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00:00:01 [Applause] [Music] today's scripture reading is taken from matthew chapter 4 verses 1 to 11. then jesus was led by the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil after fasting 40 days and 40 nights he was hungry the tempter came to him and said if you are the son of god tell these stones to become bread jesus answered it is written man shall not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of god then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point
00:00:45 of the temple if you are the son of god he said throw yourself down for it is written he will command his angels concerning you and they will lift you up in their hands so that you will not strike your foot against a stone jesus answered him it is also written do not put the lord your god to the test again the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor all this i will give you he said if you will bow down and worship me jesus said to him away from me satan for
00:01:22 it is written worship the lord your god and serve him only then the devil left him and the angels came and attended to him this is the word of god morning fbc today we're gonna be looking at a very important topic temptation temptation affects all of us but we're gonna be looking at it in the temptation of our lord jesus christ and see how he handles it and perhaps this provides a template for our own spiritual struggles chapter 4 verses 1-8 let's start with the word of prayer lord we ask that you be with us this morning
00:02:04 help us have the word illuminated for us so that we would understand it and we'll be able to understand what temptation means and how we could overcome it in our fight in our spiritual struggle we ask for jesus sake amen now let's look at the passage then jesus was led up by the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil and after fasting 40 days and 40 nights he was hungry and the tempter came and said to him if you are the son of god command these stones to become loaves of bread here we have a situation
00:02:37 where jesus right after the baptism in which the father said this is my beloved son that's the most important thing that come out from that jesus led into the by the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil after fasting 40 days and 40 nights 40 days 40 nights is significant because 40 years is where israel was tempted in the wilderness right so it's trying to retrace the steps of israel it's just like if you look what's in the news today you've got the new president coming in president biden and then the old
00:03:13 president going out president trump and what the new president is going to do when he gets back into the white house he's going to look at every single order which donald trump has given and he's going to reverse it the only way he's going to reverse it and he's the only person who can reverse it because he's the next president he goes back the same place in which those orders were given in the white house and he reverses every single one and in a sense that's what the meaning of repentance is david and suzanne adams talked about
00:03:43 repentance repentance is metanoia change in mindset and the most important thing that we need to understand to receive god's kingdom coming is to repent which means stop looking at adam and start looking at the new king the new king is jesus established in matthew chapter 1 through his genealogy linked all the way back to king david he was emmanuel in the messiah and then he acted as israel saved out of egypt brought into the wilderness baptized to identify with israel so jesus as it was retracing the steps of the old adam
00:04:20 because he's a new adam and he's the true israel adam lost edom and wound up in the wilderness and what's happening is that jesus from the wilderness retracing those steps and reversing the order and bringing mankind back into eden and we're going to look at three temptations which are common to all of us every single one of us experiences it's a temptation to self-gratification temptation to self-esteem and temptation to self-exaltation the first temptation is a temptation to self-gratification we're
00:04:57 tempted to fulfill our desires apart from god's will the tempter came and said to him if you are the son of god command these stones to become loaves of bread here you have a situation where adam and eve was tempted in the garden of eden with every desire fulfilled they've got the best food the best food the best environment and jesus was tempted in a situation where he's got every desire denied and he didn't have a wife he was all alone and the focus of temptation is always on desires desire the flesh
00:05:37 desire the eyes and the pride of life now if you look at this cartoon the two dogs and the first dog is not going to be tempted by the apples because dogs don't eat apples it's an issue of nature he's looking at the other dog because he's got this roast chicken and the question that pops to mind in terms of the temptation of jesus can he really be tempted because we read in james that god cannot be tempted with evil and he himself tempts no one so how can this be a legitimate temptation where jesus is trying to retrace the
00:06:11 footsteps of adam and do better so we have this issue of the incarnation where god becomes man taking upon himself complete humanity could he be tempted and could he actually sin let's look at the process of temptation and sin now james says each person is tempted he's lured enticed by his own desire and then desire when it's conceived gives birth to sin and sin when it's fully grown brings forth death desire sin death now desire is neutral big panda looking at a whole basket of bow nothing wrong with that you tell him
