The Kingdom Way | Luke 5:15–16 with Pastor Clayton Tyner

Welcome to the MetaCurch Podcast.

My name is Clayton.

I'm the pastor at MetaCurch, and I hope that today's message is inspiring and enlightening and really builds you up wherever you're at in life.

Man, I'm so glad that you joined us today.

If you're new with us, my name's Clayton.

I'm the lead pastor here at MetaCurch.

And wherever you're joining us from, if you're here in Helotus, and I'm so glad that you came out to our Holotus venue.

God is moving so powerfully there.

If you're watching us online, I'm so grateful for this ministry, for the incredible team of people who helped make that ministry possible.

And uh, I'm glad wherever you're joining from that you're in with us today.

Now, uh, we are going to go through just a couple of verses today, but I want to give you a little bit of context, um, not just to the verses, but also just to what we're going to do together today.

Um, we're going line by line through the gospel of Luke.

And so if you're new to Metachurch, you need to know that we're going very slowly.

We're being intentional and allowing God to speak to us through the gospel of Luke.

We've broken that up into several series, and we are currently in this second section of Luke that we're calling the kingdom way.

This is where Jesus has begun his ministry, and every single second that Jesus was on earth, he was displaying the way of the kingdom of God.

And so if we slow down and we really pay attention to that, we can learn how to live as a part of God's kingdom as well.

Now, so far in 2026, the way our Sunday services have been structured is we come in and we worship through music, and then we corporately worship through prayer.

We pray together, and then we get under the word.

And so what we have done is prayer has prepared us for the word, but we're trying to be led by the Holy Spirit.

And so, spoiler alert, not just this Sunday, but next Sunday as well, as I'm putting together the sermon, it became very obvious to me that we needed to get into the word to prepare us to pray.

And so we will pray after the message this week, and we will pray after the message next week, and we will pray whenever the Holy Spirit tells us to, forever.

Okay, so that's gonna be the plan there.

Now, I can't just jump right into Luke.

Uh it's it's it's two verses, but they are jam-packed and they need some context.

Uh, you need to know this.

Uh, at Metachurch, we care deeply about the context of scripture.

And there is a real danger and a real temptation in the world for as long as the scripture has been in publication to isolate verses in the text, to pull them out, and to use them to say whatever you want them to say.

And so, text without context, it's called pretext.

You can use those words as a pretext to push forward anything you want.

And one of the things that's shocking to me is a lot of the Western cults, they hold our very same Bible with this very same books as their inspired scripture as well.

They just abuse the words of those scripture, they rip it out of its context to make it say what they want it to say.

Does that make sense?

And so the Latter-day Saints, they hold our Bible as scripture, but they take it out of its context to make it say something that it doesn't actually say.

And we don't need a charlatan from the 1800s to tell us what the word says.

We can get into the word itself.

Shots fired, I guess.

That's how we're starting today.

Latter-day Saints, friends, I love you.

Uh, but your boy is sleeping on the couch because his wife is sick and not getting much sleep.

So I don't know what's gonna happen today, alright?

I'm excited because uh the context today is so rich.

And it's why we're gonna pray after the message together.

And I honestly didn't know what to do with these two verses because as I am studying and preparing, I'm planning weekends out six weeks in advance or eight weeks in advance, and the verses don't always break down neatly.

And so originally I thought I would take these two verses and I would add them to the end of the passage of the man with leprosy.

Or maybe I would take these two verses that are transitional in nature and I would put them at the beginning of next week's sermon.

But I'm trying to actually do what I have claimed we are doing and study every line of every verse.

And as I did that, it was so clear to me that these needed to stand alone, and that they actually point at something that Luke is doing in the text that if we can understand it and if we can apply it, man, it could make all the difference in the world.

And so we're gonna start with some context way back in Scripture, back in the second book of the Old Testament, which is the book of Exodus.

Now, some of you know a little bit about Exodus.

This is the story of God's people as they end up trapped in Egypt for 400 years.

We'll read a little bit of that in Exodus chapter one.

It says, So the Egyptians assigned taskmasters over the Israelites to oppress them with forced labor.

They built Pitham and Ramesses as supply cities for Pharaoh.

But the more they oppressed them, the more they multiplied and spread so that the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites.

