READING Matthew 3:13-4:11
Introduction
Last time we looked together at the end of Jesus’ story, and how the course of his life was ultimately decided in the crucible of Gethsemane. Tonight, I’d like us to switch our attention to three years earlier, to his ministry’s very beginning. Here, as laid out for us in Matthew 3 & 4, what we discover is that the path Jesus faithfully stayed with on the Mount of Olives was first set in place in the Wilderness of Judea!
The Forming of a Leader
FOUR significant elements in Jesus’ preparation for leadership are recorded for us in Matt 3:13-4:11. I want to focus on the final one tonight, but let me mention the others as we begin.
I. Firstly, Jesus’ baptism.
After 400 years of silence, God’s voice has again been heard in Israel. John the Baptist has come, fulfilling the prophecies of Malachi 3&4 – preparing the way of the Messiah through his preaching and baptism of repentance. Now, in Matt 3:13, Jesus himself appears on the banks of the River Jordan, and, understandably, John is surprised at his request to be baptised. We all are. Jesus is the spotless Lamb of God. BUT nonetheless, he insists that John baptise him, Matt 3:15, “to fulfil all righteousness.”
Two things, I think, point us to the purpose of Jesus’ baptism.
1. Firstly, there are the echoes of Israel’s past.
– There is the gentle hint of Noah, with the reference to the Dove, and the purification of the world that happened through the flood;
– There is the gentle hint of Moses, and Israel’s journey to liberation though the waters of the Red Sea, in the parallel between Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness, and Israel’s 40 years there.
– finally, and perhaps most clearly, there is the hint of Joshua, whose name Jesus bears, and whose stepping into the waters of the Jordan marked the beginning of Israel’s journey to the promised land.
Such symbolism and metaphor is deeply important in Semitic culture and we find it aplenty in Jesus’ baptism.
2. The Second pointer to what His baptism is all about is what Jesus, himself, later says of it.
Both in Luke 12:50 and in Mark 10:38, Jesus speaks to his disciples of his ‘baptism of suffering’.
For example, in Mark 10:35-40 we read:
Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to him. ‘Teacher,’ they said, ‘we want you to do for us whatever we ask.’ ‘What do you want me to do for you?’ he asked. They replied, ‘Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory.’ (Not their finest moment!!) ‘You don’t know what you are asking,’ Jesus said. ‘Can you drink the cup I drink or be baptised with the baptism I am baptised with?’ ‘We can,’ they answered. Jesus said to them, ‘You will drink the cup I drink and be baptised with the baptism I am baptised with, but to sit at my right or left is not for me to grant.
It is interesting that Jesus uses the present tense – “the baptism, I am baptised with.”
Put together, I think these pointers allow us to understand why Jesus chose to be baptised. Here, in the waters of judgement and cleansing; in this place of Israel’s new beginning; with this echo of the Israel’s escape from Egypt, Jesus is acknowledging and accepting the path of his ministry.
He does not submit to John’s baptism to repent of his own sin, but to embrace and identify himself fully with ours. The others who responded to John, entered the Jordan to be cleansed of their sin. Jesus entered it to take upon himself the role of the one who would make that cleansing possible.
In this sense, Jesus is our true repentance. He is the Ark in which we are delivered from God’s judgement. He is the dry ground to our liberation from slavery. He is the dawn and the sign of our new beginning with God. And, as we will see below, he is the one who remains faithful even in the desert.
The baptism of Jesus was his embracing of the path God had called him too. It was not a baptism of repentance, but of suffering. (cf 2 Cor 5:21) ,
As Christian leaders, we too need to begin our ministries by facing and embracing the challenge of our calling. When we enter the world of kids, we come with good news, but we also come facing the reality of why that news is needed. We come knowing both the weight of our task and the price that will be asked of us to fulfil it. These kids we serve are loved but, without Jesus, they are also lost. They are alienated from the one who created them, and their need for redemption is desperate.