00:06:54 those power is stolen then it becomes sinful sexual desire looking another woman when your wife is standing next to you not a good idea you get all right sinful desire looking at your own wife that's normal desire desire is actually neutral the difference is one is within god's will and one is not then you've got external sauce external sauce or temptation in this case it's satan the tempter comes in all right in the garden of eden the external sauce is also satan says to the woman did god actually say you shall not eat
00:07:28 of the tree in the garden so both is the same now jesus temptation and our temptation is a little bit different because jesus and us we have an external source satan comes into our lives and offers temptation to us preying on our feelings and our desires but for us we actually have an external internal source an extra source this is basically our own sinful nature romans chapter 7 22 for i delight in the law of god in my inner being but i see in my members another war law waging war against the law of my
00:08:06 mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my member so that paul saying inside my body there is another source of tension that makes me want to sin the same as david and bathsheba remember that the episode in the bible where he wakes up in the morning it takes one accidental look and he says oh beautiful woman taking a bath without any clothes the first look is neutral it's temptation sec then instead of covering his eyes and running back he takes a second look the second look
00:08:38 is due to his sinful nature that's lust so the internal sauce did jesus wake up in the morning and is so hungry that i think i will disobey god and i will turn a stone into bread that would have been the case if jesus was exactly like us having a sinful nature but he's not he didn't have a sinful nature you've got legitimate desire for hunger what's wrong with jesus making bread but jesus said as it is written man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of god the point is jesus is unlike any
00:09:18 of us he's fully god and fully man if he had succumbed to that temptation and made use miraculous means to turn stone into bread what he would have done he he would have no longer been obeying this in the strength of his human nature alone when jesus was tempted he had been tempted faced the full force of temptation with the strength of his human will and human ability all right and if he was actually to employ divine means that means he would not have been truly tempted so he would no longer be obeying in the
00:09:56 strength of a human nature alone hebrews chapter 4 says for we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are yet without sin and hebrews fully says jesus was fully tempted right let's go back to john matthew chapter 3 where john's having a conversation with jesus and he's actually not happy to to to actually baptize jesus because jesus got no sin in fact john said that would have prevented him saying i need to be baptized by you
00:10:30 you know and you come to me but jesus said to him let it be so now for us it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness then john considered what did john with jesus mean when he said to to john to fulfill all righteousness what does that actually mean well it means that jesus assuming the role of the new adam because the old adam failed miserably in the best of circumstances jesus comes in the worst of circumstances under and is basically being tempted and he says paul says romans 5 19 for as by
00:11:03 one man's disobedience that many were made sinners so by one man's obedience many will be made righteous he's retracing the steps the only difference that he will be obedient where adam was disobedient and so what happened what's happening here is that jesus work applies to us or is vicarious his righteousness is both in death and in life he lived the perfect life of obedience in every dimension of the law so that that righteousness could be imputed on us and he died to pay for our penalty he lived
00:11:41 to live the kind of life of our righteousness he could easily come and and and fast-tracked himself right to the cross and died but that wouldn't that he wouldn't have lived a righteous life to fulfill all righteousness so let's get back to matthew chapter three and matthew chapter four matthew chapter three and four matthew chapter three god says this is my beloved son with whom i am well pleased why is he well pleased because it's testifying that jesus is god's son in glory which means because he's
00:12:13 god's son the life that he lives and the death that he dies is efficacious for the whole of humanity if you and i die you only die for yourself but because he's god's son in glory his death and his life can be lived for us and in chapter four he goes and be tempted because he to show that he's god's son in obedience so that in this way he fulfills all righteousness which he can give to us now second issue with jesus temptation is that yes he could be tempted by could he actually sin could jesus sin well we have a unique
00:12:55 situation in in the incarnation where jesus has full humanity which means he's got the limited ability fragility wrecked with desire and a human will and on the other hand is he knows all knowing all powerful with the divine will but this is where he's tempted but could he have failed there is a mystery there's interaction between the divine will and the human will in such a way that jesus could not sin right he could be tempted but he could not sin because the divine will would have interacted with the human
00:13:30 will as it were but does that make his temptation any less real compared to us take a look at these two pictures that's us we try to lift the weight but we fail and that's jesus lifts the entire weight and is successful which person faces the full force of the weight well the person that faces the full force of temptation is jesus because he's successful in overcoming we have given in to the temptation so therefore we never face the full force of temptation which jesus actually faced which person faces the full force
