Truth that Transforms

As we come to this part of the service, I just want to take a minute for us to pray for the folks that are going to get baptized. So we’ve been doing this corporate congregational prayer now for a few months. So if you will just get your neighbor and just pray for, we have two students and two adults, and you’ll get to meet them here at the end of the service. But two students and two adults, if you just pray for them, that God would continue to confirm in them what He has started, and maybe even stir up that step of faith for somebody else. So y’all take it away. Let’s pray for a moment, and then I’ll gather us back together again.

Father, God, I just want to say thank you. Lord, thank you for just inviting us into a relationship with yourself. God, for loving us so much that while we were still dead in our sin, while we were still in rebellion against you, while we were still stuck in the grime and the junk of our lives, you would send your Son to come and rescue us, and that you then, for all that placed their faith in Him, you would send your very own Spirit to live within us, that we get to have a renewed, right relationship with you for the rest of our lives here and into eternity with you. God, thank you so much. Lord, I want to thank you for the four that are being baptized. God, thank you for how they are just following you and your leadership, and they’re just taking this step, and they’re enjoying this part of their relationship with you. Father, I pray if there’s any others, God, you’d stir that in them, and they’d be ready to get in the pool too, ready to make that happen. But Father, for all of us, God, for all of us, would you please, Lord, continue to woo us into a deeper relationship with you, continue to help us to walk with you. Please, Father, we need you. We need you as individuals. We need you as a church. God, our community in the low country needs that. So Father, would you make us a people that would be set on you, sensitive to your leadership, a group of people ready to take steps of faith in partnership with you. Lord, we love you. God, I’m asking that you would please get a hold of me right now at this time. Father, that you would please use my words as I am just trying to share your words. Father, just stir your work in somebody’s heart this morning. God, it’s in your great name that I pray. Amen.

Well, it’s extremely fitting that we would come to the end of this current series that we have called The Life You’ve Always Wanted. And next week, we will start a new series. You may see the posters up about that called Revival and Restoration. Starting next Sunday, we’re gonna jump into the book of Nehemiah. It’s one of the leaders and the prophets from the Old Testament who God sent to His people for a special time to help them recalibrate and get back with Him, to walk with Him in a new season of their lives as a nation and a group of people. We’re capping off this current series and beginning the next series with the moment next Sunday evening where a couple folks get to say, well, I’ve been brought into the life I’ve always wanted. A couple of folks are gonna get into the pool and say, Jesus has done everything necessary for me to have love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, and the rest. And out of that, I wanna dedicate my life to helping others be restored and have a revival in Him. That’s how we are beginning all of that.

You see, the purpose of this series is to help all of us get re-acclimated to spiritual disciplines and habits that would help us to walk deeply and meaningfully with Jesus. So we’ve been looking at things like prayer today. I’m gonna be talking about reading your Bible, but also other aspects such as living in secrecy and confessing our sin to one another and serving others. All of this meant to help foster some transformation on the inside. You see, it’s like what Seth read this morning. Paul wrote these words in 2 Corinthians. If you’ve been with us the last couple months, you’ve heard this a couple dozen times, and I’ll read them for you again. The Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all With unveiled faces are looking as in a mirror at the glory of the Lord and are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory. This is from the Lord who is the Spirit. You see, the key of transformation, the secret of becoming more like Jesus, the power to have the life you want is not in you. It’s not in the news. It’s not in self-help books. It’s not in exercise or dieting. It’s in none of those things. The power of transformation and the power of true enduring joy is in beholding Jesus. And as you behold Him, you become more like Him. And as you become more like Him, that’s when you start to have the life that I think you want.

So that is what we are capping off today. Today, we are going to be discussing the habit of meditating on Scripture. So if you have your Bibles, go ahead and open them up to Matthew chapter four with me. Matthew chapter four. We’re going to look at a moment at the very beginning of Jesus’s ministry, the one who gives us transformation. If you’re a note taker, then you would want to write down this. This is the main idea, the main point for today. God’s Word transforms everything.

