Mastering the Test
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Mastering the Test
How many of you can identify with these words from your past? All right, class, close your books. Put away your study materials. And I want nothing but a pencil on top of the desk. For many of us, this statement causes a little bit of fight or flight. You begin looking for the door, saying, is he going to pass out a test? Rest assured, I will not be doing so to see how well you've listened this morning. But there were many times when the tests would come and the thought would run through my head. I sure wish I would have studied just a little bit more for this test. Right? Well, even though it's been a number of years since I've been in the educational setting, I still have dreams where I have a test, but I have no idea where the classroom is. I don't remember attending the class the entire semester. And yet people are saying, oh yeah, there's a test. And I remember thinking, this isn't going to go well.
Well, today we're going to be looking at passage of Matthew 4:1-11, that is commonly referred to as the temptation of Christ. And that is an accurate summary for sure, as we will see the devil attempting to entice the Savior to sin. But the same Greek word translated temptation here in Matthew 4 is also translated oftentimes in the New Testament as test. And in fact, we see that when Jesus is tested by the ones who came to him and said, hey, can you divorce a woman for any reason?...called a test. Another time they came to him and said, hey, should we be paying taxes to Caesar?...called a test...same word. And then another time they came to him and said, hey, show us a sign. Do some magic in our midst so we can really believe...again called a test. So I will be using both temptation and test somewhat interchangeably during our time this morning. Another thing I want to point out is God is not the author of tempting us to sin. However, God will allow Satan to tempt us as a test, and Satan is operating in that way. And the world, the flesh and the devil are a problem that we must overcome. So today we're going to look at what is the key to success in withstanding temptations to do evil and prove that it can be done. So we're going to look to Jesus, the pioneer or the author, the beginner of our faith, who is also the perfecter and the completer. He's who we're going to look to today for the perfection in how to do this. I do have a spoiler alert for you, however. Jesus is going to withstand the temptation of Satan and be completely victorious. There's the spoiler alert. He is going to prove that not only will he ace this test, but he'll ace any test that the devil will bring his way. So, let's look now into the background and details of our victorious Lord and learn from his perfect example how to defeat the devil and his tactics in our daily life.
So the first thing I want to look at our first point is the environment of the evaluation, meaning the circumstances, the setting behind this temptation of Satan on our Lord. And to do that, we need to back up into chapter 3, verses 16 and 17, and see that this is following this great event in Scripture where Jesus is baptized, and it says in verse 16 of chapter 3. After being baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove and lighting on him. And behold, a voice out of heaven said, this is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. So this testing follows great spiritual victory, where Christ is declared to be the Son of an Almighty God by a booming voice from God out of heaven. Not only that, but the Spirit of God in the form of a dove rests on Jesus. I couldn't help but think of Isaiah 61, where Jesus said, The Spirit of God is upon me, that he would later read in Nazareth in just a few chapters. We see here a Trinity, a triune God, pictured with God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit, all in one place, and yet three distinct persons all in one. So, this testing is going to occur after this great spiritual victory. The other thing I want us to see in the environment is Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness. The reason that's important is because the devil doesn't have control over how this is going to happen. Satan is under the rule and reign of our God. This is not dualism where we're hoping God is going to beat the devil. The devil is a defeated foe, but here he is allowed just like in Job chapter one, when he appears before God and says, hey, let me mess with job. That's Willms' translation it's not exactly what it says, but it's close. It's the idea. And he has to get permission from God in order to do what he was going to do to Job. So, we see the Spirit is leading Jesus into the wilderness. And then Mark one tells us it was immediately following the baptism. And of course, if you remember our study in Mark immediately is one of his favorite words. Mark is summarizing and moving immediately. But then we also have Luke chapter 4 shed some more light on this temptation. And in Luke 4 it talks about that Jesus was being tempted even leading up to these three main temptations. So,Luke adds that there were temptations that are not recorded, that Jesus was passing all of those. And then Luke is going to record the same three we're going to look at here in Matthew. One other key thing that Luke adds in is that there is the word that there is going to be more testing coming from Satan. It says he left him and was looking for the opportune time. So keep that in mind as we look at the harmony of these Gospels. So not only was he led by the Spirit to the wilderness, but he was also led by the Spirit to fast. And it talks about 40 days of fasting...40 days. The only four that comes into my world of fasting is if I can do four hours at a time often, right? Like I eat breakfast and then can I make it to lunch without eating until I pass by a snack?...but 40 days of fasting. This can be done physically. We know it because Moses also fasted for 40 days when he got the law from God on Mount Sinai. And 40 is often the number of testing that we see in Scripture. 40 is often used in that way. So, he's led by the Spirit to fast. And then another point in this environment of evaluation is the devil appears in person. So the devil in person appears. I contend most of us are never going to see the devil in person. We're not important enough. The world, the flesh, the devil, our own fallen sin nature is enough to trip us up often. So, this idea of Jesus is getting the absolute strongest, most powerful temptation that anybody would ever come close to seeing, Okay? Then the devil appears right before Jesus is about to begin his public ministry. So, we've got this great baptism voice from heaven. This is the Son of God. This is divine. And now he's ready to start his public ministry. And the public ministry begins with private time in the wilderness. And what Satan is hoping to do is derail. Take it off the track so that Christ does not do all the things that he is going to do from here till Calvary and beyond. So, we see this is the environment of the evaluation.