00:14:08 of temptation jesus in the desert alone where every desire is denied or adam and eve where every desire is fulfilled jesus faced the full power of temptation now let's look into temptation temptation always has an external source satan all right he provides the deception and internal desires it requires participation from us from what we feel and god gives us god-given desires which are basically neutral desire for food sex glory beauty and and they are given to us so that we would be able to use them
00:14:51 in a direction that's directed towards god so if you take the food that god gives it provides nourishment you go nice and strong if you use your sex and it provides you of love companionship and family if you use this desire for glory you give glory to god desire for beauty you use it to worship and appreciate god in his creation in this world now there's another direction in which we can direct our desires our desires can be directed towards ourselves and that is called sin all right and we're always tempted to go
00:15:27 into that direction where we'll be controlled by the desires rather than desires controlling us and so therefore if our desires have taken over us the desire for food becomes gluttony desire for sex becomes lost desire for glory becomes pride desire for beauty becomes obsessive materialism so desires were never meant to be guidelines desires are given and feelings are given to god by god to us to become gauges it tells us where you are it shouldn't take over and tell you where to go right remember
00:16:02 having a gauge a fitbit the fitbit tells you how fit you are how many steps you have taken see whether you're gonna die next ten years or not it gives you some idea of your health but your fitbit can also be a a a guide where you are actually controlled because you have made instead of 10 000 steps you've got 99999 so therefore it forces you to do the extra one step it can be a guideline rather than a gauge but it shouldn't be if we are controlled by our feelings as disastrous this is harry schoenberg and
00:16:36 he actually testifies as a christian counselor and he says god's action is severe in that he gives us over not only to our desires but to a condition of ungovernable desires we demand god steps back he chooses to regulate our lives rather than to honoring and obeying if we choose to regulate our own lives rather than to honor and obey god we will lose the ability to regulate our desires and so what's harry somebody saying that if we give in to our desires we will find that our desires become unleashed
00:17:12 unfettered uncontrollable and they will in the end control us this is a big controversy nowadays this idea it's an article on cnn about being gender fluid this young woman from california um is basically telling us in certain circumstances she feels like a male the tone in my voice does change it becomes a bit more forward my voice drops a bit i've been told that i walk really masculine i puff up my chest when i'm walking and then when she feels like she's in a safer place she becomes more feminine as
00:17:45 she says my voice gets a little higher i drop my shoulders i allow people to just get closer to me emotionally and in a physical way for me for for me in particular when i'm in touch with my feminine side i feel soft so few minutes in a day she's females few minutes a day she's male but if you take that feeling and you actually act on it gender surgery then you will find a mutilating kind of surgery where a man becomes a woman a woman comes a man and it's a longer study on this particular kind of surgery
00:18:20 showing us that these are controls people who haven't gone through any surgery these are the death rates and these are death rates of people who've undergone gender surgery and you find that the suicide rate of the people who acted according to feelings is 20 times greater than the normal person we cannot follow our feelings we cannot be controlled by our feelings this is professor paul mcew an expert in transgender surgery he's from the john hopkins university school of medicine he writes transgendered men do
00:18:48 not become women nor do transgender women become men all including bruce jenner become feminized men or masculinize women counterfeits or impersonators of sex of the sex of which they identify in that lies their problematic future this is why many of them actually kill themselves here we actually have satan coming in the form of a snake and there's a deception he says you will not die when you take of the forbidden fruit and that's the deception on the other hand that deception will not work unless
00:19:26 there is participation in our desires and and and so when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise you see the eyes desire and basically to make one wise that is self-gratification you've got this and then sin is giving birth the power of temptation is self-gratification the feeling that i will be happier i will be better off if i give in to my feelings and here the deception is where satan comes to jesus and says
00:20:03 if you are the son of god that means do you i mean one chapter ago his the father just said you are my son and here satan say if you are my son and so therefore that's a deception and then that's a deception on the table and jesus looks at the piece of stone turning the bed bread is good you know it's a win-win situation you're self-gratification you're hungry all right and you also prove your identity so that's the deception but jesus said this it is written man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that comes
00:20:36 from the mouth of god now when i was much younger look in this passage it always dawned upon me i thought that you know you got to really be good with scripture scriptures like a gunslinger you got the right temptation you pull out the right verse palm you're able to survive no if you look in the background scripture needs to change your dna how will you actually instinctively react when temptation comes it can't be something that you remember it's scripture has so permeated your being that it changes how you feel
