Cravings

Today, as we continue in our series, 40 Days of Overcoming Temptation, we're walking with Jesus at His time. Remember last week, we talked about how He was baptized, and after He was baptized, the Holy Spirit came down on Him like bodily form, like a dove, and then that same Spirit drove Him into the wilderness to be tempted, and fast, and to prepare Himself and all of us with overcoming temptation. Today, we're going to start looking at each of the individual temptations, and hopefully this will provide us with some insight on what we can continue to do throughout this season of Lent.

We often talk about giving something up that we really love, so instead of eating that, or drinking that, or doing that, we can focus on God and learn to desire God more, like we were just saying about learning to rely on God and trust in God. Will you stand as you are able? Luke 4, 1-4, And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness. For forty days, being tempted by the devil, He ate nothing during those days, and when they were ended, He was hungry.

The devil said to Him, If You are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread. And Jesus answered Him, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone. The Word of God, inspired by God, for the people of God.

Thanks be to God. Amen. You may be seated.

In case you didn't know, Luke had to tell us that when Jesus had fasted for forty days, He was hungry. Don't know what was in what He was drinking to keep Him going during that time, but I can imagine, if it was us, you'd be hungry too. How many of you would be hungry after four hours? Four hours.

Teenagers. Jesus had to go through this, just like the baptism, He was showing us this, and Jesus, when He got done, the devil tempted Him with bread. I mean, bread, if you haven't eaten in a long time, you may be thinking, Man, what if it was pizza? Could Jesus have overcome pizza? Or tacos? Now I'm stuck.

But it was bread, and after all that time, something like bread was huge. And bread is something that I read is universal in every culture. Every culture has bread in some form.

So this story can relate to every single human being in the world. There are a couple verses we're going to go over today that we're going to look at in all different, all the way through this series. And one of them, which is one of my favorite verses, because it's often one of those that is misquoted, is 1 Corinthians 10.13. It might be a good idea to take the example of Bill and bring your Bible.

Because we're going to go over a lot of scripture as we move through this series. Or your phone app, or download the app, so you have an app on your phone. But 1 Corinthians 10.13, it says, No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man.

In other words, Paul is saying to the people in the church, you think nobody else is tempted like you? Everybody is. But he says, God is faithful. And he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability.

And that's where people often stop. And they say, man, God's letting me be tempted. It's all God's fault.

But this verse finishes by saying, But with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape that you may be able to endure it. So, in other words, when Jesus was driven out into the wilderness, he was full of the Holy Spirit. Luke wants us to make sure we know this.

That when we are tempted, that when we are full of the Holy Spirit, let's just say your percentages of conquering temptation go up with the Holy Spirit. That when we have the Holy Spirit, God will show us a way out of that temptation. And God will strengthen us to face it even if it's about food.

The first thing the devil says, though, how the devil tries to get us to, is he says, if you are the Son of God. If. You see, remember back in Luke 3, when Jesus was baptized and he was praying and the dove came down on him, a voice from heaven said, You are my beloved Son, whom I love.

And you I am well pleased. You are my beloved Son. So, God says, you are my beloved Son.

And then Satan says, if you are the Son of God. See what he's doing there? What happens to us, the first thing that happens when we are tempted, when it is tough for us to say no to something, we should say no to, or yes to something, we should say yes to. Well, Satan's going to go, are you sure that's what God wanted? Are you sure you're really a good enough Christian to call yourself a follower of Jesus? Are you really a child of God? You see, the first thing he does when he comes in to tempt us is he wants us to doubt who we are in Christ.

Do you know who you are in Christ? Do you know who? You're awesome in Jesus. Do you get that? Do you believe that? That you are awesome, that you are loved, that you have the power to overcome any temptation, because you are a child of God. Even if it was just you, you would have been the only one that Jesus would have died for.

But lucky for you, it's all of us too. It's everyone. The devil wants to make us doubt who we are in Christ and basically whose we are.

