Inauguration

Today on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. What had God the Father just spoken over him at the baptism? You are my beloved Son and you I am well pleased. And now Satan is saying if what God said is actually true. Look you can mark this down. You can write it down.

This is Satan's primary strategy in your life to put question marks in your life where God has put periods or where God has put exclamation points. Hey, thanks for joining us today for Summit Life with Pastor J.E. Greer. I'm your host, Molly Bitovitch. Okay, so let's be real. Who doesn't want the good life?

A beautiful family, a nice home, and maybe a couple of cars and a boat, right? But the real question is what place should these things hold in our lives? Today on Summit Life, Pastor J.D. explains that when we allow the good life to become our focus, we are heading into enemy territory. We're learning how to steer clear of temptation in a sermon that Pastor J.D. titled Inauguration.

And it's part of our Kingdom Come series that's also available online for free anytime at jdgreer.com. So grab your Bible and let's join Pastor J.D. as he opens up God's Word. I sincerely hope that you have your theological big boy pants on this morning because this is one of the deepest messages I've preached in a while and because it's one of the most enigmatic scenes in the life of Jesus. And so I really need you to stay awake, to pay attention, because if you blink, you're going to get left behind.

We're going somewhere in a hurry with this thing. Did you know, by the way, every single Gospel writer includes the baptism of Jesus. You say, well, what's significant about that? Not all of them include his birth. We have a holiday that celebrates his birth, but not every Gospel writer included his birth. But all of them include the baptism because all of them saw this as the summation and the beginning of Jesus' ministry.

Okay, here we go. Luke chapter 3, we're going to be in verse 21. Luke 3 verse 21. Now when all the people were baptized and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heavens were open and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove.

And a voice came from heaven and said, you are my beloved son, with you I am well pleased. Now what is curious about this is that Luke calls this a baptism of repentance. Now repentance is when you admit that you've done something wrong and say you're sorry.

Right? That's what repentance is. What had Jesus done wrong? That's the question that's screaming out from this baptism.

In fact, John the Baptist even asked Jesus that. He's like, uh, why are you here to be baptized? What have you done wrong? You know, I mean, you're here to say you're sorry for being so perfect. Is that why you're here? What are you repenting for?

Right? That's a great question. So we're going to come back to it. Luke chapter 4 verse 1. Jump all the way to Luke 4. Luke 4 verse 1. And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness for 40 days, being tempted by the devil.

Now just so that you don't get any romanticized ideas about this, this was not a camping trip that Jesus took with some of his buddies out in the Yukon. Okay, first, this is an area called Jeshamon, which literally means in Hebrew, the devastation. It was a terrifying place. It was difficult to traverse. There was harsh climates. The conditions were terrible. This was a horrible place to spend 40 days, six weeks alone with the devil.

I mean, not even some JV demon, El Diablo himself in Jesus, 40 days. I can seriously, I cannot imagine a worse situation. I hate being alone for long periods of time. I hate not eating. I hate being in the desert. I hate camping out. And I hate being alone with Satan.

Okay, so this is like five things that would make this the worst time of your life. And he ate, it says, verse 2, nothing in those days. He fasted. And when they were ended, he was hungry. That's another one of those places where, you know, I'm like, did that really need to be clarified?

I mean, who is it that didn't know that? Verse 3. So the devil says to him, if, if you are the son of God, command of this stone become bread. Excuse me, if, if you are the son of God, what is that a reference to? What had God the Father just spoken over him at the baptism?

Remember that? You are my beloved son and you I am well pleased. And now Satan is saying if what God said is actually true. Look, you can mark this down. You can write it down.

This is Satan's primary strategy in your life to put question marks in your life where God has put periods or where God has put exclamation points. That's what he did then. That's what he does now.

That's what he's going to do in the future. All right, verse 4. But Jesus answered him and said, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone. Now, what is Satan tempting Jesus with here? Is there anything really sinful about eating a yeast roll?

