Been There: Week 2

Good morning, Welcome to Church of Crossing. My name is James. I

just want to just say I'm just so you know, lately I've just been

praising God for all that he is doing. And last Saturday we served over

When you count the individuals that we had food for, we were able to

feed two hundred people last week out of our neighborhood market. Can we give

God praise for that. Thank you for your faithfulness, thank you for the

servants. And you know, almost every family that came in, you know,

they represent five or six people. And what we were doing is we

were being faithful and serving and loving people in great ways. And I'm just

so proud of the steps our church is taking. And I could probably sit

up here for the next fifteen minutes and tell you all that God is doing

through Church at the Crossing, but that would get into some of my sermon

times, so we're not going to do that. So today we're talking about

been there, done that. I'm talking about how Jesus experienced the same things

that all of us have experienced. And so today here's what I want you

to know out front. One today is a little bit more in depth.

Okay, so you're gonna have to, like you know, get ready.

We're gonna walk through thirteen verses number two, the three things that I'm going

to ask you to grow in today. If you will grow in these three

things, the vast amount of temptations that you will deal with in your life.

If you grow in these three things, you will be able to overcome

these temptations regularly and daily. So it's a very important message today, and

let's prepare our hearts. God, we love you so much. We thank

you for the opportunity to serve you, to worship you, and I thank

you for this congregation and their faithfulness. And God, we want to be

faithful to your word today in Jesus' name. Amen, man, start out

today by asking a couple questions. Do you really want to hand up God

upon your life? Do you want God to use you in such a way

that your life affects other people's lives for the good of the kingdom. And

here's what I want you to know from the very beginning today. And you

might not understand this. Did you know that you actually get to determine you.

You get to determine much of what God will do through you. You

actually get to decide how much impact you want to have for God's kingdom.

A lot of people don't realize that, but you are the one who actually

gets to make these decisions. And here's what we're gonna talk about today.

We're gonna look at some major roadblocks that keep people from making a great impact

for God's Kingdom. And today we're gonna talk about how to overcome those roadblocks.

But by the way, these three roadblocks I'm gonna talk about today,

every one of us deal with these three roadblocks all right now today, as

I shift into the message, I remember when I first came to Christ.

And I've shared the story parts of this story before, and I remember when

I first came to Christ. I was so excited. And I was one

of those people who like anything that's going on good in my life and I'm

going to tell you about so I just love, you know, just when

I get excited about something, everybody's want to know about. So the first

day after I came to Christ, I'm going to school and I'm like,

man, I'm gonna tell everybody that Jesus saved me. I didn't care.

I was a senior. I didn't care. I was walking into the parking

lot, and the first person I see was Dan de Brosie across the parking

lot, and I'm like, hey, Dan, how the are you doing?

And I was like, good, I lasted not even five minutes about

yelling out something extremely vulgar across the whole you know, I dropped the F

bomb within five minutes of and you know, and so I was just like,

oh, come on, James, you got to do better than that.

That's not a good witness. That's not a good witness. And then

I caught myself. Over the next few months, as I was walking with

christ I would do pretty good. And then I would get hanging out with

my friends. And there's something you need to know about me is that once

I'm hanging out with some people and we start to have a good time and

we start joking around. Especially back in the day, I used to love

using shock humor our one liners, and there was there would be time after

time where I would say something that, yeah, that would crack everybody up

at the table. But then when I would lay my head down at night,

God would convict me, my man, you should have said that that's

not good for your witness. And I would try to justify it and say,

man, Lord, it's just language. It's just language. No one's

being hurt by this, it's just funny. Anecdotes. Well, towards the

end of my senior year, Kylie, who was in my first peer government

class, she looked at me one day and she says, James, I

know you came to Christ a few months ago, but I just want you

to know I really don't think you're gonna make it. And I thought,

well, that was a kind word. I was just kind of laughed at

her, and I'm like, Kylie, I've been following Christ now for a

few months. Why do you Why do you think I'm not gonna make it?

