The market has selected for us for the Communion Meditation today, a passage out of Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy is just two words, Deuteron and No Moss, which means the second law. And most of people have said, well it's the second giving of the law, and that's true. About 38 years after the Lord gave the law at Sinai, Moses gathered the people on the plains of Moab, well before they were to go in the land of Canaan and he gave a recitation of the law. In fact he preached a couple of three very long extended sermons and that's the book of Deuteronomy. That's Moses preaching on the plains of Moab, but it's interesting. The Bible says he made a covenant with him, not the covenant that he had made at Horab, but another covenant. So the Deuteronomy is not just the second giving of the law. It's the giving of the law, a second time, this time, laced and baptized and infused with gospel. The book of Deuteronomy was the primary preaching source for Jesus and the Apostle Paul during their ministries. So when we hear the old covenant here, the book of Deuteronomy, we're hearing gospel. So hear the word of the Lord. When your son asks you in time to come, what is the meaning of the testimonies and the statutes and the rule that the Lord our God has commanded you? Then you shall say to your son, we were Pharaoh slaves in Egypt and the Lord brought us out with a mighty hand and the Lord showed signs and wonders great and grievous against Egypt and against Pharaoh in all his household before our eyes. And he brought us out from there that he might bring us in and give us the land that he swore to give to our fathers. And the Lord commanded us to do all these statutes to fear the Lord our God for our good always that he might preserve us alive as we are this day. And it will be righteousness for us if we are careful to do all these commandments before the Lord our God as he has commanded us. The word of the Lord. You may be seated. This particular passage out of Deuteronomy 6 provides kind of the heart passage for a little wider context that includes chapter 67 and 8 of Deuteronomy that kind of hang together. One of the things that I want to get across to you this morning is the interrelatedness between God's word, God's son and God's spirit. Between God's word, the Holy Scriptures, God's son, Jesus Christ and God's spirit, the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. And I think no better place as we're going through this series on the Holy Spirit and the ministry of the Holy Spirit, no better place arises before us than this particular passage. Because this is the context and the historical and theological background for some very important events in the life of Christ. Christ came at about age 30 to begin his public ministry which was not unusual priest began their ministry at about age 30. And so Jesus in his role as a priest was going to come and not just teach the commandments of God as a rabbi but he was going to keep the commandments of God entirely as our perfect righteousness. So Jesus had been for 30 years growing up at home and going to the synagogue school and going to the synagogue and as his custom was every Sabbath he spent in the synagogue. And for 30 years Jesus has increased in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man and has grown up as the young man coming through those years of childhood and adolescence and young adulthood very trying times of a person's life. Very formative in their lives. Jesus had come through that period of time increasing in his understanding and awareness of his Messianic mission, understanding his status as the son of God, being right in the midst of his people living and working in the midst of his family and his community growing up. But God is fashioning him into the person who will be our perfect righteousness. That period of time when Jesus launched his ministry is very, very important and there's a few things I want to just kind of give you a little background on today. I don't have time to develop it very thoroughly but you, I think most of you understand what I'm driving at. Here it is. John the Baptist was a cousin of Christ and he was about six months older than Christ and John the Baptist was in fact a priest. His father, you recall Zachariah was in the temple performing the offering of incense ceremonies when he was met by the angel and was given the prophecy of the birth of John. Not only that was his father a priest a Levite but John the Baptist mother was of the Aaronic family, a descendant of Aaron. She was of the high priestly family and the priesthood in ancient Israel of course was hereditary so John was a priest and he had trained his whole life under the strict vows of the priesthood to become a priest. So he began his ministry at age 30 which meant he was about six months ahead of Christ. We think of John as a prophet because he was a prophet and was dynamic in his preaching of the gospel of the kingdom of God in preparing the way for the king. And he drew out of the Old Testament a manifesto of what his ministry would be from the book of Isaiah, a voice crying in the wilderness and from the book of Malachi and John the Baptist goes as what we call the forerunner of Christ to prepare the way. One day in the midst of John's preaching down in the Jordan Valley where John was preaching and baptizing and the scripture says the book of Matthew all Israel came out to hear him. Now that that is a pretty significant statement. I don't know if every single solitary soul in Israel finally got around to hearing John preach but the language lets us know that it was it was an all encompassing ministry. Essentially the whole nation fell under the preaching of John the Baptist and that was the way it should be as he announced the gospel of the kingdom. And one day he saw Jesus in the crowd and he said behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. Here he was a priest trained in the rituals of slitting the throats of the little lambs and shedding the blood and offering the sacrifice and he sees the very Lamb of God Jesus Christ and he points