The Battle of Temptation

Matthew 4:1-8

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.

Sermon Transcript:

good morning guys. My name is Pastor Josiah, and I promise that video is going to be relevant, to what we talked about. this morning we’re going to be opening up to the Gospel of Matthew chapters one through eight. You didn’t mishear me. We’re taking a break from our study in the book of Ephesians, and we’re just going to take a one week pit stop here in the Gospel of Matthew.

Pastor Mark gave me free reign to choose any passage as long as it was in the Bible. So I chose this passage here in Matthew 4. It has been, a whirlwind of a week and a half in this passage. really excited for what I believe God has for us, certainly what he had for me. Excited to share it with you all this morning.

But let’s begin our time, or continue our time of worship with, with God’s Word and the reading of God’s Word. Again, Matthew four chapters one through eight. Then Jesus was led up by the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after 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.

But he answered, it is written, man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. And then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, If you are the son of God, throw yourself down for it is written he will command his angels concerning you.

And on their hands they will bear you up lest you strike your foot against a stone. Jesus said to him, Again, it is written, You shall put the Lord your God not to the test. And again 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 I will give to you, if you will but fall down and worship me.

And then Jesus said, Be gone, Satan! For it is written, You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only shall you serve. And then the devil left him, and behold, the angels came and were ministering to him. This is God’s word, church. Let’s pray.

Lord, the words of that last song are just coursing through my mind. Holy forever. Lord, this is your word. This is your truth. This is your beloved son. Lord, I don’t have the ability to bring the truth to hearts. Only you have that ability. And no amount of knowledge, or study,

or time spent practicing a sermon can change. That fact only you Lord have the power to open up your word to us Lord, I pray in Jesus name that you would take the sword of the Spirit that you would cut us deep That you would open up and expose the hidden parts of us that we have yet to bring to you Lord that you would work in us and that through that working new fruit would grow and That all the growth would be out of the love You That comes from the true and one gospel of grace.

We thank you lord And we dedicate this time to you this morning In your name we pray amen So I began our time with a silly video, i was trying to think of a way to kind of illustrate our topic this morning and maybe for some of you the light bulb’s going off a little bit. Maybe all of you are like, yeah, joe, we get it but I think this week when I first watched this video, I found it entertaining for all the obvious reasons.

I mean, watching these poor kids locked in a room, they’re staring down the barrel of a marshmallow. They’re just, you can see them, their whole gaze, one kid tries looking away, but he’s like holding it. And, you can see the silent battle. This, they’re locked in this sort of fierce and silent battle against this irresistible draw of the marshmallow.

And that’s hilarious, but I think Beyond being hilarious, I think there’s a deeper thing that resonates, at least with me when I watched it. And I think if you’re honest this morning, there’s a part of you as well that resonated with it. Because if I’m honest, I relate to the child in that room. No, I don’t have an obsession with marshmallows.

my kids do, but, and maybe, I’m not insinuating that you, haven’t grown out of your, or that you have grown out of this passion for marshmallows or sugar, but there is something that I think you and I have not grown out of, and that’s the battle that raged on in that small room. We have not outgrown it, that being the battle with temptation.

For many of us, as we walk with Jesus, maybe for many years, maybe just for a few short weeks or months, the realization slowly dawns on us that the battle with sin doesn’t end after we become believers, but rather it begins in earnest. For many of you, this may have led to some discouragement, frustration, even doubt, am I even a Christian if I struggle with this sin?

C. S. Lewis, addressed this point beautifully in his famous work, Mere Christianity. He put it like this, No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good. A silly idea is current that people who do not know what temptation means, Good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie.

Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting against it, not by giving in. And you find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by laying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it means, what it would have been like an hour later.

Temptation is not the battle of unbelievers, church. It is the battle of the church. And the more that we resist, the more we learn the full strength and scope of the battle which we are fighting. That’s the bad news. The comfort and the conviction that I am so excited to bring this morning, and what the Lord brought me this week is that, while you and I are no strangers to this battle that we call temptation, our passage this morning in Acts, sorry, not Acts, we’re not in Acts anymore, Matthew chapter 4.

