Resisting Temptation

Yeah. All right. How many of you, how many of you like going into something blind? Not this guy. See?

Nope. Not me. Not this guy. And if you know me, you know that is not the case. I do not like surprises at all.

Unless you get like a new Porsche or something in the parking lot, just, you know, come on by. But I do not like surprises. I like to know exactly what I'm going into. I don't like going into things blind. If one of you email me and you go, hey, Kevin, can we grab lunch or something and talk this week?

I want to talk to you about something. I'm like, yeah, I love it. I eat and meet two of my favorite things in the world to do. But I'm going to send you a follow up and say, what do you want to talk about? Because I don't like surprises.

Give me the details, let me know what's going on, how I can think about it, how I can be feeling about it, what I'm doing, what I'm walking into. How many of you know, it's good to know what you're going into when you can. Is that good? Why? So we can prepare, right?

Emotionally and mentally. Sometimes, like, spiritually, we can prepare for the thing that we're about to walk into. Like, some of you are traveling this summer, you're doing vacations, you're traveling different places. You don't just show up at an airport and go, hey, let's go, let's go. Figure out what we're gonna do you in advance.

You think about where you're going, what you're doing, and you pack properly for it so that you don't show up at the airport. And they're like, hey, you need to go back home. You don't have a ticket or you, you know, you get to some destination, you're like, oh, it's cold. I wish I had brought a jacket. You know, I've got four girls at home.

My second daughter, she's 12, and when we went to camp a couple of weeks ago, she packed for camp like two weeks in advance because she asked 20 or 30. I lost count at some point, 40 questions like, will we do this at camp? Is this going to happen? Is there a chance that this might happen? And she packs it all and has it all laid out for weeks.

And like next weekend for 4th of July, we've got family coming in town and three little boys, three little cousins are going to stay in her room. So this weekend, a full week in advance, she cleared her room. She thought about what can three little boys do to my room? And she prepared for everything so they won't destroy her stuff and cleaned it and made it very nice for them all so that they could make a big mess in it. How many of you know it's good to be prepared for something.

Yeah. Something I know about life, and I think you know this too. Sometimes life is going to throw stuff at you that you just are not prepared for. Can I get an amen? Yeah.

And when it happens, it will begin to cause you to shake. It will have you kind of shaking in your boots. And you may begin to think, like, I don't know how I'm going to make it through this stuff. And yet there's something I know that's going to happen. I guarantee to every one of you in this room, every one of you are going to face a particular thing.

And I want to talk to you today about how knowing what that thing is, we can prepare for it when it comes our way. Are you in for that kind of thing today? Yeah. You're in for that. Okay.

Last week, if you remember, we talked about this, I told you that God wants more for us. He wants more for us outside of our little box of privatized, moderate faith. He wants more for us if we'll just step out and trust him for it. If we'll just depend on him for it. He wants more for us than this little buttoned up life of faith.

He wants to bring us out into this deep and abiding relationship with Jesus where I think radical things will happen. The power of God will be at work in our lives and we'll be full of joy because we're walking with him and not walking in our own curated little cultural Christianity. We'll just push out of there. And I think you noticed this last week. Those of you who were here, you sensed it.

I felt the Lord was stirring in our church and has been for some months. But like, yes, I'm ready to step out of cultural Christianity into something that's full of life. I want to be made fully alive like Jesus talked about. And I can guarantee this, if you do that, every one of you will experience the same thing. You're going to experience temptation.

Okay? You're going to experience temptation to turn aside from the one that we've been turning towards. In fact, I guarantee this. We're going to talk about temptation today. And simply because we're going to talk about temptation, every one of you this week are going to feel tempted to turn aside from the God who loves you, in fact, probably some of you won't get out of the parking lot before or you've experienced some kind of temptation to go the other way.

And so knowing that that's coming, we can prepare for it. That's what we're going to do today. So grab your Bible, turn to Luke chapter four. Luke four is where we'll be. Those of you who are struggling to find it, it comes after Luke 3.

