I want to begin this morning by asking three questions. The first question is this, is temptation a sin? Is temptation a sin? The second question is, did Jesus sin when He was tempted? And then the third question is, could He have sinned? These are just some of the questions that I want us to address this morning as we look together at Mark chapter 1. So I'd like to invite you to take your Bible and turn to Mark chapter 1. We're considering verses 12 and 13. Mark's account of the temptation of Christ is very brief. He devotes only two verses to it where Matthew has 11 and Luke has 13. And this morning, rather than reading only the two verses that are found in Mark, I want to read from all three versions. And as I do that, I want to use John MacArthur's book, One Perfect Life. If you've never looked at that book, that is a harmony of the gospels, and it's arranged in such a way as the events occur. And so this morning I'm going to read Matthew 4, 1-11, Mark 1, 12-13, and Luke 4, 1-13 as they're all meshed together here in this harmony that we're going to see. And just to help you, I put this up on the screen behind us. Then Jesus, being filled with the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and immediately was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And he was there in the wilderness 40 days, tempted by Satan, and was with the wild beasts. And in those days he ate nothing. And when he had fasted 40 days and 40 nights, afterward, when they had ended, he was hungry. Now when the tempter came to him, the devil said to him, if you are the son of God, command this stone to become bread. But Jesus answered him saying, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. Then the devil brought him to Jerusalem, the holy city, set him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to him, If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written, He shall give his angels charge over you to keep you, and in their hands they shall bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone. And Jesus answered and said to him, It is written again, You shall not tempt the Lord your God. Again, the devil took him up on an exceeding high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory in a moment of time. And he said to him, all these things and all this authority I will give you and their glory, for this has been delivered to me and I will give it to whomever I wish. Therefore, if you will fall down and worship before me, all will be yours. Then Jesus said to him, Away with you, Satan! Get behind me! For it is written, You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only you shall serve.' Now when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from Him until an opportune time. And behold, angels came and ministered to him." As we've just heard, All three gospels are providentially followed by Jesus in the approval of the Father. The mention of the Father's pleasing reminds us that these were the last words that Jesus had in his mind as he enters into a time of testing. Now, if you're looking there at Mark and you look there at verse 12, it begins with the word immediately. Immediately means right away, at once. Mark uses that term 11 times in chapter 1. As I've said to you on the previous occasions, this book just goes from one story to another story to another story. It just moves so quickly. And it's noted by that word immediately. In fact, he uses the word immediately 41 times in these 16 chapters. Overall, the word occurs 60 times in the New Testament. And what it's telling us is that there is no lag time between the baptism and the temptation. So you come from the baptism, he comes up out of the water, The Spirit of God comes upon him, symbolized in the dove, and then immediately he is impelled to go into the wilderness. So there was no time spent basking in the glory of the heavenly voice or the presence of the heavenly dove. The servant had a task to perform, and he immediately went to do it. So immediately, or right away, or at once, the Spirit impelled him. And the word impelled, that's actually stronger than the word that Matthew uses, which is the word anago, and it just is translated was led up. It's also stronger than Luke's word, which is ago, which means was led. Now this word literally means to force to go, to go out. In the Septuagint, which is the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the word itself is described like in the garden where Adam and Eve had lived and then they sinned. And after they sinned, it says that they were driven out of the garden. This is the same word. It's also used in chapter 4 to speak of Cain being casted out after he killed Abel. We also find it where Sarah asked Abram to drive out Hagar and Ishmael from their household. And we find it in Exodus being used to Pharaoh driving Israel out of Egypt. We find it in other places like Deuteronomy 29.28 of casting the disobedient Israelites out of their land. We find it in Jonah 2.10 to speak of the fish that cast Jonah on the shore. But prior to that, he was what? Cast into the sea. Same word. And then we find it in Isaiah 2 and verse 20. speaking of casting out idols in that future day when Jesus returns in triumph. So the word is used to cast out, to drive out, to force out. Mark uses it over in verse 34 and verse 39 to speak of the Lord casting out demons, even the disciples. used it in Matthew 17, 19 when it says, then the disciples came to Jesus privately and said, why could we not drive it out? So the idea is simply this, the Holy Spirit, He did not whisper in Jesus's ears and say, I want you to go out into the Judean wilderness. No, the