Wilderness Wisdom - Overcoming Trials with Faith - March 9, 2025

It is my privilege to invite you to today's sermon podcast.

I have made the Apostle Paul's prayer request my own.

When he states in Ephesians 6, 19, pray also for me, that whenever I open my

mouth, the words may be given to me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel.

May today's sermon come alive to you and aid you in your understanding of God's plan for your life.

A preacher once said, there's a wilderness near you. That's not a threat. that's an invitation.

Thinking about this statement, I kind of think about wildernesses and I kind

of like being out in the desert.

I kind of like being out in the wilderness. And if I took a poll,

I'd kind of say that's pretty much the majority of people here.

There's something about getting away for a while where there's no people around,

or you can just be you and go fishing, go camping, go hunting,

whatever it might be. You like the wilderness.

And I have liked the wilderness for a long time.

Maybe not so much when I was a kid, when my dad would take us to California

to visit our relatives from Boise.

And the last token of civilization for a while was marching as we passed through

to go down to McDermott and Winnemucca and go down to Reno.

My dad was the type that he didn't like to stop. So you better not drink anything along the way.

Because you would just be hurting until you got to Reno, hopefully to Reno.

And if Donner, it was snowing on Donner Pass, he wasn't going to stop in Reno.

So you just had to wait and hope for Sacramento.

But I myself, I like that drive between Marsing and Winnemucca.

It's nice. I don't know if I'd like it so much if I was on horseback.

And, you know, some of the times I've gone through there and perhaps you as

well, just the snow and you not being able to see things and the wind and everything

else. But driving in a car, it's nice.

The scenery is, if I'm by myself and just driving, I could drive up and down that stretch of a road.

I just love that. I love being out there with the crispness,

with just your imagination and thinking, Lord, how did you create all this and

the beauty that comes from that.

But, you know, it's not everyone that likes the wilderness.

I think back to the Old Testament, when we think about the children of Israel

wandering in the wilderness,

and how because of disobedience and failing some tests that God had placed before

them, instead of wandering just for 40 days, they ended up wandering for 40 years.

You know, we think about that number of 40, and it's roughly 40 days until Good

Friday, what's called Good Friday,

which is the Crucifixion Friday that we celebrate in Christian circles.

And so, in a sense, between now and then, we're taking a 40-day journey.

I don't know if it will be a 40-day journey in the wilderness.

I'm not sure exactly where you're at right now, or if it will be 40 days of joy.

But nevertheless, between now and then, we're going to spend some time with

Jesus, hopefully every single day, but definitely on Sundays as we look to the Word.

And just spending this time, as in the Scripture, He marches toward the cross.

The people that he encounters with, the struggles that he encounters.

And so over the course of these next several weeks, we're going to be looking

at the Gospels, and we are just going to be celebrating who Jesus is,

and we're going to be celebrating the things that he is going through,

that he has gone through, the things that we go through,

and find those similarities in there.

You know, it's in the Scripture where we experience Jesus today,

and that is we experience him in the wilderness. In Matthew chapter 4,

Matthew 4 · chapter mention

1 through 11, we see that Jesus has whisked away after his baptism to the desert.

He has whisked away to the wilderness.

And here's what the gospel of Matthew says. You're welcome to stand if you'd

like, if you're able to, to honor the word this morning.

But here's what Matthew writes in this account of what Jesus went through.

Matthew chapter 4, verse 1, then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness

Matthew 4:1

to be tempted by the devil.

After fasting 40 days and 40 nights, he was hungry.

The tempter came to him and said, If you are the Son of God,

tell these stones to become bread.

Jesus answered, It is written, Man shall not live on bread alone,

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

Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple.

If you are the Son of God, he said, throw yourself down.

For it is written, He will command His angels concerning you,

and they will lift you up in their hands so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.

Jesus answered him, It is also written, Do 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 splendor.

All this will I give you, he said, if you bow down and worship me.

Jesus said to him, away from me, Satan, for it is written, worship the Lord

your God and serve him only.

