The Appetite Test

All right.

Imagine for a second, go with me here.

Imagine that you and I are living in 1400 BC.

1400 BC.

The children of Israel in 1400 BC are coming to the end of 40 years of being lost in the wilderness.

What we know of the story is that for generations they had been in bondage, in slavery to the Egyptians for 400 years.

And through miracles of God and through the deliverer of Moses, God uses Moses to lead them out of 400 years of bondage, out of that geographic location, across through the Red Sea, into the wilderness.

And the journey from the Red Sea to Mount Sinai to the promised land should have taken 11 days.

And it took 40 years.

11 days it should have taken, but it took 40 stinking years.

A third of Moses' life was spent lost in the chaos of the desert of the wilderness.

Why?

Why were they 40 years?

Well, the short answer is because of their mindset.

Their mindset.

They wouldn't trust God, they wouldn't obey God.

They created chaos with their decisions.

And because of that, they complained all the time.

And so they could not lay hold of ultimately what was theirs because of their mindset.

And 40 years essentially was waiting for a generation to die.

And when the generation died and a new generation emerged, we find ourselves in the book of Deuteronomy, the fifth book of the Bible.

And so Moses now, who is an old man, 120 years old, he's about to die.

He dies in the book of Deuteronomy.

But the book of Deuteronomy is basically a series of speeches that Moses is giving at the end of the 40 years to a new generation.

And in this series of speeches, he leaves no stone unturned.

He goes through every painful lesson, one after another, to make sure that history does not repeat itself with a new generation.

He's saying, look, I need you to buckle down and listen to these stories, because what would be worse than 40 years of lostness, 40 years of confusion, 40 years in the wilderness, if because we don't learn what they did wrong, we now have another 40.

And so he's trying to correct through the learnings of a generation that learned it the hard way.

How many of you know it's smart to learn from your mistakes?

It's even smarter to learn from somebody else's mistakes.

So that's what Moses is doing here.

It leads us up to Deuteronomy chapter 8, and we're going to start reading in verse 2, and I want you to pay attention.

Deuteronomy 8 · chapter mention

I've highlighted some words here that I want you to flag in your mind because it's about to come up again.

This is critical.

This is a big deal.

Deuteronomy 8, 2 through 5.

He says, Hey, remember how the Lord your God led you through the wilderness.

Remember that word wilderness, led you through the wilderness for 40 years.

Humbling you, and look at this, testing you to prove your character.

And to find out whether or not you would obey his commands.

Yes, he humbled you by letting you go hungry and then feeding you with manna, a previously unknown to you, uh, food previously unknown to you and your ancestors.

Now look at this.

Don't miss this.

He did it to teach you that people do not live by bread alone.

Rather, we live by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.

Verse 4 for all these 40 years, your clothes didn't wear out and your feet didn't blister or swell.

In other words, God took care of you every single day.

God provided for you what you needed when you needed it.

He said, think about it.

Just as a parent disciplines a child, not out of anger, not out of rage.

He disciplines a child.

The Lord disciplines your Lord your God disciplines you for your own good.

Okay, that's 1400 BC, two months before they entered the promised land.

1400 years later, Jesus is born.

We're looking at the story of Jesus in the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

You'll notice when you start to read the story of Jesus, you'll notice that most of the authors very quickly jump right into him being 30 years old.

Like there's very little of Jesus' first 30 years.

Matthew gives us some historical data about Jesus' birth and Christmas.

Mark skips Christmas.

Savage.

Doesn't even, I mean, nothing.

Just right that Jesus is 30.

Let's get to work.

Luke, Luke gives us a little bit of historical data.

John speaks a little bit in code.

We really don't get the Christmas story too much from John.

And so most of them go as quickly as they can into him being 30.

Luke gives us one little nugget in Luke chapter 2.

Luke 2 · chapter mention

It's a little morsel of when Jesus was 12 years old.

When he was 12 years old, he gets lost.

His parents can't find him for a few days, and they find him in the temple.

