Friday after the First Sunday after the Festival of the Epiphany of our Lord
Posted on January 17, 2020 by under
Scripture: St. Mark 1:12-15 (NKJV)
1:12 Immediately the Spirit drove Him into the wilderness. 13 And He was there in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan, and was with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered to Him.
14 Now after John was put in prison, Jesus came to Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, 15 and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.”
Devotion
The Son of God wasn’t immune from the devil’s temptations. His forerunner, John, was persecuted by the world and imprisoned on account of his preaching. At the beginning of Jesus’ ministry the devil and the world were set against the Gospel. The devil and the world continually attacked Christ and His apostles throughout their ministries with temptations and persecutions, and those tactics have not changed.
Christ is the Head of the Body, which is His Church. As it goes for the Head, so it goes for the Body. Christ was tempted by the devil to doubt God’s Word. The Church is tempted in the same way so that Christians put their trust in themselves, in the government, in anything other than their heavenly Father. Christ was persecuted, slandered, blasphemed, and eventually crucified. The Church through the ages has similarly been persecuted whenever she has remained faithful to Christ’s Word and preached against the world’s sin.
The Lord allows Satan to harass Christians, not to punish them, but to show His almighty power and teach them to flee to Him in all trouble. He allows the world to persecute and slander His Church so that she relies not on her own strength and resources, but on her Lord’s promises. Don’t fret over temptations and persecutions. God uses them to conform us to the image of His Son, the Church’s Head.
We pray: O Lord, we beseech Thee mercifully to receive the prayers of Thy people who call upon Thee, and grant that they may both perceive and know what things they ought to do and also may have grace and power faithfully to fulfill the same; through Jesus Christ, Thy Son, our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
