Message preached Sunday, August 31, 2014 from Mark 1:12-13
Theme: In His trial in the wilderness, our Lord tasted of what it felt like to go through the things that test us.
(Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture references are taken from The Holy Bible, New King James Version; copyright 1982, Thomas Nelson, Inc.)
We come this morning to the story of what happened to the Lord Jesus right after His baptism. It’s the story of what had to happen before He began His earthly ministry for us.
The Gospel writer Mark tells us that after His baptism by John in the Jordan River,
Immediately the Spirit drove Him into the wilderness. And He was there in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan, and was with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered to Him (Mark 1:12-13).
This is Mark’s very short account of the ‘trial’ or ‘testing’ of our Lord, just before He began His public ministry on earth. But as I have spent time with it this past week—as brief as it is—I have found myself to be surprisingly blessed by it. I believe that what it tells us about our Lord is meant to be a source of great encouragement to His people.
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To help show you why I feel that way about this morning’s passage, I ask you to keep your finger in your Bible at this page, but also turn further ahead in the New Testament to the Book of Hebrews. So much of the ministry of our Lord is explained to us in Hebrews; and I believe that in it—in the second chapter—we’re given the broad purpose for the story that Mark tells us.
In Hebrews 2, we’re told why our Lord Jesus’ came in the flesh for us—and how His coming led to our victory through His death on the cross. The writer of Hebrews says;
Inasmuch then as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. For indeed He does not give aid to angels, but He does give aid to the seed of Abraham (Hebrews 2:14-16).
In those words, we’re told of our Lord’s work of redemption for us. As the second divine Person of the Triune Godhead, He graciously left His eternal glory in heaven, took full humanity to Himself in His incarnation, and died on the cross for us—thus releasing us from our terrible bondage to the devil and gaining victory for us over death. That was why it was necessary that He became completely like us in the nature of our humanity. But Jesus is not only our great Redeemer from sin. He is also our Helper in the trials of life. To be our perfect Helper through times of trial, He also needed to experience the kind of suffering that we undergo. And so, the writer of Hebrews also goes on to say;
Therefore, in all things He had to be made like His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For in that He Himself has suffered, being tempted, He is able to aid those who are tempted (vv. 17-18).
And I believe that those words help to explain the reason for the story we are told this morning in Mark’s Gospel. Jesus—as a compassionate High Priest, who is Himself the Sacrifice offered to redeem us from our sins—is also our divine “Aid” in times of trial and temptation. He personally tasted of the things we suffer; and is able to be our Comforter, our Example, our Helper, and our Friend in all those times of suffering. You could look just a little further ahead in the Book of Hebrews—in Hebrews 4:14-16—and also read these wonderful words of encouragement;
Seeing then that we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need (Hebrews 4:14-16).
So; I ask that we go to this morning’s passage together in Mark 1:12-13, and learn about the consolation our Lord gives us. In the story of His trial in the wilderness, we can see that He Himself tasted of everything that we could ever go through. He knows perfectly how our trials feel.
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Consider for example that He knows how it feels to undergo . . .
1. THE UNEXPECTED APPEARANCE OF TRIALS.
We see this, I believe, in the first word of our passage this morning—that word “immediately”. I told you last week that I believe that’s Mark’s favorite word in this Gospel. He tells us, “Immediately the Spirit drove Him into the wilderness . . .” (v. 12).
The reason that the word “immediately” is so significant in this case is because of what comes before it. We’re told of what would have to be considered one of the most glorious moments of our Lord’s earthly life—His baptism. Think of what we’re told, in the previous verses, had just happened. As He came up out of the water, the clouds parted, and heaven itself seemed to open up above Him. The Holy Spirit very visibly descended upon Him from heaven and descended upon Him—marking Him out to all. That was what caused John the Baptist, in another gospel account, to know for certain that He truly was the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. And then, the voice of God the Father declared—in the hearing of all—that Jesus was His Son, and that He was well-pleasing to Him. What a majestic and glorious event! There would have been nothing else like it on planet earth! In one moment’s time, all three divine Persons of the Trinity were manifestly present to declare the glories of the Redeemer to mankind!