I'm funny just for the kids who aren't used to my humor. So last week when we were here, we saw that Jesus come to baptism for. For baptism to John. And he comes out there and his baptism was declaring some things about his life and his purpose on earth. When Jesus was baptized, he was declaring that he was all in.

He went under the water, came out of the water from head to toe. I'm all in for the plan of God and what he has sent me for. He's also declaring, I'm all in for these sinful people that I've come to. These people are coming to repent of sins and to turn to a Savior. And as their Savior, I'm coming to fully absorb their sins and fully make my life with theirs so they can fully make their life with me.

His baptism declared that. And it also declared that no matter the cost to him, that he would walk in this life and this mission that he had on this earth, all the way to the cross and beyond, that he was all in for that. Do you remember what happened right after Jesus baptism? He comes out of the water and there was the voice of God in heaven. We don't typically hear the voice speaking from heaven out loud, but audibly.

The Heavenly Father says, this is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. And not only do we get this audible voice of God, we also get the invisible God, the Holy Spirit, make himself visible. He goes, you know what I need to be seen for this moment? It is this incredible affirmation of Jesus purpose, his humility, his willingness to suffer all costs to raise us up. He gets affirmation from the Father and from the Spirit.

And immediately after that, he moves to the wilderness and he gets incredible temptation. It's affirmation, then temptation. And we're going to see this here in Luke chapter 4, verse 1. It says, Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan. That's where he was baptized.

Returned from the Jordan, was led around by the Spirit in the wilderness for 40 days. For 40 days he was being tempted by the devil. Mark's Gospel. When he's Writing about this gives us a greater sense of just the timeline. It says, immediately comes out of the water.

Immediately. The Spirit drove him to go out into the wilderness. Like he may not have even toweled off yet. He may be dripping from the Jordan. I don't know how far he walked, but he got out of the water.

You hear, this is my son in whom I'm well pleased. You see the Holy Spirit come down. And then immediately the Holy Spirit leads him into the wilderness. Remember this how in 1st Peter he wrote 1st Peter 5 8. Be of sober mind, be on the alert.

Our opposition, the devil is poised to pounce and would like to see nothing more than to catch us not ready. And we can see that's true even in the experience of Jesus here, the enemy is ready to attack. He does one thing that is in obedience and in humility and in faithfulness and in self sacrificing and in glory of the plan of God to bring redemption to our lives. He gets affirmation. And immediately the enemy goes, I'm ready.

And he attacks. A room this size, kids of every age, all these people, obviously there's a ton of different things that we are tempted by. And the things that I'm tempted by may not be the same things that you are tempted by, but you can look at your life and you can look at the different stages of your life, and probably you can see how in different stages that were different issues that you faced where you struggled a little more, walking in the way of life, in the way of, of God, and in seasons, maybe that changed. But you can see in every stage and every issue in every season is that we do have an enemy, a spiritual enemy of our souls who wants to steal, kill and destroy. And he is always throwing temptation in our faces to turn aside from God and not live by faith in him and to not live in the way of grace and in the way of love that Jesus carved out for us.

You see this with Jesus here. So I'm telling you, look, if he's brave enough to try to mess with Jesus, the God man, the eternal Son of God, you better believe he's going to mess with you and me and he's going to do it as soon as we walk out of this room. He may be doing it right now while we're in this room. And so I don't know what you're facing right now, but whatever that temptation is, just for a moment, maybe you think about the things that you have struggled with in your life. I want you to think about how if you just ran that thing out over the course of your life, if you just continued to struggle and to turn aside from God's plan in your life for the next six months or next year or the rest of your life, if you just take that on out for the rest of your life, you can see how one little.

Maybe I could just go this way for a moment. How eventually it never leads to anything good. It doesn't turn around. It doesn't get better. It doesn't get easier to fight against that temptation to sin.

It just gets worse. And it's destructive in your life. And it's like a virus, it's like a cancer. It doesn't remain in one little part of your life. It spreads.