And then she said to me, she says, sometimes, by the

way you talk, when you're joking around, I think it's just a matter

of time before you sink back into your old life. And that was the

day that have hit me like a sack of rocks that the way we live

our life, our personal holiness, the way we live our life among others,

really does determine the amount of impact we have for God's kingdom. God.

The impact the way that God can use us is directly correlated by our

witness out into the world. So I think it's to say that all of

us is room. We want to maximize our witness for Christ. You have.

The reality is check this quote out. The sin in our lives limits

our ability to elevate our witness and the impact of those around us. The

sin in our life, it limits our ability to elevate our witness and impact

those lives around us. And here's the good news today that by overcoming some

of these sins in our life, we could do this by looking at the

author and the perfector of our faith, Jesus Christ. So here's what we're

gonna do today. We're gonna jump to Luke chapter four. Everybody, go

to Luke chapter four right now, and I'm gonna walk you through the first

thirteen verses, and we're gonna go verse by verse and we're gonna look at

the temptation of Christ, which all of us can apply in our own life.

Now, I want you to understand that in the preceding chapter, right

before Jesus's Great temptation, Jesus began his ministry and he was baptized by John

the Baptist. So if his hair is still wet from baptism, he's led

into this time of temptation in the wilderness. So let's check out this passage

today. Let's begin, all right. It says Jesus, full of the

Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness.

Now here's what I want you to pay attention here. Okay, what

does it say here? Says that he was led by the spirit. He

was led by the spirit. So the very first thing we need to notice

today is that sometimes when we go through seasons of testing, God allows us

to be tested. God allows us to be tempted. Why Now, the

point of it is that God wants to see us, you know, have

victory over that, because once we have victory over that, we become more

like Jesus. So yeah, there are sometimes God allows us to go through

a season of testing, and he allows his son Jesus to go through a

season of testing. Now there's other times that we put ourselves right smack dab

in the middle of the temptation, you know, Pastor, Pastor, I

just couldn't resist it. I told God that at that parking spot right in

front of the donut store, that if it was open, then I would

know that it was his will for me to go get a dozen donuts today.

And I'm not talking about any other spots, but Pastor, if that

one spot directly right in front the door, if that is open, then

I know it's God's will. And sure enough, after eight trips around the

parking lot, it was a miracle. Now, I couldn't resist that cheesy

joke. But the point I'm trying to make is simply this. Sometimes God

allows us to be tested, sometimes we put ourselves in temptation. Let's continue

on. In this passage, it says where for forty days he was tempted

by the devil. He ate nothing during those forty days, and at the

end of them he was hungry. So, first of all, this is

probably the most obvious scripture in the whole Bible. Okay, after forty days

of not eating, he's hungry. Now here's what I want you to do.

I want us to think about this because there's two great temptation scenes in

the Bible. There's a temptation scene of the first atom in Genesis, and

now we come to the temptation scene of the second atom Jesus, and I

want you to look at the comparisons between them. Okay, first, of

all Adam, the first man. His temptation was in the best possible,

surrounding the gardener of Eden. Now our savior, Jesus, he faced temptation

in the worst imaginable, surrounding the wasteland of the Judean desert. Adam he

feasted on thus provisions of the garden. Jesus was weakened by forty days of

fasting. Adam, by the way we see in scripture, was tempted once.

Jesus, according to the Greek here, was tempted over and over and

over again. So we see the great comparison between these two great moments in

scripture. Now let's continue moving on, And says the devil said to him,

now, if you're the son of God, tell the stone to become

bred. And Jesus answered, it is written man shall not live on bread

alone. Now at first, this doesn't seem like an evil temptation, does

it. You know, I think Satan can make a good case here,

like, well, you know, Jesus, if you're supposed to be the

son of God, you're supposed to be the Messiah, you're supposed to be

the king of kings, How can you save all these people? If you

die in the desert from starvation. It almost sounds as if Satan is being

merciful by saying, Jesus, you need to really take care of yourself.

