Our Kingdom Identity - Leaders' Talks

You're listening to this condition of the road.

Now, Dan, I'm gonna talk to you here directly.

You can't miss this.

You guys have been given a unique and powerful gift to steal on your children's hearts, to speak that native tongue that we know to be true from creation over them.

Look them in the eyes and give them that gift of affirmation, love, and identity.

You are my son, you are my daughter.

I love you, that will never change.

I'm so proud of the man or woman you're becoming or you have become.

Those words from a father will penetrate the core and be with that child for life.

I assure you of that.

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.

I had a chance to run through this with uh last night our flagship met, and that's our middle school program, and use them as a test audience, of course, for this, right?

So prepping for you guys.

So ask them a few questions about what they felt about when they would hear ads and TV and those marketings, how they felt about themselves after they would hear that.

Um, do they feel good about themselves?

Do they feel bad about themselves?

And I had this very insightful sixth grader, she will remain nameless to protect the identity of the uh innocent.

But she uh she said, I feel bad after I get done sometimes about, you know, when I see those things.

And um we went into that a little bit more.

And she goes, but I asked her why she thought she felt bad, and she goes, Well, because they want me to feel bad, they want me to think that their products will make me feel better about who I am, or that by attaining those things I will be a better version of myself.

I said, Okay, yeah, that's right on.

I didn't have to coach her at all, she just kind of coughed that one up.

I was like, all right, paying attention.

That's excellent.

So I asked my fourth grade son today, we were talking about that as well, and I asked him how he felt, and he said that he got excited about these things.

And I said, Okay.

He was excited in a different way, it didn't make him feel bad, but he was excited sometimes about the things that he could achieve or get through uh the way those ads made him feel that if he uh if he got those things, how he would feel and be a better person.

Then he proceeded to hand me a number that he took off the radio and said, Hey Dad, check this out.

I was just listening to the radio the other day, and you can just sit on your couch and lose weight if you call this number, and they'll put this thing around you and you become a fraction of yourself.

And by the way, mom's been saying that you probably need to lose a few.

So I was like, Thanks for the number, buddy.

I'll make sure to call them.

So uh we can always appreciate our um our kids to keep us in line that way for sure.

So if you think it's a coincidence that in a fallen world these things are happening, think again, advertising is the main tool, in my opinion, of robbing us of our true identity and our kingdom identity that's been placed over us in God's creation.

I was asked three weeks ago to start maybe planning or prepping for this.

I started looking through my uh phone book and I thought, okay, I know George Stanke spoke, he's excellent.

It's Kent Miller, he's he's been good, he's been here before.

And then Steve's like, I'd really like you to do that.

I go, well, Steve, I'm more of a dialoguer, I'm not much of a monologuer.

So, but uh, anyways, he encouraged me, and so God then started to put this message on my heart about our kingdom identity.

We've heard identity in Christ.

We've heard that a lot.

If you've been around the Christian culture and you've been around the church, then that's not a new phrase to you.

But kingdom identity, and it's not far from that, but I like to take it back to where we get that in creation and what God's original plan for us was.

And the things that I'm gonna unpack tonight aren't gonna be new stories to you.

They're probably not gonna be life-changing.

Well, I hope they're life-changing.

But I don't know that they're gonna be anything pregnant, you know, that you guys haven't seen before, but they will be, hopefully, a new light will be shed as to something that we need to revisit.

Because clearly, if the world is in hitting us with 3,000 messages and images and ads a day, then us at the church, we should be revisiting what our original intent was, what God's original intent was when he created us, where we're supposed to be and how we're supposed to be living, and more importantly, the power in which we have to do that and receive that and walk freely out and accept that in our lives.

So, I'm gonna open, if we could, Genesis 1, 26 through 31.

God creates man in his image and gives him the earth to subdue and rule over it.

He creates them, male and female.

God blesses them and says, be fruitful and multiply.

We covered what multiply meant last night in flagship, by the way.

That was good.

We're doing a good work with your kids, guys, okay?

That's all I'm gonna tell you.

But seriously, thank you for bringing them.

It has been a joy to work with them.

And part of what we're doing here at the church, both through Worshiper and Warrior, our men's ministry, and both through flagship and the Lighthouse Project for the Women and the Forge for the Men, is that we're trying to change and go against the grain of what the culture and our society is doing, and that is setting a strong, firm foundation and our identity and understanding our intent and our purpose and why God even created us.