We’re not strangers to this battle, but neither was Jesus. And what I believe from the passage this morning that’s going to bring so much hope and conviction is that Jesus, though he was tempted on a scope that you and I can’t even imagine, being tempted by the devil himself, being offered the world in all its glory, he was yet victorious on every single battle.

occasion. Hebrews 4. 15 says that Jesus was attempted in every way as we have been, and yet was without sin.

My hope this morning is to stir up in us a desire to fight this battle well.

Undoubtedly, there are many of us of which I have been one feeling like we are surrounded on every side and we are losing the battle.

But using C. S. Lewis’s line of logic, far from being oblivious to the true nature of the battle, Jesus, in him, we have an expert. And in our passage this morning, what we’re going to see, church, is that Jesus is offering us a battle strategy. One that we can take, that we can use practically to fight this battle.

And even as Jesus did to find victory, not in our own strength or in our own knowledge, but in the knowledge and power of Jesus. I’m not, I’m not suggesting that we’re gonna bat a thousand like Jesus did. But I am telling you that, that it works. And many of you are living testimonies to this. We can’t fight this battle alone.

We will lose over and over again. But the good news of the Gospel of Jesus is that we don’t have to. We have an advocate who understands this battle better than any of us could even imagine. But we don’t just have somebody who understands, we have somebody who has overcome. And so what I’d like to do is just spend the next 25 minutes We don’t have a ton of time to go through this, but just quickly go through, the truth of this passage, and hopefully some practical applications for us as we do our best to walk, not only to come to Jesus, but also to follow after Jesus.

I’m going to give you a quick roadmap to our study this morning. In journalism, now I’m sure there’s any journalists here, because I’m probably going to butcher this, but in journalism there’s an old adage, I believe, Every good journalist asks the same six questions. Anybody know what they are? Yep. Who, what, when, where, why, and how.

Did I miss one? I always miss one when I was practicing this. There’s six of them. And those six questions really do a good job of getting you started and asking the right questions. Don’t worry, we’re not doing all six, I promise. But what we are doing is three. We’re going to do what? We’re gonna do why, and we’re gonna do how.

What I want to do this morning is start with the simplest of the questions. What is temptation? Once again, many of you, we watched that video and, and we, we saw it, right? We, we saw it in that room. But I think, if I’m honest church, I really do believe that there’s a bit of a confusion in the church about what temptation is and what it is not.

So before we go into the passage and what, what it shows us about both how the enemy attacks and how we resist, first we need to know what are we resisting, what are we being attacked with. What is this religious word, what is this word, temptation? All of us have our own ideas, but I’d like to go to the best possible source for the definition, that being the Word of God.

First, I want to tell you a little bit of what it isn’t though. Temptation is not the same thing as sin. And here’s why I’m gonna walk through this really quickly. Because I think in our minds, unfortunately church, we’re so used to losing this battle, that we start associating sin and temptation as one and the same thing.

At least that’s happened in my life. And where this can sometimes cause problems, and certainly has caused problems in my life, is it gives me an out. Now, what I start to do is I start to make excuses for the sin in my life by calling it simply temptation.

Let me give you a quick example, and we’re going to move quickly here.

Maybe there’s somebody here who’s battling with the battle of lust. And on one particular day, you’ve had these images in your mind running through your mind all day long. And you let them in. and you think about them, and you let them fill your mind, and then you get to the end of the day, and you succumb to those thoughts.

And what you might be tempted to think is that, I, I sinned in the evening, and I was tempted during the day. That’s not what happened. You were letting sin in here, and you called it temptation. I think this is because there’s a simple Explanation for this it’s because we have this sort of misunderstanding that Temptation is the mental struggle and sin is the bodily action Jesus is really clear in his word.