Doubt that we belong to God, make us doubt that we heard God correctly and that we understand what we are called to do in Jesus Christ. Jesus said, It is written, Man shall not live on bread alone. It is written.

So aside from bread, what does a person live on? You know, you could say a whole bunch of other foods. So let me just say aside from food, what does a person live on? What do we do with this? Jesus made it pretty clear. And it's pointing to this in Luke also.

But in John 6, Jesus is being surrounded by the crowd. They had followed him. He had... You remember this amazing thing where they had just some loaves and some fishes? And Jesus said, You feed them to the disciples.

And all of a sudden, there was enough to feed the multitude, like 5,000. And that was just the men. There were probably 12,000 or 15,000 with the women and children.

And he took it from just a handful of stuff and fed everyone. So it's no surprise that the crowds followed him because they were living on... They were hungry. They had been listening to Jesus talk for a long time and there was no... There was no drive-through restaurant nearby in the countryside.

So he made everyone the ability to eat. And they wanted to find him. And he said, Hey, you just wanted to find me because I gave you the bread.

You just look at me and say, Oh, there's the baker. And then they get into discussion about who he really is and how, you know, they said, Hey, our fathers ate manna in the wilderness. Now that's going back to Moses and the Israelites when they were in the desert.

And in Deuteronomy 8, 3, it says the full amount about what Jesus was pointing to. He says, It is written, Man shall not live on bread alone. This is what he was pointing to.

Moses told them, And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know. In case you don't know, manna is when the Israelites were in the desert and it would fall down from the sky. And it says it's like a coriander seed.

They could use it to make bread, but it didn't have an awesome flavor. And they were supposed to live on that for 40 years. But the thing with this manna that came from heaven, how many days did it last? One day.

No preservatives on the food that comes from God. Does that make sense? No preservatives. You got one day.

If you don't want to go out there and pick it up off the field and make it, you're going to be fasting. If you do go pick it up and you make it and you decide to pick up enough so you have leftovers, what's going to happen to it in the morning? It's gone. It's got the worms.

And so you had to, every day they had to rely on God in the desert. Manna from heaven came, but you had to trust in God for your nourishment, for your strength, for everything there was. Let's go back to Deuteronomy 8.3. And He humbled you and let you hunger and fed you manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man does not live on bread alone, but man lives on, say it with me, every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.

What do you live on? God's word. What do you live on? Every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. Now when they were questioning Jesus, after He had fed the 5,000 and they followed Him and He said, you just want more bread.

You don't really want me. And they said, well what work do you think we should do for the bread? And Jesus said, this is the work of God. Are you ready? This is the work of God for all of us, that you believe in Him who He has sent.

That's it. Go in peace. Believe in Him who He has sent.

And they started asking Him questions and telling them that God gave them manna and the manna came from heaven, the bread came from heaven and the bread comes down from heaven and gives life to the world and they said, give us this bread. We saw what you did with the loaves and fishes, so give us this manna. And Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life.

Whoever comes to me shall not hunger and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. I am the bread. So we go back to Jesus in the desert and the devil said, if you are the son of God, then take these stones and turn them into bread because I know you are hungry and I bet he had a mwahaha.

And Jesus said, man, it is written. So when you tie all this together and you go back to 1 Corinthians 10, 13, it says God will show you a way out. If you listen to the word of God if you read the word of God if you pray and hear the word of God if you fast so you rely on God more than all the other comforts we have in life, whatever they are, we all have cravings and we crave for physical things whether it's food or water or comfort or whatever it is we physically crave for.

Jesus said, I am the bread of life. That during the season of Lent we learn to lean on and trust and believe and crave time with Jesus even more than we crave bread, food, whatever it might be that our bodies are telling us we need. It's the same for us as it was for the Israelites in the wilderness and it was for Jesus in the wilderness.

Surviving the wilderness starts with transitioning to manna. Trusting on what God will bring. Trusting on who God is.

