In this sermon, the speaker focuses on Luke chapter 4 and presents Jesus as the Son of all mankind, not just the Son of the Jews. The sermon discusses the Advent and preparation of Jesus as the Son of all mankind. The speaker highlights the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness as the final preparation before His ministry. The three temptations Jesus faced are summarized as the temptation of self-gratification, ambition, and presumption, which all revolve around doubting God's love, sufficiency, and faithfulness.

This is supposed to work better. I hope it does. We had a little problem with our audio. Welcome again to our little Bible study. Again, you know already, but I don't tire of reminding you that we gather to see the Lord. And it's so much fun to use the word in order to behold Him. And so I'll invite you please to bow with me. We'll commit our time unto Him. Our Father, we thank you again for your precious word and for the privilege we have to gather here and trust the Holy Spirit to focus our hearts in a living and in a fresh way upon our Savior. We thank you for every part of the word of God. But in a special way this morning, we thank you for Luke chapter 4. And we'd ask you to minister in our deepest hearts. We just appreciate so much the Holy Spirit giving us light. And we pray as we fellowship together around your word, as we look devotionally at these precious things, that you would apply it to our lives and hearts. To this end, we give our study unto you and thank you in advance for meeting with us. Find us where we are. Take us where you'd have us. We ask in the all-prevailing name of our Lord Jesus. Okay, I'll ask you again please to open your Bibles to Luke chapter 4. Luke chapter 4. The message of Luke's gospel is that it presents our Lord Jesus as the Son of all mankind. Not just the Son of the Jews, but the friend of sinners. The Son of all mankind. The Son of everybody. In our look at the first four chapters, we've been discussing what we've called in our outline the advent and the preparation of the Son of all mankind. And in the first 13 verses in chapter 4, the temptation of our Lord Jesus in the wilderness, we call this the final preparation of our Lord before His ministry. In other words, right after this, He began His wonderful ministry and began with Jubilee, which we'll look at, Lord willing, next time. As you know, our Lord Jesus was tempted all 40 days. The Bible tells us that. Not just at the end, and not just three temptations. But the Holy Spirit selected three of the many. We don't know the other temptations. But He selected three of the many in order that we might have a comprehensive look at all temptations. In other words, every temptation is included in these three temptations. They're representative temptations. I told you last week that I felt like Satan, what he really wanted to do, his real intention, was just to bump our Lord Jesus. To get Him off balance. He came trusting His Holy Father God. He came and lived in a relationship with God. He said it was His meat. It was His desire to do the will of His Father. And Satan hated that. And if he could just at the beginning, before he started his ministry, if he could get Jesus to act independently, to stop trusting God, to turn away from the Lord, then he would have some kind of a victory. And I think through the temptations we see that that's exactly what he's doing. The first temptation we looked at last week, chapter 4, verse 3, Satan begins, if you are the Son of God, this is the temptation to doubt God's love by turning those stones into bread. In other words, Satan was saying, if you're really in this relationship with God, if you're really who you claim to be, then why does God allow you to be in this adverse circumstance? Judge the love of God by your circumstance. And if you're in this awful circumstance, you're in the wilderness, you're being molested or at least afflicted by all these wild beasts and this hunger and all, why doesn't God rescue you if He loves you? And so he was trying to get our Lord Jesus to doubt His Father. That brings us this morning to the second temptation, verses 5 to 8. Now before I read that, I'm going to give you again the words that summarize all three temptations. We gave these three words last week. Number one, the word doubt. Doubt was the first temptation, to doubt the Father's love. The second is ambition, or you could also use covetousness there. Ambition. And then the third word that summarizes the temptation is the word presumption. But let me give you the same three temptations in terms of his relationship with God, because that's what it's all about. The first temptation is to doubt God's love. The second temptation was to doubt God's sufficiency. And the third temptation was to doubt God's faithfulness. And that's what Satan was trying to get him to do. If you look please at verse 5 to 8, we'll read those together. Chapter 4, verses 5 to 8. And He led him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And the devil said to him, I will give you all this domain and its glory, for it has been handed over to me, and I give it to whomever I wish. Therefore, if you worship before me, it shall all be yours. And Jesus