That’s not the case. You don’t believe me Just keep reading in this for one chapter later in the written Jesus’s revolutionary sermon on the mount chapter 5 He says, You’ve heard it said you shouldn’t commit adultery, but I tell you, if any of you look with, look at a woman with lust in your heart, you’ve already committed the sin of adultery.

To Jesus, sin could happen in your mind or in your body. It was a matter of the heart. Sin and temptation are not the same thing. Now, I’m not telling you this to shame you. I’m telling you this from personal experience. But I am telling you this because I want to give us all an awareness of the true scope of the battle that we are fighting.

If you’re not desperate, then you’re not really fighting enough. The Lord wants us humble and desperate. He wants us crying out to Him for help and humility and desperation.

All right, so I told you what it isn’t. What is temptation? And we’re going to move quick, I promise. Temptation is this, and I believe this definition comes out of the scriptures, it’s, it’s my own definition, based off of my understanding, but I’m going to give it to you anyway. I believe it’s, it’s best defined in two ways.

It’s first, temptation is the test of trust between me and God. And it’s the battle of choice between my way and God’s way. The test of trust between me and God and the battle of choice between my way and God’s way.

Some of you are here and you’re like, Joe, I really don’t need a whole definition of what temptation is, brother. I know what it is. Like we don’t need to spend this much time on a definition. What I want to know is, Look, I’m a believer. I’m surrounded on every side. I’m fighting this battle all over the place, and I’m not looking for a definition.

It’s all around me. What I’m looking for is, is a why.

Why do we experience this battle with temptation? Why does God allow this battle of temptation in our lives? What possible reason could he have? Well, now we’re going to start looking more at the passage itself. for some of our answers. I think the first and simplest reason why God is allowing temptation in the battle of temptation in your life

is there are two, actually, there’s actually two reasons. The simplest is, I just said it, is that God is allowing it. We see here in verse one that Jesus isn’t driven into the wilderness by Satan. What does it say there in verse one? The Holy Spirit drove him into the wilderness. And the enemy could not have gotten near Jesus without the will of God allowing it.

That’s not very comforting. Some of you are like, I don’t want to hear that. Tell me why God allows it. And this is where the comfort starts to come into play here. I believe that God is allowing temptation in our lives first to test our trust in Him.

Let me explain. If we go back to the very, verse one of that passage in Matthew chapter 4, and actually verse 2 and 3, we see some interesting words used. When it says, the Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted, that word that’s used there, in the original Greek, the first manuscripts that were found for this, the word is paratso.

The Greek word, paratso. And that word, most scholars believe and recognize, that word actually really means to be put to the test.

And you could be saying, well, that’s a one off, Joe. That’s just talking about Jesus. Well, if you go to the Old Testament, the Hebrew word is masah, which also means to be tested or put to a trial.

The question then becomes, what is being tested?

Is it Jesus strength of endurance? His ability to go without food? No, it’s pretty clear from our passage that it’s to trust the will of God over his own will, to trust God.

And the second part is, God allows a temptation in your life, first, to test your trust in him, and secondly, to prepare your heart for his plans, purposes, and promises. To prepare your heart for his plans, purposes, and promises. And I get this from a little detail in the beginning of the passage. Do you notice the number given?

Anybody? How many days was he in the wilderness? Now, anybody, is that ringing a bell for anybody? Yeah? Yeah? Noah? Come on, call another one out. Say it out loud, come on.

Yep, 40 years in the wilderness. Noah. Moses on the mountain. Fasting before receiving the Ten Commandments. Noah floating over the chaos waters of the flood for 40 days and nights before resting on Mount Ararat and receiving the covenant that I will never again flood the land.

Moses receiving the Ten Commandments after fasting. The people of Israel wandering for 40 years before coming into the land of promise. You starting to see a theme here? Now we see Jesus Wandering driven by God into the wilderness to wander for 40 days You know what happens right after that wandering church

His public ministry He was being prepared his heart was being tested. I don’t know what battle you’re facing this morning, but I know you’re facing one and if you think the only reason that you’re facing it is because You’re a bad Christian. Or because God is unfair. Or because life is just hard. That’s not going to cut it.