Then in verse 11, then the devil said, then the devil left him and the angels came and attended him.

Let's pray. Father, thank you for your word, God.

We ask that you would search our hearts this morning, Lord, as we've asked you

to do at the outset of this worship gathering today, God.

Lord, search our hearts. Find those wayward ways within us. Lord,

may we yield them to you. Lord, may we find affirmation in the searching.

And Lord, may we find strength in this passage today. It's in Jesus' name that we pray. Amen.

Well, wilderness experiences, whether good or bad, they are opportunities.

They are opportunities, whether it's a physical desert or spiritually speaking,

not to watch out for the threats, but really to see how we might grow,

to see how we might prepare, to see how we can truly encounter the living God.

When we think about the Old Testament, we think of Moses out in the wilderness

for 40 days as he was out there, You know, God did a work in his life.

There's a calling of Moses.

When we think about his 40-day journey, his journey up to receive the Ten Commandments,

how God used that in his life, how God used that in Scripture,

we can't get away from the value of being in the wilderness.

We think about Jesus in the wilderness here. It's so true when I tell a baptismal

candidate, hey, you're making a step that honors Jesus, but there's going to be a testing time ahead.

There's going to be some things you'll go through even after making this commitment to Jesus.

And it's scriptural that when we make decisions for Christ, there's a testing

time that comes, a testing time to where when we've made a choice,

are we going to stick to that choice to follow God?

Are we going to stick to that choice to follow Him?

Are we going to trust Jesus that He's cheering us on to make it through those

trials, to make it through those tests, to overcome those temptations.

In the wilderness, there is trials, and here Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness.

We think about the phraseology there. We think even about the children of Israel

that were led in the wilderness by the pillar of fire, by the cloud, how they were led by God.

Here Jesus, led by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness He is tempted,

welcomed by the Spirit To engage in these tests And we see there's three temptations

there And I just want to go through them briefly,

Perhaps you've heard sermons like this before And maybe even similar.

To what I'm going to say today, but I just want you to get a grasp of what Jesus went through.

Temptation number one was the temptation for Jesus to prove that he was God,

to prove his deity by using his power for personal reasons.

Now, Jesus was in the wilderness and he was fasting for those 40 days.

He was going without food for

those 40 days. And so what does the tempter do? what does the enemy do?

He comes and says, hey, if you're really hungry, zap these stones and turn them

into bread. Feed yourself.

Now, that's a very tempting thing. I fasted once.

I don't do good at fasting. And it wasn't even from food.

If you know me, you know how much, perhaps not now, but I used to love Mountain Dew, the hard stuff.

Not the hard alcoholic stuff, but not the zero stuff.

Just the mountain. I wanted to clarify that this morning. I forgot they had hard mountain dew now.

And so I fasted for a period of time during this similar season while I was

teaching at a Christian school.

And when I was done, you know, it helped me to get closer to God.

It helped me by giving that up to kind of get some control of some things that

really had a spiritual thing, presence with them or problem with them.

And then I get through and I accomplished it. And then my wife says, you cheated.

What do you mean I cheated? You went to Taco Bell and you had a Mountain Dew slush.

I said, oh, I guess I did. But that doesn't count. That wasn't the Mountain Dew soda.

But yet again, she was right. So much for my accomplishment.

Isn't it great our spouses keep us humble sometimes? We think about Christ's

temptation, the first one here,

the temptation appealed to the lust of the flesh,

to satisfying the physical needs that we have, to satisfying our appetite,

satisfying those base things, those base elements that we have as human beings

that we think that we need or perhaps that we truly need.

But usually the temptation is in a way or is in a manner that is not good for us.

Here, the temptation was that Christ should secure by his own power,

that he should trust by himself, his own power to create food whenever he needed it.

To trust his own ability instead of waiting for God to provide for him.

Going against the commitment that he made to his heavenly father to spend this time fasting.

You know, I love Jesus' answer because Jesus said, man does not live by bread

alone, but by every word from the mouth of God.

Jesus, in a sense, was saying, hey, my need here is not physical.