And it says in verse 46, three days later they've discovered him in the temple, sitting among religious teachers.

Sitting among religious teachers, listening to them and asking questions.

Look at this, verse 47.

All who heard him were amazed at his understanding and answers.

So you have this 12-year-old kid sitting among religious teachers.

What are the religious teachers teaching?

They're teaching the Torah, they're teaching the Pentateuch, they're teaching Matthew, or I'm sorry, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

They're talking about the history in the wilderness.

They're talking about the history, it's a history lesson in Egypt, but they're talking about interpretation.

We're not just here to rehearse history, we're here to talk about what that means for us now.

And apparently he was a prodigy.

Because at 12 years old, these people are marveling at his grip on history, but what it means for the lives of people here and now.

That's a little glimpse we have.

So between 12 and 18, what happens?

We don't know exactly what happens.

All we know is he goes from 12, and pretty quickly he's baptized into the beginning of his ministry, and he immediately goes into the wilderness.

Alright, now, with all that context, let's look at the temptation of Jesus in Matthew 4, 1 through 4.

It said, Then the 30-year-old Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted there by the devil.

For forty days and nights he fasted and became very hungry.

And during that time the devil came and said to him, If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become loaves of bread.

But Jesus told him, No, the scriptures say, people, oh, does this look familiar?

People do not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.

Let's get every bit we can out of this text.

Let's start in verse 1.

Verse 1, it says that Jesus was led by who?

By the Spirit, led by God, into the wilderness to be tempted there by the devil.

This is a really well-constructed sentence by Matthew, and he's making a huge point when we really look at it.

The word tempted there, that's the English word that you have in most of your translations.

If you have your Bible in front of you, most of them probably say tempted.

But to really understand what Matthew's doing with this first sentence, we have to actually look at the original word.

The original word actually has a connotation of more than just tempted, but also being tested.

Tempted doesn't really say it fully.

And it's not like there's anything wrong with the Bible.

It's just our English word tempted isn't a perfect translation for peyrazzo.

So for example, the word peyrazzo uh shows up later when it says, uh pure joy when you face peyrazzo.

Consider it pure joy when you face trials of many kinds.

So the connotation is not just to tempt, because what is tempting?

Tempting is trying to get you to mess up.

Trying to get you to fail, trying to get you to stumble.

That's what tempted is.

That's dangling a donut in front of somebody who's on a diet.

Right?

That's tempting.

I'm trying to get you to mess up.

Trial, what's a trial?

A trial done right isn't trying to get you to fail, it's trying to reveal the truth.

To show the truth of what's in you.

What is a test, right?

A good teacher gives you a test, not because they're hoping that you fail, they're not trying to make you fail.

They're thoroughly testing you to draw what's in you out of you and to reveal the truth about what you know or don't know.

Did you do the work or did you not do the work?

Did you learn the lesson or did you not learn the lesson?

And so that's what payrazzo is.

And look at the beauty of the construction of that verse one.

He says he's led by the Spirit to Peyrazzo, which it's like the Spirit is pulling the word this way to test.

It's a test, it's to reveal what was in Jesus.

It's to reveal what happened in the first 30 years of Jesus' life.

What happened between when you had a prodigy 12-year-old that had a lot of answers?

But how many of you know you can have answers and not maturity?

Maturity is your ability to take the answer and turn it into a decision, to turn it into an action, to embody the lesson.

And so, somewhere between 12, when he knew all the history and could talk the talk, into when he got to the wilderness, we're gonna find out if what you knew at 12, you know what to do with at 30.

And so the word perazzo is being pulled this way in the verse by the Spirit, but it's being pulled this way in the verse by the devil to try to get you to stumble.

Okay?

Um, so the second verse says, During that time, I'm sorry, uh, for 40 days and 40 nights, he fasted and became very clear.

So let's pick up what Matthew's putting down here.

When he's bringing up this 40 days, 40 nights to the listener, what he's trying to do is connect the failure of the nation back in Deuteronomy, the failure of the nation to the fulfillment of Jesus.