Now let's look at the tactics of the tempter. The tactics of the tempter, Satan himself here, are really not any different. He kind of is the same, uses the same things. And in fact, we can look in 1 John 2:15-17, where the apostle John said this, do not love the world, nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life is not from the Father, but is from the world. The world is passing away, and also its lusts. But the one who does the will of God lives forever. So, we see this description about how Satan works and how the lusts of the flesh are present in temptations we face. Now let's see how Satan uses those basic tricks to try and trip up our Savior. So the first thing, the first temptation we see, look at verse number 3 of chapter 4. And the tempter came to him and said, if you are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread. So the first temptation. Turn those stones into bread. By the way, if you haven't eaten for 40 days and the idea of some fresh bread doesn't appeal to you, I mean, this is a real temptation, okay? For me, when I picture the idea here of turn those stones into loaves into bread, I can't help but think of when I walk into Texas Roadhouse and they have those rolls up here on the ledge that they just have made, and I can go in saying, I'm not going to eat those carbs. And then by the time I leave say, well, at least I didn't eat the whole basket myself. So understand the temptation here is real. It's strong and it's powerful. What does the devil do here is he's actually challenging authority and he's casting doubt on God's goodness. He's like, if you are the Son of God, why don't you turn those things into bread? Did Satan know Jesus was the Son of God? Yes. He wasn't doubting that, what he was basically doing is...I double dog dare you. Trying to get him to do something that he certainly could do in his in his power. All right. But Satan also, I believe, is testing God's goodness in this temptation because why does God have you out in the wilderness here for 40 days and you're hungry, you're starving, you're weak. But I think Jesus is going to give the response to this, that we'll look at in just a minute, that will absolutely give us the way to defend against the devil. So the devil here appeals to physical desires, which is desires of the flesh. By the way, I think about Esau in Genesis chapter 25, when you remember he came in from the fields, and Jacob was in there mixing up some stew. And Esau said, give me some of that...now. And Jacob said, trade me your birthright...all that goes with being the firstborn. Trade me that, and I'll give you stew. And Esau goes...deal. What good is a birthright if I'm going to die anyway? So he doesn't value what God had given him, because the lust of the flesh, the desire for food, overpowered it. Satan does this. Then the second temptation...look what he does in verse five. The devil took him into the holy city, and had him stand 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 so that you will not strike your foot against a stone. So here his second temptation is go ahead and jump. Now some of you that are my vintage, if you thought about Van Halen 1984, that lyric is in there. And it did come to my mind. I jokingly said to Ronald, when I get to that point, I need you to jump up and do a cover of. And I said, no, I was just joking. The go ahead and jump off the wing of the temple. The highest point in the Temple Mount. The Temple Mount is surrounded by valleys and the Kidron Valley. Josephus says that from the point of Solomon's porch to the bottom was some 450ft. To give you an idea of how big of a jump it is. And so in this challenge, first of all, we see that the devil actually quotes Scripture. He quotes scripture. That stuff that's in funny print in your Bibles means it's coming from other scripture. He will command his angels concerning you. This is coming from Psalm 91, verses 11 and 12. But I want to read 11 and 12, and then we'll take a look how it compares to Satan. For he will give his angels charge concerning you, to guard you in all your ways. They will bear you up in their hands, that you do not strike your foot against a stone. Satan left out the part to guard you in all your ways. He skipped that part, but even if he didn't skip the part, he is going to misapply the scripture. He is going to turn it into, hey, you can do whatever you want. Live recklessly, carelessly, selfishly, any way you want to, and God has to bail you out. All right? So, Satan is a master of deceit and he uses scripture. He knows Scripture better than we do, I think in most cases, and he will use it taken out of context and apply it wrongly in order to try and get us off track. So this is one of the devil's tactics. The third temptation that he offers, verse number 8, 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 you