00:21:05 jeremiah chapter 15 your words were found and i ate them and your words became to be a joy and a delight of my heart for i am called by your name so therefore when the word of god comes to jeremiah it brings joy delight he savors it he feels good on the other hand when he interacts with other people because the word of god has so changed his dna i did not sit in the company of revelers nor did i rejoice these are sinners i sat alone because your hand was upon me you have filled me with indignation
00:21:39 where is my pain why is my pain increasing and my wound incurable so he's totally uncomfortable when he sees sin in society right has the gospel true metanoia to true repentance is when the gospel has changed our mindset instead of looking at adam we're looking at christ imagine you receive a boatload of money that was the first thing you think are you happy right why are you happy happy because you go ahead and buy the new mercedes-benz five series or seven series if that's the case then the gospel
00:22:11 hasn't changed your mindset if you're happy because finally you have the means to be able to make a difference in the kingdom perhaps help some uh poor children's home or commit to the spread of gospel somewhere else that means your mindset has changed what about a promotion when you get one is that purely financial or has the gospel change your mindset and that you instinctively think i could use this for the sake of the gospel and the kingdom for jesus it was trust in god's word god said to him this is my beloved son
00:22:48 of which i'm well pleased and that was fixed in his dna and god's will the spirit is the one that sent him into the wilderness you in in land of america it's called the land of free in the home of the brave and recently you can see a whole bunch of people thousands actually attacked their own capital buildings like attacking our parliament house and they were all led by a deception the deception is that we're actually fighting for freedom and before this there was actually a good interview um by rachel maddow and cnn
00:23:21 and they actually interviewed a professor of history from yale called timothy snyder who wrote a book called on tyranny and he said you can't lie your way to freedom if you indulge in a big lie if you believe in the big lie if you act on the basis of a big lie you are not really free you are the creature of somebody else what he's saying is that in terms of tyranny you could tyrannize an entire segment of the population nation simply by telling lies and the people who believe your lies are no longer free
00:23:55 here you actually have a whole bunch of them in the capitol building are they really free no they're not they belong to him because they've bought into his lie jimmy snyder continues this is the problem with this country is that we have defined freedom as doing the thing you feel like doing saying the things you want to say whether it's true or false but when you take part in these big false stories you are not really true and this applies to us the big lie is by satan big deception is by satan
00:24:26 we think that we follow our feelings we are truly being free we can have sex with anybody we like we can lie as we like as long as we give in to our feelings if you do that that's not really freedom you are not really free you are enslaved to the one who owns you with a lie and that's satan so we need to embrace our desires they're not wrong but we use them the glory of god we need not to be controlled by them they're a gauge of where our hearts are but they're not a guideline of what to do we need to experience them within the
00:24:59 parameters of god's word and we need to understand that our desires are not going to be completely fulfilled now there are foretastes of what god has got in store for us in the future so that's the first temptation self-gratification there are two temptations we'll deal with it fairly quickly temptation two is temptation to self-esteem and here we have jesus brought to the holy city which is jerusalem where god's presence is and even much holier you go to the temple and he takes it right at the
00:25:32 top of the temple and said if you are the son of god throw yourself down for it is written and his quotation from psalm 91 that he will command angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways on their hands they will bear you up lest you strike your foot against a stone that's god's promise and jesus said again it is written you shall not put the lord your god to the test and here you actually have jesus putting god on the spot because here at the temple the temple is a place where it symbolizes the presence of god
00:26:03 here you add the entire nation of israel the place that most symbolizes the presence of god is in temple and he's at the top and the devil is asking him well you know if you are the son of god just throw yourself down i mean what do you achieve throwing yourself down there's nothing that you can achieve you achieve nothing at all it's done just to prove what god had already told you god already told jesus in john chapter matthew chapter 3 verse 17 this is my beloved son and now you come out in the desert after 40 days
00:26:33 of you know of pressure you're you're gonna have to prove yourself to yourself what god already done it forces god to act and god is like your genie it transfers power from god's will to your faith it's like you rubbing the genie bottle and forces god to come out to give you your three wishes it's like suppose suppose imagine you were given the rank of a general in the army and in order to believe you have the rank of general you have to walk into the army camp three times a day and have people salute you and then you