Right? I mean, no. I mean, if you're eating 10 of them at Golden Corral, maybe. But, but if you've been fasting for 40 days, I feel like you're entitled to a yeast roll. Here's the temptation.

You ought to jot this down. Temptation number one. Temptation is to love the gifts of God more than you love God himself. To love the gifts of God more than you love God himself. To take a good thing like bread or marriage or children or money or friendship, right?

To take companionship to make a good thing and make it an ultimate thing. Jesus said, no, physical bread is good, but it is not as important as God. God is the bread for my soul. My soul finds its completeness in God, not in having all my needs met.

That's what Satan is going to do with you. He'll take a good thing like bread or a good job or marriage or children and he'll make it an ultimate thing. He takes a good thing and makes it a God thing.

Something you feel like you have to have and cannot do without for your soul to really be alive and to be full. And so you start to treat God like a pinata, right? You still relate to God, but God is, you know, God's a pinata and faith is a whacking stick, which you hit God with to get from God the candy that you want in your life. That's not how we are to relate to God. God is himself his own candy, right? I mean that's, he is the thing that our soul most craves and desires or at least it should crave and desire. And so God is not sought as a means to any other end and this first temptation was to seek the gifts of God more than God himself, right?

Keep going. Verse 5, the devil took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time and he said to him, to you I'll give all this authority and their glory for it has been delivered to me and I will give it to whom I will. If you then will worship me it'll all be yours. Temptation number two, to go around God in pursuit of the will of God. To go around God in pursuit of the will of God.

The obedience of the nations was a good thing, was it not? It was something Jesus was entitled to, but here he is put in a place where he has to choose between that good thing and God. Satan tempts you that way. What things are there that matter so much to you that you would prioritize them over God himself? What I mean by that is things that consume your life and your passions more than God. A lot of your lives are consumed with pursuing something, not evil, but you're pursuing something good with the weight and the fervor that you ought to be pursuing God. It has cost you God. You devote more time to it than God. You compromise your integrity. You yield your soul, the deepest parts of your soul, to something more than God.

That's what the temptation is here. Verse 8, Jesus answered him and has written, no you shall worship the Lord your God, him only shall you serve. He says I will not give my soul to anything, even a good thing besides God. And if I've got to get to where God wants me to be and have to give up or compromise my relationship with God in the process, I'm not going to do that.

I'm not going to let good things become God things and turn into bad things. 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 a stone. Now Satan's pulling out all the stops because now he's quoting scripture at Jesus. Temptation number three, to interpret God through your circumstances rather than his word. That's what he's tempting Jesus with. He's like, you know what, if God really loved you, if that whole deal about you being his son was true, then if you threw yourself off of here, he would catch you. And if you suffer, if you fall, if you hit the ground, if you stub your toe, guess what, that's a sign that God doesn't really love you.

What is he tempting him with? To interpret God through his circumstances rather than what God has declared over him. Verse 12, and Jesus answered him and said, no, it is said you shall not put the Lord your God to the test. In other words, why would I need God to do something to prove he cares about me? Did not he say very clearly from a cloud and with a dove that I was his beloved son? If God said that over me, then I'm gonna, watch, I'm gonna believe what he says regardless of what my circumstances say. I'm not gonna base my understanding of God on my present circumstances, I'm gonna base it on his eternal word. Verse 13, when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time.

I get the image here of Darth Vader tumbling off into the universe, you know, after the Death Star, after Han Solo comes, that's the image I get right here. All right, he's tumbling away, but he's coming back. And he comes back a number of times in Jesus' life, most clearly the crucifixion, and he comes back with the same strategy. This is the strategy that he uses when he comes to you. These things that we just went over are Satan's primary strategy and how he gets to you. He tempts you to take good things and turn them into God things. He tempts you to go around God to get to the will of God, to get to things that you feel like God wants you to have, and then he also wants you to base who you are and how you understand who you are in your future based on your circumstances. Now, there are two very important things that you and I are supposed to learn from this passage. The first is something about Jesus and his work. The second is how we are to overcome temptation. So I'm going to break those down one at a time and walk you through them.

