The Wilderness | Matthew 4:1-11

If you would turn with me to Matthew chapter 4.

Matthew 4 · chapter mention

Matthew chapter 4 as we continue our series on an introduction to the Son of God.

Matthew 4 · chapter mention

Matthew chapter 4.

Matthew 4 · chapter mention

We're gonna read verses 1 through 11 together.

God's word says in Matthew chapter 4, verse 1, Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.

Matthew 4:1

And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.

And the tempter came and said to him, If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.

But he answered, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.

Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to him, If you are the son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, He will command his angels concerning you, and on their hands they will bear you up, lest your you strike your foot against a stone.

And Jesus said to him, Again, it is written, You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.

Again the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory.

And he said to him, All these I will give to you if you will fall down and worship me.

Then Jesus said to him, Be gone, Satan, for it is written, You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.

Then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and were ministering to him.

Let me pray for us.

Heavenly Father, this morning we don't need to hear the opinions of a man.

We don't need to hear anything, any winsome musing.

Lord, what we need to hear is the authoritative word of God speaking into our lives and bringing life to us.

What we need, Lord, is the conviction of our sin to draw us by your kindness into repentance.

What we need, Lord, is to be reminded again that we are not alone in the midst of this wilderness, but that, Lord, you are walking with us through it.

That Lord, you have overcome it on our behalf, and that we can overcome it with you.

Lord, I pray for each one of my people that today you would speak specifically and directly to each individual heart through your word and by your spirit.

We ask these things now in Jesus' name.

Amen.

You may be seated.

So my favorite show is a show called Alone.

And on Alone, you have ten contestants, and each one of the competitors is allowed to take with them ten items to see if they can go and survive in some forsaken place like the Arctic.

And whichever one of the competitors is able to outlast all of the other competitors wins a half a million dollars.

Now, in the beginning of the show, when they're introducing you to each one of the competitors, they give you some of the background information.

They let you know why they were interested in the song and how they came about the song, uh the show, and how they came about the show.

They they show you some of the training that they've uh received, they show you some of their background context that would make them particularly effective and being able to endure for a long time.

And so you're watching in the beginning and you're kind of deciding, all right, this guy's gonna be really tough, she's gonna be really hard to deal with.

Wow, that's a really impressive resume.

And you're kind of picking which ones that you think are gonna be most effective, and you're kind of deciding who it is that you want to be able to pull for throughout the show.

But what's interesting about the show is as the show goes on, it's not usually the one, and I again I apologize for my voice.

We're gonna get this voice is gonna come back at some point.

Memphis is what they tell me.

I don't know.

Um but as the show goes on, what happens is the people with the greatest training, the people who are most physically fit, the people who are most gifted in survival are often not the ones who are the last man or woman standing.

Usually the last person standing is not the most skilled, it's not the strongest, it's not the fittest.

It's usually the one who can suffer the best.

It's usually the one who's most willing to eat and survive on rats.

That's usually who wins.

And they do an exit interview with each of the competitors as they leave.

And as they do the exit interview, almost inevitably they say some form of the same thing.

They say something to the effect of, this was harder than I would have ever imagined.

This experience has stripped me down to bare metal.

It's refashioned me into a new kind of person.

That I had weaknesses that I didn't know I had to weak, I had where I had weaknesses, I needed to deal and process things I didn't know I needed to deal and process with.

I became a new and better person as a result of my experience on alone.

You know, I find that to be a really good metaphor for the Christian life.

That all of us are here and we're living in the midst of the wilderness, aren't we?

And living in this wilderness, it strips us down to bare metal.

It undoes us, it confronts us with our weaknesses.

It reveals to us things that we need to process and things that we need to deal with and issues that have gone undealt with in our lives.

It reveals to us temptations and particularly strong temptations that we didn't know that we had.

It strips us down to bare metal and it begins to refashion us into a different kind of person.

And typically, the people who are happiest in this world, this is like spoiler alert, are usually those who learn how to suffer the best.

It's usually those who learn how it is to endure in the midst of this wilderness.

Why?

Holding on to a durable joy.

Well, the beauty of the gospel, as we saw last week, is that our God has come to join us in the midst of this wilderness.

That in the beginning was the word, and the word became flesh, and the word the word dwelt among us.

