(2) Mark 1:9-15 6-23-13
What prepares a person for effective service to the Lord? How do you come from a place of accepting Christ as your Savior to being used by Him for His glory? What is it that can turn an ordinary, dull, routine Christian walk into an extraordinary, exciting and adventurous Christian life? I suppose all of us want to be involved in living a life that counts. We all want to be involved in effective, fulfilling service. So, what is it that gives our service to the Lord its power? What kind of preparation is necessary?
Most Christians never give their preparation for serving God very much serious thought. And if they do, they usually think in terms of study or other academic endeavors. But the real preparation of God, without which no other preparation counts for much, is an inward preparation of the heart. It is a preparation which must take place on the inside; a preparation of the soul.
Jesus Himself gave us a vivid example of that preparation in this passage in Mark. As we consider this passage, we shall see several important truths. We will come to understand the truth that inward preparation of the soul is a must for every believer. And, we shall also see that this kind of preparation has always been the method of God in dealing with people.
Our text concludes with the beginning of the ministry of Jesus. In Mark, the details concerning Jesus' activities between His wilderness temptation and ministry in Galilee have been omitted. Other Gospels include it. But Mark does not. So what we have is an account which presents his baptism, temptation and ministry in sequence. I believe Mark had a purpose in ordering these events in this way.
What we have here is a principle of how God deals with men. In the baptism and temptation of Jesus, we see an order of preparation which God has used from the beginning of His dealings with man; from Adam, to Abraham, to Joseph, to Moses, to Israel, to Job, to David, to Christ, to Peter, to Paul, and even today. This was and is the method of God in preparing His servants for effective ministry.
We shall examine two processes of preparation today. Firstly, we shall observe the process of preparation through obedience. Secondly, we shall discern the hand of God in the process of preparation through opposition. And we shall see how they are essential for our lives today.
Preparation Through Obedience
"And it came about in those days that Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee, and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And immediately coming up out of the water, He saw the heavens opening, and the Spirit like a dove descending upon Him; and a voice came out of the heavens: 'Thou art My beloved Son, in Thee I am well-pleased.'" (Mark 1:9-11)
In these verses, we see the process of preparation through obedience. This was an essential step in the preparation of our Lord for His public ministry. And it is also an essential step in the preparation of every believer for ministry in His name.
There are four words I would like for you to consider. The first is obedience.
The first step in our preparation is the step of obedience. This is what we see in the baptism of Jesus. We see His obedient submission to God. You see, Jesus did not come to be baptized because He was repenting of His sins. He had none. By John's own admission, Jesus did not need to be baptized. But Christ came anyway. In coming, He said that it was necessary to fulfill all righteousness. But what did that mean "to fulfill all righteousness?" How could Jesus' coming to submit to a baptism He did not need fulfill all righteousness? In order to understand that, we must realize why He came. What was His motive in coming?
His motive was obedient submission to God. We are shown a glimpse of His motivation in Matthew 21:25, where he asks, "The baptism of John was from what source, from heaven or from men?" Here we find the motive of Jesus. His obedient submission was to that which was "of heaven" or "of God." The baptism of John was ordained of God. You see, that is the real question for us. Is it of God? If a thing is of God, then we are called to obedience. The question is not one of our need, but of God's work - whether we are for it or not.
This brings us to our second word: identification. Jesus identified with what God was doing. This was the underlying motive of His baptism. John's baptism was of God and Jesus identified with that which was of God. By His coming to submit to baptism, He said by His presence that He recognized God was in this thing. You know, we can say much to others by what we identify with. This is one of the grounds by which many fundamentalists preach the teaching of separation, which says that when you go to a Hollywood movie, you are, by your presence, identifying with all that Hollywood stands for; or that when you attend heathen event, you are identifying with all the drinking and carousing which goes on in such places.