answered and said to him, It is written, You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only shall you serve. Now let me begin by reminding you by way of background, that this temptation along with the others is full of mystery. In other words, there are things that there's no way we can understand. For example, He took him to a high mountain. Well, there are no high mountains, or that would be called high in that particular area in the wilderness. And especially high enough to see all the kingdoms of the world. Some people think this was more of a vision than a literal taking him to a high mountain. Again, that's mystery. I don't know the answer to that. And then in verse 5 it says that He showed him all the kingdoms of the world. And in Matthew's account of the same story, chapter 4 and verse 8, Matthew says, And all their glory. So somehow, Jesus was presented with all the kingdoms of the world and all their glory, whatever that means. And we don't know, did Satan literally pick up his body and transport him to some mountain? We don't know about that. And then look at this, in verse 5, in a moment of time. See, that also adds mystery to it. Going up to a high mountain, seeing all the glories of the kingdoms, all the kingdoms of the world, and in a moment of time. I have an idea by some miracle, if you can describe a miracle to the enemy. He just somehow in a panorama, like a movie, just everything the world had to offer was passed before the eyes of our Lord Jesus. All of its dazzling beauty and unparalleled charm and all of that kind of thing. And then he saw it all in a moment of time. And then there's also a little bit of mystery, I think, in verse 6. Satan says, It's been handed over to me and I can give it to whomever I will. Well, we know Satan has some kind of delegated authority. In other words, he's the God of this world and he has some power, but he's also a liar. So I wouldn't doubt that he exaggerated here. I think as you go through the record, you'll see how limited he was. Later on, Jesus is going to deal with some of the demons and that's one of their things. Have you come to torment us before the time? And of course, his answer to that was yes. And every time he delivers, he does sort of torment him before the time. But my point is, there's a lot of mystery in this. I don't know what power Satan has to give what. I know this much. He can't give us anything beyond that. His whole power is limited to that which passes away and he can't give anything that deals with the spiritual. Quite apart from all of that mystery, let's look at the temptation as it's recorded here. To appreciate this temptation, let me just give you a little bit of background and sort of pull on your Bible knowledge. I'm not going to try to do this. All of us haven't had the same background and so I'm not going to try to embarrass you but I'm just going to bring up some stories you may or may not know. King Solomon, David's son, great King Solomon, the Bible says he was the wisest man that ever lived on the earth. And the record shows that he was probably also the richest man that ever lived on the earth. Don't answer. Do you know, this is not a question to be answered but just think, do you know the three books that Solomon wrote in the Bible? See, he wrote Proverbs, he wrote Ecclesiastes and he wrote Song of Solomon. And those three books, if you take them together, Proverbs presents two ways to live. You can live wise or you can live foolish. What will my life look like if I live foolish? Ecclesiastes. That's why he wrote that, to illustrate what happens if you live foolish. What will my life look like if I live wise? Song of Solomon. And so he wrote those three books in order to illustrate foolish living and wise living. In his book of Ecclesiastes, he describes foolish living. Perhaps you're familiar with the term he uses over and over again. Vanity of vanities. Can you finish it? All is vanity. That was his conclusion after this richest, wisest man that ever lived, by his experience and by his observation, and he was king, so he had a lot to observe. When it was all over, he put his stamp on the world. He said, vanity of vanity, all is vanity, and then he added this, and vexation of spirit. It's not only vain, it's vexing. It wears you out, and that was his conclusion of this whole world system. Now if I told you money doesn't satisfy, you could look me in the eye and say, how do you know? Have you ever tried it? And I'd have to say, well no, but I've read it a lot, and I hear it doesn't satisfy. Solomon said, it doesn't satisfy. He knew. God chose him on purpose so that this wisest man that ever lived, who experienced every pleasure, he said for seven years he went out and tried with all of his resources every pleasure he could think of in order to find satisfaction. And Ecclesiastes gives the list of all that he tried. It's amazing to read what he tried. And at the end he just said, vanity, vanity, a great big zero, there's no satisfaction in it whatsoever. Now let me just sort of summarize. I thought we were doing Luke, not Ecclesiastes. There is a tie in here. Solomon made three conclusions. Number one, when he looked at this whole world system, he pointed out in