Use this Sword (Ephesians 6:17)

Joshua Kehler: Let's go to Ephesians chapter six.

Happy Pentecost.

Yes.

we're gonna be looking at the sword of the spirit today.

So in the armor, I'm gonna read in verse 10, start in verse 10.

Finally, be strong in the Lord and in this strength of his might put on the

whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.

For, we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers,

against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present

darkness against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

Therefore, take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand.

The A and having done all to stand firm stand therefore having fastened

on the belt of truth and having put on the breastplate of righteousness and

as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of

peace and all circumstances take up the shield of faith with which you can

extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one and take the helmet of

salvation and the sword of the spirit.

Which is the word of God, praying at all times in the spirit with

all prayers and supplication.

To that end, keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication

for all the saints and also for me that the words may be given to me in

opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel for which I

am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare it boldly as I ought to speak.

Matthew chapter four.

Then Jesus verse one was led up by the spirit into the wilderness

to be tempted by the devil.

And after fasting, 40 days and 40 nights, he was hungry and the tempter

came to him and said to him, if you are the son of God, command these

stones to become loaves of bread.

But he answered, it is written shall 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 and set him on the pinnacle

of the temple and said to him, If you are the son of God, throw

yourself down for it is written.

He will command his angel discerning you and on their hands, they

will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against the stone.

Jesus said to him again, it is written, you shall not put

the Lord your God to the test.

Again.

The devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms

of the world and their glory, and he said to him, all these I will give you.

If you will fall down and worship me.

Then Jesus said to him, be gone.

Satan, 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 were ministering to him.

This is the word of the Lord.

Let's pray.

Father, we thank you for your word.

and we thank you that the word became flesh and DW among us.

We thank you that you are the message, the very tone come from heaven to

reveal the heart of the Father to us.

Help me Lord, to make much of Jesus right now and all of us together, Lord, that

Jesus will be made much of in our hearts.

Save us from the opinions of men and good ideas, clever reasoning, gimmicks,

10 step programs or whatever it may be.

Lord, we want.

Jesus to be exalted and lifted up because we say together in this place, what we

need is you, that you are our chief end.

And so bless this time, bless the churches that gather all over the Central Valley.

Thank you for the different churches and their different expressions.

Thank you that the family of Jesus is big, that your father over so many different

personalities and expressions and cultures and races, and we're all part of the

same family, and we thank you for that.

what a privilege to be a part of this, blood bought family.

man, everything else is just a shadow.

Pointing to the reality that really to her.

Yes.

And so we thank you that you're the substance, thank you, that you

came to bring us to the father.

we love you so much.

Jesus.

Bless this time.

A Jesus name.

Amen.

Amen.

Russell Moore writes in his book, as he was in the car listening to the radio,

a program called The Stairway to Heaven.

they were talking about slaughtering cows.

He said there was something rhythmic, almost soothing

about the soft clatter of it.

The soothing repetition sounded like a summer thunderstorm coming

up from the coast or rickety old midnight train off in the distance.

I had no idea what I was listening to.

I had no idea that it was the rhythm of cattle marching to a slaughterhouse.

It turns out what I had happened upon randomly driving in my car was

a public radio program about factory farm broadcast was about how to kill

cows, but with kindness kind of brings new meaning to kill 'em with kindness.

What happened is that there was this scientist that studied.

For years because, when cows get stress or sense stress, it makes the meat tough.

So her whole thing was how can we create an environment that they're

coddled and that they don't get stressed, so that when they're

slaughtered, the meat stays tender.

Learned through years of research this researcher how to register

which stimuli produced which animal sounds and how to track what

scares or stresses the livestock.

A slaughterhouse then, in order to keep the cattle relaxed, should remove

anything from the side of the animals that isn't completely familiar.

The real problem is novelty.

If dairy cattle are used to seeing bright yellow raincoats slung

over the gates every day when they enter the milking parlor.

There'd be no problem.

She counsels this researcher.

It's the animal who's seen a bright yellow raincoat slung over the gate for the first

time at the slaughter plant or, the feed.

Who's going to balk or freak out if you just keep the cows

contented and comfortable?

They'll go wherever they're lead.

She advises.

Don't surprise them.

Don't unnerve them, and above all, don't hurt them well, at least not

until you slit their throats at the end.

Along the way, the scientist devised a new technology that has

revolutionized the ways of the big slaughter operations in this system.

The cows aren't prodded off the truck but are lead in silence onto a ramp.

They go through a squeeze shoot, a gentle pressure device that

mimics a mother's nuzzling touch.

Okay.

The cattle continued down the ramp onto a smoothly curving path.

There are no sudden churns.

The cows experience the sensation of going home the same kind of way

they traveled so many times before as they mosey along the path.

They don't e notice when their hooves are no longer touching the ground.

A conveyor belt slowly lifts them gently upward, and then in the twinkle

of an eye, a blunt instrument levels a surgical strike right between their eyes.

Yeah, they're transitioned from livestock to meat and they never wear

enough to be alarmed to bite any of it.

Yikes.

Which is great for barbecue.

It's terrible for us because what Paul's talking about is that we

are in a spiritual battle and that the enemy is out to steal, kill.

And destroy.

Yeah.

That we face off against this enemy.

We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against this enemy

who wants to see our destruction.

The temptation and the reality of the battle that we're in is not so much

as we talked about last week, the hug booga, like spinning heads, levitating

bodies, projectile vomit like we see, and the exor or you probably don't see

that cuz shouldn't have watched that.

that kind of like, oh my gosh, it's in your face.

It's alarming, but it's the subtle shaping you into the mold of the world.

Getting you to think like the world becoming, invested

in the things of the world.

You remember that we said that every temptation is rooted in your identity.

Yes, every temptation is rooted in an attack on your identity of who you are

in Christ as a beloved son and daughter, it is Adam and Eve in the garden and

the serpent coming and whispering.

Did God really say?

Does God really care?

Does God really, after your freedom, I thought he said

you could have all the trees.

he's holding one back from you.

He's holding the best back from you.

In fact.

To get you to doubt his love.

it's not so much, it's the slow, methodical pressure to conform

us into the image of the world instead of the image of Christ.

Every temptation at its root is an attack on our identity in Jesus.

You'll be tempted with consumption, security, and status.

You'll be tempted to provide for yourself, to protect yourself and to exalt yourself.

And at the core of these three as a common impulse to cast off the fatherhood of

God, to cast off his care, to cast off his protection, to cast off his way, and

his plant and his wisdom for our life.

Father led or fed.

Father protected or neglected father's plan or the way of a man, it's a little

rhyme scheme to help you guys remember it.

The first step in the cycle of temptation is the question of your identity.

