PYHO: Weak Spots

So I'm about to do something that I've never done at the start of a message.

You're supposed to drink water.

Oh my gosh.

I love Diet Dr.

Pepper.

And uh I brought it on stage with me for that very reason.

If if you're a friend of mine and you know me well, like if you worked here at the office, um, I've got one of these on me pretty often.

And I just want to say this.

I know it's horrible.

I know it's bad for you.

I know that the word diet is like a complete and total lie, that it does it's not healthy in any sense, in any way.

If something has an ingredient that you can't pronounce, you probably shouldn't have it.

But it's just good.

It's it's good.

And I have a weakness for diet, Dr.

Pepper.

Anyone else have like a weakness for soda or for something else like that?

Anybody at all?

Okay, cool.

So every single week I tell myself, I'm done.

I'm done.

I'm I'm done.

I'm that's it.

I've gone months at a time without, but but I just keep coming back.

I just keep coming back.

And what happens, it's the same story every time.

I'm like, I'm I'm done.

I don't need this stuff.

I know it's not healthy, I know it's not good for me.

Um I I need to like drink water, you know, like humans are supposed to.

That's important.

But then I go to Quick Trip.

And like once I walk into Quick Trip, it just starts calling to me, you know?

And that's when the real battle begins.

Like the real battle's not will I or will I not?

I decide really fast, yeah, I'm gonna get a doctor pepper.

Um, the real battle is in what form?

Because you've got choices, and I've thought through this, right?

Like you can go fountain, you can go bottle, you can go can, and they each have their perks.

Fountain, you get volume, right?

You know, you you get like have you seen the size of like the extra larges at racetrack and quick trip, places like that?

Like it don't make it, they don't make any sense.

It's like 72 ounces of fluid.

It's larger than your body can hold, um, but it costs like less than the small one.

I don't know how it works.

It's like, hey, pay 70 cents, you basically pay a penny per ounce.

That's what you pay.

And so if you go fountain, you get volume, but then you don't get consistency because you know, every fountain machine's a little different.

You don't know if this one's gonna be too fizzy, not fizzy enough.

It's just, it's a gamble.

All right?

Some of you guys, you're risk takers, so you're probably fountain drink people.

Um if you go can, you're sacrificing some volume, but you're getting temperature control because there there is nothing that keeps temperature like an aluminum can, right?

So if you get it out in a can, it's it's gonna be good.

You've got like a solid hour where you can drink it and enjoy it.

The bottle, that's where I tend to go.

Because I feel like you get enough volume and it's consistent in its temperature.

You've only got about 30 minutes to drink it before it's like room temperature, but for that 30 minutes, you're you're good.

And so, with that said, I got a few bottles of this this morning on my way here.

You know you're addicted to something when your eyes water a little bit the first time you take a drink.

Pray for me.

Um but no, no, I just wanted to share this with you because I have a weak spot for this, and we all have weak spots.

Every single one of us has a weak spot for something.

Every single one of us has something that we are powerless to, or at least we feel that way.

It may not be reality, like you don't own me, but I could quit you at any time.

I'm just saying that out loud.

But we feel powerless.

I've got a lot of things like that in my life, I'm sure you do as well.

If you get the emails that we send out, I mentioned in the email this week, Chaco tacos are a thing that I have a weakness for.

If you've never had a Chaco Taco, it's it's not a real taco.

It's a waffle cone shaped like a taco shell, stuffed with vanilla ice cream, fudge, and topped with chocolate.

It's amazing.

I ate them when I was a kid, and then I went like seven years without having one because I became an adult.

And one day I'm in Quick Trip, which I recognize as a theme in my stories.

You're like, does this guy just live at Quick Trip?

There's always a Quick Trip somewhere.

Um, I go in there and I see a Chaco Taco in the little freezer and I and nostalgia kicks.

You know, nostalgia's powerful.

And so I'm like, you know what?

It's been a long time.

And I'm gonna grab one of these.

I said to myself, it's probably not as good as I remember.

Oh, people, it's better.

It's so good.

It's so good.

I ate one and I was like, this is amazing, and I'm not I'm not exaggerating.

Every day for like the next 10 days, two weeks, every day on my way home, I went in and got a Chaco Taco from Quick Trip.

To the point where the guy working the counter started looking at me kind of funny, and it was very shameful.

Like I got to this point where I couldn't make eye contact with him.

I'd just like walk up and be like, you know, go out and get my chocolate.

The last day that I, when I realized I really had a problem, I walked in and they were out.

And it was the only dessert that they were out of, like in the freezer.

Everything else was pretty much fully stocked because it wasn't even the summertime.

It was like like mid-fall.

Um, they were out.

And I thought to myself, did I eat all of these?

Like, did I just single-handedly wipe out the stock of a gas station's Chaco Tacos?

And I'm pretty sure that I did.

And that's that's probably not healthy, you know, so I had to pull back.

Point is this we all have weak spots.

We all have things that we're easily tempted by.

We have ones that that are kind of funny to talk about, ones that we can say out loud and laugh about.

