Testing, teaching and healing
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| The Temptation of Jesus |
The Holy Spirit is perhaps the
surprising link between all four chapters so far. The creative Holy Spirit is
there at Jesus’ conception. The hidden yet communicative Holy Spirit is there
prompting the dream-life of Joseph and the scholars, thus saving the child Jesus.
The comforting (strengthening) Holy Spirit confirms Jesus’ beloved status as ‘marked
by love’ at his baptism. And now the compelling Holy Spirit is the one who drives
Jesus out into the wilderness to face his greatest and formative challenge.
What kind of relationship did Jesus have
with the Holy Spirit? And how might this be duplicated in our lives as
disciples? How instructive is Matthew in showing us the character and work of
the Holy Spirit, the Go-between God, who is creative, communicative, comforting
and compelling.
In Matthew, Jesus is ‘taken’ out into
the wild by the Holy Spirit – it is as if the Spirit is alongside him, leading
him by the hand. In Mark, the contrast is quite stark – the Holy Spirit drives
him out, pushing him from behind, with force and unrelenting power. While Luke
describes Jesus as ‘full of the Holy Spirit’ and thus ‘led’ out into the desert
in strength.
What all three Gospels agree on is that
Jesus was tested in three ways by Satan after fasting for 40 days. In Matthew,
Jesus finds strength and answers the three tests from his knowledge of
Deuteronomy. Later in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus teaches his disciples that when
they face tests and persecution, they are not to have pre-meditated answers for
their accusers, but rather to depend entirely on the Holy Spirit who will give
the right answer at the right time. This does not mean that we are to say the
first thing that comes into our heads, but rather to plumb deep into our
knowledge of who Jesus is and the words of life that are found in the
Scriptures. And surely, this is how the Holy Spirit led Jesus. To meditate
profoundly on the words of the Law and the Prophets. And even when the tempter
goaded him by quoting Scripture back at him (Psalm 91 in the second
temptation), Jesus was ready with a clear statement rejecting the self-serving
mindset of Satan.
And having defeated the tempter with
single-minded and single-hearted responses, Jesus is ministered to by the
angels. Angels who did not sing at his birth (at least according to Matthew) but
gave secret wisdom to his father, are now sent from the heavenly Father to meet
his needs and to ready him for his mission.
And the mission is to the strategic
placed backwater of Galilee, a crossroads for the nations on the main trading
routes to Syria and the Mediterranean and Egypt and Jerusalem. Jesus picks up
where John has left off. As John is jailed, Jesus is liberated. He begins with
brothers, inviting them to join him. Something about the way he talks attracts
them like no other, and they drop everything without hesitation – abandoning boats,
and work and family. And so begins the work of liberating ordinary people
overlooked by the religious elite and oppressed by the secular rulers. What
Matthew presents is a programme of a new government which is neither religious
or secular; but one of goodness and able to get to the heart of people’s needs –
whether mental, emotional, physical or relational. And by the end of chapter
four there is a sense of huge momentum with crowds coming from all over Judea,
Jerusalem and across the Jordan. Matthew’s camera pans out from the personal
wrestling of a solitary man in the desert to a person of gravity and lightness
whose magnetic pull is extending across the nation. It’s bound to spell
trouble, eventually.
I often wonder how much was pre-arranged between Jesus, John and the disciples. As cousins, Jesus and John must have known each other before the meeting at the Jordan when Jesus was baptised. And when he returned from the temptations in the desert, Jesus started to preach exactly the same message as John. John had cried, ‘Repent for the kingdom of heaven is near!’ in the desert in chapter 3. In the present chapter Jesus left Nazareth to live at Capernaum on the shores of the lake of Galilee, and the message he first preached was exactly the same, ‘Repent for the kingdom of heaven is near!’. I wonder how much they had discussed their individual places in God’s plan, and worked out their different callings together.
ReplyDeleteThe summoning of the first disciples may have been a sudden life change for the disciples when they first met Jesus, and this is often how it’s portrayed. But it is strange they were all so eager to join a stranger half-way through their day’s work. Jesus could well have known them before the ‘call’, and pre-arranged that when he started his mission, they would join him. At least Jesus would have known the character of the men he would ask to join him and, after his death, to carry his message on.
So Jesus sets off preaching the good news of the kingdom. The great difference between the preaching of John and that of Jesus for the crowds that came to hear them was the working of the Holy Spirit through Jesus in healing the sick of the many diseases that are listed at the end of the chapter. No wonder so many people came Jesus, not only to hear him preaching but to see him healing as well. This was something unexpected and new amongst the many wandering preachers of the time. Jesus was different. There was a new feeling in the air. And a new hope.
40 days is a common time recurrence throughout the bible, it comes up time and again.
ReplyDeleteThe devil knew what he was doing, he only seemed to tempt Jesus when he was at his weakest, can you imagine the exhaustion Jesus must have been feeling and yet he still managed to resist the temptations. We are talking superhuman here not mere mortal. It reads as if the angels fed and nursed him back to health because somehow he got back to Galilee.
Jesus then fulfills Isiah 9. 1-29 [a]Nevertheless, there will be no more gloom for those who were in distress. In the past he humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the future he will honor Galilee of the nations, by the Way of the Sea, beyond the Jordan—
2 The people walking in darkness
have seen a great light;
on those living in the land of deep darkness
a light has dawned.
Much of what Jesus does is predicted in the old testament including the writings in Ezekiel chapter 34. The life and death of Jesus was already planned and Jesus knew it, could we cope with such knowledge?
I wondered why he used fishermen for some of his disciples, is it to do with this ???
Jeremiah 16:14-16 New King James Version (NKJV)
God Will Restore Israel
14 “Therefore behold, the days are coming,” says the Lord, “that it shall no more be said, ‘The Lord lives who brought up the children of Israel from the land of Egypt,’ 15 but, ‘The Lord lives who brought up the children of Israel from the land of the north and from all the lands where He had driven them.’ For I will bring them back into their land which I gave to their fathers.
16 “Behold, I will send for many fishermen,” says the Lord, “and they shall fish them; and afterward I will send for many hunters, and they shall hunt them from every mountain and every hill, and out of the holes of the rocks. If as you say Terry there was new hope, I wonder if when the prophets of old made their predictions, hope was in the hearts of people ?
How was Jesus tempted? Did he see Satan as a person with a body? Were these just thoughts in his head? Wouldn't it be easier for us if Satan was a recognisable being with a body, to resist temptation? I ponder why the last temptation was to worship Satan. Jesus already knew he was the son of God. He didn't need to worship Satan. Everything was already his.
ReplyDeleteThe angels, messengers of God's healing and strength, are ever present in the life of Jesus, as portrayed by Matthew. May the angels continue to minister to all who need God's reassuring and strengthening presence today.
ReplyDelete