And you would have thought that after such a glorious event as that, no trials could happen. You would have thought that after such a high-point of spiritual experience, our Lord’s life would be absolutely ‘trouble-proof’. But it was not so. Right after such an unprecedentedly glorious experience—”immediately”, in fact—His time of testing began. And it wasn’t as if He went into that time of testing on His own initiative. Rather, we’re clearly told that it was the Holy Spirit Himself who “drove” Him out to the wilderness to experience it— ‘casting Him out’ into it, as the original language has it. The strong inner compulsion He felt from the Holy Spirit made it necessary for Him to go; so that no sooner had He experienced the glories of His baptism than He “immediately” began to experience a time of testing—as if it came upon Him with unexpected, unwanted, inescapable suddenness.
That is how those times of trial feel to us; isn’t it, dear brothers and sisters in Christ? Suddenly—unexpectedly—as if we are “cast” into them. They are not preceded by a two-day courtesy notice. As the apostle James puts it, we seem to “fall into” them. He wrote,
My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing (James 1:2-4).
Those trials have a purpose in our lives, of course. But from our experience, we find ourselves thrown into them suddenly and unexpectedly—and even during times when it seems as if they should never have come at all; at times when we are at a spiritual high-point; at times when we are walking with God in the full integrity of our hearts, and are seeking to please Him with all our being.
Let’s learn a lesson from this. When the trials suddenly come, it’s not necessarily because of sin in our lives. Even our righteous, sinless Lord was suddenly driven into a time of trial. And let’s also remember that He knows perfectly well, by experience, what the unexpected appearance of such trials feels like.
We can go to Him at those times, and find Him to be our compassionate Helper and sympathetic Friend.
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Jesus also knows what it feels like to go through . . .
2. THE GLOOMY PHASES OF LIFE.
I suggest that we can see this through the place it was that the Spirit drove Him to—the particular arena of His time of testing—the wilderness.
As modern people, living in the beautiful State of Oregon, we might read the word “wilderness” and at first think, “How nice! I love the great outdoors too!” But let’s not misunderstand. To be driven by the Spirit into “the wilderness” was not the same thing as being sent out to a nice, clean KOA site. The wilderness—in our Lord’s day—was a place to be avoided as much as possible. In the Bible, it is often associated with danger and desolation—a gloomy place of hardship and suffering. When someone was possessed by demons, we’re often told in Scripture that the demons drove their poor victim out “into the wilderness”.
When we read the word “wilderness”, it’s hard not to think of the forty years of wilderness wanderings that the people of Israel suffered before they entered the land. The wilderness wanderings would have been thought of by a Jewish person as a miserable phase of their history—as sad and gloomy experience. And I believe we would be right to think of our Lord’s long period in the wilderness as representative of the times of sadness and depression and travail of soul that we sometimes go through. Some of us have gone through long, debilitating times of gloom that can only be described as ‘ghastly’.
Some terribly misguided Christians believe that no genuine follower of Jesus would ever go through a time of depression or sadness—that if they did so, it must be because they have sin in their lives. But have you ever stopped to think of what the Bible tells us about the Lord Jesus in the Old Testament? It tells us that He was “a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3). I believe that our Lord’s time of testing “in the wilderness” is meant to show us that He knows personally what it’s like to go through those deep, dark, gloomy phases of life.
He has felt the gloom of “the wilderness” experientially. And because that’s true, if we will go to Him at such times, He will prove to be our sympathetic Friend and Helper.
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The fact that Jesus was in the wilderness for “forty days” suggests another thing that our Lord Himself personally felt along with us; and that’s . . .
3. THE SIGNIFICANT PERIODS OF CHANGE.
Now think. When you hear the number ’40’ in the context of the Bible, aren’t there several stories that come to mind? Don’t you think, for example, of the ‘forty days and forty nights’ of rain that brought about the flood in Noah’s day? Do you remember how Moses was up on the mountain for forty days to receive the law from God for His people? Or do you recall the forty days that the spies of Israel spent exploring the promised land? And we’ve already mentioned the forty years that the people of Israel spent wandering in the wilderness—so that whole disobedient generation could die out, and their children could enter the promised land in their place. And remember how the prophet Jonah announced to the people of the ancient city of Nineveh that they only had forty days before the city would be destroyed?
Do you know what those various “forty” stories have in common? The number ’40’ identifies a significant experience of dramatic change of some kind: the replacement of the pre-flood world with the post-flood world; a new law from God for a new nation; a new land to be occupied; the replacement of one generation with another; a call to repentance that led to remarkable revival. We can similarly understand Jesus’ forty days of trial in the wilderness as meant to show that He was undergoing a life-changing experience that would mark a permanent change in His earthly life. It was what marked the transition from His private life to His public ministry. He had already spent thirty years of living on earth—much of it in private and much of it as a carpenter. But after His time in the wilderness, He would be a carpenter no longer. From then on, He would spend His last remaining three and a half years on earth as a Preacher, a Healer, a Prophet, and finally as the Redeemer of mankind. ‘Life’ constituted one thing before that forty-day event, and ‘life’ would be something completely different afterward.
