Yeah, praise God. Man, what an awesome time at all of our locations. You know, I love that video. I don't know what Pastor Brandon did to deserve getting the green slime like that, but knowing him, I definitely believe that he deserved it.
Okay, so that's good for all you guys at Clifton out there. But man, what a cool week. Can I talk about Kids Week for just a minute? Hey, you guys prayed, you prepared the jars with your serving. Man, we were ready for what God was going to do in terms of the amount of people that we had signed up to serve.
And y'all, God just blew it away. Hey, record attendance and serving and kids. Let's praise God together. 1,216 children were part of Kids Week here at Mercy Hill. I'm telling you, and I know, listen, we're a church that celebrates numbers because every one of those numbers is a story that is precious to God.
There is so much potential in every one of these kids' lives, especially the hundreds of them that do not have an opportunity. They don't have a church home. Maybe Mercy Hill is the first time they've ever come to a kids' week or something like that. That may be your story here today. Your kids twisted your arm into coming to the last day of Kids' Week, and maybe you're here today to kind of be with them.
And man, we're just so glad that they came. We believe that God has a huge plan for their life. And man, it was so cool to see kids from all these different backgrounds. You know, the old Sunday school song that we used to sing that now is probably non-politically correct, although I do not care at all, is red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight.
Some of you guys remember that. And the whole point of that song is: man, it doesn't matter the background. God is after the hearts of children all over the world. And we got to change. Chance to see that, man.
We have people from kids from different backgrounds that were coming in, and the Lord loves them, and He is worthy of their hearts' affection for Him. And we got a chance to move the needle, I think, this week in some of their lives. My son gave His life to Christ two years ago at a Kids Week. I know there were a lot of kids that gave their life to Christ this year at a Kids Week. And so, if you served or if you give to Mercy Hill, man, I want you to make sure that you take the appropriate joy in this harvest that we are seeing right now and just know that your generosity is fueling the mission, and your serving is fueling the mission.
The other thing I would say is: hey, some of you guys are going to start having conversations with your kids right now because Kids Week has lit a fire in them. Maybe they gave their life to Christ, and it's time for them to get baptized. If that's you, I'm going to invite you to text baptize, sorry, baptism to 87217. All right, 87217. Listen, you are the primary disciple maker of children that are in your home.
What we do with Kids Week and student camp and doing stuff on Sunday morning and student ministry and all that, we are providing tools and resources that you take advantage of as you're discipling your children in the home. And so, hey, if they're going to talk about baptism, it's going to need to come to talking to you. And they're going to want to talk to you about that. And so we just pray that you will jump on that and make sure that we are kind of moving them through the right pathways. If you text baptism to 87217, somebody will get from our team will get with you and we'll be able to start that process with them.
We are baptizing next week.
Okay, so I'm praying there's going to be dozens and dozens of kids that end up in the water because of Kids Week this week. All right. Hey, we're going to be in Luke chapter 4 today. We already prayed about this. Brand new sermon series called Walking with Jesus.
And here's the idea. The idea of this series is the more we get to know Jesus, the more we're going to want to know Jesus. And if we take some stories, some snapshots from the book of Luke over this summer, it's going to radically affect our heart. We're going to want to be more in relationship with him.
Now, some of you guys know this because it's happened to you before. But how many of you have ever heard the phrase, don't you ever heard the expression, never meet your heroes? You've heard that before? And the reason is because when you get up close to them, the athlete or the celebrity or the public figure or whatever, maybe it's a pastor or it's a preacher or something. But the idea is when you get up close to them, maybe they sold a persona that didn't match up with the character of the person.
And honestly, that's going to be true of all of us in some ways. Like if you get really close, you're going to see some imperfections and things like that. But sometimes the persona and the person are wildly different.
Sometimes it's like a character instead of their actual character, right? And that is really hurtful to us. What we're going to see in this series is, man, the closer you get to Jesus, the more you're going to. To see the perfection that is in him, the closer you get to him, the more you're going to want to be in relationship with him. All right, it's not, it's the opposite of like get close and realize there's a bunch of problems.
How many of you guys have ever heard of the dude named the Liver King?
Okay, somebody heard of the Liver King in here.
Okay, if you never heard of him, raging muscles, entire body, veins popping out all over the place, the greatest suntan you've ever seen in your life, and one of the greatest beards.
