Jesus: Strength in Temptation and Divine Commissioning

"We have mentioned that the gospels give us little information about the early years of Jesus' life. We hear of His infancy, we see Him in the temple when He's twelve years old, and then the next time we see Jesus is when He comes to the Jordan River to be baptized by John, and He's thirty years old." [00:00:11]

"Now the Bible does tell us that He grew up as the child of Joseph and Mary, and that presumably He grew up in a carpenter's environment. And that can be a little bit misleading to us. It's fascinating that when we look at the teaching of Jesus, in the parables that He teaches, for example, that He constantly draws His material from the normal patterns of life of His day -- many, many references to agriculture." [00:00:40]

"But the number one reference in Jesus' teaching to images drawn from the society of His day is from the field of stonemasonry, and that could be a little bit surprising to us because we don't think of Jesus as being in the construction business, but rather of His having been a carpenter. But therein is the rub. The carpenter in these days was not simply a cabinetmaker or one who worked with woodwork, but he was chiefly a builder, and it was a quite arduous task." [00:01:10]

"Well, in any case, we've seen part of the significance of the baptism of Jesus inasmuch as Jesus came, presented Himself to John by the River Jordan, and John protested against his baptizing Jesus and wanted Jesus to baptize him. And we recall that Jesus said, 'No, suffer it now, John. This is necessary because I have to fulfill all righteousness.'" [00:02:41]

"And there is that significance to the baptism that Jesus is willingly and voluntarily submitting to every dimension of the law of God. But there's another important element that we have to understand with respect to His baptism because we are told on the occasion of His baptism that the Holy Spirit descends from heaven in the form of a dove upon Christ." [00:03:08]

"This is His ordination; this is His divine commissioning for His messianic vocation. This is when the Spirit of the Lord comes upon Him to make Him God's anointed or God's 'Christos,' because the title, 'Christ,' means 'the anointed one.' So Jesus is now anointed for ministry, and He is ordained by God and set apart to begin the vocation for which He had been sent into the world in the first place." [00:03:43]

"Now the other element in the record of the baptism that is significant is that we are told that God spoke audibly from heaven on this occasion. There are three times in the New Testament where we have the record of God's speaking audibly, and in every one of these occasions, the message is substantively the same; namely, it is an announcement from heaven declaring Jesus to be His Son." [00:04:25]

"And so we read in the record that when the dove descends upon Jesus and the voice came from heaven, the voice announces this: 'You are My beloved Son. In You I am well pleased.' And then the Scriptures tell us that immediately after His baptism, the same Spirit that has anointed Him, the same spirit that has descended upon Him now impels Him or drives Him into the wilderness to be tempted of Satan for forty days." [00:04:55]

"Now you will recall that we, at the very beginning of this series of 'Dust to Glory,' considered the probationary period of Adam and Eve when they were in the Garden, and how they were assaulted by the serpent. And the serpent prevailed over them and got them to sin. Now one of the most important motifs of the New Testament with respect to Jesus is that Jesus, in His messianic office, has to fulfill many responsibilities, one of which is to fulfill the role of the Second Adam or the New Adam, the representative of a new humanity, and to achieve victory where the first Adam suffered defeat." [00:05:48]

"And so in behalf of His people, it is, as it were, Jesus is driven back into the place of tempting, and He is subjected to this rigorous test. It's like an ordeal of fire through which He must pass in order to be qualified to go public with His ministry. So that His first mission is not a public mission, but it's a private mission undertaken in the desolate arena of the Judean wilderness." [00:06:35]

"And if any of you have ever had the opportunity to visit the Holy Land, I doubt if you could ever forget your visual impression of the Judean wilderness, where the only indigenous wildlife includes wild rabbits, snakes, scorpions, and a handful of birds. That's it; it is one of the most intimidating, desolate pieces of real estate on this planet. And it was into that environment that the Spirit of God drove Jesus to be alone." [00:07:25]

"Now I've talked many times about the comparisons and contrasts that exist between the tempting of Adam and the tempting of Jesus. Remember the environment in which Adam and Eve were tempted. The place or the setting of the assault of Sa -- of the serpent against them was in a gorgeous, lush, garden paradise. They were attacked and assaulted by Satan in the midst of an experience where they were given the privilege of eating freely from all of the fruit of the trees of the Garden." [00:08:09]