The Temptations of Christ

Would you grab a Bible and open to Matthew chapter 4?

Matthew 4 · chapter mention

Please read and I'll pray for us.

Matthew chapter 4 verses one through 11.

Matthew 4 · chapter mention

Matthew chapter 4 verses one through 11.

Matthew 4 · chapter mention

Then Jesus 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 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,

Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that

comes from the mouth of God. Then the devil took him 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 angels concerning

you, and on their hands they will bear you up, lest you

strike your foot against a 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 in 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 God.

Would you pray with me? Father, we thank you for giving

us Your word and our language and for giving us Your Spirit in

US and around us, that as we read you, Almighty God, the

living God, our Creator, our Redeemer, that You can teach us

through Your Word. That is our request this

morning, Lord. That You would take up Your

Word, that You would bring us instruction as a people, that

You would show us again the glories of our Savior Jesus

Christ, that we might delight ourselves in Him, that we might

know the things freely given to us through Him.

And so would you grant, Lord, that we would all hear a better

sermon that is preached today and that we, we would be the

better for it. And we ask it in Christ's name,

Amen. So we are in the season of Lent.

And traditionally when you come into the season of Lent, you,

you focus as a congregation on the life in the ministry of

Christ, particularly on his sufferings, on the things that

he suffered in order to secure our redemption for us.

And so in the liturgical calendar, this is the reading

that that the divines have assigned to the church, the

temptations of Christ. And So what I, what I want to do

is I want to look with you at the temptations of Christ,

looking at Christ as Christus victor.

This is Jesus in his victory for us.

A lot of times we come to the temptations of Christ and and

think in terms of what are what are the temptations of Christ

teach us about how we should weather temptation, and that's a

great thing. That's a great lens.

This is our example for how to navigate temptation without

failing. But the point here is not how

you can avoid falling. The point is Christ did on your

behalf, that Christ maintained perfect, sinless perfection

despite taking these temptations from our enemy, the devil.

And so I want to look at this text with you.

I'll have some applications in and around and through it as we

work our way. So you're in Matthew chapter 4.

Matthew 4 · chapter mention

If you look in verse one, I want to the first temptation, if you

were going to summarize it, if I were going to summarize it, I

would summarize it this way. The lie that we're told often is

that God helps those who help themselves, right?

Don't pray for a hole while leaning on a shovel.

And it's true you should not do that.

But the Scriptures teach that God comes to help those who wait

upon the Lord. The first temptation of Christ.

Satan tempts Christ to help himself to the things of God as

opposed to trusting His Father. So let me read the first few

verses and then I want to make a couple of observations here.

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit.

Emphasis on the Word. Then if you write in your Bible,

circle the Word then and draw an arrow just right before to the

verse that happened right before.

Because there's a historic context.

Here we are right after the baptism of Jesus.

Jesus is dripping wet as he goes into the wilderness to be

tempted by the devil. Jesus was led up by the Spirit

into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.

Did you know that? Did you know that sometimes you

can be led by the Spirit? Christ was led by the Spirit to

be tempted by the devil. Is that, is that something that

the Spirit would do? Yes, it's something that he did.

Verse 2, after fasting for 40 days and 40 nights, he was

hungry. It's a great detail that Matthew

gives us to protect us from a very traditional heresy where

you fall into one of two camps. Typically heretics will fall

into one of two camps of making Christ really God but only sort

of man, or making Christ sort of man or really man but only sort

of God. The testimony of Scripture is

that Christ was very God who became very men.

Real God becomes real man. And so it's a warning to us as

we look at the temptations of Christ and say, you know, it was

just his deity that that allowed him to navigate temptation or,

or what? You know, of course, of course

he was able not to turn stones to bread.

He was gone. Matthew tells us that just like

when you go hungry, when you don't eat, you go hungry.

Matthew tells us Christ had been 40 days without eating and he

was hungry. He's a real man, He's hungry.