But you know what will? Recognizing that a sovereign and good God has ordained that you would walk through this battle to test your heart of faith in Him Amen. And to prepare you for His plans, for His purposes for you, and for His promises for you.

He wants children who trust Him.

And suffering and temptation are the ways that He does it. Learning to trust God’s way over my way. Learning to submit to His will over my will. Not my will, but Thy will be done.

It was the same with Noah, with Moses, and with the people of Israel. God was preparing them. Their hearts weren’t ready. They needed to be tested and prepared. There’s a second reason, though, aside from God allowing it in your life for those reasons. The second reason why this suffering is in the life of a believer is that, simply to put it, there is an adversary.

Now, many of you, the moment I said the word adversary, immediately thought of the devil. And I’m glad, because that is who we’re going to focus on this morning. But I don’t want you to rush past this fact. There’s actually a triumvirate. There’s a, a set of three allies that work together to draw you and me away from God.

Away from his plans, away from his purposes, and away from his promises. And they were present even all the way back in Genesis 3 At the first moment of sin, you know what they were the world the flesh and the devil Let me explain just really quick track with me here church, please. This is so important If the devil came down in the form of a serpent to even to Adam And he, he gave all of his wise schemes to try to draw her away.

If her flesh didn’t desire what he was offering, would it have worked? No. If he didn’t have the fruit of the tree to offer her, would it have worked? He needed her flesh to desire it and he needed the testing fruit to offer.

The temptation is to blame all of our temptation battle on the enemy and not to take culpability in our flesh. And say, no, there’s a part of me that wanted that. You And I took it. I took the fruit. If it’s always the devil’s fault, we don’t take action in ourself, take steps in ourself to let the Lord in to that area and to make it new, to the transforming of our mind.

But I do want to focus on the devil this morning because he’s the main character in our passage. One of the reasons why that is is because he’s the intelligence behind the operation. He’s the one orchestrating it. He’s the general of the other side of the battle. It’s a cosmic battle that’s been raging since Genesis 3.

And though this enemy has had many names, the serpent, the satan, Beelzebul,

his purposes and goals have never changed, church. He wants to sever that relationship of trust between you and God. He wants to stop the plans and purposes and promises of God in your life. That’s his goal. It’s never changed. You Don’t believe me look at look at the goal. What did he want to do in the garden?

He wanted to separate adam and eve from one another. He wanted to separate adam and eve from god He wanted to separate adam and eve from creation

He wanted to put a stop to what God was doing there,

the beautiful relationship of trust between Adam and Eve and God.

Guess what? Even as his goals have never changed, church, his strategies haven’t changed either. If it ain’t broke, why fix it? They work.

And we see the self same strategies used by Jesus in, used by the enemy against Jesus in our passage as he uses in Genesis 3. Hear me when I say this. I want you to really hear me. You know what my main goal this morning is to do? It’s to, it’s to expose his works. I don’t want you to be left in doubt. Is this the enemy or is this God?

Is this just me or is this the enemy? No, I want to expose his works and bring them to light so that you know the enemy that you’re fighting and that you cry out to the Lord Jesus and you use what he has given, his battle strategies to fight this battle. So here’s what we’re going to do. This is the meat and potatoes of our passage.

the how section. This is where we really dig into what the scripture says in this passage about temptation. We’re going to look at two things. How does the enemy attack, and how do we resist? You guys ready? It’s a lot really quick, but I think it’s really worth it. Let’s start with the enemy’s strategies to attack you and to attack Jesus.

The enemy attacks when and where we are weak. Notice in our passage, Jesus has been wandering in the wilderness for 40 days, without food. He’s at the absolute limit of his human capacity. I don’t know how many doctors are in the room, but you probably know better than me, the state of somebody after 40 days without food.