That Jesus came and he joined us here in the midst of this wilderness, and he joined us in the midst of this wilderness so that we can understand why we got here, how we can flourish while we're here, and how it is that we can overcome it through him.

So this morning, what I want us to do is I want us to ask and answer a couple of questions about the wilderness experience so that we can learn from Jesus how we can flourish and how we can overcome it.

The first question that I want us to look at this morning Well, I thought I had this fixed, is how did we get here?

How did we get here?

If Matthew were writing his gospel today, I think that Matthew would likely just print a picture book.

Because Matthew always seems to write with a picture in mind.

And if you want to really understand what Matthew is trying to say to you, then you have to understand what picture it is that he's expecting you to understand that he's communicating.

That the picture that Matthew has in mind forms the context and the background and the backdrop of what he's trying to teach us about Jesus.

Well, I think one of the pictures that Matthew has in mind here is a picture of Adam and Eve being tempted in the garden, specifically Adam being tempted in the Garden of Eden.

And he's wanting us to understand Jesus against this backdrop.

Now, when you think about the two settings that the two men were in when they're being tempted, they're very, very different.

When Adam is tempted in Matthew chapter 3, he's living in paradise.

Matthew 3 · chapter mention

He has everything that a man could need, he has everything that a man could want.

In every possible way that he could be set up to succeed, Adam had been set up to succeed.

His belly is full, his life is good, there are no problems, there is no debt.

Life is as good as it can get for Adam.

But when we meet Jesus in the midst of his temptation here in Matthew chapter 4, what we see about Jesus is the exact opposite of that.

Matthew 4 · chapter mention

That Jesus is actually struggling and having as hard a time as a man can have.

That he is starving and famished, he has not eaten for 40 days.

He's not in paradise, he's in the wilderness.

He's been set up to fail in every way, in the same way that Adam was set up to succeed in every way.

And so we can see that in Matthew's mind, there is a contrast that's being drawn between the first Adam and the second Adam, Jesus.

Now, when we think specifically about the temptation that faces Jesus in the first temptation, it's really quite a dramatic one.

The first temptation that we see is that he's led up by the wilderness, up to the end of the wilderness, to be tempted by the devil, and after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.

Again, things are not great.

And the tempter came to him and said, If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.

I think that's actually really significant there.

Okay, think about what was the temptation that Adam was first confronted with.

It was that he would eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, wasn't it?

It was that he would eat the eat something that was gotten by ill-gotten means.

Well, here is Jesus.

And the first temptation that Jesus faces is that he, a starving man, would transform these stones into bread, and that he would eat something that was obtained by ill-gotten means.

I think that Matthew intends for all kinds of bells to be going off in our mind that we could draw the contrast between these two.

Now, what's ill-gotten about this?

What's wrong with this?

Why is it a problem for Jesus to turn the stones into bread?

Well, the problem is that he's not depending upon the Lord to provide for him what he needs.

It's the same thing that Adam was struggling with.

See, Adam wanted to have equal footing with God.

And why did Adam want to have equal footing with God?

Because he believed that God was withholding from him something that was good.

He was prioritizing the desires of the flesh over the word of God.

And now the temptation for Jesus is to believe that God the Father is withholding from him something that he needs, something that is good for him, and to prioritize the desires of the flesh over the word of God.

That the belief is that God may not be good enough to give me what I need, that God may not be good enough to provide for me what I need for him to provide, that God may not be good enough to make sure that he's always seeing me through, that God would withhold from me the good things that I need.

That both Adam and Jesus are being confronted with the question, is God really good?

And this is the same question that the wilderness is going to ask of you.

This is the same temptation that you're going to face.

That when you're jealous, when you see somebody that has the job that you're supposed to have, when you see somebody that has the marriage that you're supposed to have, has the kids that you're supposed to have, drives the car that you want to drive, lives in the house that you want to live in, is honored and beloved, the way that you want to be honored and beloved and respected.

The question that's really in your heart is, is God good to me or is God slighting me?

When you have a sexual appetite or a sexual desire that's different than what God has spelled out in his word.

Well, the question in your mind is really, is God good or is God withholding from me something that is good?

When you struggle with holding tightly to the money and the possessions that you have, when you struggle with greed and stinginess, do you know what the temptation actually is?

The temptation is actually you wrestling with, is God good or will God not give me all that I need Him to provide me with?

That the question of the wilderness is about the goodness of God.

