Episode 1. Filled with the Spirit
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You mention the name Jesus – and people say, OK. Yep. The Son of God and also He became a man. But He wasn’t human in the way I am. I mean He was the Son of God. He was so different to me. Hmm …
You mention the name Jesus – and people say, OK. Yep. The Son of God and also He became a man. But He wasn’t human in the way I am. I mean He was the Son of God. He was so different to me. Hmm – but He was human. Very Human. And He had to rely on faith and the Holy Spirit in exactly the same way that we do.
I remember once when I was a young lad in my early teenage years, my dad obviously thought I wasn’t studying hard enough at school and reaching my full potential.
Now he worked as a fairly senior manager at the local steelworks. In particular he was in charge of the coke ovens. Now these are massive batteries of huge hot ovens that turn coal into coke by heating the coal to very high temperatures.
So he took me there for a day and I followed him around and I watched the labourers all day doing this brutally hot work around the ovens. At the end of the day he said to me, ‘son, if you don’t study harder at school you’re going to end up doing this sort of labouring here at the coke ovens.
Now up until that point, up until the point that I spent, in effect, a day at the office with my dad, he talked to me about the consequences of not studying hard and failing to reach my potential. He talked to me until he was blue in the face. But it hadn’t had an impact on me.
It wasn’t until I spent a day at the office with him, following him around, seeing for myself what he was talking about, that it really hit me in the face. That day at the office with my father had a powerful impact on me. I’ve never forgotten it and whilst there’s absolutely nothing wrong with being a labourer at the coke ovens or anywhere else, I knew I had the potential to study harder and find another career.
A day at the office with my father. Powerful stuff. Now imagine, just imagine if you and I could spend a day at the office with, well Jesus. Imagine what a powerful impact that would have on our lives.
Well that’s precisely what we’re going to be doing over the next couple of weeks on the program. Not a single day at the office with Jesus but a few days.
See here’s what I struggled with for a long time. These stories, the stories about Jesus in the Bible. They seemed so distant to me. They seemed such a long way off. 2,000 years ago in a culture that I don’t naturally relate to. Doing things that appear to be so miraculous that, well, they don’t seem real.
I was sitting with a man recently telling him about the ministry of Christianityworks through the media, these radio programs. And at the end of it he says to me, “I love what you guys do but make it real for me.” And it’s the same with Jesus.
We can kind of read those stories in the Bible, this great book which seems somehow, somehow to have been captured and institutionalised. And it sounds good on the surface but it doesn’t feel real. It’s distant. My hunch is you kind of know what I’m talking about.
So how do we make it real here towards the beginning of the 21st century after Jesus walked on this earth? And then it struck me, it’s like what my father did. He talked until he was blue in the face but I didn’t get it. So he decided to take me to work, a day at the office with my dad to show me what he meant.
So, I thought, what if you and I could do the same? What if you and I went to work with Jesus, followed him around for a while and looked at the situations He walked through and how He did that and what happened? All of a sudden this Jesus, instead of being some play actor in a distant fable, all of a sudden He becomes real, we get it.
So that’s what we’re going to be doing together over the next couple of weeks on the program. Following Jesus around through just a couple of chapters of the Book of Luke. Why Luke’s account? Well Luke was a physician, a Doctor and he’s so precise in the way he recounts the story.
So we’re going to kick things off in Luke chapter 4. Now here’s what happened so far. Jesus is about 30 years old by now and He’s just been down to the Jordan River to be baptised by John the Baptist. Heavens open up and the Spirit of God descends on Jesus and God speaks out:
This is my beloved son in whom I’m well pleased.
Awesome stuff. I mean if I were in His shoes I’d be thinking, “man, what a cool baptism. I am on a fast track here in the Kingdom of God.” Fortunately I wasn’t because immediately after that Jesus is cast out into the wilderness by God Himself to be tempted for forty days and forty nights by the devil.
What a huge shock. I mean if Jesus were my son, if I were God would I have done that to Him? No way. But before He could commence His powerful public ministry Jesus had to travel through this great trial in the wilderness.
Now we’re not going to spend a whole bunch of time there because a while back I produced a whole four week series on that very thing. It’s called, “Discovering The Hidden Things Of God” and that series is available online at www.christianityworks.com. It’s for anyone who’s ever gone through a time of trial that just didn’t make sense.
“Discovering The Hidden Things Of God” is the name of the series again and you can listen to it or read the transcripts at www.christianityworks.com.
So here’s the thing, in a world where we so value outward appearances and success and looks, Jesus is cast out into this wilderness, forty days He doesn’t eat. So by the time He comes out of that trial He is weak, He is close to death. He is vulnerable. He has been tempted by the devil to turn stones into bread to end His suffering. To worship the devil and to put God to the test.
So here’s the thing, in a world where we so value outward appearances and success and looks, Jesus is cast out into this wilderness, forty days He doesn’t eat. So by the time He comes out of that trial He is weak, He is close to death. He is vulnerable. He has been tempted by the devil to turn stones into bread to end His suffering. To worship the devil and to put God to the test.
And each time He comes back at the devil with what? The word of God. The truth with a capital ‘T’. So on the outside, physically He’s absolutely exhausted and bedraggled. And if you and I had been on a selection committee to find and appoint the saviour of this world and He’d walked in and applied right about that time, there’s no way we would have given Him the job.
He looked, for all intents and purposes, like a loser, right. Unshaven. Smelly. Physically weak and exhausted and powerless and vulnerable. You and I, we would have been busy no doubt judging the book by its cover and He wouldn’t even have made the short list, would He?
A day at the office with Jesus. But have a listen to what Luke has to say about Jesus and the state He was in right at that point. Luke chapter 4, verse 14:
Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee and a report about Him spread through all the surrounding country. He began to teach in the Synagogues and was praised by everyone.
See I love this. Right there when He’s starving and vulnerable and bedraggled and weak, right there in that place of trial, guess what? He is full of the power of the Spirit of God. Filled. He returned from that trial back to the people He’d come to save in the power of the Spirit.
Why? Well a couple of reasons. Because He’d been filled and anointed with Gods Spirit at His baptism, sure. You and I, when we give our lives over to God we receive the Holy Spirit. We all do. But oh so few are full of the power of the Spirit of God.
Why? Because that fullness of power depends on something else. A holiness. Maybe a better word for that would be obedience. Right when Jesus was at His most vulnerable, after forty days of starvation, close to death, the devil comes and tempts Him with “make yourself some food”.
And Jesus, does He yield in His physical weakness? “Go on, you’re the Son of God, do some magic, make some bread, end your suffering.” He didn’t fall for that. When we’re weak and vulnerable sometimes that’s the time we think we have an excuse to follow after the temptation, the devil.
It didn’t feel any different for Jesus. His weakness, His vulnerability, His starvation didn’t feel any less real than our trials and temptations. And yet right in the middle of those He drew on the two things He knew would defeat the devil. The power of the Spirit of God in Him and the word of God.
You know what I think Gods saying to us? Jesus’ suffering was real. It was the overwhelming reality for Him right at that moment and yet He chose obedience in that place of suffering through the power of the Spirit. It was for that reason that He came back out of that whilst physically weak, spiritually powerful.
Ready to save the world. Ready to do His Father’s bidding in the power of the Spirit.
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