Truth For Life Daily Program - Jesus: Baptized, Tempted

0:00salsa Welcome to Truth for Life. Today, Alistair Begg considers the baptism and temptation of Jesus. What makes these events so significant? And what can we learn from them? We'll be looking at the answers found in chapter 1 of Mark's Gospel. We begin today with verse 9. Now, John, we learned last time was the most successful preacher of his day. He was clear. He was direct. He was urgent.

1:01He was marked by integrity. He was humble. And his chosen form of dress and his diet were in themselves noteworthy. Now, he knew that his role was to fade into the background just as quickly as he might. He was the orderf. He was not the main course. Jesus was the one who was to come to the fore. He was the one who was to slip out. In fact, he says on one occasion, John records it, Christ must become greater and I must become less. And in that, he is an example to all who would ever take to the opportunity of proclaiming Jesus in any capacity at all. There are many things he might have addressed, but he addresses the central, the core issue. And women are dislocated from God as a result of sin. God who is a covenant establishing and keeping God still comes and pursues those who have turned

2:03their backs on him. And speaking to such a crowd, he sounds the note which is a necessary note then and now, namely the note of forgiveness of sins, which lies at the very heart of Christianity. Now, as we said again last time, Mark writes according to his own purpose and in relationship to his own personality. He's obviously not particularly verbose. His brevity forces the reader's attention to consider that which we might say is main and plain. And in this little paragraph, he gives to us two sins and we'll deal with them in turn. First of all, Jesus in the water and then secondly, Jesus in the wilderness, Jesus first then in the water. Now, the question is what is he doing in the water? Well, first of all, we find that he is identifying with those he came to save.

3:08Mark leaves out what Matthew tells us concerning John the Baptist's reticence from your own study, you may recall that when Jesus appeared to be baptized by John, John had said to him, haven't we got this upside down? Should I not be the one who is baptized by you rather than me baptizing you? And on that occasion, Jesus had said, let's just go with it this way. Thus, it is fitting now to fulfill all righteousness. I'm here to do what is right before God. I am here to fulfill what God designed for Israel in its perfection. I am here to determine by my life that which is pleasing to the Father and therefore it is right for me to be baptized. Now it would be immediately wrong for us to infer from that that Jesus was saying, either by word or by action, that he himself required a baptism of repentance because obviously he

4:10didn't. Mark knew that he didn't. Mark knew that he was the Lamb of God, that he was the sinless Lamb of God, the one who would take away the sin of the world. Well then, if that is the case, why is he being baptized? What is happening? Well, what Jesus is doing is he is making a statement, or we might say he is making a number of statements by taking his place in the river. He is identifying with those who, in their baptism, have acknowledged their need of repentance and have confessed their sins and have looked to God for forgiveness. Remember in 2 Corinthians 5 in an immense statement Paul says, God made him who knew no sin to be sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. And he who is the bearer of sin identifies with sinners in their need at every point

5:15if you like along the path. And so as he comes to be baptized by John, his baptism is actually pointing forward to his death because you will recall from the gospel of Luke that as he comes closer to the time of his death, Jesus says in Luke chapter 12, now I have a baptism. And what he is referring to there is the fact that he is about to be plunged if you like into death and in the shedding of his blood in death, there will be forgiveness for the sins of all who trust in him. And here he is in his baptism foreshadowing if you like what will happen in his death. Here we find him standing if you like as the priest who will bring forgiveness by the sacrifice of himself.

6:15So here in the baptism of John there is all this symbolism that which is pictured in the water is not performed in the water. Jesus goes down into the same water which is tainted by all the symbolic sins of those who have been baptized. And then John takes that same tainted water and pours it over Christ in his baptism as a graphic symbol of what will happen in the pouring out of the blood of Christ on those who are repentant sinners. So that's the first thing we need to recognize that there in the water there is an identification with sinners in their need. Sanctantly in the water we discover that he is identified not only with but he is identified as and he is identified as the father's son whom the father loves, verse 11.

7:21Now you'll notice here we have each member of the Trinity. The word Trinity does not appear in the Bible but it describes in theological terms the nature of God as he makes himself known. When you read the Bible you discover very, very quickly that there are indications of God's being that point us in different directions. The spirit of God is identified as a real person. God as father as a person and God the son as a person. And as we read our Bible we discover that in every instance each of these individuals is equal with one another in terms of their eternity and in terms of their power and in terms of their divinity. Now I want you to notice that here is one of the places in the New Testament where without announcement you find each member of the Trinity. You have God the son in the water. You have God the father speaking from heaven and you have God the spirit descending upon

8:25the son like a dove. And the father and the spirit are bearing witness to the identity of Jesus. Later on Jesus is going to ask his disciples what's the word on the street? Who do people say that I am? And on that occasion his followers will tell him there are all kinds of things being said about you. And here we are today in the 21st century. And if we were to go out this afternoon and go on to the streets of Greater Cleveland and simply ask the question who do you think that Jesus of Nazareth is we would receive all kinds of answers. Some saying well he's a great man, a wonderful teacher, whatever it might be. But here we have the authentic statement of the father himself concerning the son and this in the most dramatic of fashions. Because his verse 10 tells us as Jesus was coming up out of the water there is a visible and a variable dimension to this authenticating voice.

