Winning Like Jesus, Part 2

What the temptations of Jesus mean to you today.

Next, on Leading the Way with Dr. Michael Youssef. The first temptation was designed to get Jesus to distrust his Father's provision and satisfy his own needs. The second temptation was to put God to the test and to presume on the goodness of God. And the third temptation was to substitute the will of God the Father for the will of Satan.

And who of us, not me certainly, can claim that we have never fallen in every one of those three categories. Thank you for joining Dr. Michael Youssef as he details the temptations that Jesus faced in the wilderness on this episode of Leading the Way Audio. Now, before he begins, a reminder that leading the way is listener supported. That means that Dr. Youssef relies on God's provision through the generosity of listeners like you to continue passionately proclaiming uncompromising truth all around the world. Learn ways to stand with Dr. Youssef, including participating in the Open Door Campaign. Give us a call.

866-626-4356 and online at ltw.org. Right now though, winning like Jesus on Leading the Way. I began in the last message, a series designed for help young and old alike, calling it You Can Win Like Jesus. In the last message, I told you that some people feel guilty when they're tempted. You should not feel guilty when you're tempted. Temptation is normal. You should expect temptation. If you're a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, you will be tempted. Not possibly, you will be. Don't be surprised by it.

Prepare for it. I also told you that the threefold temptations of Jesus in the wilderness summarize and codifies all other temptation known to mankind. All temptations that you and I have succumbed to or defeated, they all codified in those three. First, Satan did not want Jesus to rely on his Father's power and on his Father's provision. Instead, he wanted to go for the shortcut, to take a shortcut.

Please hear me out on this one. These three temptations can go under these three categories. It's temptation to pleasure, to popularity and to power.

Write them down. These three are the root of all temptations that are known to you and me and every person around the world. Now, I can testify to you as the Lord my witness.

Every defeat that I have ever experienced in my life, it was because I succumbed to one of those three categories or subcategories. Let me act like the tempter. See if you recognize me. Alright? I know people say, I'll play the devil's advocate. I'm not going to play the devil's advocate.

I'm going to play the devil's role. Okay? You have needs, right? You have urges. You have desires. You have ambitions. Nothing wrong with that, right?

So far so good? Having needs are natural. We all have them. But then the tempter continues.

All of these needs must be satisfied by you. Watch how the tempter works. Jesus is fully God, fully man. Being fully man, he was experiencing the hunger pain that you and I will never experience. I know I fasted for a day or two and I'm telling you, it is not fun. But with the power of God, it's a great experience. Now he's fasting for 40 days.

Not 40 hours, 40 days. So he's coming to the point in his humanity to be absolutely starving to death. In fact, scientists tell us that no one can go past 40 days without food and still be alive.

It's starvation to death. Watch how the devil comes to Jesus, you know, with this kind of novel idea of using his supernatural power to eat. When he comes to him, not in the first day, not the 20th day, not the 30th day, but right at the end, just about to break his fast, right close at it, he shows up. And of course, Jesus had absolute choice. Anybody tell you otherwise, he had absolute choice. Should I continue my obedience to the Father or should I meet my own needs with my own power? Should I wait for the Father's timing or take matters into my own hand? Should I continue to glorify my Father in my body or gratify my own desires? Should I continue to be about my Father's business or should I go to business for myself? Should I continue to serve the Father's purpose in my life or should I demand that the Father follows my purpose in my life? It's that simple.

And it's that dangerous. Now, to understand the anatomy of temptation, which I talked about in the last message, we need to look closely at how Satan chooses his words. Look how he chose his words with Jesus, verse three. If, underline that and you might be circled, if you are the Son of God, he begins by bringing doubt to his mind. In the Garden of Eden, he came to Eve and he brought doubt to her mind. Did God really say that?

Did you really understand God correctly? It's just bringing seeds of doubt. Today, we have people who claim to be followers of Jesus, writing books to bring doubt about how God's word is so clearly defined marriage.

Namely, it's between a man and a woman. There are others today in our culture who gave up on doubt altogether and just came out in the open and he said, Jesus is just wrong about this. So Satan begins by setting Jesus up. Every temptation begins by setting us up.

Sets us up. The Father had just announced at the River Jordan, he just announced publicly, openly, in the hearing of so many eyewitnesses, this is my beloved Son in whom I'm well pleased. He is the second member of the Trinity. He is the divine Son of God. And so Satan comes in and says, if that is really true and you really trust in your Father, use your power to verify that it is a reality, that you are the Son of God. Verify that this is a true statement from God the Father. See, Satan has only one desire, in this case, is to get Jesus to disobey the Father.

That's it. With you and me, he has only one desire. Every temptation you face, he has one desire. Get you and me to disobey the Word of God.

Period. And he doesn't come out in the open and say to Jesus, please disobey your Father. Go against the will of your Father. No. How can you be sure about the will of your Father? No. In the same way, he has one desire for you and me and that is to go against what the Word of God said.

