Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he consented. And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished.

Once upon a time there was a man named John. He had been an only child, born into a very devout family to parents who were well along in years. He was a strange man. He didn’t live in a house: he lived in the desert, near the Jordan River. He didn’t wear ordinary clothing made of cloth: his garments were made of camel’s hair and leather. He didn’t eat ordinary food: he ate locusts and wild honey. (I’ve never eaten locusts, but I imagine they taste better if you dip them in wild honey.) John was a strange man; a wild man. A Baptist. He called for repentance, and people repented; he called for baptism, and people got baptized.

He said, “I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

And then Jesus showed up, and said he wanted to be baptized.

All four gospels agree that that’s what happened. The Gospel of John says so kind of indirectly, without including a sentence that declares, “And then Jesus was baptized,” yet you can see that that’s what’s going on in John’s narrative. All four gospels agree that John made the statement about feeling unworthy of Jesus’ sandals – although Matthew quotes John as saying he’s not worthy to carry those sandals, while Mark, Luke, and John report that John said he wasn’t worthy to untie the sandals. All four gospels agree about the sign of the dove, and about the voice of God giving testimony about Jesus as the Son of God.

Specifically, we want to notice that according to all four gospels, John clearly identified himself as a forerunner. He was not the Messiah that everyone was waiting for; they should look instead to the one coming after him, who would be much more significant than he was. John was there to baptize with water: but the one who was coming would baptize them with the Holy Spirit.

When Jesus said he wanted to be baptized, you might expect that John would have a problem with that. John recognized Jesus as the long-expected Messiah: this, this was the one he had been talking about, and somehow John knew that that thing he said about the sandals wasn’t mere rhetoric: he felt in his soul that this was reality. The spiritual power that Almighty God had set in John the Baptist was real, and with that spiritual power came the discernment to see the truth that others were not seeing: Jesus was indeed worthy of all honor and glory and praise, John was indeed a mere mortal in the presence of the Son of God, and what he wanted to do was bow down and worship.

Now, only Matthew records this brief conversation between John and Jesus where John objects, “It feels like we’re doing this the wrong way around: I shouldn’t be baptizing you, you should be baptizing me.” And because of that, various scholars have suggested that Matthew must have made up this bit about John hesitating to baptize Jesus. The process probably went like this, say these scholars: Matthew felt like it’s awkward to suggest that Jesus would need to come for baptism, because that would seem to imply that he was a sinner; so he smoothed away that awkwardness by making up a little story about how John the Baptist acknowledged that Jesus didn’t really need to be baptized.

But I think that’s finding an explanation for a problem that isn’t really there. All four gospels agree about the testimony that John gave about the great superiority of Jesus over himself. The awkwardness of the Son of God asking for baptism from the guy who was baptizing repentant sinners is plainly there, in all four gospels. It would be quite a stretch to assume it wouldn’t be just as plain to John himself. So it would not be surprising if he said something about it.

So Jesus got baptized. And when he came up from the water, Jesus and John and apparently many other people saw the Holy Spirit fly down in the form of a dove and land on Jesus, and they heard a voice from heaven that said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, in whom I am well pleased.”

It is tempting to end the story there, because the chapter ends there. But the chapter divisions were not actually put into the Bible until the early 1200s, by Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, so that’s a pretty late editorial decision. Our modern verse divisions were not added until the mid-1500s. Just think what that means: the church managed to get by for fifteen centuries after the death and resurrection of Jesus before anyone could go to a football game and hold up a sign with “John 3:16” printed on it.

To understand the fullness of this text, we need to go on a little farther, reading the beginning of what we now call Matthew 4, so that we can find out what happened next. At the end of chapter 3 we have a visible tableau of the Triune God contemplating the meaning of Jesus’ baptism: we see Jesus the Son, dripping with water in the river, we hear the voice of the Father identifying Jesus as, specifically, “my Son, the beloved,” and we see the presence of the Holy Spirit. Then the very next thing is that Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.