But let's look at this from a positive rather than a negative viewpoint. While we must be careful not to identify with the worldly ways of sinful men, we must also be careful to identify with all that is of God, lest we be found fighting against God. That is the advice wise Gamaliel gave to the counsel concerning the early Christians. Far too often we only identify with our group. When we do this, we become sectarian. Many times, the work of the Kingdom is hindered because of our sectarianism. Now, this does not mean that we give up hard won beliefs and convictions. It does not mean we quit trying to cause people to see what we believe God has shown us. But it does mean that we accept every blood-washed believer in Jesus as a full-fledged member of the body of Christ. It means that we identify with them as for them in what God is doing in their lives. It does not that we approve of all they do; and indeed, there may be times when we can't associate with them in certain endeavors because of a conviction we hold. But in what is of God, we need to identify. We must always be willing to say "Amen" to what God is doing. We must be willing to identify with God's work.
Jesus identified with John's baptism and He did it publicly. He let people know where He stood. And we need to do the same, especially in our day of decaying morals and religious confusion. Psalm 107:2 says, "Let the redeemed of the Lord say so." Today is a day in which the redeemed of the Lord need to say so. Today is a day in which the redeemed of the Lord need to identify with that which is of God. We must boldly proclaim our allegiance to our Lord, to His Church, and to His work in the earth. We must not only say it with our lips, we must show it with our actions.
The third word is acceptance. As we follow Jesus in obedient submission to and identification with God's work, there is acceptance and affirmation by God. Jesus heard the voice of God saying, "This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well-pleased." And just as Jesus heard the voice of acceptance, so we will sense the acceptance by God of our obedience. We will hear the voice of the Spirit of God as He witnesses to our spirit that we are the children of God.
There is nothing like being accepted. All of us long to be accepted for who we are. We all desire to have relationships in which people accept us fully and freely, without expecting us to live up to some arbitrary standard. Of course, that doesn't mean there are not many things we need to change in our lives, but none of us enjoy being constantly inspected by other people, especially those we suspect do not really care for us. We don't respond well to judgment, but we do respond to genuine love. Someone said that Jesus doesn't change us so He can love us, He loves us so He can change us. And when we come to Him, we receive His acceptance. The hymn which we sing, Just As I Am, is precisely how Jesus receives us. He receives us just as we are. Of course, He doesn't leave us that way. But He loved us while we were sinners. He loved us before we came to Him. And when we are obedient, he receives us with open arms. When we are obedient, God makes His approval known.
When we are yielded to Him, He gives us what is our fourth word, the word empowerment. Jesus was empowered for ministry. And we, like Jesus, are also empowered. As Jesus came up out of the water, Luke tells us he was praying. Verse 10 in our text tells us that in the midst of this act of obedience and yieldedness, the heavens opened up and the Spirit of God came upon Him. He was then anointed for His work.
In Luke's Gospel, we read of Jesus after His baptism, that He was "being full of the Holy Spirit," and "led by the Spirit," and "in the power of the Spirit." Then we are told how Jesus got up in the synagogue where He was raised and read that great passage from Isaiah, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me to preach the Gospel to the poor. He hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord." (Luke 4:18-19) Jesus was filled with the Holy Spirit. And so can we be as we are obedient and yielded to Him.
We, like Jesus, can be empowered for ministry. We can receive that great baptism of the Holy Spirit, that great anointing of power. But we must be yielded in order to receive its full benefit. As Christians, there are several different relationships we have with the Holy Spirit. Every believer is indwelt by the Holy Spirit. But the Bible speaks of different ways in which the Holy Spirit deals with His people. He is the One who indwells every believer. But the Bible speaks also of the anointing of the Holy Spirit, whereby He sets apart a Christian worker to a specific task. In the Old Testament, priests and kings were anointed to symbolize the anointing of the Holy Spirit in setting them apart to their place of service. The Bible speaks also of special fillings of the Holy Spirit. We read in the Scriptures of people who were already saved being filled with the Holy Spirit on certain occasions. That doesn't mean that they didn't have the presence of the Holy Spirit indwelling them prior to that special filling. Certainly they did. But it does mean that at times of special need and service, God pours forth His Spirit upon His people in a special way. Jesus was specially anointed and specially empowered for the particular ministry He was to perform. And so should we be as well. The good news is we can be. As we are yielded to Him, He will fill us, He will anoint us, He will empower us to do effective ministry.
