The Temptation of Jesus

0:00All right, while you have your Bibles there in Matthew 4, rewind to the last verse of chapter 3. You just heard the wilderness story. You got this fresh in your mind of what is about to happen. So I want you to see the verse that leads into this that closes the third chapter where Jesus has just been baptized in the Jordan River. And in verse 17, a voice comes from heaven and says, this is my son, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased. And then I want you to continue back into the text you just heard to chapter 4, verse 3, where the tempter came and said to him, if you are the son, command these stones to become loads of bread. And I want you to see your very first and most crucial connection for today's message. Jesus hears God say, this is my beloved son and whom I am well pleased. Jesus hasn't performed one miracle yet. Jesus has done nothing in public but be baptized. And the voice from heaven declares him, chosen and beloved, this is my son.

1:03And the very first thing to challenge that identity is Jesus steps out of the water, goes down into the wilderness to spend 40 days and 40 nights. And on the 41st day, the devil comes to him and says, if you are the son. Last thing he heard, I'm a son. First question he receives, are you sure? This is an important piece of information because this is the underlying attack of the devil in the wilderness on Jesus and therefore the underlying attack on you in your wilderness is going to involve first and foremost, not exclusively, but first and foremost, it's going to involve an attack against what you know about yourself. An attack against your own understanding of righteousness, your own understanding of identity. Am I everything the Bible says I am? Am Pastor Paul says I'm this? The Bible says I'm this? Am I this?

2:05And you're going to go into your own battle and your own wilderness. And I can't help you there. No hand holding. Mama dad's not there, pastor's not there. It's you and the Holy Spirit in you facing off with every question against your sanity and your righteousness and your spirituality. And they're going to happen in the darkest times of your life. And they're going to happen in the worst moments of your emotions. And that's why their wilderness is. Jesus doesn't go into the palace to be tempted of the devil. He doesn't go into the soft place of his living room. He doesn't get to chill and lounge chair while the enemy... No, it's always in our worst spot, right? It's always when we face our darkest moment we find out what we're made of. And so I want to take you on a little journey today and I want to look at what the enemy throws at Jesus. And I want to look at how Jesus responds to the enemy and I want to find out why. And I want, as an underlying thought, that sonship argument. Jesus knows Jesus' son, the devil questions whether he's a son.

3:06Jesus is tempted to prove he's a son through actions and doing things. Not all of which would even be bad things to do. In fact, here's some thoughts to get you started. Everything the devil tempts Jesus to do, Jesus can do. He can turn stones to bread. He can fall off the edge of the temple and angels will pick him up. He can even take over the kingdoms of the world. All of those are on the table in these temptations. And then there are all things Jesus is actually tempted to do. Because they're not good temptations if you're not tempted to do them. This is an easy one. We all look at people and go, well, how in the world could they do that? And that's because it's not your temptation. And so it's easy to look at people who fall in areas you're strong in and wonder what's wrong with them. Because they're not the temptations you face. But then if they were to be able to see your temptations, they might say the same thing to you. Why is she so weak?

4:06Why is he have such a problem with that? Okay, so the enemy is only going to go after the things that are actual temptations. And so that tells me that every single one of these are temptations for Jesus. Jesus is actually tempted to turn stones to bread. Circumvent other ways and just do the miraculous. Maybe he's actually tempted to call in the angels of heaven to pull him out of situations. That's why he's going to face it across when there are legions of angels that can pull him off the cross and the temptation has got to be great. Your enemies are beating you and all you got to do is snap your fingers and you get to win what a temptation. Or maybe there is a real temptation for Jesus to take over the kingdoms of the earth quickly rather than to go through the means of the cross and the resurrection. And then they're not just what he could do and they're not just what he's tempted to do. They're actually things he eventually will do. At least in part, he will multiply bread supernaturally.

