The Essential Wilderness // Discovering the Hidden Things of God, Part 2

If I were God – the last place I'd send my Son would be into a desert to be tempted by the devil.  But fortunately – I'm not God and it turns out that the wilderness was exactly where Jesus needed to be. In this day and age success is something that we can see on the outside and by and large people mostly want to be successful. A bit like that time when Jesus was baptised and the heavens opened up and God spoke: This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. Now that didn't happen when I was baptised but if it had I would have known that I was on a fast track to success in the Kingdom of God. But what God did next with Jesus was to lead him out into the wilderness. God does some odd things sometimes; at least that's how it feels when we look at it through our human eyes. He doesn't think the way we do, He doesn't behave the way we do and when we find ourselves out in that wilderness, that mismatch in expectations, means that often we just don't understand what He's up to. That's because success in our eyes is an outward thing. You see it in the secular market place and, let me say, you often see it in Churches too. A guy called, Doug Webster in his book, "Under the Radar" puts it this way, he says: For all practical purposes the fullness of the Spirit seems to mean realising your full potential, becoming the kind of person everyone else wants to follow, being someone who makes things happen, competing to win and being able to prove your success by numbers. Many popular Christian writers on leadership don't even bother to distinguish between worldly success and spiritual success because in their mind the two are virtually one and the same. Today we're going to draw that distinction and it's a sharp distinction indeed. Here's the picture, Jesus gets baptised, we looked at this yesterday but we're going to have a quick look at it again today. He comes down to the Jordan River, it's flowing, it's full of life giving water, there's a crowd and have a look at what happens when He goes to be baptised, Matthew chapter 3 if you want to have a look, in verse 13: Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptised by John. As soon as Jesus was baptised, He comes up out of the water and that very moment heaven was opened up and He saw the Spirit of God descending on Him like a dove and a voice from heaven said, 'This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased'. That's an awesome thing, that's an incredible picture and throughout the whole Scripture there's nothing else like it, it's completely unique but what happens immediately following that, we can read it in Luke's gospel, his account, straight after this baptism, straight after this miraculous event, he goes: Jesus full of the Holy Spirit returns from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the desert where for forty days He was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days and at the end of them He was hungry. Hungry, He must have been famished, He must have been starving. I mean I've gone without food for a few days and I tell you, you start getting dizzy and weak. The contrast between this spectacular baptism and the wilderness couldn't be more stark. The Jordan River with its crowds and Gods amazing deeds on the one hand and the desert, the wilderness on the other. It's so counter intuitive, it's so not what we would expect God to do but this wilderness for Jesus was an essential wilderness. You see we expect success to follow success. We expect to go forward and up and up and up and up and up but Gods plan goes much deeper than that and if we were to discover the hidden things of God then the wilderness, the wilderness is essential. Let's have a look at what happens to Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit. Now that's something we kind of equate with someone being charismatic and successful on the outside but He was filled with the Holy Spirit when He was baptised to equip Him for this time in the wilderness. The crowds have gone, the audible voice of God is gone, the dove is gone, that lovely flowing river has gone and it's replaced by a desolate wilderness and the devil tempting Him and hunger and temptation and weakness and vulnerability and trial after trial. Forty days without food, weak and needy, God takes a step back to prepare His Son. See Jesus learns obedience through what He suffers and look at who took Him out to the desert; it's easy to misread this passage. The devil? No. Look again: Jesus full of the Holy Spirit returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the desert. This was Gods idea, in fact in Marks account in Marks gospel; he puts it this way: At once the Spirit threw Jesus out into the desert. Literally, threw Him out there. In other words this wilderness was essential at the beginning of Jesus ministry; it was the sovereign choice of God to throw His Son out there in complete vulnerability. Into that deserted lonely place, deprived of the help and the protection of others, kind of like a sheep deserted by his shepherd, thrown out there by God Himself. Just Jesus out there on His own to be tempted by the devil. You see, God wants to go so much deeper with us than some worldly veneer of success. He's not interested in our popularity, He's not interested in how successful we are at work or in ministry, He's not interested in other people patting us on the back. No, He has a hidden plan to forge our character, a character that will stand completely alone in the midst of that wilderness for Him. A character that will rely wholly on Him no matter what the world throws at us, a character that's forged in the furnace of the wilderness ready to be about God's business. When we look for a leader, when we look for a disciple so often we are looking for people who are successful with a demonstrated track record who seem to have all the outward skills and appearances. How often do we ask about humility, endurance, suffering, prayer life, trials, character? These are the things that Gods interested in; these are the hidden things of God that He wants to forge in the furnace of that wilderness. All the self help books out there describe a trajectory of success but the Bible doesn't, it marks our lives with the cross of Christ, sacrifice and suffering. Its Gods choice, Gods choice as Webster writes in his book is to forge us in the wilderness of solitude, not in ivory towers, not on dream teams but on the anvil of loneliness, abandonment and weakness. You see Israel in the first century were looking for a messiah. They were occupied by the Romans, they were suffering but they weren't looking for Jesus, He didn't look like anything what they were looking for. Here some bedraggled guy, nothing much to look at who wanders out of the desert after forty days of being tempted. He's hungry, He's vulnerable, He's been tempted. He's got none of the trappings of success, nothing to commend Him except this. That in that hidden place He withstood the devil, in that wilderness all alone, hungry and weak he relied on one thing and one thing alone, the fullness of the Spirit of God within Him to get Him through and then and only then was He ready to begin His journey to the cross. Then and only then did God release Him to bring the good news to the poor, to give sight to the blind and bind up the broken hearted. That's exactly the same with us, the Lord leads us into the wilderness, that essential wilderness and then, then He seems to desert us, to leave us all alone except for this. That for each one of us who's placed their faith in Jesus Christ, He has left His Spirit in us, the Spirit who will sustain us, the Spirit who in our weakness and vulnerability will defeat Satan and in that place we discover the hidden things of God.