So God creates Adam.

It's on the sixth and final day of creation, after the creation of all the earth, the heavens, the skies, the animals.

Adam is to be his perfect culmination of that creation moment.

Adam is the first man.

He's God's perfect design before sinners the world.

And I was talking with my son about this, and we were discussing what Adam, when we go to heaven, we talk about, we've often talked about seeing Samson and Daniel and Joseph and how we'd respond to those guys and you know, be stoked to talk to them and ask them questions about their life and the stories that we read about.

And I we were talking about Adam, and I was going, well, do you think we'll be as excited to see him?

And uh he's like, probably not.

And I go, true.

I said, How do you think we'll how do you think we'll recognize Adam?

And he had to ponder for a minute.

I go, I think I know exactly.

I said, I don't know what we're gonna be wearing, and if we are all redeemed and truly walking in God's grace and love, we may be sands, our fig leaves, again, and walking in the true glory in the garden as he had ordained.

And I said, if that's the case, he'll have one thing missing that everybody else has.

And he was like, stumped him for a minute.

And I go, Well, who made him?

Well, God made him.

Okay.

So then he wasn't born of a woman.

He did not have a what?

Uh, uh.

Okay.

He had all the important parts.

What?

That's right, he would be missing a belly button.

So despite not having a belly button, this dude is probably the most perfect specimen we've ever seen.

He's like Brad Pitt times a thousand, or whoever in you might whoever in your own mind you picture as the perfect male specimen.

So despite being flawless and pretty much fantastic to the eyeball, he might not be the most popular guy.

However, we all have our own junk, although I said to him, uh, it's only because he failed that we have our junk.

So it's not like we're gonna see, hey, fist bump, dude, thanks for the garden.

But that's okay.

Both Adam and Eve, however, and this is important that we catch this, Adam and Eve know their kingdom identity from the beginning because God the Creator has spoken it over them.

Adam knows he's made in God's image, and he's been given the earth to subdue and rule over it.

God gets the heavens, Adam gets the earth.

He even gets to name all the animals, and that's fun for a while, but then he gets bored.

So God says he needs a helper.

He needs a helper comparable to him.

Genesis 2.18.

She is made from his rib that she would be beside him, not from his head, so that she would be over him, and not from his foot that she would be under him, but from the rib that she would be beside him.

Think about that fact in your own marriages, ladies and gentlemen.

And uh you can feel free to remind him of that, ladies.

Uh, as you need to, you can pull that card out whenever it's appropriate.

My wife does.

That's good.

Together they are to complement each other, not compete with each other.

We are stronger, wiser, more anointed, with our husbands and wives by our side.

Together, they are to multiply, rule over the earth.

God gives them their place in his creation and their purpose in it.

It's pretty clear.

Genesis 3:1, serpent enters.

Genesis 3:1

More cunning than any other beast in the field in God's creation, he deceives the first woman.

Okay?

This was another question we got to go over at flagship last night.

Why does why does Satan target Eve over Adam?

And I had this one energetic young man raise his hand.

And he goes, well, because they're easily deceived.

And I go, well, that's that's not the case.

Actually, it's the contrary.

It's the contrary, in my opinion.

I think the devil understands that the woman is going to be very influential in this in this story.

See, wives, you have the ear of your husbands, so be prudent with it.

If Adam is the man, the same could easily be said of Eve.

She is, without a doubt, probably the foxiest fox of all foxes.

Strikingly beautiful, and why else would Adam choose her over God in that crucial moment in human history?

Men have been trying to recover from that rib surgery ever since.

Okay?

God did such a good job with Eve that men struggled to keep God in their center.

Satan deceives her on her identity, convinces her that she could be a God if she eats from the forbidden tree.

The reality is she already had what he was trying to deceive her with.

Not that she was a god, but she was made in the image of God and they had the garden.

They were ruling over it.

And they were walking with God in communion.

On a daily basis, he was coming in the garden.

It's hard to fathom this in our daily life and think about these things.

As I was reading this and preparing, I started thinking about the reality of what that would be like.

And it was hard.

So he's essentially selling her on his own desire to be worshipped godlike.