00:27:12 believe you're the general if i would tell you you were general i'll give you a badge you wouldn't believe it and what's happening here is that it's self-esteem it's not faith he's actually asking jesus to throw himself off to prove to jesus himself what jesus has already been promised by god that he is god's son so it questions god's presence and manipulates god's promises and we do that don't we we want demonstrations of power with signs and wonders this pastor e w jackson who is basically a mega church pastor in the kovite 19
00:27:46 crisis he says i'm not gonna get the coronavirus i'm not gonna give anybody the coronavirus because i can't get it because i've talked to god about it i've taken my vaccine my vaccine is psalm 91 i'm free of this mess so his vaccine is not from modern pfizer or the cyanovac his vaccine is psalm 91 and psalm 91 says because you have made the lord your dwelling the most high who is my refuge no evil shall be allowed to befall you no plague will come near your tent he's taking this promise and that is his protection
00:28:24 and the jews did that in the past is a jewish amulet silver amulet and emblazoned on this silver emulate would you keep it for your protection is psalm 91 however pastor e w jackson actually got covet 19. when he got kovit 19 he said so when i make these professions what i'm what am i doing i'm striving for the highest standard i can reach when i fall short in this case it's not god's fault it's not god's fault it's actually i don't have enough faith so now we have a situation where faith is actually elevated all right actually
00:29:01 what he done is actually he's misread scripture verse 15 assam 91 says when he calls to me i will answer him i will be with him in trouble i will rescue and honor him you see the verse there i will be with him in trouble which means you can get in the trouble and the deception is they've misused this particular verse and that's what's happening all over the world with the prosperity gospel where my faith in god's promises is elevated above god's will if i have enough faith then i could do miracles the last
00:29:37 temptation is a temptation to self-exaltation this is quite straightforward the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory and he said to him all these things i will give to you if you will fall down and worship me quite straightforward the devil is now going for the kill all right if you look this is when jesus is totally deprived and hungry he's offering him splendor not suffering he's alone with wild animals offering him significance and not obscurity
00:30:08 he's waiting for his ministry and the devil saying look i can give you you can become the king of the world straight away instant results nothing accomplished so far jesus started and he said to him power to do what you really wanted to basically rule the world that's the appeal but the problem is that this is a shortcut it's a painless shortcut he doesn't have to live and die on a cross he's saying everybody has a price and jesus christ also has a price but the price is loyalty submission dependence and obligation to
00:30:43 satan which is beyond what jesus is willing to pay all this i will give to you if you will fall down and worship me and the same thing is a deception given to the woman okay you will be like god as it were and jesus said to him be gone satan for it is written you shall worship the lord your god and only him shall you serve worship means fall down physically serve his serve so therefore what satan is doing is trying to get him to exchange the father's smile for the devil's grin short-term gain and that is to exalt
00:31:20 himself the challenge for us this morning is you know in the old days when they were gonna slaughter cattle it was a noisy affair the cattle were very unhappy being dragged in and then they will be killed and there's a lot of noise a lot of trouble a lot of anguish and nowadays you've got modern ways for which you slaughter cattle there's a big ramp and the cows are made to feel contempted and comfortable they go down a gradual shoot until they're there one by one and something squeezes to the side to make
00:31:57 them comfortable until they actually go on to sort of convey a belt where the feet don't even touch the ground and finally the head pops up on one end they're trapped and the gun goes here and they die that's what temptation is like you act it's so gradual you feel so comfortable and you're not a you're not aware of the danger you're actually in you know during the uh french campaign of napoleon to to to russia they were actually defeated by the russian winter the french troops were coming back and many of them
00:32:33 died of the cold and how they would die is to get so tired they fall down and they fall down they will fall asleep if you fall asleep they would actually die and the officers would come and try to wake them up and try to say don't fall asleep don't fall asleep and the men would say to them for the love of god go away and let me sleep but if they let them sleep they would freeze to death and the point is temptation is like that temptations come so subtly in our lives it's all over the place and we're not even aware we're
00:33:05 comfortable and contented like the cattle being led to slaughter or we just want to be let alone just leave it alone the greek word for temptation is periasmos did you know the greek word is the same word whether it's temptation or whether it's trials exactly the same i was wondering why god uses the same word for both things because the temptation is a source it's different it comes from it comes from satan a trial the source is from god in order to strengthen us but the trouble is both temptation and
00:33:38 trials although from different sources have the ultimate same end they i authenticate or strengthen our faith in the end we're going to be looking at a lockdown we look at kovit 19 thousands of cases every single day and for many of us it'll be you and jesus at home we've stripped away all your friends strict away all the fellowships some of you don't even go to salgo some of you have no internet and it's a time where we are actually alone it will be your wilderness it will be our wilderness this is where the reality our