And verse 3, the tempter came and said to him, if you are the

Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.

But he answered, man shall not live.

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

word that comes from the mouth of God.

So the historic context here that's very important is we are

post baptism pre inheritance, which is a which is a redo of

the nation of Israel. I asked Trey to read from the

book of Exodus where when Israel went through their that their

baptism through the Red Sea, they would have been dripping

wet, but they walked through on dry ground.

They watch they they see floating in the sea, the

Egyptians, their enemies, their overlords, totally defeated.

And the text says right before Moses sings his song of triumph,

the text says that they that they saw those things and they

believed in the Lord and and they became his.

It's their covenant. It's their baptism.

And then they go after singing, blessed be the name of the Lord,

the, the horse and the rider, he is thrown into the sea three

days later without water. And they're they're grumbling

against the Lord and they're saying, is God with us or not?

God has forsaken us. It is, is our redemption?

Is it still binding? Well, Christ goes through the

very same thing. He goes through a baptism.

God speaks over him, you. This is my beloved Son with whom

I am well pleased. And he goes directly from his

baptism, just like Israel, into the wilderness to be tempted.

And when he's hungry, the tempter comes to him.

And it's very interesting. There's a lot of hay made over

the place that Jesus is and I think it's true that he's in a

deserted, forsaken, desolate place and that there's stones

all over that to a hungry men begin to start looking like

loaves of bread. You I don't know if you've ever

done an extended fast where everything turns to food.

I did an extended fast sometime last year and Gracie noticed

that I kept sending her reels of of cooking of people making

delicious food because when I was starving, I wanted to think

I wanted to think about food. So Satan comes and he says turn

these stones to bread. Now, again, it's something that

we need to focus very heavily upon.

If you are the Son of God, if you are the Son of God, this is

the temptation. If you are the Son of God,

command these stones to become loaves of bread.

But the temptation, First off, is to disbelieve the last thing

that we heard God say to Christ, This is my beloved son in whom

I'm well pleased. And Satan comes as he always

does, and says, did God really say?

Did God really say, if you are the Son of God, why don't you do

it this way? So he, The temptation is for

Christ to use his sonship, use his power, use his authority and

his, yeah, his ability to do anything that he wants to do as

Lord of heavens and earth. And instead of serving the

people that Christ that that the father sent him to rescue, that

he would use his power to help himself.

It's been called the masturbatory temptation to just

take care of yourself. Don't wait for the Lord to

provide for you, just do it yourself.

God helps those who help themselves.

Just take care of it. Just take care of it.

But Christ answers, it is written man shall not live by

bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of

God, which shows you it's a it's a, a quotation from Deuteronomy

Deuteronomy 8 · chapter mention

chapter 8. And I want to read this to you.

It shows you that Jesus knows exactly where he is in the story

of redemption. Don't turn, just listen and and

you'll hear the quotation that Jesus uses to battle Satan.

But I want you to hear it in its context.

This is the Lord speaking to Israel at the end of their

wilderness wanderings. He says the Lord commanded that

I, the whole commandment that I command you today, you shall be

careful to do that. You may live and multiply and go

in and possess the land that the Lord swore to give your

Father's. And so we see this, this

interplay between the grace of God.

God is going to give you the land.

You're not going to earn it. It's going to be grace.

He's going to give it to you. Believe Him.

But this shows us the essence of faith.

We are not saved by works. But what does faith do?

Faith obeys. So keep these commandments that

you can live and multiply and go in and possess the land that the

Lord swore to give your Father's, and you shall

remember. That's the very thing Christ is

doing. 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 commands or not.

And He humbled you, and He let you hunger, He let you hunger

for a season, and He fed you with manna, which you did not

know, nor did your Father's know that He might make you know that

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

word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.

Christ knows exactly where He is.

I'm hungry because the Lord has let me go hungry for a season.

