Were you ever is such a hurry to tell a story that you left out some of the details? Of course you have. If you included all the details it would take just as long as the original incident to retell it. We must condense our lives when we tell about it. Even in the age of Facebook, where people report that they brushed their teeth, life must be condensed when reported.
Mark wastes no time in giving us the connections. He has just reported that John baptizes with water, and now Jesus comes to be baptized by him. And in the process of being baptized by John with water, Jesus Himself is announced with a heavenly presence and voice. The very Spirit that John has said Jesus will baptize with shows up in a visual form.
And when this baptism happens, Jesus is immediately sent on a very strange mission. He goes to the desert where he faces temptation by the lead tempter, Satan himself.
These two events mark the official beginning of Jesus ministry. Or perhaps the qualifying events. Without the baptism and these trails by temptation, Jesus would not be able to fulfill His calling and mission. Think of the Olympic Games. Every athlete must train for years, compete and win against the best in their countries, and then qualify in the Olympic trials. They need the medals from previous competitions in order for them to be able to compete for the Olympic Gold. You can’t just walk up and say, “I want to be in the Olympics.” You aren’t qualified.
So where are we in this part of Mark? In our lives there are things we must go through in order for us to be ready for the next steps in life. We need the experiences of earlier in life to help us later in life. We need to learn to trust the LORD in the small things, so that when the big things come, we know how to trust. We also need to know from personal experience that He is faithful and trustworthy. We practice our trusting muscles. We have said “No” to our own desires and sought what was best for others.
We may not, and probably won’t have, a voice come from heaven announcing who we are. It only happened once. We won’t see the Holy Spirit in some physical manifestation. That only happened a few times. But we will go through temptation. We may not have Satan take up a conversation with us, but we will have conversations about temptation, either in our heads or under our breath, should we or shouldn’t we. And the consequences of yielding to the temptation are just as monumental. Our future ministry is at stake. Our eternal destiny might be as well. So take the temptation seriously, and resist it.
The Arnold Journey 