force of the passage is that Christ was compelled by the Holy Spirit. He was driven urgently into a desolate, God-forsaken place. Dieben Heibert says, The expression here does not mean that Jesus was forced out into the wilderness against His will, but indicates that He went with a strong sense of the Spirit's compulsion upon Him. Albert Barnes says, that the Spirit of God caused him to go. Now, we understand that because that's indicating a strong desire there. That's indicating a strong force on you leading you into a direction. Now, where did He drive him to? Well, it says that He impelled him to go into the wilderness. The wilderness place is actually unknown. The Gospels indicate that Jesus went there directly from the Jordan. This was away from where John was baptizing. Mark mentions in verse 13 that he was with the wild beast. That's to say that he was in the most remote and unfrequented and savage part of the desert. This was actually an uncultivated and uninhabited part of the desert that men did not go. It was the place where you find the fierce and most savage of creatures, creatures like boars and jackals and wolves and foxes and leopards and hyenas. It's that part of the wilderness that he went into, totally isolated. In fact, it's interesting that Jewish thought associated the wilderness with danger and gloom and the abode of demons. We find that in Luke 8 29 when it says, So if Mark has such a scene in mind, then Jesus is pictured here as taken into the very domain of Satan for the encounter. And now we find in verse 13, Mark says that Satan tempted him. Notice verse 13 again, and he was in the wilderness 40 days being tempted by Satan, and he was with the wild beast, and the angels were ministering to him. Now the temptation, it lasted the entire time. The temptation lasted 40 days. Not just the fast, but also the temptation. And the number that's used here is literal. It's not a symbolic number. I was reading in a number of commentaries and some of them were coming up with this symbolic understanding of these numbers, but it's speaking of 40 actual days, not 40 symbolic days. Matthew and Luke both mentioned that he was fasting without food. That's interesting. I was reading recently that those who do hunger strikes, we find that these doctors estimate that a well-nourished individual doing a hunger strike can survive without any kind of medical consequences as long as his diet is sugar and water. And if it's sugar and water, he can last for 30 days or more. Then he would die. Medical News Today reports that people who have voluntarily stopped eating to participate in hunger strikes have died after 45 to 61 days. So, when you read here that he fasted for 40 days, That's really supernatural. And it may have something to do with the fact of the angels ministering to Him. We don't know in what way they were doing this. But the tense of the verb that's used there to speak of them ministering, it suggests that the angels were there ministering to Him throughout the temptation. It wasn't at the end and then the angels come. They were with Him the entire time. Same is true when we find that Moses fasted 40 days and 40 nights when he was on the mountain there with God, receiving the law of God. We also find it where Elijah in 1 Kings 19.8, he went on the nourishment of that food the angel brought to him, what, 40 days. The number 40 was also used of other things like Israel's time in the wilderness, It lasted for 40 years. Moses spent 40 years on the backside of the desert while he was in training. The spies, when they went in to spy out the land of Canaan, you know they spent 40 days spying out the land. When it talks about the rains that came during the flood, guess how much time it lasted. It said, for 40 days and nights. Or number 40 has some kind of significance here. But it is literally 40 days. 40 days of fasting, 40 days of temptation. Now, let me ask you a question. How would you survive 40 days of temptation? I mean, we struggle enough just to have one moment of temptation in one day. Or maybe it spreads out for two or three days, but that's more than we can handle. but yet 40 days. All three Gospels state that Jesus was tempted by Satan. That's the point of time in the wilderness. Just as Jesus had fulfilled all righteousness by being baptized by John and identifying with those whom he would save, he does the same thing in his temptation. Listen to Hebrews 2, 17 and 18. It says, Therefore he had to be made like his brethren in all things, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For since he himself was tempted in that which he has suffered, he is able to come to the aid of those who are tempted. See, we don't have a great high priest who's never been tempted or never experienced temptation like we experience it. He has. Or Hebrews 4.15, which says essentially the same thing, but it adds a little bit more to it. It says, For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in all things as we are. yet without sin." The word that the Gospels use for tempted, it means to be tried, to be tested. We talked about that before. We say that you and I, we go through tests, we go through trials, and the question is whether you can pass it. The obvious answer is you can, though it might not be obvious at the moment. This word was used for testing, it was used for trying, and here it has this connotation of a solicitation to evil. When you study such words, and it's the word perazzo comes from perazmos, many times you have to use the context to get its meaning. That word, or those two words, the noun is perazmos, it's used in James 1. Perazzo is used in