James told the poor and the beaten down boast in his exaltation and

told the prosperous and the up and coming to glory and his humiliation.

Why James understood that temptation begins with an illusion about self,

a skewed vision of who you are.

The Satanic powers don't care if your illusion is one of personal

grandiosity or self-loathing.

As long as you see your current circumstance, rather than the gospel,

as the eternal statement of who you are, as long as that is your identifier.

Great.

Have at it if it's not rooted in the gospel.

So we'll see in the testing of Jesus, the attack on provision, the attack on

protection, and the attack on process.

Okay, the three and we come to this, this is our third in a message

about the sword of the spirit.

So first we talked about what it's not.

And then we talked about what it is, and now we'll talk about how to use it.

So I'm gonna catch us up a little bit for those of you who haven't been with us.

Just a five minute recap.

Stand firm.

Paul writes, hold the ground that Jesus has already won.

Jesus has already won the victory completely, and he wants us to

live the victory experientially.

We're not trying to achieve victory.

Jesus has already won the victory.

You're not fighting for victory.

We are fighting from victory.

It's been done.

It's happened.

the cross in the resurrection.

That is the pinnacle of history, right?

So then he comes to the sword of the spirit.

He's talking about wearing the armor.

And we've seen that each piece of the armor is a different

facet of the gospel, right?

That we're putting on his righteousness.

Not a righteousness that we provide, but one that he won for us.

And, how to deal with discouragement and those kind of attacks.

But we come to the Sword of the spirit.

Take the helmet of salvation, verse 17 of Ephesians six, and the Sword of

the Spirit, which is the word of God.

It was called the macra.

A small sword is distinguished from a large sword.

It's probably used in quote, close quarters battle because

again, I'm gonna say it quickly.

The, when Paul writes this, he's thinking of community.

We see this individualistically like we're out.

like William Wallace, running in that first scene where he takes

the garrison right by himself, you're like, wow, this is amazing.

Or we think of Samson, who's just throwing.

But in his mind, the church is standing together, shield to shield, right?

That's how the Romans would fight.

And so they wouldn't draw their sword if your shield to shield

because it would cut your friend.

And so you had the dagger.

And then when he is talking about wrestling, he's not

talking about, a referee being there and assigning you points.

He's talking about that fight where you're on the ground and in the mud, that fight.

So you've got this blade, double-edged.

With a super sharp point.

This is a spiritual sword and cuts in the spiritual realm, and so often we

go to a the human sword, and that's not the sword the spirit uses, right?

You remember Peter?

he pulls out a sword and just put away, that's done by sword.

He says, you'll pull out a sword one day, and you'll cut.

And he does on the day of Pentecost today, 2000 years ago.

And it's a different sword.

It's not a sword from the physical realm.

And it says, as they heard him preach about the cross of Jesus,

about his death and resurrection, they were cut to the heart.

It's a sword that doesn't inflict damage in the physical realm, but man, it cuts

you to the heart in the spiritual realm.

It liberates.

It sets free.

It takes the idols down.

James one 20 says, for the wrath of man, does not produce the righteousness of God.

Cuz we don't believe in the power of this sword and we know we don't believe

in it because we so rarely use it.

It is written.

It is the one and only in the arsenal, maybe because it's the only one we need.

There's not like a lot of weapons, like we said, in Call of Duty.

You've got, so many options, right?

It's a sword that belongs to the spirit, but it's put in your hand to use.

Now the word here is Rama, the sort of the spirit, which is the word of God.

Ramah.

So there's three words used in the Greek for.

The word of God.

The first one is graphe.

It's the writings or the written word.

Okay.

The 66 books and words that make them up and compose the canon of scripture.

When Paul's talking about the word of God, he's not talking about walking

around with a Bible under your arm.

Like this, it's like this weird thing.

I've shared, we grew up in a church where the word of God was like

the fourth person to the trinity.

the grapha, the writings, they were this, it was the sacred kind of thing.

and it was almost worshiped.

There's another word.

So you've got the writings, you've got the scripture.

The other word is log.

the logos right in the beginning was the logs and the logos was

with God, and the logos was God.

Lagos is the message of the book, what it's all about,

understanding what the passage says.

At church, you understand the logos or the meaning.

If you hear the gospel and it grips your heart, then you understand

the message of the Bible, so it's not just, the 66 books compiled.

You need that because, but the whole point is to get to the meaning

of the book, which is the gospel, and that's where the power is.

We see people swear on a Bible in court, If I break this, I'm

gonna get struck by lightning.

It's this like superstitious thing.

They're treating the graphite, the written this scripture, like

it's this superstitious thing.

The person who's putting his hand on the Bible rarely cares about the message in

the Bible, but it's like this religious thing that's their, they don't care

about the message, they just care about the book in a weird, superstitious way.

I talked about how I.

when my former pastor would come in when I was a kid, I had highlighted

passages of the Bible to make it look like I was a student of the word.

for some I was a poser, a thing.

I, my parents were actually underlining, I'm just like, oh,

that looks cool, kind of a thing.

Oh, the word that he uses is rama.

Utterance or word spoken or declared, it's declaring the message, the

declaration of the message that is contained in the written word of God.

You need the logos from the graphe, the written word, and then Paul is

saying, uttered, it is written when God, he didn't just think about.

Creating light and go, that'd be nice.

he declared let there be light.

And it was so, it's interesting cuz in Hebrews four 12 it says, for the Lagos

of God is living an active, sharper than any two-edged sword, the same word.

For sword and our passage in Ephesians, piercing did the division

of soul and spirit of joints and morrow and discerning the thoughts

and the intentions of the heart.

It's the message the logos of God is living.

Not just the book, but the message of the book.

It is alive and active.

The story about Jesus the gospel is why he says, and.

Romans one.

It's the power of God unto salvation.

That's why Jesus says the volume of the book is about me.

That's why the disciples on Resurrection Day said, did

our hearts not burn within us?

When he explained from the scriptures, How he was the

fulfillment of all these things.

It's the message.

It's the message why so many sermons are dead or dulls because they missed

the message of the graphite or the scripture that it's about Jesus.

In fact, Andrew pointed this out last week and I dug into it a little more.

And the father, he's talking to the Pharisees and John 5 37 and 39, and

the father who sent me has himself born witness about me, his voice.

You have never heard his form.

You have never seen, and you do not have his word, his logs abiding in you.

The message for you do not believe in the one whom he has sent.

You searched the graphe, the scriptures because you think that

in them you have eternal life.

And it is they that bear witness about me.

I'm the whole point of the scripture, the whole point the whole power

of the Bible is the message about Jesus seeking and saving the lost.

It's about Jesus coming to restore what man has broken,

to returning us back to home.