AND if we are to help them find their way to cleansing and new beginning, we, too, must embrace the suffering that will entail. Although in a much less significant way, of course, we, too, must drink the cup that Jesus drank and we, too, must be baptised with the baptism that Jesus received.
II. Jesus’ Empowerment.
Secondly, in Matthew’s account, we see Jesus’ empowerment by the Holy Spirit. Matt 3:16 tells us that as Jesus came up out of the water, ‘heaven was opened and the Spirit of God descended upon him like a dove.’ The one who would baptise us with the Holy Spirit was, himself, first baptised. This is amazing to me – to realise that in his earthly life, the empowerment Jesus had for his ministry was the very same one that we now have – the empowerment of the Spirit! We need to remember this vital element in our own preparation. No matter how gifted, trained or passionate we are as leaders, we are only ever ready to begin our work when we have been enabled from above.
Here’s a prayer I came across recently:
“Heavenly Father, so far today I’ve managed pretty well on my own strength. I haven’t said anything that I shouldn’t. I haven’t done anything that has hurt anyone else, I haven’t dishonoured or damaged your church, I haven’t let you down in the presence of unbelievers. BUT Father, now I have to get out of bed and I desperately need your Holy Spirit’s enabling if I am to keep it that way through the rest of this day!”
Jesus says in Acts 1:8, ‘You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you,’ He knew this from his own experience.
We all need Pentecost, and we need it every morning.
III. Jesus’ Affirmation.
The third thing we find in Jesus’ preparation is this wonderful Affirmation he receives from His Father. Matt 3:17 tells us that as soon as Jesus went up out of the water, ‘a voice came from heaven and said, ‘This is my Son, whom I love, with him I am well pleased.”
James Ryle, the founder of Promise Keepers, once relayed a powerful insight from his own story. As a six year old child, his mother left him at an orphan’s home in Dallas after his father had been sent to prison for armed robbery. She just wasn’t able to cope. Growing up there, his experience was terrible and he left as soon as he could – aged 17. That same year he then fell asleep after driving all night from a party and killed a friend who was travelling with him. He was subsequently arrested and charged with negligent homicide. Desperate to get out of trouble, he started selling drugs to raise money to hire a lawyer and two months later, he was arrested for the possession and sale of marijuana. Ironically, it was for the later offence that he was then sent to prison for two years.
But whilst in prison, James Ryle gave his life to Christ and having been changed by his Heavenly Father, he then began a search to discover a little more about his earthly one. To his great surprise, he discovered that during his incarceration, his Father had actually worked in state construction and had helped to build the very facility in which he was now incarcerated. His poignant observation was this: “Many of us live our lives in prisons built by our Fathers!” How often that is true in our kids’ lives!
But it was not the case with Jesus.
Not only did Jesus receive the Spirit’s empowerment as he began his public ministry, he also received his Father’s affirmation. Indeed, in each of the recorded moments in the New Testament when God speaks to Jesus (e.g., Matt 17:5), his words are ones of affirmation.
“This is my Son, whom I love, with him I am well pleased.”
Jesus needed this affirmation – and so do we! In our preparation for ministry, we, too, need to seek and to know with certainty our Father’s blessing on our path. As we will see below, knowing that we are where, and that are doing what our heavenly Father has called us to, is vital for our work. Sometimes it is all we will have left to hold on to.
So, quick summary, thus far..
In his preparation for ministry, we see Jesus embracing his calling; we see his empowerment by God’s Holy Spirit, and we see the affirmation of God’s blessing for his work –these are all vital elements in any Christian leader’s preparation.
BUT as we journey to Judea tomorrow, I’d like us, in particular, this evening, to consider the fourth element in Jesus’ preparation that Matthew, and the other Gospel writers, record for us in their accounts– the testing of Jesus and his true intent.
Excavation in the Wilderness
Preparation for leadership all looks pretty encouraging thus far doesn’t it? Baptised by John, anointed by the Spirit and affirmed by God himself. That’s a great start! We’d expect Jesus’ next move will now be to stride off into the mission field, like the kid’s cartoon figure Gospel Bill, firing from the hips with both testaments in every direction! Surely after these experiences, he is absolutely ready to get going?
