Sermon Tone Analysis

Mark 1:12–13 (ESV)

12 The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.

13 And he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan.

And he was with the wild animals, and the angels were ministering to him.

Review

So, with the Spirit descending from heaven and with the words that he speaks, God the Father publicly sets the seal on the mission of his Son.

He smiles down at the Son he has sent into the world out of his love to save it.

Jesus himself knows his unique qualification for his mission.

Looking back, we too can understand and know.

This is the Lord Jesus, who is both God and man so that he is able to stand in the gap that separates us from God: the man who can identify with us in our weaknesses, who feels the cold as he stands on the riverbank and the wind dries him off; but who is also God the Son, with the authority and power of God, the authority that will be seen throughout his ministry as he heals diseases and drives out demons with a word—the one who is qualified and able to save us.

Introduction

Perhaps it's humbling to admit, embarrassing at points, but all of us still carry around with us a susceptibility to temptation.

You were susceptible this week.

You are susceptible to different things than I may be susceptible to.

But we’re all susceptible to temptation in some location, some situation, some relationship.

And because of that, this passage that we’re going to look at, however brief, is a particular comfort.

Mark is very careful to record that Christ faced and defeated Satan in three ways throughout His life.

First, in this moment where Christ is driven by the Spirit of God into the wilderness and is tempted by Satan He defeats Satan in that moment.

Christ faced him again in His public ministry and demonstrates His power over evil there.

And Christ faced him again at the cross, making a public spectacle of him, triumphing over him by the cross.

Mark reminds us that everything Christ did in his life was done for us.

From day one, it all was the substitution; it all was Christ in our place, Christ facing what we would not be able to face, Christ winning a victory that we could not win.

Paul Tripp

Illustration

The Unavoidable Encounter

Charles Colson, in his brilliant book of essays Who Speaks For God?, tells of watching a segment of television’s “60 Minutes” in which host Mike Wallace interviewed Auschwitz survivor Yehiel Dinur, a principal witness at the Nuremberg war-crime trials.

During the interview, a film clip from Adolf Eichmann’s 1961 trial was viewed which showed Dinur enter the courtroom and come face to face with Eichmann for the first time since being sent to Auschwitz almost twenty years earlier.

Stopped cold, Dinur began to sob uncontrollably and then fainted while the presiding judge pounded his gavel for order.

“Was Dinur overcome by hatred?

Fear?

Horrid memories?”

asked Colson, who answers:

No; it was none of these.

Rather, as Dinur explained to Wallace, all at once he realized Eichmann was not the godlike army officer who had sent so many to their deaths.

This Eichmann was an ordinary man.

“I was afraid about myself,” said Dinur.

“I saw that I am capable to do this.

I am … exactly like he.” Wallace’s subsequent summation of Dinur’s terrible discovery—“Eichmann is in all of us”—is a horrifying statement; but it indeed captures the central truth about man’s nature.

For as a result of the fall, sin is in each of us—not just the susceptibility to sin, but sin itself.1

It was not the horror of the man Eichmann that smote Dinur, but the horrible revelation of self and the predicament of mankind that made him faint.

Eichmann is in all of us, because all of us are in Adam.

This is proven by our susceptibility to temptation.

We are tempted by theft because we are thieves, even though we may not in fact steal.

We are tempted to kill because we are murderers, even if we do not literally slay our brother.

We are tempted to adultery because we are adulterers, even though we may not commit adultery.

James says,

James 1:13–14 (ESV)

13 Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one.

14 But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.

The fact that we are tempted proves that we are prone to evil—and it is terrible.

Eichmann is in all of us.

Objecting to this shows that we have not yet fully grasped the Scriptures’ teaching about our sin, nor have we come to grips with the realities about our own personalities.

Chuck Colson

“The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.”

The intimate connection between the two events is established by the introductory word “immediately.”

Jesus’ expulsion into the desert is the necessary consequence of his baptism; it is the same Spirit who descended upon Jesus at his baptism who now forces him to penetrate more deeply into the wilderness.

it is the same Spirit who descended upon Jesus at his baptism who now forces him to penetrate more deeply into the wilderness.

Christ wasn’t in the wilderness because of some kind of preemptive attack by Satan.

He wasn't there because He was lured there by the evil one.

It was the Spirit of God that led Christ into the wilderness to be tempted.

Now here's what that means.

This was part of the redemptive script.

This was part of God's plan.

The wilderness was a necessary step in what Christ came to do.

This isn’t a diversion.

This isn’t an interruption.

This is not a dangerous moment and you wonder what's going to happen.

This is God doing exactly what He meant to do, to lead Christ to face the enemy on our behalf.

You should notice the obvious reference, the obvious allusion that Mark makes to Israel and Israel's time in the wilderness.

Think about the people of God in the wilderness.

It really is pretty shocking because they've experienced marvelous redemption.

Think of the glory display that happened in Egypt as God is delivering His people.

You would think that in the heart of every Israelite, there would be this thought, “This is God and God alone, and we will serve him without question forever!”

You would think

But it doesn't take very long.

Look if you would, with me, you have to get out a church Bible to do this, to Exodus 32, because it's shocking what happens here.

God, as an act of grace, having redeemed his people from Egypt, is now going to give them His law.

That giving of the law is itself a grace.

Notice the account here:

When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered themselves together to Aaron and said to him, “Up, make us gods who shall go before us.

As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.”

(Exodus 32: 1- 2, ESV)

What's the issue?

What's the issue that leads to this outrageous idolatry?

Schedule!

Moses is gone longer than they think he should be gone; they say, “We don't know what's happened to him.”

And so what's the obvious next step?

“Let's make gods for us.”

I mean, that's how powerful our temptation to idolatry is!

It doesn't take much for our hearts to run after a God-replacement.

That's why we're so susceptible to temptation.

Own the fact that that heart is in you.

Do you know what the New Testament says?

1 Corinthians 10:11–12 (ESV) 11 Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction, on whom the end of the ages has come.

12 Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall.

These are people just like us.

Now think of Aaron.

Aaron is one of God's leaders.You would think Aaron would say, “Never!

There is one true God, Jehovah, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God who led us out of Egypt!

I will not do this thing?”