Temptations of Jesus: The Internal

If ever I love thee, my Jesus, tis now.

Heavenly Father, thank you so much for another opportunity to come together and worship you.

And Lord, I'm sure many of us can testify that we do love you, and we do want to worship you,

although sometimes we don't always live that out in our life.

We don't do it perfectly, and many times we have to come humbly before you and ask that,

Lord, you would forgive and overlook a multitude of things that we've messed up in.

But Father, we can come before you today with thanksgiving, and Lord, just the opportunity to cry out to you

for forgiveness, for mercy, for grace in our lives.

And thank you for being a God who so freely offers it up to us, as we need it.

Every one of us needs that grace and mercy.

Father, as we come to worship you this morning and sing your praise, I ask that you continue to be with us.

God, that you would pour your Holy Spirit out on this place.

That you would pour your Spirit out in our hearts and lives as individuals.

And Lord, this morning, as we have many people who aren't able to be here, that you would pour your Spirit out with Him.

From all of our shut-ins to people who just aren't able to be here, Lord, to those who are in the hospital

and need extra love and attention today, and so God, we lift up Miss Kathy to you.

Lord, we ask that you would touch her body as she just awaits the surgery that she needs,

and Lord, that you would be preparing all the people for that process.

God, we pray for baby Mayhem this morning.

God, that you would touch him as he's in the hospital right now.

Lord, we pray that you would be with the doctors and nurses and everyone involved

to help them kind of figure out what's going on right now.

Lord, that you would touch his body.

God, that you would be with his mom and dad and his grandparents

as they have to sit back and wait patiently for answers to be given and things to be done.

Sometimes that's the hardest thing to do.

Father, it's just a reminder this morning that we're in your hands.

Lord, we're not in control, no matter how much we like to think that we are.

So God, we give ourselves to you this morning.

We put ourselves in your hands and we ask that you would speak to us,

shape us, mold us, do with us as you please this morning

because you are our God and we are your people.

Father, we love you today.

We thank you so much for the opportunity to be together.

And we ask all this in Jesus' precious and holy name.

And everyone said, Amen.

Well, for the past two weeks, we have been talking about the temptation of Christ.

And I want to overview, go back and review a couple things with you.

First thing is, is that Christ was tempted and yet he did not sin.

I think it's very important as people that we remember that,

that the Son of God was tempted and yet had no sin.

And so in our lives as people, as followers of Christ,

we cannot help the ways that we are tempted.

We cannot help why we are tempted with certain things.

But to know this morning that we can have confidence

that even though we may be tempted,

as long as we do not yield to that temptation

and enter into sin, we don't have to have guilt in our lives.

The guilt should only come from sin.

So yes, you may face temptations.

We all do in many different ways.

But there shouldn't be any guilt in our life unless we yield to that temptation.

Christ did not yield to it.

He was sinless and he was perfect.

And that's a great example for us to follow.

There will be many things in our lives that will tempt us as individuals.

But as long as we don't yield to it, we walk in fellowship with Christ,

we walk in his will, and we can be absent from guilt in that.

Second thing is, is that Jesus was prepared for his temptation.

If you are a follower of the Lord this morning

and you want to win in your spiritual battles of life,

you need to make sure that you're prepared.

You cannot go out into the world Monday through Friday,

spending no time with the Lord, no time in his word,

no time in his prayer with him,

and no time in fellowship with other believers,

and just think that when temptation arises,

that you're going to act and respond

and do all the things that you're supposed to do.

We have to be practiced up, prepared for that moment.

Jesus was prepared.

He was submitted to the Holy Spirit,

he was being led by the Spirit,

and he was fasting and praying

and prepared for those moments when he was going to be tempted

and was ready when that situation arose.

Now, third thing is, is that the Holy Spirit leads us to hard places.

So many people in our lives, we pursue the Lord

because life gets hard,

and automatically we begin looking for answers,

so we start seeking the Lord,

and our mindset is if we follow God, it's going to get better.

He's going to make everything better,

but the Lord doesn't always lead us to sunshine and rainbows.

