Matthew 4:1-11 - Jan 7, 2024

Mount Zion Community Church

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Alright. So today is, it's an exciting day because every day that we get to come here and we get to do this is exciting to me.

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I can't tell you how much I love digging into the

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Word and preparing these messages. And you probably know how much

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I love for how long you guys have to sit here and listen to me talk. But it's also sad.

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So I don't want to go into this too much, but a lot of you know I have, after today, I have one more Sunday before I'm going to be gone for a little while.

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So if that leads us to a much longer sermon, please forgive me. But so we're starting today the fourth chapter of Matthew.

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So we've gone all the way through the first three chapters of Matthew so far and we've seen all kinds of amazing things.

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We saw the genealogy of Jesus, the birth of Jesus, the coming of the wise men.

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We saw Herod try to kill Jesus and how God stopped him providentially from doing that. And last week things culminated in John the

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Baptist giving Jesus that water baptism. And I don't know if I said this last week, but another way that we can look at that baptism is as an inauguration of Jesus, right?

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We have inaugurations of politicians, we have big ceremonies to get them started in their service.

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But since Jesus is really a king, maybe instead of an inauguration we can call this something else.

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We can call this a coronation because as we said, the whole Trinity was present as Jesus was baptized and as Jesus in the flesh prepared to begin his earthly ministry.

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The Holy Spirit descended on him and God spoke for the first time in what, 400 years?

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God spoke audibly to confirm the fact that Jesus was his son. He was his beloved and whom he was well pleased.

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And that was a joyous thing and that was an amazing thing for us to look at. But throughout

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Scripture, one thing that we see, one thing that we see in common with everybody that we would consider a hero of the faith is that after their commission, after they're sent out to do something, even if they're given charge of a huge organization, you know,

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Jesus was basically given the ministry to all the world to save his people from their sins.

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But anytime we see this, anytime someone assumes this kind of position, basically the next thing that happens is they get tested by God somehow.

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See if you can find anything in common with these scenarios. Abraham was commanded to sacrifice

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Isaac. Moses was given charge of the nation of Israel, led him through the desert and parted the

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Red Sea. So he was given, you know, the nation of Israel basically and then they had to wander through the wilderness for a long time.

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More on that idea later. As soon as Joshua took over for Moses, he was tested.

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He had to walk around the city of Jericho and do something that sounded crazy. Noah was commanded to build a boat, backing up a little bit obviously, and then we also have

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Job, we have David, we have Elijah, we have prophets like Ezekiel. All of them, after being commissioned by God to do something directly for his service, were tested in big ways.

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And if any of those names sound familiar, we basically just sort of gave a real fast overview of Hebrews chapter 11.

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So you can go back and read that later if you want to read about the heroes of the faith and some of the ways that they were tested.

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But the point is, when God calls a leader to do something, when they are obviously commissioned or sent by God, He also tests them.

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And the purpose of the test, and all the tests that we just mentioned, and the tests that we're about to see, is that God is trying to teach them something with this test.

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He's trying to teach them something very specific. In all these cases, God is trying to test them so that they learn about their need for their dependence on God.

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And for a lot of leaders, those tests are sort of an opportunity for God to mash that self -reliance out of them, because people that become leaders often have that sort of ego that makes them feel like they can do these things on their own, when truly, they can't.

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Especially not when you are being given something of God's to lead.

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Now, obviously, this is a little bit different in the case of Jesus, because Jesus was the Son of God.

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Jesus has deity. Jesus is the Messiah, and Jesus was perfect. But let's jump into the text today and see what this looks like.

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So, we have a lot of stuff to look at, and a lot of stuff that we're going to learn today. So, we're going to start in chapter 4, and we're going to look at verses 1 through 11.

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So, I'm going to read all those to you right now. Then Jesus was led up by the

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Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after he had fasted 40 days and 40 nights, he then became hungry.

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And the tempter came and said to him, if you were the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.

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But he answered and said, it is written, man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.

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Then the devil took him into the holy city and had him stand on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, if you are the

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Son of God, throw yourself down. For it is written, he will command his angels concerning you, and on their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.

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Jesus said to him, again it is written, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test.

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Again the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory, and he said to him, all these things

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I will give you if you fall down and worship me. Then Jesus said to him, go Satan, for it is written, you shall worship the

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Lord your God and serve him only. Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and began to minister to him."

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So this is our passage for today. Now, as you know, it's our custom to go through each one of these verses, look at what they're telling us, look and see what's underneath them, what's around them, what they're built on, and then see what we can take out of these.