Okay, and this guy walks around with no shoes and no shirt. Hundreds of millions of followers on social media built a hundred million dollar business off of selling products that he says are in line with what he calls ancestral living, okay?
So his whole shtick is, man, you eat raw liver, you do cold plunges, get a lot of sunlight, and you run around the woods with no shoes and a spear and a fish hanging out of your mouth, and you're going to be super healthy, okay? And you're going to look just like him. If you just go back to the caveman roof, The ancestral roots, you're gonna look just like him. And I'm like, hey man, sign me up, okay? This is great if it works.
The problem is, he failed to disclose one other little detail, and that is that he injects $15,000 worth of steroids every single month. All right, and so it came out. You know, it came out after he had been asked a million times, Are you clean? Are you clean? Are you clean?
And he says, Yes, yes, yes, then it's like, Yeah, the raw liver and the sunlight and all that, plus $15,000 a month of steroids, and you get to look like my man.
Okay, now the big thing was, you know, his persona and character didn't match the person or the actual character. And I think, man, listen, our young people right now, and some of us know this, even if we're not that young, guys, we live in a liver king, chat GPT, fake news, social media world. Our young people are reeling. Here's the thing: our young people are starving for authenticity. They don't care if it's big.
They don't care if it's bold. They want to know: is it real? And here's what we get to learn about Jesus. Man, today, you never get a glimpse of something that is more real than when you get to see a person and see their character when nobody else is looking, when their back's against the wall, when the pressure's on what comes out. That's who they are.
We're going to get a chance to see this. Man, Jesus was more than the sermons. He was more than just the persona, the character. He was more than the world-changing history. He was more than the miracles.
Man, he was real. What was in him came out, and what was in him was the word of God. We're going to talk about the temptation of Christ today. Here's the big idea: God's word is a weapon against temptation. It's a weapon against temptation.
And I don't mean it in terms of learn a few pithy fighter verses that we pull up like an incantation and a magic trick to cast a spell over the devil. That's not what I mean. What I mean is we want the Word of God shaping us deep inside of us. And it's going to anchor us to put our hope in the right place. That guards us against temptation.
All right, now let's dive in. When did temptation come? Many times, temptation comes right after the mountaintop, and that's what happens in Jesus' life. And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan. That is important because the Jordan is where he was baptized.
And he was led by the Spirit in the wilderness for 40 days, being tempted by the devil. And he ate nothing during those days, and when they were ended, he was hungry.
So Jesus comes from the Jordan where he was baptized. Very significant for many of us in here because there's hundreds of people that have been baptized in the last year at Mercy Hill, hundreds.
Okay, some of you, there's probably hundreds left to be baptized the rest of this year, and a bunch can be baptized next week. What do you need to learn from this first?
Well the first thing is, you return from the Jordan, he's led by the Spirit for 40 days, and what? tempted by the devil. This matters because some of us have just experienced the mountaintop of baptism. And what you need to understand is that whenever you put the jersey on and declare for the kingdom of God. There's also a big giant target that gets put on your back.
And this is important for me to tell you guys today. I'm not, you know, I want to push you to get baptized, especially some of you that maybe your kids are asking about it, or you're a believer, but you've never been baptized. Do I think you should be baptized? Absolutely. First act of obedience.
Identify yourself with the team that you're on. Who wants to be married but not let the world know? Put the wedding ring on. Put the uniform on. Step fully in to the obedience that God has for you and declare for his kingdom, but do it with wide eyes open.
Because when you come out of that water, there's a target on your back that wasn't there before. And now all of a sudden, as we see in Jesus' life, you know, you go from the baptism mountain to the temptation valley. Heaven was opened in Jesus' baptism. Hell is open in his temptation. And that might come for some of us as well.
Man, when you kick the hornet's nest, what do you think is going to happen? Diablos, Satan himself, is tempting. Jesus here, and he is a real figure. with real demons that he really beckons. And he really can mobilize.
And you see them doing things in the scripture like making people really sick, like messing with people's minds. You see Satan and his demons causing cracks and fractures in the church and sending wolves and sheep's clothing and teaching what is false. And you see these things happen.
Now listen, we are not one of these churches that thinks that a devil and a demon is behind every bad thing that happens in your life. But we're also not one of these churches that don't think it could be a demon.