Sin affects every area of your life. It may start with the sin of the eyes or the hands or whatever. It may be an attitude or whatever it is, but it begins to take over your body very quickly. It takes over your life. And it doesn't just hurt you, but it hurts others around you.

It affects the relationships you have. And it will destroy our witness to a world who does not believe in God because. Because they will look at us and go, even the Christians aren't satisfied in Jesus. Look at them. They would rather make a mess in the mud like the rest of us than walk in faith in Jesus.

So it will ruin our witness, too. And it's happening and it's going to happen. And there's not a person in this room who's not susceptible to the temptations that will come our way. Especially not me. I mean, you guys watch the news, you see what's happening with pastors on tv.

My gosh, none of us are exempt from this. Please don't think that we are. And so knowing it's coming, we've got to prepare for it. So I want you to see how Jesus deals with this in this moment in his life. In Luke 4, verse 1, again, full of the Holy Spirit returning from his baptism in the Jordan, led by the Spirit in the wilderness for 40 days, being tempted.

He ate nothing during those days. And when those days had ended, he became hungry. Like, that's a line that probably didn't have to be included. He didn't eat for 40 days, and then he was hungry. Except it may be a good thing because it reminds us that Jesus wasn't above the human frailty in that moment.

Right when Jesus was born a human. Yes, he's still fully God, but he put off Philippians 2, says the rights and the privileges of being God he emptied himself of those things. And so in this moment, for 40 days, he doesn't eat. Guess what? He's hungry.

Because he is susceptible to everything that we are susceptible to. He got tired, he got hungry, he got disappointed. He experienced the kinds of things that we experience. It's a good thing it's here. And the devil said to him, if you are the Son of God, remember immediately he was driven out to the wilderness.

But what happened right before that? The Father's voice from heaven, God, the Father says, this is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. And then one moment later, the enemy goes, if you even are his son, right? And this is what he does all the time. Satan likes to put question marks in your life where God has put periods.

And it's always like this. When there's a moment of grace, there's a moment of blessing, there's a moment of affirmation from God, he immediately seeks to undermine it. It's like. Like when bright light brings out nasty bugs at night. You know, you go out on your patio, everything's fine, you turn the light on, and suddenly they're all swarming everywhere.

That's how Satan works. Whenever God seeks to do a great thing in your life and to just pour life into your soul, the enemy's gonna go, mm, I'm coming after that now. And he does that here. Jesus gets affirmation. And Satan goes, if you even are his son, he says, tell these stones here to become bread.

And Jesus answered to him, he's hungry. Jesus answered him and said, it is written that man shall not live on bread alone. And so after this incredible moment of obedience and self sacrifice and just displaying the humility and glory of the Son of God, the affirmation, suddenly he's attacked and his identity is attacked. That's the first thing. But Satan is strategic.

If you are the Son of God, if you even are. And he goes at what? He goes after his base hunger. He goes, this guy's hungry. This is easy, right?

If you are the Son of God, I know how hungry you are. Just turn the stones to bread, because you could do that if you're the Son of God. And he's clever. It's really not about food. Food's his end.

But what temptation number one is about is about our desires. It's about our base desires. It's what we desire. If we'll trust in God to meet that desire of our life, of our heart, or if we will begin to doubt that God can provide for us the thing that we want the thing that deep down we're craving. And I love Jesus response.

He doesn't just say, I'm good because he is hungry, right? He didn't say, I'm not that hungry. But he quotes Scripture. And what he's quoting is from the Old Testament. It's from the Exodus story.

It's from after Israel has been brought out of slavery, out of Egypt. They're in the wilderness, by the way. And he's quoting Deuteronomy 8, verse 3, says this. He humbled you and he let you be hungry. He let you be hungry and he fed you with manna miracles here, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that there's a reason for it.

Israel's in the wilderness. They're hungry. He provides for them so that he would make you to understand that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds from the mouth of God. The context is Israel has been brought out of slavery, they've been brought out of Egypt, they've been brought into the wilderness, and here they're getting hungry. And God is allowing them to be in a place of hunger because he's teaching their hearts and their lives before he gives them the place of promise.

