Matthew 4:1-11 • The Temptations of the King

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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)

Let me ask that you would look in your Bibles now at Matthew chapter 4. Matthew chapter 4, as we have been working our way through the Bible in a year, now into the New Testament, we are seeing the long-awaited Messiah.



 In my last time with you, we looked at the genealogy of the baby who was born. And after a baby is born, what do you do?



 You wash him off.



 And that's what happens here in Matthew 4, but it's more than a washing.



 It is a scouring as the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world is made pure to be a perfect sacrifice for His people. Let's stand as we honor God's Word and read of Jesus' temptation.



 Matthew 4 verses 1 through 11. "Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.



 And after fasting forty days and forty 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 by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God."



 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 not put the Lord your God to the test."



 And the devil took Him to a very high mountain and showed Him all the kings of the world and their glory. And He said to Him, "All these I will give you if you will fall down and worship Me."



 Then Jesus said to Him, "Be gone, Satan, for it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve."



 Then the devil left Him and behold angels came and were ministering to Him. Let's pray together.



 "Father, as angels came to minister to Him, send your Spirit by your word to minister to the hearts of those who gather here now.



 We cannot speak of temptation without knowing we face it.



 But we have an Advocate who is in all manner tempted like as we, and yet was without sin, that He might not only be a perfect sacrifice, but a great high priest able to sympathize with our weaknesses so that we might go to Him and He would intercede for us.



 So now we ask for that work of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in Jesus' name. Amen."



 He was in the fight of His life.



 Some of you know the story I saw that was actually on TV last night. James Braddock, washed up prize fighter, obscure now dock worker who by a set of improbable circumstances gets to fight for the World Heavyweight Championship. It's amazing that he gets the shot, but it's all a set up, a set up by the managers of the opposing fighter.



 Because as great as it looks that the obscure James Braddock would be able to fight to gain



 riches for an impoverished family, to give hope to a nation that's in the middle of the Great Depression where the underdog everyone hopes will win, there's just one little problem in the scheme.



 It is the huge opponent, Max Baer, a vicious fighter who has already killed two men in the ring.



 James Braddock, to reclaim a World Championship, has to fight Max Baer. It will not be a fair fight and everybody knows it.



 And so on the night of the fight as Braddock is preparing with his managers in the locker room, everyone is nervous, afraid of what is about to happen.



 And Braddock's wife enters the locker room. The managers try to stop her. No distraction now. We don't need tears. We don't need fear now. Go and... she looks at the managers and she withers them with a look. You get out of my way.



 I'm going to talk to my husband. And she goes to him and she locks her eyes on him. And the woman that we have learned through the movie has faced poverty and abuse.



 Much of her life speaks to her husband.



 Maybe I understand some of what it means to fight.



 You just remember who you are.



 You're the bulldog of Bergen, the pride of New Jersey.



 You're everybody's hope and the kid's hero.



 But most of all, you are the champion of my heart, James Braddock.



 She reminds him of his purpose. He's everybody's hope. He's the one who's supposed to lead the nation, if not the children, out of hopelessness. What really gives him strength is the knowledge that beyond the fight, perhaps even beyond the defeat, is the love of that one that will not bend.



 It's so much what is happening in this passage as you see the account that almost becomes fabled in our minds of Jesus facing the great temptation. In the movies, it's sometimes made extravagant, sometimes it's just made perverted.



 But what we are being told is that as Jesus was being tempted, not only was he being tempted in every way such as we ourselves are being tempted, but just as he was tempted in all those ways, he is resisting by the very means that God makes available to us so that we recognize when we believe God's love must fail.



 He can't hold me through this fight. He can't hold me beyond my losing this fight.



 When we fear our temptations cannot be overcome or forgiven, God is saying, "You just remember this.



 You are the champion of my heart." And everything that is written here is written to give us the strength of understanding his love that will not let us go.



 The love is on display as we begin to understand a sacrifice is being prepared for us in this passage. As we have gone through the various Old Testament passages, we recognize that in the Old Testament, the people of God, to be made right with God, they offered animal sacrifices, a lamb without blemish, a washed animal made right before God, not because the animal was sufficient, but because an object lesson was being taught. A life would be given for a life, the innocent for the guilty, and ultimately that would come to fulfill it in the lamb slain from the foundations of the world, as the book of Revelation says, "When Jesus Christ himself would come, but he must be proven, pure, made right."