They worked the Israelites ruthlessly, and they made their lives bitter with difficult labor and brick and mortar and in all kinds of field work.

They ruthlessly imposed all of this work on them.

And this lasted for 400 years.

And so one of the things that you need to know is in Egypt, Israel was not yet a nation.

A lot of times we miss that in scripture.

Israel was not yet a nation, they were a people.

And they had a shared identity, not through some kind of national governmental structure.

They didn't have that, they didn't have the law, they didn't have a clear delineation of the breakdown of their 12 tribes, they didn't have any of that yet.

They were not a nation.

They were a people.

And this era of scripture, we would call the era of the patriarchs, because the way they identified themselves is they are the people of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, the patriarchs.

Not a nation, a people.

And because they are not a nation, they do not have a clearly formed identity.

And so they're in Egypt for 400 years, and their identity is being formed, not by who God uniquely called them to be, but by the culture around them.

And we see this in the story.

And even if you don't know the story, this is one of those Bible stories that has permeated culture, so you like might know some of the story.

If you haven't read it, you have probably heard it.

And if you haven't heard it, you might have seen it in the greatest animated film of all time, The Prince of Egypt.

Dude, if you haven't seen that movie, NFL is over.

Your homework is to go home and watch The Prince of Egypt.

Oh my gosh.

Do yourself a favor, not now because I'm preaching, but get out your phone as soon as I'm done and go to Spotify and just pin the Prince of Egypt soundtrack.

It is absolutely unbelievable.

There's a duet between Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston for an animated movie.

What is happening?

Like what is real?

You know?

It is so crazy.

It's a great movie.

And it tells a story.

If you don't know the story at all, I'll outline it for you: 400 years, and God raises up a leader.

And he raises up this leader, Moses, by positioning him in the palace under the Pharaoh.

And then Moses is out.

And God calls Moses to come back and to confront the royal family, who he's familiar with, and to demand that they let God's people go.

There are believed to be over a million Israelites of free labor, free workforce.

And so the king of Egypt, the Pharaoh, is just not interested.

And so God sends plagues.

Ten incredible, miraculous plagues.

And eventually that convinces the Pharaoh to let them go.

And so now they are on their way.

The problem is that they have to go through a wilderness, and on the other side of the wilderness is the land that God promised to them.

The problem before the problem is that to get to the wilderness, they have to go through the Red Sea, an impassable body of water.

And about that time, Pharaoh changes his mind.

He sends all of the armies of Egypt after them, and pretty soon the Israelites are pinned down between the Red Sea and the armies of Egypt.

And you might know this part of the story.

And if you don't know it from the Prince of Egypt, you might know it from the old Charlton Heston movie.

Where are my boomers at?

Charlton Heston?

Anybody?

Are you shocked I know who that is?

That's fun.

And God parts the waters and they go through on dry ground and they get to the other side, and the army comes after them, and God releases the waters and they swallow them up.

And listen, militant anti-theist atheists will tell you that there is zero evidence for the exodus of Israelites out of Egypt, and they will fail to mention that in the dry season you can find the wheels of Egyptian chariots at the bottom of that water.

After they get into the wilderness, a lot of problems start because God forms them into a real nation and he gives them an identity and he gives them the law and he gives them a governmental structure and he's getting ready to give them the land.

But what you find out if you read Exodus carefully is that the people have no faith.

They're constantly complaining, they're constantly grumbling, they are constantly trying to undermine the leader that God has placed in charge, and they constantly want to go back to Egypt.

And here's why.

Because they spent 400 years in a foreign land with foreign influence, under a foreign political structure, foreign incentives, foreign powers, foreign spirituality, foreign gods.

And here's what you need to know while reading the Exodus story is that ethnically, God's people are Hebrew.

But culturally, socially, and spiritually, God's people have become Egyptians.

Ethnically, they're Hebrews, but culturally, socially, and spiritually, God's people have become Egyptians.

There's no single greatest example of this.

Then when Moses goes to speak to the Lord, he gets an audience with the Lord, which is a good thing, you know?

Like, if God was like, Clayton, you get two days, and you get an actual audience with my visible presence, you should all be very happy about that.

Because I need some help.

Okay, it's like this is a good thing.

Moses is gone for like 87 seconds, and the people are like, We're bored.