Because he is too sophisticated to come out in the open and get us to go in disobedience. But he will come to you and say, let me do the tempted thing again. You are saved by grace or are you saved by works? And all the Reformed people say, oh, I'm saved by grace. Of course, the Bible said, saved by grace through faith. Ah, you're saved by grace. That's nice.

Isn't that great? Grace of God will cover all your sins. Why don't you just go and do your thing and sin to your heart's content and may I just, you know, let the grace of God cover it. You're saved by grace.

You just told me that, right? You're saved by grace. Why tithe? Tithing belongs to the Old Testament. Why tithe?

You have financial needs. Don't tithe. You miss out on the blessing because he doesn't want you to be blessed. He said to Jesus, turn the stones into bread.

Turn the stones into bread. It's a simple thing, really. And he says, you have needs and you can meet your needs. The very obvious part of the temptation is to fulfill a legitimate need by a miracle. And what could be more right than to meet legitimate need and desire?

Let me here go again being the tempter, okay? You need to be loved a certain way, don't you? But you are not loved that way now.

Why don't you trust somebody else other than your spouse? Have an affair. Get on the computer and start watching some of those pornographic sites. You have needs, don't you?

We already established that. You have sexual desires. Why wait till you marry?

Everybody else is experimenting. You have needs. What Satan was saying to Jesus, what he says to all of us through his demons and through the world, the flesh and the devil, why starve to death when it is within your power to fulfill your desire? Beloved, the purpose of this first temptation was not simply to get Jesus to satisfy his hunger and his needs. When you and I are tempted, Satan does not simply want us to meet our needs. He doesn't give a ding-dong about your needs.

Did you get that? He doesn't give a flip about your needs. But that's how he starts, as if he's on your side. He was saying to Jesus, hunger is incompatible with being the divine Son of God.

He wanted to tempt Jesus not only to doubt the Father, but to doubt the love of the Father, to doubt the provision of the Father. Go ahead. Do what you should do. You have a free will, don't you? You're a physical being and you need gratification to fulfill your physical needs. Oh, here's this one.

If I heard it once, I heard it a million times. God wants you to be happy, doesn't he? Actually, I don't find that in the Bible. I find it says that he wants me to be holy. Well, you're not happy, so do whatever makes you happy, regardless of whether it's against the Word of God or not.

Just do whatever makes you happy. He gets you to elevate your physical appetite above honoring and obeying God. He places greed above contentment. He places indulgence above obedience.

He places self-pleasing above self-surrender. And that's what Satan is doing here with Jesus. And that is why the series of messages is that you can win like Jesus. You see, God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, the Holy Trinity, three in one.

They've been in perfect unity. In that unity, it was God the Son to fast for 40 days in the wilderness. And the devil comes in here and he tries to put a wedge between God the Father and God the Son. He's trying to put a wedge within the Trinity.

He wants to make two gods instead of one God. And he was turning one against the other. Be very careful when the enemy starts setting you up against a brother or sister in Christ. He's trying to separate you. Be very careful when the enemy comes in and puts a wedge between husband and wife. Be very careful young people when he puts a wedge between you and your parents. Be very careful when the enemy puts a wedge between you and the Word of God.

Be very, very, very, very, very careful. I can tell you without a shadow of doubt that whenever there is a dissension, whenever there is a division anywhere, whenever there is disharmony, whenever there is a strife, whenever there is discontentment, you can be absolutely sure that the devil has brought us sin in the midst of the situation. And there's only one way to deal with sin and that's to repent of it.

My young friends, old ones as well, listen to me. If the devil gets you isolated on the internet and pornographic website, you're in danger territory. See, whenever you convince yourself that you can live without godly friends and godly mentors, you're heading for danger zone. The first temptation that Satan loved at Jesus was to get him to go for the shortcut and get away from the father's plan.

That's the first thing he wanted to do, to get away from the father's timing. Had Satan succeeded in moving Jesus from self-surrender to self-serving, had Satan succeeded in getting Jesus to go against the plan of the father, he would have succeeded in creating an irreparable rift between the Trinity and your salvation and mine would have been in great doubt. Satan tempted Jesus to go from self-surrender to self-satisfaction and he failed and so can he with you. You can be a winner like Jesus.

Rely on Jesus and godly friends. And don't ever, ever, ever, ever, ever forget that Jesus had the power to do what Satan wanted him to do. And Satan does the same thing with our free will. Why wait for God's timing?

Why wait till marriage? Why submit to the will of God? Why obey God's word when there is so much doubt by so many good preachers about the authenticity of the word of God?

And on and on and on. And I want to hasten to tell you about how Jesus defeated Satan and he won over Satan and over temptation and how you can win too. Jesus won by absolutely, completely and totally trusting and submitting to the written word of God, the Bible.