James 1.13. Here's how it's used there. In James 1, perazmos is used to speak of trials. James defines what trials are by saying that they are tests, tests of your faith. Then in verse 13, he switches to the verb, paradso, and it's translated temptation. And what he's trying to tell us by the use of those two words and by the context that when you go through a trial, it is a test. It is a test you can pass. But it is a test nonetheless. If you fail the test, it now becomes a temptation to sin. Now, as we look at it here, this, as the enemy is using it in the life of Christ, is a solicitation to evil. In fact, we're going to see what his ultimate goal was as we look at these three Gospels. As I said, that the term that's used here for temptation This term occurs in the present tense, and this is where we get the understanding that Jesus's temptation was ongoing. It's the present tense that tells us that it was repeated. It went on repeatedly. It went on during the entire period. And the three temptations that Matthew and Luke give, they were actually the climax at the 40 days. So it's not like that there were just three temptations that the enemy came and tempted Jesus with. No, he tempted Him with many other things that just are not recorded for us. Because this temptation went on repeatedly. He kept looking for a way to make Him fall. That's His goal. And that's His goal with you and I, is to make us fall. And to make our fall to be so traumatic that we don't get back up. And in the case with the Son of God, He was seeking to discredit Him. But as I asked, is temptation a sin? Did Jesus sin when He was tempted? Well, I believe that we're going to find this out as we look through this text. G. Campbell Morgan says that these temptations are not the swift, sudden, subtle, insidious temptations that sweep upon men. Our Lord faces such also. But these constitute an organized and systematic attack upon a man in every department of his life. See, as you begin to look at this temptation, or temptations, plural, that we should probably say, you see that he was tested in every department of his life. We find how devastating this actually was. We also learned that Satan came during his weakest point. He was exhausted and he was hungry. Satan comes to you at the same time. When you're exhausted, when you're hungry, when you're tired, or when you're discouraged, he just pounds on you over and over and over. And his goal is to make you fall. But he does have another goal in mind, and it's the very goal that he applied in the third temptation at the highest and weakest moment. And we'll talk about that in just a moment. All three Gospels identify the tempter as Satan. He is literally a creature created by God. The Bible teaches that he was an angel, but he sinned. And when he sinned, he took a third of the angels with him. They are commonly referred to in Scripture as demons. They have no redemption. Satan has no redemption. The angels that fell have no redemption. Some are bound to a pit, some are loose to roam the earth and to lead people astray and so forth. Satan ultimately will be bound as well in a pit for a thousand years. But then at the end of that thousand years, he'll be released to tempt the nations one more time. And then he will be cast into the lake of fire where the beast and the false prophet will be. And they will be there forever and ever in torment night and day. And beloved, if there's anything that you could applaud right now, it would simply be that. Your enemy will be destroyed. That is a promise from the Word of God that Satan, doom is imminent. Now Satan is mentioned in eight Old Testament books. He's mentioned by every New Testament writer. He appears in 19 New Testament books. 28 of the 30 references in the Gospels involve either direct encounters with or mentions of him. His name Satan means adversary or one who opposes. And don't we see his activity just like that? He's the very adversary of God. He's the very adversary of believers. He opposes God. He opposes believers. So this actually pictures him as a ferocious, roaring lion stalking his prey. And you remember in 1 Peter 5.8, It says, be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. And as we said when we were studying that passage some time ago, that a lion does not announce his arrival until he pounces on his prey. Because if he announced it, in some cases we do find him roaring because a terrifying roar, it shocks the prey. Some run. Some stand there. Some don't know what to do. Now, the Bible gives us some 40 different titles for Him. He's called the Devil. He's called the Serpent. He's called the Great Dragon. He's called the Prince of the Power of the Air. He's called the God of this Age, the Evil One, the Prince of Demons, the Accuser, And he's called the tempter. That's just a few of the 40. And when you think about Satan, Satan possesses the highest power of all the created beings. But his power does not begin to compare with God's. Satan is not omnipotent. He is not omniscient. He is not omnipresent. He is not immutable. He is not sovereign. He is not eternal. He is not immortal. He is not great and He is certainly not self-existent. All those statements are true about God, but not about Satan. He possesses none of the divine attributes which belong uniquely to the Creator. No human being possesses the supernatural power that actually belongs to him. That's why I have to chuckle when I hear believers running around trying to cast Satan out. They don't know what in the world they're dealing with. And they do not have that kind of power. We find that kind of power very limited in the New Testament. Even all of the apostles did not manifest that kind of power. Only a few of them did. And we can also say here that Satan is a master deceiver. He excels at deceiving and entrapping. He also rules this world's sinful, evil system. In John 12, 31, Jesus referred to him as the ruler of this world. 