How To Overcome Temptations

And the gospel of today, which is from Matthew chapter 3 from verses from verse 16 to Matthew 4 till verse 11, talks about his trial that took place in the Judean desert. After the Lord was baptized on the River Jordan, the heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended on him as the dove, and there was a voice from heaven saying, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. Then he was led by this Holy Spirit, by the Spirit, to the wilderness where he fasted 40 days and 40 nights, and at the end of that he was hungry.

Then the tempter came after the 40 days. Now imagine you don't eat anything, you don't drink anything, and after 40 days you could just imagine how weak the body would have been after those 40 days have gone by. If you ever been to Israel, this fasting took place around the Jericho area.

Now Jericho, my beloved, in summertime, and by the way, the Lord Jesus fasted in summer. Okay, don't want to give you too much information now and confuse you, but the Lord Jesus fasted around summertime and it is the hottest place you could ever be during summertime. Temperatures can literally reach close to 60 degrees Celsius, and the humidity of that region is probably three to four times the humidity of Sydney at its best, at its peak.

So it was extremely difficult terrains and very severe weather, and the Lord was tempted in the heart of that severity. Three temptations. Now these three temptations were not only given to the Lord at the time and that was it.

The Lord Jesus was tempted throughout his life from the moment he was born till the moment he was crucified. His life was never empty of trials, temptations, tribulations. These, they go with you throughout your life's journey on earth.

But these three temptations, they sum up every temptation you could ever think of that you go through throughout your life on earth. The first one, the tempter said to the Lord Jesus, if you are the Son of God, say to the stone to be bread. The Lord replied and said, it is not by bread alone a man shall live, but by every word that is uttered from the mouth of God.

The second one, he took him to the pinnacle of the temple and he said, cast yourself down from here, because it is written that he will he will charge his angels to carry you on their hands, lest your, lest your foot stumble against a stone. The Lord said, do not tempt the Lord your God. And the third temptation, he took him on a high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glories, and he said, if you bow down and worship me, I shall give you all that.

And the Lord replied and said, away with you, Satan. It is to your God, your Lord God, you shall worship, and him alone you shall serve. All three replies from the Lord Jesus, you find that in the book of Deuteronomy chapter 8. One thing we see here, that Satan is very knowledgeable when it comes to the Holy Bible.

He actually knows it by heart. So if you ask Satan, I'm not gonna say go and ask him, okay, don't do that, but if you really were to ask Satan, where is this word, where is it in the Bible, he'll tell you. Which book, which chapter, which verse? He knows the Bible inside out.

It looks that Satan tempted the Lord through and by the Word of God, the Holy Bible. But you see, the Lord Jesus, he was well equipped, so he replied to him with the Word of God. You can only overcome Satan by the power of the Word of the Lord.

This is telling us that we need to become more familiar with the Holy Bible. The Holy Bible is not that book that you place on a shelf in your house and keep it clean. No, it needs to be worn out.

It needs to be used. As somebody said, if your Bible is absolutely new, then you are worn out. And if the Bible is worn out, then you're absolutely new.

So which one do you want to be? You want to be worn out or do you want to be new? It all depends on how you apply yourself to that holy book. We need to read the Holy Bible always. If you are the Son of God, say to the stone to be bread.

This is to do with the body of the human. If you are the Son of God, cast yourself from that edge of the temple, the is to do with the spirit of the human. And I'll give you the kingdoms and their glories.

If you bow down and worship me, this is to do with the soul of the human. In 1 Thessalonians 5 23, St. Paul states very clearly that a human being is made out of body, soul, and spirit. There is a temptation for the body.

There is a temptation for the spirit. There is a temptation for the soul. And the Lord today is giving us a cure, an answer, a solution to every temptation.

What is the temptation of the body? Lust. What is the temptation of the body? Lust. What is the cure for the lust? Fasting.

What is the cure for the lust? Fasting. You see, when our body is strong, when our body is fed well, looked after, always on diet, looking good, baby. Putting the Versace and the Chanel and going downtown, brother.

Maintaining your body to the best of the best, giving it everything it needs, making everything happen for it. You want to go out? Let's go. You want to dance? Let's dance.