They had their 40 years of failure of not trusting God, of not doing it his way, of complaining, of wrong mindset.

And now we have Jesus in a new, in a sense of a new model of humanity of how we should think and behave.

So that's what he's doing with the 40 days.

But then he says he fasted for 40 days and was hungry.

So now we're introduced to the idea of temptation.

Okay, so let's let's deconstruct real quick temptation.

What is a temptation?

How do you end up tempted?

All right, we are made up, constructed as people uh with spirit, soul, and body.

Spirit is eternal.

This is the eternal part of us that lives eternally with God.

When Jesus died, he said, into your hands I commit my and it says he said, Commit my spirit to you, and then his body died.

And so this is the eternal part of us.

This is the part of us that interacts with God.

This is the part of us that that receives ultimately messaging from God that's connected to God, that perceives God.

The word soul actually in the Greek is the word psyche.

And it's it's your mind, your will, and your emotions.

Let's go a little bit more with that.

Your mind, then, is your thoughts, your logic, the things you think about, the stories you tell yourself, your will is your feelings.

And your I'm sorry, your emotions are your feelings.

You get the idea, you get the idea.

Will are your decisions where you make your decisions.

Sorry.

Okay, I'm making a mess.

Okay.

Make sense?

Sorry about that.

Okay, come back to the next service.

I'll get it right, I promise.

Um, all right, so this looks horrible.

This looks like Willy Wonka, like Willy Wonka.

Um, okay.

Is that better?

Okay.

Um help me, Lord.

Okay, so your your soul is your mind, will, and emotions.

Your body is your connection to the physical world.

So it's your sensory experience, right?

The things you hear, the things you see, the things you feel, it's your perception of those things, it's your physiological appetites, it's all that kind of stuff.

You have physiological appetites, by the way, which are introduced in this story.

It says he didn't eat, so he became hungry.

By the way, you know how long a healthy human being can go without food?

I look this up.

They say a healthy human being can go probably between 30 and 50 days without food before you just die.

So Jesus had gone 40.

He's at the verge of the human capacity, okay?

So he's giving us sort of an extreme version of an appetite, but he he's using a physiological appetite to make a statement beyond just your body, but your psychological appetites.

Our physiological appetites are designed biologically to not be fully satisfied, so they'll keep being hungry, so we keep fueling ourselves so we can live.

But our psychological appetites, right?

We have these things, these cravings, appetites or cravings.

Anything you crave, crave power, you can crave pleasure, you crave peace, you crave control, you crave uh to be valued or to be recognized.

There's lots of different types of cravings.

So it's within our cravings or our appetites where the fight, the battle around temptation, this is where the enemy can show up and try to tempt us to do wrong.

Anywhere that you have made an immoral decision, you've done wrong, you violated your own conscience, you did some, you lied, cheated, stole, you you did something manipulative, you knew it was wrong.

This isn't even like, was it wrong?

You know it was wrong.

And you look back, you're like, why would I give in to temptation on moral things?

Well, the reason is fairly simple.

It's like in here, there is a craving in some way, you're craving a feeling.

I want to feel a certain kind of way.

Okay, if you look at what you do uh sexually, you look at what you do with money, you look at what you do with your words, okay, the things you do in the dark places, bad decisions.

Often it's a craving for something.

I want to feel powerful.

I want to feel wanted.

I'm either trying to get something or get rid of something.

Why would somebody take a risk and do make a decision so bad it would complicate their whole life and would put all of their closest relationships at jeopardy?

It would cause them potentially to lose their freedom.

Why would people do this?

Knowing it's wrong is because there is a feeling that's a craving, it's an appetite.

I want to feel powerful, I want to feel valued, or I want to get rid of this feeling that I'm insignificant.

So again, money offers the lure of that.

Uh, sex offers the lure of that, relationships offer the lure of that.

And so this is where the battle takes place because somewhere in my physical body and somewhere in my psyche, I have cravings for things, and what's being presented to me is as a solution to meet that longing.

So we know from a moral standpoint, it's fairly simple, not easy, but simple when we see the moral thing.