And the same thing that kicked him out of the celestials is going to get them kicked out of the garden.

In one false swoop, they both eat the apple.

Eternity and paradise are lost.

The earth is now under new management.

And also in the deal of mankind, gets to toil the land with pain, suffering, and death.

Genesis 3, 14 through 19.

John Eldridge in his book, Waking the Dead, writes this.

And I've hung on this.

This has been something that I've gone back and read, and I shared this with our men at the Wholeheart Advance.

We all, men and women, were created in the image of God, fearfully and wonderfully made, fashioned as living icons of the bravest, wisest, most stunning person who ever lived.

Those who have ever seen him fell to their knees without even thinking about it.

As you find yourself breathless before the Grand Canyon or the Alps or at the sea at dawn.

That glory was shared with us.

We were, in Chesterson's phrase, statues of God walking about in a garden, endowed with a strength and beauty all our own.

All that we ever wished we were or could be, we were that and more.

We were fully alive.

So God created man in his own image.

In the image of God he created him, male and female, he created them.

When I look at the night sky and I see the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars you have set in place, what are the mortals that you should think of us?

Mere humans that you should care for us?

For you made us only a little lower than God, and you crowned us with glory and honor.

John's quoting Psalm 835 there.

He goes on to say, I dare say we've heard a bit about the original sin, but not nearly enough about original glory, which comes before sin and is deeper to our nature.

We were crowned with glory and honor.

Why does a woman long to be beautiful?

Why does a man hope to be found brave?

Because we remember, if only faintly, that we were once more than we are now.

The reason that you doubt there could be a glory, that there could be a glory to your life, is because that glory has been the object of a long and brutal war.

So we're going to fast forward to the New Testament, and I think that we obviously understand full well from Sunday school and my brief revisit here where our glory and our identity got stolen in the garden, and what the enemy has come to do and chronically do over human history.

We pick up the story in Matthew 3, 13 through 17.

We see that Jesus is entering his time of ministry and he's doing so at the age of 30.

Not much has happened in his life that we are aware of, except the incident where he abandons mom and dad and goes off at the age of 12 to teach in the synagogues.

Roughly 17 years pass before we pick up his story again.

However, there's a key thing that happens here, and before he starts his ministry, he knows a few things that he has to get done.

Jesus has to receive, namely, the power of the Holy Spirit, and he's also going to receive his Father's affirmation.

Verse 16.

When he had been baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit descending like a dove and alighting upon him.

Jesus is instantly filled with the power of the Holy Spirit at this moment for the first time in his life.

Verse 17.

And suddenly a voice came from heaven saying, This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.

I was in church, much like Steve, nine months before I was alive, or, you know, in the world with my mom.

And so we were there three times a week, twice on Sunday, once on Wednesdays.

And so church and these stories I've grown up hearing, but I've always loved this story.

And I loved it as a young man, but then as I've gotten older and I become a father, it's become something, it's meant something different to me.

And I feel like God's even revealed a little deeper something on my own heart in going back to this story of baptizing what Christ gets at this moment.

Jesus is publicly affirmed by his Father, God, the creator of heavens and earth.

Jesus hears from his father three things that are core to the very truth of his creation.

Jesus knows now, and he did before, but now the world and he, and it's reaffirmed to him.

Jesus belongs to God as his son.

God tells Jesus that he is beloved to him.

He tells Jesus that he is proud of him.

He announces it publicly to the crowd at Jordan.

God does this again in Matthew 17, verse 5 on the Mount of Transfiguration, and he does it between Jesus' three closest comrades, Peter, James, and John.

Matthew 17:5

He uses the same words.

In this text, God alludes to two Old Testament texts.

Psalm 2.7 and Isaiah 53.5.

Psalm 2.7, it was a song that was sung at the crowning of the King of Israel.

The Father's application of this text to Jesus identifies him as a divinely appointed king who will rule and whose kingdoms would extend to the ends of the earth.

It says, I will declare the decree.

The Lord has said to me, You are my son.

Today I have begotten you.

Ask of me, and I will give you the nations for your inheritance and the ends of the earth for your possession.

You shall break with them with rod of iron.

You shall dash them into pieces like a potter's vessel.

He is also the one in Isaiah 53.5 promised would be wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities.

