Preparing the Son of Man : Part 2
The Next PROCESS (involved in preparing the Son of Man) is,
His Authentication
How do you decide if something is authentic? You test it, right? Back in the days when gold was used in coins, some people would actually bite the coin to see if it was genuine. They knew that gold is fairly soft, you could dent it with your teeth. They also wanted to see if the coin just had a thin coating or if it was gold the whole way through. Just like today, there were imitations and counterfeits.
Here, God was testing His Son, Jesus. Did God think Jesus wasn’t genuine, that there was some flaw in Him? We know better than that. It was a testing of authentication. This testing would prove or confirm the fact that Jesus was fully human. I believe what happened next in Jesus’ preparation for ministry happened for our benefit.
So, Jesus has this glorious experience of the Father and the Holy Spirit affirming and blessing Him. But then, immediately, the Holy Spirit, with an irresistible force, drives Him out into the wilderness. Some versions say the Holy Spirit sent Jesus into the wilderness. But that lacks the strength of meaning in this word. Driven is a much better translation. This same word [ekballo] is used in the context of casting a net or even casting out demons!
This highlights for us, right here at the beginning of His ministry, a couple of patterns we’ll see all through Mark’s Gospel. First, Jesus was obedient to the Spirit. Being filled with the Spirit meant He was fully under the Spirit’s control. In addition, the most exalted One is also the most humiliated One. He is the King of Kings, but He is also the Suffering Servant. Even in His horrible death as a common criminal, the placard above Him proclaimed Him as “The King of the Jews.”
Imagine what a spiritual and emotional mountaintop experience Jesus’ baptism was. It reminds me of the ministry of Elijah on Mount Carmel. He has this glorious manifestation of the power and presence of God bringing a revival, and the next scene shows him running for his life from the wicked Jezebel. He ends up in a cave in a state of depression and self-pity. Maybe you’ve experienced some similar highs and lows in your walk with the Lord.
Jesus was driven by the Holy Spirit into the Judean wilderness. This was near to where John was baptizing. Immediately after receiving the accolades of heaven, in the presence of the crowds, He now faces the fierce assaults of hell—alone! You and I both know that being alone makes us more vulnerable to temptation.
Jesus was God in the flesh, why did He need to be tempted? Hebrews 4:14-16 give us the answer. “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.” Satan’s temptation is always designed to rob us of God’s best.
What is the significance of the wilderness being a place of temptation? The wilderness is a fearful place, a desolate place, a lonely place, a wild, untamed, dangerous place. It is associated with evil, with unbelief, and with hostility. It represents a picture of judgment, a picture of mankind without God, a picture of unbelief and Satan’s kingdom. The Scriptures, especially the Psalms, abound with word pictures that illustrate this.
In Isaiah chapter 32, the prophet describes a time of judgment where the land of Israel is overtaken by thorns and briars. He tells his readers that the land will stay that way “Until the Spirit is poured upon us from on high, and the wilderness becomes a fruitful field, and the fruitful field is counted as a forest.” And after His lament over Jerusalem in Matthew 23, Jesus said, “Behold, your house is left to you desolate…” Desolate is a different translation of [er-ay-mos] wilderness.
And then, He was there in that untamed wilderness enduring this time of temptation for 40 days! Time periods of 40 days are fairly numerous in Scripture. The rain of Noah’s time lasted for 40 days. Moses was on Mount Sinai for 40 days. Other 40-day events were Goliath taunting the armies of Israel and Elijah sulking in the cave after his tremendous victory at Mount Carmel. These 40-day time periods are usually associated with testing, trial, and eventually, triumph. A specific time of testing in preparation for service is a consistent pattern in the Scriptures.
Mark adds a detail that’s not included by any of the other Gospel writers, that Jesus was with the wild beasts. This would’ve included jackals, leopards, and wild boars. Recently, I watched a video of a lynx taking down a whitetail deer. It was difficult to watch. The poet, Tennyson, wrote that “nature [is] red in tooth and claw.” Wild beasts are dangerous, unpredictable, fierce, and cruel, much like human beings who are under the control of sin and Satan.
But Mark does omit the detail of Jesus fasting for 40 days. Some commentators believe that the record of the specific temptations in Matthew and Luke came at or near the end of that 40-day fast. Jesus’ physical body would’ve been in a state of extreme weakness by that time. And yet, He successfully resisted ALL of Satan’s temptations.
And what was the point of those temptations? What was Satan trying to do? He attacked Jesus repeatedly on His role as the Suffering Servant. He didn’t tempt Him to give up His deity, or His sovereign power. Instead, he tempted Jesus to use His power in selfish ways apart from the direction of the Holy Spirit. If Jesus had yielded to Satan that would’ve undermined God’s saving purposes. The success of Jesus’ earthly ministry depended on His humiliation. The apostle Paul explains this concept so clearly in Philippians chapter two.
One ray of light shines into this wilderness experience. During this time of extreme testing, angels waited on Jesus and ministered to His needs. I want you to understand that the temptation Jesus experienced wasn’t just one time. We may get that impression from the other Gospels. He was being tempted, again and again. But the angels were continually attending to Him and meeting His needs. What a precious truth. God doesn’t abandon us in our times of testing even though we may feel like He has!