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But you see from the first verse here that what's going on is not random.

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It's not just that Jesus was out somewhere and, you know, doing whatever it was that he did after his baptism.

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We see that he was clearly led to the wilderness by the Spirit, and he was led there for a very specific purpose in his ministry.

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And just so you know, it says he was led to be tempted by the devil.

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Every once in a while we want to look at the Greek, and the Greek word that we translated into tempted is a neutral word.

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So temptation, which we're gonna look at in detail today, is pretty much always a bad thing, right?

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Temptation always has a negative connotation, because when you're tempted to something, it's something that you shouldn't be doing.

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But this word is a morally neutral word, and it just means to test. And that's important for one very specific reason that we have to get out of the way early, and that's the fact that God never tempts anyone.

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James goes into this in his epistle. He writes this in chapter 1 verses 13 and 14.

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So we see this. We see that that God does not tempt people, but what

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God does do is test people. And there's a big difference between a test and a temptation.

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But even God's tests, they can get pretty crazy. We talked about Job or just mentioned his name earlier.

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God gave Job a tremendous test, but he never tempted him, because God doesn't do evil.

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Evil is not part of God's nature. But just because of that, it doesn't mean that temptation doesn't exist.

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Of course temptation exists. Like, it would be pretty ridiculous for us to say that it doesn't.

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And in fact, I want to go, we already looked at part of 1 Corinthians. I'd like to go back to 1 Corinthians chapter 10 just briefly and look at what

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Paul has to say about this. He says, Now these things happened as examples to us so that we would not crave evil things as they also craved.

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And we're going to see this in a huge way in this passage. Now these things happened to them as an example and they were written for our instruction upon whom the ends of the ages have arrived.

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Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed that he does not fall.

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No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man. But God is faithful who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you were able.

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But with the temptation will provide the way of escape so that you will be able to endure it.

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Therefore my beloved flee from idolatry. So we have to know that when something was written about to that extent and it's written about so many times and we have it in God's Word and it's so explicitly referenced that there will be temptation, we have to understand that we're not exempt from that.

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We have to understand that these are things that can get us.

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But at the same time we want to deny that we could fall prey to temptation.

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We want to feel like we're too strong for that, we're too good for that. And people have even taught some really bizarre things to try to avoid the idea of temptation.

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So there was a monk in the fifth century, his name was Jovinian, hopefully I pronounced that right, but one of his his main teachings was that after a person was baptized that person was forever free from temptation.

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And that's one of those things that really gets to me, right? I know people are laughing and shaking their heads because that's so dumb.

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And we'll see that in this passage, but I hate to hear those things because even though we've had a couple thousand years to refute that and a couple thousand years to read our

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Bible and to know that that's not true, people still teach along these lines.

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People will still teach that if you just say a prayer and you make a decision to come to Christ, which is not the way it works by the way, but if you just make a decision and you say this prayer then everything will be great and you won't be tempted.

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People still teach that. People still use that to fill their churches. But it's not true.

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Temptation doesn't go away, and it certainly doesn't go away just because you were baptized. In fact, the passage that we're looking at in Matthew chapter 4 makes that clearly false.

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And why do I say that? Because Jesus's temptation immediately followed his baptism, and he was

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Jesus. So let's look at verse 2. We have a little more background. Verse 2, "...and

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after he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he then became hungry." So he is out in the wilderness probably doing things more spiritual than we could ever imagine.

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He's fasting for forty days, forty nights. He's getting closer to the Father, and he became hungry, obviously.

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That's probably a longer fast than most of us have done, but I think it's significant information to have because for a lot of us, if we experience physical discomfort like hunger, it's a lot easier to succumb to temptation.

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I don't know if this is necessarily temptation related, but one of our children, when that child, and I won't even put a gender on this so that I don't embarrass them specifically, when that child is very grumpy,

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Amy and I'll say, you probably need some food. So being hungry can lead to all kinds of bad things, but I probably didn't need to tell you that.

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But what I do need to tell you with this is something that Matthew is doing. So if you've been here for the last several weeks, you know that along the way,

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I've pointed out the ways that Matthew is referring back to the Old Testament, and the way that he is subtly tying in stories that his readers would have understood, and references that they would have gotten that we don't always get because it's not part of our culture.

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And we talked about the concept of typology. Does anybody remember that? We talked about typology.

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And so what typology is, is a pattern in the Old Testament that gives us this shape or this concept of what

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Jesus Christ would be in the New Testament. But remember, we can only see typology fulfilled when we look at the

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New Testament. So we can make up typology all over the place, but we only have it fulfilled with Christ in the

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New Testament. And the reason for that reminder is because what

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Matthew is doing here is he's using some specific imagery, some specific phraseology to draw out certain parallels.