Matthew 8, 17 confirms this by saying, He took himself He Himself took our affirmities and bore our sickness.

The Father's words at that moment identify on his heart, Jesus' heart, his human heart, that he is both a king and the savior of this world.

Jesus fully receives his kingdom identity at that moment and is prepared to proceed with the task at hand.

He is to ransom for all eternity the salvation of mankind and take back the dominion of the earth from Satan.

Now, dads, I'm going to talk to you here directly.

You can't miss this.

Because you guys have been given a unique and powerful gift to seal on your children's hearts, to speak that native tongue that we know to be true from creation over them.

To do this, and if you haven't, I strongly encourage you guys to do this as soon as you can.

And I don't care how old you are, and if you've never had it done to you, there's going to be an opportunity for that.

Look them in the eyes and give them that gift of affirmation, love, and identity.

You are my son, you are my daughter.

I love you, that will never change.

I'm so proud of the man or woman you're becoming or you have become.

Those words from a father will penetrate the core and be with that child for life.

I assure you of that.

God the Father wants you to know these truths in your own heart.

Some of you have never heard these earthly, or these words from your earthly parents.

My father passed away when I was 21.

He was a great dad.

God took him before his time.

I was very close with him.

We adventured in the wilderness.

We came to Colorado a lot, caught some fish, lied about catching another fish.

It was good.

But he uh he was a good dad.

And I knew he was proud of me and I knew he loved me, but he never got to tell me those words.

I had to receive those words through another men's ceremony and the coming of age thing down in Phoenix.

And I had my father-in-law, or my brother-in-law's dad, actually pray this prayer over me.

It was a father's blessing.

So the fact is, we all, humanity, we are all God's creation.

But not all of us are his children.

And so not everyone can call him father.

But God wants that for all of us, and he extends that invitation through Jesus Christ.

Immediately after getting baptized, Jesus is led into the wilderness by the Spirit.

So we're going to pick up that story and we're going to go to Luke 4, the very beginning, Luke 4, 1 through 13.

Jesus is going to conquer Satan in the wilderness at the end of 40 days of prayer and fasting.

Verse 1.

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

The Spirit was leading Jesus to be tempted.

This is his trial in the wilderness.

This involvement and need of the Spirit in Jesus' life, it highlights Christ's genuine humanity.

He needs the Spirit in his flesh and is obedient to the Holy Spirit's leading.

We also understand that this is the very, this is a very intentional act by the Spirit, and also that the face-off between Jesus and the devil has been ordained by God.

The filling and leading of the Spirit are key aspects of empowerment of the Christian life and resisting the devil.

The wilderness is where Israel failed.

It's a test of faith before God in Numbers 14.

You can read about that in the whole chapter.

Jesus would succeed where Israel failed and passed the test.

The temptation of Christ highlights numerous parallels between Jesus and the Old Testament Israel.

Deuteronomy 8, verse 2 through 3 says the Lord leads Israel into the wilderness to be tested for 40 years.

Deuteronomy 8:2–3

Christ is led into the wilderness for 40 days.

Every scripture that Jesus quotes in response to his temptations to the devil were drawn from God's message to the Israelites and their wilderness test between the chapters of Deuteronomy 6 through 8.

Israel failed its test, but Jesus passed his and in doing so fulfilled all righteousness.

Christ was being tested as the last Adam.

In 1 Corinthians 15, 45, the one, the one who would succeed where the first Adam failed.

And it says, and so it is written, the first man, Adam, became a living being.

The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.

At the end of the genealogy of Christ, in Luke 3.38, going back to the origin, the origin of mankind, Adam is referred also as the Son of God, because he was directly created by God and did not come from woman.

John Bevere writes this in his book, Rev Relentless.

God desired to give back into the hands of mankind what Adam had relinquished.

However, he couldn't come in the form of a deity and just snatch it back, because God doesn't retract the authority he gives.

And Adam had officially relinquished it.

He'd relinquished it to the devil.

A man lost it, so a man had to restore it.

This is why Jesus had to come as the Son of Man.

He was born of a woman, making him a hundred percent man.

He was fathered by the Holy Spirit, making him a hundred percent God, and thus free from the curse of sin.

Verse 2 through 3, we see the first temptation.

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

Now the tempter came to him.

