Temptations of Jesus: God’s Will

Glory to his name.

There to my heart was the blood applied.

Glory to his name.

Well, Father, thank you so much for the opportunity

to be together once again.

Thank you for the opportunity

to gather with other believers

and to be able to bring glory to your name.

And Jesus, I know there's

so many people gathering in one room

where we all have very different lives.

We come from very different places.

We're all in very different circumstances.

And Lord, I know that this past week

for some people have been very different than others.

God, thank you for the work that you did at camp

and the lives of our teenagers,

but also the teenagers across our district.

Lord, thank you for the work that you did

and other people's lives.

And I know there's been several people

who've had some difficult times this past week.

And Father, this morning, I just take the time

to pray for Miss Kathy as she continues to recover.

Father, we pray for Miss Margaret Lyle's nephew,

Lord, that you'll be with his body.

He seems to be doing well.

We just pray that you'll continue

to help him after a stroke

or just be with his body.

Father, we pray for Miss Martha,

Donna's sister, and Lord,

we just ask that you would touch her.

Lord, you know her health issues

and you know what she needs.

And Father, we just pray that you would

send the right doctors and the right people in place

to help her.

And Lord, we just pray for Mr. Bruce

as he continues his treatments in the coming weeks.

Father, I know there's many other things

and what we just ask should be with him.

But Father, in these moments as we gather together,

I pray that your Holy Spirit would be in this place

and you would speak to our hearts

and for all of our brothers and sisters

who are traveling for vacation

and who are just not able to be here for health reasons,

Lord, we just pray that you would be with them

as well today.

Father, thank you for the opportunity to come

and to lift the name of Jesus high.

Lord, we love you, we thank you.

We ask all this in his precious and holy name,

all God's people said.

Amen.

Pastor James, when I say take it back,

I did just, what a blessing.

I wrote up with you taking the kids

and this is why that camp's got a lot going on.

Pastor James, you know all the what he does

at the second class this time of his family.

But it reminds me of what he still has

and then it's on my palm.

Although it was seeing who I scarred,

he's turned on fire and snow.

It's seeing his and him to work in these kids.

What a blessing I'll never get over it.

I'll thank you this morning.

Amen.

Anybody else?

Well, I'm very grateful for the teenagers

being willing to speak.

I remember what that's like.

Pastor Greg tricked us whenever we come home from camp

our first time and had to get up

and talk in front of the church.

But it's really funny, as much as God did

in our lives at camp, just the simple aspect

of getting up and saying it out loud

and verbalizing that in front of other people

was just as much as part of the process of God

working in our lives as it was for him,

what he did in our hearts.

Because it brings it to reality.

So when you say it out loud

and when you testify about that in front of other people,

it brings it to reality.

So thank you young people for sharing.

You do what most people will never do in a church

to get up in front of others and talk,

which is a very, very brave thing to do.

We're in week five.

We're talking about the temptations of Christ

and I told you guys for several weeks

we were gonna focus on Matthew four.

And today we're gonna move beyond that a little bit.

And I think that's really important

because if we're not careful,

we can come to this misunderstanding

that basically Jesus faced temptations

in verses one through 11 of chapter four.

And during that 40 day and 40 night period

that's all he ever faced.

And then it was done and basically

he was just perfect from that point on.

But that's just not reality.

That gives us a great insight as to some of the things

that he dealt with in that moment

and in that season of life.

But the truth is Jesus went through

an extreme amount of temptation

and things that you and I may never get to experience

or never have things offered to us

that he had offered to him.

And so in Luke chapter four, verse 13,

now we hit on Luke a little bit last week

to get a little bit different perspective

of that temptation.

But Luke's account said in verse 13,

it says, when the devil had finished tempting Jesus,

he left him until the next opportunity came.

So understanding that in Jesus' life,

his temptations were not limited

to this 40 day, 40 night season of his life

where he's experiencing extreme hunger, loneliness,

really just kind of going through this moment

before he's entering his ministry.

Satan come at him when opportunities arise.

And so in your life, there are gonna be seasons

where you experience temptations more than others.

I guarantee you, a lot of these young people

just had this amazing moment at camp this past week.

And then you come back home

and you have all the things in your life

that were there before.

And then all of a sudden you're like re-exposed

to all those things.

And I'm sure that many of them face temptations

since they came home at Friday.