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And if you look at the fact that Jesus was out in the wilderness, and that Jesus fasted for 40 days and 40 nights, you see a direct parallel to the nation of Israel who wandered through the desert for 40 years.

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So Jesus is now becoming a type for Israel. But of course there's the difference.

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Where Israel failed in just about every one of those areas of faithfulness to God, we are going to see

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Jesus succeed. And more on this as we go along. We also see a typology with Adam being fulfilled in these passages as well.

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Okay, so now we've set the stage with the location, the wilderness, and Jesus's physical condition, hunger.

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And with that, we can jump straight into verse 3 and the first temptation.

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So verse 3 says, "...and the tempter came and said to him, if you were the Son of God, command that these stones become bread."

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Now we've introduced a new character to our story. We're seeing him for the first time here, and obviously this is somebody that has a significant role.

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So we've got the devil, Satan. The tempter, the prince of the power of the air, and another name he's given that's very significant in light of what we're going to look at is he's also referred to as the ruler of this world.

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So Satan comes to a hungry Jesus, a

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Jesus who has just fasted for 40 days and 40 nights, and he says, "...if

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you were the Son of God, command that these stones become bread." And there's a couple things going on here.

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So he says, "...if you are the Son of God..." And while that sounds like a question, it's really not a question.

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He's not doubting that Jesus is the Son of God. He knows that Jesus is the

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Son of God, but he's doing something else here. He's being really sneaky with this. This is how

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Osborne describes it in his commentary. It says, "...he is not challenging the truth of it, which is

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Jesus's deity, but trying to tempt Jesus into using his sonship selfishly to center on his elevated status rather than the humble path set by God.

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Since Jesus was obviously hungry, it would hardly be wrong to use his messianic power to feed himself.

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In effect, Satan is saying, we know you are the Son of God, now prove it by helping yourself."

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So the issue is whether Jesus will do it God's way or his own way. So basically, this temptation is doing a couple of things.

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It's appealing to Jesus's ego, you're the Son of God. You know, a lot of us, if you said, hey you're this, we might feel like we have to prove it.

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And he's appealing to that ego because he's saying, why should the Son of God have to be hungry?

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You've got the power to fix this right now. You can make these stones into bread.

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And it goes even deeper than that. So John MacArthur said this, he said he was being tempted to doubt the

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Father's Word, the Father's love, and the Father's provision. So the temptation here is to use his status for his own comfort, to use his status to relieve this physical discomfort that he has.

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Now, talked about Jesus and Adam, right? I'm giving you the answer ahead of time. What does this temptation remind you of?

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Did Satan ever tempt anyone else with food to do something that they shouldn't do? That's right, that's right.

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In the Garden of Eden, he used the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil to cause Eve and Adam to both stumble.

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And what they did brought about the downfall of all mankind. That's what brought sin into the world and left us in the condition that we are in now without Jesus.

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And here he is trying it again. So this is number one in the devil's bag of tricks.

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Imagine having all of God's provision, whether you're the Son of God or whether it's in the

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Garden of Eden. Imagine having everything of God right there at your hands.

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All of God's promises for you. You have it right there. But then someone comes along and says, well, hey, what if you had this instead?

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And we do have all of God's promises, yet we're still tempted. And this temptation is common to all of us.

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So what this comes down to is the temptation to meet our physical needs at the expense of our spiritual needs.

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It comes down to the idea of us saying, I'm not gonna wait for what

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God has promised me. I'm gonna go get it myself right now. We don't have something that we want, or we don't have something that we feel like we're entitled to, and we complain about it, or we use other means to try to get it, or we assume that we don't have what we want because God has forgotten about us.

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And we don't trust the promises that are in God's Word. We have promises in God's Word like this,

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Philippians 419, and my God will fulfill all your needs according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

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Matthew 6, 8, Jesus says, your father knows what you need before you ask him. And if we hop back into the

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Old Testament, Psalm 37, 25 said, I was young and now

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I am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or his seed begging bread.

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Sometimes we don't have something, or we're being put in a situation that's uncomfortable, because that's where God wants us to be.

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And sometimes we have to wait on the fulfillment of those promises.

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But let's look at what Jesus does. So the devil says, you're hungry.

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You can fix it. Turn the stones into bread. And Jesus says to him, it is written, man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.

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Now where does that come from? Because we all know that Jesus is giving

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Scripture back in response to the devil's temptations. It comes from Deuteronomy 8, 3.

