Capable

Well, it seems like to me that we have been on an adventure with Jesus during this time of Lent, being in the wilderness with Jesus, trying to understand what he was going through when he fasted and prayed and was tempted throughout that whole time. And we've been over the three temptations. So in all of this, it's just really cool to see like there is a happy ending here, although, you know, the tougher stuff is yet to come in Jesus' life.

Will you stand as you are able as we end this section on Jesus' temptation in the wilderness? And then when the devil ended every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time. And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit to Galilee. And a report about him went throughout all the surrounding country.

The Word of God, inspired by God, for the people of God. Thanks be to God. Amen.

You may be seated. Now, if you remember a couple of weeks ago, I talked about how fun it was to play tug of war with my dog, Mabel, and we just enjoy that game. But believe it or not, sometimes that dog is not always the best dog to be around.

It is a documented, I don't know if it's documented, it is a fact that she is the loudest barking dog in the neighborhood. And so when that voice is amplified in the kitchen, it is, it's a little painful on the ears. Now, one thing I do love is she has started jumping up on the chair on my lap, and she just sits there like, you can pet me now.

And it is just some really, really cool bonding time, except you got to watch her like a hawk. I was petting her, and I looked over at Colin, and I go, I really love when she sits on my, and before I could do that, her mouth shot right at my open mouth and licked me. How do you train a dog not to open mouth kiss you? It was so gross.

I'm over there spitting, and my son is laughing at me. Thanks, Colin. He's still laughing.

Yeah, and then she came at you because you were laughing. She went for your mouth too. So, that, believe it or not, reminds me, in a way, of what this text is saying to us, that the devil looks for those opportunities.

You see, the way that we, Satan, last week we were talking about the schemes and the algorithms of Satan with those three temptations, but we see a hint and a foreshadowing towards this, to the continued schemes, the algorithm of Satan. Satan will question your resilience by looking for future opportunities to tempt you. The devil will tempt you at a future time when you are weak.

Therefore, even when Easter comes and goes, you need to continue with fasting, prayer, study, sanctification, growing closer to God, working with everything you have. Jesus said we had to give him everything. That's all.

Modern Christianity often says, oh, it's so simple. We just make it so complicated, and it's so simple. Well, it's simple if you just do some of the gospel.

It's simple that Jesus did all the work. Simple for us, but it's not easy to open ourselves to God in every situation and let God work on us and strengthen us. Even after the season is over, 1 Peter 5.8, he picks up on this topic really well.

He says, be sober-minded, be watchful. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a luring line seeking someone to devour. How would you like to think about that verse all week long? That's the part of the gospel.

The gospel is that God will protect us and God will help us with that, but that's the part of the New Testament that we want to ignore, that we are susceptible to the ways of the devil if we are not walking with Jesus. Well, that sounds simple, but walking with Jesus all the time is something that takes a lot of practice. It takes a lot of thought.

It takes a lot of prayer. It takes a lot of study. It takes a lot of trial and error, falling down and getting back up again.

The difficulty is so many people will fall, and they won't get back up. They think, I can't overcome this. I am stuck.

I am here. I am habitual, and I just keep doing the same thing. What was an opportune time? When Luke tells us he was waiting for an opportune time, look at some of the temptations that Jesus would have.

The rejection of religious leaders over and over, that they didn't believe him. Judas, one of his twelve, in Luke 22.3, who entered Judas? Satan. It says the devil entered him.

He found a weakness. Whatever it was, something with what Jesus was teaching, something with what was taking too long for him to knock out Rome. I don't know what it was, but he found that.

That's the algorithm I talk about, where they kept going back to your habits and your ways and the things you do, looking for a weakness to take you down. And as we keep moving through there, Peter, in Luke 22.31, he says to Peter, when Satan sifts you like sand, then encourage your brothers. When you come back, then when you come back, encourage your brothers.

Jesus knew Judas was going to fall. He said, the one who I give this piece of bread to is the one who will betray me. And he blatantly said in front of all the disciples, here, Judas, you get this.

Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean, this person is Judas. Here, Judas, you take this. And when Judas took it, they were just thinking it was something to do with the treasurer.

But Satan had entered him. He was doing something and going back to the way he was. They were just beginning this transformation.

Of course, with the crucifixion, I believe with everything in me that Jesus could have walked away. Think of all the things he could have done so he wasn't crucified. He could have said one word.

I mean, when they came to arrest him in the book of John, it says that the soldiers, the temple soldiers came to arrest him and they go, where is Jesus? And Jesus said, in English, it's so lame. He said, I am he. But the Greek, he said, ego ami, which is simply not lego my ego.

It is ego ami means I am. Whose name is I am? God. And at the name of I am, everybody dropped to their knees.

Every knee shall bow. Every tongue confess. He saw it right there before him.

He had the power to stop it. In the trial, like we, like I talked about in the newsletter, he remained silent. In Isaiah 53, it says, like a sheep before the shearers, her shearers is silent.

I mean, he just annoyed Pontius Pilate. He annoyed Caesar, not Caesar, Herod, because Herod wanted to be entertained, but he wouldn't talk. So they thought he was crazy.

Why won't you defend yourself? Because if he defended himself, he would have been able to walk away. And if he was able to walk away, then what power would we have to overcome sin? What opportunity would we have to enter the gates of heaven? The devil looks for all those regarding us. He'll tempt us at the times when we're weak.

So we have to seek to be like Jesus, even beyond the season of Lent. When I was preparing this, this sermon, these strange things pop in my head, like songs from the 80s, mostly 80s, sometimes 90s, maybe sometimes earlier ones. And I'm reading this, and the song just sticks with me.

I did not know, did you know, do you know who the actual author of Joan Jett and the Black Heart singing, I Hate Myself for Loving You, do you know who the actual author of that was? It was Paul. Paul wrote that song for the 80s. She says, in these words, it says, I think of you every night and day.

You took my heart and you took my pride away. I hate myself for loving you. Can't break free from the things that you do.

I want to rock, walk, but I run back to you. That's why I hate myself for loving you. Who knew, well, it was from the 20th century, that's why it fits with the gospel.

Paul said the same thing. She was talking about a guy, which people can bring us down to, but Paul was just talking about himself. Where in Romans 7, verse 15, it says, for I do not understand my own actions.

For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now, if I do what I don't, do not want, I agree with the law. That is good.

So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. He goes on to say in verse 22, for I delight in the law of God and my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? Do you ever feel that way? I know the right thing to do, but I just don't do it.

I mean, all of us probably have things we have overcome. That is one of the reasons I have learned over the years where I thought, you know, blanket, I could say, God, forgive me for my sins and try to blanket cover it. There's too many for me to think of right now.

And then over the years, those things would come back to haunt me. And I had to learn that there's a point to asking forgiveness, asking God to give you the power to repent from a specific sin that draws you apart from God, because God will meet you right there with that. Anything troubling you, God will be there to give you the strength.

The devil's always looking for opportunities to bring us down. Now, thinking of that song of, you know, how she wanted to get away from this guy who was bad for her, but she kept going back to it. If we think of, is it bad if I compare sin to a guy? Does that sound? If we have sin, and it just commands our attention, we have something we know is wrong, but it takes up our mind and our heart, and we keep going back to it, and we keep focusing in on it as if we're locked on it, and we know we shouldn't, but we still do.

I think of Adam and Eve, that in Genesis 3, God told them, hey, you can eat of any fruit of the garden, any of them, any fruit. In other words, Adam and Eve, you've got one job. And how did they do on that one job? Didn't fall.

You've got one thing you can't do. It's like if you tell a child, don't touch this one thing in the room. What are they going to think about? Or in a car, when you figure out that you push the button, the window goes up and down, that it keeps going up and down.