Well, it progresses forward as we move into the second temptation.

As we move into the second temptation, the devil takes Jesus and he takes him to the pinnacle of the temple.

The pinnacle of the temple was representative of all of the religious fervor that would have been found in all of Israel.

Here he is at the height of the religious center in all of Israel.

And you know what he does there at the pinnacle of the temple?

He begins to quote to him the Bible.

Did you know Satan would do that?

He begins to quote to him the Bible.

He quotes to him Psalm 91, verses 11 and 12.

Psalms 91:11

And he says, Don't you know that it has been written?

I'm glad you bring that up, it is written stuff, Jesus, because I have some scriptures for you.

Do you know that it's written that the angels will make sure that you will not even stub your toe on a rock if you were to fall off of this temple?

So why don't we do this, Jesus?

Why don't we see if God is actually a man of his word?

Why don't we see if God is actually gonna live up to the things that he said?

Why don't you take a plunge off this temple and then we'll see whether or not God is actually who he says he is and that God is gonna do what he says he's gonna do?

So we learn from Satan right here something that's really important that I want to make as an aside.

That the scriptures can be used in a malicious and malevolent way.

As a matter of fact, this takes us back to Adam as well.

Do you remember what Satan says to Adam and Eve there in the garden as he is tempting them to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil?

Do you remember what he says?

He says, Did God actually say?

Did God actually say?

Is that really what God said?

Are you sure you understand his word?

Are you sure that you you can trust his word?

Are you sure that this is really what he meant?

That here he is.

First with the image bearer of God in Adam.

Now with the Son of God in Jesus, he's confronting them with the same possibility that they could compel God by their own actions, by their own manipulative means to do for them what they want to do.

That he is taking the will of man and tempting the man to elevate his will above God's will.

Now for Adam, it was so that he could know what God knew, so that he could understand what God understands, so that he could see what only God saw.

For Jesus, it's that he would be healthy and strong and satisfied.

For Jesus, it's that he would be able to prove and verify that God will uphold his word.

Now, why is it that you need to know what God knows or understand what God understands or see what God sees?

Why is it that we feel like we need to be in control of our lives?

Why is it that we would need some superstitious sign to prove and to validate and to verify for us that God's word is what he it is and that he'll do what he says he's gonna do?

Why is that?

Well, the only reason is because we doubt that God is trustworthy.

That we don't believe that we can actually depend that God will honor his word.

It's because we don't believe that God, having the knowledge that he has and having the understanding that he has and seeing what he sees, we don't know that we can entrust our lives into his hands.

And so we want to see, we want to know, we want him to verify his word on our terms and by our means.

You know what's what the wilderness does?

The wilderness in a thousand different ways and from a thousand different angles is always asking you the question: can you trust the Lord?

Do you trust the Lord?

Do you trust the Lord when your dreams come crashing down, when your job feels like a dead end?

Do you trust the Lord when your kids walk away from him, or when your spouse comes and drops a bombshell on you?

Do you do you trust the Lord when it feels as though all of your bills are exceeding all of your income?

Do you trust the Lord when you want something so badly that he has forbidden it in his word?

Do you trust the word in a thousand different ways and from a thousand different angles?

The wilderness is always asking you the question: do you trust the Lord?

In fact, both of them are offered the same deal.

Both Adam and Jesus are both offered that they can have all of the gifts of the creation, all of the gifts of this world without having to deal with any responsibility to the giver himself.

That they can have everything that God offers and everything that God promises and everything that God gives without actually having to deal with the headache of God Himself.

Man, this seems like exactly what our culture is after, doesn't it?

You'll notice it's really striking here, isn't it?

That when he's talking about the kingdoms of the world, he talks about their glory.

Isn't that interesting that he does that?

Why does he do that?

The kingdoms of the world are impressive, y'all.

The kingdoms of the world are attractive, y'all.

The kingdoms of the world are desirable, y'all.

Like when you see all that the world has and all that the world offers and all that the world can give you, it's really enticing.

It's really something that you'll find your heart wanting.

It's something that you'll find yourself being drawn to because what do they offer?

Well, they offer exactly what our culture is offering to us.

They offer reward without obedience, they offer pleasure without sacrifice, they offer freedom without boundaries.

And so this is all having been offered to Adam, and Adam failed.

Now it's been offered to Jesus.