if you fall down and worship me. So here he is promising just worship me once. Just bow down and worship me once and I'll give you all of this now. Now this raises the question. Does Satan have the authority to give this to Jesus at this point? I'll answer it this way. Scripture makes it clear that God calls Satan the prince of the power of the air, the God of this world. He calls him the in control of the earth within the restraint of what God allows him to do. Does that make sense? So Satan, in effect, is the one that is ruling and reigning in the world in that sense. However, is it really his to give to Jesus when he is working underneath what God has allowed him to do? And I say, no, it wasn't his to give. But when has the truth ever stopped the devil from making offers or claims or deceiving people? You see, he was more like a sub. He's like God's given it to him with a lease. And then Satan was trying to say, well, I'll give it to you like an illegal sublease. Okay. It wasn't his to give. However, that's what he is offering to Jesus. When he shows him this it says he took him up onto the high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world. Here we can see the devil appealing to the lust of the eyes. Everything that Christ could see. The purpose of this temptation, if you take a look and think about it, Jesus is due all the worship of the world. It is his. He will also have it in full. However, if Satan could get him to jump now to this temptation and say, yeah, let's do it now, he derails Christ again from being able to do everything that he is supposed to do from that point to Calvary and beyond. So he is offering something to get it out of order and destroy the work of Christ. And if he does, we're all hopeless today. The devil loves to change the order of good things, by the way...even in our lives. I can't help but think about the area of physical intimacy. God's given that gift to man and woman coming together as a marriage, united as one. And he gave it for joy and for so many good things. And yet what does Satan do? Says he's just a killjoy. God doesn't want you to have fun. Go ahead. You can have that intimacy now. It's so fantastic. And of course, Satan only paints the part of the picture he wants somebody to see and doesn't picture the guilt, the sin, the abortions. The brokenness that comes with getting things out of order. Our God is a God of order. When he prescribes, this is how he wants it done. That's how it should be done. So we see the tactics of the tempter are very similar to what the Apostle John said in 1 John 2 of what he did to Jesus in Matthew chapter 4. But I want to make a quick detour to Genesis chapter 3. So if you go in your Bible to Genesis chapter 3, we're going to take a look at just the first 7 verses there, because Jesus is going to as I gave you the spoiler alert, he is going to withstand these temptations. And we'll look at that in just a minute. But these temptations of Satan were first tried out on sinless, non fallen humans in the perfect Garden of Eden. And this is how that went down. Now the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, indeed, has God said, you shall not eat from any tree of the garden. The woman said to the serpent, from the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat, but from the fruit of the tree, which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, you shall not eat from it or touch it, or you will die. The serpent said to the woman, you surely will not die. For God knows that the day you eat from it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate, and she gave it also to her husband with her, and he ate. So here you see the same kind of temptation that we're seeing in Matthew 4 done to Adam and Eve in Genesis chapter 3. Look at that beautiful fruit. Look at how good that looks. Yeah, but God said we'll die if we eat it. Ah, you're not going to die. Challenging and questioning authority, putting doubts in people's minds, and then it's going to let you be like God. Uh, Satan loves to get us to want to be our own God. He really does. And I have proven to myself when I become my own God, when Scott Willms becomes God of his life, things do not go well. I am a terrible God. I will justify my own sin, which further moves me further away from the goodness of what God has given me. I have no tolerance for anybody else because they're not like me. I got no mercy, no compassion. But Satan loves for us to think that we can be God of our lives. Here is what happens. Eve says, man, that sounds good, takes a bite of the fruit and then it says, gave it to her husband with her. She didn't have to go looking for Adam. He was right there. All right. And so he takes it willingly, and sin enters the world. So Satan has used this before effectively. But it's not going to be effective this time on Jesus Christ.