Okay, so so sometimes it's hard to know what's what. But you need to understand that there is a spiritual war, and Satan has a war machine, and it does not get mobilized to those who are not making any noise for the kingdom. You can say it like this: when you declare yourself for the kingdom, Satan declares war on you. And ground zero, number one, in Jesus' life was when he decided to take on baptism.
Now, some of you are thinking, man, this is the weirdest baptism sales pitch I've ever heard.
Okay, I know that. I know that's what you're thinking, okay? But for some of you, the crazy ones, the serious ones, there may not be a better sales pitch in all of the world.
Okay, because the Bible doesn't guarantee you you get saved, you get baptism, baptized, and now you make the sale, and you're always going to be healthy, and your kids are going to do this. There's no guarantees of that in the Bible. What we see is that we're going to get saved, we're never going to be alone, our future is secure, we have a purpose every day of our life. God interacts with us, and we put on the uniform in baptism, and we are deployed for his mission, and that is our purpose. But yes, it comes with significant risk.
That's risk. That's why Jesus said, count the cost. Before you do it, if you're going to go in, make sure you go in with eyes wide open. If you're going to finally surrender to that mission trip that God has been calling you to, if you're finally going to get out of that relationship that you ain't got no business being in, if you're finally going to begin to give of your time, talent, and treasure, you're going to step in obedience. How do you think Satan and his war machine will react to that?
Doesn't mean that it's not good. But it does mean that we should see it with eyes wide open. And I personally am convinced of this. Ephesians 6, if we are going to do spiritual battle well, it's because we understand what the old translation called the wiles of the devil. In other words, if I'm going into a fight, it is my advantage to understand the strategy of my opponent.
If I'm going into a game, it's to my advantage to understand the playbook of the opponent. The playbook of Satan is: you kick the nest and you reap what he's going to sow. You know, you reap what's coming at you. You go down in the water and you should expect to fight. And that helps me to be braced against what's coming.
Can I give you a personal testimony? All right, the ridge opens a couple of months ago. Man, we believe that this campus is going to be great for the tribe. We believe it's going to be great for the world. More campuses spun out, more church plants spun out, our whole church kind of a home and hub for the entire church.
You know, we'll have a chance to come together different times during the year and all come together from all the campuses and all that. And it's been great. Since we opened the ridge, I can't tell you the amount of relational heartbreak I've gone through. I can't tell you the amount of sickness that has come upon our staff. And upon my family, I can't tell you the amount of critique and gossip and things like that that have popped up.
And this is what's funny. Man, Mercy Hill, and I'm in this business, okay, so I know a lot of other churches and a lot of other things. We are an incredibly unified body. I mean, it's like, dude, we got a mission: 5,000 baptisms, 500 missionaries. We're growing people, next generation, college students.
Like, we got this mission. And, dude, it's really sort of a breathtaking thing to see the unity in this church. And the second the ridge opens, what happens? Man, all of a sudden, there's some gossip starts to creep up. There's some cracks and fissures that start to come up.
I want you to understand: ridge opens, relational heartbreaks, sickness, and gossip and critique. None of it shocked me at all. None of it. Why? Veteran, man.
Vetter on the block. I understand that when you make a big kingdom investment and when you declare for the kingdom and you walk in obedience and something gets established, do you think Satan takes that land down? Man, he don't take that laying down. And so I'm just going to tell you guys: hey, as we are walking in obedience, understand what may come next. All right, so for some of you, I am going to throw this slide up again.
Text baptism to 87217.
Some of you are like, nobody in their right mind is now going to get baptized.
Okay, I get that. I understand. All right, but there's others of you that are wild-eyed enough to be like, hey, I think I understand what you're saying, that you count the cost. that you're going to sacrifice to get on the team, but it's worth it. And I pray that's where you will be.
So Jesus goes from the Jordan to being tempted by Satan. It is my belief that he was tempted all 40 days. And that these three temptations that we're going to get into now encapsulate. They're sort of representative a little bit of the last three, maybe the biggest three, okay? But most of the temptations in your life, you can put in these three buckets.
The first one is the temptation of appetite. Look at verse 3. The devil said to him, If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread. And Jesus answered him, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone.