He's teaching them to depend on him so that when they get into a place of abundance in their life where blessing is obvious, they won't turn to other gods or they won't say, look at that we've done. He's training them in their hearts and their minds to trust in him and to rest in him so that they won't be slaves again. Slaves to work or slaves to greed, or slaves to we have to have it this way. He takes them into a place of physical hunger and then provides for them with miracles so they will see God alone is the One who provides for us. And I will trust in him.

And. And so Jesus, when he's tempted by Satan, he's hungry. And Satan goes, aren't you hungry? Look at this. Just turn these stones into bread.

And Jesus goes, just like the children of Israel when they were wandering around in the wilderness. I will trust in what he provides. And I will not make for myself, I will not take for myself. I will trust, but he will provide for me. The reality is that you and I have all kinds of hungers and desires in our lives that Satan wants, wants to exploit.

There's the hunger for belonging, to have a person, a friend or boyfriend or girlfriend, a spouse, a family. Hunger for belonging, a hunger for intimacy. There's A hunger for security in our lives, that I'll be okay and I don't have to worry about my next day, that things are provided for me. I gotta provide for myself sometimes. I'm thinking that way we get these hungers in our life that Satan wants to exploit.

He wants to use those things to tempt us to take our eyes off of God. And the way he does it is by making us hyper focused on those things. Think about this, Jesus, 40 days, no food. He goes, wouldn't you like a little bread right now? You know, you could take these stones and turn them into Hawaiian rolls, Jesus, wouldn't that be delicious?

And he makes him hyper. He's trying to make him hyper focused on the things that he's craving, his body is hungry for. And this is the same thing that Satan does in our lives. Like, I'm doing fine, I'm okay. And Satan goes, don't you want this?

Isn't this something that deep down you've been craving in your life? And you go, yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm a little hungry, but I'm okay. He goes, yeah, yeah, but think about how hungry you are right now. Then my stomach starts to growl. Yeah, I am hungry.

I'm actually kind of starving. And whatever that hunger is in your life, whether it's intimacy or security or belonging or provisions of any kind, anything that the flesh desires, he gets you hyper focused on it, where you're thinking about it and your craving just grows and grows and you begin to say, well, if I just feed the desire for a moment, just a snack, you know, I don't eat a full meal, just like one roll, just take the edge off a little bit. If I take what I see with my eyes, at least I'll just be better for. And then, you know, I've got the strength to endure beyond this. I just, I just need a bite right now.

Just a little bite. But it's the bite that gets us. Some of you are like, man, I'd love to go to Olive Garden and get some never ending breadsticks right now, you know? But it's not about the food, it's about our desires. It's those things that we see with our eyes and we go, if I could just have this, then I would be okay, but I gotta have this thing.

And Satan wants to take us out in that way. He goes to Jesus and he takes the same approach. What happens is he takes a good thing like bread, you know, like a good job or like, you know, good friends at school. He takes it like a girlfriend or a boyfriend or marriage or a family, children, takes a good thing and he makes it an ultimate thing. That's what Satan does where it becomes like a God thing, a little false God or a little idol in our life.

It's a good thing, makes it an ultimate thing. It becomes an idle thing, then it becomes a bad thing. Bread wasn't a bad thing. Going after it and taking for myself was a bad thing. Taking my eyes off of what the Lord will provide and trusting Satan's temptations was a bad thing.

And Jesus says there's a right way and there's a wrong way to feed those desires within. And he quotes scripture and says, I'm going to trust in God's provision. The first round goes to Jesus. Ding, ding. Second round, second round, verse five.

He led him up, he showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment. And the devil said to Jesus, I will give you all this domain in its glory, for it's been handed over to me and I give it to whoever I wish. Therefore if you worship me, it shall all be yours. And Jesus answered him. And he said to him, it's written, you shall worship the Lord your God and serve him only.