So let's look at our third point here of the example of Emmanuel, the example of Emmanuel. First of all, Emmanuel is, uh, it's coming close to Christmas. Emmanuel means God with us. That's what that word means. So let's look at the perfection of Christ here. First of all, notice that Jesus was spiritually strong and prepared. Okay, absolutely spiritually strong and prepared. Why do I say that? Because in Luke chapter 2, we see that Jesus grew in favor and in stature with God and man. At age 12, he was in the temple and they were amazed at what he was understanding and able to teach at that point. What do you think he was doing from age 12 to age 30. I think he was increasing in favor and in stature with God and man. Jesus is strong and physically prepared. Then the 40 day fast which left him weak physically. I guarantee you he was communing with the father during those 40 days, and every time the hunger pains came, he trusted more in the God who he was equal to and one with. So we see this leading up to the challenge that Jesus is strong and prepared. He is master of the material that is going to be required to ace the test. The second thing we see when it looks at the example of Jesus is he limits his communication with the devil to the written Word of God. In fact, if you notice, it says in verse 4 it is written. He responds to Satan. In verse 7, on the other hand, or literally again it is written, and then in verse 10, Go Satan, for it is written. So Jesus relies on the written word of God in order to deal with Satan. So now let's look at Jesus declares in his example, he declares truth to live by in his response to this temptation. So in the first one, when Satan has offered him bread, make those stones into bread. What does he do? He says, Deuteronomy 8:2-3. He quotes the last part of verse 3, which is the Word of God which says man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. By the way, in chapter 8, verse 2, it talks about the children of Israel in the wilderness, and it says that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not. He humbled you and let you be hungry and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know that he might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of God. You can have an entire feast ready at Thanksgiving and not eat a bite of it if God doesn't give you the breath and the heartbeat to do so. He's the most important thing in life. He controls our life. He provides us food, but he is the most important thing. Then, in the second temptation, when the devil took him up into the holy city, had him stand on the pinnacle of the temple and said, throw yourself down. Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 6:16. He said, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test as you tested him at Massah. That Massah is a spot in the children of Israel's wilderness where they were thirsty, and they demanded that God produce water for them...not prayed, but demanded. It was a very presumptuous, demanding of God to do something like God is a genie in the bottle. Or in today's, many churches, you just name it and claim it, man. God's got to do it. You say it. God has to do it. God doesn't have to do anything that God doesn't want to do. So in this process, we see that Jesus is saying, don't ever test the Lord your God with careless, demanding, or selfish living. All right, Christ could have thrown himself off and the angels could have scooped him up and so forth. But when the devil suggests something that you could do, just don't do it. All right. Just the Bob Newhart defense. Stop it. Just don't do it anymore, okay? This is. Satan is a tempter. Even if it sounds good, make sure you check back with Scripture. Is this the right thing to be doing? And then in the third temptation, when Satan just said, man, all these things I will give to you if you fall down and worship me. Jesus quotes there from Deuteronomy 6:13 where he says, you shall fear only the Lord your God. You shall worship the Lord and serve him only. The idea of service and worship go together. What you worship, you will serve. What you serve, you will worship. So this is Jesus declaring truth to live by and his response to temptation. So it is written and here's what it says. It is written and here's what it says. I want to make a point here. Jesus did not do what Hollywood would want him to do. The story would be so cool in my Scott Spielberg movie maker. If when he said turn the stones into bread, if all of a sudden Jesus went and the stones just started pelting Satan in the head like the roadrunner does, you know, to Wile E coyote just pelting in the head. Or when he took him to the top of the Temple Mount and said, jump off here. If he would have Spider-Man, webbed him and then took David's sling and slung him, and he went flying into the air, into the Dead Sea. Right? I'd go, yes, great movie scenes, but you know what Jesus did? It is written. Guess what we have access to today. It is written. We have the Word of God, and if we will master that material, we too can ace every test that comes our way. As we look at Jesus, we also see this very interesting truth in verse number 11. It says, then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and began to minister to him. This verse has always fascinated me for a long time. That the perfect Son of God, fully God and fully man, had angels come to minister to him. That lets you know how intense this temptation is. Ok. This is like nobody has ever faced this kind of testing that Jesus Christ is facing. When the angels came to minister to him, the text doesn't tell us what they did exactly. But I'm going to make a really good educated guess. They made him some fresh baked bread. And they said...here, provided for by God. I contend that their appearance to him, to minister to him, reinforced the real truth of Psalm 91 that Christ in all your ways you're going to be protected. The angels are going to watch out for you. And in fact, they are demonstrating that by coming to his rescue in this time. And then I have no doubt that right there they worshiped their creator...just like they will in the future. That they praised and worshiped the one who had passed this test of Satan. And in fact, in Revelation 5, listen to these words coming from John...Verse 11. Revelation 5:11, then I looked, and I heard the voice of many angels around the throne, and the living creatures and the elders, and the number of them was myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, worthy is the lamb that was slain to receive power and riches, and wisdom and might, and honor and glory and blessing, and every created thing which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and on the sea, and all things in them I heard saying; to him who sits on the throne, and to the lamb be blessing, and honor, and glory and dominion for ever and ever. And the four living creatures kept saying, Amen. And the elders fell down and worshiped. You see, this worship that is promised of Christ...He's going to get every last bit of that. He didn't need it early. He didn't need to bow to Satan to get it done. He is going to do it in God's proper time.