Obedience on our part, identification with the things which are "of God," the acceptance and approval of God, and His empowerment in our lives for ministry; surely this is all the preparation we need for an effective ministry. No. There is still another equally important preparation.
Preparation Through Opposition
And immediately the Spirit impelled Him to go out into the wilderness. And He was in the wilderness forty days being tempted by Satan; and He was with the wild beasts, and the angels were ministering to Him. (vv. 12-13)
There is an equally important process of preparation we have yet to consider. Not only is there a process of preparation through obedience; there is also a process of preparation through opposition.
In our passage, Jesus is driven into the wilderness to be tempted and tried. A principle of God's dealings is that there is always a wilderness experience in our preparation. Just as Jesus was tried in the wilderness, so are we. In verse 13, it says that Jesus was "tempted by Satan." The word in Greek for "tempted" has for its meaning "to put to the test to see what good or evil there is in a person." It originally meant, "to make an experience of, to pierce or search into." So Jesus went into the wilderness to be tested and tried, to see what was there. This is a picture of a wilderness experience.
To help you see that this wilderness experience was not simply isolated to Jesus, but that it is a principle in how God deals with men, let's look at the history of God's dealing in the lives of a few men.
Adam was the first man. And Christ is a type of Adam, the second Adam. The first Adam was blessed by God. God created him. He was in the family of God. He was given dominion over all the created realm. But there was a test, a temptation to prove him. The first Adam failed. The first Adam was tempted in his territory and fell. The second Adam was tempted in the Devil's territory and stood. But the testing was there for both.
Abraham was given a promise by God. But he had to endure the test of time in waiting for a child. Then he had the wilderness test of whether he was willing to obey God and offer up his only child, Isaac, or not. The test was there for Abraham.
Joseph had seen a vision from God, but he had to endure the test of captivity in Egypt. Would he continue to trust God in the midst of his Egyptian captivity? What was Joseph made of? Joseph himself would say later that this was God's doing. The test was there for Joseph.
Moses was thrust into the wilderness even before He was sent into Egypt to deliver Israel. Most often we think of Moses' wilderness experience being with the people of Israel for forty years. But we fail to remember that Moses was in the wilderness for forty years before his ministry began. Although he had risen to prominence in the courts of Egypt and availed himself of all the Egyptian education and training, he was not yet ready to be used by God until he was tried. There was a test for Moses.
Israel, as a people, were taken into the wilderness to be tried before they could enter the promised land. God said, in Psalm 81:7, "I proved thee at the waters of Meribah." The test was there for Israel.
David was forced to endure the wrath of Saul, even after he was given the promise of the kingdom by God. The temptation was there. Would he take the kingdom by his own power? Was ambition David's God? Or, would he trust God to fulfill His promise? Again, we see the test, the wilderness experience.
Peter was given the keys to the Kingdom. And then he was sifted by Satan in his wilderness experience of denials around a campfire. Peter came face to face with who he was in his wilderness experience.
The test is always there if we would go on with the Lord. It is a principle of God for our preparation for effective ministry. God does not bring the test upon us to hurt us; He brings the test upon us to bless us. He brings the test upon us to make us more like Christ. You see, the test does several important things for us.
The test reveals what we are made of. At the judgment seat of Christ, our works will be tried by fire. As it says in 1 Corinthians 3:13, the purpose is to "try every man's work of what sort it is." The wilderness experience is much like that trial by fire; only it lets us see what is in us now. 1 Peter 1:7 says, "That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ." David knew the value of seeing himself. He said, in Psalm 26:2, "Examine me, O Lord, and prove me; try my reigns and my heart."
We should be thankful for the test, whatever it reveals. Because even if we fall, we have learned much. And because we see what is in us now, we have time to change.