My need here is not the physical bread that would nourish my body,

but my need here is that I am getting in touch. I need the spiritual life that comes from God.

I need the spiritual life from my heavenly father.

When we think about this first temptation, and perhaps we've been tempted before

in such manner, where we've had a really need, we had this need in our life,

we just can't satisfy it. So we just keep feeding it and feeding it.

And God finally says, enough. Take a time out.

Fast from that. And let me speak to you on a deeper level, a level that overcomes

the physicality of these needs.

A level through which you can experience a great self-control when you submit that need to me.

The first temptation, we feel that one.

The second temptation was for Jesus to prove his deity again by the spectacular.

Did you catch what the enemy, what the devil wanted him to do?

Took him to Jerusalem, the holy city, stand on the highest point of the temple

and said, okay, now jump off because the word says in the Psalms,

that the angels will not let you splat on the ground, my paraphrase,

of course, but that they will come in and they will rescue you.

Not even part of you will be harmed.

Just do that. Show everyone that you're God right now. Just leap on.

There's a lot of people that like the spectacular these days, right?

I've seen some videos going around, some crazy things that people do.

I did see one that was kind of cool, though. the pastor

came floating in from the ceiling on a harness preaching the

word of God and landed on the stage man can you imagine how spectacular our

Easter play would be if we hooked up the person who was playing Jesus to a harness

and after they go through the Easter story and Jesus rises again that we could

lift them up as they ascend to heaven and hopefully stop before the roof,

Okay, that's spectacular, right?

I mean, our minds can come with all the spectacular stuff.

And that's kind of the temptation here, was appealing to the pride of life,

trying to appeal to Jesus' pride. Come on, Jesus.

You're the Messiah. If you are really the Messiah, then just leap off here and

let everyone at the holy city, here at the holy place, the Temple Mount,

let them see you in action and see your angels.

Come on The temptation was again to test his deity To test his godness if you

will For lack of a better word right now But to attract attention to him Through

the spectacular, the wow factor.

I'm not getting any ideas. No, now I've got an idea. Thanks a lot, Mary.

We'll talk about it at staff meeting. No, the temptation here,

how Jesus overcame that was just simply, again, through the word.

It is also written, do not put the Lord your God to the test.

Hey, it is not for you to test me, Jesus says.

Jesus knew fully well who he was. God is to be trusted, not just to be a spectacle

for everyone's entertainment.

And folks, I hope we understand that. Hey, do not get me wrong.

I love going to Christian concerts of all genres.

I love the gospel concerts as much as I love the contemporary ones when people

are authentically worshiping God.

But I've also been to some things that could be just called a circus where the

focus was on the individuals. the focus was not on God.

The focus was on the religious acts rather than on the one who they were trying to honor.

Folks, we're going to go through worship style changes in our lives.

We're going to go through different things. I mean, look, we've got the PowerPoint now.

We've got the screen instead of the old projector with the plastic sheets that

are on there. We go through changes, right?

But the focus isn't on the technology. It's on God.

We focus on God, not the spectacular things that we can do.

Here, Jesus tests. Prove your God by putting on a show.

Appeal to Christ's pride. Jesus had another way.

The third temptation this morning that the scripture says is,

hey, why don't you prove your deity by just compromising here?

Come on, meet me halfway.

Have you ever noticed when someone asks you to meet you halfway,

it's usually more than you're halfway.

Whether it's, hey, I'm coming to town or coming by your town.

Let's just meet me halfway. Okay, where's halfway? Winnemucca. That's not halfway.

Well, I'm going all the way to Idaho Falls. Okay, let's meet in Twin.

No, let's meet me down here. Anyway, when people ask you to compromise,

and you notice this at elections, I don't want to be political,

but there's one party that says, compromise, compromise, compromise,

unless you're in power, then it's our way or the highway kind of thing.

Compromise never works out well. And spiritually speaking, I'll tell you,

compromise never works out well.

What do you mean compromise? I'm talking about the temptation here is the lust of the eyes.

What you see, shiny and new. Oh, I want that.