That they said, Lord, I'm gonna give this to you,

I'm gonna turn this over to you,

I'm not gonna do this anymore.

And then it's like, boom, Satan's like,

here I am.

Because it comes, when the opportunity arises,

he comes and he came after Christ again in a later time.

Another cool thing we see is in Hebrews 4.15.

And the author of Hebrews writes

that this high priest of ours,

and he's explaining to Jewish people

how Jesus is our high priest,

he sits at the Father's right hand,

he pleads on our behalf,

he is the ultimate sacrifice once and for all time

for our sins, okay?

But in verse 15, he says,

this high priest of ours understands our weaknesses.

For he faced all the same testings we do,

yet he did not sin.

And so the reminder this morning,

and I think this is important

that we don't look at Jesus and be like,

oh, that makes me feel different about Jesus.

He faced all the same temptations I do,

but he didn't sin.

It should bring us great comfort to know this morning

that no matter what it is that draws you,

whether it's fleshly or worldly

or spiritually being disobedient to God's will,

whatever it is in your life,

Jesus understands that because he faced

all the things that we faced.

And yet he did not sin.

So the reminder this morning

that because we are experiencing temptations in our life

should not bring in this load of false guilt, okay?

So for some of you young people,

when you got home this past weekend

and you faced some of those temptations again,

do not have the false guilt of the temptations you face.

You only should feel guilt whenever you give in

and yield to those temptations and commit the sin.

Because Jesus experienced all the temptations

and all the testings that we do, yet he did not sin, okay?

That should bring us great comfort as we continue on.

And the typical rendition of what's happening

throughout scripture is,

is the same old story of when things are the way

they're supposed to be,

we pay very little attention to it, right?

I don't know if you ever noticed that before,

but when you go to a place, you go to a restaurant,

and the food's good and the service is good

and the drinks are good and they keep your cups filled

and they do everything they're supposed to do,

that's just the way things are supposed to be.

And unless they do something extraordinary,

we don't really pay it too much of attention.

But if it's bad, we notice, right?

Like as soon as you walk in and something's bad,

you notice.

And it draws your attention to it.

And with Jesus, who is God's son, goes through life

and he does everything that he's supposed to do

and he lives a perfect life and he's good

and he treats people well,

and he does all that he's supposed to do

and he never sends,

it doesn't get much attention drawn to it

because he did what he was supposed to do.

But think about how many Christians you know

who have failed in a moment

and then it's broadcast for the world to see

and now everybody knows, right?

Like we make a big deal out of it

when people don't do what they're supposed to do,

but when people do what they're supposed to do,

well, they're supposed to,

so we don't pay it much attention.

So we miss a lot of things that Jesus goes through

because he did it right and he did it perfectly.

And we expect him because he was Jesus

that he did what he was supposed to do

and we don't pay it much attention.

But today, I wanna read a passage to you

from Mark 14, verses 32 through 41.

Mark 14:32–41

And we're gonna talk about some of these other temptations

and these testings that Jesus have throughout his life.

And we're gonna see a couple of those today.

But I think this is really important

because we've lumped it all in to Matthew 4, 1 to 11

and think, well, that's all Jesus knew.

And it's not because Jesus battled this constantly

throughout his life, just like we do.

So in Mark 14, 32 through 41,

Jesus is about to go to the cross.

He's about to be crucified

and he goes to the Garden of Gethsemane

and he takes his disciples with him to pray,

is what it says.

So they went to the olive grove called Gethsemane

and Jesus said, sit here while I go and pray.

He took Peter, James, and John with him

and he became deeply troubled and distressed.

He told them, my soul is crushed with grief

to the point of death.

Stay here and keep watch with me.

He went on a little further

and he fell to the ground and he prayed

if it were possible.

The awful hour awaiting him might pass him by.

I'm a father, he cried.

Everything is possible for you.

Please take this cup of suffering away from me

yet I want your will to be done and not mine.

Then he returned and he found the disciples asleep

and he said to Peter, Simon, are you asleep?

Couldn't you watch with me even one hour?

Notice he points Simon out.

We'll come back to that in a second.

Couldn't you watch with me even one hour?

Keep watching, pray so that you will not give in

to temptation, for the spirit is willing

but the body is weak.

And then Jesus left them again

and prayed the same prayer as before.