And I suggest to you that this symbolizes the kind of significant life-changing experiences that we are often called upon to undergo. It may be the death of a spouse or a loved one. It may be the loss of a job or career. It may be a forced move from one place to another. It may be a disabling loss of health or physical ability. Counselors often refer to such things as a “crisis experience”. It’s an unwanted event that throws life in a whirl; and when it’s over, things will never be the same again. “Normal” will, by necessity, mean something new and different . . . and perhaps terribly unknown.
And this means that Jesus knows what that feels like. He left the comfortable town of His upbringing and the work of His hands that He knew so well, underwent a forty-day period of testing in the wilderness, and came out of the other side of it into a completely different place of life. When you and I are faced with the trial of significant life change—when we are forced into a situation that we do not wish and did not asked for; and that will bring us out, on the other side of the situation, into a world we do not know—Jesus understands how that feels.
We can go to Him in those times, and cling to Him as our sympathetic Friend. He has been there Himself.
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Another thing that our Lord knows all about is . . .
4. THE STRONG TEMPTATION TO SIN.
Mark tells us that Jesus was “there in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan . . .” Mark doesn’t tell us the details of this; but there’s much that’s told to us in the other Gospels. And many of us are familiar with the story.
We’re told that Jesus had fasted for forty days; and that after that time, the devil tempted Him by saying, “If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread” (Matthew 4:3). Satan sought to tempt Him through His physical desires; but could not do so. Then he took Him to the highest point of the temple and tempted Him to throw Himself off; “For it is written: ‘He shall give His angels charge over you,’ and, ‘In their hands they shall bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone” (v. 6). He sought to tempt our Lord to make a prideful show of things; but that failed too. Then Satan took Him to a high mountain and showed Him all the glory and riches of the kingdoms of the earth; and told Him, “All these things I will give You if You will fall down and worship me”(v. 9). He tried to tempt Him with the lust of material riches; but that temptation failed too.
In undergoing all this, Jesus suffered temptation in the very same ways that we all also suffer temptation. It may be true that He didn’t suffer the specific temptations we might suffer today. He didn’t, for example, suffer the temptation to hack someone’s computer. But He suffered temptation through all the inroads and in all the basic forms that we experience it—through the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and through the boastful pride of life. As the Bible tells us, He was “in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin”.
Because He was fully human, He knew what temptation feels like—even powerful temptation. And this means that He is able to be a sympathetic Counselor and Friend to us during those times when we are tempted to sin. Because He is fully human, we cannot come to Him with a temptation that He Himself would not understand. But because He was also fully divine in His time of temptation, He never sinned; and so, He is able to be an encouragement and an example to us in those times. His experience in the wilderness shows us that it is not itself a sin to be tempted to sin.
We should always go to Jesus in times of our deepest temptations to sin. He knows just that those times feel like.
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Very much connected to that, He also knows what it feels like to receive . . .
5. THE ATTACKS OF THE ENEMY.
The Bible tells us that temptation to sin comes on three fronts. One, of course, is “the world”. The second is “the flesh”. But the third involved “the devil”—a powerful, intelligent, dreadfully malicious spiritual enemy who is utterly focused on our destruction; someone who has had thousands of years of experience in making people like us fall, and in bringing about the kind of failures for which he can bring accusations against us. He is the most powerful being God has ever made; but he is, at the same time, presented to us in Scripture as “a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Peter 5:8). If you have ever felt times of powerful spiritual oppression from the enemy, you know how helpless you are—in terms of your own resources—to resist Him.
But Jesus knows how that feels too. For those of us who undergo times of “spiritual attack”, it is very comforting that Mark tells us that Jesus was driven into the wilderness to be “tempted by Satan”. Think of it! The Son of God—the one who is the Creator of that powerful being Satan—actually allowed Himself in His humanity to suffer Satan’s attacks, and to feel the spiritual oppression of the enemy of our souls! He knows how that feels. And so, He is able to be our sympathetic Friend in times of spiritual attack.
And what’s more, the Bible tells us that if we resist the devil, he will flee from us (James 4:7). Do you know the best and surest way to resist him? It’s by turning for comfort and help to Jesus—the one who felt the temptations of Satan, and resisted the devil victoriously!