Ecclesiastes that it's all a show. It's all for these eyes. It's just to behold that there's no substance to it. In the end of the New Testament in 1 John, in chapter 2, in verse 16, John describes the world in the same way. He said, all that's in the world. And then he said, the lust of the flesh, that's pleasures. The lust of the eyes, that's riches. And the pride of life, and that's honor and dignity. He said, all that's in the world is vanity. It's like a bubble. It's not real. A bubble will have 10,000 colors in it. But it's a false light. It's not in the bubble itself. And if you grab it, it bursts, and so on. All the glory of the world is invented. It's imaginary. It's not real glory. And we decide, or somebody decides, this is valuable. And so it becomes valuable. And so, so-called enlightened people go to a savage people and see that they have gold. And say, we'll give you our glass for your gold. We'll give you our beads if you give us those colored rocks. And they hold our gold in contempt. They don't think our treasure is worth anything. Fine, we love this sparkling glass. The point is, who determined to them that their glass was valuable? They did. Who determined to us that our gold was valuable? We did. It's just a rock. That's all in the world it is. So it's not real. It's all imaginary. And Solomon pointed out that there's nothing in the world that's real. It's all imaginary and invented. And so, the only purpose for it, someone wears beads and someone wears bracelets and someone wears jewelry, the purpose of that, and it works, it's show. That's all it's for. It's just appearance. It's just to show. And that's the whole purpose of this world. And it has no other purpose. And if you reduced everything down to its naked element, to its first principle, then we could really see how vain the whole world is. Our finest silk, just the excrement of a worm. I mean, the food that we eat, it's just dead animals and dead plants and so on. That's all prepared in a beautiful way. So Solomon showed that the whole world was just show, and he also showed that it was all vexation. It was all deceit. And to give your life, to go after this vanity, is such a waste of time. There's great vexation in getting it. And all of the effort to go after pleasures and honor and all that, and then you get bored with it and it doesn't satisfy. And then there's great vexation in trying to keep it after you get it and to hang on to it and to guard it and all that kind of thing. Losing it is a grief. You know it's not worth anything because if you had the whole world and a toothache, the whole world doesn't mean anything. The toothache is big enough to destroy all the pleasures of the whole world. And if you had all of these treasures and riches and you got a stone in your shoe, you can't enjoy no matter how much it is. It just shows how vain this whole thing is. And then Solomon showed the third thing that was the conclusion of Ecclesiastes. Only God can satisfy. Because we're created with this lofty capacity, this spiritual nature to know God. And so the world is vain, it's all vexation and only God can satisfy. Why do I bring that up here? If Solomon knew that by experience and observation, don't you think our Lord Jesus knew that? Do you realize what Satan did? He takes this bubble and he dangles it before the Lord Jesus. I'll give you all of this. Jesus knew what that was. He sought to the elements, to the foundations of all of that. And Satan is trying to get our Lord Jesus to say, oh wow, you give me all of this. Jesus knew what it was and how transient it was and it was going to pass away. And so this whole temptation to our Lord Jesus, it's just so amazing that Satan would try to do this. Notice in verse 7 and 8, please. Therefore, if you worship before me, it will all be yours. Jesus answered and said to him, it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve. See, what Satan is trying to do is to bump the Lord Jesus as in the first temptation. He was trying to get Jesus to say, does your father really love you? Now he's trying to get Jesus to say, is your father really enough? Is he adequate? Is he sufficient? I can give you so much more than this. Now remember our Lord Jesus was alone in the wilderness with the devil. Now I speak as a fool. We don't see it in the English, but in the Greek, when he says, fall down and worship me. The Greek word means, just this once. It's the wilderness. It's private. It's secret. I'll never tell. And if you'll just do it one time, that shows the malice of Satan. So proud he was. He just wanted it one time. But he's trying to get his eyes off of his father God. In verse 8, Jesus couldn't be moved. He said, Thou shalt worship the Lord God, and him only shall you serve. Now you notice in that verse the relationship between worship and service. He said, worship, it begins with worship, it ends with service, and the only thing in between worship and service is the Lord thy God and him only. It starts with worship and it ends with service. And Jesus knew who you worship, you serve. Now Satan just said, just worship me once. And Jesus said, yeah, and be your servant forever. Who you worship, you serve. I'm not going to worship you. And so our Lord Jesus