You want to sing? Let's sing. You want to go on holidays? Let's go. I'll give you what you want.

As long as the body is healthy, as long as the body is happy, I'm happy. In here, Satan will tempt you very, very strongly and powerfully and make you fall. What is the cure? Fasting.

What does fasting do to the body? Weakens the body. Now, some people use fasting as a mean of punishment for the body. Don't ever punish your body.

You need to discipline your body. There is a huge difference. The Lord did not say, go and fast and kill yourself.

No. But the Lord says, when you are fasting, you are teaching your body that not everything you want, you will get. So don't be naughty.

Be quiet and sit. Next time the body says, let's go clubbing, say shut up. Next time the body says, I want to dance with somebody, say shut up.

I want to drive fast, say be quiet. I want to put the subwoofer Habibi in the backseat and go say in your dream. Michelangelo was asked once to make a painting that depicts fasting.

So he said, leave me alone. Come back after a couple of weeks. They came back.

He drawn this beautiful portrait, split it in half. One half, a big fat pig and a skeleton eagle. The pig, so fat, so chubby, so healthy, walking, dragging the eagle behind it on the ground, dragging it.

The other side, a very healthy, strong eagle and a very skeleton pig, grabbing the pig and flying with it extremely high in the heavens. They looked at it. They didn't understand what he meant.

So they asked him, Michael, what do you mean? What is this? We asked you to paint something about fasting. What is this? He said, I'll tell you what it is. The pig is the body.

The eagle is the spirit. When you feed the pig the body and make it fat and healthy, you are starving the spirit. The body will drag that spirit, that starving skeleton spirit behind it in the streets of Kings Cross, Las Vegas, Star City Casino.

The pig will drag you in the pig's field and the temptations of this world and the lust of this world. He said, but when you look after the spirit, feed it and make it healthy, it is going to be a very strong eagle. Stop feeding that body, make it weak, for the eagle spirit grabs that body and make it fly high into the heavens and become a spiritual being instead of a physical, materialistic person.

Fasting is to discipline the body. When you go for a few hours without eating anything, the body is weak. The tummy is making noises.

But what happens when the body is weak? You tend to be more in control of your eyes, of your ears, and of your tongue. You know when someone is healthy, it's very easy for that someone to gossip about people, isn't it? Like a simple thing, it's very easy to gossip about them. It's very easy to go and stick your nose where it doesn't belong and see who got married, who got divorced, who built, who destroyed, who did what, that I want to know everything about my next-door neighbor.

But when I'm sick, do you think I'm gonna go and see what my neighbor is doing? No, I'm sick. All I'm doing, I'm begging God to have mercy on me and make me wholesome again. All I want is to be healthy again.

I'm so of a good boy and a good girl when I'm sick. The moment I'm healthy, we have a saying in Arabic, رجعت حليمة العادة القديمة. Haleema is a girl's name.

We say, Haleema went back to her old habits. The moment Haleema got well, she went back to her old habits once again. We cannot keep on looking after the body and ignoring the spirit.

I always say this, if the time we spend on going through diets, special diets for the body, if we spend 5% of that time on dieting the spirit, we would have been all saints. We would have been all saints. You know what, I have been doing some great research.

Okay, so what have you come up with? Yes, I'll eat an apple in the morning. Wow! Couple of walnuts at lunchtime, Habibi. And in dinner, nothing, just a little fruit because I want to sleep, you know, in a peaceful night's sleep.

Why don't you do that with your spirit? Say, in the morning, I'm going to pray for five minutes for the sake of my spirit. In the afternoon, I'm going to digest what I prayed about. At nighttime, I'll contemplate on it so that when I wake up, I have dreamt about what I was contemplating on.

I had a very peaceful night. Break the lust of the body by fasting. Now, in our church, fasting for the next 40-50 days, we are 100% vegan.

No dairy product, no meat, no fish, nothing. Vegetables, baby. Vegan.

Oh, that's a cardinal, sorry. We go vegan. We go vegan.