Now, here's what you're going to see. Three temptations, three scriptural references. Jesus pulls from only two chapters of one book of the Bible, the book of Deuteronomy, to throw back at Satan whenever he's coming at him with these temptations. And the first temptation is very simple: it's the temptation of appetite. Jesus, you're hungry.
If you really are the Son of God, you shouldn't have to suffer.
Okay?
So just step out of God's will and use the power that He has given you for miracles that point to your kingdom, because that's what Jesus' power was, and just do a magic trick, man. Just go into the realm of kind of Harry Houdini here and just do the magic thing. And just turn this bread, turn this stone into bread and be satisfied. But Jesus was after a greater bread. Jesus was after, hey, his satisfaction was going to come from feasting on the will of God.
You could say it like this: Satan tempts us to satisfy ultimate appetites with temporal things. What is it? The appetite for food to be satisfied. That is something that we deal with in the flesh. But there is an ultimate way that we are satisfied, and that is only by being in the will of God.
It is only by living in a responsive life towards God. It is by being saved, by being one of His children. And what Satan is trying to get Jesus to do is: hey, step out of that. Step out of that. Use your power in a way that's inappropriate.
Okay, step. It's almost like a little bit like Moses here. Hey, I want you to know: Jesus was tempted for 40 days for a reason. It wasn't 39, it wasn't 39 or 41.
Okay, he is stepping into the lineage of Israel, of Moses, all the way back to Adam.
Okay, all the times that the Son of God failed, Jesus is going to be victorious. And so I want you to think about this. He is stepping in for Israel. He's stepping in for Moses. What happened in the wilderness with Moses and the rock?
He took the power that God gave him and all of a sudden became very high and mighty with it. Right? And he ended up being judged for that. He was sinful when he did that. And I think there's an allusion to that here with Jesus, where he's trying to get Jesus to use his power in an inappropriate way, step out of the will of God, just to be satisfied.
Y'all, many of us face that temptation today.
Some of us are dealing with temptation or sin that has come from temptation. We are giving into it, and it squarely falls into the realm of appetite. Man, God is calling you to use food and drink in a certain way, and instead it is turning into gluttony and drunkenness. God has called us to think about sexuality in a certain way. Man, woman, marriage, for life, covenant love, expression of covenant, and instead, it's pornography, it's hookup culture.
Man, it's boyfriend, girlfriend in high school, boyfriend, girlfriend in college. And we are stepping out of God's will in order to satiate and satisfy. This appetite that is within us. And Jesus is telling us here, man, hey, when that comes, remember, you don't live by bread alone. It's not just this body and its appetites.
There is something way more spiritual and ultimate that God wants to satisfy us with Himself, His plans for us, the gospel. These things are better than satisfying in a sinful way the appetites of this world. I think Satan wants you to think about the world what Mazda wanted you to think about their cars in the 1980s.
Okay, 1980.
Now, this is funny to me, it may not be funny to anybody else in the whole room. But this is The tagline for Mazda, okay? Uh in 1980, this was what they said that their Mazda card could do. It is, this is in a quote. We have an intense commitment to your satisfaction in every way.
That's a bold claim. For a Mazda.
Okay, maybe if it's a Chevy 3500 Duramax dually LTZ. But a Mazda?
Okay, my point is. This idea, an intense commitment to your satisfaction in every way. That is what Satan Is trying to bait with the world. Hey, whatever appetite you got, remember, listen, Satan's not a creator, he can't create appetites in you. but he distorts them and plays upon them.
And he wants the appetite that you have for these different things: money, health, food, sex, anything like that. Step out of God's plan into that. And what does Jesus say from Deuteronomy 8? Man, we don't live by bread alone.
Now, look at verse 5. And the devil took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And said to him, To you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me. And I will give it to who I will. If you then will worship me, it will be yours.
And Jesus answered him, It is written, You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only you shall serve. Satan takes them up. There's some kind of spiritual vision, every kingdom of the world. And Satan says, Man, all you gotta do is bow down to me, and then you are gonna get all of this. The first temptation was about appetite.
The second temptation is about power and authority. Or you could say it like this: Satan tempts us to seize authority rather than to receive authority. There is an authority that we are to receive from God. Satan wants us to short-circuit that plan and to grab all of the power that we can, and he baits us with that. I want you to think about Jesus here, who the Bible tells us was, you know, zeal for God's house consumed him.