was so victorious for us in our behalf because he saw right down to the core of this whole world system and how vain it was. And he also saw that his father was sufficient. There's something pretty wonderful in Matthew's account of this temptation that we don't see in Luke. Before Jesus said, it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve. Before he said that, he said something else to Satan. Luke doesn't tell us, but Matthew does. Anybody know what that was? Just before he said, it is written. What he said was, King James says, get thee hence, Satan. My new American standard here says, be gone. I like that. Be gone, Satan. It is written. Thou shalt worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve. Probably one thing that means is that Matthew's order is correct. See, in other words, this is the second temptation in Luke. It's the third temptation in Matthew. And after that he said, be gone. So that was probably, Matthew's order is probably the order of chronology. But I also see it as sort of a prophecy. You see, Satan was saying, I'll give you this whole world if you worship me. And Jesus said, be gone. I'll take the world by driving you up. And I think it's sort of a prophetic thing of what's going to happen. You see, the reason God came to the earth in the person of the Lord Jesus was to reclaim the inheritance. Was to take back the world. Everything Satan offered him, that's why he came. To get it. And Satan was trying to get him to shortcut the will of God. I'll give you all this. You don't have to go all the way to the cross. You don't have to die to win all of this. All you have to do is one time bow to me and it's yours. And he was trying to get him to shortcut the will of God. He said, all of this God promised you. I'll give it to you if you do it my way. And he said, no I'm going to do it my father's way. Worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve. Satan would love to get Jesus to look away from his father and to look at the prize. Look at the inheritance instead of God himself. Now it's important for us to end up in the will of God. But the way to end up in the will of God is to go after God. If you go after God, you can't miss God's will. If you try to shortcut and go after the will of God, many times you can miss it. So that's the second temptation. Discontent. God's not enough. There's more beside God. Ambition. Go after this. Now as we did last week, in order to make this intensely practical, let me take it out of what our Lord Jesus experienced and sort of bring it down and apply it several ways to our own heart. How does Satan sometimes tempt us on the mountain with all of the world? One way I think is in verse 5. Again, I said there's mystery here. I don't know what this means. He showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. Has that ever happened to me? The closest I can come to that in my life is daydreaming. I don't know if that's what happened to the Lord Jesus, but I'm a great daydreamer. And sometimes I'll just be in a trance. And what I'm thinking of a lot of times is vanity. And I'm always the hero in my daydreams. And all this vanity comes through. And I think Satan can take advantage of all that kind of thing when we just meditate on those things that are going to pass away. There's a movement. I don't know if you're familiar with it because every Christian group they sort of cluster together. But in the big Christian world there's a movement around now called Name It and Claim It. Have you heard it? Name It and Claim It. And the idea is visualize. Sit down in a chair and just think. And meditate and picture what you want. And if it's a car, picture what color it is and how big it is. Just picture it. And then claim it. Name It and Claim It. And God will give it to you. And it's this whole, I think it's nothing more than he just passed all this in front of his face. I think it's a dangerous thing. And I just sort of give you a warning on that in advance. A second way Satan can tempt us with this second temptation, of course is the most obvious way, by the sin of covetousness. Just this idea, the folly of setting our heart on what the Bible has already stamped as vanity. Now the Bible says God has given us freely all things to enjoy. He's not against us having things. In fact, he's given it to us to enjoy. And that's the purpose of all things. But to set your heart on it, some people have just gone after it as a goal rather than a by-product. Let me just test your Bible knowledge again, not to embarrass you. Don't answer, just think. I'm going to name a bunch of covetous people in the Bible. Think if you can recall their story. Lot. Remember the story of Lot? Achan. You know him? Gehazi. You know the story of Gehazi? Solomon, of course. Judas. Ananias and Sapphira. Demas. In fact, you don't need to know those stories because it all illustrates the same point. They went after this world and crashed. They thought that was the whole thing. The summum bonum of life was just things. In fact, the first record of covetousness in the Bible is in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve. Part of the sin was God is not enough. And there's more. And you can have more if you try to get beyond