The Validation Test

What's up everybody?

Last time I saw you, we were all evacuating the premises.

Turns out there was no fire.

It was a child that pulled the fire alarm.

And if it was your Yeah, you know it happens, right?

It says pull down on it, so just being obedient.

We can't scold them too hard, but um we're not here to judge you.

If that was your kid, we love you.

Um true story.

A couple years ago, my son pulled the fire alarm at the church uh about a half hour after church, fortunately, but uh my son has autism, and so at school um the teachers were telling him, like, hey, we're gonna do this fire drill, and it's kind of like a field trip and whatever.

And so they all went out and the fire trucks came.

He loves fire trucks, and so it's like, he's like, that was amazing, you know.

So he's like the next day, he's like, let's all go outside, Jim.

Turns out it's a crime, and we tried to explain that to him.

But anyway, you know, we're gonna make up for it this week.

I'm gonna preach for about two and a half hours, and uh you don't mean that.

You don't mean that, trust me.

Well, it's great to have you here.

Let's pray and we'll get into it, Lord.

We just love you.

We thank you, God, for the opportunity to be in your house, uh, Lord, in a crazy world where a lot of things are happening.

We turn on the news, we see um things that disturb us, and yet, Lord, we find comfort and refuge in your presence, in your promises, uh, Lord, and our relationship with you.

And so, Lord, we draw near to you in this time.

I pray, God, you would give me, uh, Lord, the uh the words to share today.

I pray, God, that every receptive open heart would have that great experience of um, it just feels like you're talking right to us.

We're able to personalize it, we're able to see the light.

I pray that there would be no condemnation in the room, like just like unnecessary guilt.

But yet, Lord, provoke us where we need to change, where we've been misled or misguided, or we've been blind to something, God.

Open our eyes and do something in us as a collective, Lord, as a community.

We're so thankful for what we have here in this community, and we want to continue to surrender ourselves to you and to walk out what you've given us to do.

So we offer ourselves to you in Jesus' name.

Everybody said amen.

Amen.

Well, we're in a series right now called Fighting Temptation, and what we're doing is looking in Matthew 4.

If you have your Bible, you can go there.

Um, but it'll be on the screen and everything if you don't sweat it.

But um, we're looking at fighting temptation and and we're look learning right from Jesus uh in his temptation in Matthew 4.

I want to start by actually uh all of us thinking about who are some of the people, maybe outside of your family or friends or people you know personally, but people who who have had an impact on you, people who have influenced you.

Uh it may be like a band, literally, like a band that you you just love their music.

There's something about their ethos, there's something about their lyrics uh and the way they do what they do.

Uh maybe for you it's a again, a specific artist, a musician, the way they play or what they do.

Maybe for you it's an actor or someone who's who gives speeches, who give teaches content.

Um, you know, it might actually be interesting to think about different characters, like even fictional characters that have had an impact on you, that you maybe movies you've watched more than one time, but it really connects with you.

I think if you would you know look at that, comedians, people that that you really resonate with, I think if you thought about it deeply, you would notice that there the reason that they connect with you is because there's something about them that connects to something about you.

In fact, maybe they help put you in touch with you.

It feels like you're getting to know them, but really the thing that feels so good about it is that you're getting to know you.

And I think if you took some time, it might even be worthwhile at some point, like after you leave here, to kind of sit down and think, man, who are your top three to five people that you listen to?

And then to really think about that.

Like, what is it about them that connects with me, and what part of me uh do I feel like I'm learning about or being in touch with?

I say that today because um I think it's an important component when you're studying Jesus to, yes, certainly study Jesus to know who Jesus was, but I think one of the great things we take from it is that getting in touch with Jesus or understanding the truth of who Jesus is puts us in touch with the best part of ourselves.

Um let me show you a couple scriptures, I think that really frames it up well.

It's actually in Genesis 1.27, the very beginning of the Bible, it says that God created human beings in his own image.

So that, and then it says, the image of, in the image of God, he created them, male and female he created them.

So saying that men and women, all human beings, we are created, we are made in God's image.

Which means that there's something like that when it's coming out of us, uh, even feelings that we have that are from God.

Feelings that are and behaviors and desires that we have that are connected to the image of God in us.

Uh Colossians 1.15 says, Christ, Jesus, is the visible image of the invisible God.