I mean, he was one who, you know, he talked about his baptism, meaning Jesus talked about his death, burial, and resurrection. And he talked about it in a way that says, man, he was consumed by that.
Now, for that guy who is thinking about what is going to happen. Imagine the temptation of just saying, Jesus just sees it now. Essentially, what Satan is offering Jesus is a crossless path to power. A suffering less path. to authority.
Now, Jesus sees the bigger plan here, and of course he sees through it. Y'all, God's plan is bigger than him being a king on earth. God's plan for Jesus is to be the savior of the world.
Now, he's going to have to go to the cross and through death and up through resurrection to become. But Satan is showing him all the kingdoms in the world, and I could see Jesus being like, You're trying to tempt me with this, but at the same time, I know that God has given to me the purchasing power for a people from every tribe, tongue, and nation. They will come together in one people one day. And I will rule over them. I will not only save them, but I will rule them, and I will give them the authority to rule over the earth.
As crazy as that is, that is our destiny that is coming. And so Jesus sees through this, and I want us to see through it. You know, Satan offering Jesus, hey, you worship me and I'll let you be the king on earth. That's about like in the Chronicles of Narnia when the white witch offered Edmund the chance to be the prince of Narnia when all the while he was already destined to be king. There was already a greater promise.
And she's trying to short-circuit that promise. And of course, he takes the bait. And who wouldn't? It's Turkish delight, whatever that is.
Okay?
And so it's like, hey, he takes the bait. But for us, I want you to think about this. Jesus, because and this is the whole point, the word is in him.
Alright, he responds by the word. I don't mean in a quick fighter-verse incantation magic trick. I mean the word is in him in a way that anchors his hope. Understands his future, and it keeps him understanding and eyes up towards there is a greater future than the one that you are offering me. You are offering me to short circuit now.
Get out of God's plan for my life now to gain something quick and is short-sighted. And what does he say? No, we worship God alone. We don't worship you. That is not what we're here to do.
Now, I want to, for some of us right now, it's like, hey, you are destined to, if you're a Christian, you are destined to receive authority. That authority is going to be our opportunity to exert dominion on the new heavens and the new earth in the way that we were supposed to in the garden. Y'all, the Bible says we will command angels. Do I understand what all that means? No.
But there is an authority that is going to come into our life if we are to receive it. But some of us want to take the bait. From Satan. Cheat our way, lie our way, step out of God's will. Why?
Because I need the authority over this company. I need it now.
Some of us don't want to just receive the authority of headship in our home. That means we serve those in our home. But some of us, guys, are you being a tyrant in your home? Is there yelling, screaming? Man, death and life are the power of the tongue.
That went out the the the window a long time ago, and there's just this this harshness in you towards those that are in your home. And I think, man, is it a grabbing right now, I will set up this kingdom rather than waiting to receive? the authority that God has given us. One is so much greater, and the word helps us to see that. Last, listen, we got temptation of appetite, temptation of kingdom, power, authority.
Last one, temptation of trust. Look what it says in verse 9. And he took him to Jerusalem and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here. For it is written, He will command his angels concerning you to guard you. And on their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against the stone.
Now, that's a quote from Psalm 91. This is the one where Satan goes for the big guns. And he pulls out a quote from the Bible. And Jesus answered him: It is said, You shall not put the Lord your God to the test. And when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time.
This is crazy, y'all. Satan knows the word. We have to know the word, and we have to know how to interpret the word. Because if we don't, we're susceptible to something like this. This is a twisting.
Of the soul. This is not what this means. Hey, Jesus, go tempt God by throwing yourself off. That's not the idea, but yet he twists this. He can twist it for us as well.
We have to be sharp on these things. Third temptation: Satan tempts us to test God instead of trust God. Test God instead of trust God. God, if you do this, then I know you can do that, rather than trusting Him at His Word, which is what faith is. I want you to put yourself in Jesus' shoes for just a minute.
Y'all, Jesus is about to go to the cross. He's going to go through death. He's going to go through resurrection. He's got to trust that God is not going to leave him, abandon him in death, but is going to resurrect him. Can you imagine the temptation you might have in that moment, knowing what you're facing?