what God has given you, what God has commanded you, and so on. If it's true that this world is vanity and it's a bubble and it's a shadow and it's a dream and it's transient and it's passing away. It's called deceitful. Isn't it amazing what a high price some people put on it? I got a phone call two days ago. It just shook me to my socks. A Christian son was suing his Christian father for $450. Things. It means nothing. And all the relationships that are being crushed by this thing. People work their heads off to get what's going to pass away. People kill for it. It's an amazing thing. And it's so, so vain. Colossians 3, 2 warns us, set your affections on things above, not on the things of this earth. And then finally, of course, the great temptation here is discontent to ever suggest that your God is not enough. He is adequate. He is enough. And Jesus was saying, I'll choose God for nothing. And when he chose God for nothing, he got everything. You don't lose by choosing the Lord. No one ever loses by choosing the Lord. Satan loves to get us to think that there's satisfaction in something else. Jesus was, Satan was trying to get Jesus to believe that if you went after, it was God's will that Jesus have the world. So Satan said, all right, go after. Go after the world. And he said, no, go after God, not after the world. If you go after a by-product, you're going to lose the by-product and the goal. I think I've used this story in another connection, but it's so powerful. I'm going to just tell you again. Stir up your mind. And he said, I'm coming back to Newport and I'm going to find the will of God no matter what. He said, I bought a bunch of books and I'm going to find it. So he stopped in South Carolina to see a friend of mine. And he had all these books, brand new books, never cracked, piled up. And my friend said, what are you doing? He said, I'm going to find the will of God for my life. And then he said to my friend, where do you think I should start? So he went over and he looked at the books and right on the top is Knave's Topical Bible. You familiar with that? It's a Bible that just has topics. You look up topics and it gives you all the Bible references. So he looked at that Knave's Topical Bible. He said, why don't you look up guidance? He said, why don't you start there? So he looks it up and you know how books cross reference? If you take Knave's Bible, look up guidance. It says, see God. It was over. He put those books down and he came up and he's doing beautifully now in the Lord. But it just set his heart to see God. You want guidance? See God. See God. And that's what Satan was trying to do. He said, stop looking at God. Go after the treasure. And Jesus said, no, no, I'm going to worship the Lord my God and then all these things will be added unto us. I'm going to ask you to look at verse 9 please. The final temptation, he led him to Jerusalem, had him stand on the pinnacle of the temple, said to him, if you are the son of God, throw yourself down from here for it's written he'll give his angels charge concerning you to guard you on their hands and they'll bear you up lest you strike your foot against the stone. Jesus answered and said to him, you shall not put the Lord your God to the task. We've used the word presumption to describe this particular temptation. Notice in verse 9, he led him up to Jerusalem. Well, you know, that's the holy city. That's a spiritual place. And then he led him up to the temple. Well, that's a spiritual place. And then he led him to the pinnacle of the temple. You couldn't get higher than Jerusalem the temple and the pinnacle of the temple. I call attention to that to remind you that some of your greatest temptations and mine will be spiritual temptations. Not only to run after this world but in the temple, in the holy city, and on the pinnacle of the temple. Now let me back off and remind you of what Satan was attempting to do. Now remember, he's trying to bump Jesus. Jesus is in union with his father. He's trying to upset that, to get him off balance. And so to get him to doubt God, he said, doubt God's love. He wouldn't allow this hard time if he really loved you. And Jesus said in effect, I will trust my father. And he said, but your father's not enough. There's this whole world, I'll give it to you. One minute, just bow down, just for a second. And he said, I will trust my father. So in this temptation, if Satan can't keep you from the will of God, he'll drive you beyond the will of God. If he can't keep you off the horse, he'll push you off the other side of the horse. And so that's what he's doing here. Satan says in effect, you want to trust God? You insist on trusting God? Okay, trust him. Let's see how great your faith is. Let's see you trust him now. Put your faith on display. Let's see how absolute your faith is. So Satan goes into Psalm 91, and he quotes Psalm 91, verses 11 and 12. He's given a promise to you, Jesus. Your father said that if you were to fall down, his angels would protect you and they would catch you. Is your father faithful? Did he mean what he said? Trust him. Throw yourself down from this pinnacle of the temple. You see Satan here quoting Scripture. How subtle that is. Now do you realize you have