We have ones that we'd rather not mention at all, but we all have weak spots, we all face temptation, and today we're gonna talk about that.

Now, for some context, we're in a series right now called Pyho, P-Y-H-O, it stands for prayer your heart out.

We're talking about prayer because we want to be people who pray like we're meant to pray.

We have a God and he listens to us and he answers our prayers.

We're told in Scripture, James chapter 5 says that the prayer of a righteous person, meaning someone who's been made right by Jesus, the prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective, but rarely will you hear people describe their prayers as powerful and effective.

James 5 · chapter mention

That's meant for all of us.

We want to be people who pray the way that we're we're meant to.

And so we're in this series called Pieho, pray your heart out.

We're doing two things.

Number one, we're praying.

Because if we want to be better at prayer, we've got to pray.

You will forget what you hear, you will remember what you see, but you will learn what you do.

And so if we want to get better at prayer, we've got to be people who pray, and we've been committing to pray for one another more than ever.

In fact, I want to talk real quick and show you how we're doing that practically.

Uh, if you have the His Hands mobile app, if you don't download it, but if you do, there's a section in it that says pray.

And when you click that button, you're gonna see three options.

One says, pray for me.

You can submit a pray request.

One gives you a chance to tell us when God has answered one of your prayers, and the other says, I will pray.

That's you committing to pray for people here.

When you click that, you're gonna have the option to download another app.

Uh, and this is amazing.

This is something that we started using really recently.

I'm gonna show you guys on the screens.

This is called the Echo Prayer app, and it's so cool.

It's so cool.

If you download this and search for His Hands Church, it's gonna pop up as a feed, okay?

So just search His Hands, it's really intuitive.

And once you are subscribed to His Hands, this is all the prayers that have come in this week alone.

This is you guys.

This is our people.

This is us.

All the things going on in people's lives, and you can just thumb through this and you can click on one that really seems to stick out to you per se.

You can read it.

There's a little option here at the top right where you can click and it says pray.

And actually, when you do that, it lets us know that it's been prayed for, which is really cool.

Okay.

Um, you can also just decide that you want to pray for uh for like all of them.

So you can just go ahead and hit pray, and that brings this up, and then you can just start sifting through them and pray for whatever it is that you want to pray for.

Just spend five, six minutes.

In fact, there's even an option in this that allows you to set a timer, and you can say, hey, I want to pray for five minutes, and just hit that for five minutes, just go through and pray for these.

But we want to commit to praying for one another, and this makes that really easy to do.

We'll update it every single week.

So download that.

Let's start praying for one another.

That's that's awesome.

Um, so we're praying for one another.

We're also learning how to pray, and we're doing that by by listening to Jesus because, well, we're Jesus followers, so that's what we do.

And Jesus happens to actually teach on prayer, which is really cool.

We have a God who helps us learn how to pray.

We've said this before, I think it's important to mention that religion, which is not what we're about, religion is where God demands much but gives little.

In religion, God demands everything but offers no help.

That's why religion is a burden.

In fact, Jesus actually went to the religious leaders of his day and he said, You put a burden on people that's too heavy for them to carry, but you don't lift a finger to help.

God is the opposite of religion.

He gives more than he ever demands.

He gives us so much more than he asks in return.

So he may ask us to pray, but he gives us everything that we need to do it.

He gives us the example, he gives us the tools, he gives us his Holy Spirit so we can really connect with him.

And Jesus loves us enough to actually give us an example.

He allows us to be able to learn from him and to model what he does.

And so in Matthew chapter 6, he says three powerful words.

Matthew 6 · chapter mention

He says, Pray like this, and then he says these words after that.

May your kingdom come soon, may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us today the food that we need, and forgive us our sins as we have forgiven those who sin against us.

And don't let us yield to temptation, but rescue us from the evil one.

And so we've been going through this prayer piece by piece, and actually today we're at the end.

Today we wrap it all up with verse 13, which says, Don't let us yield to temptation, but rescue us from the evil one.

Temptation is a reality that we face.

It is everywhere.

It's inescapable, it's inevitable.

We all get tempted.

Not one person in this room, not one person in this world is immune to temptation.

It's just that temptation looks a little bit different for all of us.

Like I said earlier, sometimes it's, you know, Diet Dr.

Peppers and Chaco Tacos.

Sometimes it's things that are a little bit more serious.

Sometimes it's infidelity, sometimes it's pornography, sometimes it's financial dishonesty, sometimes it's substance abuse and addiction.

It comes in a variety of forms.

But it affects all of us.

Every single one of us is affected by temptation.

Even if you're someone, by the way, who doesn't believe in God and in all the spiritual stuff, you can't deny the fact that people seem to be easily tempted to do things that they either believe are wrong or suspect might be.

Like it's normal for us as people to even be able to go, I don't know if this is right or wrong, but I'm doing it.

Like I'm compelled to.

That's because we are easily tempted.

And temptation is all around us.

It comes in a variety of forms and shapes.

Sometimes we get tempted by people we we know.

Sometimes it's people close to us that actually tempt us to do things that maybe we're not comfortable with.