 How does that happen? Not from obscurity, not isolation from the world's problems. Rather he is tested for his purity, for his righteousness, and ultimately it is that test that we are made to see, as the Father is not only washing the lamb as any worshipper in the Old Testament would have to do when he brought his sacrifice, but the Father is actually scouring the sin of the world off of his Son that he might be the perfect sacrifice for all humanity.



 So that we would understand the purpose, the Spirit actually begins to express it to us. In the very first words of verse 1, Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness. When I hear Jesus was led, I'm thinking of those words of Isaiah the prophet in the Old Testament, he was led as a sheep to be slaughtered.



 But in this case, it's not the Roman soldiers who come to my mind when I think of Jesus being led to slaughter. It's not Pilate, the Roman governor. It's not the Jewish leaders.



 It's not even the disciples who betrayed Jesus.



 It's the Spirit who led Jesus into the wilderness for this temptation.



 The Gospel of Mark, the very next Gospel after Matthew, even makes it more explicit. That tells us just after Jesus was baptized, and that voice came from heaven that says, "This is my Son in whom I am well pleased." We are told immediately the Holy Spirit drove him into the desert to be tested of Satan.



 Drove him into the...it's not a limousine that he's driving.



 This is the language of herding as a sheep to be slaughtered. He is driven by the Holy Spirit in the desert because he has to be tested. It's what Jesus himself would say to John the Baptist, "It is necessary for me to fulfill all righteousness."



 What you've not been able to do, what humanity has not been able to accomplish, God will accomplish in His Son by making Him perfect and therefore perfectly equipped to be the sacrifice that is needed. He's not Satan ultimately that drives Jesus in the desert. We know from Jesus' own words. Do you remember when Jesus ultimately stands at the end of His earthly ministry before Pilate and will not answer in a way to defend himself from the crucifixion? Pilate says to Jesus, "Will you not speak to me? Do you not know I have the authority to release you or to crucify you?"



 And Jesus says to Pilate, "You would have no authority whatsoever were not it given to you by the one above."



 It is God who takes Jesus on this journey and He does it for a very specific purpose, to make clear to us the Spirit's provision for us, a perfect sacrifice being made. And He is made that way first by resisting the temptations that we face in the very same dimensions that we face them. What is the first temptation? Verse 3, "The tempter came and said to Jesus, "If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread." Now, he's been 40 days and 40 nights in the desert. He's hungry.



 And Satan says, "If you are the Son of God, make the stones bread. Establish your identity.



 Show what will give your life meaning and satisfaction by some physical means."



 It's the Satan tempting Jesus to say, "You may find your life's meaning, your identity, in something physical like bread."



 And we dismiss it because we don't struggle in the same way until we recognize it is that physical temptation that so often grabs us. We think, "What will make me satisfied? What will give my life meaning is if I can get the right promotion, get the right mansion, get the right person, get the right ecstasy, get the right experience. If I can just get this thing, I'll be satisfied."



 But Jesus said to the woman at the well, "Do you remember, if you try to get satisfaction out of the wells of this world, you will just stay thirsty. The physical things are not going to satisfy you. You get the mansion? What do you want?



 Bigger mansion.



 You get the sex? What do you want?



 More sex.



 You get the big paycheck? What do you want? Bigger paycheck. You go to Canada, you get a big fish? What do you want?



 Bigger fish!



 You're never satisfied. What you get physically only draws you to want more of it. Jesus ultimately said, "Book of John, my bread is to do the will of Him who sent me." That when it's all said and done, what ultimately will give your heart satisfaction is not what you've accumulated, not what you've experienced, but the profound understanding. I lived for my Lord. What brought Him glory, what brought His name fame, what brought His purposes to bear in the lives of others was my goal, and I was willing to live for Him rather than live for some physical experience.



 Of course, other people say other things.



 A number of you who are young enough to know the names will know that the names that are in the news a lot right now in popular entertainment are Keisha and Ariana Grande.



 And Christians talk about them because their lyrics are sexually charged and vulgar.



 And so we just tend to talk and complain about them.



 We ought to be in deep prayer, recognizing that what has now come to the surface in the lives of those who are so popular and so popularizing its sexual satisfaction that will ultimately give you satisfaction is young women who themselves have been sexually abused and are going through eating disorder problems and addictive issues and doing anything to forget what life is really like.