Jesus, you can do miracles. Take that stone and turn it into bread,

and it almost from a distance, sounds like Satan is being compassionate.

Now here's a good spot for us to define temptation, since we're in the

middle of this unique temptation here see temptation. I like temp Chalie's definition of

temptation. Temptation, by the way, is anything that promises satisfaction at the

cost of your obedience to God. Will say that again. Temptation is anything

that promises satisfaction at the cost of your obedience to God. Let me put

it in lay terms. If something out there promises satisfaction but it leads you

away from the will and purposes of God, it's a temptation. And we

see this all the time. The world is always offering us these promises,

but it leads us away from the will of God. For instance, we

know that we might have that nagging pain or that drama or anxiety or pain

in our life, but these pills over here. It can dull that pain.

So if we just take these pills, you know what, even though

it would be disobedience from God, it promises that satisfaction, but it leads

to disobedience to God. Pornography promise us, you know, hey, a

little stress, relief, a moment of excitement, and yes, it actually

delivers that, but then afterwards we feel worse and we feel depressed, and

then we're in a worse situation. So it does. It promises satisfaction in

one area, but at the cost of obedience. How many times do we

get down on ourselves and we feel, you know, like our self esteem

could use a big shot in the arm, and we're not feeling too great

about ourselves. So we decide, all right, maybe if I just talk

about this person or that person, and maybe I just gossip a little bit,

Well, you know what that's gonna do. That's gonna lead me to

feeling better about myself. So once again, here's what temptation does. It

promises you satisfaction. And by the way, when you sin, a lot

of times, it does bring you this temporary satisfaction, but at the cost

of what obedience, at the cost of doing God's will. And we see

here in this temptation, anything, any yes to Satan that Jesus would have

said would have been known to God's will in his life and his purposes.

Now here's what I want us to do. I want us to take a

thirty thousand foot view of this temptation from Satan, and then I want to

actually talk about how it applies to your life and my life in our journey.

So we have to understand first of all, this temptation is not about

bread. Okay, everybody needs to get that this morning. This temptation is

not about bread at all. No, this temptation is a temptation to serve

ourselves. It's a temptation to put ourselves in the number one spot in our

life. Every day we have choices to make. Am I gonna trust in

myself or I'm gonna trust in God for my needs? Look out for myself

says someone needs to be looking at for numero uno? Or will I live

a life that focuses on investing in others knowing that God's gonna take care of

me. Seeing Jesus' case, Satan was asking him to use his miraculous powers

that he was given by God to perform a miracle. See verse one says

that Jesus was let into the desert for forty days. And let me tell

you what Satan was asking Jesus to do. Jesus, his whole existence has

been within the Trinity, the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.

And Satan was saying, Jesus, why don't you act independently of God and

your Father and the Holy Spirit? And why don't you just from once do

a miracle that benefits yourself. Why don't you just do something for yourself?

Why don't you trust in yourself instead of the provisions of God. Now,

by the way, this is a little temptation, but I have significant consequences

because every single day, and let me tell you what's going to happen in

your life. You're gonna wake up in the morning and you are you're not

even going to notice these temptations. But here's the temptations that happen to you

every single day that they're knocking on your door every single day. It's a

temptation to use your time, your talent, and your resources to bless yourself,

to be all about you to get what you want, instead of using

your time, your talent, and your resources to bless others. Every single

day, this temptation to serve yourself above everyone else is going to come right

at your door, and we don't even notice this temptation because it's so subtle.