Okay?

The Lord may very well lead us as his followers

into hard seasons and in hard places.

And when you look at what the Holy Spirit led Jesus to do,

it led him to the wilderness.

It led him to starvation,

to hunger, to loneliness, to pain,

and to temptations beyond what most of us will ever truly be able to understand

and comprehend because I guarantee you there was things

that Satan offered to Christ he would never offer to us

because of who he was

and the plan that God had for his life

and the weight that his sinlessness carried for all of us.

And so there's things in this that we can never understand.

So understand this morning,

the Holy Spirit will lead us to hard places.

If you're in a season of hardships right now,

it does not necessarily mean that you've done anything wrong.

It doesn't mean that you necessarily deserve to be there,

but for some reason Christ has ordained this moment

and this time in your life for this thing

and have faith

and understand that he has a purpose and a plan

that if we're faithful in these moments,

we'll see what that purpose and plan is

when we get on the other side of it.

We don't know how long it's going to be.

We don't know how long it's going to last,

but the Lord is faithful,

and we've got to stay faithful in that.

The fourth thing is, the last one is,

Satan can use anything to tempt us.

It doesn't have to be like sinful things.

It doesn't have to be anything that we can look at and say,

oh yeah, that's definitely evil.

He's going to come at us and use normal worldly things

to twist and distort and pervert in a way

that keeps us from honoring God

and bringing honor and gratification to ourselves.

So he can use anything in this world

and twist it and make it sinful

so that we will bring more of the focus on ourselves

rather than focusing on the Lord

and honoring and glorifying him in our life.

And so we've talked about the physical,

how God will tempt us with physical worldly things,

and today we're going to talk about how Satan

tempts us with internal spiritual things.

So read with me Matthew 4, verses 1-11.

Matthew 4:1–11

We're in our same passage,

and we'll be there for the next few weeks.

It says,

Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness

to be tempted there by the devil.

For forty days and forty nights he fasted

and became very hungry.

During that time the devil came and said to him,

If you are the Son of God,

tell these stones to become loaves of bread.

But Jesus told him,

No, the Scriptures say people do not live by bread alone,

but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.

Then the devil took him up to the holy city in Jerusalem

through the highest point of the temple

and said, If you are the Son of God,

jump off.

For the Scriptures say

he will order his angels to protect you,

and they will hold you up with their hands

so you won't even hurt your foot on a stone.

And Jesus responded.

The Scriptures also say,

You must not test the Lord your God.

And next the devil took him to the peak

of a very high mountain.

He showed him all the kingdoms of the world

and their glory.

I will give it all to you, he said,

if you will kneel down and worship me.

Get out of here, Satan.

Jesus told him, For the Scriptures say,

You must worship the Lord your God

and serve only him.

And then the devil went away

and the angels came and took care of Jesus.

So point number one this morning

that I want us to see is,

Satan is no respecter of holy places.

Satan is no respecter of holy places.

Notice right here

that Jesus is in the wilderness.

He's been isolated.

He's carried out far away from civilization

and far from everything.

And Satan takes him to the temple,

takes him to the highest point of the temple.

So I don't know how that happened.

I don't know how they got there.

But we'll just take it for what it is.

This is where Satan took him.

And this is where they are.

To the highest point of the temple,

he took him to the holiest place on earth.

At this time, this is the holiest place on earth.

This is the temple of the living God.

Where the Ark of the Covenant sits,

where the presence of God dwells,

hovers over the Ark of the Covenant.

The sacrifices are made here,

like the atonement for sin,

the whole worship system,

everything that hinged on the Old Testament

rested at this place.

And Satan did not care.

Satan took him from the wilderness,

took him to the holiest place on earth

to deliver his second temptation to him.

I think that's really important for us to see this morning.

Because as people, we have this mindset

that when we go to church,

there's some sort of like magical protection.

And then whenever we go there,

like Satan is not allowed in,

and it's going to be okay, and this is a holy building.

Can I just say this morning that churches burn to the ground?