So Jesus resisted the base desires of hunger. And Satan now turns to a different desire in our life, one for control and one for power. And he goes after the desire in every human heart to have things our way. Temptation number two is this. It's about power, control and where to surrender our lives.

It's about where will we seize power, what will we do to get power when we feel that we don't have it, or what compromise will we make in order to try to have things more and more our way. And Satan gives Jesus a vision of the kingdoms of the known world. Because look at everything out there. There are kings and there are nations and I have the power to give them all over to you, where they will follow you, they will do what you say, they will bow before you as king, but you first have to bow before me. And Satan's not lying about his ability to give these over.

He's telling the truth. First John 5, 19 says, the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. He has some freedom to reign and to turn men's minds and hearts. Jesus said in John 14, he calls the devil the ruler of the world. And so in this moment, what Satan is saying, I don't think he's lying.

I think he's telling the truth. If you'll bow before me, I'M going to turn these people's hearts and minds to where they will bow before you. And Jesus hearing this, I mean, I don't know how quick this moves through his mind, but he knows what's ahead for him is rejection. It's persecution, it's people spitting on him, it's being betrayed by his friends, it's being beaten, it's being arrested, it's being crucified. He knows that things, things are ahead for his life.

That's what he's going to do after he comes down off of this mountain, out of the wilderness. And Satan is saying, look, Son of God, all you have coming, you can just bypass that stuff. You see the end of you ruling, sure, fine, you rule, but you can bypass all the pain. You don't need to go through all of this, Son of God. So just take a knee, take a knee.

I'll make it happen the easy way. And you can have authority and power and control. And again, when Jesus replies, he says, it's written, you shall worship the God, the Lord God, and serve him only. Guess what? He's quoting again from Deuteronomy, this time, chapter 6.

Same context, same story. Deuteronomy 6. Then it shall come about when the Lord your God brings you into the land which he swore to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And God begins to talk about how they will enter into a promised land where their life will be provided for and they will have like they have not had for generations upon generations upon generations. And it will be sweet.

They will taste and see the Lord is good. And they won't have to go looking very hard to find it. It will be laid out before them. And God reminds them, I'm the one who brought you out of slavery. I brought you out of Egypt.

I'm with you in the wilderness, guiding you through it. A cloud by day and a fire by night. I am providing for you. Miraculous. I'm the one who's done it.

You didn't take these things in your hands. So all I want from you is when you move into the promised land, to not forget me. That's what I want. Because I want your heart. I'm not worried about all this stuff.

I'm not worried about all these days. I want your heart. I want your life. I want what's best for you. I want you to walk in grace and to live in freedom.

So don't forget me when you have, like you've been forgetting me when you have not. And he says to them, you shall fear only the Lord. Your God. And you shall worship him and swear by his name. You shall not follow other gods, any of the gods of the peoples around you.

Now, we know Israel's history. Did they do good at this? No. They frequently would trust in themselves. They trust in their own strength.

They trust in their own armies. They trust in their wealth. We know that they would say, you know what, God? All the other nations have a king. We think it would be better for us to have a king than have a God.

I mean, not that we're that far off some days, right? If only I had a human leader who was great, well, then, you know, everything would be fine. God is not enough. I need a human leader. They would do this, and they would frequently turn aside and worship other gods.

They would frequently compromise their beliefs and their integrity in order to have life just 10% better or 10% more in the way that they think that it should be in life. And we see this all the time. This is why young Christians will turn their backs on their beliefs. They will compromise their integrity. They will cling to a president or a political party.

They'll cling to anything that they can to make life 10% more like they think that it ought to be. We're tempted to do so. If I'll just take a knee here, then I can have a little more power and control over the things of this world, and I can make things better if only. If only I could get there. Now, this is the temptation that Satan was tempting Jesus with.

Look, just compromise a little and you get it all. And you can do whatever you want then, but just, you got to compromise a little now. And maybe some of you are resisting temptations of the flesh. You're like stones, bread. I'm okay.