5:08He will have angels bear him up out of the tomb. Or he comes up out of the grave in a supernatural miraculous way and he will take the kingdoms of the earth and make them his own and have them bow to him. So these are very real, even if they don't look very real to us. Because I remember as I would read these coming up and think, boy, I wish some of his temptations had been a little more like mine. You know, like the devil's never said to me, hey Paul, won't you turn those stones to bread? Because he kind of knows that'd be stupid. I can't turn stones to bread. That's not even the temptation. I mean, if I had the power to turn stones to bread, I'd probably try it just to do it. You know, why not? I was never tempted to throw myself off of a high building and see if the angels would catch me. I was pretty sure you'd splat. And I was never directly tempted by the devil to bow my knee down and worship him

6:11and then give me something in return. I wished he would have said something that affected a teenage boy when I was a teenage boy. I wish he would have said, that's me. But I also know that Hebrews 4.15 tells me he was tempted and all points like as I am yet without sin so that he could sympathize with us. And that tells me that the whole purpose of what we're doing today in Matthew 4 is not for you to find out how good Jesus is. We could have done that without Matthew 4. It's to show you that Jesus sympathizes with all of the things that you go through, all the times you are tempted and all the times you fail. He has learned in his humanity to sympathize with you. It's one thing for us to say God knows everything. Yeah, there's God. He knows everything. He's divine. But that doesn't really help you in your humanity. It just makes you go, boy, God's so much bigger than me. He's surely disappointed in me. It's when you see Him in Jesus. Jesus comes down and becomes us.

7:11And then when you see Jesus, it's even easy then to go, boy, that's the kind of man I'm supposed to be. That's tough. But we need to stop that business. We're not here to compare ourselves with how we're living versus Jesus. What we are to take is that Jesus became us not so that we could live like Him. Jesus became us so that He would hold the sympathy of what it means to live as us. So that then we could understand that our father sympathizes with everything we go through because he has been one of us. I had a man come to me this week. One of my neighbors walked up. I was sitting outside and he walked over and we had a long conversation about the state of the world. And he told me how unfair it was that his relatives had gotten cancer. I mentioned another person that was unfair that they had lost a loved one. He said, and he wasn't making any proclamations of being a believer or being an agnostic or an atheist or an unbeliever at all.

8:11Just making observations. And he goes, yeah, I know that it even makes me question God. And I couldn't help but believe the Holy Spirit walked into my garage for a reason. I mean, he could have walked up and said that to anybody. And then we would have got a lot of different responses. But it gave me 10 or 15 minute chance to introduce the love of God and how our father is actually in our disaster, not standing outside causing our disaster. And it prepped my heart to stand here today with you having Jesus in the wilderness is that Jesus goes down in so that when the bad thing happens to you, you will realize that the bad thing is happening to Jesus. It isn't God standing off to see how you'll handle yourself. It's God letting you know that he has been there and is there in that moment with you. When you lose someone, he's losing someone. When something bad happens to you, something bad is happening to him. He's able to sympathize with how we feel because he feels it.

9:12As us so that he's facing what we face. If it's hitting us, it's hitting him. If it's tearing your heart out, it's tearing his heart out. He's feeling our pain. He's crying when we cry. He's laughing when we laugh. That's why we're told to do the same. So that we are reflections of God to our neighbor. So that if it's hurting Greg, it's hurting me. If it's making Sandy happy, it's making me happy. I'm sharing as best as I can. I'm not God and neither are you. But as best as I can be a reflection of my Savior, I'm sharing in your infirmities and in your joy and in your sorrow and in your pain. And the worst thing I can do is say, get over it. Be faithful. Show yourself to be a man in this moment. No, I can cry with you. I can weep with you. I don't have to wallow and stay forever, but I can get down there with you if the woman in adultery is in the dirt. Jesus will play in the dirt.

10:12In John 8, they throw her at his feet. And so Jesus goes all the way down to the dirt and writes in the sand. And we've argued about what he wrote. It doesn't matter what he wrote. It matters that he was eye level with the woman caught in adultery. But she's dirty. He's dirty. She feels them looking at her. He feels them looking at him. He's him catching her eye and saying, I know how you feel. They don't like me either. I know how you feel. They're judging me right now as hard as they're judging you. And then go into bat on her behalf. That's the temptation of Jesus. That's Jesus facing off with the enemy. Not to show you how to win blow by blow, but to take the blow and show you that there's a tomorrow and walk out of that wilderness. Now he's doing things symbolically. For sure. Look at Matthew 4. I want to show you that symbolically. Watch verse 1 and verse 2. Jesus is led by the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.