Listen, Jesus' response to Satan is incalculable humility. Jesus himself is the logos. He is the revealed word of God. He is the word of God.

He is the second member of the Trinity and yet he upholds the written word of God with all of its authority high up in his life. I know it is fashionable these days by some preachers even in the evangelical churches to say, well you know there are just some parts in the Bible cannot be taken literally other parts. You know we're just not sure about this and not sure about this and so-called evangelical pastors let me tell you something.

All I want to say is stop. Who in the world is going to decide which parts of this and which part is that? It's the height of arrogance. They're placing themselves in God's place.

They know better than Jesus who submitted to the written word of God, who used the word of God, who obeyed the word of God and it flies in the face of logic. Jesus said it is written. It is written. It is written. Three times it is written. Here he said man shall not live by bread alone Satan but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. All three winning responses stemmed from and founded upon the written word of God.

Don't let anybody undermine the authority of the word of God because that's the beginning of trouble. Each time he said it is written. It is written.

It is written meaning it is final. It is not open for debate. It is not open for discussion. It is not open for interpretation. It's not open to change.

It's not open to modification and it's not open to being watered down. No wonder Psalm 119 verse 11 David said I treasured. Can you say that with me? I treasured. He said I treasured.

Not debated. Not try to figure out what it means. Not to doubt it. Not to reinterpret it.

To fit the culture. I treasured your word in my heart so that I may not sin against you. It's far better to trust God and to wait for his provision than to go for instant gratification when you think you need it. Those words of course were spoken in Deuteronomy chapter 8 verse 3 which Jesus quotes here in the scripture. He believed all of the Old Testament. He believed all of it and they were given originally through Moses to the people of God in the wilderness.

Here's a fact. As a young boy Jesus memorized the word of God. He studied the word of God. He internalized the word of God. At the age of 12 he was sitting in the temple teaching the elders and my beloved friends listen to me. When you love and uphold the word of God regardless of your age you will be a victor and you will win like Jesus.

Moms and dads would you be patient with me? You heard me many times that I've made many mistakes as in my parenting but when you teach the children to read the word of God, to memorize the word of God, to apply the word of God, to internalize the word of God when you model that for them you're going to keep them from looking for shortcuts when they grow older and disobedience. I can tell you most assuredly the way we train our children and model godliness for our children is incalculable when they grow older. I like the story about the four pastors who were debating which translation of the Bible is a better translation. Well the first one said I like the King James version it's really poetic it's old English I just love that translation and the second man said no I really like the American Standard Version it's a more accurate translation and the third one said I really like the living Bible because it makes hard concepts easy to understand I like the living Bible and the fourth one was quiet for a minute and then he said I really like my father's translation the best.

He said oh what is that one? He said it's the one that he read and obeyed. Now beloved I will tell you that convicts us as dads and moms it's easy for us to preach at our kids I know that more than anybody else but it is daily modeling studying internalizing and obeying the word of God is what really matters in the end. Unless we daily feed upon the word of God it becomes difficult not only to know it but to believe it and then obey it. Then you get some slick preacher comes along and throws doubt on the word of God and we fall for it. It's happening all across our land. It happened in Europe until the church is only a shell and when that happened the word of God ceases to be a sword.

The Bible calls the word of God a sword both in defense and offense and if Satan did a number on Christians today he let them have more than 10 Bibles in their homes but every statistic showed very few really read it and study it and internalize it. May this change today. May every home that's represented here all those whole thousands of people watching around the world may this change today that as the world gets darker outside that we will hold on to the light of the word of God. Our Father we are so sorry that we have neglected your word and as a result is wholesale departure from the faith.

People don't know what the truth is anymore. Forgive us Father. Forgive me.

Forgive us. And Father we come to you in humility and brokenness and ask you let your word be a light and the lamp unto our feet. Help us to consume it.

To feed on it and grow strong by it. For that's the only hope we pray in Jesus name. Amen. Thank you for making leading the way part of your day. Listen again for more solid Bible teaching from pastor and international evangelist Dr. Michael Youssef on the next Leading the Way. Find out more about Dr. Youssef at ltw.org. Our five year vision to come is following in the footsteps of Jesus his great commission and so we're focusing on bringing the 96% of Americans who do not have a Christian worldview to come and understand the gospel of Jesus Christ. We're reaching out to the rest of the world through the navigators through kingdom sets for many many opportunities and that is God's vision for us and I pray that you're going to be part of this vision. Speak to a ministry representative at the Leading the Way call center to learn more.

The number 866-626-4356 or visit ltw.org. God has placed the responsibilities of governing in our hands. What an incredible privilege, stewardship and responsibility. Not voting is abdicating your stewardship. I hope you're going to vote and I hope you're going to pray before you vote and let God guide you. God bless. This program is brought to you by Leading the Way with Dr. Michael Youssef. Connect further with audio and video content at ltw.org or through your favorite social media platform.