You can have all of this, and you can have all of it without having to deal with the headache of God at all.

And so the decision that's facing Jesus here is the decision that's facing you and me.

And the decision that we have is we have to decide what it is that's going to determine the direction of our lives.

Are we going to be live are we going to live our lives for what we can have, or are we going to live our lives for who we can know?

Are we going to live our lives for what we can have?

Or are we going to live our lives for who we can know?

Because this will determine the tone of your life and the attitude of your life and the trajectory of your life.

That the way that you answer these three questions will determine the direction and the shape and the attitude and the tone that your life ultimately takes.

Do you really believe that God is good?

Do you really believe that God is trustworthy?

Do you really believe that God is worth it all?

Because all the kingdoms of the glory of the world, with all of their glory and all of their splendor, they're trying to convince you that God just isn't worth the headache.

My middle daughter, her name is Sarah Eliza.

I can't wait for all of you to get to know her a lot better.

My wife and I, we joke that Sarah doesn't really need parents.

That she has some kind of internal governor, some kind of internal drive inside of her, that just this desire to be perfect all the time.

It causes her anxiety, it causes her all kinds of things.

But she always wants to put her best foot forward and to be impressive and to do the right things and to follow all the rules.

Well, not that long ago, Sarah Eliza found herself on the wrong side of the law, right?

On the wrong side of the law.

And she is not used to being on the wrong side of the law.

And so we go and we begin to question her and have a conversation with her.

And you can see it all over.

She's beat red, but she is trying her best to maintain that veneer of perfection, right?

Because that's what perfectionists do.

And once she knew that she had been had, once she knew that she had been caught and that there was no way around it, this is what she did.

She erupts in tears.

And she says, I just wish Adam hadn't have eaten that apple from that snake.

Which is pretty good theology for a nine-year-old, right?

But it's really only half right.

You see, when we begin to answer the question, how did we get here?

there's both a cosmic reason and there's an individual one.

The cosmic reason she has right.

That through the one man Adam, sin and death entered into the world.

That because Adam sinned originally, all of the world has been cursed, all of the world has fallen under the curse of sin, and all of us are born with a sin nature.

So we're in the wilderness because Adam has sinned.

But you know why else we're in the sin, the wilderness?

The reason that Sarah missed?

It's because we've sinned.

Willfully, purposely, intentionally.

We have sinned against God.

We have defamed his glory and brought an infinite offense against him.

But the good news that Matthew is here to share with us is that where Adam has failed, and where you have failed, and where I have failed, and where even precious little Sarah Eliza has failed, Jesus has succeeded.

And Jesus has overcome.

That because Jesus has succeeded in the midst of the wilderness where Adam failed in the midst of paradise, now all of us who are with Jesus can overcome the wilderness through him.

That he has provided for us the way.

The way that we can have abundant life and true life and eternal life in Christ, the way that we can overcome the struggles that we're facing and the difficulties that we know and the impossibilities of our own sin nature, the way that our nature can be transformed so that now we are blazing the image of God, portraying the image of God in all that we do.

In fact, as we begin to look at the varied responses of Jesus to all of his temptations, I think that's what brings to answer the second question that I want us to ask this morning.

That I don't just want us to say, ask, how did we get here?

I want us to ask, what do we do here?

What do we do here?

That we're in the wilderness, and being in the wilderness, we we best understand exactly what we're meant to do while we're here.

There's a second picture that I think Matthew has in mind in his picture book as he's showing it to us.

The first was Adam, but the second one I think is Israel.

It's really a striking picture if you think about what's happening.

To get us to Matthew chapter 4 so far in his gospel.

Matthew 4 · chapter mention

Do you remember when Jesus is a little boy and the and the edict goes out that all the firstborn are gonna be murdered, right?

Or all the little boys are gonna be murdered, and what do Mary and Joseph do?

They do what good parents do, they take up their little boy and they flee to Egypt, right?

And then what's the next thing we read after he flee to Egypt in Matthew's gospel?

Jesus' baptism.

That he's there and he's baptized in the Jordan.

So what's the picture?

Think about it.

Think about it.

Just slow down your mind just a second to think about what the scriptures are telling us.

Here is the Son of God, the beloved of God, the firstborn of God.

All by the way, words that are used of Israel, passing out of Egypt into the water.

And on the other side of the water, what do we come to?

The wilderness.