I’m going to read Matthew chapter four, verses one through 11 for us. If you have your Bibles, read along with me. If you don’t, then it’ll be on the screens. Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After He had fasted 40 days and 40 nights, He was hungry. Understatement of the year. He was hungry. Then the tempter approached Him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.” Jesus answered, “It is written: Man must 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, 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’s written: He will give His angels orders concerning you, and they will support you with their hands so that you will not strike your foot on a stone.” Jesus told him, “It is also written: Do not test the Lord your God.” Again, the devil took Him to a very high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. And he said to Him, “I, I will give you all these things if you will fall down and worship me.” Then Jesus told him, “Go away, Satan. For it’s written: Worship the Lord your God and serve only Him.” Then the devil left Him, and the angels came and began to serve Him.

A wild moment at the very beginning of Jesus’s ministry. You know, we talk a lot about Jesus here because we believe like what Paul has already said, Jesus is the power of transformation, both for the believer to become more like Him, but also for the person that does not yet know Jesus in truth. The greatest thing I could ever do is just hold up Jesus for you and say, look at Him.

Coming out of this moment, there’s just a few observations I have to make. It starts off, this whole moment between Jesus and Satan, it starts off with this difficult season for Jesus, the divine Son. The very first word in chapter four is then. Then would point back to whatever happened before then, which would be chapter three. I’m no whiz at math or at Bible scholarship, but I know that much. Jesus, in the end of chapter three, has just been baptized by John the Baptist. And when He comes out of the water, it says, the heavens opened up for Him and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming down on Him. And then a voice from heaven says, “This is my beloved Son with whom I’m well pleased.” And right after that moment, the Holy Spirit leads Jesus into the wilderness. Jesus, He leads Him into the wilderness, it says, to be tempted by the devil.

Oddly enough, God’s plan to rescue people, God’s plan to send Jesus to the world for you and for me would send Jesus not to a throng in the marketplace, not to tons of people in a city square. God’s plan would have a step one, going by Himself into the desert where He would be tempted. I think God is incredible because He can use anything for His plan, even a season of 40 days and 40 nights of being tempted by Satan. But if you’re like me, maybe something is going off in your mind about, hold on, God being tempted? That doesn’t quite sound right. And if you are thinking that, you’re a great Bible scholar because James 1:13 says that God neither tempts us nor can be tempted. And Jesus was God, amen? Was Jesus God? So how in the world was Jesus tempted?

All right, so I want to introduce a concept for you. Jesus existed at what’s called the hypostatic union. You say it with me. Hypostatic union. The hypostatic union, I got to nerd out for just a second, means essentially Jesus was totally God, totally man in one person. He was 100% God and 100% man, 100% of the time. God cannot be tempted. God tempts no one. Jesus, God in the flesh, was not just God. Jesus was also human. So when Jesus is taken into the wilderness, His humanity is being tested across time.

Now, make no bones about it. Jesus was human. He slept. He ate. He got splinters in His hand from working wood in His dad’s carpentry business. Jesus knew what the smell of the sea was like. He understood that if He’s cold, He’s got to get close to a coal fire to warm up. Jesus is fully man, yet He’s fully God. And if He wasn’t fully man, then the author of Hebrews was lying. Because the author of Hebrews says that Jesus was tempted and tried in every way like you and I are. He never sinned.

This indeed is a paradox. How in the world can someone be fully God and fully man 100% of the time? I’ve got the answer. Do you want to know the answer? Deuteronomy 29:29 says this. The hidden things belong to the Lord, but the real things belong to us so that we may follow the words of His law. Oftentimes in the Bible, there are paradoxes. There are hidden things. There are mysteries. Things that we are not intended to be able to untangle and parse out perfectly. And God says they can both be true at the same time. And I am trustworthy. Trust Me at My word and just follow what’s clear.

I cannot do all the theological math to help us understand how God in the flesh could be 100% God and 100% man, 100% the time. But the Bible presents Jesus that way and I’m just going to accept it that way. What should amaze us is not that Jesus was tempted, but that Jesus withstood every temptation He ever faced for a lifetime. Jesus was perfect in every single way. That’s not me. I am going to leave here today. Within five seconds, we’ll be tempted with something. And guess what? The odds are in the favor of the temptation there. I am deeply flawed. I am imperfect. I fail in so many ways that I want to be able to succeed in my relationship with Jesus. Jesus, He was tempted and tried every second of every day of every year of His life, yet never once gave into it.