And he returned to them again, he found them sleeping

for they couldn't keep their eyes open

and they didn't know what to say.

And when he returned to them for a third time,

he said, go ahead and sleep, have your rest

but know the time has come, the Son of Man is betrayed

into the hands of sinners.

And point number one this morning,

I think it's really important for us to see in this moment

that Jesus does not wanna suffer and die.

You know, when we talk about what it means to be tempted

and go through temptations, you know,

earlier we talked about Jesus turning the stone in the bread

and jumping off the highest point of the temple

and receiving the kingdoms of the world

and all their glory and all their splendor.

And so as we walk in our relationship with the Lord,

there's very much this initiation of when we begin

to follow him, we're fighting sins of the flesh.

We're fighting things that we've always just kind of done

because they were normal and everybody else

in the world is doing them.

And then we're battling those things.

We're asking God to help us overcome those things.

And then we're battling things of the world

and dying to the world and overcoming that

and moving into this relationship with Christ.

But I dare to say this morning that if some of you

have been walking with the Lord for a good while

and you've given your heart to Christ and you've served him

and you've died to sins of the flesh

and you've died to things of the world,

then more than likely as you're here today,

you're probably not having to fight off

sins of the youth and all those things

that we associate with being younger

and trying to die to and give into.

And you're in a much more established place in your life.

And now you're fighting this internal battle

of things that God is leading and calling you to do,

want you to do that may not necessarily

he's speaking and calling and leading anyone else to do.

And in this moment you see this very unique

calling on Jesus' life to be the sacrifice

for the sins of the world.

He is called to die and he does not want to.

Let that sink in for a second.

As Jesus goes to the garden to pray

and the time is drawing near,

he has been obedient to God this entire time.

He's done everything God has asked him to do.

He's fought and kept from doing every temptation

that's been faced to him so far.

And yet, even up to the end,

when he goes to the garden,

he's praying, God, anything's possible with you.

And Jesus understands God better

than any of us could ever dream of

because he came from the Father.

He was with the Father in the beginning.

And he says, anything's possible with you.

Jesus knew that if God wanted to make another way

and remove this burden from him,

that God could do that.

God could technically save us in some other way.

He says, God, anything's possible with you,

yet I want your will to be done and not mine.

And what you see in this moment

is that Jesus is having the same struggle in his life

with the calling that God's put on him

that many of us face so many times.

That God speaks to us, he calls us,

he reveals things to us.

And yet, we know what we're supposed to do,

but there is something within us

that just does not want to surrender and do it.

And that's where Christ is in this moment.

And he's praying and he's seeking God.

And this is something that's very personal to Jesus

that nobody else can understand.

Jesus has announced this.

He's told his disciples about it multiple times.

The Son of Man must go to Jerusalem.

He will be betrayed.

He will be handed over to sinful men

and he must suffer and die so that people can be saved

and forgiven of their sins.

He's explained this multiple times,

but the disciples don't get it.

They don't understand it.

The religious leaders have no idea what's going on.

Nobody else in the world knows what's happening

except for Jesus and God,

because they're the only ones who truly understand

what's about to take place.

And understand in this moment,

even though Jesus knows why

and he knows what's supposed to happen

and he knows what's coming,

there's something within him that does not want to do it.

He does not want to experience what's about to happen.

I don't know about you guys.

I'm a pastor, been saved 26 years.

You won't see me going and signing up

to suffer and die today,

because I don't want to.

That's not a good salvation message.

That's not a good thing to get people

to sign up to follow Christ.

That is not within who we are as human beings

to say, yeah, I can do that.

That's not natural.

Nobody else gets it, and you can see it.

Look at Matthew 16, verses 22 through 23.

Matthew 16:22–23

Jesus is telling his disciples what's about to happen.

Peter just testified who Jesus was.

He says, you are the Messiah,

you are the Son of God.

And just a few verses later,

Jesus says, well, I must go to Jerusalem.

I must die.

And in verse 22, but Peter took him aside

and began to reprimand him for saying such things.

Heaven forbid, Lord, he said,

this will never happen to you.

Jesus turned to Peter and said, get away from me, Satan.

You are a dangerous trap to me.

You are seeing things merely from a human point of view,

not from God's.

Can I tell you this morning

that if you're sitting here today

and you're still fighting sins of the flesh

and this is your only battles that you're fighting,

let's just be honest with what's going on.

