Text: Mark 1:9-15
Facebook live: Repent and believe the gospel!
12 At once the Spirit sent him out into the wilderness, 13 and he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. He was with the wild animals, and angels attended him.
As our theme of Return to the Lord continues with this second midweek in Lent, we are called to repent and believe the gospel. The gift of God in Christ for you and me as the father in love sends his Son to redeem us and by the Spirit’s work we are made new and made God’s children.
10 Just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. 11 And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”
Following Jesus’ baptism by John in the Jordan we see the work of the Holy Spirit immediately driving Jesus out into the wilderness. The wilderness is a desolate place, a place of danger, a place we’re told of wild beasts and certainly a parallel for the wanderings of Moses and the Israelites, in the wilderness, for 40 years. Here too we see the 40 years paralleled with the 40 days in the wilderness and the tempting that Jesus endured.
The number 40 shows up many times in the Bible having significance as a time of trial, tempting and persecution.
Here, Jesus is tempted by Satan. Satan literally means “the tempter” in Hebrew and also in Aramaic – adversary - or literally, “One lying in ambush for.”
R.C.H. Lenski commentary, St. Marks Gospel, Pg. 57
This was no demon in training that Satan sent to temp the Son of Man, no this was important business and Satan was up to the task himself. The tempting of the devil, the starkness of the wilderness and the ferocious beasts were all that Christ had in his company for 40 days.
In St. Matthew and St. Luke’s gospel we read of three tempting and Jesus’ answer by the word of God to Satan,
that man does not live on bread alone - Luke 4:4,
12 At once the Spirit sent him out into the wilderness, 13 and he was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. He was with the wild animals, and angels attended him.
As our theme of Return to the Lord continues with this second midweek in Lent, we are called to repent and believe the gospel. The gift of God in Christ for you and me as the father in love sends his Son to redeem us and by the Spirit’s work we are made new and made God’s children.
10 Just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. 11 And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”
Following Jesus’ baptism by John in the Jordan we see the work of the Holy Spirit immediately driving Jesus out into the wilderness. The wilderness is a desolate place, a place of danger, a place we’re told of wild beasts and certainly a parallel for the wanderings of Moses and the Israelites, in the wilderness, for 40 years. Here too we see the 40 years paralleled with the 40 days in the wilderness and the tempting that Jesus endured.
The number 40 shows up many times in the Bible having significance as a time of trial, tempting and persecution.
Here, Jesus is tempted by Satan. Satan literally means “the tempter” in Hebrew and also in Aramaic – adversary - or literally, “One lying in ambush for.”
R.C.H. Lenski commentary, St. Marks Gospel, Pg. 57
This was no demon in training that Satan sent to temp the Son of Man, no this was important business and Satan was up to the task himself. The tempting of the devil, the starkness of the wilderness and the ferocious beasts were all that Christ had in his company for 40 days.
In St. Matthew and St. Luke’s gospel we read of three tempting and Jesus’ answer by the word of God to Satan,
that man does not live on bread alone - Luke 4:4,
worship the Lord your God and serve him only - Luke 4:8
and finally, not putting the Lord your God to the test - Luke 4:12
But what is also clear is that Jesus was tempted for 40 days – an ongoing tempting of the devil.
Unlike the Father and the Spirit, who as God cannot be tempted, but Christ Jesus true God and true man was tempted as we were, yet without sin.
All of the temptations of the devil attacked the true humanity of the God/man himself, Jesus Christ.
Only man hungers and thirsts
and only man is led to worship falsely one who isn't God,
and only man puts God - and his love for him to the test.
You like me know hunger. You like me have trusted in the things of this word, and you like me have tested God beyond measure.
We were marked in birth as a sinner and God’s enemy, in life we carry marks as well.
Ill.
I have a scar on my knee. I don’t remember what I did to get it but I remember it was the first time I needed stitches to close the wound. I can still see the needle, thread and the Dr. working. I must have been around 8 when it happened and all these years later it remains a mark and memory in my life.
The scar on my hand came from climbing through a broken window at my neighbor’s garage where I took a chunk out of my palm with a shard or glass.
There is a scar on my right foot that came in childhood foolishness when I jumped off the roof of my grandfather’s shed on to a board with a nail sticking up that went into my foot and required a tetanus shot.
The scar on my head came as I bent over in my garage as an adult to pick something up and hit my head on the metal bracket of a hose reel saved for what purpose I don’t know but not in use.