In fact, sometimes it's the people that we know the best, people that actually love us, that tempt us the most.

It's not like they're doing it on purpose.

It's just that they love us so much that they have no way to be objective about us, so they give us really bad advice.

That's why it's so important to have mentors in your life and people you trust that are not like in your family, because sometimes your family, they just think way too highly of you.

And uh and they're not gonna be honest with you.

I'm I'm teasing, like halfway.

But honestly, I've had times where I'm talking to someone who I love very much, someone that I'm really close to, and they'll say something like, Someone just tried to airdrop a picture of a puppy to my phone.

No, no, no, no, no.

No, don't do that.

See, someone knew that my phone was connected up there and they're trying to be funny.

People?

I would have never done that to the guy who used to be the pastor here, just so you know.

Come on, respect.

So, um, you know, sometimes like like I'll have someone in my family and I'll tell them, I'll share frustration with them, and they're like, you know what you ought to do?

You ought to go up to that person and say this.

That's what you ought to do.

You ought to, you ought to quit.

You ought to just walk away.

They don't know what they've got.

You gotta walk away, that'll make them feel it.

And that's like really bad advice.

You know, you should just quit your job because they don't treat you right.

Like, no, no, no, no, no.

Go get a new job first, and then maybe thinking about quitting your job.

But sometimes when you love someone, you're so passionate about them that you accidentally act as a tempter to them.

Jesus experienced that.

Like he understands that dynamic.

In fact, in Matthew chapter 16, we have this really interesting story of Jesus and one of his friends.

Matthew 16 · chapter mention

His friend's name is Simon, but it becomes Peter in this story.

It says, When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, Who do people say that the Son of Man is?

Well, they replied, Some say John the Baptist, some say Elijah, others say Jeremiah or one of the other prophets.

And then he asked them, But who do you say that I am?

And Simon Peter answered, You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.

Jesus replied, You are blessed, Simon, son of John, because my Father in heaven has revealed this to you.

You did not learn this from any human being.

Now I say to you that you are Peter, which means rock, and upon this rock I will build my church, and all the powers of hell will not conquer it.

And I'll give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven.

Whatever you forbid on earth will be forbidden in heaven, and whatever you permit on earth will be permitted in heaven.

And then he sternly warned the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.

From then on, Jesus began to tell his disciples plainly that it was necessary for him to go to Jerusalem, that he would suffer many terrible things at the hands of the elders, the leading priests, and the teachers of religious law.

He would be killed, but on the third day he would be raised from the dead.

But Peter took him aside and began to reprimand him for saying such things.

Heaven forbid, Lord, he said, this will never happen to you.

And Jesus turned to Peter and said, Get away from me, Satan.

You are a dangerous trap to me.

You are seeing things merely from a human point of view, not from God's.

So Peter goes on a pretty interesting journey in this story.

He goes from getting it right, like you're the Messiah, and Jesus goes, ding, ding, ding, you're the winner, and he gives him a cool new nickname.

He says, Now I'm going to call you the rock, which is super awesome.

That's very masculine and manly, you know?

And so Peter's like the winner.

He's the best.

He says, Upon this rock, not meaning Peter, but the declaration that Peter made, upon this rock, I will build my church.

And then just a few minutes later, Peter is now Satan.

He says, Get behind me, Satan.

What's going on?

Jesus is not saying that Peter is the devil.

In Hebrew, the word for adversary is Satan.

And so Satan to us has become a name and a title, and it's totally fine for us to call the devil Satan.

We'll talk about that here in a second.

But what he's saying to Peter is right now, you are acting on behalf, essentially, accidentally, unwittingly, of the devil.

You're tempting me to do something that God doesn't want me to do.

Sometimes we experience temptation from people that we love and that are close to us and they mean us well.

They don't mean us harm, but they don't see things the right way.

Jesus gets that.

Sometimes we get tempted just because there's some urge inside of us.

No one's in our ear, no one's around us telling us to do something to break our conscience.

It's just something inside of us has an urge and we seem to need to satisfy it.

I watched that in my children.

I've watched my two-year-old Judah for no reason whatsoever look at his older sister who's playing, minding her own business, doing nothing to him, and just punch her.

For no reason.

I've watched it happen.

I've just watched him look at her and just right like that.

And I'm like, what is wrong with you?

Like, what are you doing?

And he just wanted to.

You know?

He just looked at her and he said, ah, that's a punchable face.

I'm just gonna punch that girl real hard.

And he does that.

You know, my my youngest Eli, he crawls around on the floor and he has this knack for going to the thing that he shouldn't have.

Well, all these toys, all these things that light up and make noises, and you know, they're for him.

They've been designed, I expect, by some expert who knows what babies would like to play with.

They I don't know how they test this, but you know, I trust them.

And yet he'll just go away from that and find something sharp and pointy.

Why is that?

Why is it that he has this urge to go to something that he shouldn't have?

We have temptation that just comes from within.

We all know what that feels like.

So does Jesus, though.

See, that's what's so cool.

When Jesus talks about temptation, when he teaches about this, he understands it.