So what are the takeaways from this test?...the takeaways from this test. First of all, looking at Jesus as the God man in his work, as a God man, we see that his perfect, sinless example was clearly revealed, right? Perfect, sinless passes in flying colors. The second thing we see is the ability for him to demonstrate his complete power over the devil. Even the power of Jesus to end the testing is seen here because after that third test he says, get out of here, Satan! Get behind me! Be gone. He even has the power to end the temptation. But he certainly has the power over the devil. And we know this from all of Scripture demonstrated here in his first coming. In fact I John 4:4, writing about us, Apostle John says, you are from God, little children, and have overcome them, because greater is he who is in you than he who is in the world. Satan is defeated, but he never gives up. Does that make sense? We have the King Jesus on our side. Third thing, take away from this test in relation to the work of Jesus as a God man. It confirmed with absolute proof that he was God and he couldn't and wouldn't sin no matter what is thrown at him. He's God in the flesh. The fourth thing is to know what we face....to know what we face. Hebrews 4:15 tells us this, for we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. So one of the things that happens is Jesus now identifies because he took on flesh like us. He didn't have a sin nature like us, but he took on flesh. The devil tested him from the outside with the strongest temptations he could come up with, and Jesus withstands it perfectly. So when we get our temptations, which are very tiny in comparison to Christ, we have a Savior who is not unfamiliar with the testings that we have and our temptations that come from a sinful nature and from the world and the devil. So this is one of those things that is a glorious truth, that we have a high priest who is on duty for us 24/7, never takes vacations, never takes holidays, and actually welcomes us to reach out to him. Ridiculous grace that comes from our Lord Jesus Christ. So those are a few of the takeaways for what we see in Jesus is the God man. What are some takeaways for us today? Alright, so I'm going to propose to you that first of all, we must master the material in order to ace the test. What is the material? It is the word of an almighty God. We need to read it. We need to study it. We need to memorize it. We need to saturate our life with it. In fact, Paul calls it the sword of the spirit in Ephesians 6 part of the warfare with the world and the flesh and the devil. We're in a war, and one of the things that you've got to have is you got to have a sword, both to defend and to take care of Satan with those tests that he throws our way. Then more evidence of the goodness of God...1 Corinthians 10:13, Paul wrote this. No temptation has overtaken you, but such as is common to man, and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it. If you're a believer and a follower of Christ today, you actually have the capability to say no to the devil and the world system. You can resist by using the power of the word of an Almighty God and applying it to your life, understanding it, living it, and being ready to use it whenever you are facing trouble. I got time, i'm going to give you a quick example of how this might look in your life. I for a number of years was beset with the sin of worry. I would worry about a lot of things, and worry so much that sometimes I would get out of bed and then climb back in bed and pull the covers over my head. I would physically get sick from worrying about where my next sale was going to come from, because in my line of work, when I finish the school year, I have this much guaranteed income for the next year...zero. And I would get worried sick. I knew these words of Jesus and then one day I really not only listened, but acquiesced and absorbed to actually live these words. And these are the words that helped me to overcome the sin of worry. Matthew 6:25, For this reason I say to you, do not be worried about your life as to what you will eat or what you will drink. Nor for your body as to what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air that they do not sow, nor reap, nor gather into barns. And yet your heavenly father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they? And who of you being worried can add a single hour to his life? And why are you worried about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow. They do not toil, nor do they spin. Yet I say to you that not even Solomon in all his glory clothed himself like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow, is thrown into the furnace, will he not much more clothe you...you of little faith? Verse 34, he says, so do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will take care of itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. So in spite of the fact that I knew these words had been there, I had read them multiple times when I finally actually trusted in the God of the Word is when he gave me victory over worry. Because my problem when I start to worry is I am demonstrating a temporary lack of faith in God, and then I'm able to stop and say, no, don't do this. My life group in my mutual ministry, men know that I have confessed. I said I had that pop in, I started to worry, but I cut it off immediately, and I'm so thankful God has given me this weapon of Matthew 6. He has given us all the weapons to overcome the temptation and the sins that so easily beset us. But we're going to have to master the material in order to ace every test that comes. Second thing to us today. This is not a spoiler alert either, but every one of us has failed and still fails when temptations come at times, right? Unfortunately, we are not sinless. We still deal with this flesh. We still have the sin nature. So