9:30First of all we're told he saw heaven being torn open. Reminding us that this is a supernatural event. And then the spirit is described as descending. You will notice the spirit is capitalized there in the NIV. Reminding us that this is a reference to the third person of the Trinity God, the Holy Spirit. Now when the people of God were anticipating the coming of the Messiah, they anticipated that when the Messiah came and he stepped out if you like into the formalized role of his kingly rule to subdue the rebellion of man in the formalized role of this prophetic work to deal with the ignorance of men and women in his priestly role to bear our alienation and so on, that that messianic inauguration would surely not happen absent that which had taken place when if you like inferior priests and judges and kings had been set to their

10:35task. So when heaven is torn open and the Spirit of God descends like a dove, people would not immediately have said, oh my, my, I wonder what this is all about, they would have said, oh, now isn't this just the kind of thing that our four bearers told us had happened for the kings of Israel and so on and they would have recognized something of the significance in it. And the descending Spirit is said to come on the one who will in turn baptize with the Holy Spirit. Jesus is going to finally go to heaven and he is going to send the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit will come and baptize and fill the followers of Jesus and equip them with an understanding of the truth and with power to take this wonderful good news to the very ends of the earth. And so you have heaven being torn, you have the Spirit descending and then you have this

11:38voice from heaven in verse 11, declaring, you're my son, my love, with you I am well pleased. This is the echo of the word of prophecy in Isaiah 42 which leads us eventually to 53. Here is my servant whom I uphold, my chosen one and whom I delight, I will put my spirit on him and he will bring justice to the nations. So you see where a knowledge of the Bible matters because suddenly we're looking, even even just with two or three verses, we begin to get a far more panoramic view of what's going on. Otherwise, we simply come to this as the baptism of Jesus and I guess Jesus got baptized and it wasn't that jolly good when we learned about the baptism of Jesus. Now we realize that what is happening here when God speaks, the declaration of the Father is an echo of the prospect and the anticipation of all that is now fulfilled in the water.

12:48Jesus is in the water according to the eternal councils of God. Jesus is in the water to do that which is fitting to fulfill all righteousness. Jesus is in the water as the one who identifies with sinners in their need, preparing the way for the forgiveness that will be provided by his death. Jesus is in the water as the only beloved son of the Father, recognizing as surely as the water descends upon him and as the Baptist ministers to him that one day he will be plunged down beneath a flood which will be a cleansing flood for men and women, a cleansing that is provided in his blood that is pictured in the baptism that they have gone through. That's enough on Jesus in the water. Jesus in the wilderness, verse 12, at once the Holy Spirit who has descended in gentleness now moves him out in power.

13:49The Spirit sent him into the desert or into the wilderness and he was in the desert for 40 days. The children of Israel were there for 40 years and there seems to be some symmetry between these two events. And what was happening there, he was being tempted by Satan. He who had received the unequivocal endorsement of his Father is now faced by the implacable hostility of the evil one. You will notice that it is a scene of conflict, spirit and angels, verses Satan and the wild animals. If the angels come, as the Samus says, to minister to the chosen of God, then we should not be surprised that the angels would come and minister to Christ the beloved son of God. Now what is happening here is simple. Mark is pointing out what he is going to clarify throughout the whole of the rest of his gospel, namely that in the incidents that he will describe is taking place and they will come upon

14:50us very quickly. The driving out of an evil spirit is good in illustration as any, the healing of many, the man with leprosy, the raising of the paralytic and so on. What is happening here is that Mark is pointing out the fact that behind all the earthly scenes in Galilee and beyond, all the things that he is going to describe as he gives to as the record of the life and death and resurrection of Jesus, all of these things are ultimately represented by a supernatural conflict which underlies them, that behind all of the animosity towards Jesus, all of the rebellion of man concerning Jesus, all of their unbelief about Jesus. That all lies in the fact of an unending supernatural conflict, unending to this point. Now again, you need to know your Bible and I'm going to turn you to Genesis 3. If you want to turn to it good and if you don't, then I hope you'll turn to it later.