Satan's gonna come at you with a second attempt like he did with Jesus, and it's gonna be about power. It's going to be about the things that you feel like you have no control over in your life, but you desperately want it because you go, life would be just a little better if I had this. We love the feeling of power. You know, we love life being more like we think it ought to be. And maybe what we think is God's way, maybe we think that, but certainly, do you think that the Father in heaven wants Jesus to be the Lord of all?

Yes. And Satan says, well, we can have it done right now. You don't have to go through the suffering part. You could just have the authority part. And we attempted by that, too.

Like, I could make it more God's way I could. I know I got a sacrifice and compromise to get there, but you know it'll be better in the end. We love the feeling of being on top. We love the feeling of not having to suffer on the way to what's ahead. But Jesus says, you know what?

There's no way I'd compromise. There's no way I'd take a knee to you. Because I trust in God's plans and his plans are always the best plans. And if it takes me through this trouble on the way, I know he will deliver in the end. So I, like the children of God, will believe that they struggled with, but like God had for them a plan and he was working out the plan.

And I will faithfully wait on the plan because I know that his plan is the best plan. I'm not taking a knee now to get the authority immediately. So round two goes to Jesus. Ding ding, verse nine. And he led him to Jerusalem and he had him stand on the pinnacle of the temple.

And he said to him, if you are the Son of God writ this business again, if you are, throw yourself down from here, for it's written, he will command his angels concerning you to guard you, and on their hands they will bear you up so that you will not strike your foot against the stone. All right, so Satan goes against his base desires and he resists that. Then he goes after his just the human desire for power and to not suffer on the way to it. And Jesus resists that. And so now Satan has been hearing Jesus words and he recognizes them as scripture.

He knows the word, by the way. Satan knows the Bible. He knows what God has said. It's not a mystery to him. He knows it better than a lot of us.

Doesn't mean he follows it, doesn't mean he submits to it, but he knows it. And so he goes, you know what? I'm going to quote some scripture back at him. See how this thing works. And what he quotes is Psalm 91, 11 and 12.

But he takes out a few words here and there, right? People do that, don't they? Satan does that. He quotes scripture at Jesus, but takes a few words out and twists the meaning when he does that. He says, look, God's commanding his angels and they'll care for you, so why don't you just jump?

And this is, by the way, another great way to receive power and glory. Now because all these people are going to see jump from a high, high place and they're going to see a swarm of angels scoop you up. Now everyone's going to bow when you do that, for crying out loud. Jesus answered verse 12. And he said to him, it is said, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test.

And again, anyone surprised here? Jesus is quoting the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 6 again. You shall not put the Lord your God to test as you tested him at Massah. Anyone know what happened at Massah? You'll know it right away when I tell you it's a story that's very familiar, probably for a lot of you if you grew up in church.

It's in Exodus 17. The people of Israel have come out of Egypt. They come out of slavery. They're in the wilderness. They're hungry and thirsty.

And they begin to throw up their voices to Moses and throw up their voices to God and say, we should have just stayed in slavery in Egypt. Why did you bring us out here to die of hunger and thirst? Are you even listening? Are you even watching? Do you even and care, God?

And God says to Moses, I want you to take that staff that I empowered the Holy Spirit empowered to lead the people out of Egypt, and I want you to go over to the rock of the mountain. I just want you to just to strike it. And water will flow out and the people will drink and they'll be satisfied and they'll know it came from me. And it says, then they named the place Messiah because that's where the people were fighting and arguing and asking God, are you even real and do you even care? Are you even with us?

We see people do this, and we do this, too. There are moments in our life when we're in the wilderness and we go, God, are you even with me on this? Do you even care about the suffering that I'm going through in my life? And we'll take God's words that have been laid out before us. We've read it, we've heard it, and we'll go, I don't even know if any of this means anything to my life today.