It's like there are tornadoes that tear churches up.

Like there's churches that literally fall apart.

In fact, when you read pretty much the entire New Testament,

all the epistles written by the apostles,

they're written to the churches,

do you know that all of the writings of the New Testament

to those churches are dealing with the sin

that's taking place within the body of Christ,

within their meetings of worshiping God?

When you come into this place this morning,

I guarantee you, some of you, if not all of us,

have already faced some sort of temptation this morning

as we walked in, or we were walking across the parking lot.

You want to be honest, let's share some things.

Some really weird stuff.

Jealousy.

People come to God's house.

Maybe you pulled up in the parking lot this morning

and maybe you're driving a beater these days,

and somebody drove a really nice car,

and you're like,

man, I wish I had a car like that.

Coveting.

Lusting.

Most people show up to church on Sunday morning

looking their best.

Got some good-looking people in here this morning.

Maybe you were tempted to look at somebody

you weren't supposed to look at.

Gossip.

Maybe you saw somebody do something this week

they shouldn't do,

or they posted something they shouldn't have posted.

Or you know something about them,

maybe don't nobody else post,

and you want to talk about it.

Completely awesome.

Had a person this morning

testify, interrupted me during my sermon

in the first service talking about this,

talking about how as soon as they got in the parking lot,

they were tempted, they got angry this morning,

had something happened out in the parking lot

on the way in,

and gave a little bit of repentance for it,

praised the Lord for forgiving her for it,

and carried on.

How cool was that?

It happens.

Pride.

You know one of the things that happens with us

whenever we become closer with the Lord,

as we're walking with Him,

we see the Lord working and moving,

we can experience pride.

Pastors do, lay people do, we all do.

Division.

You might have a different attitude

or a thought of how something should be

or should go.

Maybe a different song,

maybe the volume of things,

maybe just like you don't like something.

Division and dissension.

All of these things are temptations

that we all walk into every Sunday morning.

That's not even counting what we face

Monday through Saturday.

You with me?

Satan is no respecter of holy places,

he's no respecter of holy people.

In fact, as we've said many times,

if Satan is tempting you,

you should be thankful

because it means you don't belong to him.

Do not be surprised when you're going to face temptation

no matter how dirty the temptation may be

or how little or minute you might think it may be

or whether it's some worldly thing

or whether it's within the body of Christ,

it's going to be there.

Satan does not like people who are living for the Lord

and progressing in that.

He does not like people who are growing in their faith.

He does not like people who are repenting from sin.

He wants you back.

He's going to come after you.

And in Acts chapter 20, verses 29 through 30,

Acts 20:29–30

this just happens to be one of those verses

where Paul is talking to the church in Ephesus

and he's kind of giving them direction

and listen to what he says,

I know, I know that false teachers,

like vicious wolves will come in among you

after I leave, not sparing the flock.

Even some men from your own group will rise up

and distort the truth in order to draw a following.

Temptation is everywhere.

Satan is everywhere.

For some of you this morning,

he might be right here, right now.

Can I share something with you?

Some personal stuff?

On the way to kids' camp this past week,

I was on the phone, I was driving the bus

taking the kids up to kids' camp,

and I was on the phone with one of my friends.

I have a headset.

I wasn't like putting your lives in danger or anything.

So I was on the phone talking to one of my good friends.

He's in ministry.

He's at a church in Florence right now.

And we were talking about

how there's this like crazy thing about church.

Like it does not matter what you do as a pastor.

Like you could be like the most talented person in the world

and there's nothing you can do within your own power

to make a church grow.

You can't make people get saved.

You can't make people repent from sin.

You can be as faithful as you can possibly be.

We joke about this because our staff does a little Bible study

and we laugh because I think it was Jeremiah

who spent his entire life prophesying for the Lord,

giving the message to the Lord.

He had one convert.

And Jeremiah was a great dude.

And then you look at the story of Jonah.

And Jonah was kind of a turd.

He didn't want to go.

He did not do what God wanted him to do.