He existed before anything was created and is supreme over all creation.

So what it's saying of Jesus, you know, Genesis 1 says that all human beings are made in God's image.

But 1 Corinthians 1.15 says that Jesus as a human was in the image of God, but he's the ultimate example of the image of God playing out in the life of a human being.

Don't miss this as you're studying Jesus or you're hearing a message about Jesus, you're digging deep into Jesus, that you're learning about yourself.

It's designed to show you God's image in you and to live that way.

That's why I love this series we're doing right now because we're looking at not just like the big, powerful, heroic moments, but looking at the temptation of Jesus.

That all of us struggle with temptation, but what I'm trying to do with this is to go beyond just like the wilderness and go beyond just these stories into the deeper, like what is the temptation that Jesus experienced that we have common ground with, and then how did he behave, which then leads into how we should behave, how we should respond and how we should think about these same temptations.

Okay?

Alright, so last week we we were looking at temptation number one.

Jesus is in the wilderness and um he he hasn't eaten for 40 days, he's fasted.

And we know scientifically human beings can go somewhere between 30 and 50 days without food if they are healthy.

And so Jesus is knocking on the door of like dying.

I mean, he's right, he's right there, so he's feeling weak.

And it's in his weakness that the devil shows up and says, tempts him, says, Hey, you ought to, you're feeling weak, you ought to take those stones and turn them into bread.

And you ought to eat, you ought to indulge yourself.

And so it was ultimately, it's really a story about appetites.

And it's you we use a physiological or a physical appetite to really make a bigger statement about psychological appetites.

And the idea that appetites are never fully and finally satisfied, and appetites are always coming back up, and biologically we're designed to do that so that we do have fuel and we can keep living.

But when it comes to psychological appetites, they can also create these cravings, these cravings.

And so what Jesus is doing here is he's learning to master his appetites.

He's learning to not live his life compelled by his appetites, not just his physical appetites, but his appetites for success or his appetites for approval or his appetites for pleasure, his appetites for power, whatever they may be, he's showing that to control his appetite.

And so that's what we looked at last week.

This week we're gonna go to uh back to the story.

It started in verse 5, Matthew 4, in verse 5, it says, The devil took him to the holy city, Jerusalem, to the highest point of the temple, and said, If you are the Son of God, jump off.

For the scriptures say, He will order his angels to protect you, and they will hold you up with their hands, so you won't even hurt your foot on a stone.

Weird that the devil's quoting scripture, but that's probably noteworthy.

Verse 7, Jesus responded, The Scriptures also say you must not test the Lord your God.

This is loaded.

We're about to get some good stuff here.

Let's just start and work our way through it in verse 5.

Verse 5 gives us some powerful stuff.

So it says that the devil took him to the holy city of Jerusalem and to the highest point in the temple.

In other words, he goes either physically or metaphysically.

In some way, he's he goes from the wilderness where he's alone and he's suffering and he's feeling dealing with loneliness and appetite.

And now he goes from alone in the wilderness to now he's in this big city on a high building.

But he's not in just any big city and any high building, he's in Jerusalem at the top of the temple.

And to Jesus, this is a very significant thing.

So you think about Jerusalem.

Jerusalem isn't just a big city.

Jerusalem was really the center of the epicenter of culture for Jesus and his people.

Um Jerusalem played some significant moments in Jesus' life, both his lows and his highs.

So, for example, when Jesus was 40 days old, he's taken to Jerusalem by his parents to be dedicated, consecrated, set apart.

Um, when he was a boy, his family would make an annual trek.

Uh, they would make a trip.

If you had a place your family went every year, okay, and you know how you felt about it, that's how Jesus felt about Jerusalem.

They go every year.

In fact, the story we story we looked at last week in Luke 2, where Jesus comes up missing at age 12, it's in Jerusalem.

And then they find him.

Where do they find him?

Not just in Jerusalem, but in the temple.

And he's in the temple, and his parents are freaking out, and they're like, Why would you do this to us?

And he goes, You should know that I would have been in my father's house.

So the temple held a significant place for him in terms of his relationship to his heavenly father God.

And it was a place that he was familiar with.

They had gone every year.

Um, it was a place ultimately that we see Jesus later, he weeps over the city of Jerusalem.

