Into the wilderness

When Jesus was baptized, God his Father spoke to the crowd out of thin air and the Holy Spirit descended on him like a dove and rested on him. This was his moment of commissioning: he could have capitalized on that and started gathering crowds to himself. So what he decided to do instead was go into the wilderness for over a month, by himself apart from a few lizards and various other wild animals. Why would anyone do that? If God spoke in an audible voice to the crowd in my local town, saying that I was amazingly special to him, while a dove came down from Heaven and perched on my head, I think that I would want to make something of it. "If you want to know more, then come along to church this evening at 7.30 and I'll explain what's going on!" Perhaps I'd find a friend to set up the stage and get the PA working, contact a worship leader to provide some music at the start of the meeting, change into my best clothes and write some notes for the talk of a lifetime - not go away for a month until everyone had forgotten!

Ash Wednesday is, as you are probably aware, the first day of Lent, when we remember that Jesus was in the wilderness for 40 days and nights. We sometimes give up something during that period to help us focus on prayer; Jesus gave up food, altogether. It's easy to get the impression that he fasted for 40 days, then the devil said three things to him and it was all over. However, Luke makes it clear that he was tempted throughout that period, which is also implied by Matthew. This was Jesus' first month or so of the rest of his life - the first 40 days of his mission. He needed to get some things straight, lay the ground rules for himself. He went to the wilderness with the Holy Spirit and presumably spent quite a bit of the time with his Father as well. But this was also the devil's moment to wreck the whole plan. If he could put Jesus off course, or even stop him altogether, then Jesus' victory over him on the cross wouldn't happen. The devil might not have known all the details, but the day the Messiah received his commission was going to be a worrying time for him.

So those 40 days were a struggle throughout. Jesus chose to fast, presumably to make himself more spiritually aware so that he could tune in properly to the Father and Spirit. It also made him more susceptible to spiritual attack as well. It seems that the 40 days went OK for Jesus. Whatever the devil threw at him hadn't caused a problem. By the end, Jesus was probably extremely weak, but also very open to the spiritual realm in a way that his human body possibly didn't normally allow in quite the same way. At that point his enemy struck at the core of his mission. We shall look at those temptations in later posts, but suffice it to say that Jesus came out of the time without having given any ground at all to his tempter. The ground rules were in place: Rule One was not to pay any attention to those voices that would cause him to stumble.

Temptation comes in many forms. The Screwtape Letters are a light-hearted but deadly serious attempt by C S Lewis to make this point. We can be tempted to do things that we know we shouldn't. We can start to think that we're not up to much and certainly not useful to God. We might even find ourselves beginning to doubt the very existence of God. Don't listen to these thoughts. Don't give them the time of day. Hold on to the truth in question and declare it back to yourself. Tell the negative thoughts to go away; you can use the name of Jesus to do that. Go back to what you believe and remind yourself why you believe it.

This is a war - a war to get you off course, just like Jesus was tempted to go off course. You need to establish your ground rules, not the devil or whatever of his minions he might send to try to persuade you otherwise. One of those rules, like in Jesus' case, needs to be not to pay any attention to the voices that would cause you to stumble.

A firm foundation

If you're going to build a house, you need a good foundation. Many are the houses now suffering from cracking, or even severe subsidence, because the foundations weren't thought out properly in the first place. Whatever you think of Jesus, he did teach some really good foundational life truths. Even a lot of atheists acknowledge that he was a great teacher, so it's worth considering what he had to say to prevent cracks appearing in our lives.

Reading through Luke's Gospel, we get to a major teaching session in chapter 6, verses 20 - 49. This is probably one example of many such occasions; the similar passage in Matthew's Gospel (chapters 5 - 7) might recount a separate event or provide a different emphasis on the same one. Either way, this passage gives an important insight into Jesus' teaching and, more importantly, tells us how we should live. Someone recently said to me that if we lived like that it would be life-changing, and that's the point, isn't it? It's great teaching, but only has any effect if we live it.

In this chapter we read what Jesus had to say about treating other people and being honest about ourselves. He starts, however, by telling us that being blessed isn't based on seeking material security. Yes, if we have that we are blessed, but only short-term, while we have it; that isn't eternal blessing though. Jesus had come for the poor, hungry, sad and rejected; he was going to provide great blessing for people like this if they followed him.

He then turned his attention to personal relationships. The bottom line, he told the crowd was to treat everyone as we would want to be treated ourselves - everyone, including our enemies. He adds elsewhere (e.g. Luke 17:4) that we should even forgive those who treat us badly. There are times when we have to stand up for what is right and oppose evil, but we should never get into judging and persecuting other people. In fact, he continued, we should spend more time on making sure that our own lives were being lived right than criticising others for their behaviour. Only when our lives are properly ordered do we have a right to speak into those of others.