The test produces fruit or growth in us. By trials, we grow in faith and fruitfulness. James 1:2-3 says, "My brethren, count it all joy, when ye fall into diverse temptations, knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience." Then again, a few verses down, "Blessed is the man that endureth temptation; for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love Him." (v. 12) Another passage along these lines is 2 Thessalonians 1:3-5. "We ought always to give thanks to God for you, brethren, as is only fitting, because your faith is greatly enlarged, and the love of each one of you toward one another grows even greater; therefore, we ourselves speak proudly of you among the churches of God for your perseverance and faith in the midst of all your persecutions and afflictions which you endure. This is a plain indication of God's righteous judgment so that you may be considered worthy of the Kingdom of God, for which indeed you are suffering."
As we react in faith and obedience to the test or trial or temptation, our faith grows. This is what Jesus did, and He is our example. As we overcome each trial, we are strengthened. Our faith grows. Our confidence in the power of God to strengthen us increases. Our patience becomes greater. Our assurance of the promises of God rises and we are made ready for service, effective service. We are prepared, like steel is tempered so it will not break under pressure.
But how do we handle trials successfully? How do we overcome? Jesus is our example of how to overcome. We ought to handle the trials which come our way in the same manner in which Jesus did - by trust in the Word of God. Each time the Devil came with his subtle temptation, Jesus responded with the Word of God. And we must remember that these were very real temptations and that Jesus could have yielded to them. Otherwise, they would have been meaningless. Jesus experienced temptation, and He learned obedience by the things He suffered. And He also came through these temptations as one who would be able to comfort those who had been tempted. This is what the book of Hebrews says. The force of temptation and testing works a great work in us as we face it and overcome it by the Word of God.
We need to understand what the Lord says on the subject of our temptation. We need a word from God to stand on, and the Bible has that word. The sword of the Spirit is the Word of God. Use it and you will be victorious in your temptation or test.
But even so, there will be a struggle involved. So many people today have the idea that if you are really walking in the Spirit, there is no struggle, no hard time, no difficult decision. But that is simply not true. As a matter of fact, you should be glad it isn't true. The reason is because you need to struggle to grow. Much like an emerging butterfly needs to struggle its way out of its cocoon in order to have the strength to fly, so we need to struggle to overcome the residue of the old nature we find in us. Just as when you cut open the cocoon to release the butterfly of its struggle, only to find that without it, it dies; so when we gain the things of God without struggle, we become irresponsible with their use, and begin to take the Lord for granted. No. We need to fight the good fight of faith. We need to press on for the mark. We need to run the race as a disciplined athlete. Then we will overcome. We will win. And you will thank God for the struggle of tough decisions, for the wilderness, because it made you tough. And you could stand when you were in that place of ministry where it all counted on your standing. God said to Israel, "From the furnace of affliction have I chosen thee."
"And after John had been taken into custody, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, and saying, 'The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.'" (vv. 14-15)
Now we see Jesus beginning His public ministry in Galilee. But it is only after He has come through the dealings of God in His life. Even the Lord Jesus learned obedience by the things that He suffered, it says in Hebrews. The obedience, the submission, was tested by the wilderness experience. Then He began His anointed ministry.
The same holds true for you and me. We must also be tried in the wilderness. Perhaps you have been through a wilderness experience lately, or perhaps you are going through one right now. The word of God to you is, "Don't despair." God is with you in that place of trial. He will uphold you by His strength. And when you come forth on the other side, you will be so much better for having gone through it. The Bible says, "I have never seen the righteous forsaken, or his seed begging bread." God is with you in the midst of the hard times. He will never, never, never forsake you.
But stand strong and be true to the Lord. The trial will refine that faith like pure gold if you will not waver. And you will find that a new door will be opened to you in your service to Christ. If we will allow the Lord to prepare us through the process of obedience and opposition, then we will find a door opened. It is the door of effective, anointed service.
Based largely upon a sermon by J.D. Hoke