He loves the city.

Um he's dedicated as a baby there.

He's also later on, he's sentenced to death by crucifixion there when he's an adult.

Um the temple represented to both Jesus and his people the presence and protection of God.

Uh it was the focal point of their culture, and it was where people expected the Messiah to show up and overtake the Romans and establish his reign in Jerusalem and in the temple.

And so when you think about all the significance of these things, okay, and the fact that Jesus is the Messiah, and so he's coming on a messianic mission, now the story really starts to light up when you see that that the devil takes him to the top of this important place and says, you know what you ought to do?

You ought to make a grand entrance.

You are the Messiah, and everybody's expecting a Messiah.

He's he's tempting Jesus to meet the messianic expectations of the people.

Go stand up on this temple, and what grander way to make an entrance as the chosen one than for you to leap off of the temple, and everyone's like, and right before you hit the ground, the the angels, you know, catch you and set you down, and you're like, the Messiah has arrived.

And what the temptation here is to try to get Jesus to set his affection on the awe of the people.

What's interesting is at 12 years old, he got a taste of the awe of the people.

The people in the temple.

Um if you we talked about the story last week, I referenced it a minute ago.

When Jesus was 12, he's in the temple, and all the religious leaders and the teachers of the law, they're sitting around, and it says in Luke 2 that they were amazed at him.

And what do you say when somebody's amazing as you tell them that they're amazing?

It said that they were just absolutely beside themselves into how talented and wise and ahead of his time he was.

And so at 12 years old, Jesus received a taste of these powerful people thinking he's amazing and affirming him and making a big deal about him, and what that would do to your sense of uh value and self-worth.

And it feels good when people tell you you're good at stuff.

It feels good when people respect your work.

It feels good when people tell you you're smart and that you're good and that you're better than everybody else.

It feels good when you get these things, and yet what the enemy is trying to get Jesus to do is to set his purpose and his affection on gaining the affirmation and the approval of these people.

If you jump off the temple and you get caught by angels right outside the temple, who sees it?

The people that see it are the people at the temple.

It's the religious elite, it's the powerful people, it's it's it's the people that Jesus was actually called by God to disrupt.

And so the devil is trying to get Jesus to it to be in a head space where he's craving their approval.

He wants more of what he had when he was 12 when they said, ooh, you're amazing.

That he would fall into this bottomless pit of desire of these people needing him needing them to think he's great.

Needing them to be in awe of him.

Ooh, wow.

So so what the temptation is to manufacture a miracle that would create a great spectacle that they would all have their minds blown.

Be like, ooh, this must be our Messiah.

And this is it, this is deep here.

This is deep because ultimately Jesus' purpose was to go in and challenge these people.

In fact, it was how he served them and how he served mankind as a whole, was to challenge people, to challenge this group of people.

And what is the devil trying to get them to do, but to cozy up to the very people that that he is there ultimately to challenge as part of his purpose.

This is a group of people that were going to reject Jesus into his purpose.

And the temptation is to try to impress them.

To try to impress them.

Okay, we gotta we gotta think about this.

I I think if we're not careful, if we read this temptation stories, there's a tendency to draw shallow conclusions.

And I think we need to sit really sit with it and understand that what we're being given here is a tool to evaluate our own hearts and our own motives.

It's not necessarily a recipe for how to handle every situation all the time.

So, for example, in the first temptation, um, Jesus doesn't, he doesn't eat for 40 days.

I think it would be a mistake to draw the conclusion that deprivation equals piety.

Which is what sometimes people do.

They go, hey, the person who's the most deprived, the person who has no pleasure, uh, the person who's completely alone, like the more alone you are, the less fun you have, uh, the more sour your face is, the more sorrowful you are, the more, okay, that means you're you therefore equally accepted by God.

That's really what God wants from you, would be that your taste buds never are happy.

And and that you're always uh, you know, on the verge of death.

Like that's that's not the thing.

In fact, there's nothing in the text that gives us any sort of conclusion that Jesus fasting for 40 days is what caused him to be approved of by the Father.

It he was already approved.

You just flip back one chapter in Matthew 3, the Father says to the Son, This is my dearly loved son who brings me great joy.

This is my son in whom I am well pleased.

So he had already been approved of, he had already pleased the Father.

