What Kind of King Is Jesus？ — Gary Wilkerson

What Kind of King Is Jesus?

Thank you for coming from local places and coming from places around the United States and coming from places from overseas. We're honored and thrilled to have each and every one of you here with us. Turn in your scriptures.

Jesus Is Tested in the Wilderness

I hope you have your Bible with you today or your phone app, your Bible app to turn to Matthew, chapter four, Matthew, the fourth chapter, begin reading in the first verse. Then Jesus was led by the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.

Let me pray and then we'll talk about these temptations that Jesus had and the temptations that you and I as shepherds in ministry have as well. Father, we thank you for the power of your Holy Spirit.

We are asking you to enliven this word and let it be resonating in our hearts and transformative to our lives. We give thanks for this. Bless my words. Let them be words that would be an honor to honoring to you, exalting to you.

We give thanks for this in Jesus name. Everybody said together. Amen. Amen. So in context here, Matthew chapter four, verse one, he's being led by the Holy Spirit into the desert, but you know what happened just before that, right?

There was another pretty dynamic experience that Christ had, had been affected with by the touch of his father's love on his life. You know, the story it's just found in the previous chapter, chapter three, John the Baptist, the first verse is talking about John the Baptist is, is crying out to repent and then Jesus comes to him and John doesn't want to baptize him, but then Jesus says, let it, let it be.

And then all of a sudden you hear these words in verse 16. Here's the context of the temptations of Jesus. Verse 16, as soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. And at that moment, the heavens were, the heaven was opened and he saw the spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him.

And a voice from heaven said, this is my son whom I love with whom I am well pleased. I'm sure you've heard this before, but this statement that the father made about the son was before Jesus had ever preached a sermon before Jesus had ever healed anyone who was sick before Jesus ever cast out any demons or raised any dead before any performance, before any act of ministry, the father was already pleased with him.

What, what was the purpose? Why would he be pleased with them already? Simply because he was a son, our sonship, our daughtership, our, our, our identity is that we are sons and daughters of the most high God.

Our identity is not you're an evangelist, apostle, pastor, teacher, leader of a teen challenge program. Your identity is that you are a son and daughter of Jesus Christ. You are his beloved. Isn't that good news from friends.

And, and, and it's in that context, verse one, that Jesus is then led by the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after fasting 40 days now, oftentimes we call this the three temptations of Jesus.

I actually believe it's five temptations, uh, three by the devil and two, just natural temptations. He says here, uh, after fasting 40 days and 40 nights, he was hungry after fasting breakfast. I am hungry.

Lunch becomes a glowing entity. And, uh, and Jesus says any fast and 40 days, and then he was hungry. What kind of intensity was in his soul? What kind of fire was burning in his bones where, where food barely mattered to him.

But he being fully God and fully man, he would have been hungry throughout this 40 days and thirsting as well. So the first temptation could be simply said, even, even before the devil tempted him at all, it's like, I don't want to do this anymore.

I went into this wilderness to fast for 40 days, but I'm on day 20 and it's enough. The longest I've ever fasted was 21 days. And that was with several cheap days in between that. This is the first time I'm ever telling anybody actually cheated.

So don't tell my wife that because she didn't cheat. And I was at the pizza shop, one of those days in the middle of those 21 days, but that's the longest I've ever fasted. And man, I tell you, it can be, if you've ever fasted long, I know my friend Claude is here and they fast every year for 21 days at the beginning of the year.

And I always, uh, tell them I'm praying for them, man, fasting is difficult. And so Jesus could be tempted to say, it's just too much, too weighty, the burden, the responsibility of, of this call of the Holy spirit, leading me into this fast, leading me into this prayer life, leading me into this preaching ministry, leading me into this ministry of helping addicts get free, leading me into this mission work that he has on my life.

Sometimes it just gets overwhelming in the flesh, in the natural, without even the devil tempting you just in our own spirit. It's like, I don't want to contend anymore. The, the, the disciples that couldn't cast out the demon, Jesus said, these kind of only come out by prayer and fasting.

We live in a nation where our contending without prayer and fasting will be too weak for the demons in our land. And, and so it's going to require this, but, but sometimes we get to the point is I don't want to contend anymore.

I don't want to fight this fight anymore. This, the, the aggressive nature of ministry is overwhelming me. I just want to do something a little bit more lighthearted, a little bit easier. How many of you don't raise your hand, but how many of you pastors and leaders have wondered about what your other career would be if you gave up the ministry?