The wilderness.

Do you see the picture of the Exodus here?

That here is the firstborn of God in Egypt passing through the water, just like Egypt, just like Israel passed through the Red Sea as they left Egypt, and then on the other side of them is there is the wilderness.

That we're meant to begin to draw a contrast in our minds to see that God is trying to show us, that Matthew is laboring to show us that there is a contrast now between Jesus and Israel.

That where Israel has failed and where Israel languished in the wilderness, now we're gonna see Jesus begin to succeed.

That most of us think of the wilderness as the place that we don't want to be.

But the wilderness really presents to us an opportunity.

What's interesting is that the wilderness follows triumph in both Jesus' ministry and in Israel's life.

So you think about Israel, they come into the wilderness after the Red Sea has parted and they have walked through on dry ground.

The Red Sea has been brought down, crashing down on Pharaoh's army there, right?

It's an incredible picture.

And so your expectation in reading that, if you're just a normal person, is that you're gonna come into the other side if you don't already know what's gonna happen, and it's just gonna be an ongoing experience of revival there in Egypt or in Israel.

That they're gonna have this intimate relationship with God, that He's gonna continue to provide for them miraculously.

They're gonna love Him, He's gonna love them, it's gonna be awesome.

And it's exactly the opposite of what happens, isn't it?

They begin to doubt Him.

They begin to Well, think about Jesus' baptism.

You have this miraculous moment of baptism, the the heavens open up, the Father speaks, the Spirit descends like a dove.

He says, This is my son with whom I'm well pleased.

And the expectation is that from now on it's gonna be awesome.

The Son of God is here, God is pleased with the Son.

The miraculous provision, the Messiah has arrived, and now we're gonna experience the joys and the fruits of his ministry.

But he comes into the wilderness.

You know, I wonder if your baptism followed a path like that.

Then when you were baptized, that you you thought, man, now life is finally gonna be good.

I've figured out all my problems, I've figured out all the issues, I'm living as a sin, I'm living without God, I'm living under the burden of the weight of the world, like I've got to carry it all.

I need the Lord, and now I have him, I found him, his yoke is easy, his burden is light, he's bringing rest to my soul.

This is gonna be awesome.

And then life got hard.

Then life got harder than it had ever been before.

Then the temptations got more real than they had ever been before.

Brothers and sisters, I want you to see that this is the pattern of scripture, that this is life in the wilderness.

This is the life of spiritual warfare.

Look, the the enemy does not care when you are no threat to him.

But when you become a threat to the enemy, that's when he begins aiming all of his weapons at you.

That's when he begins to aim all of his all of his uh all of his malevolence and all of his malice and all of his contempt at you.

That's when life gets that's when life gets hard.

You see, the wilderness, the wilderness is the greenhouse that produces the fruit in your life that starts in your heart.

The wilderness is the greenhouse that produces the fruit in your life that starts in your heart.

Jesus responds to each one of the temptations of the enemy by quoting from Deuteronomy chapters 6 through 8.

Deuteronomy 6 · chapter mention

Now, most of us have trouble reading through the book of Deuteronomy sometimes in our Bible reading plans when we try to read through it in a year.

Jesus quotes exclusively from Deuteronomy here to be able to respond back to the enemy.

And it's interesting because Deuteronomy was written to the wilderness generation.

It was written to a group of Israel, the children of those that had failed to go into the promised land because they had doubted the provision and the might and the security of God.

And so these are their children.

They were raised in the wilderness.

They were born in the wilderness.

They had only lived in the wilderness.

And so he writes to them the book of Deuteronomy, it means second law.

He writes to them that they can understand why they're there, how they can flourish while they're there, and how in the world they can actually be able to get out of there.

And he begins to explain to them the purpose of why they are there in the midst of the wilderness.

And look at what he says in Deuteronomy chapter 8, and this is where Jesus gets his first response from.

Deuteronomy 8 · chapter mention

In verse 2 of Deuteronomy chapter 8, he says, And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these 40 years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart.

Deuteronomy 8 · chapter mention

That God tells the wilderness generation that part of the reason that I have you in the midst of the wilderness is because I want to test your heart.

I want to see that you know where the source of true life comes from, where you know the source of your protection, the source of your provision, the source of your hope.

I want to see if you're living for all of my gifts, all of my promises, or if you're living because you know me, because you love me.