In the creation, right in the Garden of Eden, it's a story about losing a

father and being wayward, trying to find.

Family in this broken world and about Jesus coming and to bring us back to the

Father like It's a story about going home.

It's the story of Jesus seeking and saving the lost.

It's a story about the Father, heart of God who gave his son to have you as sons

and daughters forever for eternal life.

So why this tangent?

Because Jesus says to the devil, it is written.

The devil loves to hear us say, I think, or my opinion is, or my

friends say, or This is what the latest poll says, or Here's what my

political party's stance is, or this is what the religious leaders say.

But Jesus knowing the message, because the devil's gonna quote scripture.

But Jesus knows that he's the message, he knows the message of scripture,

that it's all pointing to him.

So really important that as we think, and then we, as Paul says, the sword of

the spirit is we're not just, it's not just sitting up here, but that we're.

Singing Psalms, hymns and spiritual songs to one another, that we're telling

each other the message of the gospel that we're preaching to our hearts.

You know that, as the psalmist says, why are you cast down

within me like hope in God?

What's wrong with you, my soul?

You hope God's preaching at his heart, the message, right?

And so we really need to understand that, and that's as Paul's framework

for the sword of the Spirit.

So it's not just a random.

Verse, it's knowing the message.

Of what that verse is, right?

So often, we take something like Psalm one.

Blessed is the man who walks not in the council of the ungodly, or sits

or stands in the wave centers or sits in the seat of the scornful.

His delight is on the law.

The Lord in his law, he meditates day and night.

he'll be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, who, he's not

gonna flee, but the wicked are not.

So they're like chaff driven away by the wind, you come to Psalm and

you're like, man, I wanna be this man.

I wanna be the one who's not, sitting in the seat of the scornful.

I, I don't wanna be the chaff.

I wanna be, The one who delights in the law of the Lord day and night.

And then you start to like, wow.

But I don't, I'm not delighted in the law of the Lord Day and night.

I am more like, I do sit sometimes.

I'm the scornful and other people are sitting and I'm the

one who's scorn in everything.

I'm like, man, I'm more like the chap than I am the,

it's because there's a greater hero of every verse.

And every verse whispers his name, and he is the one who came, who did delight

in the law on the Lord Day and night.

He never did not delight in the law of the Lord Day and night.

It oos out of him on the cross.

He just bleeds scripture, and he was treated as the chaff.

He was treated as the scornful, as the wicked and judgment was put on him.

He was uprooted so that I could be planted by the rivers of water.

so that I could have life.

And so even in that verse, there's rescue and it's about Jesus, but then it gives

me a picture of what he's shaping me into, that he put his law in my heart that

like he put the Holy Spirit in me who?

Praises the Lord who loves Jesus, who makes much of Jesus day and night like,

like all of a sudden there's rescue in that, that there's hope in that.

There's promise in that.

There's reality in that, and there's worship and there's praise, through that.

So not just the graphite, we need it.

It's important.

People died for it.

Like the canon of scripture.

Amazing history.

But we have to know the message of it.

And it's about Jesus, right?

That it's about Jesus and his story.

so how to use it.

So that's just a little, we're coming back.

So now we're getting into the temptation of Jesus.

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit, Matthew four, one to two, into the

winner, be tempted by the devil.

So this is a spiritual battle.

This is like a battleground, right?

It's very interesting.

We'll point some things out along the way, but 40 days in the wilderness,

very picturesque of the children of Israel, going through the wilderness

for 40 years, wandering, needing to depend on God for everything.

So then Jesus was led up by the Spirit under the wilderness

to be tempted by the devil.

And after fasting, 40 days and 40 nights, he was hungry.

So 40 days, 40 nights.

I don't know how, if you've ever fasted, or how long you've fasted.

I go like 10 hours.

I'm like, I'm gonna die.

it's a long time and now, doctors say that your body's turning on itself.

You need to eat food or you're going to die of starvation.

What a wonderful thing that the sun would not only identify us

with by becoming human, but also to submit to temptation for us.

We must never lose sight of the context for this wilderness testing.

And here's the context of it, cuz this happens right after

this, and this is so important.

Luke 3 21 to 22.

Now, when all the people were baptized and when Jesus also had been

baptized and was praying, the heavens were opened and the Holy Spirit

descended on him in bodily form.

like a duff and a voice came from heaven.

You are my beloved son.

With you.

I am well pleased.

Then in Luke four, one to two, and Jesus full of the Holy Spirit,

returned from the Jordan, was led by the Spirit in the wilderness for 40

days being tempted by the devil, and he ate nothing during those days and

when they were ended he was hungry.

The whole context of this spiritual battle, the whole context that Jesus is

going into is you are my beloved son.

That's right.

And whom I'm well pleased.

That's it.

The attack is gonna be on that.

It's gonna be an attack on his identity, that he has a beloved son.

Of God.

And so too were will our attacks, the spiritual battles as much as we

wanna make 'em about this or this, it all comes down to the fact, am

I truly a beloved child of God?

Am I.

Truly beloved by him no matter what am I, is what he says from heaven or

says to us and the person of Jesus through the gospel that I'm his

beloved son and that I'm his beloved daughter because of what Jesus did.

He's well pleased with me.

That's right.

Is that the truth over my life?

Yes.

Is that the reality that I live my life in, or am I suspicious

because of circumstances?

Yes.

Am I suspicious because of timelines?

Am I suspicious because of difficulty?

Am I suspicious because the path is hard?

Am I suspicious?

Because what he says that he's a shield about me.

It feels like I'm getting struck with arrows.

Where's the shield?

Is that the reality that governs how I see life or

Circumstances is that govern how I see life.

And so that is going to be the point of attack.

Our sonship, our daughtership, our but, and not just, I can't stress this enough.

That's right.

Like not just you're the redheaded stepchild, whatever that means.

Or the son, we don't invite to the gatherings because you're a little crazy.

Or the kid who has a passed and hasn't fixed himself up yet, like this distance.

The message, the logs of the Bible, As replayed over and

over as Nathaniel is in my life.

I get home, he's like, dad.

And I pick him up.

And he bear hugs me.

The Holy Spirit says, that's it in my heart.

I don't want anything from him.

I don't want him to graduate with honors.

Yeah, that's so far off a thing.

What I want is his nearness.

Am I just rejoices over that little?

Is he does this thing now where.

He's trying to kiss you and he just grabbed your face and like, he's pretty

strong and he just churns it and he's just like, and he'll just, he kisses so weird.

But you know, you're like, like that is the message.

It is the prodigal who's a far off and the father runs and he tackles the boy.

I heard one commentator say that, in that day to dishonor your father, like

that the community could stone you.

So as he's walking back, the father's like Uhuh and he's gonna dart to him.