11:15He fasted 40 days and 40 nights and afterwards he was famished. symbolically for Israel, these have big meanings. Israel went into the wilderness. How long was she there? Not 40 days and 40 nights, but 40 years. Jesus doesn't have time to be in the wilderness 40 years. So he condenses the story down into the same manageable number that represents the same thing. 40 days had meant something to Israel. It had meant something to Elijah and his fasting in the wilderness. And it means something when Jesus copies the 40 years journey down into Israel's wilderness. So it's Jesus as Israel going into the wilderness, squaring off with the enemy and coming out the other side. According to numbers, when Israel was in the wilderness, they were attacked by snakes. Thenima snakes bit them. And as the venom coursed through their bodies, God showed up and spoke to Moses and said, put a brass serpent on a pole, hold it up.

12:16And if in the Israelites will make eye contact with it, I'll pull the venom out of their bodies. And supernaturally, God extracts venom from the venom bites of the Israelites as they stare at the snake on the pole. He doesn't kill all snakes. He just pulls the venom out of their body. He doesn't kill all devils in your wilderness. He just gives you a way to overcome the devil. Don't consider God a bad God because he doesn't remove snakes in your wilderness. No, he goes down into the wilderness with you. Takes the snake bite for you. And at the cross becomes the brass serpent on the pole if I'm lifted up. He said, I'll draw all to me. Draw all judgment. Draw all men. Maybe draw all venom. Maybe he becomes the one who draws out of you the venom that has been destroying you, that bit you in your darkest moment, that got you. It knocked you down and you thought disqualified you. But the cross draws it out. Christ becomes the draw. So Israel can see herself in this story, but Jesus is fulfilling her story.

13:16He's becoming the climactic promise. He is becoming what Israel could never become. So we have Israel there 40 days. We have wildernesses there. And then we have a conversation, the tempter, if you are the son of God. I wanted you to listen carefully to the Eve story, but I want to show you a couple of highlights from Genesis 3. If you'll go back there because I want you to see that conversation as a mirror of the conversation that Jesus has in Matthew 4. A conversation with the devil in Matthew 4, and a conversation with the serpent in Genesis 3. The serpent is more crafty in verse 1 than any other walled animal that the Lord had made. And he says to the woman, did God say, and I want you to note this important parallel. The devil says to Jesus in Matthew, if you're the son, you would do this. Questions Jesus' identity.

14:18Notice the first thing the snake says to Eve, did God say, questions God's authority. And so the enemy is always out to question what you know about God. And this is why I beg of you every week to hear it and receive it of what God says about you, because it's the thing that the enemy is going to come after during the week. Is what do you know about your own walk with God? If you don't know it, you can't understand or comprehend it, and he'll begin to make you question it until you don't know who you are in Christ at all. And there are so many Christians with no understanding that they are sons and daughters of God, that they are the righteousness of God, and because they don't know that they keep trying to become something they already are, they keep trying to work for something they already have, they keep trying to pay God off for what's already been paid for, because of bad information, they always come into them with a question mark. Are you sure? Are you sure? Are you sure you're forgiven?

15:18Are you sure you're God's righteousness? Are you sure that you're going to make heaven your home? It doesn't take long to turn on a preacher, and they'll ask you to. Sometimes it ain't hard for all of us to do the devil's work. You know? I mean, he comes clouded, he comes designed as an angel with light a lot, because a lot of times we'll say in the name of Jesus, and then slap three questions on you that are just meant to condemn you, that are just meant for you to get yourself straightened out. It sounds a lot like the devil going, you know, if you were a son, I mean, I don't think you'd have done that. I mean, I know what you did this week. If you were a son, you wouldn't have said that. If you were a daughter of God, you wouldn't be thinking this way. Now, I know this room's too holy to admit that you've ever had any of this. This room is just too close to God for that, but I mean, I'm going to assume if I was in a normal room, that there would be some people who struggled a little bit during the week

16:18and thought, oh, my goodness, I had that exact thought this week. It crossed my mind. Man, if I was really a Christian, I wouldn't have said that. Does that sound familiar? I mean, if I was really... Man, I've been going to the garden. If I was growing half as much as I thought I was, I wouldn't even be thinking this way. Sound familiar? You know, boy, I'm glad nobody knows how I really feel. They'd be so disappointed in me. Sound familiar? Listen, I have all of those. I have all of those. That's par for the course for me going down into my wildernesses. Is the devil showing up going, you sure about that? Question mark, question mark. Just question mark, question mark, question mark. Where I'm just fighting and wrestling out. And I have to go back to Matthew 4. I have to go back and watch how Jesus does it to handle my own situations and my own discouragements and my own wildernesses, so I know you've got them. They just don't all look the same. And you don't want everybody as an audience in your wilderness. You don't want people down in there watching how badly you fail