Chuck Swindahl says that there's actually four stages of temptation. He says,

first of all, there's the appeal. It's something that you want. It's

something that you like, something that brings interest to you. I want this

or I want to do this. Number two, there's a struggle, there's

this tension that builds up inside of us. And then three, there's the

response that a decision has to be made whether or not you're gonna do things

God's way or your own way. And then there's the aftermath, which is

either consequence of sin or the fruit of obedience. Now I don't know about

you, but when I go through temptation, it's so subtle. I don't

think I've ever recalled one moment going this feels so appealing to me. Wow,

Wow, something really appeals to me. Right Oh oh, now I

feel is that a struggle? There's an internal struggle going on in my life.

Oh oh, decision time? What am I gonna do? You know?

I don't think we go through these and we even notice these. Here's

what I think happens. You know, temptation is so subtle that it's more

like lightning in your life than a soft rain. I think we would all

be able to catch temptation if we notice it and it was coming in slow.

But temptation comes in so quickly we're not even able to process it.

All we know is I want that, and we our body automatically go through

these things and then we make a choice. Temptation comes at our door every

single day. We don't even notice it. We wake up in the morning

and we start making decisions as are all about me. They come to our

step every day. So what's the antidote to that? What's the antidote to

live in a life above serving ourselves? I think it's simply this, to

start working on your soul to be a generous person. Now, when I

say generous, I'm not switching into a TV evangelists all of a sudden,

like, so send the church one thousand dollars and you won't have to worry

about this temptation anymore. No, No, I'm talking about generous with your

time, your talent, who you are, you're being generous with decisions,

you're being generous with everything you do, or it's not about you. You

start living a life that is just open handed, where you wake up in

the morning you say, God, all that I am and all that I

have at yours. I remember my soul got rocked. I was driving home

from Thanksgiving. This is right before I came here, and Caitlin fell asleep

in the car and I turned on a Rick warm podcast and Rick Warren was

talking about how he made sixty million dollars selling the book Purpose Driven Life.

And while he was talking, I remember daydreaming for a moment about what all

I would buy. That was not the point of the podcast, unfortunately,

I wish it was. But as I was daydreaming about all this land I

would buy and all this stuff, Rick start talking about how he could own

an island. He could have a bunch of servants, he could have,

you know, maids, and he can have all these people, cooks and

all these things. And he said, instead, my wife and I chose

to give ninety percent of that money. And we're talking tens upon tens of

millions of dollars. So he decided to get to three charities. He decided

to pay his church back every penny they ever paid him for his whole career

and ultimately give away ninety percent of that money. Man, So in the

middle meet daydream about what I would do with that money. This dude talks

about this and I just turned a podcast off and it was a change moment

for me, and I said, God, I am nowhere near that.

I am not like that guy, but I want to become like that.

Lord, how do I become like that? And I realized that it wasn't

because it wasn't going to happen by God giving me sixty million dollars. It

was going to be It was going to happen in little moments where I could

be generous here my time, are generous here with this or generous with that.

It was going to happen in an over a period of time. So

I made a commitment to the Lord that Lord, my moms started living a

much more open handed life. And by the way, that was a big

moment for me. And here's what I really noticed. And for those of

you who are young around my age, I want to talk about this for

a moment because this is one of those moments where God kind of said to

me, James, why don't you grow up? Do you know a lot

of us when we grow up and when we're in our young twenties or young

early thirties, we're still wanting things for ourselves. We're still looking out for

ourselves. But it comes a time in your life where you need to stop

acting like a child and you start need to be the adult of all those

around you. You need to be the one who's concerned is everyone else taken

care of before you think about yourself. And for me, it was one

of those moments like grow up, but it was in Christian terms. It

was a moment I've gone from immaturity to maturity. And let me tell you

something. I've watched this for years, and I've seen it in this church

and the church house at before, and the church has at before that,

and the church I grew up in. Let me tell you what I see.