He actually ran from the Lord.

And yet he goes and a hundred something thousand people

and the animals put on sackcloth and ashes and repent

and the Lord spares them.

And Jonah has like an entire city repent.

He has like he's batting a thousand

and Jeremiah's batting like point zero something.

That's not fair.

But for whatever reason, like you just have no power in that.

But you know what we do have the power for?

We have an enemy who sits right beside us all the time,

constantly offering us the keys to a nuclear warhead

to just blow the whole thing to smithereens.

Because I don't have the power to make any of you get saved.

But I guarantee you if I did something really stupid,

I have the power to make half of you leave today.

You get me?

Because Satan's real.

The power that he is sitting there so willingly,

willing to offer to us is real.

And he's willing to offer it to you.

And while for me it may be something to tear the church apart for you,

it might be something to tear your family apart,

to tear your children apart, to tear your life apart.

Your testimony is real.

And when you look at this, he's no respecter of holy places.

He's no respecter of holy things.

And so this is why we need to be absolutely prepared and ready

and not just praying for ourselves and prepare for ourselves,

but praying for one another.

Because there are sins that you could commit

that could very well tear the church apart too.

It would be much easier for me to tear the church apart,

but it's going to be a possibility for some of you to do it as well.

So we need to be praying for one another.

Point two, Satan will double down on your identity.

We talked about it last week,

about how he comes for your identity and who you are.

And if you look at this passage,

one of the most interesting things is,

is Satan comes back to Jesus for the second time and says,

if you are the son of God,

then you climb up here on the top of this temple and you jump off.

Because Scripture says,

and then he starts quoting Scripture, right?

He starts, he attacks the identity of Jesus once again.

Now, I want to talk about the end of chapter three.

If you got your Bibles, you can just literally flip back to chapter three.

And the last section of chapter three that's talked about is the baptism of Jesus.

So let's go through this whole baptism thing.

Jesus goes out to the wilderness, to the Jordan River.

John the Baptist is there baptizing people.

He comes up to John the Baptist and he says,

I've come to be baptized.

John the Baptist says, no, you're the one who should be baptizing me.

Jesus says, no, you're going to baptize me.

This is the right thing to do.

So John baptizes Jesus,

dumps him in the water, pulls him back up.

And as soon as Jesus is pulled back up out of the water,

the heavens open up.

The Holy Spirit descends on him like a dove.

Just kind of give you a little bit of visual image,

like everyone there in the wilderness who's watching this moment can see

there has been a chasm broken and opened up in this moment.

And they see the Spirit descend on Jesus like it's a visible thing.

And the best way that they can explain it is like a dove.

I don't know what that means.

I wasn't there.

That's the best we got.

So the Holy Spirit descends on him.

And then a voice from heaven,

which is the voice of God,

proclaims to Jesus and to everyone there in the wilderness

who's there being baptized and watching these baptisms,

this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.

Now think about this.

At the end of chapter 3,

God proclaims who Jesus is,

verifies his identity,

and literally says,

this is my Son in whom I am well pleased.

And then we go back to chapter 4 where we are,

and twice now Satan has come and said,

if you are God's Son, then do this.

Can I share something with you this morning?

I think a lot of times,

no matter how many times we feel the presence of God in our life,

no matter how many times we feel like the forgiveness of sin

and the grace of God,

there's always something there that we want more.

And even though Jesus' identity was very much established

in the wilderness in front of all these people,

which would be completely awesome, right?

I don't know about you.

I've never heard the voice of God come down and say,

you're my kid, man.

I'm pleased with you.

I've never gotten that.

I would love to have that.

And as cool as that moment was for Jesus,

there was something within Him in human flesh

that for whatever reason desired to have that experience again.

And in this moment, in this setting at this time,

it was God's will, and God was more than willing to do this for Him,

to establish Him in this moment.

But in chapter 4, in the wilderness,

during His fasting and prayer and preparing to enter into His ministry

as Satan has tempted Him, it is not God's timing.