Because he went through it.

He went through it.

Hebrews chapter 4, verses 14 and 15 says, So then, since we have a great high priest who has entered heaven, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold firmly to what we believe.

Hebrews 4:14

This high priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same testings we do, yet he did not sin.

So Jesus experienced every type of temptation that we could experience.

He experienced it all.

He didn't sin, he succeeded where we fail, but he knows what it feels like to be tempted.

So when he talks about temptation, we can listen.

We can listen because we're listening to someone who gets it.

I love the fact that Jesus gets me.

I love the fact that we have a God that understands us.

He understands our weaknesses, he understands our temptations, and when he teaches us about it, we should listen.

In this prayer, Jesus reveals something about temptation that we often forget.

He understands things about temptation that are really easy for us to lose sight of.

I want to go back to verse 13 in Matthew chapter 6.

Matthew 6 · chapter mention

Don't let us yield to temptation, but rescue us from the evil one.

And guys, keep that up for just a second.

This is a really interesting verse.

Because in some translations, it doesn't say evil one, it just says evil.

Don't let us yield to temptation, but rescue us from evil.

And you may be familiar with that translation.

You may have heard that phrase before.

But that kind of gives us this idea that evil is just a force in the universe.

That evil and temptation, they're like gravity.

They're just something that's around us, something that affects us, but they're sort of nameless, faceless, they don't have a personality, they don't have a will, they're just a thing.

That's not what Jesus is communicating.

In fact, the reason that this translation says the evil one is because in the Greek language that Jesus spoke, the original language, he said evil in this thing called the nominative case, which is a fancy grammar term for like proper noun.

Okay, so when he said evil, he he would have capitalized it in our language.

In fact, the most the most word-for-word translation would be us saying, rescue us from the evil.

The evil, which doesn't really make sense in our language.

But make no mistake, he's per he's personifying evil.

He's connecting temptation to a person.

And that's why he says the evil or the evil one.

He's talking about the devil.

He says, Lord, help rescue us from the temptation that we're going to face at the hands of the tempter.

Now, a few months ago, we did a whole message about the devil, and then we did a whole follow-up podcast about it because it's a big subject.

I don't want to get into all of that, but I will say this real quick.

So important for us if we're gonna deal with temptation to understand this concept.

We live in a time when believing in the devil is not as popular as it used to be.

It used to be like super popular.

You know, when you think about the stereotypical person who believes in the devil, it's it's like always a southern, in like movies and stuff, it's a southern, ignorant person who's like the devil, you know?

And it kind of makes you feel like you're an idiot if you believe something so silly.

We just live in a time when even in the church, a large percentage of Christians don't believe in the devil as an actual entity, as a person.

The idea is we've just invented this as a way to personify evil because we we need to do that as people.

And I'm not here to tell you what to believe.

That's actually not my job.

And so if that's something you believe, I'm not here to tell you that you're wrong.

That's not what I'm here to do.

My job is to pray and to study scripture and tell you not what I believe or what you should believe, but what Jesus believes.

And what I can say with confidence is that Jesus 100% believes in the devil.

There is absolutely no way to read the teachings of Jesus and walk away with the conclusion that he did not believe that there is a person, a force, with a will and a mind named the devil, called the devil Satan, whatever word you want to, Lucifer, whatever title you want to give him.

Jesus absolutely believed in the devil.

He talked about him often.

For example, in John chapter 8, Jesus is really challenging the Pharisees, and he's not pulling any punches.

John 8 · chapter mention

These were the religious leaders who were so hypocritical.

He says, You are the children of your father, the devil, and you love to do the evil things he does.

He was a murderer from the beginning.

He has always hated the truth because there is no truth in him.

When he lies, it is consistent with his character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.

Now, does this sound like Jesus speaking metaphorically?

Or does this sound like Jesus describing someone he knows?

Absolutely.

Jesus believes in the devil.

So here's why I say that.

I'm a Jesus follower.

I have committed my life to him.

I'm a disciple of Jesus.

When you're a disciple of someone, it means that you do everything you can do to get your way of thinking to line up with theirs.

That you get yourself oriented with them, not the other way around.

And so as a Jesus follower, Jesus' words matter more to me than anyone else's.

As a Jesus follower, what Jesus says carries more weight with me than what anyone else says.

And there is simply no way to read the teachings of Jesus and walk away with the conclusion that he does not believe in the devil.

And so Jesus connects temptation to the evil one, our real adversary, to Satan.

When he speaks about that, he's actually speaking from personal experience.

Because Jesus was tempted by Satan himself.

Like in the flesh.

We see this story in Matthew chapter 4.

Matthew 4 · chapter mention

It's a really interesting story.

If you read Matthew, early on, Matthew chapter 3, Jesus gets baptized.

Matthew 3 · chapter mention

And just like we had Bella get baptized, and Connie in the first service got baptized, such an amazing experience.

With Jesus, it was really cool.

Because when he comes up out of the water, the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, comes upon him.

God the Father speaks and like audibly says, You are my son, I love you, you bring me great joy.