Oh, look at this. This is a better way. I want to try that. When we think about

the temptation here, the devil again took him to the very high mountain,

showed him all the kings of the world and said, hey, bow down.

If you bow down, if you compromise, if you show me as God, then I'll give you all this.

Satan didn't even own any of that. None of that was his.

But here's the temptation for Jesus to compromise, to achieve his purpose through another way.

I mean, we think about people in the Old Testament, especially,

who wanted to achieve God's plan, but going a different route.

We see all kinds of examples in there of why not to do that.

We don't have to look far into Genesis before we meet a man named Abram,

becomes Abraham, who God made these spectacular promises to.

And yet Abraham and his wife, Sarah, they tried to compromise through their

own means, through their own way of doing things and caused a big problem that still exists today.

When we think about trying to do what God wants us to do, but cutting it short

by doing something else.

I mean, man, we could probably raise a lot of money if on a Sunday morning we

had a big kegger or Saturday night,

and we invited everyone, hey, come down, it's happy hour at the Church of the

Nazarene, and we offered cheap drinks and wanted to get a whole bunch of people here.

Well, we're going to do a building program that way. That doesn't make sense, does it?

Rather than God wanting to accomplish his purposes through the sacrifices of his people,

through the giving of his people through the spiritual

gifts he's given some that are just givers you see

we can compromise even today i know that was maybe a silly choice but if we

switch our loyalties even in the short term it has long-term consequences and

we've got to protect against that just like jesus did i love what jesus said

and this is perhaps what we need to say out loud sometimes away from me satan.

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

We have one that we serve, not many.

Jesus makes this decisive choice. He is going to worship God alone.

Setting the example for us in these three instances, how to overcome the lust

of the flesh, how to overcome the pride of life, how to overcome the lust of the eyes.

All three of these things that lead to our innate nature to sin,

that appealed to that old nature.

Of course, Jesus didn't have that old nature. He showed us how to overcome it, praise God.

He showed us how to live in the way. We think about the wilderness.

It's a solitary place of preparation.

It involves struggle, and I want to tell you that struggle can lead to victory,

folks. Do you believe that this morning?

The struggle that you go through in your wilderness times and your times of

testing, not just does it make you stronger, but it also gives you victory over

that through which you were struggling.

And so I want to encourage you this morning to embrace your wilderness.

I want to challenge you to welcome your wilderness this morning.

1 John 2, 15 through 17 says this, do not love the world or the things in the world.

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

For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes,

and the pride of life is not of the Father, but it is of the world.

And the world is passing away, and the lust of it.

But he who does the will of God abides forever.

Man, where's our focus going to be? We've got to follow Christ's example in

his overcoming the devil, overcoming the tempter.

We have got to desire the will of God.

He who does the will of God abides forever. But that's where our focus needs

to be, not on the short term, not in the intense moments of testing,

but in the long game and getting through that and overcoming it.

You know, we think about comparing what we would call civilization to the wilderness.

A verse comes to mind as I was preparing this in Matthew, again, Matthew chapter 7,

Matthew 7:13

verses 13 and 14, where Jesus says, enter in through the narrow gate,

for wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction,

and many enter through it.

But small is the gate and narrow is the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.

We're talking about he who does the will of God abides forever.

There are all kinds of commercials that you are subjected to in a one-hour time

frame that appeals to the lust of your flesh, to the pride of life,

and to the lust of your eyes.

There are temptations everywhere is what I'm saying, and so we consider that civilized.

Maybe what we need is more time away from the TV in the wilderness.

Trust in the God. Trust in that God has something for us.

So if you think about the civilization versus the wilderness,

think about civilization, smooth roads most of the time, probably lots of construction even.

We think about ordered lives. We think about family schedules.

We think about the green and red traffic lights and hopefully no one running them.