We need to ponder on that combination. After arriving on the scene in the symbolic shape of a dove, the work of the Spirit of God was not done: it was not as if the Spirit made a symbolic appearance for this tableau and that was all. Instead, the Spirit took the strong action of leading Jesus into the wilderness in order to face an evil confrontation aimed at destroying him. That’s pretty severe. Matthew’s description is actually a little mild, compared to Mark’s. The Gospel of Mark says that “the Spirit immediately drove Jesus out into the wilderness” to confront this temptation. And it’s actually even more stark than that, because I was quoting from the New Revised Standard when I said “the Spirit immediately drove Jesus out into the wilderness,” and like most English translations, the NRSV blinks right here and tones down the roughness of Mark’s Greek text, which literally says “the Spirit immediately cast Jesus out into the wilderness.” Jesus got cast out into the wilderness. Cast out. Are you thinking, “Isn’t that the way the Bible talks about Jesus getting rid of demons: he casts them out?” If so, you’d be right: it is indeed the same term used for ‘casting out’ demons. It is a vivid, forceful verb: its literal meaning is to throw something, to throw it out. The Spirit threw Jesus out into the desert. The Spirit cast Jesus out into the wilderness. It’s a rounding up wild cattle image, and if we miss the forcefulness of it we are missing the point. When you think of the Spirit driving Jesus out into the desert, you don’t want to think of a chauffeur driving Jesus in a limo: you want to think of cowboys driving wild cattle. Jesus was driven by the Spirit out into the wilderness, into a situation where he would confront Satanic temptation. Matthew says it in more genteel vocabulary, but we still want to get the image that he’s talking about when he says Jesus was led by the Spirit.

So. If I am led by the Spirit, will the circumstances be user-friendly? If the Spirit decides to lead me or drive me in a particular direction, will my circumstances affirm that I’m going in the right direction? Or would it be possible that the Spirit might driven me into circumstances where the devil is trying to tempt me and even to destroy me? Will the Spirit make sure that my life is always peaceable and comfortable, as I sit in my recliner with popcorn and a cold beer, watching the game on TV, cheering for the guy waving his John 3:16 sign whenever there’s a touchdown? Or will the Spirit lead me into a difficult and challenging situation? Will the Spirit hurl me into a reality where I have to struggle mightily?

If the Spirit of God could decide to drive Jesus into a situation of conflict and temptation, I suppose I don’t have a strong basis for saying the Holy Spirit could never do that to me. In fact the Spirit did not drive Jesus into the desert every day, and so I might not expect the Spirit to push me out into the desert every day; but I probably ought to expect that sometimes the Spirit of God will indeed push me into difficult places where I can sense that the devil is out to get me.

How do I feel about this? Am I willing to be led by this Holy Spirit, knowing that the places to which the Spirit will lead me will sometimes be quite unpleasant? Am I willing to trust that the most important thing is to go where God’s Spirit leads me to go, even though I can see it will be difficult?

In the book of Acts we read how the Apostle Peter was called by God to go to the home of Cornelius the Centurion, a gentile, and explain the gospel to Cornelius and his family. It is clear from the text that Peter felt quite reluctant about this idea; he had never been a guest of a gentile, had never partaken of the hospitality of a gentile, and in particular had never eaten any non-kosher food served to him by a gentile. But because the Spirit of God was directing him – leading him, driving him – he went, and he told them the story of Jesus. Cornelius and all his family responded so positively: this was just the message they were looking for. In that moment, they made the decision to believe. They were baptized. And Peter was in trouble.

Because now he had to go back to Jerusalem and explain his actions. He knew that he had gone to Cornelius’ house in obedience to the call of God, but nobody back in Jerusalem knew that. He had not asked permission from the other leaders in the church. He had not brought this matter to the Session. They say it’s easier to get forgiveness than it is to get permission, but that doesn’t mean it’s always going to be easy to get forgiveness.

