Thank you for tuning in to the Covenant Podcast, a podcast dedicated to the teaching and preaching of God's Word. The Covenant Podcast is a ministry of Covenant Baptist Church located in Indianapolis, Indiana. And now, here is today's speaker. The Word of God is a treasure beyond all that we could ever describe. It was February every year is always a month that I observe because it was a February. It was February when I was 19 years old that I submitted to the call to the ministry. 26 years have passed and I don't know how that happened. oldest is in college and my youngest is not going to be too far until he is there. And at every stage of life, I have found this book to be worthy of my attention and helpful to my life. The presence of the Holy Spirit who wrote this book, who authored it, and as he puts these things in our life and our hearts and the experiences that we have. I am just overwhelmed with the love that God has shown us to give us such a book, 66 of them to be exact, and to tell us about himself and about us and what we need in order to find peace in the world and in eternity. And I know that of late, you all have suffered a loss with the loss of Brother Thompson, always a word of encouragement, and I appreciated that in him. And I'm thankful that according to this book, according to what we know, he right now is at home with his Savior. And he'll be there a hundred years from now. He'll be there a thousand years from now. He'll be there a million years from now. I am amazed at times at the blindness that this world places upon us. The blindness that we see only what's in front of us rather than what is beyond what we see. The blindness of looking in this world for fulfillment and purpose and meaning when it's not here. It's been said to try to look into the world for that meaning and that purpose is like a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there. You're not going to find it in this life and in this world. You're gonna find it in God and find it alone in Him. What a blessing that it is to be able to present to you and I pray that God would simply use me as a mouthpiece. There's one focus that ought to be here tonight and that is Christ, Him, glorified and lifted up. And if we'll do that, if we'll honor Him with our thoughts and our intentions and our will, we will find Him to be sufficient to the hour, and we wanna ask you to pray that the Lord would be in the midst, that he would empower the words with his Holy Spirit, that it would be more than words, but that it would be truth expounded and lodged into your heart. God knows all seven billion people that are on the planet, and he knows you, and he knows me, and he loves me, and Jesus came to die for me and for you. We've heard that again. How many times have you heard that in your life? May it never grow dull in our ears. May it never cease to amaze us to think that God sent his son to die for you and me. That is the greatest story that's ever been told and ever will be told. It is the story that will be told throughout the unending age of eternity that is to come. And we have a privilege to talk about this one Jesus tonight. You don't have anything more important to think about than Him right now. I don't care what it is. I don't care how big of a deal it may feel to you. Financial struggles and worries, school troubles, job troubles, relationship troubles. These are all real things. There's nothing more important for you right now than to deal with what God wants to say to you and speak to you. And stop for a moment and think of the grandness of just that thought, that God wants to speak to you. He wants to speak and He wants us to hear and heed. He doesn't need us. He is independent in His character. He is completely at one with himself, three in one in this trinity of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. He did not need creation to complete himself, yet he created all that we see and know and do. And he did so because he loves and he wants to show you that love. And he showed us that love in the most exact way through his son, who willingly stretched out his arms and died for you. Christianity is the only religion in the world that talks about not what we do to get to heaven, but talks about what God has done to make a way for us to get to heaven. You talk to the Buddhist, it's about himself. The Hindu, it's about himself. The Muslim, it is about himself. We do not want to attack these people. We want to love them with the truth of the gospel. But it is what God has done, and not us, that allows us to have opportunity to know him, and to know Him more every day. And I pray diligently now that you would stop for just a few moments here and think about this thought. If you know the Lord and you've been saved, think of the privilege that every day gives you as you wake in the morning. You can go to bed that night knowing something else, something more, something deeper about this great God of ours, who is infinite in his holiness and infinite in his power. Do you know what infiniteness is? It's without end. I often think of heaven and I had some friends when I was young, silly friends as we all had. And sometimes we ourselves might have been the silly ones. And they would ask, we love to play sports. We love to play tennis. And they say, I wonder if we're going to play tennis in heaven. And I thought, this is a silly question. God of the universe is there. There's going to be one thing that I'm going to be doing and that is worshiping him. And I believe learning more about him with every passing moment of eternity. And I will never get to the end of this God that we know. He's infinite. That's why it's going to take eternity. That's why he has set it up that eternally we can know more about him in perfection when we shed this veil of sin. But even today, today, God gives us privilege. to know more about him, to dive into this book that he wrote for you and me. Tonight, we just pray that whatever God might speak to us, that we would listen. Sometimes I find myself praying for direction and guidance. Lord, I don't know what to do with whatever this situation is, and then there are times that he comes in quietness, and sometimes he comes not quietly to my heart and my soul, and he says, I have already answered your question in the word, if you would just read. and pray. So tonight, maybe you have a need. Maybe you've been praying about something. And maybe perhaps God will give you the answer you've been searching for