What is the issue of the spirit? What is the weakness of the spirit? Pride. Pride, my beloved. Satan, the enemy, took the Lord Jesus to that pinnacle of that temple.

Pinnacle, it's a high place. What's a high place trying to tell me? Being boostful. I'm really elevated.

I'm right there, up there. Everyone is below me. I'm going to look down at everyone else because I'm the best of the best.

I'm the smartest. I'm the genius of the geniuses. I am it.

Everyone needs to look up to me and come and seek my counsel and my advice. I am the best of the best. Pride is the problem of the spirit.

And to prove this, the very first sin that took place in heaven was pride. That angel was from the cherub order, the highest level in the angelic orders, the cherubims, who later on became Satan. He was an angel from the highest rank in the angelic orders, the most beautiful and the wisest of all.

But what happened to this angel? Pride engulfed him because pride attacks the spirit. This is the weakness of the spirit. Just like lust is the weakness of the body and we need to heal it with fasting, so as pride is the weakness of the spirit and the medication for that is prayer.

Prayer. Why is it a struggle for us to pray? Why is it so easy to listen to someone singing and so hard praying? It's a struggle. Have you tried it? Have you experienced it? You know when you're sitting watching something on TV or on YouTube, whatever, you're fully alert.

The moment you start praying, you begin to yawn, your eyes start closing and then all of a sudden you have a headache, backache, the legs are shaking and you're turning and tossing and people come to me and say, father is it okay? I think it's okay father. Can I just sleep in my bed and pray instead of stand or kneel? God is merciful. God will hear me.

I don't need to be standing. I don't need to be kneeling. Can I just snort it off on that bed and say our father who art in heaven and before I finish it, I'm gone and the moment they say there is a movie on, yes Habibi, I'm coming or let's go out.

Oh yes, but when it comes to prayer, it's a struggle. I'm praying. Before prayer, I couldn't remember my name.

Once I started praying, I realized the clothes are in the washing machine, the food is on fire, so and so's birthday, I forgot to call. I will remember everything under the sun and my memory will be so sharp, it will take me back 500 years. Once I stopped praying, I have dementia.

What did you say five minutes ago? Huh? I don't know. It's a struggle. Why? Because Satan doesn't want you to pray.

One simple reason, because he's after your spirit and to get your spirit, he needs to come through the body, the weakest point in the human being. The weakest in you is your body, the strongest is your spirit. It's like in a marathon, the body is bronze, the soul is silver, the spirit is gold.

You come first, you get gold. You come second, you get silver. You come third, you get bronze.

After that, see you later. Nothing. He comes through the body to get to the spirit.

So what does he do with the body? Go and have fun. Go out with your friends. You only live once.

You're not a monk. You're not a nun. Don't be so complicated.

You need to take it easy. Just go with the flow, brother. Can't you see the whole world, what they do? Everybody goes out and have fun.

You go with the same flow. So when you go out, you go out, you go out. Eventually, after a little while, you don't know how to pray anymore.

You cannot pray anymore. You cannot. What happens? Pride attacks the spirit, because that was what attacked the spirit, the angel.

Angels are spirits. What attacked that spirit was pride. Number one enemy of the Lord Jesus, pride.

You know, when the Lord Jesus came, the very first thing ever asked of everyone who chose him to be their Lord and Savior, once we chose the Lord to be our Good Shepherd, the first thing before you make any step in his path, the first thing he will say before you make a move, you need to deny yourself humility. That's the first thing. He's not going to come and say, I want you to be holy.

No, he will say, I want you to be humble, because if there is no humility, there is no holiness. If there is no humility, there is no life, because life comes from the Lord. And the only way for that life to be mine, I need to die to my old person in order to live in this new person called Jesus Christ of Nazareth, all humility.

He is all humility. I will challenge you, you read the entire New Testament, there is not one miracle, one sign, anything the Lord Jesus did, unless it was done for his father, nothing for himself, nothing, nothing. Everything was to glorify his dad.

They came and said, Lord, Lord, he said, not everybody that says Lord, Lord shall enter the kingdom of heaven. It is he who does the will of my dad. If you love me, love my father, I came to do the will of my dad.