All right, you ready? This is the first one. It's the really deep one. Number one, we learn about the unique nature of Jesus and his work. Listen, all three temptations are designed to divert Jesus from the cross.

All three temptations, you paying attention? All three temptations are to get Jesus to establish his kingdom like every other religious leader has established their kingdoms. By commanding obedience and by rewarding obedience and tempting Jesus to turn bread into stones, he was saying, listen, you should prioritize food for the body without restoring God to the soul. What if Jesus, we could meet all the human needs? What if we could supply bread for every person, but God was not restored to the soul?

Would that be enough? Satan is like, we can do that. Jesus says, no, the most important bread is knowing and loving God. And offering him the obedience of the nations, if Jesus would just worship him, Satan was tempting him to get him to modify their behavior without ever really changing their heart. They would be brought into obedience to God, but their hearts would compromise the worship of God. They wouldn't worship and love God. They would actually worship and love something else, even if they're brought into obedience. And he's saying, coerce their obedience through rewards, through power. Give them good things if obey and bad things if they don't. But that is, is that what God wants?

I mean, think about it. Does God want people who obey him because they love reward? If I teach my kids to tell the truth, because if they tell the truth, I'll give them a cookie.

Your parents ever do that? You know, I tell the truth and I give you a cookie. Then they're telling the truth, not because they love truth, but because they love cookies, right? And that's not what God wants. He doesn't want people who obey him because they love the reward or hate the punishment. He wants people who obey him because they love him. God is not pleased. God is not glorified. God does not desire people whose obedience to him does not flow out of an overflowing love for him. Thanks for joining us on Summit Life with J.D.

Greer. We'll be right back to today's teaching in a moment. But first, have you been wanting to grow in the consistency of your time in God's Word? Or are you looking for a great way to introduce a friend or a family member to the gospel, maybe even for the very first time? If so, I've got good news because this month's brand new featured resource is a book of devotionals that Pastor J.D. wrote called Kingdom Come, 20 Devotions from Luke. It's exclusively available to our generous donors and gospel partners. And you won't want to miss out on the opportunity to follow along with the daily teaching you're hearing every day here on Summit Life.

It's a chance to dig even deeper in your own study and then to pass that on to those around you. What better way to make disciples than by sharing directly from the gospels, the actual words of Jesus himself? We'd love to send you a copy today with your gift of thirty five dollars or more.

Just give us a call at 866-335-5220 or visit us online at JDGrier.com to give. Now let's get back to today's teaching. Once again, here's Pastor JD. I remember that story I told you. I think I've told you a couple of times. I think I told it to you a year ago about the girl that I dated when I was in high school that I just really wasn't that into and being a typical guy, high school guy. High school guys are kind of idiots anyway. No offense, high school guys.

But at this point in our life, we're all idiots. And so I never, I just didn't have the courage to have to determine the relationship talk. I just kind of kept putting that off. And so, you know, I'm dating her right around Christmas time and I had this thought like, am I supposed to get this girl a present or not?

And so, you know, I'm like, what am I going to do? So I'm walking through Haines Mall in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and I go into R&M's Sporting Goods and there I saw it. The perfect gift. It was an Adidas neck warmer, said Adidas. In real big letters, you wore it underneath the sweater and it kept your neck warm while you were skiing. It cost seven dollars. I was like, that's perfect. It looks like it's at least a twenty dollar gift.

It cost seven dollars. If she gives me a gift, I'll give her that. And if she doesn't give me a gift, that puppy's mine, right? So I get that thing and I put it in a box and I put a bow on it and I put it in the backseat of my car and I drive out to see her the day before Christmas. And, you know, she opens the door and first thing out of her mouth is, I got you a Christmas present. I was like, I got you a Christmas present too. She's like, let me get your, she goes and grabs this box and gives it to me and I start to open this present and, you guys know I'm not a clothing connoisseur. You can tell that, you know, just looking at me. But, I mean, she, I pulled out this and I could tell I was like, that's a seventy dollar sweater.