He's going to provide for me, but He wants me to know that man

does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes

from the mouth of the Lord. The essence of this temptation

and the answer of Christ show us something profound that Satan is

always trying to get us to look through the lens of our hard

providences at the word of God to verify or to disprove it.

I need to say that to you again because it's important.

Satan is always trying to get us to look through the lens of our

hard providences. Why is this happening to me?

Let me look through my circumstances at the word of God

to see is the word of God true? My circumstances don't vindicate

that. That's what Satan is always

tries to get us to do instead of what God would have us do, which

is to look through the lens of God's Word at our hard

providences that we might know our Father more intimately and

know our dependence upon Him. Don't look at the Word of God

through your hard providences, rather look through the Word of

God at your hard providences and know that you are loved and your

Father has not forsaken you. So do your lack of funds.

Do you look at your lack of funds and see them as proof that

God has not kept His word to hear your prayer and to provide

for you? Or do you look at the promise

that He is sworn? He's taking responsibility for

your provision so that any financial hardship in the long

run is meant to teach you to rely upon Him more.

It's just one of the many hardships that some of us

undergo. The circumstances of Christ in

this text do not dictate to Him what He will and will not

believe about the Father and His Word, and neither should yours

dictate to you what you will believe.

Living on the Word of God means clinging to the light of what

God has said to you when your circumstances seem to darken

that Word. Clinging to the light of what

God has spoken when you're in the dark of circumstances that

want to darken what He has said to you.

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

If you are the Son of God, it's always this way.

The second temptation of Christ is a temptation to test the

theory. Let's test the theory.

Do you believe in the Lord or not?

Let's test it. Let's put it to the test.

Watch this verse 5. Then the devil took Christ to

the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple.

Let me just exhort you to take this at face value.

Don't try. And was this a in the next

temptation where he takes him up on a high mountain?

Is this a vision? Is this something that's going

on? Is he asleep?

Just take it at face value and see what this text would

indicate, that the devil took Christ to the holy city and set

him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him again, if

you are the Son of God, throw yourself down.

For it is written, he will command his angels concerning

you, and on their hands they will bear you up, lest you

strike your foot against a stone.

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

the Lord your God to the test. So the devil takes Christ and

sets him on the temple, take it at face value.

And he says, if you are the Son of God, throw yourself down.

So if we want to see the nature of this temptation, we need to

see the Incarnate Christ standing on the temple, looking

down on the people of Israel, scurrying around under foot, and

remember our context that Christ has been declared to be the

king. God the Father has said this is

my son, and he's looking down on his people, Israel walking

around underneath that have no idea who he is.

They don't know him. He's got to wait.

He's got to wait for the Father to reveal him to Israel.

And so the temptation is Israel largely doesn't know who you

are. God has said who you are.

So if this is true, throw yourself down.

Throw yourself down and you will force your heavenly Father's

hand to rescue you in the sight of all Israel.

It wouldn't that be a spectacle, Geronimo?

And the Father sweeps in, and now we all know this is the

Messiah. What you're doing is you're

forcing God's hand to identify Christ to Israel right now.

That's the temptation. And I want you to note the

strategy, knowing Christ had stood firm on the Word of God.

And by the way, the context, when Jesus says man shall not

live by bread alone, but by every word, what is the word

that he heard? This is my son.

And Satan says, if you are the Son of God, Christ is clinging

to what the Father had just said about him.

And Satan knowing that his second strategy is to tempt

Christ to do what ought not to be done in order to put God's

Word to the immediate test, Throw yourself down, for it is

written. So Satan in this context, by the

way, is quoting from Psalm 91, which is a messianic Psalm about

the Father's protection of the Messiah.

So we would ask, is it an accurate quotation of Scripture?

Do these things apply to Christ? Absolutely.

It's accurate quotation of Scripture.

Is it applicable to Christ? Yes.

Is it a promise that Christ can claim and he can own right then

and there? Yes, it is.