Let's melt down all the gold we plundered from Egypt, and let's form it into a golden calf, and let's worship it.

And so, you know, when we learn about this in Sunday school, worshiping it means like you get on your knees and you kind of like they worshiped it like Egyptians.

They partied, they had orgies, they cried out to false gods.

And you probably wouldn't be shocked to find that if you study ancient Egypt, one of their primary false gods that they worshiped took the form of a calf.

And of course it did.

Because although ethnically they are Hebrews, and spiritually they are supposed to be God's people, culturally, socially, and spiritually, they've just become Egyptians.

Now we also often misunderstand the story because if you know, it takes them 40 years to get into the promised land.

And I'll be honest, I grew up in church and I didn't understand the timeline.

I just thought the promised land was like really far away.

That's not what happened.

They got to the edge of the promised land like in weeks.

And God said, If you trust me, and if you have faith, and if you will fight, I will give you the land.

And they looked in the land.

And the cities were fortified, and the men were warriors, and they were not, they were slaves from Egypt.

And they did not have enough faith in God to go and take the land that He had given them.

It only took them weeks, if that, to get to the edge of the promised land, and because of their lack of faith, they had to wander for 40 years.

We don't really know how to think about this wandering.

I think for most Christians, we just see this as punitive, meaning this is punishment for their lack of faith.

And you need you do need to know this.

When you disobey God, consequence follows.

Who's lived long enough to find that out?

When you live in opposition to God, consequence follows.

And let me tell you something.

Sometimes you're manipulative enough, or you're you're good enough at lying, or you have enough money, or you're enabled by other people, and you get away with your sin for a little while.

And let me tell you something, that's the worst possible outcome.

The best thing you can get is your consequences as quickly as possible.

Because if you are able to seemingly evade your consequences, you are actually just storing up a well of wrath that someday will come out on your life.

Consequences are a part of how God loves us well.

And for those who don't know God and are living in opposition to God, every consequence is the voice of God calling you back to truth.

It's God's world, He created it.

We are gods.

God, G-O-D, apostrophe, S.

You're not a God.

We belong to God.

He gets to decide how things function in his world, and when we live in opposition to that, the consequences come.

He told them to take the land they did not.

The consequence comes.

And so I would be lying, and it would not be true to say there's nothing punitive about the 40 years of wandering.

But if you only see it through the lens of punishment, or if you only see it as the primary means that God is trying to get across, you'll miss what the wilderness actually means.

God told the Israelites specifically why they had to wander for 40 years.

You may not know this.

40 years represents a Jewish generation.

40 years.

God says clearly in his word that they were to wander for 40 years because the leaders of Israel, the elders of Israel, they did not have enough faith.

They were too full of Egypt to have faith in God.

And so God allowed for that entire generation to die out.

He allowed 40 years of formation of those that remained.

And so let me give you some context that you have to understand if we're going to understand Luke today.

This is the way to view the wilderness.

In the wilderness, God empties the people of Egypt so he can fill the people with faith.

He has to get Egypt out of them.

400 years.

They've become Egyptians, culturally, socially, spiritually.

He has to get Egypt out of them so he can fill them with faith, fill them with a proper identity, with true culture, fill them with power and purpose and destiny.

And once they are empty of what was of the things of this world, then God can fill them with what they need to take the land and to prosper.

Does that make sense?

Are you tracking with me so far?

You have to understand that this is the purpose of the wilderness, and that the wilderness is seen by all of Israel as this moment in their national identity that changed things forever.

Forty years later, they walked into the land.

Centuries after that, Jesus came to earth.

Now, while Jesus is on earth during his ministry, he's not physically in Egypt.

He's not geographically in Egypt.

But metaphorically, Egypt is always all around us.

And what I mean by that is the power structures of our world are always informing us.

The political radicalism of our world is always pressing in on us.

The desire for material wealth and material goods is always tempting us.

The desires to use what God has given us to make our own names great and to build our own kingdom is always in front of us.

Egypt is always around us, and sometimes it's on us, and because we are all sinners in need of a savior, Egypt is often in us.

And so Jesus might be geographically standing in Israel, but Israel at that time had all the same problems of Egypt.

Spiritually, they were corrupt, they were engaged in idolatry, they had lost faith in God, they were living for the moment, they were protecting their own kingdoms.