15:53But in Genesis 3 and in verse 15, after Adam and Eve have dissipated God, have turned their backs on him, have done what he told them not to do, the Lord comes to the serpent who has been the deceiver and says to the serpent, because you have done this, cursed are you above all life's stalk and all the wild animals you will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. Now here is the conflict, verse 15, and I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers and he will crush your head and you will strike his heel. Now there is a sense in which the entire Old Testament is the outworking of what we discover there in Genesis 3.15, that the conflict between the seed of woman and the serpent explains all of the antagonism towards the work of God in each generation.

16:53And that runs all the way through the inter-testamental period and all the way into the New Testament in the conflicts that Jesus will engage in as Mark and the other gospel writers describe them. And it runs all the way out through the back end of the Bible, if you like, into the centuries of man's sins and into the 21st century. And while sociologists would laugh at such a dissertion and historians would regard it as the apex of total foolishness, when men and women take their newspapers in the morning and say, what in the world is going on with the world? The answer is in Genesis 3.15, that there is a supernatural conflict which underlies all conflict. And it is this which is addressed in Christ's encounter with Satan in the wilderness.

17:56You can read it for yourself later on. Satan in Genesis 1 is set within the beauty of the garden, lovely place, lovely wife, lovely animals, lovely flowers, lovely. He has dominion over it all. You can have all of this, you can enjoy all of this, enter into the pleasure of all of this. He's in a garden with the enjoyment of it all. Christ is in a wilderness with the antagonism of it all. What is happening? You must read your Bible again. 1 Corinthians 15, we discover that God has in Jesus the second Adam. That the first Adam goes up against the evil one and fails. The garden becomes a wilderness. We must now await the arrival of a second Adam who will go up against the evil one and triumph so that one day we will live with him in the garden.

18:57And I'm sure there is something in it, some funny little bit in it that when you read in the resurrection appearances, it says that Mary took him to be the gardener, there is a sense in which he was the gardener. He was the one who by his atoning death and resurrection turns the wilderness back into a garden, turns the wilderness of human rebellion into reconciliation and transforms it all as a result of him going head to head with all that hell can throw against him and coming out absolutely triumphant. This is the story of good news. Jesus has entered into our world, into a world not as Adam found it, but into a world as Adam left it. Now we must stop here. But this is just setting the scene for the drama of the good news about Jesus, the Son of God which begins here, says Mark. The story of Christianity is the story of a God who does not shout from afar, who is

20:01not reached as a result of our great endeavors and internal searches. But it is the story of a God who comes to us in the person of Jesus entering into our wilderness world, a world that is fallen, that is broken, that is sinful and that is disintegrating. And he comes into this world in order that he might restore those broken relationships, that he might come to our alienation and our alienations and grant the fix, that he might come to our fears of the future and grant to his a joyful anticipation. So tomorrow morning we will read again about the financial crisis. The crisis is not financial. The crisis is personal. The crisis is a crisis of broken relationships.

21:05First a relationship broken with God expressed in a covetous heart. Then in relationships broken with one another, I demand more, I require more, I deserve more, I want more, I will have more at any cost to anyone. The brokenness in your marriage, if it's broken, is first of all broken on the vertical access, not the horizontal. The brokenness in human relationships has to do with our brokenness, vis-a-vis God. The good news is told by Mark is this, you cannot fix it yourself, but the one who stood

22:06in that water, identifying with you in all of your brokenness and alienation, is the one who stood for you in that wilderness, taking on all of the threats and intimidation and temptation of the evil one and emerging victorious, so that he might undergo a baptism that would yield the benefit of the very forgiveness that was pictured in this Jordan River. And that benefit, that is conveyed in the gospel, is discovered by those who will come to God and say, the reason this world is broken is because I'm broken. The reason things are disrupted is because I am disrupted.

23:10For Jesus Christ, come and forgive me and change me and through me, change my little world. You're listening to Truth for Life with Alistair Begg. As Alistair mentioned in today's message, it's important for us to read our Bibles if we want to grow in faith. So how can you tell if you're growing spiritually? In his brand new book, we will be changed to Alistair unpacks the traits of a genuine believer and explains how these characteristics are cultivated, as teaching is drawn from the Apostle Paul's letter to the Galatians. So how do we mature in our faith? Do we do it through our own effort or by some other means? Pastor addresses these questions and invites you to reflect on the evidence of God's transforming work in your life. Tomorrow is the last day we'll be recommending Alistair's book, We Will Be Changed.

24:14So be sure to request your copy today. It's yours for a donation to Truth for Life. You can give online at truthforlife.org slash donate or call us at 888-5887-884. I'm Bob Lupine. Thanks for listening. Are you a Jesus takes the wheel kind of person or do you lean more toward the I've got this attitude? Tomorrow we'll learn how Christ's reign affects our lives. The Bible teaching of Alistair beg is furnished by Truth for Life. Where the learning is for living.