This wasn't like, hey, maybe if I don't eat for 40 days, God will think, my heavenly father will think I'm awesome.

He'll he'll accept me then.

Now he'll think I'm elite.

No.

This is he had already received that.

So he's embracing God's plan for him, which is to go, you need to go get your appetites under control.

And there's only one way to do that, man.

You gotta go the hard way.

Like you got to go and say no and develop discipline and make choices in real time that you don't want to make.

Everything in you wants to stuff your face with that, but you're going, I'm not gonna do that because if I can say no to this, I'll be able to say no to other things.

And this is a process of getting my flesh under control, not getting the approval of the Father, he'd already had it.

So I don't, I think it would be a mistake for us to look at the first temptation and go, deprivation equals piety.

It doesn't.

Also, I don't think in this story we would say that doing something spectacular is a sin.

Or even desiring affirmation, approval, encouragement.

That's not wrong to long to have your work recognized and respected.

It's one of the ways, by the way, we serve one another is by encouraging each other.

We affirm each other, we build each other up.

That's all over the Bible, too.

That's all over the Apostle Paul's writings about the church.

He's like, man, build one another up, encourage one another.

So, like affirmation in these things, it's okay to long for having those type of things.

It's wrong, though, to live for it and to need it so bad that it becomes a need.

It's not just something that feels good as part of a healthy communication and reciprocal relationships.

It becomes something that I crave so bad I have to have it and I need it.

That's what the enemy is trying to get Jesus to do, to crave the approval of the Pharisees, to crave the approval of the teachers of the law, to crave the approval of the upper echelon so that he would need it so bad.

When you need it, if I need your applause, I can't serve you well.

If I need you to affirm me, then I might lose my courage when it's time to challenge you.

And so these are people Jesus was supposed to challenge in love but with great courage.

And if you need that person, if you need that person, you'll let them slide.

If you need that person, you won't be direct when you need to be direct.

If you need it, it's okay to want relationship.

It's okay to want an applause.

There's nothing wrong with getting an applause every once in a while, but when you need it, it overtakes and it becomes your purpose.

Applause becomes your purpose.

You know, it's interesting.

I I was uh thinking about this and I'll just share a personal, personal situation for me in my journey.

You know, I I laugh sometimes when I think about what I do, you know, here at the church because I I never wanted to be a speaker.

I I my only D in high school that my only D that I got was um speech.

I'm not kidding.

It was I I got you know a lot of C's, and by the way, it was a D plus.

It was I was very close to a C minus.

Okay, I was right there, but it was a D plus, and I got in speech, and I never wanted to be a speaker.

I still remember my first speech was on schizophrenia.

I just stared at the paper, I never looked up, it wasn't good, and and I just there was nothing.

So when I felt like God was calling me into ministry, I was excited about organizing people and leading people and mobilizing.

I wasn't excited about speaking and doing this.

I'm like, I didn't want to do it, but I'm like, Lord, if this is what you have for me, and through a process, I've come to a place that I've enjoy it and I've grown in it, but it wasn't didn't come naturally.

And here's what happened when I was in my early 20s and I started doing this, I was so self-conscious standing up in front of the room that I would I would be I'll be thinking about me the whole time.

So I'd be standing up here thinking, well, I hope these people don't think I look stupid.

I hope I I hope I don't have something in my nose.

I I hope that I didn't stammer around too much.

I hope I'm not making a fool out of myself up here.

And so because of that, I was so self-focused and self absorbed that then in my preparation, before my presentation, when I would prepare, I would just sit there and I'd be reading the Bible and I'd be thinking, what can I say that the people will like?

What can I say that will make the people happy?

What can I say that will make these people approve of me?

Make these people think I'm a good guy.

And because of that, it clouded the way I studied the Bible.

My motive, even though I got into it for the right reason, it started to muddy my motives.

To where now, and of course I can always justify it, because hey, I preached this book of the Bible or I preached this verse, and I can always come away going, it was God's word.

But the reality is I had I was developing tainted motives that were rooted in my insecurity and my need for approval.

And so the process of maturation for me, and frankly, the most effective work that has come has come after God took me through a process where I was able to detach myself from the need for your approval.

And now that I've gotten to that point, actually, I don't stop, I'll just tell you at this point, I've been in this now, I've been doing it for you know 20 plus years.