17:18every test and every struggle. Hey, man, no, you don't want it, but you do have Jesus in there with you. And he's not standing over there going, gosh, that was disappointing. What a terrible showing. Can you do better next time? No, he sympathizes with our weakness. He sympathizes with our weaknesses and says, I know why you. I know. I know we failed. I know you messed that up. It's okay, look to me. I'll pull the poison out. Yes. Look to me. I'll pull the venom out. Come here. I know it was a bad week. Yeah, you had a terrible day. That was awful. I mean, I hurt watching. But I hurt because I know how it feels, too. Look to me. Let's spend some time together. And he extracts the poison. The venom begins to be released as you take his healing and his grace and his forgiveness and his mercy and his peace floods your soul. The scripture that was quoted early today for you from Second Corinthians 3, Mark talked about. This is a scripture we used last week that we built on with your transfigured.

18:22Did you see that text? Your transformed, transfigured from one degree of glory to the next. And what I heard in my spirit as Mark read that is, if there's a chance in this sermon a day, reinforce that one more time, transformation does not happen automatically. Transformation comes in degrees. It comes in stages where one day I'm not able to see that in me. And the next day I am able to see that in me. And it comes in degrees where I start to transform into the person that I know I'm born to be. Yes, I know I'm a son, but I'm not acting like it all the time. I'm not thinking like it, I'm not talking like it. But one degree of understanding Dad's love to the next degree of understanding Dad's love. One degree of receiving is forgiveness, compounded on the next degree of receiving is forgiveness. Then I'm steps ahead of where I used to be. And it's all because I've watched how Jesus does it. Eve opens her eyes to an alternate universe. Look, stay there in Genesis 3 for a moment.

19:24The woman said, we need to have the fruit of the trees of the garden. Verse 3, but God said, you shall not eat the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden. Or touch it, or you shall die. By the way, this might be semantics, but God never told them not to touch it. God said, don't eat it because the longer you talk with the enemy, the more confused you get about what God actually said to you. When God speaks, listen. And you don't need 12 people to confirm it. The more people put something into the stew, the less it tastes like what God gave you. And so when you say God spoke this to me, and then you go off and get 12 opinions, you'll have 12 different versions of what God told you. And none of them will be what God told you. And so one quick conversation with the snake and Eve is completely confused. God didn't say, do you sure God said? And then Eve says, no, here's what God said. And I think already the snake gives a little snake smile. Because he knows God didn't say, don't touch it. But he's already got her confused.

20:24He's already got her down a path of don't, don't, don't, don't. Notice how quickly God turns into a don't, God for us when we start talking to the enemy. God said, don't eat it or touch it. God didn't say, don't touch it. But we think it sounds more godly. God told me, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this, and don't do this. And God's going, I didn't tell you any of those things, but it makes you feel better, don't it. It makes you feel like you're holy or if you've got seven don'ts rather than just don't eat it. But that's our nature. And so we get, that's what this story is about. It's about showing the human nature in confronting chaos and darkness. It's about how we will add things to what God has said and we'll add things to the list of requirements that God never placed in front of us. And then of course, you'll eat the fruit of the tree, verse four. The serpent said to the woman, you won't die. God knows when you eat your eyes are going to be open and you'll be like God, knowing good and evil. So when the woman saw that the tree was good and there's a great irony, he told her your eyes will open and then the next verse says she saw, which tells us that she already had the eyes open that she needed.

21:25She can already see what's in front of her. But the enemy is just trying to confuse the way she sees it. And so everything you need is right in front of you in the face of Jesus. Look unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith. But the enemy will always get us to be confused about how we see or what we see and cloud it with all of our own actions. Now take this back to the wilderness for a moment. In Matthew chapter four, verse three, the tempter says to Jesus, if you're the Son of God, command these stones to be made loaves of bread. But Jesus answered it is written, one does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. The first issue is one we've dealt with. He questions Jesus' identity, you need to know your Son. But the second thing he does is give Jesus a chance to live in the miraculous.