him out. Now Jesus comes to John to be baptized and when he comes to when Jesus comes to John to be baptized John immediately backs up just a little bit because John has been consistently now for about six months or more preaching a gospel of repentance. That is a turning from sin and he has been certifying and ratifying his gospel of repentance by a ritual. A ritual that comes right out of the book of Leviticus it is a cleansing ritual that symbolizes the cleansing of sin and John had been as a priest following strictly the Levitical practice of getting living water moving water clean water. The Jordan River at low ab going over the rocks and reels in the shallows of the Jordan and he had been placing a hisip branch in the water according to the prescriptions. Why would a priest do something different than what the Bible outlined them to do? He was doing exactly what Leviticus called for taking that hisip branch which was an absorbing plant and saturating it in water and then splashing it and dousing it sprinkling it upon the people. The symbol of their sins had been forgiven and they were cleansed and they could walk out of there knowing that they had a brand new start with God their heart was right their sins were forgiven and they were cleansed. So when Jesus shows up for that ceremony John backs off a little bit because he says you are the sinless son of God you do not need this ritual. You need not repent I am not out here performing this ceremony for you you are the one exception to all of Israel all of Israel was sinful but Christ of course was the sinless son of God. Jesus steps up and sort of gets up to John and I can see him say look cousin he just sort of might have reached over and got him by the elbow and said let's do this to fulfill all righteousness that's all John needed to hear because John knew the Old Testament and he knew what Jesus was doing was making an illusion an unmistakable illusion to this particular passage. Notice there at the very end of the passage what it talks about if we are careful it's a and it will be righteousness for us if we are careful to do all this commandment before the Lord our God. Jesus reminded John that there was a whole lot more to the Old Testament cleansing rituals than simply the ritual of cleansing or repentance of sin there were other rituals in the Old Testament that the priest performed. And so had Jesus suggestion John performed one upon Christ he still doused that old his up branch with a saturated water and doused Christ in a baptism that was a baptism that symbolized the cleansing for the priest to the dead. At age 30 in the Old Testament law the priest were ceremonially and ritual cleanse as they begin to launch into their ministry and something remarkable happened that day the Holy Spirit of God descended in an unmistakable way upon him in the form of a dove and so here is Christ the son of God with the spirit of God descending upon him then we hear the voice of God the Father saying this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased by the way if you're struggling a little with the doctrine of Trinity that might help a little bit because here we have all three persons of the triune God. God the Father speaking God the Spirit descending upon God the Son all three from that time forward in the passage and there both the Gospels Matthew and Mark record some of this information Luke as well but the most thorough presentation of this particular epoch in the life of Christ comes from the Gospel of Matthew which is not surprising Matthew wrote his God gospel primarily to the Jews to prove that Jesus was the Christ the very Messiah so he interconnected these Old Testament background things with the life of Christ in a very unmistakable way and so we see it happening right here we see Jesus Christ at his baptism being baptized not just in water but in the spirit the Holy Spirit comes upon him in a special way and we find that the Spirit of God coming upon Christ is going to empower him for his ministry but before he empowers him for his ministry he's going to drive him that's what the word literally means the Spirit of God drove Jesus into the wilderness some Christ moves down south into the wilderness of Judea and there undergoes a wilderness experience of 40 days in 40 nights just as was referenced here in the text of the wilderness experience of God's people 40 years in the desert and he goes into the desert Christ does being driven by the Spirit and there we find him in fasting and in prayer and in understanding this powerful relationship between himself his father and his spirit mysterious remember I mentioned a few weeks ago that to be a good Christian in many ways you've got to kind of be a mystic you've got to hold some mystery I love explaining things I love understanding things I dig around try to find out learn everything I can but when I get right down to it it's some mystery it is a holy mystery in every way but God the Spirit and God the Son in the desert coming to an intimate relationship oh it's kind of like in the desert when Israel was in the desert there was this old tabernacle there was this tent and the Spirit of God dwelled in the holy place the most holy place now the tent is the body of Christ he tabernacles among us and the Spirit of God is now in Christ and let me tell you what it happened about out of time and let me just wrap up real quickly tell you what happened Jesus was so saturated with the word of God from his 30 years of study of the scriptures and now he is so empowered and filled and related in a dynamic way to the Spirit of God that he is able then to endure the temptations that come and what's something very interesting I don't have time to spell it out but Satan came you all know the story quite well and he asks Jesus he said if you're the Christ there's a very easy way to prove it and that is that you'll be a wonder worker in a miracle worker so why don't you just turn these stones into loaves of bread and enjoy a nice meal out here in the wilderness I mean after all didn't you know you have mana in the wilderness so you know you're