The Battle for the True Self: Matthew 3:16-4:11 - Matthew: Kingdom of God Revolution

You're listening to the road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

And men and women, I want to encourage you today.

This is the true self.

This is who you are.

You are love.

You are cherished.

You are precious.

You have Christ's love and his agape goodness living within you.

He says to every one of you in this room, whether you're a believer or not, that you're beloved, that if you'll give yourself to him, your life will be well pleasing.

At The Road, our vision is to raise up wholehearted disciples of Jesus Christ.

For more information on The Road, visit theroad.org.

We hope you are encouraged by today's message from Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

So turn in your Bibles to Matthew 3, 16 through 17.

And what we're, if you're a guest with us or you're new, or you haven't been here in a while, we're going through the book of Matthew and we're looking at this theme of a kingdom of God revolution.

Twenty-nine times the idea of the kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of God is mentioned in Matthew.

And church, I believe that God wants to bring a kingdom of God revolution, first of all in your life, but then second of all in your lifestyle and in your job and in your family.

God wants to visit your family with the kingdom of God.

And we define the kingdom of God as the reign, the rule, and the power of Christ over a rim, an area.

That's what kings rule over.

Kings can't be kings unless they have a territory for their kingship.

And a king in ancient times was one who ruled over a territory, and the width and the depth of the power of that kingdom was based in citizenship, how many citizens they had.

And we're citizens of the kingdom, you guys.

You're a citizen of the kingdom.

That means that you are marked with the identity of the king.

In other words, when when the English, you know, took over different territories, they colonized them.

And when they colonized them, they made England there.

They took England and they brought it to Jamaica, or they took England and they brought it to Hong Kong.

And so everybody in Hong Kong, you know, today drinks tea.

They don't drink coffee, they drink tea.

And they drive on the wrong side of the road.

We got independent over 200 years ago.

But that's what a kingdom works, that's how a kingdom works.

It colonizes.

And the kingdom of God, our job on this earth is to colonize the earth with the kingdom of God through bringing heaven to earth with an identity that's heavenly, so that God's kingdom on earth looks like God's kingdom in heaven.

How many of you know there's a pretty big disconnect?

And it's because the church today brings the church too much.

It's too much of us and not enough of him.

And so we're studying Matthew because we're learning principles, we're learning patterns, and we're learning the ways of the kingdom through the king.

Jesus.

Over a hundred times he spoke about the kingdom.

It was his central message.

He really didn't talk much about anything else but the kingdom.

And we hardly ever talk about what he talked about most of the time, which is the kingdom of God.

So look at Matthew 3, we're at the end of it, the end of Matthew 3.

And this is my lead-in to the three great temptations of Jesus, which are the same three great temptations that you and I experience.

And I'm going to call it the battle for the true self, the true identity that you have in Christ.

The battle for the false self, which Satan wants you to buy into.

And he's been largely successful on the earth and especially in the church with this false self.

So let's look at the true self.

So it's interesting to me that the Father affirms the identity of the Son before he does anything miraculous, before he has any public ministry, the Father, God, through the filling of the Holy Spirit, says to his son, this, verse 17, a voice came from heaven saying, This is my beloved Son in whom I'm well pleased.

So even Jesus, fully God and fully man, needed evidently to actually be affirmed in his true identity, his true self.

That he was beloved, that he was well pleasing to his father before he had done anything.

And men and women, I want to encourage you today.

This is the true self.

This is who you are.

You are loved, you are cherished, you are precious.

You have Christ's love and his agape goodness living within you.

He says to every one of you in this room, whether you're a believer or not, that you're beloved.

And if you'll give yourself to him, your life will be well pleasing to him.

It's what everybody's longing for.

It's the delight of all the nations.

I'm convinced that if everybody in these neighborhoods all around us knew that they were beloved and that Christ loved them and they really, really had it presented to them in a life-giving, biblical, spirit-filled way, we would not have room enough in our churches to contain all the people that poured in.

But instead, we've we've masked it with the false self and what happens in many of our lives, and we're going to talk about this great temptation and the three great temptations, is that Satan knows that people out there aren't really that interested in our doctrine.

They're really not that interested in our theological viewpoints, couldn't care less about what we think about this book called the Bible.