to read Psalm 91 to see it, but if he quoted one more verse, see he stopped short. If he quoted one more verse, he would have quoted his own doom. Because the next verse says, And thou wilt allow him to tread upon the adder. And that was a prophecy saying he's going to crush the head of the serpent. He stopped short of that. He didn't want him to hear that at all. This whole idea of Satan quoting the Bible, the Bible can, you can get the Bible to prove anything. Anybody can quote the Bible. Dip in there and make it mean this and make it mean that. Sometimes you just move a comma around or something and it will mean something else. You know that verse in Colossians, Let him that stole, steal no more, rather let him labor with his hands. That's a good verse. Just move the comma. Let him that stole, steal. No more let him labor with his hands. All I did was move the comma. And so you can get the Bible to mean whatever you want it to mean. And Satan loves to do that. Satan is saying, Jesus, your father has given you a promise. Now let's see if you can trust him. Venture on your faith. Do something heroic. Here you are on the pinnacle of the temple and the people are down in the court beneath. Thousands of people. You want to prove you're Messiah? What an opportunity. You've got a promise in the Bible. Claim the word of God. Leap off from the tower. The angels will come and catch you up. You'll be on display. Everybody will see it. They'll all applaud. You'll be famous. And they'll all know that you are truly the Messiah. That was the temptation that he was trying to give him here. Just picture the Lord Jesus standing on that high pinnacle with the people below. And this whole idea of prove your faith, show that God is faithful and so on. In verse 12, Jesus answered and said, You shall not tempt the Lord your God. Put your God to the test. Satan was saying, in effect, prove your faith. And Jesus said, If I have to prove it, it's not faith. If I have to demonstrate it, it's not faith. My Father is faithful, and I don't have to prove it. I rest in it. I don't have to prove it by putting myself in a circumstance that forces God to do a miracle just in order to prove my faith. Satan was saying, Challenge God. See if he's really as faithful as he said he is. Satan was really trying to get Jesus to take his eye off the object of his faith and put his eyes on faith. You know, it's a terrible thing to have faith in your faith. What Jesus was saying is, I am going to trust God. And Satan said, Trust! He put the emphasis on trust. We do that in our Christian life too. Some poor Christians struggle so with faith. And it's because they're not looking to the object of their faith. And everyone says, Trust! And they go, I don't know how to trust. I want to trust. I want to have faith. I don't know how to have faith. It's easy if you trust God. If you think of the object of your faith, it's easy to trust a friend. I can trust Lillian. I can't trust a stranger, but I can trust Lillian because it's who she is. And so Satan was trying to say, Get your eyes off of God and put your eyes on faith. And Jesus said, If you do that, you're tempting God, not trusting God. And he made the difference between tempting God and trusting God, between presumption and faith. Now what is presumption? Webster says it's to assume, to dare, to venture, to encroach upon. When I try, without a word from God, to put God to the test, to needlessly put myself in a place of danger on my own accord, when duty doesn't call me to that place of danger, and then expect God to rescue me. If I have to go out on some limb or take some daring public display of faith in order to prove God, I'm really only testing God. Jesus proved Psalm 91 by not jumping. He didn't prove it by jumping. He proved it by not jumping. Now let me try to bring it home to our own hearts and apply it several ways. How does Satan tempt us in the temple and the pinnacle of the temple? Well, the first is obvious, I think, in spiritual places, the place in the world. One of the things I love, in Leviticus 16, in the Day of Atonement when they had to sprinkle the blood with the hyssop branch, and God said, you've got to sprinkle the sinners. And so that makes sense, sprinkle the sinners with blood. And then he said, sprinkle the altar. And then he said, sprinkle the Ark of the Tabernacle. That's a holy piece of furniture. Why does that need to be sprinkled? Now I'll tell you why. Everything needs the blood of the Lord Jesus. And my prayers need to be sprinkled with the blood of the Lord. And when I take communion, that needs to be sprinkled. And when I study my Bible, this whole idea, in spiritual places, Satan can really tempt us a lot. It's a high place and it's a dangerous place. He dangles before us our privileges. God said this and God said that. Let's see if you have faith. Claim it. And so on. And it just is a terrible temptation. Let me get home a little closer to it. Satan tries to tempt us by causing us to act apart from a clear word from God. And I think this is the essence of the temptation. One thing that's helped me so much is Numbers 14 where God uses the word presumption. And He actually describes it. It was at Kadesh Barnea where Israel failed