But no. There is a final preparation – and it is one that we will all face.
IV. Jesus’ temptations.
Matt 4: 1-3: “Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.”
When seeking to build any great structure, the higher you want to go up, the deeper you first have to dig down. And so, as Jesus completes his preparation for ministry, God now allows his foundations to be truly examined.
NOTICE the three areas where Satan seeks to derail Jesus’ course:
1. The lure of an easier Path
Wilderness, as you know, is a very common theme in the scriptures. Some 50% of Israel, even today, is desert. And just as with Israel during the 40 years following their passing through the Red Sea, so with Jesus during these 40 days following his passing through the Jordan, the savage conditions of the Judean wilderness form the context where his true course is set.
As Andre Moubarak says, the desert is where our destiny is revealed.
Matt 4: 2-3: After fasting for forty days and forty nights, Jesus was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, ‘If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.’
Forty days and forty nights amidst the desert heat. I hardly survived yesterday morning! No wonder Jesus was aching for sustenance. And amidst such deep vulnerability, Satan comes to him and says, “If you are God’s son, turn some of these stones into bread and eat!”
Do you see the trap? It is so very clever – and so very similar to what took place in the Garden of Eden. It is God who, by his Spirit, has led Jesus to the wilderness. This hardship he is now facing is not a surprise or a shock to his Father. It is part of His plan for him. And what Satan now attempts to do, is to get Jesus to question that plan, to doubt his Father’s good purposes and, instead, to look for an easier way.
It’s like that story of the man who slips and falls off the edge of a high cliff. Hanging on by his finger tips he cries out to God, “Oh Lord, please save me!” And God’s voice comes to him: “I am here my Son. I will save you. Just let go and fall, and I will catch you and bring you safely to the ground.” The man looks at the 100 foot drop to the valley floor below, pauses, and then cries out, “Help! Is there anyone else there?!!”
“Jesus,” Satan is saying. “What are you doing in such a situation?” “Are you really God’s son? Are you really the one through whom the universe was made? If so, why on earth are you accepting such hardship? Why are you letting your Father lead you like this? Turn some rocks into bread and eat something!”
In other words, Satan is questioning whether Jesus’ Father can really be trusted? Can his leading really be relied upon? And Jesus’ answer is “yes!’
v4, ‘It is written: “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.”(cf Deut 8:3)
All of us, as leaders, must decide if we are willing to trust God’s path for us?
When I set off to Fuller Theological Seminary to get trained in Conflict Resolution and Church Planting (back then I thought that was two subjects!), I had no idea how hard it was going to be for me in the years ahead.
The vision God had laid on Sheena and I’s hearts, was to see a new church plant take place somewhere in the Republic of Ireland. Our denomination had not started a new congregation there for almost a hundred years and I was so ready to change that. BUT it took me 7 of the most difficult years in my life to get there. Five times my wider church said “no” and sticking around as we longed for a “yes’ cost Sheena and I every penny we had, and more. Along the way, we were forced to face doubt and discouragement like we had never encountered before. On several occasions I came very close to packing the whole thing in and going back to Northern Ireland for a ‘proper’ job. (Those who enter the promised land, sometimes do foolishly want to return to Egypt! 🙂
I still remember the occasion of the 5th categorical “no”. It was at a meeting a few hours from our home, and all our hopes were finally resting on its outcome. I had been working two jobs to try and keep us in the country and the funding for one of them was just about to come to an end. We had no reserves left, we were carrying as much debt as we were allowed, and our financial situation was about to become very desperate again. For months we had prayed and planned and hoped that, this time around, we would be given the approval we needed. It came as an incredible shock to me, then, to find at that meeting, not only another “no” but a categorical, for ever and never to be changed “no”. I’ll never forget the way that conversation went. I was devastated. I almost cried during the meeting but I managed to hold on until I was driving home. When I got back and told Sheena what had been said, we both cried as we stood in our living room with our three and six year old kids gathered around us.