And then right after that, Jesus goes to be tempted.

Chapter 4, it says, Then, meaning after he was baptized, Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted there by the devil.

Now, sometimes this verse creates confusion.

Doing the tempting.

But that's not what it says.

I just want to be really clear on that.

Who's the one doing the tempting?

The devil, right?

The Spirit leads him to the place where that's going to happen.

And the reality is that Jesus is being tested.

He has to be tested.

We'll all be tested.

God is never the author of our temptations.

God is never going to offer us something that is not good, something that is not healthy, something that is not right.

God is never our tempter.

But God does allow us to be tempted.

He does allow us to be tested.

He does not allow us to live in a bubble where we never have to face temptation or testing of any kind.

He lets us get tempted.

That's what's happening here.

Jesus had to be tested.

Because if he was going to die as a sacrifice for our sins, then he needed to actually defeat temptation in order to have any claim over that.

So he goes to the wilderness, which was a desert, to be tested.

It says, For forty days and forty nights he fasted.

He became very hungry.

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

But Jesus told him, No, the scriptures say, people do not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.

Then the devil took him to the holy city 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.

And Jesus responded, the scriptures also say, You must not test the Lord your God.

Next the devil took him to the peak of a very high mountain, and he showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory.

I will give it all to you, he said, if you will kneel down and worship me.

Get out of here, Satan, Jesus told him.

For the scriptures say, You must worship the Lord your God and serve only him.

And then the devil went away, and angels came and took care of Jesus.

I love this story.

I love it.

It's one of my favorites.

And I love it because Jesus just dismantles, just dismantles Satan in every turn.

And Satan, he's kind of bringing out the big guns here, you know?

He's tempting Jesus with things that no one that I know has ever been tempted with, like, you know, all the kingdoms of the world.

That's a pretty big temptation.

And Jesus just dismantles him.

But but in this story, Jesus, again, he's giving us this example to follow.

Just like he's doing when he prays.

And he says, pray like this.

Jesus is showing us how to handle Satan himself.

He's showing us how to handle our tempter.

And he's revealing some things to us that are so important for us to see.

And this is so exciting because we learn through this story that our adversary, the one who tempts us, the evil one that Jesus prays, that we need to be protected and rescued from, he has a weakness.

Just like we do, he has weak spots.

Just like I feel powerless against, you know, Diet Dr.

Pepper and Chaco Tacos.

Satan is powerless against the truth.

That our enemy has a huge weak spot, and it's the truth.

He cannot hold up to the truth.

The reality about the devil is that all he does is lie.

He just lies.

And if you can understand when you're feeling tempted, that whatever you're feeling tempted to do, when you recognize it's temptation, it's a lie.

It might take you some finagling to figure out what kind of lie it is and why it's a lie, but it's a lie.

You can bet money on it, it is a lie.

All Satan does is lie.

And lies are powerless against the truth.

They're powerless.

Jesus, he just sees it more clearly than we do.

He just doesn't fall for the lies.

And Satan throws some doozies at him.

Like Satan's being really, really subtle.

He's a good liar.

Give him credit.

He's a really good liar, but Jesus sees right through it.

Let's look at a few examples, because I think this is really interesting.

We see patterns in the way that Satan tempts Jesus.

We also see these patterns in the temptation story in Genesis when he tempts Adam and Eve, if you're familiar with that story, Genesis chapter 3.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

And these are patterns that we can learn to recognize in our life.

For example, verse 3.

First temptation.

During that time the devil came and said to him, If you are the son of God, if you are the son of God.

Verse 5 and 6, second temptation.

Then the devil took him to the Holy City, Jerusalem.

There's probably having like a vision at this point, to the highest point of the temple, and said, If you are the Son of God.

Both of the first two temptations begin with Satan saying, If you are the Son of God.

Now, what's Satan implying when he says that?

That you're not.

Exactly.

That you're not the son of God.

And is Jesus the Son of God?

Yeah, I mean, at the very least, the way he's presented in the story, no question.

Because what happens just before this story?

He gets baptized, right?

What did God say to him when he got baptized?

You're my son.

So there it is, clear as day.

You're my son, and then Satan shows up and what does he do?

Yeah, if you are the son of God, implying that maybe you're not.

It's so clever.

Like Satan's so clever, because if Satan just comes in hot and goes, You're not the son of God, Jesus is just gonna refute that.

Yes, I am.

God told me so.

And that's human nature anyway.

Like if you if you come to someone and you try to debate them and you give them a position that's absolutely the opposite of their position, and you just come in strong, all they're gonna do is get defensive.

You're not gonna, you're not gonna move them forward at all.

All you're gonna get them to do is be even more entrenched in their own opinion.

So for example, my biological father is Mike McTear.

If you came to me and said, Mike McTear is not your father, I would say, Yes, he is.

That's just my response.

Like, how dare you?

But if you came to me and you said, you know, if if Mike McTear is your father, shouldn't you kind of look like him?

If Mike McTear is your father, shouldn't you have pictures from like your childhood, you being a baby with him in it?