Don't love me, love daddy. You've done it all. What did daddy give Jesus? Miracles, the ministry of miracles.

None of the miracles he did for himself, everything, every miracle he performed was to glorify his dad. Why? Because he is humility. I don't live for myself, Jesus says, I live for the one who sent me, my father, who art in heaven.

I live for my dad. That's why he lives. As a human, I'm talking, that's why he lives forever, because he emptied himself.

He allowed daddy to fill him completely, to fill him up. The pride is the enemy of the spirit. To heal the spirit, you need to pray.

What is prayer? Prayer is to connect. Every time you connect to God, you are praying. Therefore, prayer is not only words, it is also deeds.

A prayer can be deeds as well. Imagine you go and visit someone in hospital. We pray for the full recovery of every person that is sick in hospital, in Jesus' mighty name.

But you go and visit someone in hospital, but that visit, you've done it in Jesus' holy name. You said, Lord, let's go and visit so and so in hospital. From the moment you left the house, all the way to the hospital, and your time that you spent there, and came back all the way home, that was all a prayer.

Why? Because the moment you connect to Jesus, it becomes a prayer. So can you pray all the time? Yes, and the Lord called us to pray all the time. In fact, the Lord Jesus, he did not only pray, he became prayer itself.

He is prayer. Because everything he did, everything he said, he was 100% connected to his heavenly father. So all his life was one simple prayer.

That's why his spirit, the human spirit that is in him, was not overcome by pride. He stepped on pride, therefore he stepped on Satan. What is Satan? Pride.

Satan can't humble himself. It's not in him. He lost it from the very beginning in heaven.

He lost it. Satan will always pump in you self-exaltation, false glory. He'll bring things your way.

He'll bring people, and he'll let those people say to you very beautiful things. Oh, you're a saint. You're so faithful.

You're so kind. There is none like you. And then you start becoming a big balloon, and then you start flying high.

But when you fly high, the balloon is gonna explode, and you'll be coming down on your head. So when someone comes and says, you're a saint, go to Fairfield, Nita City. Don't stay there.

Run away. Run away. Don't stand there and say, oh please, don't call me a saint.

You know, like, I'm a sinner. Please get a life. Grow up.

This is an actman. You know, when people start saying, oh no, please, please, I'm a sinner. They're acting.

You know who's truly living humility? The one who doesn't talk. The moment he starts saying, no, no, no, I'm not, I'm not, please, no, no, no, no, no, you're acting. Satan's got you.

Don't talk. There was this saint in the third century, Saint Makarios, from our beloved Coptic Church. And he's also a saint in our church, by the way.

And the Assyrian Church, yes? He's a saint. He is in the prayer book. We have his name written in the Church of the East prayer book, Saint Makarios.

Beautiful saint. In the third century, one day he was in his cell. He was a monk, and he was a leader of a monastic life.

So he was praying in his cell, sitting on the ground, on the floor, and praying in absolute silence. Satan came and appeared in that cell looking like Jesus Christ. You see, some people say there is no such thing, Satan can come and do this and do that, because you're a baby, you see? You're not mature in spirituality to know what Satan does.

The Lord will only allow Satan to tempt you according to your stature. If you are a kindergarten level, Satan will come and tempt you at a kindergarten level. Saint Makarios was at a university level, not kindergarten.

So you will see things, whoa, out of this world. So anyway, he came, appeared in the cell like the Lord. Saint Makarios didn't make a whisper, he didn't move, nothing, nothing.

He just had his head down, closed eyes, absolutely silent. Satan said to Makarios, shame on you. Your master himself came all the way to your cell, and you are so disrespectful, you didn't get up and bow before your master, shame on you.

Saint Makarios saw quietly, so peacefully, without making any big moves and making a big fuss, he said, look, if you are Jesus or not, I don't know. But one thing I know, why would Jesus come and see someone who is nothing but the greatest sinner ever to exist? Why would the Lord waste his time on someone like me? Satan exploded out of anger and said, oh you Makarios, you burn me with your humility. You burn me with your humility.

You shred me to pieces. You want to overcome Satan? Be humble. You want to be humble? You need to be a prayer.