22:28To live in the miraculous in which he need not listen to prepare for tomorrow. He just needs to act out a miracle today. Turn stones to bread. No reason to prep anything so that you know how to bake bread. No reason to teach your children anything so that they know how to bake bread. No reason to prep the world around you just float through on the miraculous. The temptation as far as I can see is at least a little bit is to avoid any kind of personal responsibility or any kind of preparation for your own soul and just trust that God's always going to swoop in with the merciful miraculous every single time and expect that that's what the Christian experience is. You're going to be wildly disappointed because bread is most often baked and there's a time it takes to prep it and to bake it before it's finished. Our lives are not built on the miraculous stone being turned to bread.

23:28There are times when our father turns a kid's lunch into 12 baskets of fragments left over and we eat well. But there's also a follow-up to that story in John 6 where the same people show up the next day for breakfast expecting that Jesus is going to do it again which is the exact reason why Jesus never wanted to do stuff like that in the first place. Because the moment one rock turns into bread all rocks become bread. That's our life. Now that's how I live and when they showed up for breakfast in John 6 Jesus said, you people aren't here for what I could say to you, you're just here for food. And he said, this is the kind of food you're going to have to keep coming back for. Wouldn't you rather me give you some food that you don't have to keep coming back for? And they don't want that. We go, we already had that. That was Moses in the wilderness. He goes, no, that wasn't Moses in the wilderness. He goes, that's my father. I can give you bread so you're never hungry again. I can give you water so you're never thirst again. He said, if any man eats my flesh and drinks my blood, he has my life in them

24:28and the crowd don't want that and they leave because that's not what we're looking for. And so there's always the temptation to experience the miraculous. But I want you to go back to the three things I told you. It's stuff Jesus could do, it's stuff Jesus is tempted to do, and it's stuff Jesus eventually will do. And this is the illustration. He's most definitely can take a kid's lunch and feed 5,000 people with it. So he most definitely can take a rock and turn it into a loaf of bread. That's not a problem. And he's obviously tempted to do it because the devil tempts him to do it. Tempted to function that way in ministry to go about doing the miraculous and giving people exactly what it is they think they need in the natural realm. Ignoring their spiritual needs but just giving people all the money they ask for and all the jobs they want and all the cars they ask him for and all the stuff they want him to do and all the relationships they want him to fix. And every natural thing they ever ask for, he just turns stones to bread. Kind of world would we have as followers of Christ.

25:29But it's obviously something you will do because he does turn those stones of bread. So they're representative things. But notice how Jesus answers. He quotes scripture. One does not live by bread alone but by everywhere that proceeds from the mouth of God. Now I think this is a bridge verse for Jesus. This is a verse that points back to that temptation. Hey, I'm not here to just let people live by the miraculous. They're going to have more than that. So I say amen to that. Thank God. I don't have to wait on the miraculous. God does things every day in my life, gives me my daily bread and had turned stones to bread. But I think it's a bridge verse to what's about to come. Because what did Jesus say? Don't live by bread alone but by every single word that comes out of God's mouth. All right, devil. Don't selectively cherry pick your way around the things that actually point to me. Because watch what the enemy does next. This is an amazing thing. Now this is, if you've listened to concerning Jesus at all, I mean you listen to one lesson. This next moment is going to mean something to you.

26:29It would not have without that series. All right, so what's the devil pole next? He reaches into his bag of tricks, takes him to the holy place in verse five, puts him on the pinnacle of temple and says, if you're the son of God, boom, questions, identity, right? If you're the son, you think you're the son. I don't think you're the son. If you're the son, won't you prove it? Throw yourself down. For it is written. He will command his angels concerning you and on their hands they will bury you up so that you will not dash your foot against a stone. Did you catch the devil say it is written? The devil quotes scripture to Jesus in the wilderness. He goes back into the Psalms, grabs a song Jesus knows, and sings a line for him. Now, how's Jesus going to handle this? Because this is somebody weaponizing the Bible. This is someone using the Bible against you. This is someone going, you people think this but the Bible says, boom, book, chapter, verse, period, I won the debate. That's how people treat Bible, right?