And I would go, Well, he's my dad.

Like, and then I call my mom, like, hey mom, we've got pictures, right?

Like he's I'm he's there.

You know, I mean, I kind of look like him a little bit.

Like if you look at like my nose and my eyes, sort of, but but other I don't know, like, you know, it's funny how how something subtle like that can just play in our mind over and over and over again.

If Satan had come in hot, Jesus would have just said, no, whatever.

Satan he he lies in this really subtle way.

He did the same thing in the Garden of Eden when he tempted Adam and Eve to eat this fruit that God had told them not to eat from.

He said, Hey, did God really say that you're not supposed to eat the fruit from any of the trees in this garden?

And they're like, Well, no, he didn't say that.

What he said was, well, Satan got him.

Notice that Jesus doesn't engage and try to argue.

Jesus just quotes scripture.

He just responds with truth, but he saw that lie for what it was.

Satan is very clever.

He's subtle.

The best lies are always subtle, right?

I've got four kids.

The cool thing is that they lie all the time, you know, because they're people, but they're not smart enough yet to be very subtle about it.

So it's really funny as a parent.

You know, like that the lies they come up with to explain what's happened, they don't make any sense.

They're just like, like, guys, clearly, you need to, you need to like come together, brainstorm a little bit more on the lie that you're gonna give to me and your mom, because this is just, you gotta get better at lying.

You know?

I really don't want them to get better at lying.

My point is, they're not good at it, and that's a good thing.

Satan is, though.

He's really good at it.

He's subtle, he's subversive.

If you are the son of God, are you really?

Are you really?

Satan doesn't get Jesus.

Jesus doesn't fall for it at all.

Let's go to the first temptation.

Let's look at that.

This is really interesting.

We see another pattern here.

Verse 2 for forty days and forty nights he fasted and became very hungry.

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

Every time he's tempted, he comes at Satan with scripture.

It's important to know.

That's why it's so important for us to know the word.

That's why when we get together on Sundays, we make sure to dive into it.

Okay, because it's truth.

We can bank on it.

But think about what's going on here.

Because this is something Satan does to all of us.

This is how temptation works.

Jesus is hungry.

He has not eaten in a long time.

And so Satan shows up, and what does Satan offer Jesus?

Somebody said food.

Does he?

Thank you.

Rocks.

He doesn't give Jesus food.

Satan doesn't show up with like a basket full of Pillsbury crescent rolls and go, like, hey man, check these out.

They're buttery.

They're, they're, I just, they just came out of the oven, you know?

Like, you want one of these?

I mean, who knows?

Maybe Jesus had just said out loud, like, Father, I'm hungry.

I could really go for some bread right now.

And there's Satan with a loaf of bread.

No, no, no.

Satan offers him rocks.

And I don't know if you've ever eaten a rock.

They're not good.

Like, at all.

You're not supposed to eat those.

But this is so like Satan.

It's so subtle that we miss it.

I've even preached on this before, but like, it's still so easy to miss it.

You read through it, you're like, oh, he tempts them with bread.

No, no, no, no.

He doesn't offer him bread at all.

He offers him rocks, but he does it in a way that almost makes you think he's offering Jesus food.

So many times in our lives when we're being tempted with something, it's a rock disguised as bread.

We might be tempted to believe that it's something really good for us, really healthy for us, but it is not.

It is not because Satan doesn't want you to have anything good.

He hates you.

He hates us.

He's a liar.

He's a murderer.

And so maybe let's use a scenario.

Maybe you've got a situation at work and you're in a tight spot and you want to do the right thing, but the right thing is hard.

And the right thing may not be popular.

And all of a sudden, this other idea pops in your mind, and it's not 100% honest.

But, you know, it's gonna solve the problem much, much easier.

We're so tempted in those moments to believe that that's the loaf of bread, that's the solution, that's what I've been waiting for.

It's a rock.

It's a rock.

Maybe you're in a relationship, you know, you're married, let's say.

And unlike Megan and I, you don't just have 100% perfect uh you know, get along passion romance all the time, like we do, you know, like that it's a rare person that just is married for 13 years and never has a fight and argument, you know.

It's just how it is for me.

It's it's the burden of my life that every day I wake up and Megan just stares at me and says, Wow, you're amazing.

And how many times am I allowed to kiss you today?

Can you remind me of that?

And I tell her the quota, and you know, um, it's just my life.

But but maybe you're not like that.

Maybe you have problems and arguments and fights and you don't understand.

Maybe sometimes your wife says things and you're like, you're crazy.

I don't understand the way you think at all.

You make no sense whatsoever.

What's wrong with you?

Again, not my life.

But like, maybe you're going through a season where you and your your spouse, you're just not connecting.

And it's just, it's not, there's no passion, there's no excitement, there's no fireworks.

Maybe it's been like that for a while, and all of a sudden there's this person at work, there's this person around, and you know, they're really nice to you, and they just seem to always, you know, be on your side, and they're coming around.

And maybe you're like, is this flirtation?

It kind of feels that way, but I don't really think so.