At best, you're a young Christian.

You're still in a state of immaturity as a Christian

to still be fighting sins of the flesh.

That doesn't mean that you're not gonna make it.

It doesn't mean that God doesn't have a plan for you.

He can't use you.

This is just where you are.

And you have some growing to do.

And if you're fighting this battle of dying to the world

and choosing to follow Christ and things like that,

you're a little further along,

but you're still dealing with these things.

And then there comes this point of God is calling you

and speaking to you about certain things.

And no one else knows and no one else understands.

And you can try to explain it

and you can try to verbalize it

and it's not gonna make sense to anybody else.

And you can look in this moment

when Jesus is verbalizing what God has called him to do,

his most faithful, like biggest cheerleader,

Peter's the one who's just there.

Like Peter chopped off somebody's ear for Jesus, okay?

Like he's in it.

And he says, God forbid, this is not gonna happen.

This is not for you.

And Jesus looks at Peter and says, get behind me, Satan.

You're a trap to me because you are seeing things

from a human point of view and not from God's.

If you get to the point where you are following God

and God is speaking to you and he's calling you

and he's guiding you in your life,

even the closest people to you

will not understand what God is leading you to do.

There will come a point in your life

where people in general will not be able

to look at your life and hold you accountable

for what God is speaking to you and calling you to do

and the things that you need to give up,

things that you need to die to,

things that you need to do more of,

nobody's gonna be able to hold you accountable in that.

It will only be the conviction

of the spirit of God in your life.

And you will be responsible to be obedient to that.

Because Jesus had said it over and over and over again

and the closest people to him were just like,

no, this ain't gonna happen.

No way Peter reprimands Jesus in this moment.

And in this moment, Satan uses one of the closest people

to Jesus to be a temptation to him.

You following me?

That's a scary place to be.

We have to be really careful in our personal lives

to make sure we're following God.

And we also have to be really careful as people

whenever we're encountering other people

that we're talking to

and we don't understand the things that they're saying

and what they say God is speaking to them about

and calling them to,

to not just automatically shut them down

because we don't understand what's going on,

but to really say, man, I don't get that,

but I will definitely be praying for you.

I'm here for you in this

for whatever God is leading you and calling you to do,

because it's not for us to understand what God is doing

in the heart of someone else.

It's just for us to understand,

to love them and support them

and pray for God's will to be done.

There's gonna be a temptation in our life to be comfortable.

We don't wanna suffer.

There's gonna be times where we don't wanna forgive someone.

There'll be times where we don't wanna lead others.

We don't wanna speak in front of others,

but God will want us to and God will call us to

and the question is,

is what will you do when God puts that on your heart

and in your life?

Only you can truly know

through the spirit speaking to you

and whenever you stand before your father one day in heaven

and you have to give an account

for the things that you were obedient in

and the things that you were disobedient in.

That's tough.

But that's truth and you have a Lord and Savior

who stood there at the threshold

of exactly what God sent him for

and there was something in his flesh that said,

God, I don't wanna do this

and I know everything is possible with you

and you can take this away from me if you want to.

I don't wanna do it, but let your will be done

and not mine.

That's hard.

Point number two,

the flesh and the spirit are at war.

In this moment when Jesus is praying in Gethsemane,

this is the age old battle that's taking place

and if you don't understand this as a believer,

you are setting yourself up for failure.

Your flesh and your spirit are going to be battling

each other constantly

and there is a need in our life.

We know that we have to feed one

and starve the other

and the biggest temptation will be to feed both

but you can't

because when you feed the flesh,

the spirit starts to die.

When you feed the spirit, the flesh starts to die

and the truth is is we like the flesh.

We like our bodies.

You look at this moment where the disciples are with Jesus

in the Garden of Gethsemane

and you look at what they're battling in this moment.

They are tired.

They've been at this like

what they've been doing in Jerusalem

for the past several days.

It's just like this gauntlet of mess and ministry

and these altercations between Jesus

and the religious leaders

and Jesus is turning over tables in the temple

and there's all kinds of stuff going on in this moment

and they're exhausted

and Jesus is in the Garden

and he's praying and it's dark

and it's quiet

and he starts praying and he says,

pray with me

and every time he leaves, they go to sleep

and there's nothing simple about sleep, is there?

How many of you slept last night?