Maybe it'd be, maybe you'd like to talk so you could be a good lawyer or, or you'd like to do something simple, like be a farmer, you know, but all of us have had that temptation to give up. And I wonder if Jesus had that certainly to stop contending in these 40 days and 40 nights.

And then he was hungry. And it's right in those times where you're ready to give up right when the time where you're most hungry, right at those times where you just feel like you're not sure you can keep contending for the gospel, keep contending for the glory of God to come, keep contending for that revival that you're praying for.

Just when you're about ready to, to, to, to be at your weakest point, here's the next verse. The tempter came. The enemy knows where to hit us, when to hit us, how to hit us, each of us in a unique and different way.

For some, for some, it is one particular form for another. Gloriously with Jesus, this powerful text about Jesus, it says, Satan has come and he found no place in me. Isn't that amazing? When Satan's come to me, he's found two or three places.

I have to admit to you, he's, he's found a weakness here or a, a, a, a, a drawing to something fleshly there. He's found that, but with Jesus, Satan's found no place within him. That's one of the things I'm fasting for, praying for, contending for, that Satan comes to me and he feels all he sees is the full armor of God with no place to enter in.

And then the tempter came to him and said, if, and here's the second temptation, if you will, not, not even getting into the actual bread and stones and high mountain and the temple, but just this personal thing that Jesus was wrestling with.

And, and the tempter came to him, this is verse, verse three, and said to him, if you are the son of God, tell these stones to be turned into bread before the actual temptation, what we call classically in theology, the first temptation is turning this, the bread, turning the stones into bread.

But before that is the real temptation. The real temptation of Satan was what happened to Jesus just in the previous chapter, just a few verses earlier, Jesus hears this wonderful voice. It's the voice that you and I need to hear every morning, every morning, you know, every morning I wake up, I go to Psalm 139 and it just, and it says in Psalm 39, I just read Psalm 139 and I just, I just see, it says there that, that he knows me.

He formed me in my mother's womb. He, before I give him a word, he already knows what I'm going to say. He knows my going out. He knows my coming in. He, he, he knows the, the thoughts of my mind. He knows the words that are coming out of my mouth even before I say those things.

And then at the end of the Psalm 139, he said, it says, and, and know my heart and see if there'll be any anxious way in me. And so I turn all my anxieties over to the Lord. My anxieties of my ministry, my anxieties of four children, my anxieties of the night before when all 10 of my grandchildren were over at my house and I have been burned out in about an hour and a half.

The next morning I get up, Lord, I turn all my anxieties over to you because why? Because he cares for me. And so when we understand he's formed us, he's made us, he's, he loves us. He declares us his sons, his daughters.

When we understand that these temptations are so much more weak than they would be if we fall into this first trap that Satan is trying to trick Jesus with. If Jesus, if God really said that to you, did the father really, if, if you really are the son of God, I picture Satan in my hopefully sanctified imagination.

I picture Satan saying, oh, hey, Jesus, that, you know, I was, I was kind of on the outskirts of that baptism thing. That was pretty wild, wasn't it? Man, I saw that voice come down out of heaven. That was, that was really amazing.

You, you, and then he said things about you. He's, that thing about being loved and man, you must feel really special. You must be. But then all of a sudden he turns the table and says, now, is that really true though?

And what Satan's trying to do to set up the other temptations is to get him to wonder about this first one. Am I really the son, beloved son of God? Does he really love me? Does he really care for me?

Is he, you know, maybe even the question might be, if he, why did we go from a descending dove resting on my shoulder and a beautiful baptism with my cousin, John and the crowd around me and voices from heaven.

And then the next thing the spirit does is lead me into the wilderness to not eat for 40 days and have the devil come and tempt me intentionally by the spirits leading. It could be that Jesus, if he wasn't as he was connected to his father so richly, he could have begun to doubt that.

And I think that's really what Satan's after in this, in these three temptations is, is to get us to ask these questions, to begin to doubt, to feel inside insecure, to feel inadequate, to feel unloved, to feel unwanted, to feel unwelcome, to feel like we're not a part to, to feel like he gifted others, but he passed us by to feel like he's moving mightily in other cities.

But in my city, it's too tough. He's moving in other churches, but in my church, it just seems to be cold and dry. Am I really the beloved of God? Am I really the one he has chosen? And he's selected.

The Temptation to Become Popular

And we see now in these three temptations, the first one, he says, take these stones and turn them into bread. Now, you know, in scripture that other points where Jesus was doing these miracles of, of multiplying the bread, Jesus understood people come and follow me because I feed them.