I see a lot of people get stuck here. They come to Christ

at a certain point, but then for the next thirty years, instead of

growing and maturing and moving from being a son or a daughter to becoming a

man or a woman who is mature in their faith, what they do is

they live that same year over and over and over and over again. They

never actually grow. They always stay a child in their faith. And I

believe that this temptation to stay a child in your faith, to stay immature

in your faith, starts with you deciding it's about me, it's about what

I want instead of becoming generous. Can I just share with you real quick,

worry about how all of our generosity does what I would even consider something

close to the miraculous. I learned about this last week and it just blew

my mind away. And I tell you what I thought about this twenty or

thirty times since I heard about it. But I asked you guys a few

years ago to give a significant amount of money to the Spanish ministry. We

didn't have a Spanish ministry. I said, let's redo the gathering place and

let's invest in all this. And it's been like a three year journey and

we finally have a Spanish ministry that's starting. And then a couple of years

ago we said, all right, we're going to launch this ministry called One

More and this is where we're going to become the hands of feet of Christ.

Now here's what I noticed, and I knew this very much. When

I was asking you to give these hundreds of thousands of dollars or tens of

thousands of dollars to these ministries one, I knew that almost every single one

of you didn't speak Spanish. See yeah, so it's like, hey,

why don't you give to the ministry that you won't be a part of number

two? One more. I also knew that a lot of you would never

need the help of the ministry of one more. But this church responded and

became we say, like, all, let's be in the hands of feet

to Christ. One of our members who started volunteering for the Spanish Ministry was

walking into Walmart last week and he walked by a guy who he knew was

definitely a Hispanic and all he did was wave at him, and they both

waved at each other, and then he went on with his own business.

At two o'clock in the morning, our member from our church woke up suddenly

out of the middle of the night, and all of a sudden, God

spoken to a spirit, pray right now, pray right now, Pray right

now. His life is in danger. I can't get into the details,

but this man from our church knew to pray for this man that he waved

at at night because his life was in danger. Come Sunday morning, he

walks into the gathering place of where they're doing their pre launch services, and

lo and behold, who does he see there? This man that he had

never met. All he had ever done was just wave at this man at

Walmart. So they go through service, and then afterwards, the member from

our church walks up to this man and he says, Hey, I don't

know if you remember me, but I waved at you at Walmart and I

need you to know something. That Thursday, at two o'clock in the morning,

God woke me up and told me I need to pray for you passionately

because your life was in danger. And the man said, you're absolutely right.

My life was in grave danger at that exact same time. And so

he came to church that morning through the prayers of this man. Now here's

the other thing interesting. He was sitting next to his wife. Guess how

his wife got cannect to the Spanish service through the One More Ministry. The

wife came in through the One More Ministry, and then the volunteer and all

that came in through our Hispanic ministry. And let me tell you some God

saved that man's life through the prayers and the passion and the ministry of these

two ministries that all of us gave to over the last two years before we

even saw anything. Let me tell you something. When we as Christians live

open handed, we live unselfishly when we decide it's not about us, when

we decide to be the hands of fee to Christ. When we just say,

all right, we're gonna say no to making bread for ourselves, but

we're gonna say, God, all that I have is years. Guess what

God does? God does the miraculous. Because I would love for any of

you to stay after service and explain that story to me. Logically, it

makes no sense. All we can say is only God. And by the

way, before we clear up this first temptation, I want to be very

clear here. Jesus eventually does do a miracle that involves bread. Okay,

he finally does do a miracle that involves bread. But guess what he does.

He feeds five thousand people with that bread. So when Jesus finally does

a bread miracle, it's to bless everyone else. All right, let's look

at the second temptation today, all right, says the devil. Then let

him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms

of the world, and he said to him, I will give you.

I will give you all their authority and splendor. It's been given to me,

and I can give it to anyone I want to. If you worship

me, it will be all yours. Now, some of you are saying,

like, how can Satans give Jesus anything and say that he is a

worlder of the world. But remember and John in the Book of John,

three different times Jesus calls Satan the prince of this world. So here's how

Jesus answered. He says, it is written, worship to the Lord your

God, and serve him only out when we look at this, if we

will just go beneath the surface a little bit to see what Satan's really offering

Jesus. He's offering Jesus a kingdom without any suffering. He's offering Jesus the

easy route. He's said, Jesus, Jesus, you don't have to be

homeless, Jesus, you don't have to face opposition. Jesus, you could

sit on the throne today, Jesus, you could be greater than Caesar.