How incredible is Jesus? Imagine a lifetime of temptation building up against Him like water against a dam. The weight getting heavier and heavier and heavier. Always this voice in His mind, just give in a little bit. It’s kind of nice, actually. Satan, after 40 days of Jesus not eating, coming against Him, tempting Him. How incredibly difficult would that have been for Him to withstand that? And He does. He does. That’s what should amaze us here.

And the fact that Jesus does not wield His perfection over us, judging us for our failures, for our inability to stand up to temptation, but He moves toward us. He moves toward us, offering His own perfect obedience in our place, sympathizing with us. The author of Hebrews says, Jesus was tempted and tried in every way like us. That’s the great high priest we have. One that understands our needs. In the words of a commercial series that’s going on right now called He Gets Us. Jesus gets us. There’s nothing you will ever go through in life that God can’t say, I understand. God fully understands. Every temptation you’ll ever go through, Jesus will be able to say, I get it. Here’s how you get out of it.

First Corinthians 10:13 says that with every temptation, God is also providing a way out. It’s as if your life is like an interstate and you’re just going on 26, the 26th of life. And temptations come up and God is like, hey, there’s an off ramp. There’s always an off ramp. Take My off ramp, get out of The danger, get away from the temptation, just get off the interstate, rest for a minute with me. You get back on later and we’re going to keep cruising. All right. It’s going to be okay. God always provides that for us. Jesus in every moment of His temptation always took the off ramp. And that’s what He’s doing here. 40 days of fasting, 40 days of going without food. My man is hungry. I can’t go 40 minutes without munching on something. And Jesus went 40 days. And I choose to believe the Bible’s literal. I choose to believe that Jesus truly did not eat for 40 days. Understatement of the year. He was hungry. So there’s this difficult season and it leads to this temptation for food that Jesus has. So someone comes up in the midst of Jesus’ lowest point when He is most susceptible and weakest. The tempter approaches Him. Matthew calls Satan the tempter. He just goes ahead and puts it all out there. He says, hey, Satan is not your friend. He is a tempter. His whole identity is in getting you to doubt God and what God has done and what God has said. That is his entire identity is to make you doubt your relationship with God.

So naturally, in verse three, he would look at Jesus and say, if, if you’re the Son of God. I just read it a minute ago in the baptism. Right, Rhett? Where God said, this is my beloved Son with whom I’m well pleased. And Satan has the audacity to come up and say, if you’re the Son of God, go straight to His identity. Makes or wants Jesus to doubt what God has just said. I wonder what the tempter would want us to doubt. I wonder what promise from scripture, what incredible experience He’s given us, what hope we can have as a church and as individuals because of Him that He would want us to doubt. If Satan came into the room this morning and said, if God really, really loved you, if you really are saved by grace and not by works, what would it be? If the Son, if you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread. My man, Jesus says, man must not live on bread alone. No, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. Satan wants Jesus to get the right thing the wrong way. But Jesus says, food’s important, but it is not ultimate. And Jesus there quotes some scripture and we’re going to come back to that in a second.

So after this temptation for food, then there’s this temptation for authority. Satan, the devil, the tempter, takes Him, verse five, to the holy city, stands Him on the pinnacle of the temple and says, if you’re the Son of God, once again, if, if, if, then throw yourself down. You see, Satan took Jesus to the most visible place, of the most important place for God’s people. Jerusalem would have been the epicenter. It would have been the very middle of Israel’s worship of God, of their hopes for a Messiah, for their desires and dreams for a King to come and make everything right. And in the very middle of Jerusalem would have been the temple. So that’s just naturally we, where people would have congregated. That’s where they would have gathered. At the very top of the temple, almost 500 feet above sea level, there Jesus is standing on the pinnacle of the temple. Satan says, throw yourself down. This question of identity and sonship has just been affirmed, yet Satan wants Jesus to be thinking about what else He can get out of life. Satan takes Jesus to the center of Jewish life, faith, and culture.