The wilderness is not just to punish, it is to purify.

And so let's get into our text today.

To give you a little bit of setup, Jesus has started his ministry and he is healing people by the dozens and maybe even sometimes by the hundreds.

And so Jesus' popularity is peaking.

Everywhere he goes, Jesus goes viral.

And everyone wants to be associated with the Jesus brand.

And so let's look at these verses together.

This is right after healing the man with leprosy.

It says this the news about Jesus spread even more.

He was already viral, already becoming famous.

It spread even more, and large crowds would come together to heal hear him and to be healed of their sickness.

Look what Luke says.

Yet he often withdrew to deserted places and prayed.

I love Luke because Luke's just real.

He's a real guy.

He's writing things from his perspective.

And look at how this sentence is structured.

The news about him spread even more.

Somehow he's even more famous.

Remember just a few weeks ago, all the people in Capernaum come together and they're like, hey, what do we have to do to get you to stay?

We'll give you whatever you want, we'll pay you however much you want.

You give us your wish list, we will check every box.

We, dude, we will worship you.

Like, we'll make you king.

You want to be king?

We'll make you king.

Now he's even more famous everywhere he goes.

People want him.

They want him to themselves.

They want him to stay.

We would be the same way.

If Jesus had decided to come to Earth in 2026, wherever he landed on earth, we would book a flight, we would book an Airbnb, we would spend a week, we'd do everything we could to try to get to him and try to get close and try to stay close.

And Luke doesn't say he became even more famous and he would often go to deserted places and pray.

And is like the continuation of a thought that logically follows.

He doesn't say that.

If you're looking at the text, Luke says he became even more famous and even more popular, and yet, yet is an interruption.

Yet is unexpected, yet is a left turn.

And yet, even though he's at the peak of popularity, he would just slip out and disappear.

Get away.

Yet is something unexpected.

Yet would be like key lime pie is Clayton's favorite dessert, and yet he didn't finish his plate.

Which would never happen, by the way.

It's unexpected.

Yet.

This is how Luke sees it.

And this is how we would see it.

Andy Warhol kind of famously predicted that at some point everyone would be able to get their 15 minutes of fame, and he said that long before social media and reality television.

And all the ways we used to have A-list celebrities and B list celebrities, and those were all the celebrities.

Now we got A through Z celebrities.

We got the person who had one thing who went viral one time on Instagram.

We get our 15 seconds of fame, and everyone's aiming for it.

And here's what you know.

You know this.

You have to strike while the iron's hot.

When momentum starts going up on you as your own personal brand, you have to ride that wave of momentum.

What you cannot do is just disappear into the desert for a few days.

We know that, and Luke knows that.

It's like these people are willing to give him whatever he wants, and yet he slips away.

And so we have to see what Jesus' intention is here.

And these are two verses, they're short, but verse 16 is doing a lot of heavy lifting.

Here's the first thing I want you to see.

It says, yet he often withdrew to deserted places and prayed.

He often withdrew.

What Luke is wanting us to see is this didn't happen once, this didn't happen twice.

This is something that happened all of the time.

Jesus was already practicing this before Luke chapter 5, before he had become famous.

Luke 5 · chapter mention

And Jesus would practice this as long as he was here on planet Earth.

He would get away, he would spend time alone with the Father, spend time alone in prayer in the deserted place.

And as I'm studying this, I just want you to know what I experienced in myself.

As I was studying this and I see this in the life of Jesus, I experienced great conviction.

And here's

Because we are experts at rationalizing why we don't spend more time with God.

And you are important.

I don't know if you feel that way.

If you don't feel that way, I'm glad you're here.

So you can hear at least one person say this.

And I don't know how much weight my words carry with you, but you are important.

You're important to God.

You're important to me.

You're important to this movement.

Your life matters.

It does.

God created you on purpose, and He created you with purpose.

And if you will really follow Jesus and live that out, you'll make a huge impact on the world.

Your life matters.

And you're busy.

I know you're busy.

And we're like busier than we've ever been.

And we have all of these excuses.

And some of them are very valid excuses.

I'm not even trying to like delegitimize the excuses that sometimes get in the way of you investing time with your Heavenly Father like we know we should.

