Lent 2019 | Day 6 | Jesus Withdrew to the Lonely Places Part 1

We’ve taken our first 5 days to meditate on Jesus as God, Man, and Servant King. We will now thoughtfully consider how and why a hallmark of Jesus’ life was to seek out lonely places to be with Father God.

SCRIPTURE

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Afterward, the Holy Spirit led Jesus into the lonely wilderness in order to reveal his strength against the accuser by going through the ordeal of testing. - Matt 4:1

DEVOTION

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Before this event, the scriptures say that Jesus was baptized and a voice from heaven thundered, “This is my beloved son, in him I am well pleased”...then the Holy Spirit actually descended on Jesus. What a moment! Regardless of the setting or time period, this would have been a moment that created quite a stir! Adding to this moment was John the Baptist, pointing and shouting to others, “LOOK. Here is the Lamb of God to take away the sins of the world. This is the one…” No one had ever had a moment like this. The prophet of the day exclaiming the Messiah had come in a man among them. Father God booming down from heaven his spoken pleasure. The Holy Spirit descending like a dove in some fashion that was recognizable to some or all. In every way, this event was remarkable. Jesus was being called out. He was in the spotlight. Can you imagine the stir, the popularity, the opportunities, the crowds, the attention and the envy he must have drawn?

But what was Jesus’ next move? Matthew says that “Afterward, the Holy Spirit led Jesus into the lonely wilderness in order to reveal his strength against the accuser”.

Wait. Why? Here he was exalted by God himself in front of his family, friends and strangers. He could have stayed and revelled in the glory of it all…but instead he went to a lonely place, the wilderness.

The Holy Spirit led him away from something really good, even a circumstance that God had created! But the Holy Spirit didn’t just ask him to sacrifice something. Actually, that was a by-product. The scripture reads that the Holy Spirit led Jesus. Jesus was led towards something…which required walking away from something else. And the invitation included the sacrifice of food, water, and shelter. But let’s be clear. There was an exchange. We are never called to sacrifice something without being led to something else. Jesus’s first sacrifice was laying down his privileged place by the Father. But he laid it down to move toward something else that had greater value to him and to the Father. And that first sacrifice, created a ripple effect of sacrifice after sacrifice after sacrifice. But each sacrifice was an exchange, an investment towards a great return. A reward. God had something FOR Jesus in the wilderness, but Jesus could only get to it by turning from something else.

REFLECTION

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What was Jesus withdrawing from? What were some of the things he sacrificed in the 40 days of testing? How did the Devil test him? What does Matthew 4:1 say he received?

PRAYER

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God the Father, we love you. Holy Spirit, we love you. Jesus, Son of God and Son of Man, we love you. We long to understand who you are and the power of your sacrificial love. We long to see ourselves with the value you place on us. Open our hearts, our eyes, our minds and the scriptures to the greatness of your love and the power of the Resurrection story. Amen.