Luke 4:1-2 Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, 2 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.
Many people often think and feel when they are going through some difficulty that the LORD has left them, that they have failed, that God is punishing them. I find that this belief comes from an inaccurate few of God’s love. Some feel that His love is conditional, that you have to be perfect in order for God to love you, or that His love isn’t big enough to reach someone as bad as we are.
But nothing could be further from the truth. And our text gives us an excellent example of just the opposite. Jesus has just been baptized by John the Baptist. His earthly ministry has officially begun. The torch has been passed from the forerunner to the Messiah. John’s ministry of preparing has ended, and Jesus’ ministry of redemption has begun.
And the first thing that happens is that He is brought face to face with Satan himself. He fasts for forty days. He is thrown into temptation. But what often gets missed is that our text states that Jesus was “full of the Holy Spirit.” It wasn’t the absence of God that put Jesus in this circumstance. The presence of God was clearly there.
Could it be possible that suffering has a purpose in our lives, that God can use it for heavenly reasons and eternal ends? The temptations that Jesus went through successfully mirrored the temptations that Adam and Eve went through in the Garden of Eden. They failed, but Jesus was obedient and stood up to the test.
Often when people choose sin, fall into temptation, or fail to act when prompted to do so, they feel like failures. They sense the separation from God that the sin created. They often seek to rid themselves of that feeling by means other than repentance and obedience. Those other means are destructive. Repentance and obedience are healing.
I think a better question to ask during suffering is this: What eternal purpose does this have in my life at this time? We often need a shift in perspective when suffering comes. If we get too focused on the suffering, the pain and ill ease, then we loose sight of God, other people, and perhaps most of all, eternity.
Jesus was full of the Holy Spirit and at the same time was confronted with massive temptation. The two are not exclusive conditions. I think we get in trouble when we take our feelings of distress in temptation as a sign that God’s presence is somehow distant in that moment. In Jesus case, nothing could be further from the truth.
And maybe, just maybe, the faithfulness of God to be present with Jesus in that moment can be present with us when we face temptation. Temptation is not the sin. Yielding to temptation is.
The Arnold Journey 