It's an accurate quotation of Scripture applied to an

inappropriate applied in an inappropriate way in order to

justify a disobedience. So faith we were we were driving

through Smithville last night. Do you guys remember what that

sign said? Something about faith receives

doubt does without something like that.

It was like a pithy Christian turn of phrase that like, man,

if you're doubting, that's the only reason you could possibly

not have what God has promised to you.

And so there's this, there's this temptation to force God's

hand. Let's see whether or not the

Lord is among us. By the way, when Christ says

again, it is written, you shall not put the Lord your God to the

test. He's quoting from Exodus 17

verses one through 7 where they come to a place where there's

where there's they don't have any water.

And so they're grumbling against the Lord And they they say, I

want to read this to you because I'm going to I'm going to

butcher it if I try and remember, this is Exodus 17.

Listen to listen to what Israel says.

And this is the this is the, the the context of when Christ

quotes so the Lord said to Moses, pass on before the people

taking with you some of the elders of Israel, taking your

hand to staff which you struck the Nile and go, Behold, I will

stand before you there at the rock at Horeb and you shall

strike the rock. Book of Corinthians says the

rock was Christ and it was following them.

You shall strike the rock, and the water shall come out of it,

and the people will drink. Moses did so in the sight of the

elders in Israel, and he called the name of that place Masah in

Meribah. Because of the quarreling of the

people, and because, listen to these words, they tested the

Lord by saying, Is the Lord among us or not?

Putting the Lord to the test is not the same thing as taking Him

at His word and waiting for Him, right?

Trust the Lord and wait, not trust the Lord and try and put

Him to the test. So, so they're without water and

they go to Moses and they say if the Lord gives us water right

now, we'll believe. So let the Lord demonstrate

whether or not He's with us. Putting the Lord to the test is

an attempt to force God into a place where He will either keep

His word to you right now, or else you will no longer believe

in His Word. OK, so think about this for a

moment. We could do it right here that

Jesus said, whatever you ask in my name, the Father will will do

for you. And so let's just let's let's

postulate a theory that why don't I just pray that someone

would levitate into the ceiling. And if God does it, we'll all

believe that he's with us. But if he doesn't, we'll all go

home and know that this whole thing is a sham that's putting

the Lord to the test. That, by the way, is the logic

of the name it and claim it crowd that the only reason you

would ever pray for something and not receive it is because

you don't have faith. Even though Christ taught us

that faith the size of a mustard seed is able to move mountains.

Because it's not faith. It's not the quality of the

content of your faith that matters, it's the content of

your faith. It's the God that you're

trusting, not the size of how much you are trusting Him and so

the same logic that says if if you if you ask and you don't

receive, it's only because you doubt it denies one the model of

Christ's prayer who qualified in the garden.

This is what I want. But but your will not mine if it

be your will if it is possible, let this happen.

But I trust you, Lord, to caveat prayers like that is the essence

of faith. This is the logic of name and

then claim it. This is the logic of a lot of

charismatic believers. And listen to me, brothers and

sisters, it's the logic of Satan.

God will demonstrate himself now or we will not believe in him.

Jesus says no. That's putting the Lord to the

test. Jesus will not put his Father in

a situation where God will have to keep His word to Christ now

or Christ will die. I'm not going to throw myself

down so that God will vindicate me and demonstrate that he's

with me. He will not put him to the test

and nor should you. And let me say as a

parenthetical statement here, this is not some people take

this as a temptation to suicide. It's not a temptation to

suicide. It's a temptation to force God

to put him to the test, to force him to act on Christ's behalf.

But let me say, in case you take it that way, you need to beware

anytime you hear a thought, a voice, a desire, an entity

exhorting you to self harm, that is never from the Spirit of God,

never in life would God ever tell you to self harm.

Satan hates God and therefore he hates the image of God, which,

brothers and sisters, is you. Satan hates God, he hates God's

image, he hates you. And if he can deceive and get

you to hurt yourself, it's a great victory for him.