We think about food that we can get In a couple minutes Pulling up to a drive-thru

and then pulling away I mean, there's a lot of things we think about We think about,

That, civilization But we think about wilderness And if you spent time in the

wilderness You know it's a place of change The weather changes quickly Perhaps

one minute the road's there and then it's not,

Perhaps it was washed out in a storm last night And the

way you thought you knew Now it's not there And I have to think of

a different way We think of the challenge that is in the wilderness We think

about also the growth That is in the wilderness So if we take civilization We

take wilderness We put them side by side One screams of the broad way And one

screams of the narrow way.

There's two different types of deserts. The first desert's a hot one.

It's the one you've seen in those Bugs Bunny cartoons when someone ends up in

the desert and they're crawling through the sand and saying, water, water.

There's just a dryness there. Well, spiritually for us, if we're going through

one of these hot deserts, sometimes there's a spiritual dryness we're suffering.

Our spiritual life is just dry. It's just that.

Some of you are thirsty in here from the warmness. You kind of understand what I'm talking about,

Spiritually speaking We long for the Long for the cool drink of water That is Jesus,

But it seems for some in this desert Jesus is a long way away There's also cold

deserts Believe it or not We think about Antarctica That's considered a cold

wilderness That's considered a cold desert if you will,

Where nothing grows It can't grow in the modern era here that we're talking about.

We think about cold deserts, spiritually speaking, sometimes there's a numbness to spiritual things.

Sometimes there's a numbness that manifests itself in a depression we just can't

get out of, or discouragement every time we try to do something good and we

just get knocked down, and so why should I even try?

That's a wilderness, folks. that's a cold desert.

Not a good place to be. And so how do we overcome these kind of things?

Well, we just follow Jesus' example.

Again, how did Jesus overcome? Well, he was in the wilderness, he was praying.

There's nothing that substitutes for a fervent time of prayer,

a schedule-altering prayer that when there's a need, you stop everything and you begin to pray.

When you stop everything when you get that text that says, my brother or sister has a need.

I got to pull over and I got to pray about this, or I just need to pray out loud.

And as I'm driving and ask the Lord to intervene on behalf of my brother or sister.

Folks, there's nothing that substitutes for prayer. It's a discipline.

It's something that we must work at and that we must work out.

I want to encourage you When you're faced With a desert situation When you're

faced with a wilderness situation Don't drop your prayer life Make that even

a priority That you increase that.

Fasting Altering those eating habits To focus on spiritual growth I know some

have no problem doing that Others there's some medical issues involved But giving

up that thing Giving up the focus on something That is vital to your life so

that you can concentrate on something that is spiritual.

So you can concentrate on your spiritual life. Jesus was here fasting for 40 days.

Scripture. In each instance, Jesus quoted Scripture. How important do you think Scripture was to Jesus?

Very important. In each instant, he shut down the devil through the word that

he knew. Of course, he was the word.

When you steep your mind in the Holy Scriptures, when you do even as the Old

Testament says, to have it all over your house so you see the Word of God.

When you have music that leads you to think about these, what is it?

Yesterday, they had kids standing up during the quiz meet to quote a Bible verse.

And you know what those children were doing?

They were singing the verses. How did they memorize these verses?

I think Robbie, wasn't it, he memorized over 20 verses plus five, I think, bonus verses?

I mean, the kid is sharp. He's put the word in his heart.

But these kids were singing in order to remember the word of God.

And those songs are going to stick with them, kids, their whole life.

It's never too young. Some of the songs we sing, even sang this morning,

are directly from the Bible.

The scripture is not all of the songs, perhaps, but some of the phrasing in that.

Folks, we get the word in our heart. I've hidden your word in my heart,

the scripture says, so that I might not sin against you.

If you want to protect against the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes,

the pride of life, sin in all its forms, you memorize the word of God in each

one of those things in which you are tempted.

When I was growing up, I was nervous a lot.

Not nervous about life, but when they would ask me to come up and stand in front

of people and pray or something at church.

I mean, the lowest grade I ever got was in speech class. I was a wreck.

I mean, God's got a sense of humor to call me to preach, don't you think?

It shows you who works in me and through me, I think.

My own power, there's no way I could do this. But one of the things I did was to memorize.