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

At the peak of his hunger, and at the end of the fasting, the devil comes when Jesus is at his weakest moments.

Jesus' duty was not to exercise his divine powers, but he was to suffer and patiently endure hardship as a perfectly obedient human who waited for God's deliverance and empowerment.

One of our great temptations by the enemy upon our identity is to satisfy our basest passions.

I know that I've been stretched, and our family's been stretched through times where we've had to pray and get in front of God with prayer and fasting.

And we've seen breakthrough.

But it hasn't come easily, and it hasn't come without practice and us being intentional about that.

Uh when we were first, we were in a marriage ministry, and uh we were studying a uh one of John Eldridge's things was Love and War.

And at the end of that, he had a four page prayer, and uh I was reading through that as a leadership guide one night before we're getting ready to have that, hand that out to um the rest of the The couples in our group.

And I read it, and it was so powerful that I actually brought my wife in and prayed over her before we started that um that session that night.

And I handed copies out to everybody else in the group.

But I continued to pray that prayer over our kids and over our family and over our home.

And we got to see real breakthrough.

And anytime we we realized that there was a strong when the enemy was strong and he was in our presence and he was attacking us on all fronts, I pulled the prayer out.

And eventually that prayer morphed into my own, my own words, and some of those things.

But it was a great guidepost to get me started.

But it was a far cry from even a kid who grew up in church from the occasional short, man, if my prayers lasted 15 seconds, that was a long time.

So four pages was like, oh boy.

All right, we'll get through this.

But it was more than that because in there lied power that I hadn't even begun to release in my own life until I had started to use those words and then turn that into specific prayers over our family, and it was fantastic.

We got to see a real breakthrough there.

Verse 4.

It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.

Jesus answers the devil's tempting by citing God's word in Deuteronomy 8.3.

I've never been able to say that book very well.

And it comes up a lot in my scripture tonight, so in my passage, so bear with me.

The citation deals with Israel's needs being met in the wilderness for 40 years.

They are met physically by manna, and they are also spirit met spiritually by the presence and word of God.

Satan twists and perverts the truth of God's word.

Jesus sets the record straight with the truth through God's word and quoting it in proper context.

Being in the Word of God and with His Spirit is where our hearts hear the beloved message from Him and how we resist the devil's agreements on our lives.

And in preparing, I can't even begin to tell you guys and ladies, ladies and gentlemen, we'll start there.

How many agreements that I started to hear this week as I was prepping and coming to tonight and this time about identity and uh the agreements that he wanted to put on my life.

And in fact, people that I hadn't even talked to from junior high, high school were coming out of the woodworks, and you know, it was just it was really strange that people that I hadn't talked to or even connected with in a long time, and they were um they're like, You're not in banking anymore?

Obviously, you're not on LinkedIn.

It's all good.

It's okay.

I'm not really on LinkedIn much anyway, so it's all right.

Um, verse five through seven.

Then the devil, taking him high up on a mountain, showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment in time.

And the devil said to him, All this authority I will give you and their glory.

For this has been delivered to me, and I give it to whomever I wish.

Therefore, if you will worship before me, all will be yours.

First of all, as the Messiah, Jesus will rule over all the kingdoms of the world at the end of the age.

We're told this in Revelation 11, 15.

He knows this.

Revelation 11, 15 says, There were loud voices in heaven saying, The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.

The devil tried to offer Jesus a shortcut to that worldwide authority, whereby bypassing the pain and suffering of the cross of Calvary, which he must endure.

Satan's called the ruler of this world in John 12, 31.

His claim that the world has been delivered to him and that he can give it to anyone he wants is untrue.

The devil's a usurper of God's realm.

We're not shocked that he's lying here, right?

He's called the father of lies in John 8.44.

He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him.

When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it.

This is what he does, and it's his biggest tool and weapon against us.

He only has a few tricks, but he's had a lot of time to perfect them, and we kind of cycle through, but he's kind of remained on the earth.

So we're kind of open to those suggestions, sadly.

In the temptation of the look what I can have lie, the devil uses the advertising and marketing to accomplish this mission, promising to give us a better, more complete, satisfying life.

If only we had that car, the house, the job, the clothing, the salary.

And the list goes on and on.