How many of you tried to sleep last night?

There's nothing simple about sleep

but it's a very minute choice in this moment

because sleep is something that feeds your flesh

and at times that is an appropriate thing for us to do

and at other times there's a time for us

to deny our flesh of something like sleep

and in this moment,

they were feeding their flesh with sleep

but they were killing their spirit in the process.

This is why Jesus came back to Peter.

Remember Peter?

And he calls out Peter and says,

Peter, you need to pray

because if you don't pray, you're not gonna be ready

and you'll give in the temptation

and what does Peter do

as soon as it hits the fan?

He runs away and denies.

He's not prepared.

He fed his flesh with sleep

but he didn't feed his soul.

He didn't feed his spirit to resist temptation.

Everything matters.

Whether we want to admit it or not,

everything matters.

Every little thing.

There's a time and a place for all these things.

In Galatians 5 verses 16 through 17,

Galatians 5:16–17

this is the passage of Scripture

we've used several times here lately

but it's so powerful.

And Paul writes,

so I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives

and then you won't be doing what your sinful nature craves

for the sinful nature wants to do evil

which is just the opposite of what the spirit wants.

And the spirit gives desires

that are opposite of what the sinful nature desires

and these two forces are constantly fighting each other

so you're not free to carry out your good intentions.

And if you see Jesus in this moment, in this garden

and you can't understand that his flesh

and his spirit are fighting one another

and he's praying about that

and he's crying out to God about that,

we're blinding ourselves

and we're setting ourselves up for failure

because as soon as you walk out of these doors,

if God does something in your heart

and he speaks to you and he moves in you,

you can rest assured that sometime,

if not sooner than later,

your flesh is gonna start saying feed me.

Feed me.

I don't know if you've ever had a kid before,

but whenever they get hungry, it's miserable

because they're immature

and they don't know how to verbalize it.

We did that yesterday morning.

We listened to crime for about 45 minutes like,

let's go get something to eat

and it changes everything.

And your flesh and immaturity cries out constantly,

feed me and your spirit sits over here

with a lot more maturity

and quietly waits for you to feed it.

Your flesh is the infant over in the corner,

screaming and crying and hollering.

So the squeaky wheel gets the grease,

but your spirit sits quietly

and patiently waits for you to feed it.

And the more you feed the one that screams

and hollers and cries,

the more that this one dies.

But the more that you feed this one,

the more your flesh will die.

And we have to be aware that our spirit

and our flesh are going to be fighting one another

more than we could ever imagine.

This might be the most important thing

that's said this morning.

But as we talk about moving forward

in our relationship with God

and not always fighting the sins of the flesh,

so don't get me wrong,

even if you're a mature Christian,

there will be times where Satan comes along

and says, hey, you remember this thing over here?

You remember what you used to do

and know what you struggled with?

Wouldn't that be really nostalgic

and fun to have that once again?

There'll be times,

but the longer you follow the Lord,

the longer you serve Him.

You need to understand

that your flesh will always have a voice.

And it will always cry out

and it will always want to be fed.

And there are gonna be plenty of times

where you are not gonna want to do

what God is leading you to do.

It's not just gonna be once,

it's not just gonna be every once in a while.

It could be something that's quite regular,

where God has spoken to you,

He's teaching you, He's guiding you,

and there's gonna be moments

where you are just not gonna want to do

what God is leading you to do.

And Jesus experienced that up until the very end.

It really changes the perspective

of how we look at our Savior.

Not just some man who just frolicked along in life

and just did everything perfect and it was all easy,

but somebody who came and he suffered

just like you and I suffer.

And he battled just like you and I battled.

And he chose what was right over what was wrong

every single time, not for him, but for you and for me.

He did that for us.

And in this moment,

so far we've looked at how Jesus battled sin

and how he battled temptation.

And we know that he fasted.

And we know that he quoted scripture.

And we look at all these things

about how he combated those temptations in Matthew 4.

But what's awesome is is when you look at this passage

and you look at how he's fighting this temptation

and this battle of the flesh and the spirit

and this moment is, dude, he is crying out in prayer.

He is lifting himself up to the Father,

crying out to the Father and reminding himself

of what God wants to do.

And he's saying it out loud.

He's saying what his flesh wants,

but he's also saying what the spirit wants

and what the Father wants.