when we sin, it's very important, I believe, not to sit there and wallow in the sin like a pig in the mud. Because how many times have you been like me where you have absolutely sinned or did something wrong and then you go, well, I blew that, so I'll just do this. And the spiral of degradation continues to where you are going. Well, what difference does it make? I've already messed up here. No, I contend to you that the thing to do is to repent, to confess, ask for forgiveness of that sin. The great news is 1 John 1:9, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. He will cleanse us from sin. There is no penance in this. It is forgiveness from the God who grants it graciously. And then dust yourself up. Get up and be ready to face the next temptation. And let's not fail them all. Let's use his word in order to defeat the devil, defeat our sin that is within us, and walk more like Christ, right? The third application to us today would involve two different groups of people that may be present here today. One is there may be some of you out there going, I'm doing my best to defeat temptation. I'm showing up at church. I'm doing men's Bible study, women's Bible study. I'm in life group. I never miss. But the reason you're doing those things and trying to resist temptation is because you think you're earning some sort of points in order to earn enough points, like the credit card points where you can redeem them for a free flight. You think by earning enough points, you are going to earn favor with God and a ticket to heaven. The bad news for you...it's not a points based system. Because any good you can do...qualified good...one little sin makes your points go to zero. I was damned to hell when I stole candy from my mother's purse as a four year old. Because she told me not to get candy, and I did. One sin is enough to separate us from a holy God who can't tolerate any sin whatsoever. So if you're thinking you're scoring points with religious activity, church membership, attendance for all the good stuff that happens at HBC, it's not a points based system. Then there's others here today in this category who you're going...resist temptation? I call those opportunities. Oh, whatever that Satan puts in my way, man. Oh, that looks great. I can't wait to get away from church. Away from my parents, away from my spouse, away from my family. To where I can fully indulge in these things. On the outside, you are living the buttoned up Christian life, but on the inside, you know you're playing a game. The solution for both of those people is found in the good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I'm going to read Ephesians 2:1-10. Listen to my favorite passage of Scripture regarding the good news of Christ. It says, "and you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too, all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest." If it stopped right there, here's what this passage is saying. You're dead. You're disobedient and you are doomed. You are a child of wrath. God is going to have to punish that sin. And then this great little conjunctive word of verse 4, "But God being rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved and raised us up with him, and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the surpassing riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves it is the gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in him." The solution to the one who is trying to earn points, or to the one who is pretending to be a Christian, is the same solution. Acknowledge the fact that you indeed are doomed. Sin has destroyed you. You are dead without a God who is going to miraculously make you alive. How is that executed? It is executed by you agreeing with God and mastering this basic material. I'm a sinner who needs a Savior. And indeed Jesus went to the cross. In fact, right before he got to the cross, he was in a place called the Garden of Gethsemane. And in the Garden of Gethsemane he prayed, and he said these words, pray that you may not enter into temptation. And he withdrew from them about a stone's throw. And he knelt down and began to pray, saying, Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Yet not my will, but yours be done. Now an angel from heaven appeared to him, strengthening him. Two times in Scripture where angel appears to minister to Christ, one at the beginning of his public ministry and one right before his crowning achievement, which is dying in my place. All of my sin....millions and millions of sin. Just mine. Plus add yours, plus add people from the beginning of time to the end. He pays a price and takes the full wrath of God on our sin in our place. But you've got to repent of your sin. You have to turn to him and beg him to save you. The good news is he won't cast you out. He will save you.
So as we conclude, we got to master the material to ace the test. As a believer, you need to soak yourself in the Word of God. You need to memorize it, know it, live it, trust it, and then trust the God who gave it to you. And if you're one of the people who doesn't fully understand. It's not a works based system. It's not about externals. It's about your relationship with Christ. We invite you to come to him today.
Father God, we thank you for the opportunity to study this passage that shows the perfection of our Lord Jesus Christ. God in the flesh came to live among men perfectly, never failing, passing every test, defeating the devil, and then being willing to go to the cross to pay my sin debt. And indeed, everybody in this room in the world who is been chosen by the father. Lord, I ask that you will work and move in our hearts. Lord, help us to not be the same, but help us to be changed by your Word and Lord we just pray that you'll continue to do a work in each one of our hearts this week. We pray these things in Jesus name. Amen.
