Jan. 6, 2023 - Just Informed Talk - Craig James
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| Welcome to our segment of God's Grace is Greater where we do a deep dive into the scripture. | |
| Today we're in the Gospel of Luke. | |
| We're looking at Luke chapter 4 and we're going to be talking specifically today about the temptation of Jesus Christ. | |
| This is following his baptism and right before he starts his ministry as an adult around 30 years old. | |
| This is what Jesus faced, and there's a lot we can learn from these verses, so I'm just going to share them, and if you guys want a little recap, we're doing all of the major Gospels. | |
| We started in the Gospel of Matthew. | |
| We did Matthew, Mark. | |
| Now we're in Luke. | |
| We're in chapter 4 at the beginning, verse 1 through 13, talking about The temptation of Jesus Christ and what that means and how it all took place, what it looked like, how it happened according to Luke, the doctor who told us in very specific detail about Jesus' life. | |
| So let's go ahead and read here, starting in Luke 4, verse 1. | |
| It says, Then Jesus returned from the Jordan full of the Holy Spirit and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness for 40 days to be tempted by the devil. | |
| He ate nothing during those days, and when they were over, he was hungry. | |
| The devil said to him, If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread. | |
| But Jesus answered him, It is written, Man must not live on bread alone. | |
| So he took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. | |
| The devil said to him, I will give you their splendor and all this authority because it has been given over to me, and I can give it to anyone I want. | |
| If you then will worship me, all will be yours. | |
| And Jesus answered him, It is written, Worship the Lord your God and serve him only. | |
| So he took him to Jerusalem, had him stand on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written, He will give his angels orders concerning you to protect you, and they will support you with their hands so that you will not him, Strike your foot against a stone. | |
| And Jesus answered him, Wow. | |
| So I love this verse because I believe it tells you everything you need to know about how you can overcome this fallen world. | |
| And Jesus set us the example here in this exchange. | |
| These 40 days that he went and had this encounter in the wilderness with Satan, it teaches us so much. | |
| Now, this is kind of going in parallel to what was faced by the tribe of Israel after, you know, when they were lost in the desert, when they were in the wilderness. | |
| And there's a lot of parallel between these three different accounts of the devil's temptation and what they faced as they were lost and wandering through the wilderness. | |
| But for this segment, I'm just going to focus on what Jesus faced when the devil came and tempted him and what that actually means. | |
| So the first temptation that is written here... | |
| It's Jesus' hunger. | |
| Now, this obviously correlates back to the hunger that was felt by the Israelites as they were wandering through the desert and the manna that was given to them by God. | |
| Jesus is tempted by the devil after 40 days not eating, saying, If you are the Son of God, Tell this stone to become bread. | |
| So he's telling him to prove that he's the Son of God by doing something that he wants to do anyway. | |
| Now isn't this a trick that the devil uses on us all the time? | |
| Doesn't the devil always seek to worm his way into our lives and tempt us, not when we are strong in our faith, not when we are at our best and highest and most aware, but when we are at our weakest, when we have been, you know, Put in a state of incapacity when we're not able to fully fight with everything we have. | |
| That's when the devil will slither his way in like a serpent and try to deceive us, just like he did in the garden with Adam and Eve. | |
| But this is Jesus giving us the example of what to do when that happens. | |
| Now, Jesus gave us this example when he was hungry. | |
| You're talking about 40 days of fasting. | |
| And the devil is saying, well, why don't you just make yourself something to eat? | |
| You're the son of God. | |
| And he's essentially saying, well, why wouldn't God want you to eat, right? | |
| That's what he's essentially saying. | |
| And Jesus gives him this answer. | |
| And this is a powerful answer. | |
| He says, it is written, man must not live on bread alone. | |
| Now, what's he referring to? | |
| Is he saying that you need a diverse diet? | |
| Well, maybe. | |
| I don't know about that. | |
| I think what he's trying to say is that you can live... | |
| With God spiritually feeding you without the food that we consume regularly in this world. | |
| He's saying that, in my opinion, what I read this as is, That we have to focus on the Spirit being fulfilled. | |
| Like Paul talks about when he writes about the feeding of new Christians as babies taking milk before they can consume the full food of the Gospel. | |
| They have to be weaned on the milk until they can consume the full breadth and scope of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. | |
| And in the same way here, Jesus is telling us that our lives must not be fulfilled. | |
| Focused on survival. | |
| We have to thrive with God spiritually first and foremost before we should worry about how we take care of ourselves in this world. | |
| And that goes right into the next one. | |
| Where the temptation comes from the devil in taking Jesus up to the top of a mountain and showing him all the kingdoms of the world and saying, I will give you the splendor and authority, all the power that you can ever imagine or want. | |
| Can be yours if you will just worship me is what the devil says to Jesus. | |
| And this is something that the devil can tempt us with too in our lives, right? | |
| In the world that we live in, what is the obsession we see most culturally when we turn on the TV or we turn on movies or we read through the social media pages? | |
| What is everybody the most obsessed with? | |
| I wish it was about finding favor with God. | |
| I wish it was about becoming spiritually stronger and finding solace in just the knowledge that Jesus died for our sins, but it isn't. | |
| What we see more than anything across the board are people obsessed with power, with money, with cars and luxury items and homes and decadent foods and all these different things, right? | |
| There's an obsession there. | |
| And sex and everything else and drugs and alcohol and everything else. | |
| What is the devil really offering Jesus here? | |
| He's saying God has allowed me in this lower level to have control over all these things and I can give them all to you. | |
| All the things that men want. | |
| All the things that men desire. | |