Yeah.

And he's gonna tackle him and hide himself in him.

He's gonna kiss him and he's gonna hug him and he's gonna love him.

and he's gonna feast.

And the guy's like, I'm gonna fix my life.

I swear this time it will be.

And he's like, shut up.

I don't My son was dead and he's alive.

You're with me, you're with me.

Guys, we come to Christianity to get fixed.

Being fixed is a byproduct of nearness.

And God isn't ultimately after your fixing, he's after proximity with you.

And Nearness Holiness

is a byproduct of nearness.

He had to make you holy so it could be near to you.

But the whole goal was it just to have a, oh, there's another holy one.

But to have you.

Yes to have you.

That's it.

That's the message.

That's the logos, he came to bring us to the father.

He's the way, the truth and the lie comes to father, but by him.

But through him.

So we can't lose sight.

And so the enemy is going to attack you on that.

he's gonna attack your identity of who you are in Christ.

He's gonna attack your identity and he's gonna asal you with

thoughts that maybe God doesn't love you, like he loves other people.

maybe you are the one who, maybe you gotta go clean yourself up.

Maybe you gotta head out, maybe churches have told you're not good enough.

You need to, take your baggage and throw it away in the dump.

And like, and it's the enemy.

God is so faithful.

At completing the work he began.

Yeah, man.

So often we're like, oh, we gotta help God complete the work he began.

Romans eight 15 For you did not receive the spirit of

slavery to fall back into fear.

Yeah.

But you have received the spirit of adoption as sons whom we cry.

Abba.

Father,

that is the height of theology.

Yep.

Abba, father, daddy, Galatians four, six.

And because you are sons, God has sent the spirit of his son into our hearts crying.

Ah, the father.

So he gives you the Holy Spirit cuz he knows we don't even believe that.

So the Holy Spirit's preachy APA father, Matthew seven, nine to 11

of which of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone.

So amazing that Jesus says this after his temptation because

that's the whole temptation.

If a son asks him for bread, we'll give him a stone.

Or if he asks for a fish, we'll give him a serpent.

If he, then you who are evil comparatively know how to give good

gifts to your children, how much more will the father who is in heaven give

good things to those who ask him?

Father letter fed, father protected or neglected, the Father's way or Man's

way, or the father's plan or man's way?

In Jesus, we overcame temptation the same way he did by trusting in

our father and hearing his voice over everything in our lives.

Some of us may ask, what?

What does temptation look like to the spotless son of God?

Did he real?

Was he really tempted?

Did he just shoot electricity and deal with the devil that way?

Some argue this wasn't hard for Jesus because he was the son of God, but

others can argue that the one who faces temptation after temptation and comes

out Victoria's faced it more intensely.

As they keep upping the ante, he suffered from nation.

Far worse than anything we have faced.

Scripture says that Jesus was tempted in all points as we are yet without sin.

Hard for us to wrap our minds around because in so many places, when we're

tempted, we fall, but he did not fall and he did not fall on your behalf

like he won victory for you and me.

He beat temptation.

Because he knew our frame, that it's dust.

He knew we would falter and that we would fail, but he succeeded.

he won.

So Jesus out into the wilderness, the biblical word, in the biblical

word, the desert was a dangerous place at its most primal level.

Dry, fruitless, lonely, untamed.

we kind of picture the wilderness he was in as maybe Yosemite.

You know, it wasn't, it was like a rock quarry, there's like three animals

that like live in that wilderness.

just a stones everywhere.

Dry, desert, deserted.

lonely, untamed in a passage.

Many ancient Christians believe spoke of the fall of Satan.

Isaiah 14, 16 to 17.

The Bible speaks of the enemy as one who shook kingdoms and

made the world like a desert.

Some of us tend to think of wilderness here as a forest or a woodland even

when we come to understand that Jesus was so journeying in a desert, we

still tend to see it as a vast tract of sand, like a beach with no ocean.

But this place, the Judean wilderness, was a craggy field of stone.

There were probably rocks as far as Jesus could see, and Satan offered him

a way of escape from this rocky exile.

Another element why this passage seems strange to us when we read

about the temptations, I think, or the testing of Jesus is, his temptations

on the surface seem foreign to us.

I've never been tempted to turn stones into bread or to get up on

the temple and jump off of something high, I'm not a fan of heights.

I don't mind them, but although I did jump out of a plane once, which was insane.

What is Jesus tempted with and how, in any sense is this

something that applies to us?

So bread, verse three, and the tempter came and said to him, if you

are the son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.

And here is the attack.

If you are his son, you need to eat.

If you really are his son, why hasn't he fed you?

That's the attack.

If you really are his son, who God said from heaven, you're beloved,

then why are you hungry right now?

Jesus, why are you slitter starving to death and a lonely place all alone?

Where is he?

Why isn't he coming through?

The first temptation was to doubt God's provision and love

in the face of circumstances.

Satan often traps us by introducing a small element of doubt, right?

Adam, in the garden has God really said, right?

Eve has, God really said you can't eat a, fill the trees.

Satan rarely comes in with a pile of moral crap and say, here you go, wallow in it.

He presents it as something beneficial and insightful, like, Hey, you need this.

Look at you.

You did the 40 day fast.

You're amazing.

You did the cleanse, you know, kind of a thing.

Think he doesn't say, do a 180 and you'll be fine.

Look at these temptations.

Not a single tempt.

Take adultery, cheat on taxes or lie or steal, or rob.

In fact, on the face of it, it seems reasonable.

he has been fasting 40 days.

Isn't he supposed to be the one to come and rescue mankind?

How's he gonna do it if he's not gonna survive at the end?

He's weak, he's tired, and he's hungry.

He's saying, I'm not suggesting you do something wicked, like

create a harem or something.

I'm suggesting you feed yourself.

isn't the body, the temple of the Holy Spirit?

Nothing intrinsic, intrinsically wicked in this temptation.

So too nowadays, our physical and personal discomforts are used against us by the

enemy of our souls to make us, in the first instance doubt God's love and

care for us, and to doubt his provision in our lives and the whole culture.

Is trying to shape us into consumers who are never satisfied.

You are a economic unit.

They give you social media free unless you're on Twitter.

because what they want is they want to study your spending habits

and then they create products.

So, That break after the warranty expires where you keep perpetually

buying and you know, I was told, as an electrician, sometimes we get to

work in cool places in the Bay area.

We're working at, Intel and one guy pulled me aside and he is

like, see this box right here?

And this is back when the penny in four was just released, and

oh, it was awesome because I bought it day one, early adopter.

Went into debt.

Awesome.

Andrea loved that.

but I had two people at church say, oh, that's cool.

he's like, Hey, the pity and fours just came out.