It is not God's will for this to happen,

and yet there's something within Christ

that is drawn to the top of this temple

and desires to jump off to see if God's really going to protect Him

like Scripture said He would or not

because Satan starts quoting Scripture

and he starts trying to make it sound all good, right?

Like, this is what God's word says.

He'll protect you.

He'll guide you.

He's not even going to let you strike your foot on a stone

to be hurt.

And there's something within Jesus

for whatever reason that appeals to Him in this moment.

And that's really hard to understand.

And I don't know how you feel this morning,

but it doesn't make me feel like Jesus is dirty

or anything like that.

It makes me identify with Him because it's hard.

Like, when you face temptation, it's hard.

It's not meant to be something that's like Jesus is just floating through

and this is all easy for Him.

There was something within Him that desired this.

And I don't know if it was like,

okay, you got the affirmation in the wilderness

and like, you know, kind of the peasants and the peons,

just the normal people are out there in the wilderness with John.

But then in Jerusalem, you got the leaders who are representing Rome.

You got King Herod.

You got the religious leaders, the Sadducees, the Pharisees,

everybody who's involved in that process.

And maybe there was just something in Jesus that wanted for them

to see and acknowledge who He was

because when you read back through the New Testament

and the Gospels, 90% of the conflict between Jesus

and the religious leaders was, are you really the Messiah?

Why?

If you're it, tell us that you're it.

Show us, give us a sign.

Show us a miraculous sign that you are who you say you are,

that you are who people are saying that you are.

And in this moment, this is the very temptation that He's facing

is to reveal that to everyone who would be important.

But for whatever reason, this is not God's will.

It's not God's timing.

It's not God's plan for Him.

The truth is, as people, we would be lying to say

that we really don't care what people think about.

We care what people think about a lot more than we like to acknowledge.

Paul writes about that to the Church of Galatia in chapter 1, verse 10.

And he says, obviously, I'm not trying to win the approval of people,

but of God.

If pleasing people were my goal, I would not be Christ's servant.

And I just want to remind us this morning, like,

we can't be servants of Christ if we're trying to please people

and do what we feel like they want us to do.

We've got to choose.

And we can't be Christ's servant if we're pleasing ourselves

and not living for Christ and trying to please Him.

We can't do that.

We have to make a choice.

And to know today that there was a desire

in the fleshly body of Christ to be seen and acknowledged,

to be heard, to be affirmed in who He was,

I guarantee you every person in this room has wanted that at some point in time.

We want people to see us, we want people to acknowledge us,

we want them to be affirmed in our talents and abilities and gifts.

What we feel like we're good at, we all want that.

And sometimes it's God's will for that to happen in chapter 3,

but in chapter 4 it's not.

And we've got to be obedient in those moments.

Point 3, last one.

All of us are tempted to take it for granted.

You know, the whole thing about Satan in this moment is,

he's coming to Jesus, he quotes the past, he says,

look, Scripture says that if whatever happens,

like the Lord will protect you, the prophecies have been made,

you won't even strike your heel on a stone and hurt it.

And there's this temptation in our life to just take things for granted.

When you're young, you take your age for granted, your health for granted.

When you get older, you start being a little more thankful for those things

and be a little more concerned about them.

Sometimes we take our fortunes and our livelihood and our blessings for granted.

Sometimes we take people in our lives for granted.

You know, one of the things that I've realized at 41 is,

is that the people that I just always thought were going to be in my life,

they're just not.

People move on.

People live in different places, they do different things,

they have their own families, their own professions.

People pass away.

The people who you started the journey with are probably not going to be

the people who you finished the journey with.

And that's just a fact of life.

We take a lot of things for granted as Christians.

And we just assume that the Lord is just going to protect us

and he's going to guide us and he's going to walk with us

and he's going to do these things.

And the truth is, is that when you start sitting down

and you read scripture, there are a lot of blessings and promises

that come from the Lord for people who follow Him

and serve Him and are obedient to Him.

But nothing is guaranteed.

There's nothing that we can take for granted.