So don't ever deface God's image by harming yourself.

Last temptation is a temptation to speed up the plan.

Look in verse 8 again. The devil took him to a very

high mountain. Just take it at face value.

I don't know what mountain you can stand upon and see all the

kingdoms of the earth in their glory.

I don't know what mountain this is, and I don't think it

matters. Just take it, because it's the

Word of God. Again.

The devil took him to a very high mountain, and he showed

Christ 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, Begone

Satan, for it is written, You shall worship the Lord your God,

and him only shall you serve. And then the devil left him, and

behold, angels came and we're ministering to him.

I will give it to you if you will worship me, meaning I will

take you where God has promised to take you.

But I will show you an easier and a quicker way.

There's no need to suffer. There's no need for for three

years of, of taking it on the chin from your enemies.

There's no reason for the ignominy of death.

A Roman cross. You just vow right now and I'll

give you it all. I'll give it all to you.

The the offer here is to be king without a cross.

That's the offer. So maybe it's helpful to ponder,

can Satan promise this at this point in historic redempt, in

the history of redemption? I think so.

I think at this point it is his to give and I think he has.

This is the magic sauce of why so many people that don't make

any sense in our world still tend to rise to power

inexplicably and accomplish great things.

Let me ask you something. Do you know who the most evil

person in the history of mankind is most evil?

We might say Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Mussolini, like we might

say any of those those guys. But if you take their death toll

and add them all up together, there's one person whose life

took more human lives than them combined.

All of them. Do you know her name?

Her name was Margaret Sanger. She was the feminist eugenicist

founder of Planned Parenthood, which is responsible worldwide

for more than a billion human murders.

And this woman, by the way, you should homework assignment go

look up Margaret Sanger. Look up quotes that she wrote,

but really importantly, look up pictures of Margaret Sanger.

This woman was pug ugly. No joke, man.

She was ugly like, like my, my dad would say she's so ugly,

she's ugly, she's bad. And yet this woman, when she

left her husband, seduced wealthy man after wealthy man

after wealthy man who gave her their fortunes to use in her

eugenicist program, eugenics program.

That's she was able to do all of these things.

And we say like, how in the world can that Lady get that

kind of devotion from those guys that they would give their

fortune to her to use at will? This is the reason.

Sell your soul and I'll give you what you want.

I leave it to your judgement. But since Margaret Singer's

life, Molech has been our country's deity of choice,

sacrificing the unborn so that we could have a little more

financial security. And this is the essence of the

temptation to attain what God has promised in a way that he is

not allowed. Attain the promise in a way

that's not permitted. This is the temptation in the

garden. Just take and and and then

you'll be like God. The the whole the whole reason

we were made in the image and likeness of God.

Conformity into the image of God is our intended purpose.

We grasped at it early in a way that was not allowed Jesus.

One of my favorite quotes about the temptations of Christ.

Brace yourselves. Jesus will not receive as a gift

what he is about to win in open warfare.

Satan says, hey, just worship me and I'll give it to you.

And Jesus says no thanks because I'm about to bind you and take

everything you have. I'm about to whip you right now.

Jesus came to crush the devil, not to receive anything as a

gift from his hand. OK, So what?

How do these things apply to us? Well, first of all, that we

should understand that Jesus is that great.

Jesus is that great. Think about this.

Christ is the new, the second, the better.

Adam. Adam was a perfect man with a

full belly who had a million yeses and one no perfect man

never sinned. He's he's sufficient to have

stood yet free to fall. He's never sinned.

He's got a full belly. He's got a naked wife.

It's like it's the greatest, you know, context of any man ever.

A million yeses. You may freely eat of all the

trees in the garden, just not this one, because if you eat it,

you're going to die. A million yeses, one no perfect

man full belly and he yes, the no Christ, on the other hand,

was a perfect man dying of hunger.