What they're looking for is authentic Jesus followers who spread forth the love of Christ and the forgiveness of Christ in a way that touches them at the deepest levels of their heart, just the same way Jesus did.

Jesus could not contain the crowds.

And God today is looking for an authentic church, and it begins with us, but the temptation of the enemy comes, and he always comes to rip us off from the reality of who Christ is.

So Jesus gets filled with the Holy Spirit.

He hears this affirmation of the new identity that he has in his heavenly Father.

Look at chapter 4.

Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.

It's interesting, isn't it, that Jesus immediately, when he gets filled with the Holy Spirit, has an affirmation to the Father he's led into the wilderness.

How many of you have been led into a wilderness in your life?

Let me give you a prediction from experience.

And it's theologically true.

The more calling and the more that God has for you to do on this earth, the more you'll be led into wildernesses.

You know why?

Because God is getting you out of you so that he can get him into you.

Because wilderness times are difficult, and this is this is the Cantana of the wilderness.

This is a Judean wilderness.

This is seven miles northwest of Jericho.

If you know where Jericho is, and if you go with me to Israel, you'll learn about Jericho.

We'll go into Jericho, but Jericho is right down there, just north of the Dead Sea.

And in that area, it's just wilderness, you guys.

It's not like Colorado.

I've hunted and fished all through the wildernesses of Colorado, and there's trees, and there's aspen and there's streams, and it's it's kind of beautiful, actually.

It's not beautiful in Israel.

It's just, there's no trees, and it's just rocks, and it's stones, and it's dry, and it's arid, and they have these massive spiders.

We won't take you to those places.

Um huge spiders and massive uh venomous snakes.

And there's a big mountain there.

There's this big mountain, it's called the mountain of temptation today, and there's a monastery there that was erected hundreds and hundreds of years ago, and that's where Jesus goes.

He's going to be led into that wilderness.

And he's going to fast and pray for 40 days.

Imagine that.

40 days.

And it appears that there may have been some temptations that came during that 40 days because it says here he was to be tempted by the devil.

God the Father allowed the devil to tempt him.

But where we're going to pick up the story is the very end, the way Matthew describes it and Luke describes it, that after 40 days, it was an opportune time.

Folks, that's how the devil works.

You can put temptation, wilderness, and devil all together.

Temptation, devil, wilderness, all come together.

And when I speak of wilderness in our lives, I speak of despair, depression, maybe thinking about suicide, divorce, abortion, betrayal.

You know what I'm talking about, right?

Those kind of days in our life that they're going to come to all of us, not all of those, of course.

But there's times where God takes you into the wilderness, and it's God who actually is allowing the wilderness, even in your life, whether it was because of your sin or not, he allows it in your life, and the devil comes.

And what we know from Isaiah 14, Ezekiel 28, is that Satan was an archangel, led the worship of all the angels in heaven.

And some time immemorial, we don't know exactly when, maybe billions of years ago, maybe millions of years ago, he rebelled.

He said, I shall be like God, the five I wills of Isaiah 14.

He was cast to the earth, he became the power and the kingdom of this earth, brought a third of the angels of heaven, which became demons.

Now look at me.

None of us in this room, at least at this point that I know of, are powerful enough to probably ever deal with the devil himself.

So don't say Satan did this to me or Satan did that to me because Satan didn't.

Satan can only be at one place at one time, and you and I are just not that significant in his kingdom.

I mean, we'd like to think we are, and we'd like to claim that we are, but we're not.

But what he did bring is a third, and we don't know the exact number, but a third of the angels of heaven became demonic.

And so what you deal with and what I deal with are demons.

Demons of lust, demons of temptation in rims that hit us at the weaknesses of our lives.

And these demons, folks, are real.

And I've cast out hundreds of demons in my time.

And I'm gonna throw you a little theological loop here.

Might disturb some of you.

But I've cast almost every demon I've cast out was that of a Christian.

Oh, Christians can't have demons until you get one, and then when you get one, you start believing in it.

But the reality is that any person with the Holy Spirit or without Holy Spirit, who who continually gives himself to fleshly desires, and you can everybody knob with me if you sin sometimes, even as a believer?

Well, if you give yourself, Ephesians says it becomes a foothold in your life.

