Fasting Day 3 of 40 | First Friday of Lent
At once the Spirit sent [Jesus] out into the wilderness, and He was in the wilderness forty days, being tempted by Satan. Mark 1:12-13a
Why did Jesus fast forty days. In The Saints’ Everlasting Rest, Richard Baxter teaches us say that Jesus did it because He was serious.
“God is in earnest with you; and why should you not be so with Him? In His commands, His threatenings, His promises, He means as He speaks. In His judgments He is serious. Was He not so when He drowned the world, when He consumed Sodom and Gomorrah, and when He scattered the Jews? Is it time, then, to trifle with God? Jesus Christ was serious in purchasing our redemption. In teaching, He neglected His meat and drink: in prayer, He continued all night: in doing good, His friends thought Him beside Himself: in suffering, He fasted forty days, was tempted, betrayed, spit upon, buffeted, crowned with thorns, sweat drops of blood, was crucified, pierced, died. There was no jesting in all this. And should we not be serious in seeking our own salvation?”
Baxter sketches the aim of Lent. We unlearn self-centered ways to become serious, surrendered people, willing to do whatever God asks of us. Notice that the Spirit led Jesus to the wilderness. That means it was God’s idea and Jesus did it to model the way for us.
Holy Spirit, teach me to get serious in the forty days of fasting. Amen.
Satan does not want you to get serious. How does he tempt you? Name the ways. Now follow the example of Jesus, resist temptation with the sword of the Spirit: Scripture. Ask the Father to deliver you.