I have a lot of excuses, and a lot of them feel very legitimate to me.

And so I'm not trying to do that.

And then also, like also, if we're honest, some days you spend five hours on TikTok, so you have to stop that, right?

Because that's not legitimate, but we do that as well.

And so sometimes we just snooze a few too many times, and then we can't be late, and then we head out the door, and we have never connected with our Heavenly Father who loves us and created us and wants to hear from us and wants to speak to us.

And you know, you're busy and um you're important and you matter.

And I think that the role God has given me is important here at Meta Church, and I think it matters.

Um and I'm very busy.

I I live a busy life.

I have three kids and they're all busy, and um, there's always things going on, and uh we preach and we pastor and we lead and we organize and we do all of those things.

And you get to the end of some days, and and you know, I hope that like you won't just leave me alone up here on stage.

Um, you get to the end of a day and you go, Man, I just really did not connect much with my Heavenly Father.

Like, I really took this day on the chin because I tried to do all of it on my own.

And things come up.

You get surprises.

If you have kids, you get surprises, and some of them are positive.

It's like, Mom, I made the team, and you're like, Yes! And then you'll never see an evening for the next like six months, you know?

And sometimes you get surprises from your kids that are not exciting, and you have to deal with those.

And sometimes marriage is very hard.

And sometimes you wake up and the coffee maker's broke, and you're like, Can the Holy Spirit work without caffeine?

And some days you're just not feeling it, and here's what I know, and here's where this heaviness and this conviction came from.

Uh I do think my life matters, I think my work matters, I think it's important.

There will never be a solitary second of my life that is more important than a single solitary second of Jesus' life.

And Jesus found time.

At cost to himself, and don't miss this.

Sometimes at cost to others.

There are times in the gospels that the disciples are like, where's our leader?

Where did he go?

Everywhere he goes, there are lines of people waiting to be healed of their sickness and disease.

And Jesus will go.

And he'll slip out and he'll spend time with the Father.

I even think like if Jesus didn't do this, but the apostles did, who wrote the rest of the New Testament, it'd be a little easier for me to rationalize and make an excuse, but Jesus did it.

And so I'm gonna give you a key idea here.

Um, you can write it down if you want.

This is why you come to church here, because I, bro, I go deep, all right?

So let me give you a really deep idea.

Um to be a Jesus follower means you should write this down.

We follow Jesus.

And so I know, like you don't have a PhD in theology, and neither do I.

Most of you don't have a seminary degree, and neither do I.

Most of you don't know all the technical theological terms, and that's okay.

Because you can read about what Jesus did, and then you can do what Jesus did.

And Jesus was not too important, and his time was not too valuable to him, and the people who depended on him did not weigh on him too heavy to consistently get away and spend time in prayer.

And it just shatters any potential excuse I could bring.

And that was very convicting to me, and I hope that is convicting to you as well.

He still made time to get alone with God.

Now, that'd be a very powerful lesson, that'd be worth preaching these verses all on their own, but there's more.

Because as I was studying this, I saw something that Luke was doing that I hadn't seen before.

And I want to paint this picture for you a little bit.

It's in the text.

It says that yet Jesus often withdrew to deserted places and prayed.

Deserted places and prayed.

That word, deserted places where Jesus would go all of the time to get away.

It doesn't just mean somewhere where no one's around.

It doesn't just mean he had a special prayer closet, which is good.

You can have a prayer closet where you go and get alone with the Lord, but that's not what it means, and what it means matters because nothing happens by coincidence in the word of God.

Do you know that?

Oh, that was discouraging.

Let me try.

Because nothing happens that is coincidence in the word of God.

Do you know that?

If you didn't know that, you know that now.

Deserted places is the Greek word Eremos, which means wilderness.

When Jesus wanted to spend time with the Father, he went to the wilderness.

This is the pattern, this is the rhythm, this is the spiritual discipline that is present in Jesus' life.

Let me remind you: the main goal of the wilderness is not punishment, the main goal is formation.

Now, what's been beautiful is we've gone so slowly through Luke and we've really taken our time.

And because of that, we can pick up on these things.

And as I see the word Eremos, I know I've seen it before as we're studying through Luke.

And the picture that comes together so far surpasses anything I could have imagined in preaching these two verses.