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And Deuteronomy 8, 3 says this, and he humbled you, and let you be hungry, and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of Yahweh.

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That is God reminding Israel of his provision for them.

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That is God pointing out to Israel that they were hungry, and he gave them something they had never seen before.

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Every day they woke up and it was there, and it was nothing that they did. It was purely

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God caring for them. So we have to we have to trust

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God and trust his provision. Paul writes this in Ephesians 3 .20, Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or understand according to the power that works within us.

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So that's temptation number one, to prioritize our physical comfort or our material desires and needs over our spiritual life.

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Satan uses that one. We see it with Jesus, and I'm sure that you'll notice that in your own life.

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Because Satan will always tempt us. He will always tempt us with things that God has promised, or even that he hasn't promised.

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But he tempts us to go ahead and push forward without trusting in the Lord, without trusting in God's timing, and without trusting in his provision.

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The bottom line is that he is trying to get you and me to circumvent

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God's revealed will through our own disobedience to him. And Jesus reminds us, not just here in his response, although that's great, but he reminds us that our first priority is

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God's Word and God's will. He says this in John 4 .34, speaking of hunger,

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Now, as we move on to verse 5, we see a change of venue here.

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Now I will say this, there's discussion as to whether this was actually a physical thing that's going on, or it was a vision.

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How are Jesus and the devil going to all these places? And honestly, we don't know.

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And honestly, it doesn't really matter. But one thing that is significant is that Matthew mentions the holy city.

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So he's talking about Jerusalem. And then he mentions a temple. And this temple is probably the one that Herod had rebuilt part of.

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And I believe it was the eastern portion of it. It overlooked a valley. So they went up to the top of this temple.

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And it's easy for us to sort of minimize this idea, because you can stand on the top of this building, and if you threw yourself down to the ground, it's probably not, it might not even hurt you that bad.

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It might hurt some of you, some of you less than others. But this temple was overlooking a valley.

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And the drop between the top of the temple and the bottom of the valley was probably something like 450 feet.

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So this is somewhere you would stand and look down, and you would get dizzy. And Satan challenges him to throw himself off the top of the building, because if he is the

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Son of God, then God will send angels to protect him. So he doesn't need to worry.

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He can do whatever he wants. And this is where the devil is tricky again, because he's suggesting something that, if you don't think too deeply about it, it kind of makes sense.

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And, you know, for those of us that are people pleasers, we're like, well, you're right, this would probably happen. So yeah, I'll go ahead and do that just to eat you off my back.

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But not only that, the devil's sort of tweaked his method here.

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Now he's quoting Scripture back to Jesus, right? So Satan's suggestion is now being bolstered with a passage from God's Word.

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And it's out of Psalm 91, and it's verses 11 and 12. And just briefly,

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I'm gonna read those even though, you know, I don't necessarily need to read them because they're almost word -for -word right here.

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We're gonna do it anyway. So that says, Psalm 91, 11 and 12, "...for

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he will command his angels concerning you, to guard you in all your ways. On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against the stone."

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Now this serves as an interesting reminder for something else too, not necessarily related to what we're talking about.

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The devil knows Scripture. The devil is well -versed in the

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Word of God. In fact, the devil probably knows the Bible better than a lot of Christians do, and that's a problem.

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Because it's also a reminder that just because people can say things that sound spiritual, or maybe even quote all kinds of Scripture, it doesn't mean they're actually

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Christian. I'll tell you this, one of the devil's best tricks is to take things that look like they're

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Christian but are not, to sucker people in. And we're not gonna go into all those things because I've talked about that before, but here's what

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I will say to you. You have to know your Bible, because if you do, you won't be able to be tricked by these things.

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Even if Scripture is being quoted at you by someone, you can look at them and you can see the fruit of their life, or you can see the fruit of their ministry, and you can know those things don't match up with Scripture.

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So learn God's Word so that you're not taken advantage of by those kind of temptations.

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Now, as usual, the devil is taking Scripture, but he's using it out of context to try to get

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Jesus to do something selfish, to try to get Jesus to put God to the test.

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And this one is subtle, because he's not misquoting Scripture. He does leave off a little bit of the verse that he's quoting at the end, but he's taking the context and he's changing the meaning just a little bit in order to try to get

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Jesus to do this. Now, when people look at this temptation, there are a couple different things that they see, or a couple different things that we can see.

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And the first is that this temptation is to do something flashy and public to prove that He's the

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Messiah. Now again, we don't know if this is a vision or if they're physically at the temple, but it is significant when we note that they've shifted from the wilderness.