00:34:17 faith is made real with our faith be strengthened and authenticated during this trial or would we actually fail if you look at genesis chapter 38 and genesis chapter 39 there are two characters put side by side one is joseph every day he's being tempted by portugal's wife who throws herself on him to get him to commit sexual immorality on the other hand you've got and joseph is a slave he's got no money he's got no status he's not even a human being he's a slave and judah on the other hand has called
00:34:56 all the money all the wealth and what does he do the one who is in the best position just like adam and eve with garden eden with every every wish fulfilled he actually has sex with a prostitute which turned out to be his daughter-in-law and joseph in the midst of neediness and poverty no money he did not deny god he survived the temptation and in his reward got thrown into prison but after that god raised him up to be the prime minister of egypt and through joseph just because he kept his zipper
00:35:32 on didn't give in to sin he actually saved not only egypt but the nation of israel from which the messiah now comes and saves us see temptation and the overcome temptation is so crucial our spiritual lives are at stake you know the greeks have very interesting legends the two legends they're out from the alien one is ulysses and the sirens the other one is jason the argonauts and what happens that in a ulysses is one of the heroes who comes back from the trojan wars and they're going to go to a
00:36:05 particular part treacherous part of the sea where there are a bunch of what we call sirens which are beautiful women but they're deadly they'll sing a song and if you actually listen to their song you'll go mad and you'll crash your ship and you will basically die in the place where the sirens are lots and lots of skeletons of men and women of sailors have crashed and and ulysses and his what he did was he actually made beeswax and put into the ears of all his sailors so as they rode their ships through they couldn't hear
00:36:42 because they couldn't hear the sirens the girls singing they weren't tempted and they could stay the course for jason he for ulysses he wanted to hear so therefore what he did was got his soldiers to tie him onto the mast and as they sang he heard he was tempted he started struggling and the ropes tore at his flesh but he survived because he was torn down see that's one way of handling temptation you either don't see don't hear or you tie yourself down but you can't really see the world in all the reality
00:37:14 the other greek legend is that of the argonauts and jason they went through the same channel through the sea i experienced the same temptation the only difference was they brought along a chap called orpheus and orpheus had a beautiful harp and he played the song and instead of listening to the deadly song and the music of the sirens would have killed all the all the sailors they listened to the beautiful music of orpheus and his harp and they were able to see the world was not obscured to them and
00:37:48 this music guided them through now that's the picture of us as christians isaiah 26 verse 7 says the path of the righteous is level straight god you make level the way the righteous in the path of your judgments oh lord we wait for you your name and remembrance are the desire our soul see god makes our path straight through temptation but we your in our hearts your name and remembrance are the desires of so we need to love him we need to be so encapsulate captivated by the love of god we hear his song in our lives remember
00:38:30 this beautiful old movie where we've got jean kelly starring in this singing in the rain the song that we sing like the song from orpheus determines how we respond to the world because we are hearing the song of jesus christ you see every temptation is assault on sonship matthew chapter 4 if you are the son of god twice yourself if you are the son of god see temptation is because because satan can't attack the father so he has attacked the son he has to attack all of us he's trying to diminish our sonship you see obedience
00:39:10 is evidence of sonship revelation 3 9 the jews were supposed to be the sons of god jews were supposed to be the chosen people of god and jesus said to them behold i make new i will make those of the synagogue of satan who say they are jews but not but they lie the jews are not sons of god the jews belong to the sons of satan that's what he's saying so sonship is actually not genetics sonship is actually obedience so jesus is not just a template he's the he's actually the vehicle all of us right now
00:39:45 since then since we have such a high priest who has passed through the heavens jesus the son of god let us hold fast our confession for we do not have a high priest who's unable to sympathize with our weakness but one with every respect has been tempted as we are yet without sin let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in a time of need it's jesus temptation is not just an example to follow he actually is a vehicle through which we
00:40:17 can undergo spiritual warfare this is how we draw near we draw near when our desires are fulfilled in him we need to find our desires fully met in jesus christ we need to have our self-esteem founded on what he has done and what his word is to us and we need to have our glory to be his glory in us and this is how we draw near our own identity was how popular we are how godly we are how clever we are how much we have achieved how hard working we've been you know how much have you sacrificed or how big is your church that's our old
00:40:55 identity repentance is a change in mindset repentance is our new identity is what christ has done for us that is the only way we overcome temptation