And so I want to go back to Luke chapter 3, and I want to start painting this picture for you.

Luke 3 · chapter mention

Here's how Luke 3 starts.

In the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, God's word came to John, the son of Zechariah, in the wilderness.

And he went into all the vicinity of the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah, a voice of one crying out in the wilderness.

John the Baptist heard from the Lord in the Eremos, the same word, the wilderness.

And he executed his ministry in the Eremos, the same word in the wilderness.

But there's more.

Because as we studied through Luke chapter 4, what we saw, let me remind those who were there, let me inform those who were not.

Luke 4 · chapter mention

What we see in this passage of the baptism and the temptation of Jesus is we see Jesus intentionally contrasting the Exodus.

And what Luke is showing us in this snapshot is that Jesus is the new and greater Moses, he is the new and greater Exodus, he is the new and greater Israel.

Everywhere that they failed, Jesus will prevail.

And so Jesus is baptized right on the edge of the Eremos.

And watch what happens.

Then Jesus left the Jordan, that's his baptism, full of the Holy Spirit, and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness for 40 days to be tempted by the devil.

He ate nothing during those days, and when they were over, he was hungry.

The same word.

Eremos, wilderness.

I've told you this before, might be a good reminder.

During Jesus' time in Israel, the people of Israel, the Jewish people, they read a very specific version of the Old Testament called the Septuagint.

The Septuagint is the Old Testament in Greek.

In the Septuagint, the Greek word used all throughout the book of Exodus for the wilderness is Eremos.

It's a direct call.

Remember the parallels.

The Israelites had to go through the waters of the Red Sea to go into the wilderness.

Jesus goes through the waters of his baptism and is led by the Spirit into the wilderness.

The Israelites wander for 40 years, Jesus stays for 40 days.

The Israelites immediately are tempted by hunger, and because Egypt is in them, they lose faith and want to go back to Egypt.

Jesus fasts for 40 days and he is tempted by hunger and yet he stays faithful.

40 days.

Last year we fasted together for 24 hours.

Some of us did 48 hours.

Yo, we are from San Antonio.

We don't go 24 hours without eating food.

It was tough.

It was tough.

Jesus did 40 days.

In Matthew's gospel, we learn that Jesus was so depleted, so empty of human resource, that angels came and were ministering to him in his time of need.

Three times by the devil himself.

And so we know that and we learned that, and I preached that.

But here's what you need to see today.

When Jesus came out of his 40 days and left the wilderness, he wasn't done with the wilderness.

He kept going back.

And we've actually already seen it.

Just a couple of weeks ago, we read the first time Jesus starts doing miracles in his ministry.

It's also in Luke chapter 4, starting in verse 40.

Luke 4 · chapter mention

It says, When the sun was setting, all those who had anyone sick with various diseases brought them to Jesus, and as he laid his hands on each one of them, he healed them, and also demons were coming out of many of them, shouting and saying, You are the Son of God, but he rebuked them and would not allow them to speak, because they knew he was the Messiah.

And when it was day, he went out and he made his way to a Eremos.

He went to the wilderness.

Now I know that you know this now.

There are no coincidences in the Word of God.

Amen.

Luke is setting up a pattern in Jesus' life.

He has this whole section from Luke 3 to Luke 5, 16, where again and again Jesus is utilizing the wilderness.

We see two times that Jesus escapes to it to pray.

There are no coincidences.

Both times Jesus leaves the crowd, dips out, gets alone in the wilderness.

Both times are when his popularity is peaking.

Both times are when the world is tempting him.

To not stay on his mission, but to stay in Capernaum.

To not head towards the cross, but to head towards an earthly crown.

Get the throne without the thorns.

Take the easy route.

Quit building the kingdom of God.

You could build your own kingdom right now.

And when Jesus is tempted, listen, by the same temptations of Egypt.

Earthly power, earthly influence, earthly comfort.

Where he goes is to the Eremos.

You know, one of the things that we do is we flatten out the scriptures.

We don't have good attention spans because Instagram has like melted our brains or whatever, I guess.

And so people like to fight about politics and science and culture, but most people don't know much of anything about those topics.

They just know talking points that are neatly packaged for them by people who are paid to manipulate you.

So that's not what my sermon's about.

I just think you should know that because that's how life is working for us these days.