But what's interesting is that Satan tempts Jesus, but he tempts him with something that's morally neutral.

Not something that's immoral, but something that's amoral.

Look at this in verse 3, it says, During that time the devil came and said to him, If you are the son of God, tell these stones to become loaves of bread.

Tell these stones to become loaves of bread.

That's morally neutral.

He didn't say, hey, if you are the son of God, go rob a panera.

You gotta be hungry, man.

You gotta be weak.

Just go rob a panera at gunpoint.

No.

He didn't say something that was immoral, he says something that's morally neutral.

Now think about this.

If Jesus is somewhere between 30 and 50 days of fasting, which means he's not far from his body just being done, he's in a weak place.

So look what he says.

If you're the son of God, so he comes at his identity, he comes at his feeling, trying to make him feel insecure.

If you're the son of God, and then he says, use your power, use your power, take these rocks and turn them into bread.

Morally neutral thing, but he's trying to get him to overcome a feeling of feeling weak and feeling hungry, hitting his appetite, both physiologically and psychologically, to try to get him to take matters into his own hands and to turn the rocks into bread.

Now, we are in Matthew 4.

In Matthew 4, Jesus, what is he doing?

He's fasting.

He's fasting.

Why?

He's fasting because he wants to discipline his flesh.

Because if I can, if I can get my will right, if I can make decisions even when my body and my mind are craving something, if I can say no to myself when I don't have to, then I can say yes to God in the Garden of Gethsemane when he says, Go into your purpose, not my will, but your will be done.

So this fasting thing isn't to try to earn the approval of God.

He's not trying to make daddy happy, he's not trying to prove anything.

This is a matter of bringing mastery or discipline to his flesh, because I've got to get in the habit where I build my discipline muscle to be able to say no to myself when I could say yes.

Think about bread for a second in the Bible, okay?

He's saying, turn these rocks into bread.

Think of, can you think of other times Jesus did stuff with bread?

So we have Matthew 4, he won't eat the bread.

What about Matthew 14 when he turns five loaves into 5,000 meals?

He's going to 1,000 X.

He's going to do a multiplication miracle of bread in 10 chapters.

How about breaking bread with his disciples?

Remember the last supper?

Well, we now have the Lord's Supper.

Every time we do communion, we're doing it to remember when Jesus broke bread with his disciples.

That's Matthew 26.

Matthew 26, it's going to be the right time to break bread.

Matthew 14, it's going to be the right time to multiply bread.

Matthew 4 was a time he was disciplining himself to not say yes to the bread.

When he could say yes.

And this is where this is a whole, this is a whole deep message about actual maturation, is when you come up against an amoral or a morally neutral type situation, that it might be right for you, but it's not right for me.

It might be right for me in the future, but it's not right for me today.

And to be able to get to a place where I'm seeking God in real time, even though I have an open and shut case as to why I should be able to indulge this.

Even though I feel weak and it would make me feel powerful and strong to use my power to turn rocks into bread.

There will be a day I'll use my power to turn bread 1,000 times over.

But today, even though it would feel good because I feel weak, I feel like I'm on the verge of death, it would feel good to use my power.

Today is about not using my power.

And to chapter by chapter seek God on what do you want me to do now?

What do you want me to do now?

Um, so look now, let's look at Jesus' response.

Verse 4 when he says, Turn these low uh rocks.

Into loaves of bread.

He says, No, the scriptures say people do not live by bread alone, but every word that comes from the mouth of God.

Remember, we just read that.

So, what Jesus is doing in real time is he's going back 1,400 years and he's saying, What took my forefathers 40 years to figure out, I'm going to learn in 40.

I'm going to not only know the stories of the mistakes of the people that went before me and the things that caused them to not lay hold of their promised land even though it was theirs.

And I'm not only going to know it here, I'm going to turn that knowledge into a decision.

This is why, by the way, the Apostle Paul, he talks about this in Romans 12.

He says, hey, be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

We talked last week at Easter about shame.