They've got like the twelves right here.

I was like, what?

He's all, oh yeah.

they just stagger.

They've already developed everything.

they just get you to keep buying and needing the upgrade and needing the

upgrade and needing the upgrade, and so.

The whole culture is trying to shape us into that mold of needing more and

never being satisfied with enough.

it's all about that.

And he is our representative.

You guys will see, and maybe it's hitting you as you hear about the story, the

first Adam, he's in a garden paradise.

And he is also offered food, right?

A food he's not supposed to eat.

And he gives in in paradise, right?

He's got every tree he can choose from except for one.

And then our second Adam in a wilderness has also offered food that he's not

supposed to eat yet, and he has victory the parallel as our representative.

You see, Adam?

We all have sin when we're born because our federal head, our representative,

the best of us, Adam, right?

Imperfection our.

Almost perfection.

It's not perfect if you can choose evil, but close chose not good, chose sin.

And as our representative brought sin into the world, and then we

all, it's passed down, to us.

Our second Adam, our new representative, Jesus, our new federal head, He

succeeded where Adam failed, right?

Again, it's like God said to Adam, the first Adam, obey me concerning this tree.

And you'll forever be blessed.

And he failed.

And we're like, I wouldn't, oh, I would be way faster.

It'd be like, and God said, let there be a light, and he'd be like, oh, wow.

The fall already happened.

It must be Josh.

Oh, chapter three already crazy.

God said to the second Adam the Garden of Gethsemane son.

Obey me concerning this tree.

And you're gonna be cursed.

You're gonna suffer the curse of all mankind.

And he obeyed.

He said, if there's any other way, but not my will, but your will be done.

And he went to the cross us and he took on our curse so that

it would be obliterated in him.

To rescue us and to bring us back into the family.

And so yes, there is way more than just Jesus passing the test.

He's our representative passing the test for us because again, in the

gospel we don't just get a clean slate.

And now we've gotta keep it clean in the gospel.

We get a new record.

we get the righteousness of Jesus himself when he relates to us.

He's not like, oh wow, you didn't do your devotion today.

Okay.

Side hug.

He sees the perfection of Jesus over your life and it's beautiful, and he charges

you and he bear hugs you and he holds you, and he is like amazing, perfect,

beautiful, because of what Jesus did.

Yeah.

That's why it's good news.

Yeah, it would be good.

And news if we got forgiven and clean slated.

That was great.

For the people in the Old Testament who had to, on the Day

of Atonement, a substitute would cover their sins for another year.

Yeah.

That's, yes, man.

I'm covered.

Why we call it good news is because it's not only washed away as far

as the east is from the west.

But something new is put in its place.

So was put in its place a righteousness and that's how God relates to us.

So yes, he is our representative.

So at the end, he's weak, he's tired, and he's hungry.

It's not this crazy, do something wicked.

To make us in the first instance doubt God's love and care for

us to doubt his provision.

It is relatively easy to trust God when everything is going well.

We all know this.

Then get four months of chronic pain or five or 10 years, and when

someone tells you to curse God and die, you're tempted to do it.

Some subtle points.

Really, it was a plea to doubt ever so slightly.

Amen.

Jesus will not do anything apart from the expressed leading of the Father.

He says that in the Gospel of John.

He says, I only do what my father tells me to do.

Should the son trust his father?

Should he take independent action to satisfy his needs to, and you

take a step back into that ancient agrarian world of the Bible.

There was no child support.

There were no eternities or state welfare offices.

A man who would not feed his family was disgrace to his tribe.

This is at the root of Jesus's teaching that even an evil person

would not give their child a snake when he asked for a fish or a stone

if he asked for a bread, right?

We just read that verse, and so there's this sense that like, The enemy is saying,

why isn't your father coming through?

Why isn't he feeding you?

This is where Eve fell, and Adam, right behind her.

Satan suggested back in the garden that somehow God was withholding something

good from the humans, something that in fact would make them like him.

Eve started to see God not as father, but his rival.

And that's when she struck out to grab what he was holding

back from her appetites.

Satan said, were more reliable, a guide to what she needed than the

word of her heavenly father and man, that is the temptation of the day.

Your appetites are a more reliable guide.

your drives are a more reliable guide to what you need in this moment.

You're trusting.

And a father who loves you without restraint and without limit, and is

using all his power to bring out his glory and your life and your joy.

It's just so, it's that.

it's Nathaniel, I just can't get over it.

I'm like, he does not understand the plans.

Why I go to work he doesn't like.

They're so not, he's just like, you're gone.

Where are you?

Why'd you leave?

I wanna play, I want you to hold me.

I don't get it, man.

That's me, Lord.

I'm like, where'd you go?

Even the garden Esau and the birthright it's all through the

narrative of scripture, right?

Esau sells his birthright for some porridge, some lentil stew, right?

Israel on the wilderness, God providing manna every day.

And they look at it and they go, what is it?

What's this?

And they're like, remember when we had garlic and onions and and we had meat?

We had all this food.

Yeah.

Our firstborn sons were face down on the water drowned.

Oh, we forget about that.

And just as an eat and Satan offered Jesus food.

If you are the son of God, how will he respond?

Will he respond like the children of Israel and the desert who when they

were hungry, murmuring, complain, and a sign to God some motive of

evil, God brought us out here to die.

Isn't that the ultimate like, not like, Hey, he liberated us and he's just not.

But we like begin to assign him evil motives.

When he is not coming through, we're like, he brought us out here to kill us.

The angels are just going like ove, they're just like, what in the world?

Are you kidding me?

It's insane.

he, and he says simply, and I love this cuz we, it can't be lost on us.

He uses the sword.

Yeah.

And he knows the message because he knows the graphite, the scripture, right?

He uses the sword.

He says it's written.

He doesn't do a fantastical display.

He doesn't rebuke the wind and the story he just says it's written.

And man, this slashes right in the belly, but he answered.

It is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word

that comes from the mouth of God.

Do you say he display a power raises voice?

It is written.

It is written.

It is written.

It cannot be lost on us.

If the Son of God used the sword of the spirit to face off against

the enemy, how much more should we?

In Acts 23, there's this interesting story where Paul's brought before

the high priest and in Acts 23, 5, the priest says something and he,

and Paul says, you whitewashed him.

he like loses his temper and calls him out.

And and then somebody points out to him and says, the scriptures

say you're not supposed to speak against the Lord's anointed.

and Paul said, I did not know brothers.

That he was the high priest for his written, you should not speak

evil of a ruler of your people.

He preaches to his heart.

He's like, oh yeah.

And the sword cuts him.

He responds with that word from God, a millennial and a half before.

So here's the content of what Jesus says.

Okay.