To that point, I don’t think I had ever felt more discouraged in my whole life. We’d given four years of our lives for this. Our savings were gone. Our income was about to be halved. There was no other job that we knew of that would allow me to stay as a minister in the church and remain in the Republic of Ireland. Our chance, it seemed, was gone. And I had brought us here. I had put Sheena and our kids through all these years of hardship – and I had done it, apparently, for nothing.
What saved us was an unexpected visit from a friend the very next morning. In all the years I had known him, he had never called into my home ‘just in passing’. But that next morning, I answered the door to find him standing there. He was ‘just passing’ and had decided he’d like to call in to say hello. And, as my friend, he asked me how we were doing. Usually I would have lied and told him I was fine. We were Christians afteral! But I told him that, in truth, we were not doing very well. Despite all our hoping and dreaming, all my best efforts to find a way, we had just been told that there would be no new church plant happening, With one of my jobs about to finish, we were having to face that it was time to give up and return home.
And then my friend asked me the all-important question: So simple and yet so profound. “Keith,” he very gently said, “I know this all seems really hard at the moment, but can I ask you something? Ever since I met you, you have felt that God has called you into church planting and in this nation. Do you sense that his call to you has changed?”
And that was all I needed. I realised I was looking at the hardship of where I was and not listening to the voice of the one who had led me there. And when we stepped back from our circumstances, we truly felt that God had not changed his call to us, that we felt every bit as much that our calling was in the direction we had thus far journeyed.
And so we stayed.
In I Kings 17, we find Elijah at the Kerith ravine amidst another severe desert situation. You’ll recall that Ahad and Jezebel are after him. God had directed Elijah to prophesy that there would be no rain in the coming years (3 infact) except at his word and so it was. Not something to make you popular with most despotic world leaders! And God had then told Elijah to go to the brook at the Kerith Ravine where he had commanded the ravens to feed him and where he would find water. Then, as time passes, the Brook dries up (Elijah’s own doing really) but, very significantly, Elijah does not leave. He stays at the Kerith Ravine where God had called him. The water is gone. His situation begins to look desperate. But he stays there. He stays until, as scripture puts it, ‘the word of the lord came to him’ a second time.
What my friend, that morning, allowed me to realise was that God’s word had not yet come to Sheena and I for the second time. It was just that the path he had called us to had turned out to be a whole lot more difficult and frightening than we had ever imagined it would be. Some of you may well be in the same situation.
So we stayed, and through circumstances we could never possibly have anticipated, God provided for us and our kids. We ended up starting our own business, we were given amazing help by the ministers in our local Presbytery, I got a new job in a local church and then, suddenly, things just began to fall into place. Just over 7 years from our move to the Irish Republic, Maynooth Community Church held its first public service on Sunday 7th September 2003, and, as it turned out it wasn’t an especially great service! But I didn’t care. God had called us, and we had got there!
I wonder how many times people give up in their lives just before they would have seen something amazing happen? Well, ten years and six different meeting venues later, we are now just about to begin our first building project in Maynooth; our second church plant in a hundred years has recently reached the stage of been constituted as a full congregation and our local Presbytery has just established its first ever church planting fund with over a hundred thousand euros already in it to support further new starts! Pretty encouraging!
Almost every leader is tempted to find an easier path than the one God has called them to. Jesus could have made his life much easier. He could have walked away from his testing. Turning stones into bread would not have been a problem for him at all. But, then, he would been doubting his Father’s love and direction and he would have been using his power to serve himself and not those he had been sent to serve. SO he did not chose the easier path – and we are free because of it!