Now Israel had failed in that, hadn't they?

Israel comes out, and the first thing they say is, Oh my Lord, what am I gonna eat?

What am I gonna eat?

Lord, what are we gonna eat?

Egypt was better to you than us.

This is what he's getting at in verse 3.

He says, And he humbled you and let you hunger, and fed you then with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.

And so here is the temptation before Jesus.

Jesus, you believe that you you might believe that God would neglect giving you something that is good, that God might withhold from you his provision, that God might withhold from you that which is good.

And how does Jesus respond?

Man shall not live by bread alone.

That is, Jesus recognizes, Jesus recognizes that true life doesn't come from the crumbs of bread that we can find in this world.

True life doesn't come from a drink of water.

You may eat a crumb of bread, but you're gonna be hungry again.

You may have a cup of water, but you're in the midst of the desert.

It won't be long before you're thirsty again.

None of those things are helpful.

That you don't survive by finding water by finding a cup of water.

You survive by knowing the well, by having the well, by possessing the well.

And when you know the well, now you can know, even in the midst of the wilderness, that you're never gonna be thirsty again, that you're always gonna be okay, that by finding God, you find true life, the source of life, not just the temporary provisions for life.

I wonder this morning, I wonder this morning if you spend all of your time, all of your energy until the point in which you're utterly and totally exasperated and exhausted chasing after bread crumbs and cups of water.

Because you're convinced that's what you have to have to live.

You're convinced that you've got to have the next job.

You're convinced that you've got to have the next raise.

You're convinced you've got to have the nicer car at home.

You're still living in your starter home.

You're convinced that you've got to have the status car.

You're convinced that your kids need what they don't need.

You're convinced that that your uh vacation has to be what your vacation does.

And if you don't have it, if you don't have it, it just feels like you might as well just die.

What am I working for all these years?

What am I doing all of these years?

And you're grasping at breadcrumbs and chasing after cups of water.

But brothers and sisters, you are living in the desert.

As soon as that vacation is over, you're gonna want another one.

As soon as you get the promotion, you're gonna want another one.

It's not going to satisfy you.

Those things are fake life.

What you actually need is the source.

You need the well because you're living in the wilderness.

See, we're tempted to resent the wilderness.

We're tempted to wish that we were anywhere but here.

But the wilderness has a lot to teach us.

The wilderness is actually an opportunity.

It's an opportunity for us to learn that true life isn't about just walking on, walking through the Red Sea and crushing the Pharaoh.

That true life is about knowing the one that can sustain you, whether it's through triumphantly overcoming the Pharaoh or languishing in the wilderness.

That the wilderness actually provides for us the proper context for true faith.

Because it makes us dependent.

It reminds us and teaches us how badly we need him.

It it causes us to live in trust of him rather than in self-reliance.

It reminds me again, if you look at the next temptation, when Jesus is tempted there on the top of the pinnacle to throw himself down.

He responds by saying, You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.

And it's reminding us, he's quoting from Deuteronomy chapter 6, verse 16.

Deuteronomy 6:16

In Deuteronomy chapter 6, verse 16, he says, You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.

Deuteronomy 6:16

There's the same word, right?

As you tested him in Massa.

Now, do you remember what happened in Massa?

Massa is the event that rocks Moses' world for a long time.

That you have God's people, he's delivered them from Egypt, He's brought them into the midst of the wilderness.

He has actually begun to bring down bread from heaven.

They're literally eating bread that wasn't there yesterday.

They wake up in the morning and there it is.

And you know what they do?

They do what we do.

We ask God for something and he gives this to us.

Then we ask him for something else and he gives it to us.

Then we ask him for something else and he gives it to us.

And you know what we say?

Well, Lord, but I don't have what I really want, you know?

I tell you what I really want.

I really want a lake house, Lord.

I know you gave me this house, but really want a lake house, right?

This is what they do.

This is exactly what they do.

They are sitting there, they're worried they're not gonna eat, and they're in mass, and they say, Well, yeah, we have lots of bread, but man, that bread sure doesn't make me thirsty.

What are we supposed to drink around here?

There's no water, we're in the midst of the desert.

And you remember that Moses takes and he strikes the rock, right?

And the rock begins to pour out water.

But he says, You have tested the Lord.

You have tested the Lord.

In other words, you didn't trust that God was gonna take care of you.

