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Trinity in view, we have Jesus Christ with the Holy Ghost ascending on him and a voice from heaven saying, Thou art my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. So obviously that's God the Father speaking to the Son and you have the Holy Spirit there, all three present, that's the Trinity right there. So the Bible says in verse 12, And immediately the Spirit driveth him into the wilderness, and he was there in the wilderness forty days, tempted of Satan, and was with the wild beasts, and the angels ministered unto him. Now when we think of the wilderness, we might think of like a really dense forest or a jungle, but typically when the Bible refers to the wilderness, it's usually talking about the desert and it's used synonymously in the Bible with desert because the events of the Word of God didn't take place in South America. If you look at the geography over there in Israel, the wilderness is the desert. That's the part that's the most wild or the most untamed or the part where you would struggle to survive. It's not a dense forest or a jungle or anything like that. And so it's used synonymously in the Bible with the word desert. So Jesus is driven out into the desert, he's driven out into the wilderness, and for forty days he's tempted of Satan and he's with the wild beasts. You know, just lizards, snakes, it's just talking about how he's living out there in a difficult environment for forty days. And the angels ministered unto him, meaning that they helped him out, they served him. Now after that John was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God and saying, the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand, repent ye and believe the gospel. And again we talked about how that's basically one command there. Hey, it'd be like if my wife said, I'm not going to the store, and I told her, look, I want you to pick me up such and such the food item, you're going. And she's just like, I'm not going to the store, I don't want to go to the store. And I say, hey, I want those jalapeno poppers, repent ye and go to the store. So if I told her, repent and go, is that two different separate commands or is it, hey, you better get yourself turned around and go to the store like I told you to, right? Do you see what I'm saying? That would be repent and go. This is repent and believe because they are right now in an unsaved condition. They don't understand the gospel, they don't believe the gospel. And so he's telling them to repent and believe the gospel. Now notice that Jesus Christ, he gets baptized, okay, which again has nothing to do with salvation because if it did, why would Jesus have to get baptized? Jesus doesn't need to get saved. Jesus is the savior. Jesus doesn't need to wash away any sins. He doesn't have any sins. Baptism is just a picture, it's symbolic. He was just symbolizing the fact that he's going to die and be buried and rise again. He's symbolizing that for others. And it was just a pattern for us to follow. But after he's baptized, he then is tempted of the devil. And so he goes through a very difficult time. He goes through a hard time. He's out in the wilderness. He's being tempted by Satan. And of course, Matthew and Luke have a little more detail on this, where the devil's coming to him and trying to tempt him with food because he's hungry and trying to tempt his ego and trying to get his pride involved and so forth. But we see that he's going through a struggle and a difficult time and temptation and testing. And here's what you need to understand. You know, when you get baptized, you may go through something similar after being baptized as well. And I don't just mean when you get baptized, but really any time you take a step forward in the Christian life, you can expect there to be some kind of an obstacle or a hurdle or some kind of a difficulty. And if you study the Bible, you'll notice that great victories are often followed by great defeats. Now in this case, there's no defeat because Jesus is always winning all the time, of course. But we see there's a challenge involved. And many times we as human beings aren't up to the challenge. But the point is that we should expect sometimes if we make some big step in our Christian life for there to be a little bit of a pushback and not just expect it to be easy all the time. So you know, you get saved, you get baptized, you're excited. It's like, all right, buddy, now you're going to the wilderness. Now you're going to boot camp. Now you're going to be tempted. Now you're going to have problems. Now you're going to suffer. And sometimes people aren't ready for that. Maybe you just started going to church. You know what? It's the new year. It's a new year's resolution in 2021. I'm going to church. Now my life's going to be easy. Now everything's going to be great. God's on my side. Hey, just expect that if you start going to church in 2021, expect problems. Say, well, why would I even go to church? Because life is not about just having it easy. Is Jesus on easy street here? No, he's 40 days out in the wilderness being tempted of Satan. He's out living with the wild beasts for 40 days. And so life is not about taking the path of least resistance and doing the easy thing. It's about doing the right thing. And in the end, you're going to be blessed for doing the right thing. But when you do the right thing, opposition comes. When you do the right thing, there's an attack that comes. When you do the right thing, trials and tribulations come and you've got to push through. Jesus Christ pushes through this time of temptation. And when he comes out the other side, he's preaching with power. He's preaching the gospel. He's doing great works. He has great crowds of people listening to him, but he had to pay his dues first. He didn't just go to some cushioned climate controlled Bible college, get a degree, and now all of a sudden he's ready to preach to the great crowds. No, he had to go through the crucible. You know, he had to go through some hard times and some testing and some trials out in the wilderness and so will you if you're going to be used by God. You're going to have to go through some opposition. You know, sometimes you can get saved, get baptized, or take other steps like going to church or getting out soul winning for the first time. Or maybe you decided, hey, 2021, I'm going to read my Bible cover to cover. Well, you know what? Expect something to suck up your time and get in the way of that. And you have to decide, no, I'm going to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. And no matter how busy I get, I can read four chapters in the Bible every day, no matter how busy I am. Right? I mean, how long does that really take? 15, 20 minutes. I'm not a super fast reader. I'm not a speed reader. I do a lot of reading, but I just read at normal speed. I've never been into speed reading. Never been good at it. It's not my thing. I read at normal speed. It takes me like 15 or 20 minutes to get through four chapters. That's the average. You know, you listen to Alexander Scorby read it. It's like 15 minutes to get through your daily Bible reading. So I'll give you 20. Fine. Take 25. But you know what? Here's the thing. 25 minutes we can carve out in our day, I guarantee it. You know, let's say you work eight hours. I work 12 hours. Okay. You work 12 hours. Work 12 hours. Sleep eight hours. Spend a couple of hours with your family. Spend an hour preening and primping and grooming yourself and you still have an hour left. And so, you know, you can always carve out that 15, 20 minutes. I don't care how busy you are. You can get it done if you make it a priority because isn't it interesting when other things are a priority in our life, we make time for them. We find a way to get them done. We carve out that time, do or die. Well, that's how it's got to be with the things of God. Hey, you decide to read your Bible, expect things to get in the way. You start to start praying, expect things to get in the way. You decide to start going soul-winning, expect opposition, expect problems. And, you know, sometimes you could have family criticizing you because you joined the church or started going soul-winning or because, you know, you keep talking about the Bible now or you posted too much about Facebook on the Bible or whatever, you know. And these things could cause opposition, push through. Push through the trials and tribulations and you'll come out on the other side with power to serve God. And that's what we see Jesus signifying here by getting baptized, going into the wilderness and then coming out the other side stronger and more prepared for his mission. You know, Jesus isn't just doing this for his health. He's doing it for two reasons. Number one, because he's going through all the trials and tribulations that we would go through because he's going through the whole human experience. And number two, he's showing us an example so that we wouldn't know what to expect in the Christian life. When we take a step of obedience, we should expect there to be some hardships, some trials. And that's what's going on here.