Mark 1:9-13
Were you ever is such a hurry to tell a story
that you left out some of the details? Of course you have. If you included all
the details it would take just as long as the original incident to retell it.
We must condense our lives when we tell about it. Even in the age of Facebook,
where people report that they brushed their teeth, life must be condensed when
reported.
Mark
wastes no time in giving us the connections. He has just reported that John
baptizes with water, and now Jesus comes to be baptized by him. And in the
process of being baptized by John with water, Jesus Himself is announced with a
heavenly presence and voice. The very Spirit that John has said Jesus will
baptize with shows up in a visual form.
And
when this baptism happens, Jesus is immediately sent on a very strange mission.
He goes to the desert where he faces temptation by the lead tempter, Satan
himself.
These
two events mark the official beginning of Jesus ministry. Or perhaps the
qualifying events. Without the baptism and these trails by temptation, Jesus would
not be able to fulfill His calling and mission. Think of the Olympic Games.
Every athlete must train for years, compete and win against the best in their
countries, and then qualify in the Olympic trials. They need the medals from
previous competitions in order for them to be able to compete for the Olympic
Gold. You can’t just walk up and say, “I want to be in the Olympics.” You aren’t
qualified.
So
where are we in this part of Mark? In our lives there are things we must go
through in order for us to be ready for the next steps in life. We need the
experiences of earlier in life to help us later in life. We need to learn to
trust the LORD in the small things, so that when the big things come, we know
how to trust. We also need to know from personal experience that He is faithful
and trustworthy. We practice our trusting muscles. We have said “No” to our own
desires and sought what was best for others.
We may not, and probably won’t have, a voice come
from heaven announcing who we are. It only happened once. We won’t see the Holy
Spirit in some physical manifestation. That only happened a few times. But we
will go through temptation. We may not have Satan take up a conversation with
us, but we will have conversations about temptation, either in our heads or
under our breath, should we or shouldn’t we. And the consequences of yielding to
the temptation are just as monumental. Our future ministry is at stake. Our
eternal destiny might be as well. So take the temptation seriously, and resist
it.