I know enough to know that is a seventy dollar sweater and that is not a neck warmer. And she's like, well give me my gift. And I was like, I left your gift at home. Because I live forty-five minutes away from her thinking I got, you know, drive home and then tomorrow I'll buy another one and I'll mail it to her, everything's going to be fine. She's like, well, you know, we don't have any plans tonight and my parents aren't going to be here so we can't stay here and I haven't seen your parents for a while so why don't we drive back to your house and just get the gift. I was like, oh, this is the judgment of God for me for lying. So, we get in the car and the whole time I'm driving back thinking, what am I going to do?

You know, what, God, I'll go to the mission field if you'll just show me what to do. And that happened in my life. So, I drive back to my house and I walk in the house and I tell this girl, I'm like, sit here for a minute in the living room. And I go back and my mom, you know, is there like a gift we were going to give my sister?

I have one sister who's three years younger than me, she actually goes to church here, her name is Christy. And I was like, is there a gift that you were going to give to Christy that she didn't know about yet? Mom is like, like what? I'm like, like I don't care. I don't care what it is.

Just, you know, it's got to be around seventy dollars. And so, she goes back in the back, she gets a box that has my sister's name on it and a bow. We take that, my sister's name on it, we put that girl's name on it.

I have no idea what it is. I walk in there and I put it down in front of her. I'm like, there's your gift. And she's like, oh, what is it? I'm like, just open it.

Just open it. So, she opens it up, she pulls it out. It's a sweater that's like a nearly identical gift to what she gave to me. I was as surprised as she was. Now, I tell that, to my knowledge, well, I know she didn't have any knowledge of the circumstances behind that gift on that evening because I was such a smooth operator. But, to my knowledge, she still does not know the circumstances of that gift. I know that the way God works is one day she's going to show up in this congregation when I'm telling that story and she'd be like, I looked you up on Facebook and came to your church and now I hate you. So, here's the question. If she had known the circumstances of that gift, would she have been flattered and would she have been honored and would she have really gotten into receiving that gift?

No. I mean, any girl worth anything would totally reject a gift that was given to her because of guilt or because it was going to make me look bad. Right? She wanted me to give her a gift. A girl that wants to receive a gift wants it because there's nothing I'd rather spend my money on than her.

And it just delights me to spend that kind of money. Why is it that we think that God would want to be obeyed because we want reward and because we fear punishment? God wants us to love the right and to do the right because we love the right and to follow him because we love him. And so, simply coercing obedience and making people act right is not going to do what God wants done. And Satan is tempting him saying, hey, we can make the whole world worship you. He just can't really worship God and God only. And Jesus says, no, the whole point is that our hearts be totally in love with God because that's how God is toward us.

And lastly, in trying to get him to throw himself off the tower to see if God would catch him, he was saying teach people that the proof of God's love for them is how well they're doing in this life. This would be the message, listen, of every other religious leader. Change people's behavior. Restore justice in the world and remove all suffering. Jesus totally rejected that type of religion.

Why? Again, because what we needed was more than behavior modification. We needed heart change. Not only do we do wrong things, we did wrong things because we loved wrong things. The problem with demanding justice be restored was that none of us could really handle it if God gave it outright. If God gave absolute justice for sin, nobody would be left standing. And Jesus could not end suffering without ending sin because, again, that would take away the pain of the disease without actually curing the disease. So Jesus' work would be different than that which is prescribed by every other governmental or religious leader. Jesus would not focus on behavior modification. He would focus on heart change. And so, listen, his primary work would not be in a morality that he taught or in an example that he gave us to follow, but in being a substitute for our sin who would die in our place. And in doing that, he would pay the penalty for our sin, he would restore justice, and he would break the power of sin over us by changing our heart. So if I told you choose one word, one word to describe Jesus' work on earth, that word that came out of your mouth like a reflex ought to be the word substitution. If I snuck into your house at 4 a.m. and woke you up and shook you violently and said, what did Jesus do?