I wonder if Jesus had been born into America right now, where he would place Jesus. I wonder if Satan would place Jesus on Wall Street, where the stock exchange is, where we have so much hope in our financial assets and in our ability to save and spend. Or would Jesus have been placed at the U.S. Capitol building, where we are just hoping for some sort of tide to turn politically perhaps, because we want our nation to experience something maybe. Or maybe Jesus would have been placed at the Las Vegas Strip, the height of entertainment and comfort and creature desires for our world, all packed into a four-mile expanse. Maybe Jesus would have been placed in the middle of Hollywood, this director of our culture, this fountainhead of so much of what we believe as a nation coming out of movie theaters. Where would Jesus have been placed? You see, there’s a temptation for Jesus to sidestep God’s plan, putting himself in charge and resisting God’s authority. But once again, Jesus responds to Satan with Scripture in verse 7, and He says, “Do not test the Lord your God.” You see, Satan had just quoted Scripture to Jesus in verse 6. He had just said, “The angels won’t let you get hurt. God’s going to protect you. Just throw yourself off. Forget all this suffering business and just go ahead and become the king of the world with this public display in the most important place of your nation.” Jesus says, “I will not put God to the test. I am going to go through this plan. I am not in charge. God, as a unit, we are in charge. Don’t test the Lord your God.”

So after that, then there’s this temptation for glory. Again, verse 8, “The devil took Jesus to a very high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. And he said to Him, ‘We’ll give you all these things if you will fall down and worship me.’” Jesus told him, “Go away, Satan.” I can’t imagine what Jesus’ voice and the authority would have sounded like in that moment. We have an idea of when Jesus and the disciples are on the sea and they’re in the boat and everything’s going crazy and Jesus says, “Silence! Be still!” And He’s able to talk over a storm or to a storm and everything goes quiet. We have an idea of what Jesus would have said whenever He is healing the little girl, Jairus’ daughter. And He says, “Little girl, arise!” And He brings her from death. I wonder what Jesus’ voice sounds like in this moment where He commands Satan to go away.

You see, Satan, again, was offering Jesus something Jesus already had. Jesus is God. He owns all things. And He’s the Son of God, which means He’s the heir of all things. Everything in this world, everything in this universe, every planet, every plant, every person, everything belongs to God. The sin of sin is that we would give any credit to anything other than God. God is the originator of all things. He is the owner of all things. Jesus owns all kingdoms. He owns all their splendor. Everything is coming back to Him. Satan is trying to give Jesus something that He already has. And Jesus will not stand it. He will not. And the offer that Satan makes, “if you will fall down and worship me.” You see, Satan does have some sway over this world right now, though. Because there is a day coming when Christ will return and He will set all things right. And we’ll be done with funerals. We’ll be done with cancer. We’ll be done with trying to make ends meet. Because everything in this world that’s gone haywire and where we hear the echoes of that original lie that Satan told Adam and Eve, that will stop. And what we will hear instead is a chorus of people from all tribes, tongues, and languages singing with the angels about the praise and the goodness and the greatness of our God. All the bad things will become untrue one day. Until then, Satan has some power here. And he’s saying, “Jesus, you can have it all now. Just bow down to me.” Jesus will not be tempted, though. For He is, but He won’t give in. He says, “No.” God’s Word says, “Worship the Lord and serve only Him.” It’s clear, God’s the only one worthy of our worship and glory and service. And Jesus says, “I will bow down to no other. No other will get that kind of credit for me.” Had He submitted, had Jesus bowed down, had Jesus just done a shortcut for this whole plan of salvation thing, He would have gotten what was rightfully His, but He would have sacrificed everything to gain that.

So Satan leaves Him. Verse 11, this comfort for Jesus comes in. 40 days. I would have to imagine as the angels came and began to serve Him, part of that means they’re giving Him food. Part of that means they’re holding Him. Part of that means in their own way, they’re praying for Him. They’re talking to Him. They’re encouraging Him.