And for Jesus to step up on this temple mount

and to face the temptation of jumping off and revealing of who He is,

it's an excess thing.

It just didn't need to happen.

It wasn't God's plan, but for some reason He wanted it.

And there was this whole idea, like, if I do this,

then scripture says this, so I'm going to be okay.

And we have to be really careful in our lives

that we don't just take scripture and use it

to try to justify things that we want and dreams that we have

in pursuits that we're chasing after in life.

Because nothing's guaranteed.

We can't take anything for granted.

And I think the passage of scripture that Jesus quotes in this moment

about how we shall not test the Lord our God

is a fascinating passage.

And we get this like one little verse, but I want to read to you

the verses surrounding this verse.

And Jesus pulls this verse that He quotes from Deuteronomy.

I mean, this is the Word of the Lord that God gave to Moses on Mount Sinai.

And surrounding this one verse, which is verse 16 of Deuteronomy 6,

there's some other verses that I think like really just kind of wrap this thing

and kind of give us a really good idea of what's going on.

Because it talks about this wholehearted commitment

that we need to have as followers of Christ.

And in verse 14 of Deuteronomy 6 it says,

you must not worship any of the gods of neighboring nations.

For the Lord your God who lives among you is a jealous God.

I want you to think about that this morning.

We live in a culture where we don't like to use the word jealous

because it sounds like an ugly word.

But I guarantee you this morning that the Lord is jealous over you.

If you're choosing the world, or you're choosing sin,

or you're choosing another person, or you're just choosing yourself over Him,

He's jealous of you.

He created you, He formed you, He breathed life into your body,

He gave you His Spirit, and He sent His Son to die for you.

He's already paid for you. You belong to Him.

He's jealous over you.

I don't know if you've ever been in that situation before

where you've had something and it wasn't necessarily acknowledged

as being yours and somebody tried to use it and kind of claim it as theirs.

That's a pretty frustrating moment.

That's how God feels for us.

His anger will flare up against you.

You with that?

When He's jealous over you,

He's not going to just let you go on in what you're doing.

He's not going to tolerate it.

Eventually, the grace and love and mercy, there's a line,

and it gets cut off.

And then the anger flares up against you

and He will wipe you from the face of the earth.

We don't like to talk about that side of God, right?

Eventually, there's a line, and God says no more.

For some of you young people in here today,

you be patient and you watch people.

You watch the people around you in your life

and you cannot just watch for a week or a month.

You need to watch for years

to see how God works and moves in these people's lives

who are disobedient to Him.

Because for the Philistines, it was 400-something years,

the Canaanites, 400-something years before He wiped them out

and provided a nation for the people of Israel to move into.

It takes a long time for God's patience to run out,

but eventually it does.

And you never know,

you might already be on the tell-in of that timeline.

But in verse 16, after He says,

I will wipe you from the face of the earth, verse 16,

you must not test the Lord your God

as you did when you complained at Misa.

You must diligently obey the commands of the Lord your God,

all the laws and decrees He has given you.

Do what is right and good in the Lord's sight

so all will go well with you.

Then you will enter and occupy the good land

that the Lord swore to give your ancestors.

Now, I just want to finish up with this thing

that we need to understand this morning.

So the Lord does not desire to punish people.

He does not desire to send anyone to hell.

John 3, 16 says, for God so loved the world,

He sent His only begotten Son,

so that whosoever believed in Him shall not perish,

but have eternal life.

That's why Jesus came.

Now, John 3, 17 says, for God did not send His Son into the world

to condemn the world, but to save it through Him.

The desire of God is not to condemn or punish,

but God will condemn and punish if we force Him to.

And when you look at this,

God does not invite us to test Him in disobedience.

So what you see is when Jesus is saying,

we are not to test the Lord our God,

not in disobedience, not in seeing if, like,

okay, I'm going to see if God will do this or not,

because I just want to see whether or not He's going to keep His word.

But what you find is in verses like Micah 3, 10,

where God's talking about giving to the Lord

and doing some of the things you're supposed to do,

and He says, test me in this and see if I will not bless you

and multiply and fill your barns and your vats with grain

and do all these things for you.