It's really important, and this is kind of the main one.

we're chunking at, we're gonna move through the other two, but this is

we're gonna, we're spending our time.

I'm almost done with this point, but Deuteronomy eight, two to three.

And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you

these 40 years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to

know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not,

and he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did

not know, nor did your fathers know.

That he might make.

that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that

comes from the mouth of the Lord.

So it's the whole manna story.

God gave the manna every day except on the Sabbath, right?

And then people would try to hoard it even in that.

They're like not trusting.

God's not gonna come through, right?

And it says it was filled with maggots.

The next day, God provided for them every single day.

Give us this day our daily bread as a callback to the manna from heaven.

Like every day he's teaching them.

You're my beloved, beloved sons and daughters.

I am a good father.

I'm providing every day for you.

The whole point is this, what Jesus wanted most was to be father led rather than fed.

He just trusted the father.

He's like, I'm beloved, if I'm not eating right now, that's

because he knows what he's doing.

Satan didn't propose that Jesus uses power independently as we commonly assume.

Instead, he called on Jesus to direct God, to use God's power for Jesus sake.

That as Satan wanted the son, of the Father to make his desires paramount and

his communion with God a means to that.

And I can't tell you enough how I see in, young.

believers as they're getting, we come to God and we're like,

okay, God, you're awesome.

You saved me, but here's what I, here's my list.

Here's what I want you to do for me.

When the whole point of salvation is communion with God.

Yeah.

That's the whole point.

That's the whole of everything.

Everything is an attack on his identity.

This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.

In the wilderness.

In Psalm 63, David had sung a hymn in my flesh, faints for you as in a dry

and weary land where there is no water.

Even in his hunger though, David's saying, also, my soul will be

satisfied as with fat and rich food.

God fed David exactly when he needed it.

And in the meantime, the spirit prompted David to see that at the end of the

hunger would be a table prepared for him in the presence of ven enemies.

A feast, right?

And so he's like, yes, this is what my drive is going to lead me to,

is that you are my true hunger.

You are what I need, like this hunger, pain is pointing to me to a greater

reality, not just that I need bread.

He says, man shall not live by bread alone.

We need it, but we also need to live on and trust in the love of God

and the Father, heart of our God.

Recovering a sense of who you are apart from what you want the

world around you often defines you in terms of what you want.

The advertising world sees you as a consumer defined by your buying

power and your product preferences.

Beyond that, other forces would seek to define you by your appetites themselves.

If you want to drink, you're a drunk.

If you want to have sex, then be true to yourself.

And so it goes.

But you don't live by bread alone.

You are not what you want.

You are who God declares you to be.

You are not what you want, even though the world tells you.

it's a shadow.

That's why Jesus said to the woman at the well, She's out by

herself cuz she's full of shame.

Doesn't want to hear any of the town gossip.

Yeah.

Nobody wants to get near her.

Jesus says, I'll share a cup water with you.

But he says, if you knew the water that I had, You'd be asking me because

the water I have to give, once you drink it, you'll never thirst again.

She's like, sir, tell me where to find this water.

She's like, yes, that's what I want.

And he's using even that thirst to point to the greater reality

that ultimately these drives point to that all our satisfaction.

Is found in him ultimately.

Jesus heard the voice of his father and believed the words, you are my beloved

son, with whom I am well pleased.

Those invisible words were louder for him than a stomach's growl.

What will we have to decide is whether we'd rather be fed or fathered.

And that's what it comes down to.

Let me just move through these and then we'll be done.

The temple top Father protected or neglected, verse five and six.

Then the devil took him to the holy city and sat him on the pinnacle of the temple

and said to him, if you are the son of God, throw yourself down for his written.

He will command his angels consign you and on their hands, they will

bear you up unless you strike your foot against the stone.

The second temptation was to doubt God's protection because of the

circumstances and thus doubt.

His identity as a beloved son.

So what does Jesus want here?

Quite simply, Jesus, the man wanted what every son and daughter

wants to be safe and to be loved.

Satan's offer here was one more assault on God's fatherhood and on

Jesus' sonship, the people wanted a sign in order to answer a question,

is the Lord among us or not?

Exodus 17, seven.

and that's the whole framing of this one.

We need a sign, is the Lord among us or not?

So they're wandering in the wilderness.

They've just crossed the Red Sea.

The question was whether God was right or Pharaoh was right, whether

they were really sons or just saves after all who had a new owner?

The first temptation drives us to the word.

The second temptation is find Satan using the word to try to trip Jesus up.

because Satan quotes scripture to Jesus.

Whoa.

if Jesus says You must live by the word, the enemy says, I can quote the word too.

You wanna live by the word.

I gotcha.

Now, this is probably a visionary experience like Ezekiel had, cuz

it would be hard to climb up on the temple, and he's in the wilderness

at the end of these things.

So he is taken, Paul said, whether I was.

In heaven or not.

I don't, but it was a thing, so.

If Jesus says, You must live by the bread.

the enemy says, I can use the word too again, visionary experiences.

It's just as possible that there was this rabbinical story circulating at

least a couple centuries later after the messiah came that said the Messiah.

When he came, he would, stand on top of the temple and crowd.

You pour your salvation draws night and he would leap down and authenticate himself.

So that was this like expectation that the rabbis had of what would

happen even if that story came later.

There are always people at the temple.

If Jesus did this sort of thing, it would be wonderfully authenticating, right?

Could the father let the son die?

We see over and over.

Jesus is asleep on the boat during the storm, right?

shouldn't Jesus is apply the same logic here.

There are biblical texts that talk about God's care.

This is an attack on the sanity of trust.

In the timeline of trust.

the timeline of trust.

Man, that's a hard one.

Yes.

Yes, because when the arrows are coming and they begin to strike, and

you're like, where's the deliverance?

Where's the armies of the Lord?

A host?

We must not only the method, but we must know the message of the Bible.

Jesus said to him again in verse seven, again, it is written, you shall not

put the Lord your God to the test.

Deuteronomy six 16.

You shall not put the Lord your God to the test as you tested him at maa.

That's the, that's what he's quoting right there.

Maa was the place where they got water from the rock.

You remember, they were like, we're gonna die of thirst.

God brought us out here to die.

He brought us out here to kill us.

We just were so thirsty.

Like they had just seen Miracle after Miracle after Miracle, his protection.

They literally, could look back off of the see the bob bodies in the

Red Sea of the Egyptian soldiers, but they're like, we're gonna die.

We're doomed.

Exodus 7, 7 17 7.

And he called the name of the place, Marba Maa Marba because of the

quarreling of the people of the Lord, and because they tested the Lord by

saying, is the Lord among us or not?

So again, Jesus knows the message.

The enemy saying, look at, you're in the wilderness.