I, it’s at the absolute limit. You’re pretty much at starvation at that point. And to be wandering in the wilderness, it’s a pretty much a miracle that he’s even upright. And the enemy chooses this time to sweep in with temptation. There’s a, there’s a helpful point in this church. The enemy is a predator.

He doesn’t attack you where you’re strongest. He attacks you where you’re weakest. Now, some of you might be like, Well, pride’s my problem, because I’m so good at everything. Well, there’s your weakness.

Where you are weak is where he will go. You ever watch those, those nature specials where the wolves, they’re my favorite animal? They, they, they chase for, just for hours and hours until the, the whole herd is exhausted and then the, the youngest or the weakest is slowly Starts to straggle and then the wolves pounce.

That’s the enemy. Is your marriage struggling right now?

Are you really struggling with the battle of lust? Are you tired and exhausted because you’re overworked? Watch out. He’s coming for that. And if you’re not on your knees, and if you’re not using the things that I’m going to talk about at the end of our sermon this morning, watch out. He’s coming for where you’re weakest.

I’m not saying this out of fear. We don’t need to fear him. But we need to be ready when he attacks. I wish I could explain more about what that looks like, but I believe the Holy Spirit’s gonna interpret that into your heart. Ask him, where am I weak and where is, where, where is, is there a weakness in my defenses?

Because I know he’s coming after me.

He might offer you any number of things. What he’s gonna do though, when he attacks, in that weak point, is he’s going to offer you a way out. Look what he does to Jesus. Jesus has been wandering for 40 days without food. What does he do? What does he offer him? He says, take, take what you need. Take the bread.

Turn the stones into bread. Use your power to take what you need. Sound familiar? You hungry? Eat. You want sex? Take it.

The bottle? Take it. That piece of cake? Take it. Whatever it is. That marshmallow? You want it? Take it. You need it. Take it for yourself. Don’t wait for God to give it. Don’t, don’t take it in God’s timing. Take it your way. Take it now. Eat the fruit.

You’re stressed out from work? Take the edge off. Take it now. You deserve it. When and where we are weak. Okay, the second way the enemy attacks, he attacks by twisting the Word of God. This is really important. We see multiple times the enemy is quoting from the Scriptures. He’s quoting from the Word of God.

Here is the problem, church. We so often are shocked when we open up our Bible and we’re reading a little bit And all of a sudden we might feel condemned. All of a sudden we read one passage and our heart begins to coil within us. And we think this must be God.

Genesis 3, what does he do? Did God really say? that you shouldn’t eat of a tree. He goes right to God’s words and starts to twist them. Because he knows, as a believer, you follow the Word of God. So if he can take it, twist it, maim it, and still get you to follow it, well, it’s no longer the Word of God, but it might be drawing you astray.

The enemy does use it. He uses it multiple times here in our passage to Jesus, and he will use it against you as well, if you’re not on guard. We’re going to keep moving. Thirdly, the enemy attacks with doubt as a weapon. This goes hand in hand, hand in hand, with the twisting of God’s word. Did you notice the language almost in every time that the enemy addresses Jesus here?

If you really are the Son of God. You hear that language? That is the language of doubt. The language of doubt. You know what he said in the garden? Did God really say?

Are you struggling under a haze of confusion and doubt this morning? The enemy is not far off. He’s attacking. And he’s using doubt as a weapon.

This has an interesting impact on us. Remember, the whole goal of the enemy is to sever your trust with the Lord. To start doubting his goodness. To start doubting his love for you. To start doubting his gospel. To start doubting who he is. Start doubting him as a good and loving father. If he can sever that relationship of trust, he can get you to run the other way.

From the thing that you really need. God’s presence.

And rather than being an obedient son, you’re a terrified slave.

We have to choose the trust instead of listening to his lies, instead of listening to the doubt. Notice what he does in one of his temptations with Jesus. He says, using doubt, if you really are the son of God, prove it, right? Throw yourself off this high pinnacle. Throw yourself down and the angels will raise you up.

Prove that God loves you. Make God prove that he loves you. That sound familiar to you?