Jesus, there's no cross in my offer. Jesus, I'm offering you glory

instead of the garden of Gath's sinamy. All you got to do is put

your trust in Satan's plan, which, by the way, Satan's plans,

just so you know, are always easier than God's plans. Satan offered an

easy plan. God offered a tough plan for Jesus. So what was Jesus

tempted to do, which, by the way, we're tempted to do all

the time, and that's to take the short cut, taking the shortcut to

get what we want or to land in our destiny. See instead of Jesus

trusting and waiting a sbmitting it to God's plan for is like Jesus could just

go ahead and grab the glory. He could meet the end goal ahead of

the schedule. And by the way, doing God's will involved difficult times.

And again the world is always offering us he shortcuts. The world says,

hey, why wait till you're married to have sex? Who cares? Look

at our culture. Everybody's living together nowadays. It doesn't even matter or why

you know, who cares about pornography. You're not hurting anybody. Here's a

shortcut to pleasure or Hey, instead of letting your bosses see your integrity and

your work show how good you are for yourself, how about you just trash

the other people you work with so you automatically look better at work, instead

of allowing God to exalt you at the right time. Hey, you know

the world offers you all these possessions, and why don't you just max out

your credit cards instead of waiting and saving up to get those things. See,

we all are offered the shortcut. But whilst the antidote to the short

cut, the antidote is faith. Now, I need to break this down

for you because that sounds too simplistic, but it really is. See faith

that God, that God's will and his ways are good. You gotta have

faith in God's timing. You have to have faith in God's provisions. You

have to have faith that God has a better future for you. Then you

can plan on your own. See faith as an antidote. And Jesus had

to decide, am I gonna put my faith in Satan's plan or God's plan.

God's plan includes a hard road. So who am I gonna trust in?

So Jesus, what do you say? It is written worship the Lord,

your God and serve him only. Now let me talk to you about

something. Often you're gonna be offered the shortcut in life to get the things

you want. But then you are whenever you decide, all right, God's

way is this way. The world's way is this way. One of the

things that we will do in order to go God's way, which is the

harder route, we will have to stop for a moment and actually ask ourselves

one big question. And by the way, it's okay to ask this question,

do I believe God actually exist? Before we will take the hard road,

the difficult road, instead of the easy route to getting what we want

in life, we have to ask do I really believe that God is real?

And do I really trust in God's ways? Even though it's a longer

route, it's a harder route. And by the way, I'm not even

I can't see it. I just know that I gotta trust God. Gen

and I had a rental home in Cincinnati for years and one of our first

renters got many many months behind rent, and then when they finally moved out.

The house was nasty. It's where there was maybe a dog mess.

They would just cut the carpet up. There was holes in the world.

And by the way, we became renters because we couldn't sell at home.

We didn't become renters because we were wealthy people trying to figure stuff out.

No, we get to this house and there's thousands of dollars of damage and

we got to get it fixed right down because we can't even afford to make

the next payment. We're in a bad situation. And my first thought was,

all right, I'm just gonna simply take this lady to the small claims

court. She has destroyed our house. I'm gonna get a quick judgment and

I'll get some money. And let me tell you someone, when you have

a business, there's times where you you probably need to do these things.