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You can imagine if they're in the wilderness, there's probably some pretty high places that he could throw himself off of to test this.

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But they went to the temple, because they went someplace where people would see. So he's trying to get

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Him to do something flashy. And why would

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He do this? Why would He get Him to throw Himself off the temple so that these angels would come and catch

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Him before He hit the ground? Well, how many people have you ever talked to who say, well, if I see such -and -such miracle, then

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I'll believe in God. And we all want to see miracles.

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There are obviously Christians that long to see miracles today. And again, I believe that God can do anything that He wants.

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I don't believe that miracles have ceased. I believe that God can do them, and the Holy Spirit can do them.

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But this overwhelming desire to see miracles or to have miraculous things happen all the time is actually showing you that somebody has a lack of faith.

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It's showing you that they don't actually trust what's in God's Word.

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They have to have this other thing. And today, it's sort of those who are on the charismatic end of the spectrum, who want to see signs, who want to see miracles, who want prophecies, who want a new word for today, who are actually showing you that they're bored with Scripture.

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They're saying, yeah, that's great, but it's just a book. I want to see this in my life. And it sounds faithful.

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It's like, yes, we want to see what Jesus did, but it's actually a lack of faith.

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Now, consider this. When Jesus was in His earthly ministry,

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He did miracles all the time. People witnessed these miracles. People witnessed healings.

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They witnessed all kinds of things. But when He was on trial and when

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He was crucified, what did they do? They turned their back on Him. There is no number of miracles that will substitute for actual faith in God and His Word and what

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He's done. It doesn't matter. Because there's also a point of diminishing returns, because you see one miracle, well, the next one you need to see or you want to see has to be better.

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It has to be bigger. So, it gets to a point where it's never enough.

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So, that's one thing. But then the other idea that we see here is that He's asking

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Him to put God to the test. And this is also a demonstration of a lack of faith.

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Or worse, putting God to the test is using the provision of God as an excuse to do something that you know you shouldn't do, but you want to do anyway.

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To go somewhere that you shouldn't go, or to look at something that you shouldn't look at, or to be with a person that you shouldn't be with.

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It's like the alcoholic who is sort of coming to faith in God and says, well, you know what?

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I'll go to the bar where all these people are drinking. God will protect me. Or it's looking at that website that you know you shouldn't look at because this is something that you're trying to get away from.

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But you're like, but God will protect me. I had an example

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I wanted to use, but now I don't know if I want to use it. I'll use it anyway.

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Some of you already think I'm crazy. So, as we know, part of the reason

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I'm leaving is because I am in the Army. I'm an Army chaplain. And two years ago, or actually almost three years ago now, in 2021, the military came out with this mandate for the

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COVID vaccine. So, just so we're clear, and you know where I stand, I absolutely would never take that vaccine, and I did not.

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But they were forcing us, and what they were saying is that if you don't take this vaccine, you will be kicked out of the military.

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So, a lot of people decided to file religious accommodations to try to get an exemption from the vaccine, you know, based on Christian beliefs.

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Saying things like, well, you used aborted fetal cells in the design of this vaccine, stuff like that.

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Well, I interviewed one person, and there's a key question on a religious accommodation interview, and that question is, if you are not granted this accommodation, are you willing to leave the military?

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Because that's supposed to be a test of your commitment to this principle.

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Well, people were requesting these accommodations, and then one, you know, I asked one person, well, would you be willing to leave the military?

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And he said, no. And I said, well, why not? He said, well, if they make me get it, I'll get it, and God will protect me.

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So, that might be one of those examples of testing God. That was a reason that I felt like I could not answer that question in that way, honestly, because I did not want to put

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God to the test. Now, that all hinges on how you feel about how safe that vaccine was, and what the risks are, and all those other kind of things.

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So, we'll leave that there, and look at how Jesus answered this temptation.

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So, what does Jesus say about the idea of testing God? He says, again, it is written, you shall not put the

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Lord your God to the test. And this goes back to Deuteronomy as well. This time, it's chapter 6, verse 16, and that says, you shall not put

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Yahweh your God to the test as you tested Him at Masa. And this is a reference back to Exodus.

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Back to Exodus 17 -2, where the Israelites demanded that Moses give them water.

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And this is coming on the heels of God giving them manna every morning. They were still demanding that God do stuff.

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They were still testing Him. In fact, Masa and Meribah are synonymous now with testing

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God. So, Jesus rebuffs this temptation as well. But the devil has one more test for Him before He's finished, and that's in verse 8.