27:30Book chapter, verse, that's all I need. The devil pulls that on Jesus. So what would Jesus do if a perfectly acceptable scripture is taken out and thrown into his face in the midst of a temptation? Now, Jesus is response to this is, again, it is written, don't put the Lord your God to the test. Okay, so essentially Jesus says, okay, you've got a verse, I've got a verse. Your verse is that, well, my verse is don't tempt God. So I'm not jumping off of this to tempt my father to catch me when I fall. However, I think the verse quoted right in front of it was the verse Jesus wanted to quote right in front of it. It's the one that set him up. Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word. So be careful, devil, about what you're about to do. Because you're about to quote scripture, but you're not going to quote the whole thing. All right, so you want to see it now, don't you? You go, I'd like to see that text. Well, good thing you're at the garden because we're going to go take you there. Psalms chapter 91.

28:30Psalms chapter 91, you're going to hear this going to sound very familiar, verse 11. He will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways. On their hands, they will bury you up so that you will not dash your foot against a stone. Stop, there it is. That's the two verses that the devil sings. Slash quotes to Jesus in the wilderness to try to get him to throw himself off the pinnacle of the temple. Pinnacle of the temple is high. I've stood outside the kitchen on Valley and saw where the top of the temple mount is. If you add the temple on top of that, it would have been, you can't survive a fall. From the temple mount to the valley floor below. We'd kill any human. The devil tempts him and says, I wouldn't kill you because I got scripture that says that if you jump, they'll catch you unless you dash your foot against a stone. But here's what he leaves out. Go just in front of it to verse 9. Because you made the Lord your refuge, the most higher dwelling place, no evil shall befall you, no scourge come near your tent.

29:31For he will command his angels concerning you. I stop. I don't have to read the whole thing again. I've led you into it. Notice, this is not, there's one coming, my son coming, the savior coming, who you'll know he's the savior because if he throws himself off, the angels will bury him up, lest he dash his foot against it. That's how the devil tried to make it sound. There's a scripture back there that tells me if you're really the son and you jump off, he'll catch you. No, it's metaphorical language that sounds more like this from verse 9. If you're someone who trusts the Lord as the person who catches you, you don't ever have to worry about the disease hitting you because his angels are living in the same house you are. Okay, you don't have to worry about it. If he's got you, then he's in your house. He lives in your tent if you put your trust in him. That's a far cry different than, hey, won't you try to commit suicide? But that's not the end of the story. Let's read on through 11 and 12. He will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways.

30:32On their hands, they will bury you up so that you will not dash your foot against the stone. You will tread the lion and the serpent, the young lion and the serpent. You will trample underfoot. Uh-oh. The devil just walked him right to the scripture. What he doesn't quote to Jesus is his own demise in the following two verses, because someone's coming along to crush the head of the serpent. Here's what you don't see here, but you do know from Genesis 3, right after Eve eats the fruit and her eyes are open, and they know they are naked. God shows up and starts to give out the curse, and he says to the serpent in Genesis 3, 15, her seed is going, you're going to bruise his heel, but he is going to bruise your head. And the prophecy of Genesis 3, 15, says essentially that there's one coming through the family of man

31:34who is going to crush the head of the snake of the Garden of Eden. Psalm 91 says it's going to be the one who the angels could bear up in the dash against the stone. He will step on that serpent's head, and then Jesus faces the devil in the wilderness, just like snakes in the wilderness of old, and squares off with him with the identity that he's a son, the understanding that he is the one who is there to crush, and then finishes the temptation story in Matthew chapter 4 verse 8 with one more temptation. Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him the kingdoms of the world in their splendor, and said to him, if you'll fall down and worship me, and Jesus said to him, away with you Satan, for it is written, worship the Lord your God, and serve him only, and the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him. And this one is missed by us sometimes, because we think, I think we think it means that the devil takes Jesus out there and goes, look, if you'll just start worshiping me, become a Satanist, I'll give you all this, and we go, gosh, that went much of a temptation.

32:35I'm not even tempted to become a Satanist now. Why in the world would Jesus be tempted to become a Satanist, and bow down the need of the devil, and worship the world? That's because we're being anachronistic. We're putting our version of what it means to worship into an ancient world. It's not what it meant at all. To bow the need is something was to recognize its power, but to join it. To accept it as your Lord, and to join its power to yours. To surrender what you can do over to the way it wants it done, because the king had authority. And so if you bowed the need of the king, you were taking his way to be your way. When the enemy offers Jesus the chance to bow need to him, to take the kingdoms of the world, it's really this. Hey, Jesus, I think you're going to be really good at what you do. I know I'm good at what I do. Let's join forces. You do it my way. Keep your Jesus stuff. Do it my way.