in unbelief. They said, Oh, there's giants over there. We can't go into that land. And they're going to get us. And Caleb said, Trust God. He can take you in. He can get those giants. And he said, Oh, but we looked at the giants and we were like grasshoppers. And he said, Well, look at God and then they'll be like grasshoppers. Trust God. Just look to the Lord. And they said, No, we can't believe God. And so God said, Alright, you're not going in. And then they felt bad about it. They said, Alright, we'll believe God. We'll go up. And God said, Don't go up. I'm not going with you. They said, Oh yeah, we're going to have faith. We're going up anyway. But we'll show you that we really mean it. And it says they went presumptuously up the hill. And oh, they got slaughtered. And they came back and it was awful. And you know the rest. Forty years in the wilderness and so on. What is presumption? It's putting myself in a place of danger when duty hasn't called me there. This idea that faith neglects duties is so wrong. Incurring danger. Let me give several illustrations from my own life. I had a brother come to me one time and say, It's a sin to buy insurance. Trust God. He knows all of these exigencies. You don't need insurance. I have a dear brother. I love this guy. He has some mental limitations. And I mean seriously, he's retarded. But he's trusted in the Lord and he's done some squirrely thing. The Lord has used him wonderfully in my life to keep me looking to the Lord. But he went into this thing on jaywalking. Deliberate jaywalking to show how God would protect him. Cars screeching all over the place. And we're trying to show this guy, this is not faith. You don't have to jaywalk to prove that God is God. Over and over again. I'm dealing with people who, Oh, we want to see God do miracles. I just quit my job. I'm going to watch God provide. That's not faith. But thousands of people are doing that. Lillian will testify. I got a call one day. This woman, maybe you heard this story too. I went over to her house. And her kids. She had four kids. They're naked. They're running around naked. No clothes. I said, Where are the clothes for your children? I burned them. You burned their clothes. Why did you burn their clothes? Because I never saw God provide. And I knew he'd provide for my children. And I know he wouldn't provide for me, but he'd provide for them. And I wanted to see a miracle. So she burned all of the children's clothes in order to see God provide. That, as I understand this temptation, that's not faith. That's tempting God. It's putting, it's demanding a miracle of God. It's putting yourself in a place where duty hasn't called you. Now, if she was there through some circumstance and her children didn't have clothes, God would provide. I don't have a doubt about that. But it's this idea that faith is trusting God insensibly. God wants us to use our head when we trust God. Faith locks the door. Faith buys insurance. Faith wears a seatbelt. This last Sunday, I was at a little fellowship north of here, and somebody said, Do you believe that we all have guardian angels? And I said, Well, I believe the Bible teaches that, not one, I think we have all the angels ministering unto the heirs. And I said, Why? He said, Because I was wondering if the guardian angel kept the speed limit. Well, I don't know. If you have a guardian angel, does he keep the speed limit? And if you don't, and so on, I don't know all about that. But the point is, faith is so practical. This whole, remember the old saying, trust God and keep the gunpowder dry? I think that's a biblical principle. That God has called us to do our part. Trust the Lord. Dress warm. Trust the Lord. Put on your seatbelt. Trust the Lord. Lock the door. And I think what he was trying to do is, Alright, Jesus, jump off of there, and God will protect you. God never told him to jump off. And when you do something without a word, that's when it's presumption. If you had a word from God to do it, then you can do it. We had another friend, we tried to talk him out of it. He said, God came to me in a dream, told me to sell my house, give all the money away, take my five children, and move out to Colorado, and I don't know where to go from there. No job, nothing. And they did it. And we tried to tell, and they crashed in Colorado. It was a nightmare. But they thought they had this word from God, and they sold their house, and they gave every penny away, and they went off with these kids, and it was just terrible. All in the name of faith. And Satan loves to come in. Do you have faith? Prove it! Show how much you trust God! Go out, launch out, do some dramatic thing, and everybody will be pleased, and so on. Here's another application of that, and then we'll get ready to wrap up. Satan loves to tempt us. You know when Jesus was on the pinnacle there of the temple? At the top of Newport Bridge, it's what, about 200 feet down? The pinnacle of the temple, probably the southwest side, called the Royal Portico. And it went right over the Valley of Kidron, a straight drop down. Josephus calls it a dizzy height. 