And you know, when Jesus died on the cross, he canceled our sin, so we're forgiven, but he also canceled our shame.

Think about this.

If I'm transformed by the renewing of my mind, it means that I could actually be debt-free in heaven.

I could have the penalty of my sin taken care of, so I don't owe anything.

And yet in my mind I'm still in bondage to shame.

Therefore, I'm not free.

I'm technically free, but I'm living in bondage.

That's what the children of Israel who had been in bondage to the Egyptians, they went out into the wilderness and were longing to be back in Egypt because that's where their mind was.

That's where their mind, will, and emotion was.

Their soul was in Egypt.

And so what you have, we see here from Jesus, is that he brings discipline and he applies truth to both his body and his physical craving and his psyche.

Then he's able to, even in morally neutral situations, he says, man does not live by bread alone, but every word.

What did it say after that?

Remember in uh Deuteronomy 8, it said, hey, a good parent disciplines their child.

Not to freak them out, not to scare them, not any of that.

Doing for their good.

So that they'll learn to bring mastery to flesh to say no when because I can.

And to not be enslaved to my own body.

Look, Paul says this in 1 Corinthians 6.

He says, I save, you say, I'm allowed to do anything.

I'm allowed to do anything.

I'm free.

But not everything is good for you.

And even though I'm, quote, allowed to do anything, I must not become a slave to anything.

So what Paul is saying is some of the things that are not, he's not talking about moral things, uh he's talking about morally neutral things.

He goes, so some of you uh don't have the wisdom because you go, because I can make a case for it that I can do it, you do it.

And then the thing that was amoral starts to master you.

And then now you crave it, and it becomes an appetite that runs your life.

And you got sucked in with the lure and the bait and the excuse that the enemy gives.

It's just bread.

It's just bread.

Yeah, it's just bread.

You haven't you done enough?

I mean, if you're the son of God, I mean you're this favored son, what are you doing out here in the wilderness?

Not eating.

Use your power.

Is it wrong to use your power?

Uh, sometimes.

Sometimes it's not.

This forces us to do what Jesus did, which was to seek God to know.

God, do you have me in Matthew 4 right now or Matthew 14 right now?

Is this a time to multiply bread or is it time to deny myself bread?

Alright, I put this sentence together.

It's a good sentence, but it's gonna take, we gotta like chew on it for a bit, and it's gonna get me tongue-tied if I don't read it.

All right, but I worked hard on it, and so please act like it matters, okay?

Here's the sentence.

It only matters what you know if you know what to do with what you know when it matters.

Thank you for that.

You some of you like, ooh.

That's what my wife does when I carry the groceries and she's like, oh my goodness, you're so strong.

You've been working out.

She has keep me doing it, right?

Okay, so it only matters what you know if you know what to do with what you know when it matters.

When Jesus was 12, he knew about Deuteronomy 8.

When Jesus was 12, he knew what his and his forefathers, the mistakes they had made.

He knew what they did.

But it only matters if you know history, if you can turn it into a decision in the wilderness.

And it was in the wilderness that he drew on it and he said, Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.

I wonder if you and I would maybe have an amoral situation, a morally neutral situation right now, where you could totally justify making a certain decision, yet you've not sought God on God.

Is this Matthew 4 or is it Matthew 14 or Matthew 26?

What do you want me to do now?

I'm not going to live by bread alone.

I'm not going to let the enemy try to flare up my cravings and my appetites, whether physiologically or psychologically.

I'm not going there.

I'm not going to listen to my flesh.

I'm not going to listen to the temptation.

I'm going to pass the test.

What I'm going to do is I'm going to come to you now, and I'm going to do what the nation didn't do in the Old Testament, which is they kept trying to take matters into their own hands.

I'm going to live by your word.

I'm going to live by your written word, by your spoken word, by your real-time Rhema word.

What are you saying to me now?

What are you saying to me now?

I wonder if there are some of us who have an open and shut case why it's okay for us to do what we're doing, and the reality is we shouldn't be doing it.

And you can argue it.