I multiply bread. They love the miraculous works of mine. And I think what Satan was after here was to get Jesus to become popular among the crowds. So my first temptation I want to talk to you about, the real temptations of Satan is the temptation of every minister is the temptation to become popular, to do things that will make me fit in with a crowd of followers, that people that will acclaim, give me acclaim, that people will give me applause, that people will follow me, that people approve of me, that people will be pleased with me.

And, and I can do things to manipulate a crowd to draw a crowd. I can, I can be clever. I can be articulate. I can be an intellectual. I can be theologically deep. I can go into Greek and Hebrew. I can't even say it, let alone go into Greek and Hebrew.

You can do all those things. And we should do those things because God gives many in this audience a great mind to be able to go into those languages and break them open to our congregation. But if you're doing it to impress people, I'm going to take these stones and all of a sudden they're going to become bread and they're going to look good and they're going to be shiny and sparkly and they're going to fill people and they're going to, it's going to be so good that they'll tell other people about how good I am at turning stones into bread and all of a sudden I'll become popular.

I'll become famous. They'll come to me for my miracles. We can, we can attempt to create a crowd pleasing effect in our ministry. We can, we can attempt to draw crowds, to increase the numbers, to be loved, to be clamored after, to have affirmations as not, not as God's beloved son, but, but accepted by numbers of people.

To, to, to have a philosophy of ministry that bigger is better. That, that we, we, we want to tell these stones and that's what Satan told him to do. He didn't, didn't say touch the stones. He didn't say kick the stones.

He didn't say put the stones in a baking oven and they'll be turned into bread. He said, tell them, tell them. And we want to have the power of our tongue be of such richness and, and speak in such a way that is so glorious and so captivating and so TED talkish that, that we draw crowds because of who we are rather than glorifying Christ, honoring him.

And, and so we try to be clever. We try to be, we try to be cute. We, we, we try to entertain how, how sad and broken the heart of our father must be that many of his houses of faith led by men and women of God who are barely more than entertainers in our day.

Using pop psychology and TED talks and, and entertainment opportunities to, to draw masses of people. It's this temptation to be popular, to, to, to want more acclaim. And Jesus takes him back actually to where Israel had failed in the first place.

Israel had failed this very test. And so Jesus takes him to Deuteronomy chapter eight and says, God says, man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. This was a test that Israel had failed.

And, and now the same test is coming to Jesus. Will you, Satan, you know, has a good memory and he's remembering thousands of years ago, I tempted Israel about manna, not about being hungry in the desert and they failed the test.

They, they doubted God's goodness. Jesus, will you do the same? Satan is certainly hoping for the fall of Christ just as there was a fall of Adam and Eve and there was the fall of Israel in the wilderness.

And Jesus uses that very verse intentionally. It wasn't just, he was saying like, I don't want bread. He was saying, I'm going to use the very verse where they failed to show you where my father by my trusting that I am the beloved, I am the son of God.

He is already well pleased with me. I don't have to turn stones. I don't have to become popular. I don't have to have masses follow me. Even if 12 follow me, that's sufficient for what the father wants to do in my life.

The Temptation to Be Spectacular

And so the second temptation then here in verse five, the devil took him up to a holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. And he said, if you're the son of God, throw yourself down for it is written.

He will command his angels concerning you and they will lift you up into their hands and you will not. And that will not strike your foot against a stone. Throw yourself down. First thing he does is take them to the holy city.

He doesn't take him to Sodom and Gomorrah. Did you notice that? Because Satan never takes us to a place we don't want to go. The temptation isn't for vile, wicked things. The temptation in ministry is for something really good.

I'll take you to the holy city and I'll put you up on the pinnacle. I'll put you up on the highest place. And then, and then also, and then, hey, let's do this. Let's do some tricks. Let's do some gimmicks.

Let's throw yourself down. And when you throw yourself down, you won't even strike your foot. You'll be, you'll, you'll kind of land like a gymnast, you know, when they go like, and they straighten out like that.

And you're going to land on the ground, you know, without faltering at all. And the crowds will see how, I think the first temptation was to be popular. The second temptation is to be spectacular. I want to put on a good show.

I want to, I want to wow the masses. I want, I want, and I, and I, and so this is the temptation. It's not, it's not the temptation of Sodom and Gomorrah. It's the temptation of the pinnacle of the temple.