 And promising to everybody else sexual experience will satisfy when their lives in various rehab clinics say that didn't really satisfy at all.



 It's before us all the time.



 And what God is saying is, "I want you to know that Jesus also thought life would have meaning if He could just have something to eat physically, be satisfied." It's what Esau did. He sold his birthright for a little stew.



 But not you.



 You must recognize that ultimately what will satisfy your heart is to do the will of the Father who put you here.



 Here is another temptation that's not just physical satisfaction that tempts us. It is spiritual substitution. If you remember in verses 5 and 6, "The devil took Jesus to the holy temple. Holy city said 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. On their hands they will bear you up lest you strike your foot against His tongue." Now isn't that interesting? Satan is quoting Scripture to tempt Jesus. And you think, "What is he doing?"



 He's actually tempting the Lord Jesus to idolatry.



 He is saying, "Jesus, put God on a leash.



 Just you know, tempt Him to do something big and splashy and showy. And by putting God at your disposal, getting Him to do what you want, you'll prove you are the Son of God." He would be the opposite. He would actually be denying He was the Son of God. If He's trying to make God perform for you. And yet you recognize it so often the case. It's the nature of all idolatry. The wonderful New York City pastor, Tim Keller, reminds us always, "What is idolatry? It is good things made into ultimate things."



 Sexual relationship? Wonderful thing? But if it's the ultimate thing, what you're living for, what you're willing to sacrifice, your purity, your marriage, your happiness for, it destroys you. Your idolatry, your God will destroy you. Work to make a living, to support a family, to advance in God's purpose. Wonderful.



 Workaholism, where you begin to serve the job, to get it to give you what you want, becomes a form of idolatry. It's always that way. What we think we are controlling ultimately will control us. The anthropologists say what? We make our tools, and then our tools make us. We're formed by what we use. We're formed by what we're paying attention to. Watch it any time, those of you who are grandparents, the newest grandbaby enters the room. That little bit of nothing. And intelligent, mature, able adults begin to do this. "Oh, Gucci, Gucci, Gucci, where did it be? Who's in control of that person? The baby is."



 We're trying to get a response out of the baby, and we get controlled by wanting that response. You try to get your God to operate on your leash, your performance, and ultimately you'll do anything to get that God to perform for you. You become a slave of your own idol, and you may not even recognize how it is happening.



 In some of the recent commemorations for 9-11, I read a commentary by the Christian commentator Jim Dennison.



 He told the account of Christina Stanton, young woman in New York City, who watched the first plane go into the Twin Towers from her balcony apartment.



 And as she was standing on her balcony, the next plane went by within 500 feet of her, the exhaust knocking her down, the sound temporarily making her deaf.



 And then the building.



 And as the buildings began to fall, she and her husband ran to the ground floor to try to escape the destruction that was so close. But as they were running through the streets as oxygen was being taken out of the air by the debris falling from the sky, they both began to fall to the ground. She said to her husband, "Are we going to die?"



 And his response was to begin reciting the Lord's Prayer. "Our Father, which art in heaven, how would be thy name?"



 She was honest about what he was doing when she wrote about it later.



 Before 9-11, I would call myself somebody who went to church on Sundays but really hadn't internalized the Bible, internalized who Jesus said He was, who I am in Him. When the attacks happened, I learned I don't have control over God.



 The Bible was not saying, you just say the right words and God will do what you want.



 You work hard and God will give you prospering like you never knew.



 That's what I believed, that the Bible was something like a rabbit's foot. You just rub it like Satan wants you to and get what you want, like you would do an idol or a genie in a bottle.



 That's not God.



 She said, "I finally begin to understand that what Christians do is submit every day to the power of the Holy Spirit instead of trying to get God to do my will, to seek God's glory over my own and living for heaven on earth," which is actually what her husband was praying.



 "Lord, do Your will on earth as it is in heaven." That's what the Lord's Prayer was, that I would be submitting my will to the Lord, not getting God to dance to my tune.



 That would be an idol. That is not God.



 Such a prayer, if that's all we're doing, reciting the Lord's Prayer like an incantation, reading the Bible to get enough brownie points with God that He'll do what we want.



 Such a prayer is not magic. It's not a superstitious chant to get God to perform our will for our desires as any good idol should.



 Ultimately, she wrote, "I recognize prayer as placing God on the throne of my heart and seeking His will for my life."