And what happens is that we will have these temptations that are right in front of our face. And when we have this temptation and we're aware of it, two things will happen. One, we'll begin to think about. I know that if I step this way that there's a moment and there's a day where I'm going to have to face my maker and I'm going to be held accountable for the choices that I make in this life. And we have one part of our brain saying this, but Another part of our brain is saying, yeah, but is God really even paying attention?

Like, this isn't that big of a deal. There's a lot going on in the world and I'm not even sure that God cares that much about this choice. I mean, the Bible doesn't exactly say how to use the computer, doesn't exactly say how to drive your car. I mean, there's a lot of things the Bible doesn't say. Probably the Bible has been interpreted wrong.

There's been some problems here and some of these verses seem a little outdated and doesn't feel like they fit in a modern world. So maybe it's not that big of a deal. If I see this temptation, I go, ah, I'm just going to move in this way. And the problem is we're trying to fit our theology into our sin. We want our sin more than we want God to be God in our life.

We want our sin more than having a holy and just and graceful, full of mercy, full of loving kindness. God in our life. We want our sin more than we want the Word of God to speak words of life. And so we will twist our doctrine to fit our circumstances. And that's the third temptation is to change our theology in order to fit it, to fit our sin into it.

We do that. We're tempted to change our beliefs in order to accommodate sinful actions in our life. But Jesus refused to do it. Verse 13. The devil had finished every temptation.

He left him until an opportune time. He's not done tempting. Just round three went to Jesus. Ding, ding. Right.

So I want to peel some layers off of this really quickly for you. I think this is pretty beautiful here. So you got Jesus. He comes out of the Jordan being baptized. He's affirmed by the Father and by the Spirit.

He goes into the wilderness. How long is he in the wilderness? 40 days. And there he's hungry and he is tempted. What's on Jesus mind with every temptation is Israel.

When they had come out of slavery and they had gone into the wilderness, Remember Moses went up on Mount Sinai for how long? 40 days. And how long was Israel in the wilderness? 40 years. They came through the Red Sea, a baptism, so to speak, into the wilderness with a bunch of 40s here.

And they were tempted very much in the same way as Jesus was because he keeps calling back their story. Go further back. Then let's go back to the Garden of Eden and Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Now they're not in the wilderness, are they? No.

And they're not hungry like Israel in the wilderness or Jesus when he's fasting? No, they have everything they need. Everything that a human would ever need to be satisfied and happy, they have. In the Garden of Eden, there's no hunger, but there's still temptation. There's still temptation there.

And the way that Adam and Eve were tempted is the same way as Israel in the wilderness and the same way as Jesus. During this period of Luke 4, the first temptation was this. They look and they go, isn't that tree good for food, man? It's a delight to the eyes. To Jesus, Satan says, just take these rocks and make them into bread that is good to eat.

Same thing. Second temptation in the Garden of Eden was, if you eat this, guess what? You could be just like God. And so Jesus says, just take a bow. Look, everything could be.

You could be the ruler of everything here. Go back to the Garden of Eden. The third temptation, he goes, did you really understand what God said? May have misunderstood it. Did he really say that you're going to die if you eat from the fruit of the tree?

Surely not. That's not what he really meant, not going to die. He says, oh, God's word. Let me throw it at you. I'm going to twist it a little bit.

Surely you can jump. I mean, everything's going to be good. Is that really what God's word said? It's the same tricks, guys. And there's so many different ways that you're going to be tempted this week.

Dozens and dozens of ways, simply because we talked about it this week. My goodness. Last Sunday was a phenomenal day for our church. There were beautiful things that happened in the morning, in the afternoon, and in the evening with student ministry. I loved it.

By Sunday night, I was already being tempted to turn aside from God, not to leave my faith, not to do some super depraved thing, but in these same three things, to feed my base desires, to try to control things that feel out of my control. Right? And to go, what is it that God's word says to me in this situation? How do I play this? And this is what he's going to do in your life.

And he's doing it. We see people every day falling to these things. It's going to manifest itself in hundreds of ways in your life, but it's going to come down to these three things pretty much all the time. There are things that you crave and you want, and the enemy is going to say, you can have it, just take it. He's going to Say things feel a little out of control, but if you'll compromise a little bit, it'll probably work out in your favor.