I want to be spectacular. I want to put on a good show. I want to put on a spectacular project. Forgive me if I'm stepping on some toes here, but ever since I've been in the ministry, I've seen it every, every like 10th year.

It's like reach the world by 1990 and then 1990s passed. And then it's the 2020 project. We're going to, we're going to send out 20 million missionaries to reach the, you know, it's just every, just all the time, right?

Am I right? Are you with me? Have you, you're too young to have heard all these projects that, and I'm not saying projects are bad. I'm not saying we shouldn't have vision and goals, but sometimes it's, it's a temptation.

It's a lure. I got to do something bigger down the street. They're doing this. The, somebody said God is doing that, but the Baptists are doing that. So the Baptists have to be outdone by the Nazarene and the Nazarene are outdone.

And we have all these projects. And, and even in our churches, we want to, the pageantry of our Easter Sunday now is, is bizarre. It's bizarre. Oh, I want, maybe I'm too old school, but I want to go back to, I want to come to a church on an Easter Sunday and we sing three hymns and then somebody gets up and preaches the gospel and people get saved, you know, just, and, and, and I'm not preaching against Easter pageants, so don't write to me later on there.

They can be glorious and God can, the Holy Spirit can use them. But, but it's the motive of the heart, isn't it? Is it, is the motive to be spectacular and, and, and bigger and better and outdoing and to stand out?

This is the spirit of competition. This is the spirit of jealousy. That's the wrong motive. If we're doing something to, to draw more than the people down the street, it comes from a wrong motive. And that is to compare, to compare others to ourselves, to compete with other people, to, to see what they're doing and want to, to stand on the same kind of level with other people.

And it used to be, it used to be you would come to a pastor's conference and you would sit around in the fellowship table afterwards and ultimately it would come to what's your budget this year? What, what size is your building?

How many people are attending your church? And, and there would be this comparison. And if you had smaller numbers, you might tend to feel a little shy or a little bit, and you might even leave the conference depressed.

I sat at a table and all five of the other pastors around there had well over a thousand people in their church and I have 80. What's wrong with me? It's this, and, and the devil tempts us to be spectacular, to get more people to follow you so that you can compare.

Now we're in a generation where it's changed. Now we sit around the table and say, how many social media followers we have? How many are following us on Facebook? How many likes do we have? How many people follow us?

And I tell you what, be careful, brothers and sisters, do not let that thing get in your spirit because it will corrupt you. It will derail you. It will be a temptation that will take the anointing of God for your life and your ministry.

I'm not preaching at anybody else. I'm preaching to myself because I was on all these social media channels on my phone and what I would do is I would look at them and if I got more followers that day, hey, we're up from this number to that number, I'd be happy.

And then if it was down, I'd be sad. Oh, what's happening? Let me rebuke my social media team. They're not getting me enough. We're not being spectacular enough. We got to do something to boost those numbers so that we have now.

And so the Holy Spirit convicted me. I hadn't changed. Used to go to the conference and say, my church has grown from 800 to 1500. Now I'm going to there and saying my social media is following and I have this and I have that and it's boasting.

And so what I had to do is I got my phone and I just, I have Instagram poo. You have that little delete button. Pastors, maybe the delete button might be the best thing you have in your life. To, to, to, I don't know if you have social media or not, or, but it's, but, and I'm not talking about the actual thing.

Social media is good and it's powerful tool that God is using mightily world challenge loves the ministry. I know Times Square church loves the fact that we can reach around the world. So I'm not speaking about that.

I'm speaking about a heart issue. Something gets inside your heart and begins to draw you into, to, to the, to the bigger, to the better, the more spectacular, the comparison. I have this and you have that.

And I want to encourage you to just let it die. Let it go. And just, you have your Bible. That's all you need. All right. Yeah. A little fire in your bones and a Bible on your bookshelf and preach the word of God faithfully.

Wesley said it best. Don't worry about drawing crowds. Just get on fire for God and people will come to watch you burn. And that's our, our, if our focused and our attention becomes on how do we bump our numbers up, whether it's attendance or on media, if that becomes our focus, we're going to eventually fall into this temptation.

Got, we've got to do more. It's slowing down. We've got to do more to, to stand out. T Austin sparks. One of my favorite writer says it this way. These poor souls must in some way or another be on top in order.

And in order to be on top, it must subject everything to itself, to, to the self becomes the, the, the thing that wants to become spectacular. It must go one better and be one better than others. And there rises all the jealousies, all the rivalries, all the competitiveness, all the possessiveness, the, the impotence and the, excuse me, the importance to be on top and not underneath.