Trusting on that manna and then crossing to the promised land requires reliance on the one who sends the manna. It is written. Ezekiel 3.3 says, And he said to me, Son of man, Ezekiel was a prophet and when he was coming to God he was asking God what he should say and he had this vision and he said, Son of man, feed your belly with this scroll that I give you and fill your stomach with it.

Then I ate it and it was sweet in my mouth and it was in my mouth and as sweet as honey. Now sometimes the word of God comes in sweet as honey but then we have some digestive problems on how to really make it work within us and that's why we need the prayer and the fasting and the reading of scripture and the trusting of God and all these things and we need to know that when we face temptation Jesus said to the disciples at the last supper when they were trying to figure out what was going to happen to him and how they were going to survive he says, But the helper, the Holy Spirit whom the Father sent in my name he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you. It is written overcoming temptation one of the pieces we need is the Holy Spirit to bring to our remembrance the word of God bring to our remembrance what is the sustenance we need for eternal life and how God can do that within us.

Now we kind of get to the point where we talked about this a little bit last week but conquering temptation seems hard to do seems like there are some things that are impossible there are some traps that we just fall in over and over and over again and then we end up separated from God and we see that it kind of reminds me of when I was in I remember being in middle school and someone was walking into the locker room after a basketball practice and there was a beam that went up and it was a low ceiling it was a really, really old school that's now condemned that's how, you know it was like in the 18th century that I went and that beam was low and that kid walked straight into that beam and hit it and went down and we started laughing and in my mind I'm going this is so mean I shouldn't be laughing but I could not stop it was just so incredibly funny and I don't think I was alone because then they made this show called America's Funniest Videos of people doing stupid things and falling and hurting themselves and now there's a whole channel based on all these videos of people riding a skateboard or jumping off a roof or trying to jump in a pool and doing all these stupid things and it looks like they would kill themselves doing it but it's hard not to what is that? Fail Army where they have it's like 24-7 of people falling and hurting you see there's something psychologically that is connected with us being tempted and falling that the world laughs at that and they say I knew Christians weren't any different you know they're waiting they're waiting for people to trip up so they can see prove that they're not perfect either but it's only by God's grace that we can have the strength to finally overcome the things that are too hard for us to overcome on our own Bishop Greenway was talking a lot you think I talk about John Wesley a lot that bishop talks about John Wesley even more he reminded me of how Wesley was talking about in his Aldersgate experience how at the first the part we loved the most where on May 24, 1738 when he went to that upper room on Aldersgate Street and while he was listening to Luther's notes to the epistle on Romans and I always thought that sounded boring and the bishop actually read it and he said it was even more boring than he thought it would be but somehow in the midst of that boredom John Wesley said his heart was strangely warmed but as soon as he got home the devil started making him the enemy started making him doubt and saying did you really have a transformed experience why don't you feel any different right now why don't you have any joy why can't I see that there's anything different about you and he had to pray and he had to think about it and he said he woke up the next day and all he could do was praise Jesus for being so amazing and at the end of that he said before he went to bed he said after my return home I was much buffeted with temptations and I cried out and they fled away and they returned again and again as often as I lifted up my eyes and he sent me help from his holy place and herein I found the difference between this and my formal state chiefly consisted I was striving yea fighting with all my might under the law as well as under grace but then I was sometimes if not often conquered now I was always conquered let me say that better now I was always the conqueror and it's with the power of the Holy Spirit that we can do things that we cannot do on our own it's with the power of the Holy Spirit that we can resist temptation that we can remember what God's word says that we can open our hearts and listen to God and trust in God and know that God will walk with us through the wilderness be there with us in the midst of that temptation when we feel so alone and isolated so separated from God that that's just in our heads that God is really still there with us and he will carry us through he will make us see a way that we can conquer any temptation let's pray almighty God thank you for sending us the bread of life help us to feed on you help us to seek your face help us to know that when we take communion when we have any meal and even when we're fasting that what we will take in is your love and your grace and the strength and the power of the Holy Spirit to help us overcome that we can always trust in you with your word we can stand on every promise you made to deliver us and give us strength in Jesus name, amen.