Peter stood before the Council and said, “The Spirit told me to go.” In the old King James Version it says, “the Spirit bade me go.” The Spirit commanded me. The Spirit drove me to do something that I had never done before. And so I went.

This is something that is of the essence of the ministry of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of God pushes us, leads us, drives us, hurls us out beyond our comfort zone, into places we are not sure that we really approve of, and which others often don’t approve of, either.

Having been led there by the Spirit, Jesus spent the next forty days fasting in the wilderness. Real fasting: he was famished. It was not like “giving up chocolate for Lent,” while still enjoying a steak dinner with apple pie a la mode for dessert.

Neither Matthew nor Luke gives a precise timeline for the temptation, though Matthew gives the impression that the devil showed up at the end of the time of fasting, while Luke gives the impression that the devil was present in the middle, or perhaps from the beginning, of these forty days. I think it works both ways. Sometimes the hardest part of the struggle comes at the very end, when you’re tired and hungry and frustrated, and that’s when the severest temptation seems to hit you. Other times the hardest part of the struggle is pretty much there continuously, and all the conflict and uncertainty and temptation seems to be there all the time. I think Matthew describes it one way, and Luke describes it the other way, because people don’t experience struggle and temptation and anxiety in just one single way. If you read them both, you’ll probably like one description better than the other. And that’s okay, because in the midst of the struggle you need to know which one will be most helpful to you.

Both Matthew and Luke agree that there were specifically three encounters in this process of temptation. That material is worthy of its own sermon, so we will have to leave that story for another time. Mark decided to skip that material; apparently he felt like it was enough simply to say that the Spirit drove, or led, or cast Jesus out into the wilderness where he would face temptation from the one who wanted to destroy him, and that time of hardship and struggle wouldn’t be done in just a day or two: it would keep on like that for forty days.

What we need to see today is this: Jesus comes out the other side of his experience of temptation in the wilderness with clarity. When it is over, he knows something about himself that he might not have been so sure about before: he is the beloved Son of God, and he will follow his Father’s will rather than give in to the temptations of the devil. That’s an important thing to have clarity about.

Sometimes people speak about “the exception that proves the rule.” I used to think that meant that there’s a rule about something, but there’s an exception, and the exception proves the rule: which means the exception enables you to know that the rule is true. “I before E, except after C, or when sounded as ‘A,’ as in ‘neighbor’ or ‘weigh.’ ” That little jingle is a spelling rule, designed to help you remember how to spell difficult words: and it carries its exceptions with it. The internet has memes about this. I like the one that says, “I before E except when your feisty over-caffeinated neighbor seizes a sleigh filled with counterfeit freight, pulled by eight foreign reindeer.” Do all those exceptions prove that the rule is absolute? Or do they indicate that there are so many exceptions that the jingle hardly counts as a rule at all?

I think that points us toward what “the exception that proves the rule” actually means. The sentence is based on an older meaning of the word ‘prove,’ where it means to test something, to set up a rigorous process so we can find out whether something is reliable or not. A “proving ground” is a place where military hardware or prototype automobiles get tested, to see if they are as good as the maker claims they are. We have a rule, and it looks like a pretty good rule, but wait: what if such-and-such circumstance arises, which the rule doesn’t address adequately? We need to prove the rule: that is, we need to test the rule. If we have a situation that would seem like an exception to that rule, we want to see how that exception proves the rule: that is, how it tests whether the rule is valid. Maybe it will show us that the rule isn’t as good as we thought it would be. Or, when we test that exception against the rule, maybe we’ll find the rule confirmed – the rule is proven – even though it looked like those special circumstances might contradict the rule.