This is the temptation, not only Jesus facing in the wilderness, but you and I as leaders face this. There's some team challenge leaders here. Oh, my program has this many beds, or it has that many beds.

It has this budget or that budget. You're in a missions program. We led this many people to Jesus. The numbers are important. We want to pursue, we want to grow. We want to build. We want to, we want to have, have glorious God led ministries.

But when this thing gets into the heart, it will, it will cause us to be, it will cause us to, here's, here's the word I want to use. I'll use in just a second, but let me preface it with this. When there's something the Lord has done in my heart, when I travel around to different nations, oftentimes, as soon as I get off the airplane, I feel something.

I, I call it like prophetic empathy. It's not a word from God, but it's just sometimes it'll, I'll get a little depressed and I'll feel, I wonder what's wrong with me. And all of a sudden the Holy Spirit says, no, it's not you.

I'm telling you what's going on in this culture. And, and, and I get off another plane and, and I feel like suicidal and another, you get off another country and, and you feel like fear or whatever it is.

And I just get that wherever I go. I don't even know what to call it. When I land back in America, do you know what I feel? Arrogance, arrogance. And that worldly culture has slipped into the church and it's an arrogance of I'm spectacular or it's a defeated spirit.

I'm not as spectacular as I want to be. And then what do we do? We redouble our efforts, try harder, work more, get after it more, double down and do more so that I could too become spectacular. The closest word to spectacular, there's not the word, the word spectacular is not in the Greek language of scripture, but the closest word I could find to that is the Greek word mega.

I don't know if you knew that the word mega is the word for greatness in scripture. Oftentimes you use good, but oftentimes like the disciple who among us will be the mega is actually what the Greek word says there.

Who's going to be the megamist. I made up my own word there. The megaest among us who will be, who will have more mega than the other person's mega. And we use that word in English today. Don't we have a mega ministry?

We have a mega church. We have a mega following. We're going viral. We have all these, these mega things that were not only. And if you experience those praise God for them and thank him and bless him with gratitude for those things.

But it's, but it's for those who maybe are not experiencing all those things. You can still have the glory of God in your life and your ministry. You can have something rich, something powerful. Don't chase after these things.

Don't chase after mega. Don't chase after big. Don't chase after popular. Don't chase after spectacular. Don't come here to times square church and look at the big screen back there and say, that's what I need.

Once I get the big screen, my church will become mega or the big choir. You don't need a big screen. You need a big God. You don't need a, you don't need a glorious grand theater. You can meet in a, in a, in a school like I do with my pastor, Chris and my home church.

It's, we meet in a middle school and the glory of God is present there. You don't need to be a powerful preacher. You just need to be on fire for God. You don't need any, you don't need anything but Jesus.

You already have enough. I came to a conference once and it was when my church was struggling and I was downcast and, and I went there and it was, and it was this huge choir and they had these guest speakers from all over the world.

They were the, some of the best speakers I ever heard. And instead of being encouraged, you know what it was? I got depressed. Oh my goodness. I'm so depressed because I don't have that. I don't have that skill of preaching.

I don't have that ability to lead that well. I don't have a 150 voice choir. I don't have a budget like that. I don't have a building like that. What do I have? And the Holy, and I went back to my hotel room and I got down on my face on the carpet and I told the Lord, I quit.

I can't, if this is what ministry is, I can't do it. I can't keep up with the Joneses and I don't even want to try anymore. I'm sick of it. And I said, I quit. And you know what I was expecting the Lord to do?

Oh, son, my dear, my dear younger brother stand and let me anoint you from head to toe because I need you. So I was, I wanted sympathy and I said, Lord, I quit. And I hear the Holy Spirit say, good. I had never known the Holy Spirit could be rude.

I was, it was very rude. I'm hurting. Don't you see that? Quit. Yes. Quit the aspirations for the spectacular. Quit the aspirations for bigger, better, more visible, more notoriety, more fame, more invitations, more book deals, more, just quit all that and hide yourself in the presence of God.

What happened to the secret closet? Here's the secret closet now. I'm in the secret closet. Hi, I'm in the secret closet. I got my selfie going here. And I just want you to know that I spent a lot of time in the secret closet.

Here's my, here's where I get down on my knees. That delete button on some of the apps is a good one. Another thing you could delete is the, is the selfie button. The thing that turns the phone around.