And if you don't confess that and deal with that, it becomes a stronghold in your life, and a demon is behind it.

Some of you are demonized in this room.

You're not demon-possessed, because to me, possession means ownership, and I don't believe a demon can own a believer, but you're demonized.

That means literal word for possession, by the way, daimonize in the Greek means influenced by.

So you're influenced by a demon.

It can build a stronghold in your life.

And some of you in this room are demonized from porn.

You are.

You can't stop.

You've got an addiction to porn, and it's a spirit of lust, and there's a demon now involved in it.

And you gotta get it, you gotta get set free.

And you can.

I had a demon of lust.

When I was a missionary, I was a professional Christian.

And and I'm in Japan and I've cast out dozens and dozens of demons there, and and I start going to look at porn in these bookstores.

And one day I'm going and I just cast out a spirit of lust out of this missionary and set him free, and I'm walking there, and the spirit says to me, You can cast out the spirit that you have.

And I'm like, What?

And I said, Spirit of lust, leave in the name of Jesus.

And I felt something lift off my back.

I literally felt something physically lift off of me, and I was set free.

Now, I say that to say, I can always go back to it.

I could always go back.

If I start indulging again, it'll come right back.

And usually the second or third time it comes back, it's actually worse than the first time, because Jesus is the one who said, You can cast that spirit, that strong man, out of the house, but if you don't put something to replace it into that house, he's gonna bring back seven more demons more powerful than himself and take over that house.

We'll study that.

So Jesus goes into the desert, this area of the Judean wilderness, for 40 days, and here's the first temptation, and it's always the first temptation for every one of us in this room.

Verse 2.

And when he had fasted 40 days and 40 nights afterward, he was hungry.

So here's the first thing we learned from this is that Satan and demonic powers always come when you're the most vulnerable.

So for me at least, the spirit of lust comes when I'm the most lonely, when maybe my wife and I haven't been intimate in a while, or situations like that.

I'm at a vulnerable place, that's when demons are gonna come.

Again, it's not gonna be Satan.

This is Jesus.

Jesus gets Satan.

Okay?

He's a little bit more powerful than you and me.

But we get a demon, a spirit will come, and you've got to say no to it.

You've got to turn on it, you've got to get away from it.

So here's what happens.

Now, when the tempter came to him, he's called the tempter, that's what he does.

He said, If you are the Son of God, command these stones become bread.

Now, I think Satan has three great temptations toward this false self.

And John talks about this in his letter, first John.

He says, This, do not love the world or the things of the world.

If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

For all that is in the world, listen to this, three things: the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life.

Now, I believe these three categories always are facilitators for how demons work.

So the first is the lust of the flesh.

This first temptation is a lust of the flesh.

He's hungry, he's desirous.

And there's always this temptation for this false self to be cool, to just go with the crowd, to go with exactly what you want right now.

So you so Jesus is hungry, here's a stone, turn it to bread.

He has the power to do that.

Isn't it amazing, church?

What soup, I mean, almost borderline, supernatural power that we have in our mind to do whatever we want to do.

It is amazing to me what entrepreneurs, inventors, creative types can do with their mind without even the Holy Spirit.

I mean, it's amazing the capacity we have to do what we want to do when we want to do it to feed our flesh.

And so that's that's that's a false self.

That's not that's not the real you.

That's not the beloved you.

Because look what Jesus says.

Verse 4.

He answered and said, It's written, man shall not live by bread alone.

In other words, man shall not live by just satisfying his physical appetite.

Rather, man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

How many here would like to be successful in their life?

How many would like to prosper in your life?

Do you know there's actually a formula in the Bible?

It's repeated twice and it's referred to hundreds of times.

I'm not gonna go there, but write down Psalm 1.

Write down Psalm 1 and Joshua 1.

Write down Psalm 1 and Joshua 1.

It is the formula for prosperity and success in this life.

Right there.

And here's what both passages say.

They say that if you'll meditate in God's word day and night, you shall prosper.

You shall be successful.

Almost exactly word for word, the same thing.

So I brought up today my journal.

This is my recent journal.

Doesn't it look cool?

Kind of looks like it's got like rattlesnake skin or something cool like that on it.

I don't know where it came from, but um anyway, I've got this journal, and I have this really cool road pen.