trying to do this wilderness thing let's get some mana on the ground and you remember what Jesus said Jesus said there was a purpose of that and he explained it to Satan and he in doing so he referenced this passage in Deuteronomy where it says I cause thee to hunger that you may know that man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God and so Christ with his knowledge of the word with his power of the Spirit is able to resist the first temptation the next temptation of course they're inverted in the other gospel but they he is taken to the pinnacle of the temple it's a place where Christ belonged after all he is the temple he was taken to the pinnacle of temple it's that place on the high part of the east wall but about a thousand foot drop he made it an impregnable fortress for anyone that wanted to attack the holy city and church history tells us years later that James was thrown off that pinnacle and executed that was his martyrdom but at this point Jesus is on that high point and the pinnacle of the temple and Satan says well you're the son of God so nothing is ever going to hurt you why don't you just cast yourself off the temple and the Lord will give his angels charge over you and he'll bury you as he Satan knows the scripture he's quoting the scripture too he's making the illusion but Jesus comes right back to him and tells him the quotation right out of Deuteronomy 6 16 you shall not put the Lord your God to the test that's the very paragraph before we that passage that we just read you shall not put the Lord your God to the test and then the third instance it takes him for a high mountain shows in the kingdoms of the world Satan knows good and well that one day Jesus is will be the king of the world he will come and establish his kingdom in righteousness and peace through his atoning death and through his victorious resurrection and in his triumph return he will be the king of kings and the Lord of the Lord every knee shall bow to him all the nations of the earth he'll become the kingdom of the Lord in his Christ all nations are his footstool why bother with this life of misery on the cross and all of this when you can just go ahead and reach your goal right now Satan says I'll give you all these kingdoms I'll yield them up to you if you'll just bow down and worship me Jesus once again goes right back to this Deuteronomy passage in 6 13 he says it is the Lord your God you shall fear him you shall serve and by his name you shall swear the Lord thy God in him only shall thou worship says Christ now here's the conclusion spirit of God and the Son of God and the Word of God working in dynamic union to enable Christ to resist temptation to fulfill his ministry to take upon himself the sins and the experience of his people he went through all of the temptation and all of the trial of those of those early days before he began to preach and the Bible says that when Jesus began to preach he went forth to preach in the power of the Holy Spirit you know there's something about that that just really speaks to me I like the fact that our Lord went through it before he began to tell us about it he lived it and practiced it he understood it he believed it he relied upon it he proved it he knew what he was talking about by his own experience before he began preaching to others afraid we have sometimes people that were preached to us and they haven't been there they haven't lived it they can talk to talk but they don't walk the walk and Christ had already learned obedience through his suffering before he began to preach and he goes forth to preach in the power and the might of the Spirit and the Word so much so and that people would look at Jesus in his preaching and say no man ever spoke as he spoke sometimes it isn't this just the carpenter's son the common people heard him gladly there was this remarkable thing between the dynamic of the Son of God and the Spirit of God and the Word of God let me wrap it up by saying this this passage we read from Deuteronomy invites you and me into the very vortex of that dynamic we get in the midst of that same powerful dynamic of the Spirit of God the Word of God in the Son of God by faith and by obedience by faith we come to Christ believing him devoting ourselves to him calling upon him seeing that everything he did the life he lived and the death he died and the resurrection that he experienced is ours by faith he comes then and gives us his Holy Spirit to dwell within us and to seal us and to operate upon us in so many ways we've spoken of over the past few weeks in regeneration and sanctification and all these other things and we're invited into the midst of this dynamic because we come by the way of the Word we learn the Word we keep the commandments of God we live according to the Word as Christ lived according to the Word and we do so in the power of his Spirit that he has given us do you know a little something of this dynamic in your own life the Spirit the Word and the Son if you don't then you really haven't moved very far into the Christian life I would ask you to let today be your starting day come to Christ by faith seize upon him embrace him trust him know that his spirit will turn you from darkness to light from death to life he will bring you out of that grave of corruption and sin and condemnation and guilt in which you now dwell and bring you into a kingdom of light and of health prosperity in Christ know the Word seek to understand ask the Spirit of God to reveal it to you and illuminate your heart in mind that you may understand keep this commandment this is your righteousness this is your righteousness this is the way God cleans us up and makes us what we ought to be the Lord will take you just as you are just as you are this morning whatever your spiritual condition whatever your spiritual history whatever the warp is upon your soul it doesn't matter he will take you just the way you are this morning don't wait another day don't leave this room come to Christ when he takes you he won't leave you the way you are he will change you and you'll go behold he made all things new