There’s a couple major lessons learned from this. I think the first lesson that we learn is that Jesus fought temptation with God’s Word. Jesus fought temptation with God’s Word. Even Jesus, the Son of God, God in the flesh, did not fight Satan with His own cleverness or logic or willpower. Jesus, fully God and fully man, but fully God did not try to fight Satan with anything in Himself.

But Jesus wields Scripture against the tempter because God’s Word is truth and it changes everything. Now, what I don’t have time to explain is that in John 1, the Bible also says that Jesus is the Word of God. So it’s like Jesus is fighting Satan with Himself, but not with His human self, with His divine self that is the Word of God. And I don’t have time to explain it. Again, paradox. And we’re gonna live with it. It’s okay.

The question for us though is, when we are tempted, what’s our weapon? What’s your weapon? Should be God. It should be God’s Word. Pray it is. Think if we’re honest. If we’re honest, we try to fight some of those battles with our own weapons. And we just try to willpower it out. We just try to tough it out. And we say, I don’t need the off ramp. I’m just gonna plow right through this. I’m just gonna take care of this myself. And when we do that, we get in a head-on collision with sin and that never goes well.

God is always offering us the off ramp. But to be able to take that, we have to use God’s Word, which means we have to know God’s Word and not just know vaguely what God means to say. But as Donna Platt says, we need to know the address of the verse that we are gonna reference and quote against something. We need to be able to know that in 1 Corinthians 10:13, God promises a way out of any temptation. We need to know, like what Hebrews says in 2 and in 4, that Jesus was tempted and tried in every way, yet never once gave in. And that’s what makes Him sympathetic to us. We need to be able to know these things.

Jesus fought temptation with God’s Word. And as He did that, He only quoted from one book of the Bible, Deuteronomy. Anybody else’s favorite quiet time Scripture come from Deuteronomy? That’s not me. I’ll be honest. Jesus, though, is quoting from Deuteronomy, which shows us our second lesson. Jesus is the ultimate Adam and Israel.

Here’s what I mean. The temptations that Jesus faced match what Adam and Eve faced in the Garden of Eden. Listen to it. Jesus and Adam were both approached by the tempter in a wilderness setting. Jesus over here, Adam in a garden. Jesus and Adam were both offered the wrong food to eat. Amen? Jesus and Adam were both tempted to test God at His word. Are you really? Did He really say? Jesus and Adam were both asked to bow down to something other than God. Jesus is the ultimate Adam, the one who does not thrust us into sin, but the one who redeems us out of it. Like what Paul would say, through the first Adam, sin came into the world, but through the second Adam, life and peace and godliness.

Jesus is the ultimate Adam that stands up to Satan’s temptations, but He’s also the ultimate Israel. See, Israel, a man and a nation. He was both a guy named Israel. God gave him a name, but that name was also put onto an entire group of people that God would call His own special people. These quotations that Jesus has against Satan all come from the book of Deuteronomy. That is a time of Israel’s testing in where? The wilderness. See, the people of Israel, they have already exodiced out of Egypt, but they have not yet come into the promised land under Joshua. They have a guy named Moses, and Moses is leading them through the wilderness. And that is where Jesus says, I am not just the perfect Adam, I’m the perfect Israel.

You see, Israel was a nation of people called to follow God under a covenant that God had struck with Abraham and then renewed and expanded with Moses. Yet, Israel was constantly failing to fully trust God at His word. When Satan tempts Jesus with bread, Jesus says, man does not live on bread alone, but from every word that comes from the mouth of God. That originally was tied to the people of Israel grumbling against God because God wasn’t giving them bread. So God starts raining manna down on them every morning. And they say, what’s this? That’s what manna means. It means, what is it? That’s the name stuck, I guess. God starts giving them bread, even though they had failed to trust Him.

And then the second time, whenever Jesus says, don’t test the Lord your God, that comes because the people of Israel, once again, were grumbling against God in the wilderness. And Moses says, okay, People, God will give us water from a rock. And God spouts out water from a rock. Paradox, once again, it’s true. And God satisfies them, even though they’re grumbling against Him. And God says, don’t you test Me. Do not test the Lord. And then the third time, verse 10, when Jesus says, worship the Lord your God, serve only Him. Once again, the people of Israel are in a moment of testing in the book of Deuteronomy. And they are called back to worship and serve God alone.

