Friday, January 28, 2022
A Job to Do
“The Spirit then compelled Jesus to go into the wilderness, where he was tempted by Satan for forty days. He was out among the wild animals, and angels took care of him” (Mark 1:12-13 NLT).
The word Trinity isn’t in the Bible, but the Trinity is.
And I don’t know of a clearer passage in Scripture than this one, which shows us the Trinity in action: “As Jesus came up out of the water, he saw the heavens splitting apart and the Holy Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice from heaven said, ‘You are my dearly loved Son, and you bring me great joy’” (Mark 1:20-11 NLT).
Here we have Jesus, the Son, being baptized. We have the Holy Spirit coming upon Him like a dove. And we have the voice of the Father saying, “You are my dearly loved Son, and you bring me great joy.”
But after the dove came the Devil. After the blessing came the trial, because immediately Jesus went into the wilderness to face Satan. Mark tells us, “The Spirit then compelled Jesus to go into the wilderness, where he was tempted by Satan for forty days” (verses 12–13 NLT).
While Mark doesn’t give us a full account of Christ’s temptation like Matthew and Luke do, this suggests that Jesus didn’t want to go. But it was something urgent that the Holy Spirit was doing here, because Jesus had to go through this. There was no time to bask in the glory of God. It was straight to work. Jesus had a job to do.
But it also shows us something very important. Often trials or testing or temptations come after moments of great blessing.
We all know what it’s like to be tempted. We’ve all felt the presence of temptation, haven’t we? Satan is real, and temptation is real as well.
So where is the best place to be when we’re being tempted? The best place to be is in the will of God, just like Jesus was.
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