And in our lives, as we serve and we follow the Lord,

you can have some amazingly bold and open

and honest conversations with the Lord

if you do it in prayer.

When you read the book of Job

and you look at how Job responded to the Lord

after the Lord allowed Satan to take everything from him

and Job made some pretty bold claims and statements in that.

But one of the reasons why Job was found sinless

in the midst of that is because he did that through prayer.

He did that as he was talking with God

and he was fleshing that out through his flesh

and through his spirit.

And he's talking with the Lord in those moments.

And for whatever it is in your life,

whatever it is that you're dealing with and going through

and how God's speaking to you

and what your flesh is wanting

and what your spirit's wanting,

you can have those conversations openly with the Father

and have some open and honest and brutal conversations

with the Father and not sin in that

because you're praying to him

and you're talking with him and you're doing that to him.

Point three, last one.

Satan again came after his identity.

He came after his identity to the very, very end.

Guys, when you look at our Savior,

and you think about how many times Jesus came after

who he was and his identity and being God's son,

that's pretty notable.

You look at Matthew 27 verses 39 through 44.

Matthew 27:39–44

Jesus has already committed himself to go to the cross.

He's already been beaten.

He's already been spit on.

He's already been ridiculed and made fun of.

He's literally nailed on the cross.

He is as committed as you can possibly be

and the temptation does not stop there.

You would think eventually, okay, Lord,

Lord, it's gonna ease up on him a little bit

and make it a little easier, but no.

To the very end, Satan is there to try to pull him away

from what it is that God has called him to accomplish.

And in Matthew 27, 39 through 44,

as Jesus is hanging on the cross,

the people passing by shouted abuse,

shaking their heads in mockery.

Look at you now, they yelled at him.

You said you were going to destroy the temple

and rebuild it in three days.

Well then, if you are the son of God,

save yourself and come down from the cross.

You recognize that?

You recognize that from Matthew 4?

If you are the son of God,

then save yourself and come down from the cross.

To the very end, Satan is still coming at him

and this time he's using other people.

If you really are the son of God,

then come off the cross and save yourself.

What better way for Satan

to ruin the plan of salvation for the entire world

than to get Jesus to come off at the last minute.

When Jesus is suffering,

when his body's probably going into shock,

when his mind is probably not thinking the clearest

that he has ever thought in his physical life,

and the temptations and the mockery

and the question of his identity still comes.

And in verse 41, the leading priests,

the teachers of religious law,

and the elders also mocked Jesus.

He saved others, they scoffed,

but he can't save himself.

So he is the king of Israel, is he?

Let him come down from the cross right now

and we will believe in him.

Can I just say that if you were ever at a point in your life

where you say, God, if you will do this,

then I will believe in you.

Be really careful about who you're sounding like.

And I know we all want proof and we all want to believe.

But Scripture says, blessed are those who believe without seeing.

Because if you believe without seeing,

if you believe without proof,

you know that your faith is genuine to trust in God

beyond what he's able to just do for you on a whim.

He trusted God, so let God rescue him now if he wants him.

For he said, I am the son of God.

And even the revolutionaries who were there,

who were crucified with him, ridiculed him in the same way.

Even to the very end,

you could be doing exactly the thing that God has called you to do.

And this is what we got to be careful with.

As a believer, you could be doing the exact thing

that God has called you to do

and everyone else around you, family, friends, people,

other Christians may mock you

because they don't understand what it is

that God has put in your heart and life.

And up until the very end, Jesus has been obedient

and he's being mocked and ridiculed by everyone who's around,

everyone who's watching.

And this whole identity thing about Christ,

who he was,

this was a lifelong thing.

There's no way it couldn't be.

You know, when you think about Jesus

from his birth to his final breath,

can you imagine what everyone in the world said about him

and his identity in Christ or his identity in God?

Even from an early age when he's a kid,

can you imagine people sitting around saying,

look, there's Mary.

You know, that's not really Joseph's kid.

Can you believe the audacity

that they claim that she was impregnated by God,

the Holy Spirit?

What a load of garbage.

There's no telling who she slept with before.

Her and Joseph finally got married.

Obviously, she's pretty promiscuous.

There's no telling whose kid he really is

and they say that he's the Son of God.

If you really are the Son of God, then you'll do this.