I don’t know if you are familiar with the story of William Borden, the heir to the Borden family milk fortune in Chicago at the beginning of the 20th century. For his high school graduation present, his parents gave their then 16-year-old son a trip around the world. They wanted him to discover the world’s wonder and complexity but as the young man travelled through Asia, the Middle East, and Europe, what he actually discovered was a growing burden for the world’s hurting people. Even before his trip had ended, the young Borden wrote home about his “desire to become a missionary”and, when he returned to the US, he began his journey there by attending Yale University in 1905. By the end of his first term there, he had gathered some 150 students in groups for prayer. Nearly a 1000 would attend those gatherings over his next three years.
When he finished at Yale, Borden then went on to do graduate work at Princeton Seminary in New Jersey. When finished his studies there, he finally set sail for his longed for mission work in China. People were amazed at his faith. Because he was hoping to work with Chinese Muslims, his start up plan led him to stop en route in Egypt where he hoped to study and learn Arabic. BUT, while he was there, almost immediately, he contracted spinal meningitis and within a month of leaving for the mission field, the 25-year-old William Borden was dead.
What must he have been thinking as he lay there in Egypt on his death bed? Well, amongst his papers, when they were gathering up his things from the hospital, they found a small piece of paper inserted inside his Bible. It had three simple phrases written upon it – no reserve, no retreat, no regret. And though he died young, he has been an inspiration to thousands.
God’s call to us, as leaders, is almost always harder than we would have expected – but no matter how bleak our situation looks, unless his word comes for a second time we need to trust where he has placed us and resist the lure of an easier path.
2: The lure of Personal Validation
Jesus’ next temptation we find in Matt 4:5-7.
Matt 4:5-7 Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the highest point of the temple. 6 ‘If you are the Son of God,’ he said, ‘throw yourself down. For it is written:
‘“He will command his angels concerning you,
and they will lift you up in their hands,
so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.”[c]’
“If you are the son of God, Jesus,” Satan now moves on to say, “then let’s see the evidence for it! Let’s see God act on your behalf as the scriptures surely say he will! Throw yourself down from the temple’s pinnacle! If you are as important as you claim, then God will surely send his angels to deliver you!”
And again, how clever the trap.
Stones for Jesus
There is an apocryphal story told about Jesus and his disciples around the mountain of Beatitudes. It’s not a real story but it packs quite a punch. One morning Jesus asks the disciples if they will carry a stone for him? And Peter, always the smart one, decides that he will carry as small a stone as he can find. All morning as they walk up and down and around the Mountain, Peter smirked as the other disciples grew tired with the stones they had chosen whilst he was hardly even noticing the weight of the one he had. Then lunch time came and Jesus walked around the disciples and changed their stones into loaves of yummy fresh bread. Suddenly, whilst all the others are tucking in to a wonderful feast, Peter finds himself nibbling at a pathetically tiny piece of bread. After lunch, Jesus again asks the disciples if they will carry a stone for him and, this time, Peter, who is no fool, picks up the biggest lump of rock he can find. All afternoon, Jesus again walks them all over the place, ending up this time on the shore of Lake Galilee. Dinner time comes, and just as Peter’s anticipation reaches a peak, Jesus simply asks the disciples to throw their stones into the Lake and calls them to move further down the shore. Peter is speechless, and stands for the longest moment just looking at the huge rock he has carried all afternoon and feeling that he has been totally hard done by. As he is feeling sorry for himself, and some rather unkind thoughts about his master, Jesus walks over and gently asks, “Peter, who were you carrying the stone for?”
Every one of us needs to know the answer to that question. All too easily, our ministries can become about us – about validating ourselves, showing ourselves to be something, feeding our needs for recognition and acclaim or even for bread. And it will not do.
Jesus replies, verse 7: ‘It is also written: “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”
And neither must we. As followers of Jesus, our heavenly Father owes us nothing. He has given us more than we can ever desire, imagine or possibly deserve. It is not our place, then, to ever ask God to prove himself to us in any other way – to make sure people know how important we are, to give us the blessings we think we deserve. Our place is as servants, and as servant, we work for his acclaim and not our own.
It is easy to pay attention to what Jesus says in Luke 17:6.