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And that says, again, the devil took Him to a very high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in their glory.

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And He said to Him, all these things I will give you if you fall down and worship Me. Now, we have another change of venue.

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We're in another location here. And again, maybe it's symbolic, because I'm not sure where you can go and see all the kingdoms of the world.

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But anyway, the devil offers Jesus everything. And this is a legit offer too, right?

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We come back to the idea of the devil being the ruler of this world. This world.

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And He is. He controls it. He can offer these things. But, this has already been promised to Jesus by God the

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Father. This is part of the plan. But there's some other things that have to happen first. But back to this temptation.

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Satan doesn't even bother using a scripture reference this time. He just goes straight for the material offer.

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He goes straight for the idea of circumventing God's will to take the easy way out, to get what

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God has promised, but not have to suffer in the way God has ordained him to suffer. But Jesus' own words later will reveal that that's not the way this works.

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So listen to this. In Matthew 7, verses 13 and 14, He says, So, beloved,

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I know that this is not an easy message. It's not a user -friendly message.

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It's not a fill -your -church message. But the message is that you will have to do things that are hard.

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And while you'll want your walk with Christ to feel a certain way, and you'll want it to look a certain way, and you'll want it to just be easy so that you can cruise on through, that's not the way it works.

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Because God's way goes against what our flesh desires all the time.

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Now there are times when it will be easy. There are times that you will enjoy, but you will struggle.

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And there will be desires to get what God has promised without having to do the work for it.

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We see this later in Matthew. If you recall, Jesus said that He's going to be crucified.

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And Peter says, No, Lord, we won't allow it. And Jesus said, Get behind me, Satan, because this is exactly the same thing.

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This is possibly even Satan in the person of Peter saying, Look, no, you don't have to do this.

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You don't have to do it the way God has told you, the way God has ordained and designed this to happen. We can get around all of this.

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But this temptation, it shows up for us just like it did here.

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In our walk with Christ, we'll have the opportunity to be tempted in this way.

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And the offers are going to be more modest than they are here, right? We're not going to be offered rule of the whole world, probably.

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But consider any time that you're offered a way to improve your life, materially, professionally, or otherwise, in some way that makes you compromise your witness to the gospel, or in a way that makes you compromise your witness to Christ.

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Because it might be where you have to deny your faith. Or even if it's not that dramatic, it might be where you have to sort of downplay your faith.

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You're like, Yeah, that's part of who I am, but I can't show it here at work because that's gonna hurt my opportunity for advancement.

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Or maybe you skip church to build your business. Or maybe even something as stupid as putting pronouns in your email signature, or filling out your pronouns on a form.

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Like that seems so small, but it's not.

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Because in doing something like that, you are playing along with something that's in direct conflict with God's design.

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And you're doing it just to avoid discomfort. You're doing it to avoid standing up for the truth of what

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God says in this Word. This is a discussion that we've had in our household, because it's on the forums at the dentist's office.

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So anyway, the temptation. I'll give you all this if you fall down and worship me.

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So what does Jesus say? Verse 10, Then Jesus said to him, Go, Satan, for it is written, You shall worship the

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Lord your God and serve Him only. So going one more time to Deuteronomy, this time it's chapter 6, verses 13 and 14.

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They say this, Yahweh your God you shall fear, and Him you shall serve, and by His name you shall swear.

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You shall not walk after other gods, any of the gods of the people who surround you. So beware of any temptation that requires you to put anything else above God, or in the place of God, or even equal to God for any kind of worldly gain.

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So our last verse is verse 11. Jesus wins.

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Jesus defeats the devil. All these temptations, every one of them,

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He wins. And then the devil left Him, and behold, angels came and began to minister to Him.

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So Jesus is hungry, the devil said turn those stones into bread, and He didn't. And what happens after He's done?

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God provides all the things that He needs. I can't imagine but that food is part of what the angels ministering to Him was.

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So another commentator I read, he summarized it this way. We went back to Deuteronomy with all these scripture references that Jesus said.

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He said, Jesus was tempted to dishonor God in the very way the Israelites did, to fret about food, to put

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God to the test, and to succumb to idolatry. So that was just such a great way of summing up what those three temptations were.

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So what can we take away from this? I got three things for you. So the first one is that Jesus provides us a model for defeating temptation.

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Now part of the reason that Jesus did this, remember last week I told you that He was baptized in order to identify with the sinners that He came to save.

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Temptation is the same way. He's identifying with the sinners that He came to save. Hebrews 2 17 and 18 says,

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Therefore He had to be made like His brothers in all things, so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.