At this point, I don't think one bit when I'm studying, hey, what are people gonna think is cool?

Well what are the people gonna like?

I'm going to the Lord going, God, what do you want me to say?

And if it's gonna ruffle feathers, it will.

It might ruffle my feathers.

If it means we got a challenge, we got a challenge.

If it means we got a comfort, we got a comfort.

If it means I gotta say stuff people don't like, then I'll do that.

If it means I'm not gonna say stuff everybody's trying to get me to say, I won't do that.

I'll do what you say.

And to be able to get to a place where I stop thinking about me makes it so I can serve you.

What the enemy was trying to get Jesus to do was to think how cool he would look being caught in the arms of the angels as all the important people were in awe of the Messiah has now entered the room.

And so that's the temptation.

It's the temptation that we still have.

I think it's wrong for us to swing that pendulum, by the way, to think that there's never a time for you to do something bold and spectacular.

Think about now what we know of Jesus.

Did Jesus play small ball with his life?

Did Jesus ever take risks?

Did Jesus do spectacular things?

Absolutely he did.

Nobody did more spectacular things than Jesus.

He walked on water, he did miracles, he raised the dead, he healed the sick, he healed the lame, he pulled people off of mats and you know, people who couldn't walk since birth are now walking around town.

He did plenty of spectacular things.

But what the enemy was trying to do was to change his motivation to make a spectacle of himself with self-aggrandizing motives instead of going through the process of burying those motives and living only for the affirmation, solely for the affirmation of Matthew 3.

That's my dearly son who brings me great joy.

That voice has to ring through, and you have to detach yourself from the need of the crowd being in awe of you.

I think another way to mess this up would be to misunderstand bold in a way that you would go from willingness to disrupt to eagerness to offend.

I think we get it twisted a little bit with bold.

Because we want to be we want to do something bold.

Jump off of the temple.

That's bold.

Take a bold he proceed, he puts a bold action in front of Jesus.

I think there are a lot of us in the room that are willing, if not all of us, that are willing to be bold.

I'm willing to be bold.

I'm willing to detach myself from the need of the Pharisees or whoever those people are, the people that I'm supposed to challenge, I'm willing to challenge them and have them not like me.

I think sometimes, though, they still sort of have their claws in you a little bit, where when they um attack you or they um, you know, they don't affirm you, or they what we see of Jesus, I mean, look how bad they misunderstood him.

They said he was empowered by the devil.

Okay, they called him Beelzebub.

They they they um called him a heretic.

They they said he was um, you know, they they completely attacked him and tried ultimately killed him.

Um and and so what you have is Jesus, who doesn't go from like um willingness to disrupt, he never turns it into eager to offend.

And I think what ends up happening a lot of times is people start to equate, I'm I want to offend you.

Well, well, who do you want to offend?

Often it's actually it reinforces more of the us and them mentality.

And so a lot of people that are championed as bold really aren't all that bold.

What they do is they just talk really um direct and often offensive to them.

And so all the uses around them are like, dude, you you told them.

You're so bold.

You're so bold, you told them, but they weren't even listening, and they don't give a rip.

And you have no influence with them.

All you did was alienate them.

And all the uses around you just were like, ooh, you got them.

Ooh, get them again, get them again, get them again.

And so you, and they keep telling you how bold you are, but all you're doing is speaking in an echo chamber to a bunch of people like you.

Satan was trying to get Jesus to to show out for a group of people that was an us.

And if he had gained the approval of us, it would have been to the alienation of the them that Jesus came to seek and save and to help.

The unclean people that he touched that you're not supposed to touch, the woman with the issue of blood, you're not supposed to touch the man with leprosy, they're ceremonially unclean, we don't even touch them, and Jesus touches them, calls the woman daughter.

So if I go cozy up over here to the us that I'm supposed to disrupt, and I call that bold because they tell me I'm bold, all to the exclusion of the people that I'm here to serve.

If you need their applause, you won't be able to serve them.

If you live from their affirmation, you'll die from their criticism.

If you crave their approval, you'll crumble when they reject you.

And this is the temptation that the enemy is trying to get Jesus to take.

And he doesn't take it.

He doesn't take it.

He stays strong.

He he walks according to the Matthew 3 affirmation of the Father.

Yes, I'd like people to encourage me.