Could you imagine the temptation that Satan is offering him here? Hey, throw yourself off the temple and make sure that Jesus is going to save you from that first before you go to the cross so that you'll know he'll save you from that. And I could just see the temptation here: like, yeah, I kind of want to do that. Like, how many of us do that?
Well, God, if you'll heal me and give me health, then I'll serve you with all of my life. If you do this, I know that I can trust you in that. If you'll give me more resources, then I will begin to give some of them away. If I can trust you with this, then I will trust you with that. But what we are called to do, and this is what Jesus says: man, you don't tempt the Lord your God again.
He quotes from Deuteronomy 6:13. Hey, we don't do that. We don't tempt God. We trust God. Tempting God is the opposite of faith.
Faith, Hebrews says, is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of what is not seen. I don't need you to make sure you can save me from the temple to trust you to save me through the resurrection. And Jesus shows us that. Y'all, here's what I want to call you through today by way of application: rely on God's word in temptation. Not as an incantation, not as a magic trick.
But something that is deep in you that anchors you to a future hope that is better than whatever Satan can tempt you with here in this life and today. All right? Man, I know that we live in a chat GPT world, liver king, social media. I know we live in a fake news world, all right? And some of us are trying to figure out.
Is Jesus the real thing or not? That thirst for authenticity among our young people, maybe you're raging for that. And you want something that is real. Hey, Jesus is the opposite of a professional wrestler. There is a person that matches with the persona, okay?
It's not a character, and then character. All right, I know you guys are in North Carolina. You guys love Ric Flair in North Carolina.
Okay, I'm talking the nature boy.
So I knew that was going to happen, all right? I can't get y'all to amen, but you'll give me a woo when I talk about Ric Flair, okay? Great.
Well, there's an amen as well. It's so funny. We were talking to one of a couple of the young, the really young millennials and Gen Z on our staff, and I was talking about Ric Flair. They had no idea who it was. And I just had to tell him, you're talking about the Rolex wearing.
Diamond ring wearing, kiss stealing, wheeling dealing, jet flying, limousine riding, son of a gun. They still didn't know who it was, okay? But I think about professional wrestler, like probably one of the most professional wrestlers that has ever lived is a guy named The Undertaker, okay? For 30 years, from 1990 to 2020, he has been terrifying and stalking the dreams of children, okay? And he is champion, I mean, you know, won all these championships.
His character kept evolving. How do you stay relevant in professional wrestling for 30 years into your 60s? But he did it. The Undertaker did it, but here's what I want you to know: there's a persona and a person. There's a character, but then there's the character.
The Undertaker is actually just a dude named Mark William Carey, who is 60, born 1965, played college basketball at Texas Wesleyan University, and apparently is a Christian and devoted family man. And that's actually who he is. You know, interesting profession choice, okay? But it's like There there is such a difference between the Undertaker and Mark William Calloway, right? Many of us kind of wonder about that with Jesus.
Who was he really? You got all the sermons, you got all the thousands of years of history that he changed, you got all the miracles, but who was he? You're going to see who he is when it was him and Satan and nobody else. And you're going to see who he is when the word of God comes out of him. The more you see him, the more you're going to want to see him, because the more perfection you're going to see.
Never meet your heroes doesn't work with Jesus. The more you get to know him, the more you're going to want to know him. And here's the deal: this is why it's so important for us today. You say, okay, great, I understand what you mean. Jesus was victorious.
Wherever I failed, okay? Like, I waver majorly. I know you do too. When you talk about temptation of appetite, kingdom, and you talk about temptation of trust. Man, you and I are just a big bunch of failures in these areas throughout the course of our life, if we're honest.
And Jesus. Never failed in them one time. And some of us might say, well, what is the relevance of that today? Why does that matter? It is the precise reason that he could go to the cross and die for your sin.
It is the reason. Jesus was victorious in temptation so that he could die for all of the times that we failed. You and I are failures with our appetites. How many of us have stepped out and grabbed for the thing of the world to satisfy what's in here? How many of us, with a power grab, authority grab?
Man, we don't want to wait to receive what is from God. We want it now. We want to exert authority now. How many of us have ever said, God, if you do this, then I will do that? And we are tempting them.
The answer is every single one of us. And yet, if you are a believer. Your record is not that record of failure because Jesus' perfection has been laid on top of you. He has put it right on top. He has washed away your sin with his blood.