We're hit hard in this area, ladies and gentlemen, every day, subtly, 3,000 times a day.

I was measuring this life, this life success by the salary, job title, and promotions of corporate America.

It's not hard to understand as to why, given that men, as a large part of our identity, comes from our job.

Adam was given a job in creation.

Rule the earth, subdue it, and this we're aligned.

However, I wasn't living.

I'm still here.

I was not living the assignment that God had for my life.

I thought I was, and I thought I was being successful in what I was accomplishing.

And by a lot of measurements, and by what my friends and uh partners and peers would say, that I had achieved a good deal of success by the age of 31.

And even my family was proud of me.

Um I was able to call myself a vice president at a bank and um go to all the fancy dinners at the chancellor's house and sit on important boards and do things that I thought mattered.

And in some ways they did.

Um I was able to impact families and work with them and trusts and estates and tender parts of their life, but I always brought God's word in those moments.

Certainly relied on his wisdom and grace and love when we're talking to family members when money's on the table.

There's a saying that was on my desk that my mentor had given me that people are always funny, but they get more funny when more money's on the table.

And that's true.

And I got a brother here in the audience who writes Trust for a Living.

I'm sure he understands that all too well.

Verse 8.

And Jesus answered and said to him, Get behind me, Satan, for it is written, You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only you shall serve.

Jesus again turns to the Word to combat the devil's lies and temptations.

He is quoting from Deuteronomy 6, 13, You shall fear the Lord your God and serve him and take oaths in his name, to make it clear that only God is worthy of worship.

This point is echoed the very first of the Ten Commandments.

You shall have no other gods before me.

Exodus 23.

In worship, in a love relationship of intimacy, we rediscover God's love for us.

Verse 9 through 11.

And this is kind of wild because he's kind of, I feel like he's teleporting Jesus through all these places.

He takes him to this high mountain, which in our day would have been um, what's the big one?

Not K2.

Everest?

Yeah.

You might be able to see a lot of kingdoms from the top of Everest.

And then he goes from there to the top of the temple, the pinnacle of the temple.

And he said to him, If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written, He shall give you charge over you to keep you, and in their hand shall bear you up lest you dash your foot against the stone.

The devil, being crafty here, tries to throw Jesus off balance.

After two failed attempts of quoting Scripture, or misquoting it, he quotes Scripture pretty accurately here.

Verbatim.

And he's citing specifically Psalm 91, 11 through 12, claiming that the angels would rush to rescue if Jesus jumped.

This fall would have been well over a hundred feet at the peak of the temple.

Certainly, mortality would be tested in this fall.

I call this the I've got talent show of finding our identity and being something spectacular or doing something significant.

Finding our identity and our accomplishments and our achievements is another great temptation of Satan.

We can get lost, separated from God in these endeavors, and they always return empty results to our joy and our happiness.

Verse 12 through 13, Jesus answered and said to him, It has been said, you shall not tempt the Lord your God.

Now, when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time.

Jesus does not deny the truth of the scripture, the devil quotes here, just the application he gave it.

Again he verbally speaks out to the devil.

He is audible with his reply in clear contrast.

Jesus cites Deuteronomy 6.16, which recalls the tragedy of Israel's complaining and testing of God at Meribah and Masa.

Exodus 17, 1 through 7.

Then all the congregation of the children of Israel set out their journey from the wilderness of sin, according to the commandment of the Lord, and camped in Repedeum.

But there was no water for the people to drink.

Therefore the people contended with Moses and said, Give us water that we may drink.

So Moses said to them, Why do you contend with me?

Why do you tempt the Lord?

And the people thirsted there for water, and the people complained against Moses and said, Why is it you have brought us up out of Egypt to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?

So Moses cried out to the Lord, saying, What shall I do with these people?

They are almost ready to stone me.

And the Lord said to Moses, Go on before the people, and take with you some of the elders of Israel.

Also take in your hand your rod with which you struck the river and go.

Behold, I stand before you there on the rock of Horeb, and you shall strike the rock, and water will come out of it, that the people may drink.

And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel.

So he called the name the place of Masa and Meribah, because of the contention of the children of Israel, because they tempted the Lord, saying, Is the Lord among us or not?

Praying out loud and audibly, I think, is a key thing that we see through the temptations.

