Does He know the challenges of obscurity and popularity equally? Has He been required to wait when waiting seems impossible? Has He encountered opposition and obstacles even when He is in exactly the right place, at exactly the right time, doing exactly the right thing? Does He know what it is like when adjustments from one normal to the next are painful and hard? Has hardship ever brought Him to His knees seeking deliverance?
The answer to all these questions is – yes!
God walked this earth in the person of Jesus Christ and lived, embodied in time and space, with emotions and desires and needs. His life was a story just like ours. The four Gospels that begin the New Testament tell us the shape of His story. They sketch the different phases of life that He encountered as He grew from an infant to a child, to a man.
The life of Jesus was not uniform from start to finish. He participated in celebrations. He experienced loss. He felt sadness. He relied on communication with His heavenly Father. He gathered friends, some closer than others. He knew rejection and betrayal. He was moved by injustice and suffering. Yet He perfectly surrendered His will and His days to the will of His Father.
Crisis and Deliverance
Jesus was no stranger to crisis, pain, and extremity – even to abandonment.
His life was punctuated by danger and threat of death. As an infant, rather than escaping Egypt, Jesus escaped to Egypt when Herod was determined to end His life. God delivered Him out of the hands of His enemy. In extreme hunger at the end of His wilderness experience, the devil tempted Him, and He triumphantly overcame. God strengthened Him after this encounter with His enemy.
In His later years of public ministry, He was constantly the subject of jealousy and condemnation by the religious groups of His day. These were the people who caused the greatest crisis of His life. Indeed, the reason He came was to face that crisis. It was in the Garden of Gethsemane, with the cross in view, and again while hanging on that cross, that He cried out, and was not delivered, in order that we might be delivered.
Jesus knew what it was to be forsaken by God. Suffering was the unexpected means by which He overcame sin, death, and the devil for us. Yet He also knew deliverance. Ultimately, He was delivered from death when he rose victorious from the tomb after His work was finished.
Wilderness
Jesus spent time in the wilderness. He knew obscurity. He lived without fanfare and applause during His growing-up years. Nazareth was out of the way. His brothers did not value Him as He deserved. He lived in obedience and submission while under the authority of His parents.
He knew how to wait until the time was right before His public ministry began. And even as it started, Jesus spent time in the wilderness, fasting, being tempted, all alone.
Crossing the Jordan
When the time came to begin His ministry in the public realm, Jesus stepped into the Jordan. This was the place where He was baptized by His cousin John the Baptist, the figurative Elijah (see Luke 1:17), sent to announce the Messiah. It was here that the heavens opened and God’s approval rested upon Him (Mark 1:9-11). The Jordan was where His ministry to the masses began. Without hesitation, He willingly stepped into the Jordan. And without hesitation, He willingly stepped out of the Jordan and began the journey that would bring Him closer and closer to the cross, God’s judgement, and a tomb that could not hold Him.
The Work God gave Him to do
Perhaps one of the most striking features of Jesus’ time here on earth is His sense of purpose. Jesus knew He was here to accomplish our salvation. Every step He took was overshadowed by this ultimate destination.
He had His eye on securing a “Promised Land” for us. He would accomplish a work in order to bring us rest, and as He journeyed towards this, He purposefully accomplished God’s will “on earth as it is in heaven” (Luke 11:2). Everywhere He went something changed: a wedding recovered its joy,[1] the guilty found forgiveness,[2] the demon-possessed were released,[3] the sick were healed,[4] the lame leapt,[5] the dumb spoke,[6] the poor had the gospel preached to them,[7] and the unwanted were welcomed and reclaimed as valuable image bearers.[8] He alleviated suffering and advanced the kingdom of God as He resolutely set His face toward unimaginable suffering and victory over the evil one. And along the way, He contended with the false – all that was not good, true and beautiful – rebuking the proud, instructing the confused, using parables and stories to enlighten the sincere and leave the insincere scratching their heads. Jesus tended to all shades of humanity as He journeyed to the climax of His work on earth.
And finally, “for the joy that was set before Him, [He] endured the cross, despising the shame” (Hebrews 12:2) and finished the work God gave Him to do. When we entrust ourselves to Him, we find that His work accomplished our rest: He became sin so that “in Him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21 ESV). We live in the light because He endured the dark. We will never be abandoned because He was forsaken. We get what He deserves because He got what we deserve. His death gives us life, and because of what He did we are now “beloved of God” (Romans 1:7) and clothed in Christ (Galatians 3:27).
Death is defeated, sin is overcome, guilt and shame are removed. Man is created anew in the power of an endless life, joining with an innumerable company from every tribe and tongue and nation, living to the praise of His glory – certainly, His finished work is indeed glorious!
He is God’s beloved Son in whom the Father is well pleased (Matthew 3:17), and He is also the only One who perfectly completed the work God gave Him to do (John 17:4): a perfect, faithful Saviour.
God knows and God cares
So not only does God plan out our days and our stories, not only does He work all the different phases and experiences we encounter into His good plan for our good and His glory – He also intimately knows the steps we take, the temptations we face, and the difficulties we encounter. He has been here. He has lived it too.
God knows and God cares. He knows where we are, and He cares that we dependently follow wherever He leads and faithfully do what He asks of us, leaving the results to Him. God is no stranger to our story. He is our example, our guide, and our companion as we navigate each chapter to the glory of His grace.
As Hebrews 4:14-16 (NIV) puts it:
“Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with out weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are – yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.”
[1] John 2:1-10
[2] John 8:1-11
[3] Mark 5:1-20
[4] Matthew 8:5-13
[5] Mark 2:1-12
[6] Matthew 9:32,33
[7] Matthew 11:5
[8] Luke 19:1-10
