Jesus - Hunger

Thursday: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

After the birth of Jesus, the next major events described in the bible are Jesus’ baptism and temptation – I think they are connected.

Mathew wrote: Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptized by John. But John tried to deter him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” Jesus replied, “Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness.” Then John consented. As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, 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, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”

What is all this about? Jesus was God, why did he need to be baptized?

The time had come for a change: A change from his old life to a new life of ministry. I think in baptism, even Jesus was saying “the old has gone, the new has come”. It was now time to start on the path of bringing God and man together.

Jesus had to be tested, to prove that his new hunger was indeed for righteousness.

Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.” Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

(There is too much in the temptation of Jesus to go into here, so I’ll do it sometime in the near future.)

Then the devil left him, and angels came and attended him.

I think this statement speaks volumes. He had survived the temptation and was now able to move on to do what the Father had planned for him to do. In a sense, he had just passed where Adam and Eve had failed.

I’m really fascinated about the first question Satan asks – it gets right to the point of hunger.

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God, I hope I do well in testing. There are all these areas in my life were I want to move out of chaos and into goodness - and I know that testing stands at the gateway each time.