“If you have faith as small as a mustard seed,” he says there, “ you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it will obey you.” That’s kinda of cool.
But it’s a little harder to pay proper attention to verses 7-10:
“Suppose,” Jesus says, “one of you has a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Will he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, ‘Come along now and sit down to eat’? Won’t he rather say, ‘Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink’? Will he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.’”
Most Christians leaders who fall, do so because they come to believe that they are entitled to some additional reward for all the hard work and service they have given to the Kingdom. Some pleasure. Some fun. Some wealth. Some adoration. It can be with money. It can be with fame. It can be with sex, It can be with power.
But such things are a trap from our enemy – and we all know very well the heartbreak of hearing about someone who was once greatly used by God now being exposed for their secret sin or abuse.
We do not lead to validate ourselves or for God to validate us in the eyes of others. We lead for Jesus and his glory alone.
Time is up but let me quickly point you to Jesus’ third and final temptation in the Wilderness: The temptation to find success by another way.
3. Success by another way
Matt 4:8-10 Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendour. ‘All this I will give you,’ he said, ‘if you will bow down and worship me.’
One of the greatest struggles every leader faces is how we handle our desire for success. We begin with hearts ablaze for Jesus and the kingdom, and somehow, we move from that to wanting, needing, desperately trying to attain success at whatever cost. The lure of power and prestige can do that.
The horrific events of that first Easter week show us just how easy it is to be corrupted for gain.
Crucifixion was a Roman method of execution not a Jewish one, and the plot against Jesus reveals so clearly just how much the Jewish leaders of the day and the Roman authorities had come to be in league together. Despite their seeming animosity (oppressor and oppressed), a clear partnership had been entered into between the two, to ensure each other’s continued power and control.
And when Jesus came, threatening the place of the Priests, Pharisees and Sadducees, they turned to, and sold themselves to the Romans in order to achieve their desired outcome.
Jesus was, indeed, called to be the Lord of all the kingdoms of the world and of all their splendour – in that sense what Satan offered him in this last temptation was exactly what he had come for. Plus, this way, there was no need for hardship or betrayal or suffering or the cross! Jesus could accomplish so much good if he had what was offered. But to get there he would have to bow down and worship the promiser of this success.
And Jesus would have none of it.
‘Away from me, Satan!”, he declares in v10, “ For it is written: “Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.”
As Jesus says in Matt 16:26: “What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?”
Conclusion
Three years later, we find Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane and we discover that his course is still the same. He will not choose an easier path. He will not ask God to deliver him. He will not try to avoid the suffering his calling requires. “Not my will but yours be done’ is what Jesus says in the Garden of Gethsemane. Here in Matt 4, what we discover is that the course Jesus followed there was, in fact, first set in place in the Wilderness.
Bobby Clinton, Professor of Leadership at Fuller Theological Seminary, carried out some extensive studies into the development of Christian leaders both in scripture and in church history. One of his interesting conclusions was that whilst, for us, our early years in leadership are usually all about developing our ministries, what God is usually focussed on in those years is developing us. It is foundations we lay in those first years, particularly in the moments of our greatest challenge, that almost always what determine how significantly God can use us in the latter ones.
As we will leave this mountain top of an experience in Israel and have to return to the valley of our daily work below, follow Jesus once more. Don’t look for an easy path, don’t give in to using your leadership for self-validation, don’t allow your need for success to ever cause you to compromise your worship or pollute your heart.
God knows what he is doing, and whatever we are facing, whatever we are feeling, we can trust in Him with all that we are, knowing that he will direct our paths.
In Matthew 26 we see how the course of Jesus’ life was ultimately decided in the crucible of Gethsemane. BUT it is here in Matthew 3&4, in Judea, in his embracing of his calling, in his anointing by the Holy Spirit, in his affirmation by the Father, and, especially, in his response to his temptations of the wilderness – that we see that course first set. The desert is where our destiny is revealed. His story is our story, too.
Amen.