Okay, pen, journal, bible.

It kind of matches, doesn't it?

Okay, most of the time it doesn't match, but this one right now does.

And what I try to do every day for the last 40 years, since I kind of came to understand this thing called a quiet time or a devotional life, is I get up in the morning, and the first thing I do is I get Pete's coffee.

That's jot that down.

Pete's coffee.

And uh, no, I grind my beans for my wife and I, and we French press it.

The French have a few good things.

French press is one of them.

And then we have coffee, and then we pray together, but then we open the word together or individually.

You don't have to do it the way I do it, but we but we open the word, she does it, I do it, my kids do it.

Because we've always believed that prosperity and success in knowing Christ comes through a devotional life where I know him.

And the only way I can know him is to read his love letter to me every day and to reap what he has for me today, because I need the voice of God.

How about you?

So he's saying that's how we live, that's the true identity, that's the beloved you, is that you're hearing from God and you're receiving from God and you're letting him speak to you, and you're in the word.

It's amazing that the stuff that he says.

It's amazing what he wants to say to you that you will not normally ever think about.

And I'm not talking about.

Don't listen to Bible preachers on the radio as your quiet time.

That's not a quiet time.

All you're doing is an echo, you're just being an echo chamber to the guy who's on the radio who spent time in God's Word.

I'm not interested in their bread.

I want bread for me.

How about you?

Is there something better?

Isn't there something good about homemade bread?

Do you love the smell of homemade bread?

Okay.

Daniel says he likes it, right?

Homemade bread.

That's right.

That's where it's at, you guys.

Homemade bread.

I want homemade bread.

I want homemade bread.

I want homemade bread.

When you spend time in God's word, you get homemade bread.

God made it for you, and it's your bread.

Don't get everybody else's homemade bread and bring it home.

That's just, that's just their bread, and they got it.

And there's nothing wrong.

I mean, listen to the radio and all that.

Preachers, I would, you know, I think that's great.

But if that's your primary way that you hear from God, that I'm telling you it's gonna get stale really quick because somebody's got to battle for this stuff.

And when there's something about you getting up in the morning before you get the kids ready for school, before you do breakfast, before you do all the things you do, and you spend time in God's Word and you let Him speak to you, it will affect your finances, it will affect your job, it will affect your marriage, it will affect your single life, it will affect your college life, it'll affect everything in your life.

He promises that if you'll meditate in my word day and night, that means when you first get up and when you first go to bed, spend some time in my word, you will be successful and prosper.

Let's just go to Psalm 1.

I wasn't planning on doing that, but I just love Psalm 1.

Should memorize Psalm 1.

It's really easy to memorize, and it's just such a powerful passage.

It's the beginning of the great Psalter, the great praise book of the Bible, Psalms.

Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful, but his delight is in the law of the Lord.

That means the word of God, and in his law he meditates day and night.

He shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water that brings forth its fruit in its season, whose leaf shall not wither, and whatever he does shall what?

Prosper.

Say, prosper.

Say, I want to prosper to your neighbor right now.

I want to prosper.

Amen.

Amen.

Well, spend time in his word.

And don't come asking for counseling from me because your marriage is falling apart.

If you're not spending any time in God's word, because you're just wasting your time, because I can tell you right now, the first session.

Now, if you want to pay me a lot of money, I'll meet with you.

But um I can already tell you what it's gonna be.

Are you praying together?

They always say, no.

Do you guys ever read God's word together?

No.

I said, I don't want to see you again for 30 days.

You pray together, spend time in God's word together for 30 straight days.

Don't miss a day.

And if you still got all your problems, then come see me, because you guys got some big time issues.

Hardly ever they come back.

Partly because they probably didn't do it, but I want to say it's because of my formula that I gave them.

But I do know that works.

I do know it works, and I do know it works in most marriages, and I know it works in a single life.

It's the reason I was a virgin when I got married was because Campus Crusade taught me how to spend time in God's Word right when I got saved, when I was uh a young guy at 18, and I was messing around, man.

And I was getting close to messing up, and I started reading God's word, and I wanted God in my life, and I wanted his word in my life, and I wanted a woman who would have God in her life and who wanted who wanted to go after God, and so I found Liz, you know, smuggling Bibles in China.