The temptation is so important for us because it shows us and it proves to us that Jesus could be the one as the perfect Lamb of God that could take away the sin of the world. This is so important. Many of us grew up, maybe you grew up thinking about this story as a story like this.
Well, Jesus gets dragged out into the wilderness to be beat up for a while by Satan, but some kind of way he comes out by the skin of his teeth. That is not the story. You need to understand the story today. This story is Jesus was led by the Spirit, not dragged by Satan, not to be beat up by Satan, but he was led by the Spirit to defeat Satan. And he did.
And where we fail. He was victorious. And yet in his gospel, he gives us his perfect record. And you and I have a chance to walk in the newness of life. Man, not looking back on all those failures, all the times we failed in appetite, failed in kingdom, failed in trust.
But we get a chance to say, man, in Christ, this is who I am. And I get a chance to live into that. And so here's what I'm doing. I want to apply this in two ways and I'm done. The first way is this.
I want you to imagine, you know, this series is a little bit like this. I want you to imagine. We're walking with Jesus. We come to the end of a few days where he's telling us a story about being tempted by Satan. We've come to the end of our journey, shoes off, sitting by the fire, just ate dinner, about to lay down on our little cots for.
For the night, and man, you're kind of alone. And this is the idea of walking with Jesus. This is what was in my mind when I wanted to do this series. I want us, every one of these sermons, to be like, dude, the day is over. I cannot believe what I just heard or I just saw, and now I'm trying to process it.
That's what that's what I want, all right? sitting by the fire and I'm trying to figure out what does it mean.
Well, there's two groups of people in the room. Right. The first group is you're sitting there by the fire and you're like, Okay. Do I believe that Jesus withstood temptation? every time where I failed.
And if the answer to that is yes, the answer to that is starting to become yes in your life, listen. Your application for today's sermon is: you need to become a Christian. You need to admit your sin, believe in what he has done. And confess him as the Lord of your life and allow the perfect record. that he was winning at the temptation.
to be applied to you. I pray that you'll do that today. Admit, believe, and confess. But there's others of us right now. That are like, man, I...
I'm a believer. I'm a Christian. I'm following Jesus. I'm sitting here by this fire. I'm trying to figure out what this means for me.
And here's the two things I think you need, and then we're done. All right? The two th number one, I think you need a giant reminder right now. Sitting there, what does this mean for me? Warming up by the fire.
I need the reminder in my life. That yes, although I feel every single failure. And I look back on the last week, the last month, the last year, and a lot of times, if you're wired like me, you just assume what is good and you point out what is bad in yourself and others. And you've got to really work on that.
So you're doing that for yourself. And you're like, man, I failed here and I failed here and I failed here. I went after this appetite when I shouldn't have. I seize this authority when I shouldn't have. Man, I've tempted God.
If you, then I. And I can begin to feel like a failure. And here's the biggest thing we need today, okay? You need to know that even though you feel that way, God does not see you that way. He sees you as the one who stands against Diablos himself in every single temptation because that is what has been given to you in the gospel.
And then it's like, well, if God sees me like that. then I sort of want to start living like that. And as I start to live like that, you know what I'm gonna find? Man, what I was looking for in the idolatry of appetite and the sinful appetites, I actually find in him. Man, I was looking to be filled, but you know what?
All these things over here, they're not going to fill me like Jesus can fill me. All of this authority that I want to have and power that I want to have, and I want to see things done a certain way, and all that. Wait a minute. You know, if I just trust God's plan. There's going to be a greater authority that I will receive from heaven.
than one that I could exert on earth? And all this stuff about tempting God instead of trusting Him. That's not faith. And I want to live by faith because I see what He has done for me. Listen, you're going to realize I have an identity and a character to live into.
Number one. Number two, man, it's good for me. And I want it. All right, let's pray. Father.
We pray, God, that those of us right now that are dealing with temptation. Whether it's kingdom, whether it's appetite, whether it's trust. Father, I pray that we will come, we will repent of those times that we have succumbed to that temptation, and we will run to the cross to remember who we are, and we will remember what you have done in our life. We will remember the things that you have given us. That will guard us against temptation.
His word. Christ and we pray. Amen. Mm-hmm.
