eventually led to an argument.  I thought about that debate this morning and thinking that every one of those grown-ups has passed on and now they all know the correct answers. As a child, I promised myself I would find answers to these question as to why the enemy tried to tempt Jesus.

So today I sat down to finally seek an answer by examining this story in the Aramaic rather than the Greek.  I was surprised at how simple the answer was, at least for me,  from examining the Aramaic word for temptation nesa’.  This word is linguistically identical to the Hebrew word nasah which does not mean temptation at all, but it means to test.  

In English, we have just the one-word test.  It is used as a word of determination to see if something or someone can qualify or reach a certain standard for usefulness. The word is also used to determine the limits of something or someone. In Aramaic as well as Hebrew you have two words nasah and bacan. Both means to test but bacan is to test for qualification and nasah is used to test one’s limits or abilities. 

The enemy was not tempting Jesus but testing Jesus.  He was giving Jesus the same chance that he gives all of us. The opportunity to exercise our free will in choosing between the flesh or the spirit.  The first opportunity was to try out the physical desires.  See God never had a human body, so He could not know what it was like to go hungry and be faced with the choice of eating bread to fulfill His fleshly desires or continue as He was feasting on Words of God.  Jesus chooses to feast on the Words of God, to feed His Spirit and not the fleshly body. But he sure gave that old body work out, He fully understands our struggle between feeding the body over the spirit. 

Then the enemy then the free will of the soul in Jesus.  People could not believe that Jesus was the Son of God yet it would be so easy to prove it to everyone. Just jump off that tower of the temple in front of the high priest, priest, and all the other witnesses and when the angels came to the rescue there would be no doubt in anyone’s mind as to His Deity.  Now the appeal was to the soul which wanted to be recognized and accepted.  But Jesus said you shall not nesa test the limits of God.  For one thing He has no limits so why bother.

Finally, the enemy appealed to both the soul and the body of Jesus by offering to bypass this crucifixion, rejection, torture and all the other things he had to endure for our salvation.  The enemy was willing to let us all go if Jesus would just worship him.  The word worship in Aramaic here is seged which literally means to give recognition, honor, and attention to something or someone.  I can only guess but my guess would be that the enemy was once the light bearer of God and then he fell and this duty was passed on to us.  All Jesus had to do was give the enemy his old job back and then the body and soul of Jesus could avoid the cross.  His body and soul probably cried out; “Do it.”  But the Spirit of God in Jesus knew that man was still doomed and thus again the Spirit overcame the desires of the body.

The result is that Jesus knows what our battle between the flesh and spirit is like.  He knows how hard it is for us to follow our spirit because He himself had his body and soul nesa, tested to the limits. 

It is the same for us, each day the desires of the body and soul are being tried to the limits.  Each day the enemy presents our body and soul with opportunities, the lust of the flesh, that are opposed to our spirit joined with the spirit of God.  Do we feed the desires of our souls with movies, internet sites, activities that are opposed to the holiness of God or do we choose the desires of our spirit over the desires of the flesh? The spirit has no objection to eating, but it does to some things we eat that are harmful to us. It has no objection to an occasional movie but it does object to movies that arouse the desires of lust and fornication.  Every day the enemy nesa’s us to choose the flesh over the spirit.