I went away and prayed, and the Lord said, I want something different

from you. I want you to trust me. I want you to trust

me. And I didn't want to do that. I wanted to call the

lady up and say you're nasty. I was mad at her, but the

Lord just kept dealing with my heart. I said, okay, I'm gonna

trust you. So I called the lady up and I said, hey,

listen, all those months you you're forgiven. You're forgiven what you did to

our house. And I want you to know I love you and that Jesus

loves you. And that was hard because the problem wasn't solved yet. And

here I am going to Low's putting, applying for credit cards and all this

other stuff. Within a few days later, my wife received a job offer

that almost more than doubled her income, which took way more, took care

of more than the rental problem. But let me take it down another decade

over there. Close to the next eight to nine years, we only had

one more renter in and we only missed one payment, and only did they

pay our rent for all those years. But by the time we sold the

house last year, we sold the house for almost twice as much as we

paid for it. Here it was eight years earlier. I had this choice

to go after the quick money. God said, cay, do you trust

me? And that was hard. I trusted God, and in the end

God, God was so faithful it blew my mind away. See, when

we look at trusting God instead of taking a shortcut, he let me tell

you something. First of all, it doesn't make much sense on the balance

sheet. It doesn't make much sense on the bout. See, faith is

an antidote to take a short cuts to our perceived happiness that the world offers,

and so trusting in God and having faith is going to keep us from

taking all of these shortcuts that the world offers. Let's look at the last

temptation as we close up today. The devil then led him to Jerusalem and

had him stand on the highest point of the temple, and he said,

if you are the son of God, he said, throw yourself down from

here. Now most commentaries would agree that this is the royal porch on the

temple's southeast corner. And we'll look over a kid drawn valley, and it

was about four hundred and fifty feet down. And Josephus the historian, said

that some people will look over and get very dizzy. And here's what Satan

was saying. He says, Jesus, why don't you jump off of this?

Because you're the son of God. God won't let you die. And

if you jump off of this you survive. There will be a miracle.

And because you perform this miracle. All these religious leaders will be so impressed

by you that they'll say, surely this is the Messiah, because only God's

Messiah could do a miracle like this. And Satan even jumps into Scripture Saw

ninety one. What does he say, says word is written. He will

command his angels concerning you to guard you carefully. Now I want to just

stop right here, because there's something missing. Satan actually misquotes this verse.

He leaves something very important. Now, he leaves out the part of the

verse that says, in your ways and jumping off a high point to impress

people is most definitely not the way of God and not the way of the

Messiah. See. Christ came to confront the Pharisees, not to impress the

Pharisees. And so here's what I want you to know. Throw this up

on the screen. Every temptation, with every temptation, there's a lie.

And Satan goes on to say, you know, they were gonna lift up

their hands, but they will not strike your foot against the stone. And

Jesus answered, again, do not put the Lord your God to the test.

See Satan tempted Christ. Instead of serving people, why don't you impress

people, become a sensation. But Satan didn't know the hearts of man,

did he? Because we know that Jesus did a ton of miracles in front

of people and they still didn't follow him. But here's what is going on.

What's a real underlying temptation here, and this is something we do with

every single day, and that is to show off, to show off.

This temptation reads its ugly head almost every day in our life. Instead of

being confident in who we are in Christ, we're a tempted every day to

impress people, whether by our skills, our style, or Facebook proffile Instagram.

Here's what John, one of Jesus' disciples says later on. He says,

hey, the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving

for everything we see. And then check this out and pride and our achievement

in our possessions, in other words, things that impress others. And he

says, these are not from the Father, but they're from the world.

So what's the antidote as we close up today? Humility? Humility? Now,

what's humility? Humility is simply this, It's not talking down about yourself,

Okay, you know, some people say, oh, this meal I

cooked it tastes so awful. I'm so sorry, And I'm like, ma'ama,

it's the best rice pudding I've ever tasted in my mind. No,

it's a little bit off, all right. First of all, false humility

often disguises itself looking for praises. Okay, are people like, oh,

this outfit is so awful, Like are you kidding? Look like you fell

asleep in norsehrim and look up at fifth Saxoph Avenue. No, there's false

humility. No, humility is not denying your strength. It's being honest about

your weaknesses. It's being who you are. And let me tell you something.