So the Spirit led or drove or hurled Jesus into the wilderness: Jesus the baptized, Jesus the Son of God, with whom God was well pleased. Jesus had every reason to believe that his heart was fully dedicated to the service of the Father: but that understanding had not been fully tested. So the Spirit drove Jesus out to the proving grounds, where this loyalty could be assessed under very harsh conditions. The devil proposed three different tests: turn a stone into bread, leap from the pinnacle of the temple and land unharmed, worship Satan and receive power over all the kingdoms on earth. The rule is, the Son will only do what the Father tells him to do: but there ought to be an exception, shouldn’t there be, when you have fasted for forty days and there’s nothing to eat? Shouldn’t there be an exception for when you have the opportunity for an astonishing public miracle of not being hurt at all after falling from a great height, which will convince people you really are the Son of God? And surely there ought to be an exception when you have the opportunity to gather all the nations of the earth in service to your mission. These proposed exceptions prove the rule: that is, the rule that the Son must do only what the Father tells him. They test whether Jesus will be fully loyal to the Father’s will.

So, there in the wilderness on the proving grounds, the tempter proposes these exceptions, one temptation after another. And Jesus answers each of these tests by quoting scripture, and he remains steadfast in the face of these temptations. His loyalty to the Father does not yield. And as a result Jesus has a clarity about his person and his mission that he did not have before. The devil has thrown these temptations in Jesus’ face, has proposed that these exceptions should turn Jesus aside from his conviction about his identity as Son of God, and from his conviction about his mission to save the world. But the devil’s proposed exceptions have not been able to do that. The exceptions have proved the rule: they have tested Jesus, and failed to turn him aside, and have thereby demonstrated that he does not yield to these very attractive temptations provided by the devil. He is the Son of God, and his mission to save the world will proceed as planned.

I should make an aside here to talk about the existential status of the devil, which is a stumbling block for many people who think of themselves as modern and clear thinking individuals. When the Bible refers to “the devil” or “Satan” or “the tempter,” is this some sort of a metaphor for the way when we experience temptation, we sometimes experience it as personified, as if there’s like a demon sitting on our shoulder, prodding us to do the bad thing? Or is there an actual devil, fully existent, actively working to bring us all to hell some day?

To answer that question in detail would, once again, require a sermon unto itself: we won’t have that sermon today. But the short answer is this: it doesn’t much matter. Some people are fully convinced one way; some people are fully convinced the other way. A serious argument can be offered favoring either position. The reality is this: we all experience temptation, and sometimes give in to it. Sometimes we experience it as if fate is out to get us, or the world is out to get us, and sometimes we experience it as personified: as if the devil is out to get us. I encourage you to choose the way of thinking about it that you find most helpful. If it works for you to see that the situation is tempting you to do something you know is wrong, and you need to resist it: that’s fine, you do that. If it works for you to see that the devil is tempting you to do something you know is wrong, and you need to resist him: that’s fine, you do that. Your way of describing how that particular temptation came to you is relatively unimportant. The important thing is that you are choosing to do what’s right instead of what’s wrong. The important thing is recognizing that this is a test where you can gain clarity about who you are and what you will do.

As it turns out, you are not the only-begotten Son of God. Yeah, you knew that already: I realize I’m not giving you any new information there. So let me point out something else you already know: you are indeed a child of God. It will come to pass that circumstances will arise whereby you are tempted to doubt that reality. Indeed, it will come to pass that the Spirit of God will sometimes lead you – or maybe even drive you – into those circumstances. Circumstances that will test your sense of who you are and what you will do. You will find yourself on the proving grounds, where the testing will be rigorous. Some days you will do better in this testing, and some days not so well.

And here is something that we don’t always think about: it is in the midst of rigorous testing that we can gain clarity about something we might not have been sure about. We can come to know that the presence of the Spirit will sustain us even in the face of very difficult circumstances. We can be tested, and proven, in the midst of difficult trials, so that we come to know something we did not know before: something about our identity and our actions, something about who we are and about what we will do. It is in the midst of the testing that we come to know, with a clarity that we did not have before, that we are indeed the children of God, and that we will follow Jesus in confidence and faithfulness, sustained by the presence of the Holy Spirit day by day, and forever.