Cause I'm, I'm walking through the city here and everybody's like, right? What in the world is happening to our culture? It's this arrogance, selfie, me-ism. And again, it's slipped into the ministry.

And it's so subtle because, and it's more subtle in the ministry because when they're doing it in the world, there's no, there's no good reason for them to be doing it. I'm taking this selfie to raise money for cancer.

They don't do that, right? This, but in the, but in our ministry, we do that. I am, I'm doing this for the glory of God. I want to, I want my church to go from 5 ,000 to 10 ,000 because of the, for the glory of God.

I want it to grow from 400 to 800 for the glory of God. I want to get more followers for them. And so our motives get mixed, right? Because there's some good things we want. And, but then the enemy attaches the things to it that don't belong in our heart, in our life.

The Temptation to Pursue Glory and Power

Now, here's the encouraging part about the second temptation. Mega ministry is not a bad thing. As a matter of fact, if you still have your Bibles open to Matthew chapter four in verse 16, it says about Jesus, after he's successfully went through all these temptations, you know what it says about Jesus?

It says verse 16 from the people living in darkness have seen a mega light. They call Jesus, the Greek calls Jesus a mega light. He, he could reach masses. He could reach multitudes. He, he could draw crowds, tens of thousands of people.

And, but, but his heart went through this test and he was successful because he said, take me up to the highest pinnacle. Take me up to Jerusalem. And, and, and tell me that I could fall down to the ground and avoid injury.

And Jesus is thinking to himself, this is the very city, Jerusalem, where I will be crucified in less than three years. And this temptation is I can escape the cross. I can escape the pain of sorrow and bitterness, the cup, that drinking down the dregs of the cup, I can avoid all that and still get the pinnacle of the ministry.

And Jesus responds to him going back to Deuteronomy. Once again, it is written, do not put the Lord your God to a test. Again, Deuteronomy chapter six, going back to Israel where they failed this test.

They, they murmured and complained. And God said, you were tested and you complained because there was not water in the rock in Deuteronomy six. And now Jesus uses Deuteronomy a second time to contend against the powers of darkness.

Third, we see this, this is, is where, is in verse 14. Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain. Do you notice something interesting in here? The spirit led Jesus into the wilderness, but there's this language that I find quite strange.

Like in verse five, the devil took him and had him stand. Again, in verse, verse eight, the devil took him to a very high mountain. It's almost like Satan was moving him in places. Satan was stand here, come over here.

Look at this. It's, it's really a weird, when I read that, it's really, it's really weird to me. It's like, why did, why did God allow the devil to do that? There's because there's a testing coming. And sometimes we, we, we, we rebuke the devil and actually God is, you may think this is theologically way off base, but, but, but God is Lord of hosts.

He's, he's over all. He, Satan is not a contending God. God is over Satan. God rules and reigns over everything. And so, so even these things of these little things that he took them and he put them here and he said this to him, it's all under the sovereignty of God.

God is doing something to show Jesus truly. He is the beloved son of God and that God is well-pleased with him and that Satan has no place in his heart. And so, so he says here, the devil took him to a high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of this world and their splendor.

And he said, I will, all these, I will give you if you will bow down and worship me. This is the last temptation I want to talk to you about. It's the, it's the, the temptation for, for glory and honor and power.

I'll give you all these kingdoms. You'll be powerful. You'll, you'll, you'll be, and some ministers really don't have a temptation for mega as long as they have power and glory there. These, these, these, these are the people that we would call in this room today, myself included to repent and ask the Holy Spirit for a fresh touch of love in our heart.

When we power up on people, when, when we are known as a leader of a ministry and people are afraid of you because you snap real quickly, you, you, you lose control. You, you, you, you get angry at people.

You, your, your, your, your heart's often not right. If, if they do something wrong, a low, low performance, it's immediately a, and sometimes there's a bitterness that gets into our hearts. And we, even though there are people that are working with us or for us, we, we almost hold them in contempt.

There's this anger, an angry spirit within us because we are looking for this temptation that Satan offers is for power. It's, it's, it's the, the word there is doxa. Have you heard that word before? Doxa, doxology, the word doxa, praise God from whom all blessings flow.

That's, that's the one called the doxology. It's the song of glory of God or the power of God or the honor of God. And Satan wants Jesus and the, he wants us as Christian leaders to have a desire for doxa without it being submitted to Jesus, without being submitted to the King of Kings that, in other words, we want praise, we want glory.