Lenten Meditation (5) and the Sprinkling of Nations

The Wilderness Temptations

Our Lord Jesus was tempted in three different ways. Among them was the temptation for universal power and authority. For this reason, “the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple.”

In the book of Job, the LORD said to Satan: “Have you considered my servant Job?” Before Yahweh presented Job to the devil, He declared Job blameless and upright. Indeed, Job came through the temptations of Satan as a faithful servant, just as God said.

In Matthew’s Gospel, God offers a new Job to be tested by Satan. Jesus overcomes the temptations of the evil one by pointing the devil to God’s authoritative Word (Deut. 8). Again, before Jesus went to the wilderness, God declared Jesus blameless and upright: “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” Jesus is the greater Job.

Let us remind ourselves daily that God does not allow us to be tempted without blessing and training us in righteousness. We are God’s servants: blameless and upright in His sight. May the Lenten journey prepare us to be faithful to respond to Satan’s temptations.

Prayer: O Lord, you are righteous and good. We ask not to be led into temptation, but should we be taken to the highest peak where power and authority are offered to us in exchange for compromising your Gospel, speak life to our hearts for the kingdom of heaven is mightier and more desirable than gold and silver. We ask this in the Name of our blessed Lord Jesus, amen.

Psalm of the Week: Be Gracious Unto Me, O God (Psalm 56)

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Notations:

*Mark 14 ritualizes Jesus at the beginning with oil, and then Jesus presides over the ritual of the Supper. Jesus is anointed to anoint us with his body and blood.

*If Jesus was baptized at the age of 30, it’s because he is the perfect priest. Numbers 8 affirms that priestly ordinations happen by sprinkling the water of cleansing on them. So too, we may conclude Jesus was baptized by sprinkling in Matthew 3. He must be sprinkled to sprinkle the nations (Is. 52:15).

*The concern for Christianized cities is reaching nation-level status among leftist “journalism.” The Washington Post’s latest is the kind of apocalypticism meant to frighten your sweet, middle-of-the-road evangelical. The associations are meant to kill the idea before it is accurately presented. For instance, the article concludes of Doug Wilson’s vision:

When it comes to major social issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage, his theology represents a majority of only two major U.S. Christian groups, according to recent surveys — White evangelicals and members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The strategy is to simplify the agenda by making this a “white” thing or some cultish tendency. But it’s far more significant. Christendom as an idea goes much farther back than the concerns of a particular race or Mormon agenda.

*The COVID data is now coming from conservative and liberal voices, concluding:

The updated classified report also affirms the view that COVID did not stem from a biological weapons program, the Wall Street Journal noted. A lack of a definitive animal source has led researchers and U.S. officials to suspect a leak from Wuhan’s assemblage of laboratories.

Michael Shellenberger tweets:

Now that the U.S. Department of Energy has joined FBI in concluding that the coronavirus likely leaked from a lab, it’s worth remembering that the media, en masse, condemned the lab leak theory as a “debunked conspiracy theory,” and Facebook censored people who dared suggest it.

We are probably looking at lawsuits for the next few decades. The Christian leaders who took us through turmoil under the guise of science will have to defend themselves before God and men.