You should come out with the word substitution. In fact, I've told you like this, I can summarize the gospel in four words, in four words, and all of you ought to know this. What is the gospel? The four words, Jesus in my place. What's the gospel? Jesus in my place.

In fact, I want all of you at all of our campuses to say that because this is so important. What is the gospel? One more time like you mean it. What is the gospel?

That is exactly right. Okay, because you said what I just told you to say. All right, what is the gospel? Jesus in my place.

That's what's been happening here the whole time. Again, let's start with the baptism. Again, why is it called a baptism or repentance? Why did Jesus have to repent? He didn't have to repent. He repented in your place.

Then he spends 40 days wandering in the wilderness. Well, what does that remind you of? Well, if you know your Bible, that was where Israel had really first fallen into sin. Jesus is retracing their steps through the wilderness in 40 years, but he is succeeding where they failed and obeying where they rebelled. He's tempted directly by Satan, who tries to get him to doubt God's word by offering him something good to eat.

What's that supposed to remind you of? Well, again, if you know your Bible, that's how Satan tempted Adam. Satan comes to Adam and said, hey, Adam, did God really say this? Did he really mean that?

And hey, here's something that you should eat. Except, listen, everywhere that Israel and Adam had sinned, Jesus succeeded. And under much worse conditions, right, I mean, Adam was in a perfect garden with all of his needs met.

Jesus had been starving in the wilderness for 40 days. Yet Adam failed, and Jesus didn't. That's why we say that, listen, Jesus was the second Adam, succeeding where Adam failed. That's what we mean when we say that he lived the life we were supposed to live as our substitute, and because of that, when he died, his death could substitute for ours.

He did everything for us. Jesus in our place. He repented for us.

There's so much going on here in this temptation. See, the devil knows that he's got to destroy Jesus, because this is how Jesus is going to break his power. Jesus is going to rescue us from hell by paying our penalty. He's going to destroy Satan's work and send him to the lake of fire, and he's going to change our heart.

So Satan throws everything he has at Jesus here. But Jesus wins. He wins not by claiming the throne, not by restoring justice, but or not by giving us an example to emulate.

He wins by substituting for us. That's what sets him apart from every other religious leader. Not only did he take away the penalty of sin and that, you see, he broke the power of sin, because Jesus' work recreates in us a desire. Listen, Jesus' work for us recreates in us a desire to know and obey God. God's not just after getting us to do the right things, but to love the right things. And how do we change, how are we changed to love what's right?

That's where the law is. That's where religion, that's where commands cannot help us. The only way that our hearts can be changed is by seeing the beauty of God in the gospel. That's what changes the heart that loves the wrong to be something that loves the right.

It's time to love what's right and despise what's wrong. We need a permanent heart change that can only come from the gospel. A strong distinction made by Pastor J.D.

Greer here on Summit Life. J.D., the latest resource we are offering our listeners is called Kingdom Come, Twenty Devotions from Luke. And I know you have some specific aim in mind. So what do you hope that listeners will take away from this book? One of the things I find frustrating sometimes in preaching is how much more is in the text that we just don't have time to get into. And so we've produced this resource, this Kingdom Come, Twenty Devotions from Luke, as a way of taking you deeper into what Jesus is teaching in Luke and also just gives you a chance to be face to face with the scriptures and to hear from the Holy Spirit directly yourself. And so we want to give you this. It is something that I think would greatly enhance your wall with the Lord and your understanding of the gospel of Luke. These devotions are some of my thoughts that go along with Luke's perspective on what the issues he's bringing up look like in our day-to-day lives. There's a lot of application in them.

There are 20 of them. I think it'll be a wonderful companion to go with us. You can grab your copy right now if you go to jdgrier.com. I'm Molly Vitovich inviting you to join us again Thursday when Pastor JD explains that commands, rewards, and punishments might change our behavior, but it is only through God's grace that our hearts are actually changed. Join us Thursday on Summit Life with JD Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by JD Greer Ministries.