Friend, it’s the language and weapon of the enemy. Amen.

We do not work in a gospel of striving, but of overflow. A security and identity in who we are as His children. And the enemy hates that trust. He’s coming after it. He’s coming after that relationship of trust. He attacks when and where you are weak. He attacks by twisting the Word of God. He attacks with doubt as a weapon.

And lastly, he attacks with offers of wealth, power, and glory in exchange for worshiping Him. Now, some of you are like, Joe, I was tracking with the intel now. Now you lost me. I have never in my life had the devil come up to me and offer me the world and all its power, wealth, and glory. Never happened to me.

I don’t know about you, but it’s never happened to me. Let me ask you a different question. Has there been a time in your life where you could seek a promotion at work, but all you needed to do was throw somebody else under the bus? Maybe there was an opportunity to make some easy money, but it was. done by breaking the law.

Maybe popularity at your school, but you needed to gossip and put down others. Maybe it’s social media followers, but you needed to dress a certain way and act a certain way in order to get that.

Now, do I think that the devil specifically is assigned to your case? Probably not. He’s not omnipresent, he can’t be everywhere. He’s concerned with maybe some bigger fish to fry than me or you. But one of his little underlings is probably assigned to you. You And you know what? They’re offering their own little mini version of what the devil offered Jesus.

They’re off they’re offering you Wealth, power, glory in exchange for worship. You’re like, I’ve never been offered worship in in the enemy. Maybe some of you have, but most of you probably haven’t. Guess what? You worship yourself? You worship the world? The same thing. The flesh and the world, they’re allies of the enemy.

And if you worship them, you’re worshiping him.

We cannot be drawn in to the devil. Okay, those are the four ways the enemy attacks, and we’ve got about four minutes here to close this up. He attacks when and where we are weak by offering us a way out to gratify our flesh. He attacks by twisting the word of God. He attacks with doubt as a weapon. And he attacks with offers of wealth, power, and glory in exchange for worshiping him.

Now, I hope most of you now are sufficiently desperate to hear this last part. How do we resist? Joe, how on earth do we fight this guy? This cosmic battle that’s been going on for thousands of years, how can I possibly fight? The beautiful reality is that Jesus lays out for us in this passage a battle strategy that is not inaccessible to you and me.

Jesus could have, right off the bat, the moment the enemy came up to him, be like, Be gone, Satan. Guess what would have happened? Satan would have been gone. But instead, He trusted God’s will, and the Spirit’s leading, and instead He showed us, you and I, the way. The beauty of Jesus earthly ministry is He didn’t just tell you what to do.

No, of course not. He showed you how to do it. And this passage is perhaps one of the best examples of this. Alright, quickly, but if you, if you haven’t been taking notes the whole time, that’s okay. Take them now. And I’m not saying because my words, this is, this is from His Word. But I want you to hear this and hear this well.

How do we resist? How do we take victory in this battle? Here is how. First, by being filled with the knowledge of the Bible. Now some of you are rolling your eyes. You’re like, oh, the Bible again. Yes, I know, I need to read the Bible because of what good Christians do. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that the Word of God is your weapon.

And if you don’t take it up, you cannot win. You, you cannot win. Not that you might not, you will not. You will not win. Jesus was overflowing with the Word of God. You know how he answered back every time? Not with his own words. With quotes, it is written, it is written, it is written, over and over again.

Jesus didn’t need to reinvent the wheel. He was filled and overflowing with the living Word of God. And it’s so important for us. I have, I have a quick just, I want to speak directly to you. I wrote this down. I knew, because I knew I needed to say it just how it was written. Men and women of God, this is your call.

This is your battle strategy. Listen to this. Be filled with the word meditate on it with your minds speak it with your lips sing it out with your voice Live it out with your life cover yourself with a blanket of his truth. Is it any wonder you’re losing the battle your sword is dull Sharpen it every day until it can cut through even the toughest of lie and most twisted deception Does it not stir you that the enemy is taking your sword and stabbing you with it?