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Now; Mark is the only Gospel writer who tells us this next piece of information. We’re told that when Jesus was in the wilderness for those forty days, He was “with the wild beasts” (v. 13). And here again, we need to be careful that we don’t misunderstand.
Many people have interpreted this as giving us a heart-warming picture of the Lord surrounded by the animals of the wilderness—all tame and purring next to Him. But that does not fit the context of this passage at all. Jesus’ time in the wilderness was not a pleasant afternoon spent at the ‘petting zoo’. The wilderness into which Jesus was driven was a wasteland that was occupied with wild boars, and jackals, and hyenas, and foxes, and scorpions, and lions, and leopards, and wolves. That was part of why it was that people didn’t venture into the wilderness. It was a place of constant danger.
Our Lord was in the midst of such beasts for forty days. Wouldn’t it be reasonable that there might have been times when our Lord was growled at?—or threatened?—or perhaps even bitten?—or scratched?—or stung? And if I may, this suggest to us that our Lord knew what it felt like to undergo . . .
6. THE TIMES OF DANGER AND FEAR.
He felt danger often; and certainly not only from literal wild beasts. He experienced great danger from ‘two-legged’ variety at times; and so do we. In the Scripture, the Lord says to His followers;
“Behold, I sent you out as sheep in the midst of wolves. Therefore be wise as serpents and harmless as doves” (Matthew 10:16).
He warned that, if the world hated Him, it would also hate us because we belong to Him. We live, for the present, as followers of Jesus in a hostile environment. We are surrounded by dangers of various kinds—including the hatred and malice of other people who hate our Lord.
But our Lord knows exactly what that danger feels like. In times of danger and fear, we can go to Him—our compassionate and sympathetic Friend.
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And that leads us to one more thing that our Lord has experienced along with us—something that is, for some of us, one of the hardest things in life to undergo . . .
7. THE NEED TO RECEIVE THE HELP OF OTHERS.
It’s truly fascinating that we’re told “and the angels ministered to Him” (v. 13). Think of that! He is the Son of God! He is the divine Creator of those angelic beings! In the time before His coming to this earth—in the realms of heavenly glory—they bowed before the throne of His majesty in humble worship! But now we see that, during His time of testing in the wilderness, He allowed Himself to be ministered to by them!
It might have been that they attended to Him when He was threatened by wild animals—much as an angel came to Daniel and closed the mouths of the lions while he was in the den (Daniel 6:22). Or it may be that they came to Him and cared for Him in the weakness of His flesh—much as we’re told that an angel came and strengthened him while He was in the garden just before going to the cross (Luke 22:43). But however it happened, what a marvelous thing it is that He allowed Himself to feel the need for help!
For some of us, one of the hardest trials of life we can imagine is to be in a state of need. We might be physically disabled in some way and need others to care for us. We might be helpless under a burden of sin and need someone’s help in getting free from it. We might be afflicted in such a way as to need the material support of others. We might be emotionally down and discouraged and in need of the encouragement and prayers of others. But Jesus knows how even that feels.
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Now; in closing, I would like to stand here and tell you that if you turn to Jesus in your time of trial, the trial would instantly end. But if I told you that, I would be telling you a lie.
I would truly love to stand before you and promise that if you simply cry out to Him, the trial would suddenly, mysteriously, instantaneously be over; and that only sunshine and happiness would come your way. But that wasn’t even true for our Lord. After all, we’re told that it was the Holy Spirit that drove Him out into the wilderness to experience testing and temptation and trial for a long stretch of time. And likewise, God has a purpose in making us pass through our own specifically measured times of trial. He is accomplishing something in those trials that is necessary for the perfection of our faith in Him. We don’t have to think that we must be out of God’s will if we go through sudden trials, or times of gloom and depression, or to fear change, or to feel temptation and the attacks of the devil, or to feel fear of danger, or even experience the frustration of the need of help from others. We have to be honest, of course, and say that it may be that such trials come upon us because we’re out of God’s will; but it isn’t necessarily so. After all, Jesus underwent such things; and He never sinned—even as He went through them.
But there is one thing that I can tell you as the absolute and certain truth. If we will turn to Jesus in our times of trial—whatever the cause of them may be—we will be turning to a wonderful Redeemer who perfectly understands what those trials feel like to the fullest degree. He, the sinless Son of God, willingly felt what such things are like; so that He can be a merciful and faithful Servant to you and me in the midst of them.