And even John the Baptist,

John the Baptist who saw him coming in the wilderness,

who said, behold the Lamb of God,

who takes away the sins of the world,

a man whose sin knows I'm not even worthy to tithe.

And he comes and he tells Jesus,

you should be the one baptizing me.

And Jesus says, no, you're gonna baptize me

because this is the right thing to do.

And some of John's own disciples leave

and begin to follow Jesus and serve him.

And when John is in Herod's house in prison

and he's about to die, he's about to be killed,

he sends some of his disciples who are still with him

to ask Jesus, are you really the Messiah?

Are you the one that we've been waiting for?

After he saw him and identified him in that moment,

and the question is over and over and over again,

are you really the Son of God?

Are you really who you say you are?

Are you the King of the Jews?

Are you the real King of Israel?

Are you the one who comes from the line of David

that God has prophesied about?

His whole life, his whole identity

would have been questionable.

And up until the very end,

Satan comes after him over and over and over again.

And I don't know what it is in your life,

but I guarantee you there's at least something

in our lives as individuals that we have followed the Lord,

we've surrendered certain things,

we've given our hearts and our lives to him

and we've seen victories in some things

and yet they're still like one

or maybe a couple of things that just linger.

And for whatever reason, we've asked God

to take this from us and help us overcome this,

but it's still there and it just keeps coming back up.

And for whatever reason,

that's the thing that we're just drawn to

that keeps on coming back up in our lives

that we have not yet understood God, why is this here?

But then when you look at Jesus

and you think about from his very birth,

all the way up until the very end,

it's the thing that Satan just kept coming back at him at.

If you really are the Son of God,

then you'll do this or you'll do this

or you'll do this.

If you're the Son of God,

you'll live up to our expectations

rather than God's expectations.

Think about the crazy rationale behind that.

But whatever it is in our life

that we experience temptation in

and we experience suffering in,

to know today that your Savior understands what that's like.

He does not look at you and think,

what a disgusting person to think

that you just keep on like,

how is that still a problem?

And not to be frustrated and not to give up

and not to just say,

well, I guess I'll just do that

or I guess I'll give into that

because it doesn't seem like I'm ever gonna overcome it.

Maybe that's just who I am or that's in my blood

or that's in my DNA or blah, blah, blah.

No, there are some things

that God allows to be present in our life.

And maybe even stay with us for the duration of our life

so that we can overcome in the name of Jesus

and bring glory to Him in the midst of it.

And Christ understands what that's like

because you see that throughout His life

that His identity was just something

that Satan just kept coming after over

and over and over and over again.

But the cool thing is, is in this moment,

Satan battles this moment with prayer

and he goes to the garden

and he bows down and he begins to pray

and he invites his friends,

his followers with him to pray with him.

And they were tired and they didn't do a good job.

But this morning,

if there's something in your life

that you would like to pray about,

I promise you, if you came to pray,

people would come with you

and they're probably not gonna fall asleep.

But this morning,

you have the opportunity

to cry out to the Father,

not in shame, not in ridicule,

but in a position that we're probably all in,

that we probably all need that prayer,

to seek the Father and ask Him to help us,

saying, God, you know this is what I want,

but I want your will to be done and not mine.

And if that's you this morning,

we're just gonna take a few minutes.

If you'd like to come pray, the altar's open.

And in just a moment, I'll pray and we'll close out.

Amen.

Come down here, hear it.

We want to be healed up.

Praise God, I want to accept Him.

That's right for you.

That's good.

Look at my sign of you.

Make our Christ lift you up.

That's right for you.

Father God, I just want to say thank you for this day.

Thank you for the opportunity to come and just give ourselves to you in a new way.

Father, I pray that your Holy Spirit would work and move in our hearts and lives.

Lord, if there's anybody in this room who just could not get up,

could not come and pray, Lord, for whatever reason,

I pray that your Holy Spirit would touch them where they are right now.

That they would cry out to you where they are.

Father, we thank you so much for being a Savior who loves us enough

to go way beyond what you wanted to do

so that you could be obedient to the Father and Lord.

We benefit most of all because of what you did.

Father, we thank you for that today.

Jesus, I pray that you would speak powerfully,

that you would go with us and you would guide us.

Lord, thank you so much for all that you've done for us and all you continue to do.

This morning as we end, I just ask that you would leave quietly

so the people praying can continue to pray as needed.

You guys are dismissed and I hope you have a great week.