Mark 1:12-13 "The Messianic Test"

Introduction

Last Sunday we saw from Mark’s gospel that Jesus submitted to John’s baptism in order to fulfill all righteousness.

This meant that the Lord Jesus as the Messiah of God identified with His covenant people by aligning Himself with them as their sin bearer.

His ministry would be one of sin bearing so that His covenant people may be the recipients of His righteousness by faith alone.

But this identification did not just connect to those in Jesus day and those to come in the future. It went back in time into Old Testament covenant history as well.

This is one of the key reasons Jesus was driven out into the wilderness by the Holy Spirit. Look back at your text to verse 12 at what I refer to as the Wilderness Expulsion:

I. The Wilderness Expulsion (12).

Notice that it was the Holy Spirit that immediately following His baptism that drove Him out into the wilderness.

The Holy Spirit that had just came down upon Him was now driving Him out into the wilderness.

That term “drove” in the original language literally means “force to leave, drive out or to expel” (BAGD). The Father is directing the Son by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness to connect Him in identification with the covenant people of God when they were delivered out of Egypt by Moses.

Remember the prophecy from Deuteronomy 18:15-19 where the Lord says that He will raise up a prophet like Moses to lead His people. We looked at it months back. God used Moses to lead His people out of Egypt and where did God take them? That’s right He took them into the wilderness and they were there for 40 years.

And you may remember things didn’t go too well in the wilderness. The wilderness wasn’t a very comfortable place. This wasn’t like going camping on vacation. The food ran out and there were battles to be fought and there was a lot of complaining going on.

This identification that Jesus was submitting Himself to had far reaching affects as it not only looked at His historical present and the future but back through Old Testament covenant history.

You see Christ was still the payment for those Old Testament people of faith who hoped in the covenant promises of Yahweh. The Lord in a sense saved them on credit in anticipation of the balance being paid in full in Christ.

But this identification is critical to understanding what it means to be in Christ as a believer in the gospel. This is true because in time we will all find ourselves in a wilderness in this fallen world. Because the world is full of conflicts and struggles.

Christians are not immune to wilderness journeys in life. Maybe not in the literal sense but in the sense where we are being tried and the testing of our perseverance in the faith is being challenged.

Christian such testing is building and affirming our faith in Christ as legitimate and authentic.

But Christian we need to remember that in such times our Lord is not out of touch with us in our weakness but He knew full well what the wilderness was like for He went there to live out His identification with us. Hebrews 4:15 declares this truth: “15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.”

His actions in the wilderness were the antithesis of the children of Israel in the wilderness. And even though He was to be like Moses, the Lord Jesus showed forth perfectly obedience to the glory of God in the face of the Satanic seduction that He would be faced with. Look back at verse 13 of your text:

II. The Wilderness Seduction (13).

Mark doesn’t get into the details of Jesus being tempted in the wilderness. We know from Mathew 4:1-11 and Luke 4:1-12 that there were three temptations that Satan put before the Lord Jesus. After fasting for 40 days he tempted Him to use His power to create bread, to worship him in order to have the kingdoms of the earth and to test God by casting Himself off a high building.

All three of the temptations are at their core an attempt to assert human rule and practice in the place of God’s dominion and authority over all things. Jesus was being offered short-cuts and comforts that in the end would circumvent the purpose and plan of God.

But Mark doesn’t dive into all of this because Mark is connecting back to the idea of the Old Testament identification with the Old Testament covenant people and revealing the unmistakable connection that Jesus has with Moses in fulfillment of Deuteronomy 18:15-19.

The forty days have a symbolic connection to Moses being on Sinai for forty days in Exodus 24:18 and also Elijah the prophet on Horeb in I Kings 19:8-15. Horeb is the same place as Sinai. But in the general sense the area was a wilderness wasteland.

But for both of these Old Testament saints God met with them and directed and encouraged them for the challenges of their coming ministry.

We are told that the Lord sent His angels to minister to Jesus after Satan left. Yes this is the same Satan in the garden of Eden that tempted Adam and Eve with, you remember don’t you. It was food and the ability to discern between good and evil for yourself in the place of God.

That was when destruction came upon the earth and man was driven out of Eden into a wilderness of thorns and thistles. I actually believe that the terms for wilderness and wild animals is denoting the affects of a fallen world in Mark’s gospel. And Mark is telling us by the Holy Spirit that Jesus was driven out by the Spirit to face all of it on our behalf to the glory of God alone.

The wilderness seduction was a micro-cosom of the Macro-cosom of the life and ministry of Jesus. And confronting Satan and the destructive affect of a fallen world are right in line with the Kingdom of God. John’s gospel has Jesus first miracle being Him turning water into wine; Mark’s gospel has Jesus first miracle being Jesus healing a man with an unclean spirit.

Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil and to set things right before God. This is the Kingdom dynamic seen in the synoptic gospels. And make no mistake Satan fought all through the ministry of Jesus. He went away during this initial temptation to wait for another opportunity.

Christian I find that at times the things I want clash with the things of God. I like thing easy and comfortable and I like the perception of success too often from a worldly perspective. I don’t like the wilderness because it is often counter productive to accomplishing what I often want.

But the wilderness was made for the sinful ambitions of men to die so that the plan and purpose of God can be discerned in our lives.

It is in the wilderness where we learn dependence and reliance on God to accomplish, not our agenda but the purpose and plan of God.

This is how Jesus lived in the wilderness. But we triumph ultimately not because we follow His example but because He followed the will of the Father and bore our sin and fought Satan head on without collapsing in weakness under the weight of sin.

Conclusion:

His provision on our behalf being applied to us by grace through faith rescued us from the Satan and his dominion of darkness.

Unbeliever, without sovereign grace applying the work of Christ to you and opening your eyes to the reality of salvation by faith alone in Christ, you are still under the dominion of darkness. You need a savior, believe the gospel.

Believer this table brings us back again to a fresh encounter with God’s provision of grace to us in Christ. By faith we come to His throne of grace in full dependence and reliance on Him through faith alone.

Because of this we are commanded by Scripture to examine ourselves in preparation of this table. Let’s Pray!

No closed and everyone together.