And and you find yourself, you know, defending their character, and you're just like, man, they're just they're great.

And you even start to think, maybe, maybe if my spouse was more like this person, you know, that's a rock.

That person is just a human-shaped rock.

That is not a loaf of bread.

See what I'm saying?

Like, Satan, he offers us things that would destroy us.

What would have happened to Jesus had he eaten a rock?

Like he had a real body, he had actual intestines.

Like, what would happen if Jesus would have eaten a rock?

You know?

Like it would have been, it would have hurt.

Satan wants you to hurt.

He wants to offer you things that damage you.

He just gets you to believe that it's a good thing.

No, no, this is a good thing.

That's what he does.

It's subtle, but it's a lie.

Skip ahead to the final temptation.

We'll we'll move forward and wrap up.

Oh, by the way, this is cool.

Sorry, almost skipped this.

This is important.

Matthew chapter 7, verse 9.

Matthew 7:9

Jesus is talking about how good of a parent and a father God is, and he says, You parents, if your children ask for a loaf of bread, do you give them a stone instead?

I just love that.

Because I'd read that so many times, never connected it to this story, but Jesus is speaking from experience because Satan offered him a stone.

I just love that.

That's cool.

Okay.

Third temptation.

Satan takes Jesus up to the top of some mountain.

It's a vision, it's not an actual mountain in this situation.

There is no mountain in that area that you can see the whole world from, so it's like a vision.

And he says, Hey, if you will follow me, if you'll bow to me, I'll give you everything.

I'll give you all the kingdoms of the earth.

Okay.

This is huge.

This is something Satan does all the time.

Um who is Jesus, according to Scripture?

Ultimately, who's Jesus?

He's God, right?

And what does God own?

Everything.

Right?

God owns everything.

He owns the earth, he owns the universe.

So Jesus is the king of the heavens and the earth.

He's the king of all creation.

The Bible says he is the king of kings, the lord of lords, right?

That one day every knee will bow, every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

He owns it all.

And so what does Satan do?

Satan tempts him.

He says, Hey, if you do this, I'll give you this.

Jesus already has that.

So often when Satan lies to us and we listen to our lies, we begin to believe that we're missing something that we actually already have.

If you read the story of the temptation in the Garden of Eden, Genesis chapter 3, I believe, if you read that, he walks up to them and he says, Hey, if you eat this fruit that God has told you not to eat, you'll become like God.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

Genesis chapter 1, then God said, Let us make man in our image to be like us.

Genesis 1 · chapter mention

So from the beginning, we were created to be like God.

And what does Satan do?

He says, Hey, if you eat this fruit that God told you not to eat, you'll be like God.

They already were.

But Satan in his in his subtle, crafty way of lying, got them to believe that they weren't something that they were.

Satan will get us to believe that we're missing things that we already have.

And that's why we see so many people go off in search of the things that God will give them, that God's put within them.

Sometimes we spend all this energy looking for something outside of us: love, purpose, meaning.

We'll spend all this time searching for it out there when it's in here.

Because if we know Jesus, that means we have the Holy Spirit.

And in Galatians, we're told that the Spirit will produce these things in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control.

That's the fruit of the Spirit.

That's what just grows in our lives when we live connected to God.

But how often do we feel like we have to go find love?

That's the way our culture talks about love.

Our culture doesn't know anything about love, by the way.

You gotta go find love.

Like, where is it?

Where does love live?

You know?

It's just it's out there.

You have to find love.

No, no, no.

You have love.

If you have Jesus, you have love.

You have peace, you have joy, you have everything you need.

You have everything you need if you have Jesus.

God has given us everything we need for life and godliness.

That's 2 Peter.

So Satan will lie to you and he will try to convince you that you're missing what's what actually belongs to you.

He tried that with Jesus.

Jesus just saw through it.

Going to Jesus and saying, Hey, if you follow me, I'll make you the king of the earth.

That's like going to the president and saying, if you do what I say, you'll be the governor of Georgia.

You know, that's not a promotion.

That's not a promotion.

Jesus saw through the lies.

Now it's harder for us to see through them, but I'm telling you, we can learn.

And I believe that it really begins, and worship team, you guys can make your way out.

I believe that it really begins by us just believing that we're being lied to.

Look, even if you don't believe in the devil, just pretend like he's real and he's lying to you all the time.

And it'll help you.

Because if you can actually believe that the temptations that you're facing are lies.

If you can really, deep down inside, believe that every single temptation you have is a lie.

None of it's true.

You'll begin to combat the temptation that you face.

I can think of so many lies that I have believed in my life.

So many temptations and the lies that fuel those temptations.

Number one, I I've I've had the lie of you need this.

You know?

Like your children woke up five times last night between 2 a.m.

and 6.

You need this.

You know?

And actually, I don't.

I need sleep.

Um, real bad.

No, you you need this.

No, you don't.

You need him.

He is what you need.

God has more to give to you than anything in this world could offer.

And so when you have that temptation and you hear that that thought, you need this.

You need this.

No, you don't.

That's a lie.

That's temptation.

When you think to yourself, I can't stop.