 Such a different perspective. It's what Jesus was willing to say when He said, "My bread is to do the will of Him who sent me. My heart wants to honor My Father. I'm not putting Him on a leash."



 I set my face like a flint to Jerusalem to fulfill His will, knowing the cross awaits me there.



 Because it's His will, ultimately, that He is being called to glorify.



 Because Jesus is not making physical satisfaction or spiritual substitution, He is God.



 Satan tries one more approach.



 If it's not the physical things, if it's not spiritual things that can tempt you, what's left?



 You yourself.



 I'll tempt you with you. Verses 8 and 9, "The devil took Him to a very high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in their glory.



 And Satan said to Jesus, "All these I will give you if you will fall down and worship me." And repetition of the very first temptation in the garden, where Satan said to Adam and Eve, what?



 You can eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.



 God doesn't want you to because then you will be like God.



 Now Satan says to Jesus, "If you'll worship me, you can have all the kingdoms of the world in all glory." You'll be like God the Father.



 You'll have it all.



 You'll be who you want to be.



 And Jesus resists that temptation as well. Recognizing He is to be obedient to the Father, it is not His job to take the place of the Father, to not make Himself the center of His purpose, even the center of His life. All of us at times get to the point where we want God to do what we want for just our little corner of the world. God I'm not asking for empires. I'm not asking for glory. I'm not asking for millions. Listen, would you just give me control over this little aspect of my job, this contract that I want, this relationship that I want, this thing that I want for my job? I just want control over this little space.



 And we are to be reminded in the words of Abraham Kuyper, "There is not one square inch of the world over which Jesus does not stand and say, this is mine."



 Not one square inch of my life or your life as we are saying, God, I'm not the one in control. You are. And we are designed to live lives of satisfaction, of wonder, of glory, of goodness, knowing we release control to Him, not take control to ourselves.



 It's hard to recognize what we're actually being called to think and believe at times.



 Paul Tripp, the Christian author and writer, wrote a poem recently to God. And this is what it said, "God, I was not designed to be on my own, to author my own story, to compose my own rules, to live with me in the center.



 I was not designed to look for life outside of you, to love people, places and things more than you.



 I was not designed to rely on my own wisdom, to trust my imagination, to rely on my thoughts, to ignore your revelation.



 I was not designed to follow the path of my craving, to be enslaved by my desires, to be ruled by my passions more than I am by you.



 I was not designed to put created things in your place.



 I was designed to know that it is good to be with God.



 I was designed to make you my sole refuge, to rest in the goodness of your heart's intent, to praise you for the eternal rescue you promise in Jesus.



 I was designed to rely on you to hold me through every trial, beyond every tragedy, through every temptation.



 And no matter my victory or my failure, I was designed to remember that you will never leave me nor forsake me.



 I was designed to rise, to fight again in the knowledge that you loved me enough to send Jesus for me, so that you will forgive me and be my refuge and strength yet again.



 Wow, what a design. Should you trust the design? I mean you see Jesus resisting the sin, the temptation in order to teach us a good and safe place to go, but do we follow against the temptations He resisted? Never meant to, because the temptations are not just proving that He is pure as a pure sacrifice, they are proving that He is the Son that God sent for us at great sacrifice to Himself. Did you catch it? It happens over and over again in the passage. Verse 1, "Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted." Verse 2, "After fasting forty days and forty nights." Now when you hear wilderness and the number forty, what comes to mind? You remember the people of Israel? They're wandering in the wilderness for how long?



 Forty years.



 And here is Jesus, the Son of God, and we should be remembering that when Moses went to Pharaoh, he did not say, as Charlton Heston says in the movie, "Let my people go."



 What did Moses actually say? He said to Pharaoh, God says, "Let my son go."



 Here are the people, representative of the children of God. So the most, "Let my son go," God says. Pharaoh will not do it, but ultimately when there's deliverance by God, they wander to idolatry and wander forty years in the wilderness. There was another time when another son was called to faithfulness. Remember after Adam's sin, that first son of God, there was Noah as God wiped the earth clean by the flood. Here it rained, forty days and forty nights.



 And then Noah failed also.



 There comes another son in the wilderness to be tested. Forty days and forty nights.



 And he is proving to be a faithful son because we have to recognize what God is ultimately doing is fulfilling the promise to Abraham made so long ago. Remember Abraham thinking he was going to honor God took his son Isaac up onto the mountaintop to sacrifice him. He raised the knife and God said, "Don't plunge the knife.