33:35We'll rule the world, man, because I got the way. Swords and bombs and guns and violence and bloodshed. And you got the stuff. You got the language and the look and the power. Put me in you together. Mary strength and authority with the sacredness of the church. Put those two together and let's take over the world. The temptation might be more real now than it's ever been in the history of the world to marry the cross of Jesus Christ with your national flag or your political party or your ideology and then claim that it's God's version of the faith and that anybody against your thoughts, ideas, or party is somehow against God. That's the third temptation of the wilderness. Do it my way and we'll take over the world. And it's a borrowing of the system of the world

34:38with a Christian bumper sticker across it. Thinking that by making an identification with Christ, we somehow can buy or purchase the favor of God in whatever we lay out next to do. Whether what we lay out next to do is Godly or not, hateful or not, terrible or not, as long as we have done it in God's name or as long as we have done it identifying the good then might can even make right. And while that sounds very national, very public, very big, I think it happens on our own soul as well where we have the chance to borrow the systems of the world, its vengeance, its payback, the way it handles itself and try to marry it with Christian concepts as if somehow we can redeem the way the enemy does it with the way that God does it because we just believe that God is better. It's the trickiest of all temptations

35:38and we've all fallen for it more than once. And following Jesus is not to follow the way of the systems of this world and the kingdoms of this world, but to trust that the kingdom of God is unlike anything in the kingdoms of this world that are walking this out with Him as our walking it out of away the world has never known. Paul ends his letter to the Romans in Romans 16 by saying the God of peace shall soon crush Satan beneath your feet. What that scripture says to me is, as peace floods your heart, the enemies of the wilderness become crushed beneath our feet. Not as you get smarter, better quote more Bible, live better, live right, but rather as peace floods your soul, the enemy gets crushed beneath your feet.

36:38Jesus goes down into the wilderness to identify with our wilderness wherever you're at today in that wilderness. Jesus takes it upon Himself because you and I have had it placed upon us, but you are not alone. You are not facing this by yourself. The temptation of Jesus is overcome in the wilderness by someone who never forgot who He was in the eyes of His Father. And so I don't want you to forget today who you are in the eyes of the Father. You are His sons, you are His daughters, you are His children. For as many as believe in His name, you have given you the authority to call yourself the sons of God. So you know what I suggest you do is start calling yourself the sons and daughters of God. And once you start to call yourself the sons and daughters of God, it becomes a matter of walking out what you already believe in your heart. The enemy is going to question it. He's going to throw curves at you. The enemy is going to throw issues to try to get you to walk away from that knowledge of who you are. That's all right. And you're going to slip and you're going to fall.

37:39That's all right. Christ in that wilderness, pulling that venom out of who you are, and you watch as that enemy gets crushed beneath His feet as peace floods your heart. Bow your heads with me. That's what I want to pray on this room. Is peace to flood your heart. Father, I thank you today for this mighty, powerful move of your spirit that I had sensed in this sermon here today at the garden where we walked into a wilderness with Jesus who was doing so because we walked into wilderness as an Jesus overcomes it by never forgetting who He is. What I've learned today is I don't even ever forget who I am and I pray peace on every man and woman in this place and every person watching and listening that they won't forget who they are. That they are who Jesus says they are. They are His friends. They are sons of the Father. The Father and the Son have made an abode inside of their heart.

38:40And He told them to let not their heart be troubled. As we let not our heart be troubled today as we accept your peace in the midst of our wilderness. Even when things aren't well, we accept your peace. It's not that we have made ourselves that peace, but we are at peace with you and therefore we accept your peace. In that, we crush the enemy under our feet. And we thank you that you have done it first. And we receive it in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you for joining us for this week's program. If you would like more information, please visit our website at Paulwhiteministries.com. Here you can find thousands of sermons, shop for Pastor Paul's books and series, and become either a monthly partner or a one-time donor. You can also visit our church website at MidlandsGardenChurch.org. For written correspondence or to donate by check, write us at Paul White Ministries, PO Box 1030, Flowery Branch, Georgia, 30542. Join us again next week here in the Garden of Grace.