Does it not goad your spirit that he’s taking the word of god and twisting it and you don’t even You Have yours out. You’ve got to be filled with this word Morning devotionals. It’s not a it’s not a checklist people But in the same way that a warrior has to sharpen his sword each morning to be ready for battle So you need to sharpen your knowledge of the word of god not as a works thing But as a battle that we must fight but now here’s the warning and the second thing we need to do First in our battle.

We need to be filled with the knowledge of the scriptures Second we need to be led by the spirit now. Listen to me here You All the sharpening the world will do you no good if you don’t know where to stick and to swing.

You could have the sharpest sword in the battle, but if you don’t know how to use it, what good does it do you? Here is the truth in Ephesians, we’re later gonna come to a section that says the The Armor of God. And in that section it’s gonna talk about the sword of what, which is, what the word of God is it the sword of Joe.

No, is it the sword of you? It’s the sword of the Holy Spirit. It’s not my sword. I don’t know how to use it, only he does. Why was Jesus in the wilderness in the first place? Who led him there? The Holy Spirit. Church, you could be filled with the knowledge of the word. The enemy’s filled with the knowledge of the word, believe it or not.

He’s a theologian, not a very good one, but he has all the knowledge in the world and it puffed him up.

The Pharisees were filled with the knowledge of the word, but without the knowledge that comes from the Holy Spirit, or rather the understanding. What good is a sharp sword? Sharpen it, learn how to use it by being led by the Holy Spirit. You have Him. If you are a Christian, it’s a guarantee. You are filled with the Holy Spirit, now be led by Him.

Be filled with the knowledge of the Word, be led by the Holy Spirit. And lastly, be filled with faith. Remember, church, the enemy’s goal is to sever your trust in God the Father. Hold on to it, though. He can’t take it unless you give it to Him.

The final thing I want to point out to you is that if In all his strategies with Jesus, in everything he offered. Did you notice, that every single thing he offered, Jesus would one day have? In God’s timing. Did you notice that? I’ll give you, I’ll just real quick play it out for you. The stones turned to bread, he would eat again, just in the Father’s timing, not in his own.

Jesus did not eat for the rest of his life, he ate again. He broke his fast, but in God’s timing. Secondly, and this might be the one where you guys have a hard time tracking, the whole pinnacle of the tower thing, it’s like, well, Joe, he never did that. Yes, he did. He would go to Jerusalem. He would go to the hilltop.

He would cast himself upon the cross and down into the pit of hell and be raised up again and shown to be the Son of God in truth. But he didn’t prove it to put God to the test. God put Jesus to the test. And he was raised up and shown to be the Son. In God’s timing. Amen. Amen. And lastly, the glory, the authority, and the power.

What does it tell us at the end of the Gospel of Matthew? What does Jesus say as a comfort to the believers? All authority in the heavens and on earth has been given to me, go therefore. He received it, everything that the enemy pretended to have, God really had, and offered it to him in his timing. We watched, we began our time this morning, as we close, we began our time this morning with a video, a silly video of kids looking at a marshmallow.

But you know the key of that video? What was the, what was the whole premise? Why would, why would the kid wait? To get a double portion, right? It’s no different here, Church. What God has for you is so much better than what the enemy has for you. It’s so much better. It’s not just being obedient and, and, you know, you never really see the results.

It’s God’s way is better. This isn’t a prosperity gospel. It’s the truth. I’m not talking about money or possessions. I’m talking about Him.

All right, we’ve got to close. Amen. I just want to end with just a simple word to you as we close. If temptation is a test of trust, trust in God the Father and His Son. You can’t win this battle alone, but you can with Jesus, by being filled with the knowledge of His scriptures, by being led by the Holy Spirit, and by being filled with faith.

And when you are, you respond to the enemy, not in an argument, but in a final statement, a finality of faith. Jesus didn’t argue with the devil. He just rebuked the lie with truth, and then moved on.