Jesus too caries the scars and marks in his hands and feet and on his head of his scourging and death of the cross. He may like you and me have also carried the scars of life’s accidents and memories not recorded in scripture but lived and remembered in a very real human life and existence.
It is fitting in this Lenten season that we look to our Lord’s baptism and to our own baptism.
9 In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 10 And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove.11 And a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”
Here Christ Jesus is marked as substitute for you as the one to be the once for all sacrifice for sin. Here he begins the journey to Jerusalem and the cross of redemption for you and here too we see in Christ and in his humiliation the descent as he goes down to Jerusalem and the cross … where …
“It is finished”
We also carry another mark that isn’t a scar, and that is of the mark of Christ given at our Baptism when we were marked redeemed by Christ and raised to new ness of life.
The old bodily scars remain - as they do for Jesus - but the mark of life eternal replaces the mark of sin, death and the devil for you and me all who are washed in the blood of the Lamb.
3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. Rom. 6:3-4
Newness of life can bring with it a confidence to boldly proclaim Christ and his saving work in spite of danger and death.
It’s a bad world, we know that.
But in Christ you can have joy and peace as his holy people who have learned a great secret.
Though despised, rejected and persecuted, as Jesus was, we can care not about this life – or the scars we bear - because in Christ, who is the master of our souls, we have been redeemed and have overcome the world.
May our Lord and savior Jesus Christ who has redeemed you, through the power of the Holy Spirit calling you to faith, comfort you with this blessed Good News now and forever!
In the name of the Father and of the Son + and of the Holy Spirit
Amen
and finally, not putting the Lord your God to the test - Luke 4:12
But what is also clear is that Jesus was tempted for 40 days – an ongoing tempting of the devil.
Unlike the Father and the Spirit, who as God cannot be tempted, but Christ Jesus true God and true man was tempted as we were, yet without sin.
All of the temptations of the devil attacked the true humanity of the God/man himself, Jesus Christ.
Only man hungers and thirsts
and only man is led to worship falsely one who isn't God,
and only man puts God - and his love for him to the test.
You like me know hunger. You like me have trusted in the things of this word, and you like me have tested God beyond measure.
We were marked in birth as a sinner and God’s enemy, in life we carry marks as well.
Ill.
I have a scar on my knee. I don’t remember what I did to get it but I remember it was the first time I needed stitches to close the wound. I can still see the needle, thread and the Dr. working. I must have been around 8 when it happened and all these years later it remains a mark and memory in my life.
The scar on my hand came from climbing through a broken window at my neighbor’s garage where I took a chunk out of my palm with a shard or glass.
There is a scar on my right foot that came in childhood foolishness when I jumped off the roof of my grandfather’s shed on to a board with a nail sticking up that went into my foot and required a tetanus shot.
The scar on my head came as I bent over in my garage as an adult to pick something up and hit my head on the metal bracket of a hose reel saved for what purpose I don’t know but not in use.
Jesus too caries the scars and marks in his hands and feet and on his head of his scourging and death of the cross. He may like you and me have also carried the scars of life’s accidents and memories not recorded in scripture but lived and remembered in a very real human life and existence.
It is fitting in this Lenten season that we look to our Lord’s baptism and to our own baptism.
9 In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. 10 And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove.11 And a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”
Here Christ Jesus is marked as substitute for you as the one to be the once for all sacrifice for sin. Here he begins the journey to Jerusalem and the cross of redemption for you and here too we see in Christ and in his humiliation the descent as he goes down to Jerusalem and the cross … where …
“It is finished”
We also carry another mark that isn’t a scar, and that is of the mark of Christ given at our Baptism when we were marked redeemed by Christ and raised to new ness of life.
The old bodily scars remain - as they do for Jesus - but the mark of life eternal replaces the mark of sin, death and the devil for you and me all who are washed in the blood of the Lamb.
3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. Rom. 6:3-4
Newness of life can bring with it a confidence to boldly proclaim Christ and his saving work in spite of danger and death.
It’s a bad world, we know that.
But in Christ you can have joy and peace as his holy people who have learned a great secret.
Though despised, rejected and persecuted, as Jesus was, we can care not about this life – or the scars we bear - because in Christ, who is the master of our souls, we have been redeemed and have overcome the world.
May our Lord and savior Jesus Christ who has redeemed you, through the power of the Holy Spirit calling you to faith, comfort you with this blessed Good News now and forever!
In the name of the Father and of the Son + and of the Holy Spirit
Amen
