In the wilderness, you know that place the Spirit led Jesus, we are led there too. It's a place where you hunger for God's presence. Jesus was without food for 40 days, which you can take literally or you can look at it as He was without instruction and without communication with the Father. In later scripture, Jesus said I have food you know nothing about, it was the act of doing His Father’s will that fed Him. Back to the wilderness, Jesus is led by the Spirit out into the wilderness but what was the point? At the point where Jesus received the Baptism, it said that the Holy Spirit landed on Him and remained. Up until that moment Jesus had no power to heal or do any miracles. Let's back up even further, Jesus was born of the Holy Spirit and Mary. He had no ties to the Adamic nature and therefore was in no need of a savior or sacrifice to get Him back to the Father. This unique situation gave Jesus the opportunity to live without condemnation, guilt or sin. We needed Jesus’s sacrifice to pull us out of our Adamic nature, He however was born outside of it. He was never touched by Adam's nature. He was God's perfect lamb.
So Jesus had choices, like we have, to obey His flesh and do what He wanted or to obey His Father. He had those choices. When He got Baptized in the river with John, He received the full power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus said, all righteousness must be fulfilled when He convinced John to Baptize Him. Why did He say that?
If you look back, way back in Exodus 30, there was a ritual for washing before you went and gave an offering to the Lord. It mentions an offering of fire specifically. As we all know Jesus was going to be the sacrificial lamb, the morning sacrifice. To do so, He had to follow the purification rights first in order to be ritually clean before He offered Himself up to God for sacrifice. This link is to a great article that explains in greater detail what the Jews history of baptism was.
So, now Jesus was baptized by John to fulfill scriptures and become ritually cleansed before He was drawn out into the wilderness to offer Himself to God. In many versus throughout the Old Testament, it says God proves a man's heart by trials like fire and we see that after Jesus is purified, He is led out to be tested, a trial by fire, as a burnt offering. His heart was to be tested, He was to be refined. God made sure that all the rituals that He made way back in the beginning for Israel was completed in Jesus. As a matter of fact, the ritual sacrifices God had in place for Israel were more than likely pointing to His Son's sacrifice and not the other way around.
So here we are in the wilderness, being tried, tested and purified and this happens to all of us. God sends the trials on purpose to see where our hearts lie. Do we crumble under the pressures of the fire and lose our faith? Do we blame God and become angry with Him? Do we see the trials as a way to be refined?
It all depends on how we think of God and His ways. If we never see trials, then what kind of quality would our hearts be.
Often the Bible refers to our faith like a metal that needs to be refined. With us having both the flesh and the Spirit within us, the flesh needs to be burned away. Like metal ores that have impurities mixed with the metal, heat must be applied so the separation of metal and impurities can be done. Often times the impurities will either burn away or the will separate from the metal so you can easily pour the impurities off. The flesh is our impurity and it needs to be offered as our burnt offering unto the Lord. Once something in us is offered, it is burned up and never returns. It is a part of our transformation from who we were in Adam to who we are becoming in Jesus.
We are washed clean by Jesus, then we must present our flesh as a burnt offering to the Lord just as Jesus did in the wilderness. His trials, His temptation, His presentation of His heart to God to be refined is where we must follow.
So for those who think they are going through trials, sufferings and fire, understand God is refining you. He is purifying your heart for one reason. He cannot let a heart that is not in line with His into His presence. As we are a mixture, God hates a mixture and will pursue one thing, which is a heart solely and purely after Him. If He sees your heart needs refined, He will do it. He does this out of love and kindness as He never wants anything less than His presence in our heart.
Often, we blame the devil for the fire and we beg God to get rid of the fire. Yet if we understand the purpose of it, we can then let the fire do what it is meant to do. Instead of a curse, we need to see it as God's love. Ask Him what needs to be purged. Ask Him what is in you that needs to be laid on the altar of incense. when the altar of incense is described, the burnt offering laid upon it is a pleasant aroma to God. If we look at how we lay our flesh on the altar to be burned, we can see why the aroma is so pleasing to Him. It's the old nature in us being burned up.
I know this is a lot to take in, baptism, refined by fire, altars and such but it is the path that Jesus took at the start of His ministry and it should be the path we pursue as well. If we say we love Him and except His gift of forgiveness, then we must walk as He walked and pursue righteousness as He did. The things done physically then, must now be done in the heart. Let God guide you into the wilderness and refine you. The outcome will outweigh the sacrifice.
To God be the Glory!
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