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For since He Himself was tempted in that which He has suffered, He is able to come to help those who are tempted.

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Because He was tempted like you are tempted, He can help you in those times of temptation.

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A little later in Hebrews we read this, Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

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For consider Him who has endured such hostility by sinners against Himself, so that you will not grow weary, fainting in heart.

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We will all face times of testing, and we will all face times of temptation.

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So how will you respond? What will you do when you're tempted this way?

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That's hard for us to say when it's not happening, but I do think that thinking through what your response will be can be helpful.

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It'll give you a place to go when those temptations do come. And I mentioned that Jesus gives us a model for defeating temptation.

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And if you boil down everything that is in Jesus's response,

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I would say there's one huge lesson that we can learn from Him. And there's one trait of Jesus that He had that we can also have that will help

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Him, or that will help us overcome these temptations. And that one trait is humility.

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So Jesus was the Son of God and could have done anything that He wanted, but He didn't use that to get

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Him any kind of special privilege. I want to tell you a very brief story, and I'm again,

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I'm gonna sort of strip out any kind of identifying things here, but I will say it did not happen at this church.

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So it did happen at a church. Somebody that I know was working at a door to prevent people from going in and out that door because there was something else going on.

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So it's kind of a security detail, you know, just to keep kids safe. And she was told, nobody goes in or out of that door.

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Well then somebody came in and out of that door, and she tried to stop them, and they said, my dad's the pastor here, it's fine.

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So that is far less of a privilege than being the Son of God, but people still use those things to do whatever they want.

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My dad's the pastor here. Look, Jesus had the absolute authority and the ability to turn rocks into bread, to call in angels to protect him, to gain all the worldly wealth and power.

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But he also knew that God the Father had a plan for all those things, and he was humble enough not to try to subvert the

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Father's plan for his own desires. Humility. So how does this play out in our lives?

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If you think about any kind of temptation that people will fall into, yourself included,

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I would be willing to bet that at the heart of it is some kind of feeling of entitlement.

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So this is my practical suggestion to you. This can help you avoid various kinds of temptations.

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Take your vocabulary, take the things that you say to yourself on a regular basis, and remove any kind of statements like this.

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I deserve. I've earned. I am entitled to.

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Get rid of those things, because as a Christian, the only thing you've earned is hell.

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The only thing you're entitled to is an eternity in hell. Romans 3 23 says, "...for

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all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God," and then jump ahead to Romans 6 23, and it says, "...for

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the wages of sin is death." But, praise the Lord, "...but

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the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus." And that's the good news, right?

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We have these temptations, and we have these things we feel like we're entitled to, but like I said, there's only one thing you're entitled to.

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But because of Jesus, because He faced these temptations, because He was baptized, because He came and did this ministry, you don't get what you deserve.

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I don't get what I deserve. We get the free gift of eternal life through Jesus Christ. They say, "...call

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on the name of the Lord and you will be saved." But guess what?

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That takes humility, too, because how did we talk about calling on the name of the Lord? God, be merciful to me, a sinner.

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That takes humility. So, back to that. Paul writes this in Philippians 2 3 through 4.

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This is what it looks like. "...doing nothing from selfish ambition or vain glory, but with humility of mind regarding one another is more important than yourselves, not merely looking out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others."

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And now you might say, but people will take advantage of me. And I'll say, you're probably right.

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And you will suffer, as Scripture predicts, 1 Peter 5 10, "...and

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after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will

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Himself restore, strengthen, confirm, and ground you." Romans 8 18, "...for

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I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us."

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And now I want you to help me out with this idea. You're gonna do a fill -in -the -blank right now, okay?

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Matthew 19 30, "...but many who are first will be and last will be."

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And Matthew 23 12, "...whoever exalts himself shall be humbled, and whoever humbles himself shall be exalted."

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Glorified, exactly. Yes, humility, putting others first, will result in you being taken advantage of, and it will result in you suffering.

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This is not news. This is in the Bible. The suffering is not worthy to be compared to the glory that's revealed to us in Christ Jesus.

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See, the thing about Jesus is that He was not seeking fame He was not seeking attention.

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He was not seeking wealth or power or His own glory. So those temptations meant nothing to Him.

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John 6 38 says, "...for I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of Him who sent me."

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So, pride will cause you to be suckered into any kind of temptation that's available.

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If you think you deserve it, you think you've earned it, humility. Humility is what is going to help you prevent that.

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So that's the first one. Jesus has given us the tools. He's given us the example. Second, and this is important too, the devil is real, and we are at war with him.