The focus of that, of Adam and Eve, when he said that, of one fruit, and then they felt, well, what about this one fruit? Because Satan saw the weakness, and he swooped in. Well, he couldn't swoop, he crawled in, and he said, did God really say that? Are you really going to die? And the fruit tasted good, but the afterbite of that was, it changed not only their whole lives, but God kicked them out of the garden. Changed the world forever.

The downfall of that sin was the downfall of what happened there, and it changed the reverberation of that, changed the entire world. So everybody then became stuck. And it's a form of slavery.

Paul's saying he's held captive. He knows what's right, but he can't do it. And he's held captive, and it's so close to what Jesus said in John 8, when he's arguing with the people, and they say, how do we know that you're from God? How do we know what you're saying is true? And he says to them, you are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's, does Jesus ever say tough things to hear? Your will is to do your father's desires.

I mean, if our father is the devil, and we do what we want to do, when we want to do it, whatever we feel like, when we want to feel like, however we want to go at it, then our father is the devil, at least with that. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar, and the father of all lies. Jesus said, truly, truly, if I say to you, if anyone who keeps my word, he will never see death.

And while he's debating with him, he says, truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. Paul said, we're held captive. If we practice sin, we are a slave to that sin.

He says, the slave does not remain in the house forever, the son remains forever. So if the son sets you free, you will be free indeed. I don't know why, but I always love that verse.

That's not just a temporary freedom, it is freedom that is free forever, as long as you are with the son, you are set free. I know that you are the offspring of Abraham, because you seek to kill me. I speak of what I have seen with my father, and you do what you have heard from your father.

Now, when Jesus is talking about what he has heard from his father, I mean, we're even going back to the wilderness here, when he sees that God showed him a way out in the midst of temptation, that because he knew the scripture, he was able to refute the devil. He was able to kick him out and his schemes and his ways and not let them bring him down. So the really cool thing about these verses is that Jesus finished strong.

In fact, in Matthew, it says, after the third temptation, then the devil left him, and behold, angels came and were ministering to him. So if Jesus, being fully God, but yet was fully man, allowed the angels to ministering to him, why do we think we're so great that we won't allow the angels to minister to us? That we won't allow the Holy Spirit to work within us, to guide us, to strengthen us, and to trust in God in everything. You see, after 40 days in the desert, Jesus was still capable to conquer temptation.

My prayer for all of us is that after 40 days of Lent, that you still see that you are capable that with the Holy Spirit, you are capable to trust in God, to do what God asks of you. You are capable when you fall to get back up, when Jesus reaches out his hand to pick you right back up. Because even when we feel distant from God, he's still there with us.

He's still just waiting for us to say, help me out. I've fallen. I need you, God.

Fasting and feeding on the Word empower us to conquer temptation in the power of the Spirit, especially after Lent ends. I think I talked about Lent ending like three times, and I'm looking at that going, okay. What we want to do is, the point is not just to be good for 40 days, or to focus on God for 40 days, but for that to be a springboard so that after the season of Lent, we can focus on God every day.

We can learn to trust in God. We can learn to open ourselves to the Holy Spirit and say, I can overcome because of you. I can conquer temptation.

I am capable of conquering temptation because I see the example of Jesus, and the same Holy Spirit that dwelled within him dwells within us to give us the strength, to give us the power, so that when we go, well, I don't know if I can do this for God. Or if we go share God's love with someone else, or we share the grace of Jesus with someone else, and they say, who are you to share about God? I know you're not perfect. But we know we're capable, that we know we can serve because we are capable, that we know that we can overcome temptation.

We have that capability when we trust in God, when we listen to God, and when we walk with God every day. Let's pray. Almighty God, thank you so much for Jesus Christ.

Thank you for his example. Thank you that in him we can be transformed to be like you. Help us to believe you, that we are capable with you to overcome temptation.

We are capable that to see the way you give us out. We just pray that when you call, we respond, that no one deters us, and that we know that the world needs Jesus. And so you want to work through us, because you are so amazing.

Thank you, God, for loving us. In Jesus' name.