tonight. Maybe. I don't know. I don't know your hearts, but I know the one who does. And I know when Brother Jonathan extended the opportunity, and again, I so appreciate this privilege, this opportunity. When he called or when he texted, And he doesn't text too much, don't let him tell you that. I enjoy getting his texts. Most of the time I have to go, hmm, I don't know about that one. And when he called and he texted and he said, hey, would you come? It was not very long after that that the Lord put a particular scripture on my heart for this evening. And I can only assume by that is that he wants to tell somebody something as a result. And so I leave that to him and to you. this great combination of the sovereignty of God and your free will. You must listen and we pray that he will speak. So Matthew chapter four, verse one, we're going to read the first 11 verses tonight of Matthew chapter four, beginning in verse one. If you've been in church very long, studied your Bible very long, you have read this particular portion of scripture probably a number of times. You've heard Bible studies given on it and sermons given on it. And I remember as a young preacher, some of the other young preachers at times would say, what new thing do you have? What is your message? What new idea? What are you preaching about? And I have learned over the years that there isn't anything, just as Solomon said was true, there isn't anything new under the sun. There's no new thought from me. Someone somewhere else, God has given these same thoughts to. But there's something about this text, these 11 verses, tonight that he wants them read and he, I pray, says something about them and uses me and then sets me aside and works with you with his word. That's our hope. This is the account of the Lord's temptation after his baptism. He's been baptized by John and then we are told that he is led of the spirit. He is led of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the Lord, or excuse me, to be tempted of Satan, to be tested by the Father. And we're gonna talk about the difference there, but let's just read as we begin. Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit after his baptism into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. And when he had fasted 40 days and 40 nights, he was afterward unhungered And when the tempter came to him, he said, if thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. But he answered and said, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple and saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down, for it is written, he shall give his angels charge concerning thee, and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone. And Jesus said unto him, it is written again, thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. Again the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them, and saith unto him, all these things will I give you if you will fall down and worship me. Then Jesus said unto him, get thee hence, Satan, for it is written, thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. Then the devil leaveth him, behold, angels came and ministered. unto him. There is a combination I see in this text of God leading his son into this wilderness in order to be tempted of the devil. It is a test that his father is giving him, and we must remember again that Jesus was all man, he was all God, the incarnation as one of the most miraculous things that man could ever even contemplate is the coming together of God, deity and man, humankind. But that's exactly what the Bible tells us happened. And God, the father, since his son leads him by the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted. And he allows his son to be tested. There are examples after examples after examples in the scriptures where God tests his people. He allows them to be tested from Job to Abraham to Joseph to Paul to really all of the apostles as they're there in the upper room wondering and in some confusion and in many ways probably doubts and misunderstanding as we see them coming to a realization of all that Jesus did, but they're in the upper room. Jesus has been crucified on a cross as a common criminal, and they are there as a small band of people, and no doubt that testing was great and difficult, and that time was no doubt one that was tried their faith. God does not tempt to evil. The scriptures are clear about that. He does not hold out for us evil. He though does, Test us. He does. Are you being tested tonight? Is in your life, is there a test that God is allowing into your life because he wants to bring you out to the other side of the test? See, there's a terrible damage that's been done to our culture and to our very way of thinking in our world, the world that we live in here. We have this idea. somehow equated the lack of struggle with happiness. We somehow allowed ourselves to believe that in order to be happy, there must be the absence of struggle and trial. That's not at all what the scriptures reveal. It's not at all what God tells us. You all probably know about the emperor moth and in its cocoon, as it breaks out of that cocoon, there is incredible pressure that is put on that emperor moth and its wings, the blood comes into the veins and it strengthens those wings. And there's a story told about somebody who saw this emperor moth and he was struggling to get out of that cocoon. And he took a pair of scissors and just snipped a little bit of the cocoon away thinking he was doing the moth a favor. And what happened is that moth never flew once it walked its whole small pitiful life because it did not go through the struggle of getting out of the cocoon. You see, what we do is we push struggle away and we pray, God, remove this pain from me. And that's normal. And that's not even necessarily a bad thing to ask God of. Jesus Himself says, Father, in the Garden of Gethsemane, if there's any other way, but not my will, yours be done. It's said that if you remove the stones, the brook loses its song. If you remove the difficulties in our life, you remove the beauty of God in the midst of them. God is trying to teach us things and he teaches us most often, it seems to me, through struggle and difficulty and hardship. We hope you have enjoyed listening to today's program. Please visit us at www.covenantmbc.com to access our podcast archive and learn more about the ministry of Covenant Baptist Church. Visit us on our Facebook page at www.facebook.com slash Covenant in Indie.