 I will provide the sacrifice rather than the son that you love."



 And here he is, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, the one that he loved, so that whoever believes in him would not perish but have eternal life." Here he is, the son who is being offered in sacrifice as God had promised so long ago, he would provide that son. And now that one is coming not just to prove that he is the right sacrifice, to prove the heart of God the Father for us. Some of you, some of you have children or grandchildren, nieces or nephews who have gone from this church to be on the mission field. I mean it's an amazing thought that something like 80 percent of the missionaries that we support are people right out of this church.



 But it's painful to send them.



 For those who go into missions or ministries, you know that they may spend most of their lives distant or never making the income of their peers.



 And those of you who are parents or grandparents, so there's a pain in your heart as you recognize this is a sacrifice of your own children for the sake of the lost. And in that sense you have just the barest of feelings of what God the Father is doing when he provides his eternal perfect son for fallen, sinful, wandering humanity.



 He doesn't just prove that Jesus is the perfect sacrifice, he proves how big is his own heart. And that has made ultimately clear when we understand the rescue that is being provided by this perfect sacrifice and provided son. What is God ultimately doing? He's showing us how we might experience his love in our lives. The Spirit's rescue is on display as well in two ways.



 The Spirit's rescue is made clear in what rescues Jesus over and over again from the temptation. Every time Satan tempts Jesus, Jesus responds with words from where? Where do the words Jesus responds with come from?



 From the Bible. He responds with Scripture as if to say the power of the Spirit is in the written Word of God. He who spoke this world into being also wrote our Scriptures as holy men of God says the Bible were carried along by the Holy Spirit. They would write what we needed to resist temptation. And so this Word is written for us. And over and over again we recognize there is strength in knowing what the Word says as Jesus was using it to fend off the temptations of Satan. Thy Word have I hidden in my heart that I might not sin against thee. If I know the Word, it has power for me. Even when I'm facing temptation, when I recognize this is so hard, God, I'm not sure that I can resist. But he that is in you is greater than he is in the world. That's what the Word says. Satan sits right there on my shoulder and says, "You can't help it. You can't be fixed. There's no hope for you." And we have to say, "That is a lie. Greater is he that's in me than he that's in the world. I'm crucified with Christ. I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. And the life that I live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. He died on the cross, but he is alive and he lives in me. The resurrection power, the Holy Spirit is in me that I might walk with the Lord." Are there temptations? Of course there are. But the Bible says there is no temptation taken you, but such as is common.



 And God is faithful. He will not allow you to be tempted above what you are able, but will with the temptation also provide a way of escape so that you can stand up under it. "Lord, I can't help it. I can't resist. I can't fight." God says, "No, listen. My word told you something different.



 Believe the word written. You can stand up under it, relying upon the truth of God, the power of the Spirit. We have to believe that that new creation that God has made us to be is real.



 And so when the temptation comes, I do not let Satan deceive me by saying, you can't be helped, you can't be stopped. I say, no, change is real. Change is possible because the power of God exists in me.



 Through the risen work of Jesus Christ as he has sent his Spirit into my heart. I believe it.



 And when that word is written, not only for us, but is the sword wielded by us, then you begin to recognize what power it has. Do you recognize, that's what the Bible says, that this sword of the Spirit is the word of God. So that when we or our children are facing temptation or trial, if that word is deep in them, they actually have spiritual resources to fend off the temptations of Satan just as Jesus did. I rejoice to be a part of a church where we have these well-versed kids where the pioneer girls and the brigade boys and the good news clubs are memorizing scriptures, where on this very day, the first graders received their Bibles from this church. You know what this is?



 This is the Bible I got when I was a child from my church.



 I keep it on my desk all the time. Reminder of the word of God given by the people of God for the strength of the children of God. God is calling us to believe that this word is powerful. It's not magic, it's not a rabbit's foot, but I will tell you, there are times even now when I may not be able to remember a Bible reference, but I know it's kind of two-thirds of the way, it's on the right-hand side about two-thirds of the way.



 Some of you are laughing because you do that too.



 And you recognize that there is this truth of God that becomes strength to our souls, and we're passing it to our children, and it's part of the beauty and blessing of the gospel, as it's not just the word written, it's the word we're able to wield in time of temptation to say, "Satan, you're a liar, and I will not follow your path, but rather what God has designed for me."