And so one of the crazy things about the Lord is,

is that He does not want us to test Him with disobedience

because He doesn't want to punish you.

He doesn't want to hurt you.

He doesn't want to bring bad things in your life.

But if you do, He will,

because He's going to try to bring you back to Himself.

He wants you to see that this behavior is not tolerable,

so He's going to try to deter you from it

by sending things in your life to draw you back to Him.

But don't test Him in that because He will.

He's a God of His word.

But test Him in obedience.

Two totally different things.

Don't test the Lord in disobedience.

Test Him in obedience.

Because there's lots of promises and things

and stuff that the Lord gives us through His word

that if we obey Him and we serve Him and we honor Him,

that He says,

this is part of the things I will give you

for being my children.

These are things that I do for my children.

I don't know about you.

I got three kids.

They all as hard-headed as I am.

And it's according to what day it is

and how stubborn they are

as to how easy or hard their life is.

And it's not like Hannah and I talk about all the time.

We do not enjoy punishing our kids.

We don't enjoy whipping our kids.

But I'm not going to let them grow up

being hoodlums

because nobody else is going to put up with them

as much as I'm going to.

I love them more than anybody else will love them.

They're not going to tolerate them being annoying

or disrespectful or disobedient.

I might tolerate it.

They're not going to. They don't have to.

They're never going to get hired by people.

They're never going to be loved by people.

They're never going to be accepted.

They're never going to have a stranger be kind to them

or do something with them if they don't learn

how to be decent human beings,

for lack of better terms.

We don't enjoy punishing them,

but we believe that it's beneficial enough

and that they will have something better later on

because we don't let them get away with crazy stuff now.

Does that make sense?

I mean, don't test the Lord in disobedience.

Test him in obedience.

And what's crazy is whenever they are obedient

and they do what we ask them to do

and they help with things and stuff,

life is so much easier for them,

but life is so much easier for me.

It makes my life hard to punish them.

I don't know if you've ever experienced that before,

but as a parent to sit back and punish one of your kids,

it's more miserable for you than it is for them

because it takes a lot more energy to punish them

and keep up with it and be disciplined

to end the punishment.

That's hard.

I would rather them be good.

The Lord wants us to be obedient.

The Lord wants us to choose Him.

And in the midst of life,

we have to be really, really careful

as we walk through this world

to be prepared, to be ready,

because we're going to face temptations,

to know that it doesn't matter whether you're at church

or you're at home behind closed doors

or you're out in public in front of everybody.

There's some people in here this morning

you would be more prone to commit a sin

in front of a group of a thousand people.

If you felt like you were embarrassed,

you'd probably do or say something

because you got embarrassed.

You might not do anything behind closed doors,

but some of you might do something behind closed doors

you're never going to do in front of a thousand people.

Some of you have more temptation here at church

than you do at home.

But you got to be prepared.

You got to be ready.

You got to be wholeheartedly committed

and not take it for granted.

Your identity in Christ

is going to be one of the greatest things

that you have to work out

as you follow the Lord.

If you think your Lord and Savior,

Jesus, whom we believe to be perfect,

was tempted twice by Satan and his identity

after God had just established his identity

for everyone to see,

don't think it won't come for you.

Let's pray this morning.

Father God, thank you for the opportunity to come.

Thank you for the opportunity

to humble ourselves before you.

And thank you for the opportunity to be yours.

Lord, none of us deserve it,

but we're so thankful for it.

And I pray, God, that you would help us

to be faithful this morning.

Not just while we're here,

but whenever we leave these buildings,

this parking lot,

whenever we get home behind closed doors,

whenever we go out in public in front of

our co-workers, family, friends, people,

all of society,

help us to be completely surrendered to your spirit,

to be obedient.

Lord, to be allowed to be led in hard places

because it's only there that we can flourish

and grow in you.

Father, we love you today.

Thank you so much.

And we ask all this in Jesus' name.

Amen.