I just want to talk about this before we head out today here at

c ATC Church at the Crossing. If we are going to become better disciples,

if we're going to grow and be in the hands of feet of Christ,

we cannot be a congregation that shows off or tries to impress each other.

Because when we show off, when we try to impress each other,

guess what, we never get vulnerable in small groups. Matter of fact,

we stay away from small groups because we don't want people to know that the

real us if this is what we want to do, we would be a

church that would have fog, and we would have all kinds of stuff going

on, and we would be doing everything we can to impress you. Let

me tell you something again, I've said this before. We're not trying to

be a cool church. We're not. God has not called us to be

the cool people in this county. No. God has called us just simply

to be his disciples. And that's all we've been called to being, is

to be disciples who are growing in Christ, who are looking at our sin

and saying, hey, I want to be become more like Jesus every single

day. And the only way we could do that if we are just able

to accept I am who I am. So when you come in here,

don't dress to impress. Wear what you want to wear. If you feel

comfortable on this, wear this, But if you don't feel comfortable with that,

just you know. I am not going to dress up to impress any

of you. Okay, I'm not going to try to speak language or words

that will impress you. We're not going to try to have stuff going on

in our church that looks cool. We're just going to be disciples We're just

going to be who God has called to be. Now that we care about

sin, we want to grow and become more like Christ. But when it

comes to being us, it's just okay to be you? Is that okay?

Guy? Can we just be us and be honest about our weaknesses,

Be honest about our sins, be vulnerable, which leads to humility, which

when we are humble, it means we become like who who is humble Jesus.

So listen, if you are going to grow in three things right now,

grow in your generosity of spirit, grow in your faith and trust in

God for your future, and grow in your humility. Now as we close

today, I just want to simply say this good news too. Scriptures right

here, Hebrews fourth says this, for we do not have a high priest

who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has

been tempted in every way just as we are. Yet he did not sin.

And then one Corinthia says, no temptation has overtaken you except what is

common to man count and God is faithful. He will not let you be

tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, He will

provide a way out so you can endure it. Another word, God's Holy

Spirit is with you to help you overcome these sins and temptations. And God

has paid the cross for are paid the penalty on the cross for our sins.

So here's what we're going to do. Let's go ahead and close our

eyes and bow our heads. And here's how we're going to close out today

as the band comes out. Ere in one of three situations today all of

us, because it's common to man. One you're really struggling with a temptation

that constantly nags you. Or number two today you are a Nita of forgiveness

or number three, both of the above. And so here's what I want

to do. I just want to lead us through some prayer time and I

just want us to take a moment, and first of all, we're going

to just go before the Lord and say, Lord, help me with these

temptations, show me how to overcome these temptations. God, I just hand

these temptations over to you. And so let's just take a moment now and

go before the Lord and take some time to pray over those. Maybe today

there's a sin you need to be forgiven of. And it's a sin that

you've been struggling with for a while, or maybe it's something that it's a

recent thing, But today you can hand that over to Lord and receive grace

and mercy. What sin is the Lord calling you to let go of,

to repent of. Let's take some time now to go before the Lord.

Maybe you're that person that I mentioned earlier. You've been living just a stelle

walk with Christ. You haven't grown, maybe you haven't done anything disastrous,

but the temptation that you have been succumbing to is a temptation to be comfortable.

Take time and talk to a Lord about that. Father, God,

we just come to right now, and we thank you for your grace and

your mercy. And if there's any of you today who would like to come

into a relationship with Christ, pray this prayer with me. Jesus. I

believe that you are the son of God. I believe that you came to

this earth to die from my sins. I believe that you died on the

cross and resurrected three days later. And I want you to forgive me my

sins. I ask you to forgive me my sins. Be my Lord,

lead my life, save me. Just lift up your hand if you've just

prayed that prayer. I see that hand. Let's see that hand. Amen,

I see that hand. Amen. God, we give you. Prayse

today because you forgive and you love and you save in Jesus' name