Hadn't eaten for 40 days. Christ as a perfect man in a

fallen world has a million no's and one terribly difficult Yes,

there are. How many ways could you sin

sitting and listening to a sermon at church?

Infinite ways. There's a million ways for us as

fallen individuals in a fallen world to just come up short.

Christ, a perfect man, dying of hunger, a million ways to fail,

one thin perfect line of obedience that he must walk in

thought, word and deed every moment of his life in real

humanity. And he did it.

Adam sinned. Christ did not.

Christ is that great. Just marvel at your Savior,

brothers and sisters. He did what no man could

possibly do. And let me warn you about

something here. Do not make the mistake of

thinking that Christ maintains sinless perfection because His

divinity kept him anchored to obedience.

That's true. His divinity kept him anchored

to obedience. But that's not the way in which

he maintained sinless perfection, and that's not how

the Scriptures talk. So let me give you a metaphor.

Imagine that someone in our church wanted to break the world

record for bench press. The world record right now for

bench press. Think about this now, all of you

guys, what do you bench? What did you bench?

What's the most you've ever benched?

I would love to hear that number.

By the way, I'm pretty sure it's Clayton has the world record in

our church. I don't know the world record,

standing world record right now. So says the Googles is 1400 and

1 lbs by a guy named Jimmy Cold 1400 and 1 lbs which no three of

us could squat, right? I mean, that's just a ridiculous

amount of weight. But think about it's the bench

press, right? It's over your chest.

So if your shoulders break or your arms collapse, you're going

to die. And so someone in our church

wants to break this record. So he works and he lifts and he

strives and he takes steroids, probably.

He does all of these things to get within striking distance.

But while he's training, postulate this, while he's

training, he has a bad day where his PEC cramps and the weight

almost falls and kills him, right?

And so now all of his friends say, listen, we want you to try

for this record, but we're not going to let you do it on your

own. So what we're going to do is the

day you go for the record, we're going to have two guys on either

side ready to catch the way. We're going to have a guy over

you, and we're going to have a guy straddling you so that if

you fail, we'll catch you. It won't kill you.

It won't crush you, right? Are you following this?

And so day of he comes, he lays down on the bench and this man

under his own strength, he lifts 1500 lbs off of the rack, lowers

it down, touches its chest and presses it to the full and re

racks it. He did it.

He just broke the record. Do we have a right to come in

and say the only way that you broke it is because you had all

these spotters? Or would he say that the

spotters had nothing to do with the fact that I actually lived

it? Yes, I had spotters.

Yes, I was not going to die. They would have caught it had it

collapsed, but that had nothing to do with it.

The same way Christ, who is divine, cannot sin.

His divinity, His divine nature, anchors Him to to the perfection

of obedience. But He would tell us that had

nothing to do with how I did not sin.

His sinless perfection was maintained in real humanity by

depending on the Holy Spirit who He pours out upon you and upon

me. Jesus maintained sinless

perfection in real humanity. So if we told Christ, well, the

only way that you were able to withstand all of this temptation

is because you were gone, he would say, oh, I am gone.

That had nothing to do with it. Jesus wins this fight with with

Satan fair and square as a real man and glory to his name.

Just think about that. That's marvelous.

Secondly, Jesus is that powerful.

I love this. Right at the beginning of the

text, the Spirit has come and is remaining upon Christ, has

anointed him for the Kingdom, and it leads him out to be

tempted in the wilderness. And we say, what, what's what's

going on there? Like why would the Spirit do

that? And then at the end of the text,

there's this really weird exchange in verse 10 where where

Jesus says begun Satan. And then in verse 11, the devil

left him, which shows us that at any moment Jesus can say take a

hike and he has to take a hike. As Woodhouse would say, cheese

it, Satan and Satan cheesed it like you can't be here anymore,

OK, I can't be here anymore. This is our sovereign Christ

begone Satan and the devil left him.

He's powerful enough to banish him at any and all times.

And yet Christ in infinite wisdom let's him take his best

shot. Why would he do that?