Yes, I'd like them to tell me good job, but I don't need it.

If it's just me and well done good, uh this is my dearly loved son, my dearly loved daughter, who brings me great joy, that's enough for me.

It's not wrong for you to long for it, it's wrong for you to live for it.

Thank you, honey.

Alright, so let's go back in the story.

Matthew 4.

Notice what the enemy does here.

The enemy throws a counterpunch at Jesus.

You remember in the first temptation, he says, turn the rocks into bread, and Jesus says, It is written, and then he quotes, man will not live by bread alone.

So the enemy sort of wises up to it and he comes with a counterpunch, and so he Satan starts quoting scripture at Jesus.

Well, if you're the Son of God, jump off.

For the scripture says, you want to go scripture, he will order his angels to protect you, and and they will hold you up with their hands so you won't even hurt your foot on a stone.

If you've got your Bible there and you're at Matthew 4 and 6, at the end of the word stone, you probably see a footnote.

And here's a little Bible study 101, and when you see a footnote, don't keep reading.

Go to the footnote.

Follow the footnote.

What is the footnote?

Well, if you follow your footnote, and I'll speed this up because I got five minutes left, and I don't know which one of y'all's kids is gonna pull the fire alarm today, so I gotta get it in.

Um we're working on that, by the way.

Um we're putting uh, well, you don't care.

Anyways, um the footnote is Psalm 91.

The footnote is Psalm 91.

Um, so so the devil is quoting Psalm 91 to Jesus, and he's pulling a classic move that he still pulls today, which is to use a scripture to make you think that it's all good because it's scripture, I mean it's God's word, but he's twisting the scripture.

So Psalm 91, the premise of Psalm 91 is that God protects those who hide themselves in him, not God protects those who self-aggrandize.

So he's taking this and he's taking uh and isolating a part of a scripture and saying, Here, this is for you, and that's not what that scripture is saying, and that's not what that scripture is about.

Be careful of that.

It's because you have a proof text, just because you have a Bible verse, okay?

Dig into it.

And often people that care more about the approval or care more about sticking to the position they're on won't do the work to dig into what does this thing even say?

And is this promise for me?

And is it really there?

Or is this something that the enemy's giving me as a temptation to justify something that's I have muddy motives?

Thank you.

Then if you keep reading, it says in Matthew 4 7, Jesus comes back and he responded.

The scriptures also say you must not test the Lord your God.

Alright, another footnote.

What's the footnote?

Well, the footnote takes us to Deuteronomy 6.16.

And we're looking at what we talked about last week.

Remember what the book of Deuteronomy is?

Those of you that were here, Deuteronomy is a series of speeches from Moses after 40 years lost in the desert.

A whole generation has died.

Moses himself is about to die, and he's giving his grand finale speech to make sure that the 40 years he spent lost, a third of his life, doesn't go in vain.

And so he goes painstakingly through all the failures of their ancestors and of him and all your parents and grandparents, and we're going through and we're going to talk about what happened so that the next 40 years don't look like the last 40 years.

And so in Deuteronomy 6, he brings up 6.16, he says, You must not test the Lord your God as you did when you complained at Masah.

Well, what's Masah?

Follow the footnote.

It's Exodus 17.

When they were lost in the wilderness, they had just come out of bondage in Egypt.

They're three months in the wilderness, and they start longing to go back home because they're going, Where is God?

Where they were thirsty and they didn't have immediate gratification and they didn't have what they wanted when they wanted it.

And so they started to long for the days gone by when they were in Egyptian slavery.

And so they're grumbling and they're complaining and they're like, What's up, Moses?

You and God brought us out here to have us die of thirst, and our kids that die of thirst, and our animals to die of thirst.

And of course, God has provided everything, including a way out of bondage, and he's provided all of their needs, and he's going to you know continue to provide for them, and yet here they are, and it says in Exodus 17, 7, Moses named the place Masa, which means test, and Meribah, which means arguing, because the people of Israel argued with Moses and tested the Lord by saying, Is the Lord here with us or not?

And what Jesus is saying is, I will not fall into the same temptation, and I will not fall for the bait.

I'm not going to, even though I feel, I feel like I can't see God's hand in front of me right now.

I'm not going to throw myself off of a building and try to create a situation to test God to see will he come rescue me?