You didn't trust that God was going to keep you.

You didn't trust that God was actually gonna provide for you.

You didn't trust that God loves you and cares about you and looks after you.

You didn't trust that all that you actually needed to live your life was not what you thought you needed.

What you actually needed to live your life was just the favor of the Almighty.

And so Jesus is here and he's confronted with the same question.

And he responds with the exact opposite answer.

He says, You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.

Again, we remember that the wilderness in a thousand different ways and from a thousand different angles is always asking you, do you trust the Lord?

You know, one of the hardest things is that we have to raise our kids in the midst of the wilderness, isn't it?

Man, I wish the culture was different than it is.

I wish the world was different than it is.

I wish it wasn't so dangerous.

I wish there weren't threats lurking around every corner.

I wish there weren't people always looking to indoctrinate my children with things that God hates.

I I wish that the culture was different.

But the question is, is do you trust the Lord?

Do you trust the Lord with your little ones?

Do you trust the Lord as you raise them in his fear and admonition?

Man, what about with the elections?

Every election cycle seems crazier than the one before.

Every election cycle seems to bring to the forefront all of these issues and all this division in our country.

Every single one of them feels like life and death to us.

They they feel as though they're gonna determine everything else about what life is gonna be like for us.

Well, the question is do you trust the Lord?

Not do you trust your favorite politicians?

Not do you trust your favorite political parties?

Not do you trust your fellow Americans to vote the way that you think they ought to vote?

Do you trust the Lord?

The Lord is the king, the Lord is the sovereign, the Lord is the one who is robbing.

Do you trust him?

What about when inflation's out of control and salaries are dwindling, and your company seems to always be on the edge of bankruptcy, and the stock market is up and down and always volatile.

You know what that is?

That's not about economic instability, it's about whether or not you can trust the Lord.

It's a life in the wilderness revealing for you the opportunity to express true faith as to whether He is your provider and He is your sustainer and He is your protector.

See, the issue for Israel was that Israel was always open to trades.

That's why when Moses comes down off of Sinai, they've already got a golden calf there.

You know why?

They were always open.

They were always looking for a God that offered them a better benefits package.

They were always looking for a God that could make them more prosperous and make them feel safer and give them nicer land and give them nicer things.

And so, yeah, they would hold on to Yahweh while they had him.

But if a better offer came along, if if something more appealing presented itself, they were always willing to have an add-on, an added benefit, a new God.

And this is what's being offered here to Jesus.

Jesus is being presented with the opportunity to decide whether or not he's gonna live for himself, whether or not he's gonna live for the glory of the kingdoms here on earth.

And Jesus responds by quoting the greatest commandment in Deuteronomy 2.

He says, Be gone, Satan, for it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.

That is, you know what Jesus is able to do?

He's able to see that the glory of the kingdoms that are here on earth are faux glory.

It's faux glory, it's imitation, it's not the real stuff.

It sparkles and it shines and it draws you in and it attracts you, but when it draws you in, it clamps down on you, it enslaves you, and it brings about death.

That Jesus was not enamored and starstruck by fool's gold.

He would only live for true glory, and true glory was only found in the Father in heaven alone.

I wonder this morning if you're open for trades.

I wonder if you're open for trades.

If you could have the marriage that you've always wanted, and you could have the kids that you've always wanted, and you could have the job that you've always wanted with the salary that you've always wanted, living in the city that you've always wanted, if you could go on the vacations that you've always dreamed of, but the only stipulation was that you couldn't have a relationship with God, I wonder if you'd take the trade.

I wonder if you'd take the trade.

Because you see, Adam, he said, give me the world.

Israel said, Give us the kingdoms and all the prosperity.

We tend to say, give us all the freedom.

But Jesus said, give me the cross.

Give me the cross.

See, it's like a loan.

The people that are the strongest and the people that are the most virile and the people that are the smartest, they aren't the ones that end up okay.

They aren't the ones that make it to the end.

They aren't the ones that outlast everybody else.

The ones that make it to the end are the ones that recognize that they need a power that is beyond themselves, that they aren't actually alone, but instead, that because our God has dwelt with us here in the midst of the wilderness, that he walks with us and he bears the weight of our sin, and he bears the weight of our lives, and he bears the weight of our sin, our struggles.

That is the hope that we have is found in Jesus' declaration give me the cross.