450 feet straight down. And so he was up there. The people that were in the court below, that were offering the worship, were looking up. I mean, they could see up there, there's Jesus standing up there. The point is, and here's the application, Satan loves to tempt us when, and I speak as a fool because it's not real, but sometimes we think that we're up here, and everybody's looking up to us. And then we've got to prove something. And it's an awful temptation to be in a spiritual place where everybody is looking up to you, and you're trying then to be spiritual. I remember going to South Carolina, my mentor, the fellow who taught me to know the Lord, how I loved him, and how much he taught me. And so I brought my friend with me, and I said, I want you to meet my spiritual guru. And so I knocked at his door, and I said, I'm wanting this guy to jump through hoops, and I'll be spiritual. Say something spiritual, do something to impress my friend on how wonderful you are. So he says, who are you going to vote for in the election? And I'm trying to engineer the circumstance to bring Jesus into it. He won't jump through my hoop. He wouldn't do it. He wouldn't speak of anything religious. He wouldn't speak of the weather. What's the weather like up in Rwanda? And when we got out, my friend said to me, he said, boy, he was really a spiritual giant. I'm glad you introduced me to him. Later I talked to my friend on the phone, and he laughed. He said, what were you trying to do? Trying to impress with some kind of spirituality. And that's exactly what I was doing, because I was doing this. He's up here. Everybody looks up. Do something great. Show how faithful you are. And then when people start looking up to you and you think you're spiritual, then you start inventing these things. Oh yeah, I'm so close to God. The other day God came to me and told me blah, blah, blah. Why can't we just be real? Why can't we just be honest? And if we have faith, real faith, it's not going to put itself on display. It's going to be humble. It's just going to trust God and look to the Lord. One final principle, and we're done. What if Jesus jumped? I think if he jumped, I can't prove it, I think the angels would have caught him. I think he'd have been preserved, and he'd have been carried down, and I think what Satan said would have been true. Everybody would have clapped him. With these eyes, nobody would have known that his ministry was destroyed. It would look like he had been delivered, and Satan would love you to be destroyed by being rescued. He'd love me to be destroyed by being rescued. And I think thousands of Christians have done this. They've lived so publicly, and with such display, and everybody's cheering, oh, what a mighty man of God, what a mighty woman of God. Faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith, faith. Faith is nothing. It's the object of your faith that's everything. It's Christ that's everything. And everybody's looking to these people who are so faith-centered. And I think Satan loves that. And I think the real, powerful, spiritual ministry that they could have if they were unassuming is lost. God has called us to just trust in the Lord. Now let me just summarize. Satan wants to tempt us, as he tempted our Lord Jesus, to doubt God's love, to doubt God's efficiency, sufficiency, and then to doubt God's faithfulness. The Lord loves you, no matter what's going on in your life. The Lord is enough, no matter what you're denied in life. And the Lord is faithful, and you don't have to go out on some limb in order to prove He's faithful. He's going to take care of you. He's going to watch over you. You don't have to create a danger and force God to do some miracle in order to prove that He's faithful and you have faith. Just lay hold of the Lord, and may God help us to do it. We begin next time, Lord willing, in the ministry of our Lord Jesus. Comments or questions about his preparation? No, I said anxiety was one of the applications of the first temptations. In other words, the temptation to... Alright, the temptation to doubt God's love expresses itself in anxiety. We all sing from that hymnal. He certainly has given us... Oh, I think exactly right. It's where our affection is. He said, don't put your affection on it. Use it. God gave it to you to enjoy. But some people embrace it as if it were the end, and it's just the means. Well, when you're really looking to the Lord, the fruit of the Spirit's love, and the essence of love, well, I think it's included in it. Well, I think that's... Our Lord Jesus, as the illustration, as He lived in union with His Father. Yes. And that we live in union with Him. But certainly He's given us a mind, and as I suggested, to quit your job and call it faith, and just wait for God to... for it to happen. Any other comments or questions? I always feel sort of undressed if we don't clinch it in prayer. Our Father, we do thank You so much that our Lord Jesus was tempted and found victorious in all ways. And we have our victory in Him. Lord, we know that we're all so tempted through this world, and daydreaming, and thinking that You're not enough, and that Your love is not sufficient, and we think we're spiritual and way up high, and we do act wacky. And teach us, Lord, just to live in union with You, to live righteously and sensibly. Work it in our hearts, we pray.