And so it's like very, very, very nuanced, complex issues.

It's like, here's a talking point for the Republicans and a talking point for the Democrats.

Fight amongst yourselves.

And nobody actually knows anything about anything.

And the sad thing is, Christians are doing the same thing with scripture.

It's why we're gonna take apparently like 16 years to go through the book of Luke.

Because if I don't do anything else at Metachurch, we're gonna get a fully rounded picture of who our Savior is.

And one of the things that we bring to Jesus because we like it flat and we like it in a sound bite is we know Jesus didn't sin.

We know that.

And we don't go into the nuance of what that means.

We just live, most Christians, actively viewing Jesus as if his life was just kind of like skating through all the problems of life.

Temptations, temptation towards money, temptations towards lust, temptations towards pride, that they just all bounced off of him.

He was just made of Teflon, nothing could touch him.

And you need to know this, that's not true.

And if you don't understand that, you don't understand the burden that Jesus actually bore on your behalf.

Because the burden was not just the nails, the burden was not just the thorns, the burden was not just the cross, the burden was stepping out of perfection, where day and night his glory was sung, and into our pain and brokenness, and being tempted and tried in every single way as you and I, and not giving in to any of that temptation.

One of my favorite verses, I quoted a lot, Hebrews 4.15, says, For we do not have a high priest, that's just the metaphor Hebrews is using for Jesus.

We do not have a high priest who's unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who's been tempted in every way as we are, and yet without him.

So any way you have been tempted, Jesus has also been tempted.

And likely none of us have ever come under the temptation of a wave of popularity, power, and status like Jesus had everywhere he went.

You can be king today.

You don't need a cross to become king.

We'll make you king today.

Who's going to stop you?

You have all the power.

Temptation.

I'm calling this the temptation of Egypt.

The temptation to be comfortable and to live for this world and to focus on kingdoms right here on earth, even though you and I were created by our heavenly Father to live our lives for a kingdom that will last forever.

And isn't it interesting?

Both times in Luke, so far that we see Jesus tempted by Egypt, he runs to the wilderness.

Let me remind you how God used the wilderness.

In the wilderness, God empties the people of Egypt and fills the people with faith.

His life's not too important to get alone and pray.

Now Jesus never sinned, so Egypt was all around him, and the temptation of Egypt was on him, but Egypt was never in him.

He never sinned.

And I'm not Jesus, and you aren't either.

So Egypt isn't just all around us in our culture pressing in on us, it also gets in us because we have all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

Which means if Jesus needs to get alone, to be emptied of Egypt, how much more so do I need to get alone and get emptied of Egypt?

The wilderness is a place of emptying, and it's a place of filling.

Jesus doesn't eat for 40 days, he is empty, he is deplete, and yet, right before he starts his ministry, Luke writes, then Jesus returned to Galilee.

This is immediate.

He fasts for 40 days, and then he returns in the power of, in other words, filled with the Holy Spirit.

We're a generation that is filled with Egypt.

We're filled with the things of this world, worldly ambition, anxiety, comparison, cultural sexuality, political idolatry, success metrics, noise, distraction, envy, pride.

We're filled with Egypt.

I can remember early in my walk with the Lord, uh, I wanted to be filled.

I wanted to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

I wanted the power that obviously comes with that.

I wanted clarity.

I wanted to have my identity in Christ just like filled with that identity, filled with purpose, my life to be filled with meaning.

And I was missing this key, crucial step.

God has a very hard time filling something that is already full.

The great prophet Elisha in the Old Testament, he has met with a widow who has nothing.

She's about to lose her home, she's about to lose her son.

He says, What do you have?

She says, Nothing.

It wasn't true though, and Elisha could tell.

What she had was a little bit of oil.

Not enough to do anything with.

Now she had a lot of oil.

She could take all that oil to the marketplace.

She could sell that oil, she could pay her debts, she could live her life.

But all she has is a little bit.

So Elisha says, I want you to go to every house in a five-mile radius.

I want you to bring every container you can find, but there is one stipulation: the container has to be what?

Empty.

She finds every container she can, and the little bit of oil multiplies and fills and multiplies and fills, and it fills until every single container is full.

And when they are full, the oil stops pouring.

I need you to understand this.

You are never empty.

Empty's not an option.