How does all of this relate to you and me and the times we’re living in? While you and I may not face testing or temptation at the same level Jesus did, it is the experience of every genuine Believer. Following times of spiritual highs there needs to be a time of heightened spiritual vigilance lest we crash to a spiritual low and succumb to temptation.
Paul told the early disciples of Jesus in Iconium and Antioch, “that through much tribulation we must enter the kingdom of God.” Peter cautioned his readers, “Don’t be surprised by suffering as though it is something strange, but rather expect it as part of our life in Christ.” The writer of Hebrews equates suffering as proof of our being God’s sons and daughters. In other words, suffering authenticates who we are in Christ. He further states that Jesus, even though He was the Son of God, learned obedience (experientially) through the things He suffered.
Additionally, testing and temptation reveal who we really are. Extreme heat and pressure form diamonds. Irritating grains of sand lead to the formation of pearls. Gold and silver in useable form must be refined in the fire. Untested faith is weak and may have little value.
As I look at my own life and experience, many of my temptations have to do with serving myself or serving others. This is right where Satan put pressure on Jesus. Use your position or your power or whatever to get what YOU want. Isn’t that what Satan and the world keep telling you and me today? But Jesus didn’t do that. He put our needs ahead of His needs and His wants. As His followers, we are called to put the needs of others before our own. How much of our effectiveness in witness and ministry is damaged by our own selfishness?
Are you willing to get alone with God the Father and fast and pray? To what lengths are you willing to go to overcome Satan’s temptations? Are you being overcome by the wild beasts of sinful desire in your spiritual wilderness?
Remember, just like the angels ministered to Jesus in His time of testing and temptation, the Holy Spirit is present with you. You have this specific promise, “No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.”
So, in this process of preparing the Son of Man, we have His approbation and His authentication.
The Final PROCESS (involved in preparing the Son of Man) is,
His Proclamation
Mark jumps immediately into a brief description of the beginning of Jesus’ preaching ministry. The specific time he mentions is after John’s arrest. This was probably about six months after the previous verses. In the interim, the other Gospel writers record Him cleansing the Temple, ministering in Judea, and offering new life to the woman at the well as He traveled through the despised region of Samaria.
Mark ignores all of that to focus on Jesus’ ministry back home in Galilee. This is a biblical principle. Ministry starts at home, and then you branch out from there. Jesus went to His home region proclaiming the gospel of God. Earlier, we looked extensively at the meaning of the word gospel as it was used and understood at the time, so we won’t revisit that. The fact that Jesus launched His ministry in Galilee seems to be a rebuke of the apostasy and corruption that existed in the religious system centered in Jerusalem.
So, Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming a message with three distinct parts; the time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand, repent, and believe in the Gospel.
The time is fulfilled. This was the hinge point of human history. Long centuries had passed since God promised Adam and Eve that the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent. Down through the succeeding generations, the prophets slowly revealed more and more of God’s plan for the coming Redeemer. His birth in Bethlehem, His brief sojourn in Egypt, His childhood in Nazareth, His rejection by the Jewish leaders, and His ultimate death by crucifixion were all foretold by the prophets.
Jesus then explained the saying, “The time is fulfilled,” by adding, “The kingdom of God is at hand.” The time was fulfilled because the kingdom of God was at hand. And the kingdom of God was at hand because the King (Jesus) had arrived.
When Jesus came to earth as a man, He came to offer this long-prophesied kingdom of God to the Jews. It seems He would have inaugurated the kingdom of God if they had received Him as their Messiah. But they rejected Him and His kingdom. And so, the kingdom was taken from them for a season until the time of the Gentiles is fulfilled.
The final part of Jesus’ announcement of the kingdom was to repent and believe this good news, the Gospel. The word repent is metanoeo. Meta means change, and noeo means mind or perspective. To repent means changing your way of thinking.
Jesus’ message included repentance but He also added belief or faith in Him. The words “repent and believe” are given as imperatives, they’re a command. In the proclamation of the Gospel message, these are not optional, they are mandatory.
The kind of faith Jesus is commanding isn’t some nebulous intellectual assent to a theory. It is a wholehearted embrace of the person and work of Jesus Christ. It is a belief that will change you both inside and out. James informs us what genuine faith looks like. “You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe—and tremble! But do you want to know, O foolish man, that faith without works is dead? For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.”
Today, you and I are called to proclaim this same message, this same Good News; repent and believe the Gospel. It isn’t popular because it leads to suffering and hardship. It often makes us appear to those around us as odd or out-of-touch with the culture. It calls us to place our own desires and wants in the background and take up the mantle of service to others. It assures us that only by learning how to die to self will we really learn how to live.
The processes for preparing the Son of Man for His earthly ministry were unique to Him because He was and is the Son of God. But they are common to everyone who chooses to follow Him. You and I need His approbation, we need His authentication, and we need to embrace and promote His proclamation.
Have you been prepared to share the Good News?