I know God will provide for me.

I know God has affirmed me.

I know I'll have what I need when I need it.

I know he's a good God.

I know he's a good father.

I know who he is.

I'm not going to try to create a spectacle to prove it.

A deep sense of faith.

I end with this story.

When my daughter was going into seventh grade, it was the summer before a seventh grade year.

She came to me.

She's like, Dad, I want to play basketball this year.

My daughter never played basketball one second of her life.

I was like, Ella, are you sure about this?

You're in seventh grade.

These girls have been playing a long time.

When you were four, I threw you a ball and you you dodged it.

I was like, I didn't push it.

You know, I didn't want you thinking you had to play basketball to gain my approval or get my attention.

Like, I'll I'm I'm with you.

I was like, we'll do whatever you want to do.

I don't need, we don't need basketball.

She's like, no, Dad, I really want to play basketball.

My friends are playing, I want to try out for the team.

And so I felt compelled as her father who played sports all my life.

I needed to help her count the cost.

I'm like, you need to understand.

Basket, you don't just play basketball.

This is not like Mario Brothers.

This is not like uh you get on a bike and pretty soon you get the hang of it, and now you always have it and you'll never lose it.

I was like, this ain't that.

Okay, this is like a high-speed chess match, lots of skills.

It takes a long time.

There's lots of failure involved.

It takes a very long time to understand what's going on out there and to have the skills to even be able to do what you want to do.

So if you're just like kind of half doing this, you're way behind already, way behind.

I'm not saying you can't do it, but you're behind.

And so if you're gonna kind of half do this, don't even do it at all.

But if you're gonna do it and all in, I'll get in with you, but I'm I'm not half doing it.

We're gonna do it and we're not gonna do it.

She's like, I want to do it.

So I'm like, all right.

So I go on Amazon and I buy one of those coaching clipboards with the basketball court on it.

All right.

Overnighted that puppy, all right.

And so I got that thing and I'm like, I'm running through this stuff, X's and O's, and I'm showing defensive positioning, and I'm trying to run and giving her quizzes and tests and all this stuff.

And then we start watching ESPN Plus, okay, Kobe Bryant details.

Okay, here's where your weight needs to be on the balls of your feet when you're closing out on a shooter.

I take her out to the court, we're running drills, she's in tears, but she kept going.

I took her to the gym, I made her vomit, and then took her back.

Okay, now we're gonna work, and she's like, I don't really want to.

And I was like, Oh, but you already said you were going to, so here we go.

And so, so I mean, just work, we're working it, and and she she busted it, man.

That summer we're going on vacation, and she's like, Hey, I want to do this and this, and we go on vacation.

I'm like, it's 30 days away.

If you don't make 2,000 shots between now and then, you're gonna sit in the hotel room while we all have fun.

And so she was out under the light, I'm kidding.

I mean, out there getting it done, keeping track, holding her accountable.

And so she does all this stuff, tryouts, roll around, she makes the team, all right?

She makes the team, and it kind of surprised me a little bit, to be honest, because I'm like, she was behind, but she got there.

And so she starts, you know, they start putting her in the game.

And because it's new to her, I mean, imagine you're just starting to learn at 13 all this stuff.

Okay, she's overwhelmed, and so I could see her wheels turning out there.

It just felt complicated.

She didn't quite know what to do.

So every game I would give her like a thing to do because I was trying to just reduce it, bring it down to simplicity.

And I kept noticing she's getting pushed around, you know, by these other players.

Like she's she's better, she's stronger than what she's doing, but she's afraid to make a mistake.

So I say to her in the car on the way to her game, I said, Listen, today I only want one thing from you.

I want you to get a foul.

She's like, What?

She's like, Dad, fouls are bad.

I said, that's a lie from the pit of hell.

You get five fouls.

We don't even start worrying about fouls until you have at least three.

So you haven't got a foul all year.

That's all I care about.

I was like, look, I'm tired of seeing these girls push you around, you not live up to your potential.

I said, talk about a good foul and a bad foul, okay?

If somebody's going up, don't hit their elbow, and so now they get a free throw.

I'm like, but if somebody's up under the thing, get your dog on, heel in there, and put your, you know, God gave you a gift.

Use the thing, man.

Get them up.