And I don't know if in your mind you've ever thought about Jesus combating Satan and how he's doing it.

Is he responding mentally or is he giving him verbal cues and he's responding back to him audibly?

Here he's he's doing it audibly, and so I think in our homes, this would be an encouragement to do so, and that uh to pray out loud and trying to get comfortable with that if you've not done that or that seems foreign to you.

Uh, but I think there we do have some real ground, and we're striking back, and we're taking back territory in our own homes, in our houses, when we cite Scripture, when we pray aloud to God for release and um rescue from the enemy.

There's only three tests recorded in Matthew 4 and Luke 4.

Similar texts, Luke and Matthew change the order of the temptation.

Luke does so because as he's taking things with Jesus, he's moving him ever closer to Jerusalem with the last temptation.

Matthew changes that order.

The point here is that there were the wording implies that there may have been more tempting and more temptations that the devil uh was doing to Jesus throughout in other areas.

But of the three that we have recorded, two of the three temptations from the devil are actually wrapped in an additional question that challenges Jesus' kingdom identity.

If you are the Son of God.

Satan clearly challenging Christ on the most basis of truth of his nature and his core.

Essentially, he's saying, Are you who you think you are?

Or more critical to the identity of his own heart, are you who you think you are?

Jesus knows who his father is and where his authority and identity come from.

He has successfully faced and resisted the devil, his lies and temptations, because Jesus has been affirmed and empowered by God the Father, and he's walking with his spirit.

God has spoken over him the deep message of validation, identity, and purpose of by speaking the native tongue of creation on Christ's human heart.

You are the Son of the one true living God, the creator of the heavens of the earth.

I love you completely.

You are my beloved Son.

I am proud of you.

You can do this.

Jesus doesn't attempt the wilderness without this knowledge and empowerment from his Father and Holy Spirit.

He wouldn't go in there by himself, not ready for it.

He knows he needs it.

The devil's best trick is to confuse and remove your kingdom identity and to make you feel alone and isolated from not only Jesus and God, but from the rest of the herd.

Your friends, family, loved ones.

If you buy into that agreement and lie from the devil, it's here that you can and will surely be destroyed by him.

Henry Nowen, the author of Life of the Beloved, says this.

I hope you can somehow identify in yourself the temptation to self-rejection, whether it manifests itself in arrogance or in low self-esteem.

Not seldom, self-rejection is simply seen as the neurotic expression of an insecure person.

But neurosis is often the psychic manifestation of a much deeper human darkness.

The darkness of not feeling truly welcome in human existence.

And I would add here God's creation.

Self-rejection is the greatest enemy of the spiritual life because it contradicts the sacred voice of creation, God's voice, that calls us his beloved.

Being the beloved expresses the core truth of our existence in his creation.

So I was preparing for this message three weeks prior.

God had put this message on my heart talking about kingdom identity, where I was hearing his voice in my life and where I was seeing his hand move.

And we were, my wife and I were preparing to go into getting some answers and really trying to seek God's wisdom and direction on a what I like to call the tent-making side of my life.

And that would be a coffee shop.

Some of you close to me know that my wife and I and our partners, uh the Adams, Randy and Randy and Danny, have endeavored uh to pursue a coffee shop up by Bass Pro, and it's been a year-long endeavor.

Something we've been excited about, but we certainly wanted to be in God's calling and his purpose in doing so and not wanting to move out without his um authority in that because I was sharing with um with Christine and Danny Hawk that the last thing I needed, besides an 11th toe, was another project of time wasting and money wasting opportunity to do that.

So I definitely wanted to be in his grace and his blessing over this.

So we were praying to enter this time of prayer and fasting with Steve and Liz, and they were also going into that, and we also we we had a few things.

So that was our personal request, and they had some personal requests, and then we also had some requests for the road.

Um, worship leader, Sunday service, a lot of those things.

We're praying for guidance.

We were to enter prayer and fasting that Friday and get those directions.

Thursday morning I wake up to a text from my cousin down in Texas.

And uh text, I opened it up.

I was like, I haven't heard from him in a while.

I hope he's doing well.

Open it up and it says that his younger brother had taken his life the day before.

And I knew, I knew how this was hitting his heart because I had seen that same cousin two years ago to the month at his older brother's funeral who had also taken his life.