Memorize in Philippians chapter 4. Do not be anxious about anything,

Philippians 4 · chapter mention

but in everything through prayer and petition and with thanksgiving,

present your request to God, and the peace of God, which transcends all understanding,

will guard your heart and your mind in Christ Jesus.

How did I overcome anxiety? is through the memory of God's word,

through putting myself in uncomfortable situations as well to overcome that

anxiety, trusting that God would get me through.

So a two-minute talk became a five-minute talk, became a 10-minute sermon,

then went to 30 minutes somehow.

The idea that prayer, fasting, and scripture, the combination of those, that's the power.

It's the power that Jesus used in this passage.

How do we know that Jesus really overcame this?

Well, just a few verses later in verse 17, Jesus begins his ministry.

In verse 17, it says, from that time on, Jesus began to preach,

repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand or has come near. Jesus left that behind.

Satan left him for a while. The angels came and ministered to him,

and Jesus launched out in his ministry, did not hold him back.

Folks, to be tempted is not to sin. If you're tempted, it doesn't mean you're sinning.

It's the yielding to that temptation that manifests the sin in your life,

which means that you can overcome those temptations to live a life above the

fray of sin, to not become entangled into it, trusting God, and you can launch out,

just like Jesus did, into the ministry that he's created you for.

Here Jesus began to preach, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

Turn away from that sin, Jesus says, and he says that to us today,

for the kingdom of heaven is right now.

The kingdom of heaven is here, and he needs all citizens involved in this kingdom.

Folks, I've got something I want to let you know about.

In the time we have left this morning, there's some clipboards on the front pews of each pew.

On those clipboards, some of you have signed up to be a prayer partner with me.

You have agreed on certain days of the week that you're going to be praying

for me, and I'm going to be praying for you. And what I'd like to do is just

give you one last opportunity.

Fill that out and just pass it back. And if it's not there by the time we're

done, they'll be out in the foyer there.

But I just want to enlist you as a prayer partner. I want to pray for you in

the mountaintop experiences that you have, but also in the valleys of the shadows

of death, in the wilderness, if you will.

I want to be praying for you every time that I see your name on there.

I want you to know this. When your face comes to my mind, when your name comes

to my mind, I'm praying for you anyway.

But I want to have a systematic way. This is something you've already done with

Pastor Chuck, with Pastor Lesson. I think we need to keep it going.

So as the Lord leads you, just feel this out.

When it gets to you, sign up or send it back toward the back.

But it's just a practical way this morning that you can say,

I'm going to be praying for my brothers. I'm going to be praying for my sisters.

I'll be praying for our leadership.

I'm going to be praying because we know that the power in prayer is the power

that helps us have that victory in Jesus.

Close with this this morning. Don't fear the wilderness.

Find God and healing right there in the midst of that wilderness.

But also, I want to encourage you by that words of that preacher again,

there is a wilderness near you.

It's not a threat, but it's an invitation. Would you pray with me?

Lord, as we are wrapping up this service and we're going to have a closing song

together before our benediction, God, I just pray in these moments that you'd speak to our hearts.

Lord, if there's something in our life that we just can't overcome,

Lord, I pray that you'll bring these words, especially the words of Jesus to

mind, to help us overcome these

things, Lord, these temptations which want us so bad to yield to them,

or which want to lead us to sin rather than to the fullness that we can have

in you, rather than the victory that we can have in you.

And so, Lord, I just pray you'd speak to our hearts this morning as we sing this last song.

And Lord, if there's something that you would like us to do,

besides sign up to be a prayer partner, God, Lord, if you're speaking to our

hearts today, I just pray, God, Lord, that folks will take action.

They'll come talk to me, Lord.

They'll talk to their trusted brother or sister here, or they'll take that step

of faith, that next step.

And God, we just want to give you the praise, the honor, and the glory today in Jesus' name. Amen.

I want to thank you for joining today's sermon podcast. You can find a copy

of today's sermon, as well as other sermons, and the sermon outline from today

on our church's website,

www.mvcnaz.org.

It is my prayer also that you will seek out a church home that recognizes the authority of the Bible.