40 days you're starving.

Okay?

So you're not gonna turn, you're not gonna feed yourself.

But where's the father's protection over you?

Doesn't he care about you more than the birds of the air?

Doesn't he?

Doesn't he clothe you?

Doesn't he feed you?

Like, like, isn't he gonna come through?

Shouldn't you make sure like God's there and Jesus knows the story, he knows

the message, and the Lord among us are not, and he's like, oh, he's among us.

And I'm gonna lean into him, and that can be so hard in trial.

Is he among us or not?

The people, this Demand for protection was a sign of unbelief.

The people didn't trust God on the basis of his word to protect them

and deliver them from their enemies.

They wanted some visible manifestation, something that

would prove that God was a father.

After all.

What's fascinating is that God is a good father and he's super gracious

and he does give them water out of a rock, and they're in a similar situation

years later and they stilled out like we do, like water out of a rock.

At nasa, the sign they wanted was a stream of water, but it

would later be other things.

Again, over this, the word among us or not also to you.

note that Satan uses scripture and things can be taken outta context, and

twisted people who you know, use it.

We all know, husbands who tell wives they have to submit and

they're just a bully in the home.

they always forget Husbands love your wives like Christ, love the

church and gave himself for it.

What does that mean?

Oh, he died for her.

Like bled, like, you know, and so all these things people can twist

to accomplish their own things.

Second temptation.

Father protected or neglected.

And finally, verse eight and nine, the father's plan, or the way a man.

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms

of the world and their glory, and he said to them, all these I will give to

you if you'll fall down to worship me.

He's like desperate, like, okay, I'm gonna catch the chase.

I, the, you know, the bread that, that ante that was crazy that I think about

it, but will you just worship me, please?

The third attack was an explicit temptation to break the first commandment.

You shall love the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve one

form of the end justifies the mean.

Satan isn't being subtle anymore.

Bread is not inherently evil.

Jesus has done great things to, display his greatness, raising the

dead, quieting the storm right?

Or he is gonna do that.

Satan, whatever he knows, he knows that Jesus is slated to be the king

of kings and the Lord of Lords.

And he says, here is a cross free way to the world that you've come to rescue.

Here's a shortcut.

You can have the crown without the cross.

You just gotta worship.

I'll give you it.

I'll give it to you.

You can have it.

I'm tired of these people.

The crown without the cross.

It is vital.

Remember that the devil cannot give you what he promises.

He doesn't have the right, and in the end you'll lose your soul.

Like it's all, he's terrible.

Read the fine print How the enemy covers up all the consequences, right?

Does that ever happen?

Like, like the thing temptation does that he does with temptation is he

just distracts you from the future.

He tries to make temptation.

Now what?

Your knee now is prominent your drive.

Now this needs will fulfill.

one guy, said, like, but don't you worry about your eternal soul.

It's like, God has to forgive me.

It's his job.

this like, wait, what?

No idea of like costly grace or anything.

Just this hardheartedness, to God.

But here, right?

he says, here's the cross free way and the enemy.

So often he covers up the consequences, but then when you're caught.

Man, he loves to expose it and shout to everybody like, did you see what he did?

and you feel the weight of it.

And then he tries to throw a condemnation on it.

It's, he's a terrible enemy.

Verse 10 to 11.

Then Jesus said to him, be gone, Satan, or get the behind me for it is

written, you shall worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve

the devil left Him and behold, angels came and were ministering to him.

Guess what?

One, of the gospel says he left Jesus and came back for a more opportune time.

You know what it was Jesus is asking them, who do men say that I am?

some say you're Elijah.

Some say you're John, who do you say I am?

And Peter says, you are the Christ, the Son of the living God, flesh

and blood has not, revealed this to you, but my father, who's in heaven

is giving you in that insight.

And then he begins to explain the cross and that he's gonna go to the cross.

And Peter pulls him aside and he's like, We gotta stop the crosstalk.

We like the glory, we like the revelation.

We like this.

Don't.

No, no, no, no.

Not the cross.

You don't need to go to the cross.

And what does he say?

The exact same thing.

Get the behind me, Satan.

He says that is the way of Satan is a path forward without a cross.

What did Jesus say?

If you want to be my disciples, Take up your cross themselves and follow me guys,

you will experience suffering.

It's not the way it was meant to be, but God is redeeming and

restoring, but there is no shortcut.

And following Jesus,

like following him and tales suffering.

God hates suffering.

That's why He, one of the reasons he came is to end it and finally it will be

ended death will be late in its grave.

Sickness and disease, pain, all that betrayal.

Emotional, like toxic, real, all that stuff is gonna be gone one day.

But what he does right now through the suffering is he only allows it

to accomplish the exact opposite of what it's trying to accomplish.

The enemy came to God.

God said, Hey, have you seen my servant job?

I'm like, don't point me out.

Ever.

No, because cuz the enemy's like, oh, he only worships you because, You allow

good in his life, he doesn't suffer.

If he suffered, then he would curse you.

The only reason is because you bless him and that's it.

And God says you can do this and this, but you can't do this.

He only allows Satan to do in Job's life the exact opposite

of what Satan was trying to do.

Because what happens to Job is that he says, Though he slay me.

Yes, yet will I praise him that you are my true treasure?

cover me with boils.

Let me shave them off with shards of pottery and the dust of the earth.

And yet you are my God.

I will worship you.

Wow.

And then he comes to know God Through that his pride is revealed.

What's removed from Job is not his faith and trust, but his pride.

And so again, the greatest defeat against evil and suffering is to

make it the servant of your joy.

Isn't that triumphing?

Isn't that, you know when in Colossians it says Jesus is

like triumphing over the enemy?

Yeah.

Like he stomps him on the feet.

Like he, he makes him like servile in a footstool.

he's making a public display over the enemy.

Isn't that the public display that evil comes in and tries to, suffering comes in.

It's like, oh, you are gonna hate this.

And you're like, actually I love him more.

It's like, ah.

I love.

It's the ultimate defeat.

the only suffering that could really destroy you was standing up to

God's judgment on that final day.

That's the only thing that could take you out.

That's the only thing that would forever separate you from him.

But Jesus came to, take the ultimate suffering so that now any suffering

that we experience serves our joy and his glory again, he's ultimately coming

to defeat that evil and that suffering.

But it's so easy to want the shortcut and we live in a day in an age where

we can buy our way outta suffering.

With the credit card we can.

Amazon.

Amazon, yes.

We can get out of it.

And I'm not saying that we, like, we are masochist and we just go into su,

like, I'm not like bring it on God.

We should hate suffering.

Like God hates suffering.

That God, when he stood at Lazarus's tomb and he saw, what death did he snorts?