It's not moral, it's not wrong, and maybe it's not wrong for them, but it's not right for you.

And maybe it'll be right for you later, but it's not right for you now.

And maybe it was right for you in the past, but it's not right for your future.

What are these things that God wants to show you that doesn't get you stuck in going, but I can?

Where are we using freedom language to justify being stuck in bondage to our vices, to our cravings, to our appetites?

What's underneath the psychological appetite, the craving for whatever it might be, value, control, power, pleasure?

What is it?

These aren't bad things.

Power is not bad.

Pleasure is not bad, but it's if it's causing a craving that's causing me to have to make decisions that are it's that my cravings are running my life.

Are you willing to do like Jesus to go, you know what?

I'm going to say no over and over and over again.

I I'm about to end it real quick.

People, we look at this story and we think about 40 days of not eating, and we go, man, after 40 days of not eating, how in the world could you not take the bread?

But I'll tell you this if you go 120 meals and you say no 120 times, 121 is a lot easier than like the fourth one.

If I don't eat today, by 6 p.m.

I'm gonna be like, I'm famished, I'm dying.

I'll use language like I'm starving to death.

I gotta have it.

Jesus had become so good at saying, no thanks.

Not for me.

Not today.

That's not for me.

Nope, nope, I'm good.

I'm good.

Nope.

He had done it 120 times.

By the time 121 came, he was good at saying no.

Are there some areas that you have been able to logically justify, morally justify saying yes, but God wants to help you learn to say no.

Learn to say no.

All right, I'm gonna give you the summary here.

Make sure we don't miss any of this, then we'll get you out of here.

First takeaway is this recognize that obedience sometimes leads you into the wilderness.

Sometimes obedience will lead you into the wilderness.

He wasn't led into the wilderness by the enemy, he was led into the wilderness by God.

And so some of you are going through wilderness times.

You went from the cool of the Jordan River being baptized into now I'm in a dry season.

And so that sometimes that's just from obedience.

The second is expect your body and soul to be tempted and tested.

Expect both physiologically physiologically and psychologically that anticipate it, you're gonna be tested, you're gonna be tempted.

The third is when tempted, anchor yourself to God's word.

Anchor yourself to God's word.

When I say anchor yourself to God's word, to his written word and praying and asking God situationally, Lord, what is it for me now?

What do you have for me this time?

We just don't ever graduate this step.

And I wonder if there are some of us who have been making decisions purely based on logic, purely based on morality, and yet you're missing what God is wanting to do in this season.

I wonder if there are some of us who know something up here since we were 12, but here we are at 30.

Are you putting it into decision making?

The fourth is make a decision today that you want to live with tomorrow.

Make the decision today you want to live with tomorrow.

Here's what we're about to do.

We're about to do what Hebrews 12, 18 tells us.

It says, since he himself, being Jesus, has gone through the suffering and testing, he is able to help us when we're being tested.

Hebrews 4, 15, this high priest Jesus of ours understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same testings we do, yet he did not sin.

So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God.

There we will receive mercy and we'll find grace to help us when we need it most.

So I invite you to stand on your feet.

Our prayer team is going to come down and make themselves available.

Some of you today, maybe you're walking through a season of tempting or testing.

Maybe there's something in front of you that you know is wrong, that you're being tempted to take the bait, and then maybe there are some of you, you're being tested, uh, you're in a place of testing.

What's inside of you is coming out.

The truth is coming to light.

And if you're here today and you say, whether it's a moral or even a morally neutral situation, God, what do you want me to do in this season?

Do you have me in Matthew 4 where I don't take the bread?

Do you have me in Matthew 14 where I multiply the bread?

Do you have me in Matthew 26 where I break the bread?

What do you want me to do today with what's in front of me?

God, give me eyes to see.

Give me in my spirit, Lord, pull me, pull me in my spirit.

Don't let my body pull me down.

Don't let my mind, will, and emotions live in confusion.

Bring clarity to me, Lord, and give me the strength.

Give me the strength to make the right choice at the right time.