I can't.

I can't.

God will look at you and say, Who told you that?

Because in scripture, he says that we are more than conquerors.

In scripture, he says that when we're at our weakest, he's at our strongest.

And so if you hear some some thought in the back of your mind, like you can't, you're powerless, no, that's a lie.

That is a lie from Satan intended to keep you down, to make you weak and susceptible to temptation.

How about this one?

No one will know.

No one will know.

I've had that.

No one's gonna find out.

No one will know.

Years ago, our nation had a president named James Garfield.

And I picture him with a beard, but I can't think right now if that's Garfield or Grover Cleveland.

But one of those dudes had an epic beard, and it might have been a couple of them.

I don't know, maybe both.

Look it up later.

I'm sure there's a picture somewhere.

James Garfield has one of my favorite quotes ever.

Someone in office, someone that was connected to him politically, tried to get him to do something that he did not want to do, did not believe was right, and they told him that no one would find out, no one would know.

And so Garfield replied, Oh sir, that's not true.

James Garfield will know, and I have to sleep with him every night.

See, when Satan says no one will find out, no one will know, you'll know.

And trust me, Satan would love for you to live with zero self-respect, but that's not how God wants you to live.

It's just a lie.

What about this one?

If they find out, if they find out, you'll be done.

That's one that had me bound for years.

You know, I a lot of you guys know this, but I had a 15-year-long addiction to pornography.

It's been almost 10 years that I've been free of that, which is great, but it's 15 years.

And that was the lie in the back of my mind.

Almost every day.

If they find out, if your wife finds out, if your family finds out, if your church finds out, if they find out, you're done.

It's the biggest lie in the world.

If they find out, maybe if you will judge, there's always judgmental people in the world.

But what I want you to know is if you have something that you're keeping hidden, you're keeping secret, because you're afraid, this is the truth.

If they find out, they will forgive you.

If they find out, they will pray for you.

If they find out, they will support you.

If they find out, they will encourage you.

If they find out, they will come alongside you.

If they find out, they will understand and they will help you.

That's the truth.

But if you believe that lie, if you believe that lie, you'll never be free.

All Satan does is lie.

Temptation comes from the evil one.

He lies to us left and right.

But lies do not hold up to the truth.

They don't at all, not even close.

And so, yes, we have an enemy, and yes, we face temptation, but we have a God who is truth personified.

Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

Jesus said, if you know him, you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

That's why it's so important for us to pray what Jesus prays here.

Pray every single day, Lord, don't let me yield to temptation.

When you pray that, what's happening is you're recognizing that temptation will come.

Temptation will come.

And it's a lot less effective when you see it coming.

So when you pray, Lord, don't let me give in to temptation.

That's a recognition that someone is going to tempt me today, that Satan's going to tempt me today, there's gonna be some moment where I'm tempted to do something that does not line up with my heart.

And then when you pray, rescue me from the evil one, it's a recognition that yes, you have an enemy, yes, you have an adversary, yes, Satan is real, and yes, he's good at what he does, but he is not God.

And he is not equal to God, not even close.

Not even a little bit, and you have a God who will rescue you, you have a God who will save you, you will have a you have a God who will lift you up above every temptation that you face.

So pray, pray and say, God, rescue me, help me.

I love it.

It's like we get to be kids, and Satan comes and he tempts us, and we just go, Dad! You know, and then what does Satan do?

He runs.

He runs.

I love it.

This is my my I'm just gonna go to this and we're gonna wrap up.

Verse 11 of Matthew 4.

Then the devil went away.

Then the devil went away.

I wonder what his posture was as he left.

I bet it was much less confident than when he first showed up.

The truth destroys lies.

And when you pray to Jesus, you are praying to the truth itself.

You are engaging with truth.

And that's powerful, and that's real.

So pray your heart out.

Pray every single day.

Be honest in your prayers, be open in your prayers.

Share your heart with God and say, Lord, I need you to rescue me from the temptation that I face.

I need you to give me the courage to stand up to it.

I need you to give me the truth to combat it with.

And he will do that because he is faithful and he is good.

We just need to pray.

And so, with that said, can we pray?

Let's pray together right now.

Lord Jesus, we love you.

We thank you so much for this opportunity to worship together, for this opportunity to be together.

Lord, I thank you for every person in this room.

God, every single one of us is facing something.

Every single one of us has a temptation that is present in our lives.

Every single one of us, Lord, has something that we struggle with.

We all have weak spots.

But remind us that our enemy has weak spots too.

He is not invincible.

In fact, Lord, he is completely and totally vulnerable to your truth.

Remind us, Jesus, that every time you quoted Scripture to Satan, he had nothing to say in response.

Make us people who hunger for the truth.

Make us people who lean on the truth.

Make us people who trust you.

And Lord, we just want to say as a group today that we recognize that temptation will come, that we recognize that we have an enemy, but we also recognize that we have a rescuer.

And we are depending on you, and we know that you will come through for us in our time of need, in our time of trouble, and in our time of temptation.

It's in your name, Jesus, that we pray.

Amen.

Love you guys.