That makes no sense.

The only way a Georgia boy could meet a UCLA girl is in China, right?

Verse 5.

Then the devil took him up into the holy city, set him on the pinnacle of the temple.

And he said, If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, He shall give his angels charge over you.

So isn't this interesting?

The devil's quoting scripture.

You know, the devil can use holy words for an all unholy purposes.

He shall give his angels charge over you, and in their hands they shall bear you up lest you dash your foot against a stone.

And then Jesus said, It is written, You shall not tempt the Lord your God.

Second great temptation that's that's true in all of our lives.

The false self is to be amazing.

Be spectacular.

Do something really spectacular and amazing.

All you gotta do is look at Twitter accounts.

All you gotta do is look at Twitters and tweets and Snapchat and all that Facebook.

I mean, everybody's always being amazing.

Look at this amazing thing I did.

You know, and they're hanging off a cliff and everything, and you know they're like a foot off the ground.

We all know that game.

Okay.

Like, hmm, move the camera down a little.

Oh, it's about I'm I'm rock climbing, you know, at a thousand feet, you know, and they're at a thousand feet above sea level, and they're one foot from the part where the picture was taken.

But be amazing.

There's TV shows and there's programs all about being amazing.

The the top uh movie is the Avengers, it's about being amazing.

It's always the false self.

Why don't you be more amazing?

Why don't you do spectacular things?

So Jesus is even being tempted that way.

And the Lord says, You don't have to be amazing.

You're my beloved, and I'll do supernatural things through you by letting me flow through you that'll be way more amazing than anything the world has to offer.

And so the scriptures are clear.

Jeremiah 31:3.

Jeremiah 31:3

I've loved you in an everlasting life, therefore, with loving kindness I have drawn you.

Psalm 139.

My frame was not hidden from you, and I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.

Your eyes saw my substance being yet unformed.

This means in your mother's womb.

In your mother's womb, God saw your unformed substance.

In your book, they were all written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them.

In other words, before you were born, you were precious in his sight.

How precious are your thoughts to me, O God.

If I were to number them, they would outnumber the grains of sand.

Isaiah 43, fear not, for I have redeemed you.

I have called you by your name, and you are mine.

That's who you are.

Men and women, that's who you are.

That's your identity, that's your kingdom identity.

Not being amazing, so that the world sees us, but being supernatural because of the power of the Holy Spirit.

Well, Satan's not done yet.

Verse 8.

Again, the devil took him up in an exceedingly high mountain, showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory.

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

Now look at this third temptation toward power.

But go back.

Go back to verse 5 and look at where Satan took Jesus.

Where'd he take him?

He took him to the pinnacle of the temple.

Now, men and women, there is such a there is such a temptation even in the church to be amazing.

There is such a temptation even in the church to be more powerful than the other church.

He takes him to the pinnacle of Judaism, the pinnacle of the temple, the pinnacle of Christianity.

And so even in our church, there's this temptation toward power for the sake of power, not for the sake of life change.

And so there's this temptation in us toward power, this false self to take us off track from a personal dynamic, growing intimate relationship with Christ.

And it is the boastful pride of life.

The boastful pride of life.

And so here's how Jesus drives back the devil.

Verse 10.

And Jesus said, Away with you, Satan.

Get out of here.

For it is written, You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.

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

Men and women were going into worship.

Song worship.

You guys realize this is a whole worship experience?

Even when we teach God's word, it's worship.

The obedience that God's building in us is worship.

We're going to go into song worship.

And there's communion.

All of that is worship.

That's intimacy with Christ.

Jesus is saying, the true self, the true identity is knowing me and having a personal growing relationship with me.

Experiencing me in your heart.

You're worshiping the Lord when you're at work and you do the right thing.

When you pay your taxes, doesn't that, I mean, that seems contradictory.

Pay your taxes means you're worshiping.

But what I mean is that when we obey God and we obey the laws of the land, when we worship Him by our obedience, when we walk in purity and the things and our thought life, that's worship.

But here at The Road, as we come into worship right now, let's be all in.

Let's be all in.

You've been listening to The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

We hope you have been blessed by today's message.

To connect with us further, visit theroad.org.

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Thanks again for tuning in today, and be sure to listen to the next edition of The Road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.