Authority

 January 24, 2022

I couldn’t get my mind working yesterday, so I apologize to any who might have been looking for my evening post. Tonight, I am reflecting on yesterday’s sermon—well, not the sermon as much as the text from which it was taken. Well, not so much the text as the verses just prior to the text. I’m referring to Luke 4:1-2, 13-15.

“Then Jesus, being filled with the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, being tempted for forty days by the devil. And in those days He ate nothing, and afterward, when they had ended, He was hungry...Now when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from Him until an opportune time. Then Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee, and news of Him went out through all the surrounding region. And He taught in their synagogues, being glorified by all.”  

I often hear Christians speak of being filled with the Holy Spirit, or wanting Holy Spirit power in their lives. It is a noble and proper desire, but for many, is but wishful thinking as they neglect the prerequisites for such presence and power.

Prior to returning “in the power of the Holy Spirit,” Jesus had been baptized and tested. He received the power in his baptism, and that power was tested in the temptations, so when he came forth from those experiences, he walked and taught, not in theoretical power, but in experiential power. He KNEW from experience the power of the Holy Spirit, and it was reflected in his teaching, as Mark says, “he taught them as one that had authority” (1:22).

We want the power of the Holy Spirit, but recoil from the experience of testing that gives us the assurance of it. We see difficulties as attacks of the Enemy, which in a sense they are, but we fail to see them as the discipline of a loving Heavenly Father who wants us to know in our experience the power of which we speak. In the New Testament, the words “test” and “temptation” are the same word. Actually, they are two sides of the same coin. From God’s perspective, life’s difficulties are challenges…tests designed to show us in real time our strength. They are designed to make us stronger, much as a weightlifter puts his body to the test with increasing resistance. The Enemy intends the same situation to be the occasion for our downfall. The difference is in the intent. Our Father wants to strengthen us; the Enemy wants to stop us.

The power of the Holy Spirit is available to us just as it was for Jesus. He was filled with the Holy Spirit at the river and tested in the desert. At his baptism, the Father declared his love for him. In the desert, Jesus demonstrated his love for the Father. The power of the Holy Spirit worked through the Scriptures Jesus quoted. He works the same through us, and as we fill our minds and hearts with Scripture, we give the Holy Spirit within us the tools to defeat Satan, and we emerge in power and authority.