Why does he do that? Well, because if you really want

to break a person in hand to hand combat, you let them throw

their best punch. You take it on the chin and then

you whisper in their ear. If I wanted to kiss, I would

have called your mother. Like Christ allows Satan to do

his worst, right? And then he takes the worst that

Satan can do, and he founds your salvation and mine upon it.

What's the worst thing that Satan could possibly do when God

becomes a man, when life himself comes into human existence?

What's the worst that could be imagined?

That Satan would kill God And God in his infinite wisdom takes

the death of Christ and he makes it the foundation of our

salvation. And the death of Christ is the

one who destroyed is the is the very thing that destroyed the

devil. So the devil takes all the leash

that Christ gives him and he uses it to hang himself and by

hanging himself save the world. It's just marvelous.

It's marvelous. The power of Christ Jesus was

victorious as man for men and we are to imitate.

Are we to imitate Christ here? So ask that question, is this,

is this something we're to imitate?

And the answer is yes, fight the devil's lies by faith in the

word of God, just like Christ did.

Anytime somebody says, well, I know what the word of God says,

but just know you're talking to some manifestation of Satan,

right? I look, I know what the Bible

teaches about sexual ethics, but I'm sorry, that won't fly,

right? I know what the Word of God

teaches about about biblical hierarchy and about men leading

in a church. I know when Paul says, you know,

I don't allow a woman to preach or exercise authority over a

man. I know that the Bible says that.

But what it actually means is no, no, no, stop.

That's Satan's lie all the time. Did God really say if you are

the Son of God? So should we fight the devil's

lies in the same way, imitating Christ?

Yes, of course we should, but that's not the point of the

text. Imitation of Christ is not the

point. The point is that just as we all

suffered the consequences of our Father Adam's disobedience

because all of us were in Adam, so we will all enjoy the result

of Christ's obedience because we are all in Christ.

That's the point, that Christ did not turn stones into bread

to serve himself. Rather, Christ gave Himself as

bread for all who are in Him. He did not worship the devil to

obtain the kingdoms of the world in all their glory.

Instead He destroyed the devil by dying and rising so that the

government would rest upon his shoulders, and the increase of

his Kingdom and of peace there would be no end.

Christ didn't receive a thing from Satan.

He bound him, and he took everything from him in open

warfare. So that as it was written, ask

of me, saith the Lord, and I will make the nation's your

heritage, the ends of the earth, your possession.

Jesus Christ is Lord of heaven and earth, and Christ in Christ.

Unthinkably we have been seated with Him upon His throne.

He did not eat so that He could feed us forever on Himself.

This bread is His body which is broken for you.

This cup is His blood poured out for the forgiveness of sin.

He won the victory and now He invites you to come and to taste

it with Him. So come, beloved church, and

welcome to Jesus Christ, who is your life.

Let me pray for us. Lord Jesus, we thank you for

being the victor. We thank you for sharing flesh

and blood like the children of man, so that by death you would

destroy the one who had the power of death, that is the

devil, and deliver those who through fear of death were

subject to lifelong slavery. You did both of those things in

your death, in your resurrection and and in your ascension.

And so we thank you that we wage war against a defeated foe in

the name of the victorious Lord of glory.

Father, we ask as we, as we respond, Lord, to your summons

to the table of Christ, where we will take with undeserving hands

the bread of life, where we will take with undeserving hands the

cup of salvation that is the body and blood of Christ.

God, that we would not look to our own merits, but to the

merits of the one who won the victory.

Christ is the victor, that so may we come in his name.

And we pray, Holy Spirit, that you would come, that you would

minister to US men, women, and children, baptized into the

triune name of God. That you would take what is

Christ and you would disclose it to us, apply it to us, renew it

to us. God, we thank you by your mercy

and by your grace. Sinners like us are supposed to

come to the table where we will find welcome.

Would you draw near to us? We ask it in the name of Christ,

Amen.