So here's my cousin, bookended by suicides, where the enemy has got in and lied and stole these guys' kingdom identity to make them feel like self-rejection.

He's won that battle.

He's taken him out of this fight that death was better than the reality and the power that he could be on this earth and living life to its fullest in the name of Jesus.

So we went into prayer and fasting with some heavy hearts, and um I've been reaching out to that cousin and checking in on him because I just I'm like, you know, if uh the enemy is working on that side of the family, and certainly working in that area.

So he and I have been in dialogue and talking.

Um just want to keep a pulse on him, obviously.

So we loved our cousins and he loved his brothers, but that's what the enemy does.

And he comes and he steals and he kills and he destroys, and that's all he wants to do for us, guys.

Adam and Eve were content, they were doing things in the garden, they were doing it God's way, and they were living in his perfect creation as perfect beings.

And since then, since that fall, we've uh we've been challenged to face the realities that we face in this world on a daily basis, 3,000 times.

Steve Ferrar writes a book called King Me.

Things your son wants from you as a father.

There's a story that he writes in here that I want to read to you guys.

Eddie couldn't believe his own success.

He lived in a gated, secure mansion in the most exclusive sections of Chicago.

He had new cars, he ate at the best restaurants, and he traveled in style.

Servants took care of his estate and the grounds.

His wife and kids had the very best of everything.

Eddie was a brilliant attorney and had succeeded far beyond his wildest dreams.

There was only one problem.

He was crooked.

His only client was Al Capone, one of the most violent gangsters in the history of Chicago.

It was Eddie who kept Capone out of jail.

And Eddie was personally sickened by the violence and murders, but he was too far in to ever back out of his situation.

He was trapped, or so he thought.

Eddie had a young son, though, whom he loved with all of his heart.

His son was a natural leader with a love for life.

His young son worshipped his dad, and he respected him with every ounce of his being.

Eddie knew one day that that respect would be lost, and that's what kept eating at Eddie.

It would eventually lead him to the decision that would cost him his life.

Wanting a better life for his son and the desire to gain back his integrity, he did the only thing he could do.

He went to the police and told the truth.

He gave all of Al Capone's financial records to the IRS, and with that, Al Capone was finished.

And we read the rest in history.

He's off to bear with me.

That's that place off San Francisco.

Alcatraz was coming.

The RAM is full.

Delete.

That's good.

So Al Capone was finished.

So was Eddie.

And in a few months after doing the right thing, he was gunned down in a blaze of machine gun fire on the streets of Chicago.

Eddie left an example or legacy to his son.

Do the right thing no matter what the cost.

It was the hardest decision he had to make, but it was the best decision he ever made.

Now I grew up in Chicago or near there and went to school by there.

And I traveled in and out of O'Hare.

If you guys have been done any traveling, most likely, if you've done any sort of traveling, you've traveled through O'Hare.

And in between O'Hare, the two terminals, there's a plaque that memorializes Butch O'Hare.

The first ace of World War II and the first naval aviator to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Story with Butch O'Hare, he was on a mission with his squadron and he realized his fuel was dangerously low.

Apparently somebody had forgot to top off his tank.

After radioing his flight commander, he was ordered to come back and return to the ship.

And in doing so, he was prepared, he was turning around and he was headed home when he realized that he saw in the distance a squadron of Japanese fighters headed toward the American fleet.

Unable to warn his American fleet, he turned his plane into the attacking enemy, firing with everything he had, flying in and out.

He picked off plane after plane until he was out of ammo.

Then he proceeded to dive into the wings and tails of the Japanese planes, attempting to disable them from attacking the fleet.

The enemy, disheartened by the courage of this young man, called off their attack and returned to their own base.

It was simply a miracle that Butch was able to return to his ship, and the entire event had been captured on the gun camera.

He had taken out five enemy planes in the process.

A year later, Butch would die in another dogfight.

This courageous young man, in the prime of his life, died in a blaze of bullets that throttled his plane and body.

Butch O'Hare died that day just as his father had died before him in a torrent of bullets on a cold Chicago street.

Butch O'Hare died a hero.

And so did his father, Eddie O'Hare.

It was the courage of his father standing against evil that gave Butch a mission and purpose in the life to do the same.

It's the job of fathers to prepare their sons for life.

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