He grunts like a horse.

He's drawn a line in the sand.

He says, Jeff, you're done.

I'm coming for you.

He does.

He just squares off against it.

He weeps at the devastation.

He hates it.

He hates what it does to his creation.

He hates it and he's gonna end it, and that's one of the reasons

that he went to the cross.

So we hate it.

But if that arrow is going through the shield and pierces, your

heart guides, the sovereignty of God says that it's an arrow.

He's ordained

for you and him.

Jesus says, worship God, only my father's word is the most important,

the relationship, the communion I have.

Is the most important with the father, so often we're tempted to take the easy way.

I may not be tempted to worship at Satan's feet, but often a price tag is revealed

that I would give up at the cross and take a shortcut if the price was right.

Paul writes like, many have left because of the love of the world.

Like they were captivated by the riches.

Jesus provides a model of how we deal with temptation, right?

it is written how to withstand it, but that's not all he is.

He's more than our model.

We think of the first temptation, Adam in the garden, and Jesus in the wilderness.

The first Adam had plenty of, beauty.

He had a companion with him, a wife.

The second Adam was in an ugly desert and stark ugliness the first Adam sin, and

brought about our downfall the second Adam prevailed and brought about our release.

The first man Adam, in a perfect environment, believes Satan's lies,

prioritize the gifts of God above God himself, doubted the goodness

of God and compromised God's laws in pursuit of a good thing.

Jesus The Second Adam, by contrast, rejects Satan's lies not in the

Garden of Eden where all his needs have been met, but in the wilderness

where he is hungry, he prioritizes fellowship with the father above all.

How he, for 12 to 16, for the word of God as living and active, the lug us sharper

than any two-edged sword, our word.

Piercing to the division of the soul and spirit of joints and morrow,

and discerning the thoughts and the intentions of the heart, and no

creature is hidden from his sight.

Since then, we have a great high priest.

who has passed through the heavens?

Jesus, the son of God, let us hold faster.

Confession for we do not have a high priest who is unable to

sympathize with our weakness, but one in every respect has, been

tempted as we are yet without sin.

He's victorious.

Let us then with confidence, boldness.

Draw near to the throne of grace nearness that we may receive mercy

and find grace to help in the time of need and your time of need.

We so often think I need my circumstances fixed.

He says right here, mercy and grace.

Yes.

Is your rescue the story of grace?

Is your rescue, like that's what you need in those moments?

Or Jesus knows what temptation looks like, not just with the

knowledge or omniscience, but with the knowledge of experience.

He knows our frame.

he's a high priest who's compassionate.

He knows the struggle.

He knows our frame.

He did step off the edge of the cliff into the abyss of darkness,

and the angels did not bear him up, and the father did not catch him.

He dashed his foot against the stone.

His heel was bruised, his body broken and crushed.

The high priest who should be doing the cutting became the

sacrifice and was cut with a sort of judgment, justice, and wrath.

So that now when the sword comes into our heart, it brings

life where there was death.

The sword of justice went into the heart of Almighty Jesus and he bore

it and he suffered and he paid the price that we should have paid.

All that we did wrong, he did right.

So when he, when, so when he came to die, he could bear our

condemnation because a perfect life that ended under the condo death.

Could free those under the condemnation of death and

restore them to everlasting life.

The tree of life.

We get to eat of the tree of life.

And What it does is assure us to our place with the Father, which gives

us the strength to overcome the temptation of Satan and even more.

He united him himself to us by his spirit, which means that the same one

who overcame these temptations for me, can now overcome them through me.

Jesus, God's own son came to earth to substitute himself for you.

Which secures your place before the father because he paid your sin debt entirely.

And it assures you of God's steadfast love for you, the fatherhood of God, that he

would go through all of this for you, and so we can trust that he'll be consistent

and present and a father in her life.

There's something specific about the word of God that Jesus recalls every time.

Something that undergirds ever's quotes something so powerful that

not even Satan can refute it.

His identity in the father's eyes.

Satan says before the temptation, if you are the son of God, everything

Jesus quotes ultimately goes back to the security he possesses

in who he is in God's eyes, and that's where the power comes from.

He knew who he was.

He knew his identity.

This is our main temptation, the root of all temptations, to establish

our identity on something other than God's declaration over you in Christ.

Satan wants us to base our identity on how we live, but God wants you to base

your identity on how he lived for you.

He really loves you.

Jesus took care of every barrier, every obstacle, every distance.

We're beset by temptation and we fail.

He took care of it for you.

We're overwhelmed by suffering.

He was overwhelmed by the ultimate suffering.

So that now.

What Satan means for evil in your life.

God works for good and we know and we know that all things work together for

the good to those who loved him and are the called according to his purposes.

He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not

also freely give us all things like, like he loves you and he says, over you.

You are my beloved son and daughter.

And whom I'm well pleased.

I will never leave you.

I will never forsake.

He's for you.

And if God before us, who can be against us like that is again, it's

our identity and what Jesus has done and standing in that is the

victory that overcomes the world.

That is.

That's the power of the gospel.

That's the message of the law gospel that he came to seek and save the

lost and bring us back to the Father.

So we pray for us.

Lord, we thank you for your word.

we remember that you did fall off the cliff, that you leapt

into the abyss, that you stared into that cup as you comprehended

what it would be like to drink.

All the wrong of humanity, every shape and form of the curse, and that for our sakes,

you were broken so that we could become whole on the cross.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

One of the messages is that in that moment, some mysterious

way, you lost your father.

So we could gain a father, and we say thank you.

Thank you, Jesus.

Thank you that you've defeated the enemy.

Thank you that your victory, victories our victory.

Thank you that you won.

And so I pray, holy Spirit, you keep preaching that message to our hearts.

That message of sonship and daughtership, that message of being

your beloved, of being the adored ones, of being your favorite.

It's an amazing thing that the Infinite God can have.

I could be his favorite.

because you don't divide your love amongst us.

We have your face.

We have your gaze.

We have your word over us.

We have your attention.

We have your song, we have your celebration, we have

your dancing and rejoicing.

Where can I go?

If I were to ascend into the highest heavens, you're there.

If I had to descend into Sheol itself, you're there with me.

What is man, that you're mindful of him and the son of man that

you would visit him mindful?

May that word just fall on us, that we have your face.

Thank you, Lord.

We can't wait to feast with you.

We can't wait for the marriage supper, the lamb.

I can't wait for these taste buds to be set on fire.

But in the meantime, we feast on your body, broken in your bloodshed,

because really that's the food we needed because we could feast in this

life and we could lose our souls.

But because you were broken, now we're fed.

Now we're whole.

Now we're sustained and we declare as your people we're satisfied.

We praise you Jesus.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.