Jesus taught great foundational truths that would change the world if we all live by them, and he gave us the power to do that through his death and resurrection.

Jesus finished this address to the crowd by warning them that listening would get them nowhere if they didn't do what he said as well. This sermon was delivered farily early on in Jesus' ministry, laying a foundation of how to live before he went onto rather more challenging and spiritual matters in the couple of years to come. He likened their response to a house built on a rock, if they acted on what he said, or sand if they didn't. Only a life with a firm foundation, based on Jesus teaching, was going to last.

Just imagine a world in which everyone was looking after the interests of everybody else and forgiving others all their wrongdoing, be it accidental or deliberate. This was revolutionary teaching and still is today, when our prevailing culture in the UK is of personal choice, individual achievement and market forces. Aren't we so inspired by the news items which report how someone has gone out of his or her way to better the lives of others?

What if everyone lived like that all of the time? It's definitely worth a try, but we all fail in trying permanently to be good. Our nature just doesn't allow it. Jesus knew that. That's why he didn't just tell us how to live, but died and rose from the dead in order to set us free from our sinful natures that prevent us from being really good people. Only if we allow Jesus to put our lives right and the Holy Spirit to have control over our them are able to get close to living out fully the lessons that Jesus taught in this passage of the Bible and elsewhere in his ministry. We end up frustrated if we try to do it on our own. When we let him help us, we can really start to put this foundation in place and begin to change the world.

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Gone fishing

There's no-one around and the boats have been pulled up onto the beach, but the nets are still full of fish, awaiting attention. The sign by the nearer boat says GONE FISHING. That doesn't seem right though. Which boat have they used? Not their own, because those are still here. And there isn't a boat out to sea, so where are they fishing? You don't leave nets full of fish unattended anyway. Something must be wrong.

In fact, everything was very right. Peter, Andrew, John and James had been invited by the new Rabbi, Jesus, to go fishing with him - but for men (Luke's Gospel, chapter 5, verses 1-11). Jesus had been causing quite a stir with his track record of miraculous healings, exorcisms and powerful teaching. An invitation to join his team was not to be missed. So they had just left everything immediately and gone off into Galilee with the man who might possibly be the long awaited Messiah. After a while an older man, Zebedee, turns up and confirms that his sons, John and James, have left with Jesus.

Jesus is in the business of fishing for people. While on Earth he taught in a way that made you sit up and listen, not like the other religious teachers of the day, and performed miraculous signs and wonders wherever he went. Being part of his team was risky, but if you wanted to take a shot at finding the truth like you'd never known it before, he was the person to follow. If he asked you to leave your fish-fishing business to do that, the choice was simple: carry on living a mundane, smelly life on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, or be adventurous and throw in your lot with the most exciting person the region had seen for a long, long time, perhaps ever.

Peter, Andrew, James and John followed Jesus to go fishing for people; Jesus is calling us to do the same - and it's really exciting!

The two pairs of brothers decided to take the risk. Jesus trained them for three years and then left them, with seven others, in charge of his followers when he ascended to Heaven after rising from the dead. Then he sent his Holy Spirit upon them and these lowly fishermen, who had given up everything to be with Jesus, started to turn the world upside down. They told people about the risen and ascended Son of God, how there was salvation, freedom and healing in his name, and how anyone who believed in Jesus as the Son of God, who had died to set them free from the power of sin and death, could receive the Holy Spirit and live radically transformed lives themselves. Thousands of people gave their lives to God and joined the rapidly growing Church in the wake of their message and accompanying miracles.

Is that how you want your life to be? Then it can be. Are you a Christian frustrated by the limitations of what your church is offering by way of opportunity to get out and do the stuff that the early Christians did, as recorded in Acts? Do you think that you haven't been trained to do that stuff? Have you heard that that 'stuff' is the stuff of legend or that things are different now, because we have the Bible and an established church? The devil has a vested interest in letting us think these things, but God is still in the business of fishing for people. The harvest is ripe and he is calling for people to join his team. Nothing has changed - the Christian life can still be as it was in the 1st Century, as recounted by Luke in Acts and discussed in the pages of the New Testament letters.

If you want to break out into a dynamic, purpose-filled Christian life, then you can offer a surrendered life to God, ask him to fill you with his Spirit, tell people about the Good News of Jesus through whatever means you have at your disposal and expect miracles to follow as you pray for people and situations. There is nothing to stop us! Not ourselves or anyone else. If you don't yet know Jesus, then giving you life to him would be the most exciting thing that you could ever do.