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There's several different ways that churches handle this. One, they just don't talk about it. Don't talk about the devil.

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We don't talk about spiritual warfare. Two, they deny that the devil is real, which is ridiculous.

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And then three, we acknowledge it. We say, yes, he's real, and yes, this is a war that we're in, because he's not called the ruler of this world for nothing, and all we have to do is look at our world, look at our culture, and you can see that the devil has led millions of people astray.

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Romans 1 24 says this, It was the devil, and he's doing it now too.

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But remember this, those people, those people that have been led astray, they're not our enemies.

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We don't hate them. We're not against them. They might be against us, but we're not against them.

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Ephesians 6 12, The devil is known as the tempter and the father of lies, and he's real, and he's out there influencing the world, and you have to be on your guard against him, otherwise you'll fall for his schemes.

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Any of us can. So this is a long quote, but I want to share it, because it sums this up perfectly.

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It's by a gentleman named Thomas Spencer. It says, So he may, the sooner, draw us into his net.

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He sails with every wind and blows us the way that we incline ourselves through the weakness of nature.

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In our knowledge, is our knowledge in the matter of faith deficient? He tempts us to error.

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Is our conscience tender? He tempts us to scrupulosity and to too much preciseness.

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Has our conscience, like the ecliptic line, some latitude? He tempts us to carnal liberty.

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Are we bold -spirited? He tempts us to presumption. Are we timorous and distrustful?

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He tempts us to desperation. Are we of a flexible disposition? He tempts us to inconstancy.

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Are we stiff? He labors to make obstinate heretics, schismatics, or rebels of us.

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Are we of an austere temper? He tempts us to cruelty. Are we soft and mild?

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He tempts us to indulgence and foolish pity. Are we hot in matters of religion? He tempts us to blind zeal and superstition.

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Are we cold? He tempts us to Laodicean lukewarmness.

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Thus, he lays his traps that one way or another he may ensnare us. And that's what

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Peter means when he writes in 1st Peter 5 .8 that your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour.

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It's probably less like a lion and more like something that looks really familiar and actually something that looks really easy.

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Third, we've been given the tools that we need in this war.

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So God has not left us without a way to defend ourselves here. You know, we have the example of Jesus.

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We have his humility. We have his responses there. We have the example of Jesus and his knowledge of Scripture as he responds to the devil using

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God's Word. Like I said already, you have to be familiar with God's Word.

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Let's go back to Ephesians real quick. Starting in chapter 6 verse 13,

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And to this end, being on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints.

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The armor of God, as Paul lays out in Ephesians chapter 6, is part of our toolkit for resisting the devil and for resisting the temptations and the schemes.

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But the biggest weapon that we have in our toolkit that you have been given by the

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Holy Spirit is your faith in God. It's your faith that God is who he says he is.

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It's your faith that what is written in God's Word is perfect and inerrant and true.

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It's your faith in the promises that he's given us. You don't have to jump ahead of God on his timeline, no matter what anybody tells you.

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Because we said this earlier, trials which you will face and which

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God will bring you are designed to enforce your faith in God. But he's given us his

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Word, and he's given us the example of Jesus and so many others to bolster our faith and to bolster our strength and to bolster our courage in the face of those temptations.

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So on that note, I'll close with this. This is John 1633, the words of Jesus.

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He says, Amen. Will you all pray with me?

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Father, we come before you today a broken people.

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People that have been tempted, people that have succumbed to those same temptations,

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God, even in times that we knew that it was directly against what your will for our lives was, and it was directly against what was in your

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Word. Lord, we come before you broken, contrite, we come before you sinners in need of your grace and mercy, and you give it to us.

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God, your Word says that anyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved, and we know that it's only through this

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Holy Spirit that we can be brought to you, God. But we also rest in that promise that if we call upon your name, you're not going to turn us away.

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So Lord, this morning I pray that you would be with those of us who are weak, you would be with those of us who are facing temptation today, and you would be with those of us that are one step away from doing something that we know that we shouldn't do.

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But on the same token, I pray that you would be with those of us who feel like we're too strong to ever give in to any kind of temptation, those of us who feel like we're holy enough to withstand these things on our own, because we know that's not true.

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God, we need you. We need your Word, we need your presence, and we ask you, we beg you to send your

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Holy Spirit to be here with us, God. Soften our hearts, soften our sin, strip every bit of it out of us so that we can serve you in a way that honors you, and we can serve you in the way that Jesus showed us in your

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Word. God, we thank you for the grace and mercy that you show us every day. We thank you that we can be called your children, and we love you, and we pray all this in Jesus' name.