The Servant of the Lord is an Overcomer!

In my last devotional, we looked at the baptism of Jesus. We learned from Jesus’ baptism and example that those who serve Jesus as His servants must serve Him in the power of the Holy Spirit!

In today’s devotional, we will look at the Temptation of Jesus and His example of being an overcomer as the Servant of the Lord! The context of Jesus’ temptation follows His baptism in the Jordan River, when the Holy Spirit came upon Him to anoint Him and inaugurate Him for His public ministry. Immediately following this monumental event, Mark wrote, “the Spirit drove him into the wilderness.”

We read the account in Mark 1:12-13,

“Immediately the Spirit drove Him into the wilderness. 13And He was there in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan, and was with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered to Him.”

An interesting observation is that Jesus begins His public ministry with testing. I recall a time when Michelle was given the task by the Lord to care for a senior with dementia. This involved Michelle and me moving into her home while I was attending NBBI. At the onset of the arrangement, Michelle felt we made the wrong decision. After she shared this with me, I went outside and ran immediately into one of the staff members of the school. I explained the situation to him. His first response was, “The Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness!” That was exactly what God wanted me to hear. In ministry, just like Jesus, we will be tested.

Mark, Matthew, and Luke all cover the accounts of the Temptation of Jesus and share in common that His temptation followed His Baptism. Mark, however, is the only writer who makes it clear that the temptation happened immediately after His baptism. Jesus’ baptism and temptation are closely tied, revealing His identity as the Son of God and showing that He is fully qualified as the Messiah to die in our place as our sin bearer! Mark reveals that the Holy Spirit “drove” or “impelled” Jesus to go into the wilderness. Jesus, as the Son who always pleased the Father, went willingly. He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan. In Scripture, 40 days often symbolize a time of testing. Jesus for forty days, was being tested to the fullest measure by Satan’s temptations, to disqualify Him as the promised Messiah and Saviour of the world.

Notice in Mark’s account it says he was with the wild beasts, emphasizing His isolation from society and people, a lonely place, in the wilderness. Adam and Eve were in the garden, while Jesus was in a desert place, alone and without any source of help, completely dependent on the Spirit and the Word of God to overcome the deadly assaults of Satan’s temptations. At the end of the forty days, Jesus was victorious, and the angels ministered to him. This demonstrated that the Father was pleased with His Son and provided the provisions His Son needed following this time of testing. The Temptation of Jesus was not for His benefit but for ours. Jesus could not sin (Jas.1:13; 1 Jn.3.5; 2 Cor.5:21), in theology this is known as the Impeccability of Christ! Why could he not sin? He is fully God and fully man (Phil.2:5-11) and without a sin nature (Heb.7:26). His testing was for our benefit to show that He is the promised Messiah, fully qualified to die as the Saviour of the World. In His testing, He demonstrated He is sinless, has authority over Satan, and showed that He can sympathize with us in our temptations. The writer of Hebrews makes this clear in Hebrews 4:15-16, “For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”

As servants of the Lord, we will be tested to prove us and conform our character into Christlikeness, and we will be tempted to sin to defeat us. If we are going to be servants of the Lord, we must, like Jesus, be overcomers. An overcomer is someone who overcomes sin by the power of the Holy Spirit and the Word of God.

As we serve the Lord, we must not allow sin to rule over us. Instead, as overcomers, we must depend upon the Holy Spirit and the Word of God so we can rule over it. The Psalmist wrote, “Your word I have hidden in my heart, That I might not sin against You.” (Ps.119:11) The Apostle John identifies believers as overcomers in 1 John 5:1. However, our identification alone does not guarantee we will overcome sin. To overcome sin, we must, like Jesus, depend upon the Holy Spirit and the Word of God as the source of our victory over temptation and sin. John Owen, a Puritan writer, wrote, “Do you mortify; do you make it your daily work; be always at it while you live; cease not a day from this work; be killing sin or it will be killing you.” John Owen