Every way that Israel failed to follow God, Jesus satisfies and Jesus follows and Jesus obeys. Y’all, we don’t have it in us. There’s not a person in the room, a person on the planet that’s ever lived or ever will live aside from Jesus Christ that can fully trust and follow God the way God deserves and the way we are. And that’s why Jesus came. He came because He knows that. He came because we would have to have a perfect sacrifice for us. You see, every time the people of Israel would sin, they were called to make their relationship right with God through a sacrifice. Now, the blood of bulls and goats and calves doesn’t take away our sin. It’s the trust in what God has told us to do. It’s the trust in the sacrifice. It’s the trust in God’s response to that. So God sends this perfect sacrifice, Jesus Christ, who John the Baptist called the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. So that anybody would place their trust in Him.

No matter how poorly I follow God, no matter how many times I run headlong into that sin on the interstate, no matter how many times I fail to take the off ramp, if my faith is in Jesus Christ and not in myself or in anything else, no matter how good I try or how earnest I am or how well-meaning my mom is toward me, I can be accepted by God. That’s why Jesus came.

The final lesson we learn from all this is that God’s word transforms everything. God has spoken. He’s spoken. And that changes everything. It transforms everything. I know that God’s word transforms what we hunger for. You see, Jesus was tempted to hunger for bread. We are tempted to hunger for our comforts, our consumerism. For some of us, it truly is just food. Now, we should rely on God in every way, but it’s not just what we eat. Literally, it’s in everything. The question is, what do you hunger for? What do you yearn for? What do you say, if only I had X, my life would be better? God’s word wants to meet you in that place to help you see that the only thing that truly satisfies is God. It’s not food. It’s not finances. It’s not marriage. It’s not kids. It’s not a great career. As incredible as all those things can be, the only thing that truly satisfies is God Himself.

God’s word transforms what we hunger for, but it also transforms what we listen to. We are tempted to listen to ourselves and to others who would lead us away from God’s path for us. But Jesus teaches that in all things, we are to follow God’s word, God’s guidance, God’s wisdom, God’s rule, God’s standards. It’s not about us. It’s about God. Are we listening to Him? God has spoken definitively. Are we listening? Not just hearing. Kind of like I hear sports talk radio whenever I’m riding down 17. Or like how I just honestly kind of hear the TV on in the background. Or whenever I’m disengaged from my family, I just kind of hear them talking to me. Am I listening to God? Am I tuned in? Am I giving Him my attention? Can’t do that unless I’m intaking this. Unless I’m reading this.

God’s word transforms what we hunger for, transforms what we listen to, and ultimately transforms who we worship. You see, we are tempted to live for anything other than God. We just are. It started in the garden, and it’ll go all the way until Jesus returns. You and I are tempted to live for anything else. Because anything else seems easier or more satisfying or more immediate than God is. I was talking to somebody recently, and he was just opening up. He said, man, following Jesus is hard. Yes. He said, following Jesus is good. And that’s the way it is with God. It’s hard, but it’s good. Jesus shows that we can live for God and His glory alone. So the question then is, what do you worship? What’s your life oriented around?

And this is not a gotcha moment. This is not me trying to point anything out. This is not me trying to berate you anything. This is me trying to help us see as well-meaning and as earnest as I am, I truly am tempted to live for other things. And God would love to meet you in that space right there, and to be able to say, “Hey, that creature comfort, that relationship, that financial goal, they could be good, but none of it’s me. Let’s live for Me instead.”

Lord, You love us with an incredibly deep love that I just don’t even have words truly to express. That You would give Your own life for us. We know from Your Word that a true and great friend is not one who loves in the word, but one who loves in deed. And You, You gave Your very life for us. God, with this news never grow old for us? Will we orient our lives around helping others taste and see just how good You are? God, thank You. You have satisfied perfection for us. Lord, help us to walk in joyful response of obedience to that. In Your great name that we pray.