He's going to say, no. You know what? It's really about this. You've misunderstood God's word. You're free to do this thing now.

The Bible doesn't really have a lot to say or it's out of date for this modern world. It's going to come down to these three things, over and over. Knowing it's happening, you can be prepared. Jesus wasn't surprised by Satan's attack, and that's why he was able to respond to it. And we got to be ready to respond, too.

So there's some things I want you to hear. Number one, Peter's right. He is prowling around like a roaring lion seeking for someone to devour. He is going to attack you. None of us are exempt from that.

Oftentimes it's going to happen. Or two, when you're isolated, it's going to happen. When you separated yourself from other people, it's going to happen after great spiritual moments, like nasty bugs on light.

When it happens, what are we going to do? Can't ignore it. We can't pretend like it's not happening, but we respond to it in the Spirit of God. Verse 1 said that Jesus was full of the Holy Spirit. Of course he was.

But guess what? The Bible says you are too if you're a Christian, that you are filled with the Holy Spirit, that he's dwelling within you. But it also says, be filled with the Holy Spirit, which reminds us not that he leaves, but that every day we're being filled by voices telling us who we are. If you are a child of God, then telling us what to do, what to care about, what to love, what to chase with our life. We're being filled with stuff every day.

That's why the Bible says, keep being filled by the Holy Spirit. Every day, wake up and say, holy Spirit, would you fill my mind? Would you flood my heart? That I would think the thoughts of God, feel affection for the things of God and that I would walk in life and life abundant and not some. Some path that leads to my destruction and can end up hurting others too.

So face temptation in the Spirit of God and with the Word of God, as Jesus did. Because. Because the Word of God has the ability to diminish and drive Satan away. Right? And then he went away.

Said, okay, I'm done messing around with Jesus for now.

You can only respond with the word of God if it's in you. If you're hiding his word in your heart, if you're taking this book and you, like in Jeremiah, eat this book, you know, take it in so that what comes out of your mouth as that which belongs to God. There's one more thing I want you to hear today. If you have fallen, if you've been tempted and fallen, that's all of us. A lot of times in our life, the enemy wants you to die in your sin.

Oh, he does. He wants so badly for you to go. You screwed up and it'll never be okay. You'll never be okay. And he will bury you with shame and guilt and feelings of helplessness that become hopelessness so quick.

He wants you to die in your sin. You messed up. You're done, son. That's not God's heart for you, and that's not his word for you. He just wants you to turn to His Son.

He wants you to repent. He wants you to turn to His Son and receive from him life and life abundant. So if you have struggled, if you face temptation, and maybe it surprised you, you didn't realize what was even happening. You just started down a path and you got somewhere down the path and you went, oh, my goodness, how did I get here? All you do now is you turn to the Son of God, Jesus, who came from eternity to enter time, put on flesh, emptied himself of glory so that he could raise us up, died on a cross, resurrected so that every knee will bow and say, jesus is Lord, and he invites us to come to him.

This is the thief who comes to steal, kill and destroy. But he comes to make you fully alive. I want you to hear that this morning. Can I pray for you?

Holy Spirit, would you help us to turn back to God to allow his word to speak life to our souls? Jesus, that you came and you walked this path shows us it can be done. But I pray that we wouldn't trust in our strength to have it done. We would know that it's your power and strength that can do in us and through us things that we can never do. The most important thing we could hear today is that we cannot resist temptation to sin.

We can, can't, but we can fall on you. And you can do it through us. You proved it.

I pray that our hearts and our minds would take this on today. Religion says, work harder, do better. But the good news is, fallen Jesus follow Jesus. And as we do, I pray that you would bring about miracles in our lives. Life.

Would you build us up so that we would walk in life and life abundance so that you would be glorified ultimately. And so that a watching world would say, I need that too. It's in Jesus name, amen.