I said, if you're fighting for position and they give you, they call a foul on you, then so be it.

I was like, but listen, I'm and she's like, are you sure, Dad?

I said, I'm I'm sure of three things.

I'm sure Jesus Christ is Lord, I love your mom, and I want you to get a foul.

That's the three things.

I don't know anything else except that.

That's all I know.

And when we get in the car, that's all we're gonna talk about.

So she's like, Alright, alright.

So we're in the game, man.

She gets put in, she goes in, there's this big strong girl under the basket.

Girl kind of gets on the block, Ella kind of steps over, and the girl's trying to step on.

Next thing you know, they're like, I got elbows and stuff, and the ref's like, imagine you're 13 years old, you're just trying to get the hang of the game, and you get in there, and the ref, all your peers in the stands, all the family, friends, the ref, everybody, the place goes dead silent.

The place goes dead silent, except for me.

I'm like, yeah, let's go! That's a great foul! Best foul I've ever seen.

These parents are looking at me like I'm crazy.

I'm like, you never seen a foul like that.

Yeah, your kid might have scored 30, but they didn't foul like that.

You see, that foul's a great foul.

We we get in the car.

Now think about it.

We get in the car.

I won't shut up about this foul.

This is the greatest foul I've ever seen.

There's more where that came from.

I'm telling you, you got more in you.

You got one foul next game, I want to see you get two.

Like, I'm I'm talking, like, hey, I want you, I want you to do this not because I want you to fail, but because I want you to become what's in you.

I want to pull what's in you out.

And I want the right thing at the right time for you, but there's gonna be something that clicks on you when you stop being afraid of failing.

There's gonna be something that clicks in you when you go out there and you you can be so confident in who you are that though the everybody, the ref didn't approve of you, the teammates didn't approve of you, the coach didn't approve of you, the fans don't approve of you, but there's one dude that's clapping you up.

Whose applause are you living for?

Whose applause are you living for?

It's okay that you want your work to be affirmed, it's okay that you want to impress the crowd.

It's okay to long for it, it's not good to live for it.

When you live for it, it makes you prone to all kinds of bad decisions.

And what Jesus learned standing at the top of the temple with an opportunity to make a spectacle that would impress the people that he was called to challenge.

He learned to live for the Matthew 3 applause of the Father.

And not to do anything to try to gain more approval necessarily.

I've already been given the approval.

He loves me as I am.

I I bring him great joy, I'm dearly loved.

But to say, I'm going to operate with one applause in mind, and if and sure, I'd like you to clap, but if you don't, I'm okay.

I don't need it.

And if you can get to that place where you can detach your purpose from the applause of people, if you stop needing the awe of man, you stop being motivated to do bold, grand things to create a spectacle that will meet the expectations of the people.

You'll start doing the most grand spectacle things that God has for you.

You want to talk about spectacular work.

It'll happen when you're no longer connected to your need for their approval.

You'll be able to serve them better than you ever have from a place of freedom, knowing where the applause comes from.

Amen.

I'm going to invite you to stand on your feet and uh invite our prayer team to come down.

And today I want to give you an opportunity to pray and to allow the Lord to speak to you in a very personal way.

Maybe there are some of you here today that maybe you've been making some bold decisions following what God's leading you to do, and it's costing you the approval.

The people that Jesus could have impressed in Matthew 4 with the temple spectacle jump were ultimately the people that would be yelling crucified.

And for some of you, you're you're under attack.

You're being provoked, you're being torn down, and maybe being lied about.

And it doesn't feel good.

And yet maybe today the Lord wants to give you a hand clap from your Heavenly Father.

That if you're following the purpose that He's given you and you're doing the work that He's led for you to do, that you can feel His affirmation today.

And that deep sense that you have to be bold and to do something special, and to do something spectacular.

You'll do the spectacular, special, bold things that God has for you when He wants you to do it.

To not only do the spectacular thing, but to do it for the right reason.

And so today, maybe there's a rebirth of hope inside of you for some of you that have lost opportunity or have lost favor with some important people that took things away from you.

I'm believing that today God will cause a hope to restore and actually even change how you feel about the whole situation, to allow you to let some things go.

go, some things that have been crushing you and have been killing you, that you'll be able to see that for what it is.

And that today you'll walk out with a new sense of job well done.