 It has such power.



 We just need to remember it.



 A couple of weeks ago I was asked to speak at a pastors conference in Texas, and I was the second speaker on the platform, and as a consequence I regretted being asked to come. You know why? You know, if you're in the entertainment industry, I hear that you never want to follow an act that features children or animals.



 You know, you know what the preacher's version of that is? You never want to follow a preacher who can quote Scripture better than you can.



 So the preacher who was ahead of me was there at the invitation of Samaritan's Purse. You know the ones who have the shoeboxes that we distribute every Christmas? We fill up with toys, but also a gospel presentation for children across the world. So here was this pastor from this little bitty Texas church that had maybe, you know, a couple of dozen people, and Samaritan's Purse had him represent them. And I'm like, "Well, that's kind of sweet." You know, that they would take a pastor from an obscure little church, and he would represent this huge gospel outreach effort.



 And then the pastor began to talk. Now he was from South Texas, and that minute took about three minutes for him to say his name.



 And I thought, "Boy, this is going to be...this is not going to be hard to follow."



 And then he said in his little church of 25 or so people that five years ago they began to pray that the Lord would allow them to give the Christmas shoeboxes in ministry to 500 children.



 Wow.



 He said there's been some blessing in our church since. He said now we're 50 people. Wow, 100 percent growth from 25 to 50.



 But then he said, "And this year what we will do is the 50 of us will distribute 11,000 shoeboxes."



 And I thought, "How did that happen?"



 And then virtually everything he said from that point forward was Scripture that he had memorized to give him encouragement and strength and zeal to his people for the gospel.



 I think that's how that happened.



 The Word of God ministered the purposes of God and gave God's people the power of God. When we are facing temptation, it is our calling, it is our privilege. I mean, the things that are said here are so beautiful. When Christ is responding with the Word of God, what happens as a result? Verse 11, "Then the devil left him." I'm just the simple word. The devil left him. It's the promise of Jesus' brother in the book of James, "Resist the devil and he will flee from you." The devil doesn't want people to resist him with the Word of God. He wants an easier mark than that. So he'll go elsewhere. If we resist, the devil will flee. And something else happens. The end of verse 11, "Angels came and were ministering to Jesus." As he is using the Word of God to fend off the temptations of Satan, not only did Satan leave, but the angels come and begin to minister to Jesus. And we think, "Man, I'd like that spa treatment.



 Angels to come and minister." It really is the red carpet treatment, if you think about it.



 Because what they are doing as they are now strengthening the Lamb of God is they are preparing him for the red carpet that will lead to the cross.



 He is being prepared for the greatest work of his life and our need, the sacrifice of his life for my sin and your sin. It is ultimately our red carpet treatment that is being prepared. As what God is doing is saying, "I have prepared the Lamb for you." And as you put your faith in him, not your works, not your goodness, but him paying the price for your sin, made perfect in righteousness by resisting the temptation that you have not, then you know that when you are struggling, you can go to him and say, "God, forgive me,



 and be assured that the one who took the sins of the world upon himself will take your sin too, that you might rise with strength and encouragement, knowing he's for me, he's for me, and he paid the price that I would not have to." When I know that, when I know that the red carpet of my own walk is taking me to the cross, where I lay my sin and my guilt, the temptations that I fall into beneath the cross of Jesus, they are taken from me, put on him, and I rise in the joy of the Lord that is my strength.



 Praise God for the temptations you face, knowing he faced them too. We have a perfect high priest who is in all manner tempted like we are, so that he is able to sympathize with our weaknesses.



 And in time of need, we go to him, lay the sin at his feet, and rise in the forgiveness that is our joy and our strength. Father, so work your word again into our hearts, that the one who gave himself for us would be the one that we live for, not because our living would deserve his giving,



 but because we in response to the one who gave his all would ask now that you would forgive us in him.



 Heavenly Father, you know our hearts, there cannot be a sermon on temptation without the word itself bringing to the minds of those who are listening to me a person, an activity,



 a habit, a pursuit that brings them great guilt and shame.



 Remind us greater is he that's in us than he that's in the world.



 And not only does he give us power, he gives us forgiveness so that we might know the joy of our salvation.



 Father, we confess to you our need of one to forgive us when we have yielded to the sin, but in light of our forgiveness, shine the joy of the gospel that we might claim your strength and live for Jesus, we pray in his name, amen.

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