When you're burnt out and you're at the end of yourself, and life has really pulled everything out of you, you may say, Oh, I'm just, I've got nothing to give, I'm so empty, I'm so alone, I'm so you're not empty.

You're full of worry, you're full of doubt, you're full of fear, you're full of anxiety, you're not empty, you are full.

You don't get to choose whether or not you are filled up, but you do, by the power of God, have the opportunity to choose what you are filled with.

And if you are not intentionally filled with the Spirit of God, you will be accidentally filled by the kingdoms of this world.

You will be filled by Egypt.

This is a crucial step in our life that many of us miss.

We must empty ourselves.

And the reason that so many of us are hesitant to do this is because the place where you get emptied is the wilderness.

God has told us to cast all of our anxiety on Him.

You know what that requires?

It requires pausing and going into prayer and asking God to search you and coming face to face with the sources of your anxiety, which are likely some of the most painful things that you have ever lived through, and you're not willing to give up your anxiety, not because you don't want God to have it, but because you're not willing to.

Face the source of it.

You're not willing to walk into the wilderness where God can empty you.

I'll tell you one of the most painful things that I do on a daily basis is confess my sins to the Lord.

And I do it because I know God's grace is enough, but I'm just I'm gonna be real with you.

The older I get and the longer I live, two things happen.

Number one, the sins I still deal with, the older I get, the more I get the sense I should have put this to death by now.

And the longer I live, the more I understand what Christ has done for me.

And so it's very painful to come and confess my sins to my Lord.

But you gotta walk out into that wilderness.

And you gotta name what you're going through and what you're filled with.

And God will take it from you.

He will use the wilderness to empty you.

And once you are empty of Egypt, He can fill you.

He can fill you with faith.

He can fill you with identity, He can fill you with power, He can fill you with purpose, He can fill you with destiny.

I wonder when the last time you asked God intentionally to empty you.

I wonder when the last time is that you were willing to get into a space where you could confront the things you have allowed your life to be filled with.

We're gonna spend some time doing that today, but before that, uh there may be some of you here at our venues or maybe even watching with us online, and you've never taken the first step of faith.

You still don't have a relationship with God, and scripture tells us that comes through putting our faith in Jesus.

Let me tell you what Jesus did for you to help you make the right decision, which is to put your faith in Him today.

There's a hymn recorded in Scripture from the early, early church, and it goes like this Jesus, who is in his very essence God, did not consider his equality with God as something to exploit against us.

What does that mean?

It means he could have been king, he could have been emperor, he could have been dictator, he could have taken over the world, he could have done it by force, he didn't.

Here's what the hymn says instead, he emptied himself, and he came in the likeness of a man.

He humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Jesus did not take the throne, he did not take the crown here on earth, he chose the cross because Jesus knew that the cross was the only answer to my sin and your sin.

And all he asks from us is that we would put our faith in who he is and what he's done.

And if you have never done that, my guess is the Spirit of God is already pressing in on your life.

That is the love of God reaching into you, calling you into relationship with your Heavenly Father.

And I'm going to suggest as strongly as I know how that you surrender, that you humble yourself, and that you come into a relationship with your Heavenly Father today.

As we close across our venues, if you'd pray with me, you just bow your head and close your eyes right where you're at.

Create a little bit of space.

If you are one of those people I was talking to, you have never had a moment in time where you've put your faith in Jesus, right now, with everyone's eyes closed across our venues, I want to ask you to simply raise your hand.

This is gonna take a moment of courage.

Amen.

Amen.

For those raising your hand, today can be the day of new life.

And so if you are ready to put your faith in Jesus for the first time, I want you to leave that hand up.

Keeping your hand up, this is a symbolic gesture that just says, today I am choosing to put my faith in Jesus.

Every hand raised, I need you to know scripture says God sees and accepts your faith, forgives your sins, and has now given you eternal life.

And all I want to do is help you acknowledge this through a very simple prayer for the hands that went up.

I'm gonna ask you to pray this with me, and I'm gonna ask every believer at our venues to pray out loud as well.

Let's pray like this.

Jesus, today I choose to put my faith in you.

I believe you are God that you died for my sins and rose from the grave.

I thank you for loving me and forgiving my sins.

So glad you joined us for today's message.

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