| The things that we're taught when we look around us to want and desire. | |
| But Jesus gives him an answer that I think Now, in these first two examples, what is Jesus doing? | |
| Jesus is using the scripture to overcome the temptation of the devil. | |
| He's telling the devil, the Bible tells us to worship God and God alone and to serve him only. | |
| And what he's also saying in giving that response is that... | |
| Worshiping God is worth more than all these kingdoms you've shown me, of all these things around me, all this power and wonder that you're trying to tell me I could have. | |
| I can have more if I worship God. | |
| That's what Jesus is saying, and that's the example that we're meant to take and hold inside of us and use in our hearts. | |
| So then, finally, the devil takes him on top of the temple in Jerusalem, and he takes him to the pinnacle of the temple, the top of the temple, high up in the air, And he says this. | |
| Now what happens here that's different? | |
| The first two temptations, Jesus rebukes the devil by citing the scripture. | |
| But in this one, the devil uses the scripture to try to tempt Jesus into challenging God. | |
| He says, If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written, He will give His angels orders concerning you to protect you, and they will support you with their hands so that you will not strike your foot against a stone. | |
| So how does Jesus respond to this? | |
| Because the devil's challenging him. | |
| He says, if you're the Son of God, which we know the devil knows he is the Son of God, but he says, if you're the Son of God, then why not test God and show and prove to us all that you are? | |
| So Jesus answered him with Scripture, but with a better and more comprehensive piece of Scripture that undermines and overcomes the argument being made by the devil in the first place. | |
| It says, it is said, do not test the Lord your God. | |
| And with that, the devil left him. | |
| And he had overcome every temptation the devil offered him. | |
| Now, why did Jesus say, do not test the Lord your God? | |
| Because he was showing the devil and showing us by example that we are not meant to test God in this life either. | |
| That God has a plan and a will, and we are meant to submit to it. | |
| We are not meant to question him in the ways that the devil wanted Jesus to question God, questioning his ability to save Jesus. | |
| If we have faith in God, as Jesus had faith in his Father, then we know and trust that God will be there for us in our time of need. | |
| Just like Jesus knew if he were to jump, God would save him. | |
| God would rescue him. | |
| God would grab him and hold him in his hands if it were a part of God's will. | |
| But what does Jesus teach us in this lesson? | |
| Do not test God. | |
| Trust God. | |
| And that's the difference. | |
| The devil is always trying to get us to test God. | |
| He's always trying to get us to serve him to get a little bit of what's in this world. | |
| He's always trying to hit us at our moment of weakness to try to get us to capitulate, to turn over our lives to him just to get what we need for the moment. | |
| But Jesus teaches us in all of these different examples how to overcome The evil temptations that are of this world that we all can fall trap to. | |
| We must not live on bread alone. | |
| We must spiritually thrive on the bread of life that comes from Jesus Christ. | |
| We must serve God and God alone. | |
| We must not look at the world as a place where we can take things from and gain all this power if we're not looking to heaven and not building our treasure in heaven. | |
| And finally... | |
| We must not test God. | |
| We must submit to God and trust Him. | |
| Because there are going to come times where things aren't going our way. | |
| There are going to come times where you think everything is going to go the wrong direction. | |
| It's tempting to challenge God and say, why? | |
| Now you can have a conversation. | |
| You can ask Him why you are going through what you're going through. | |
| But what Jesus taught us is to not test God, but to trust God. | |
| And that's what I call on all of you to do, is to trust God. | |
| That he will be there with you through all these troubles that we are going to face in this life. | |
| So with that, I'm going to say a prayer and then we'll wrap it up. | |
| Lord and Heavenly Father, thank you so much for this day and thank you so much for your incredible, incredible gift that you've given us in this scripture to have the example of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ to understand better how to overcome the temptations and the evil that is of this world. | |
| Lord, it's so easy for some of us out there to fall into these traps that are set by the devil for us. | |
| I pray that for myself and everyone out there watching, Lord, that you'll help us overcome those traps. | |
| I sincerely pray that you'll show us the way, Lord, the way forward. | |
| Help us to trust that in our time of need we will find comfort in you. | |
| We will find peace in our heart with you. | |
| We will find the sustenance and nourishment from you that we seek in our lives. | |
| Lord, that we will not test you, but we will trust you in our lives. | |
| Sometimes it's easy to think, Lord, that we can overcome on our own, but, Lord, let us submit ourselves to you and trust that with you all things are possible. | |
| We can overcome any temptation, any adversity, any affliction, if you will it, Lord. | |
| We pray that not our will, but your will will be done, that your plan will play itself out in our lives as best to our best that it may be. | |
| We thank you, Lord, for this day and every day, and most of all, our eternal salvation. | |
| In Jesus' name, amen. | |
| All right, guys. | |
| Well, I hope you enjoyed this segment, God's Grace is Greater. | |
| This was the start of Luke chapter 4. | |
| We're going to be going deeper into chapter 4 in the next one, so I hope you guys are ready for that. | |
| But if you guys are watching this, make sure you like, share, subscribe. | |
| There's links in the description if you want to financially contribute and keep this channel alive. | |
| I appreciate it thoroughly. | |
| But make sure... | |
| That you guys tune in next time. | |
| And until then, I'm going to go ahead and sign off. | |
| My name is Craig. | |
| Godspeed and God bless each and every one of you Patriots. | |
| And don't forget, this is a daily segment that's going to keep coming. | |
| So I hope you guys are ready. | |
| But with that being said, I want to say thank you again for watching. | |
| I can't wait to see you guys tomorrow. | |
| And then we'll cover it all again. | |
| Tomorrow we're going to be... | |
| I hope you guys are ready for that. | |
| But with that being said, thanks for watching. | |
| My name is Craig. |
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