1 Corinthians 4.4, he's referred to as the God of this world. Ephesians 2.2, he's called the Prince of the Power of the Air. And he also has the power of death. But Christ has rendered him powerless for believers in Christ. It says in Hebrews 2.14, that since the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise also partook of the same, that through death And speaking of Christ, He might render powerless him who had the power of death, that is, the devil. Satan also has the power of deceit. But you know what? Christ exposed his deception. 2 Corinthians 2.11 says, "...so that no advantage would be taken of us by Satan, for we are not ignorant of his schemes." So no power regardless of how great, and you need to keep this in mind, will separate you from the love of Christ. We hear words like this, Romans 8 35 and following, who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword? Just as it is written for your sake, we are being put to death all day long. We were considered as sheep to be slaughtered, but in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life," get this, nor angels nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Nothing can separate you from the love of Christ. Now I want you to notice before we dive into these three Gospels, I want you to notice in Genesis chapter three, his craftiness as he met with Eve there at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The command from God was in Genesis 2.18, "'Of every tree in the garden you may freely eat, "'but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, "'you shall not eat of it, for in the day that you eat of it, "'you shall surely die.'" That's what God said to them. You can have everything here, except for the fruit of one tree. If you eat from that tree, I will kill you." A little different when you say it that way, isn't it? But it was true. And I would just tell you that even though they disobeyed the Lord and they ate, there's a measure of grace that we see there. And you know where the measure of grace is? It's in chapter 5. I call chapter 5 the graveyard chapter because it mentions all the people that had lived up to that point and how long they lived. That's where we find out Methuselah was the oldest man to live. But it tells us the same thing in there. They all died. And it tells us that Adam died. So he did die. It's just that God didn't kill him immediately. But Genesis 3.1 We find his choice to conceal himself in a creature known as the serpent. And it tells us why he decided to do that. Because the serpent was more crafty than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. So here is Satan who is crafty, chooses one of God's creations that is also crafty to conceal himself. And you know what? It worked. Notice his intentions. He begins by casting doubt on what God said to Adam and Eve. You heard it very plainly as I quoted it to you from Genesis 2.18. But again, he shielded it with his words. And as he did this, he was trying to get Eve to question the Word of God. He does that to believers today. Listen to what he said. Indeed, has God said, you shall not eat from any tree of the garden? In other words, did God really say this? Unfortunately, Eve responds. Verse 2, from the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat, but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said you should not eat from it or touch it. or you will die. Now we don't see anywhere where God said not to touch it, but listen, if you're not to eat of it, you shouldn't touch it either, right? Unfortunately, that's how you and I play with temptation. We play with fire. And many times we get burnt by it. I want you to notice how Satan responds now. He highlights that last line in verse 4 and he says this, "...you shall not surely die." What did he do then? What did he just say? He said, God's lying to you. You're not going to die. God knows that in the day that you eat from it, your eyes will be open and you'll be like God, knowing good and evil. Eve, God is lying to you. He's holding out on you. Even though you have all of the fruit, all of the food that's in this lush garden, there's one tree here He's holding out from you on because He knows that if you eat of that fruit, you're going to be like Him. You're going to know good and evil. See, up to this point, they'd only heard about evil. They hadn't experienced it. Well, the bait had been laid. Will Eve take it? Well, unfortunately, verse 6 says she did. Verse 7 adds Adam. It says, When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate. She gave also to her husband with her, and he ate. And then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loin coverings." I want you to notice, there's a process of temptation right there in that passage. First, she saw it. Went through the eye gate. Once it passed the eye gate, it went to the heart where the desires are. Once it was in the eye gate and the desires, what's next? Take it. Beloved, if you can kill temptation in your mind, Before it gets into the desires, you will have victory over your temptation. But beloved, you have to listen to the Word of God. And 1 Corinthians 12, 13, or 10, 13, tells us that God always provides a way of escape. Every time we're tried, every time we're tempted, He provides a way of escape. And many times we think the way of escape is just for God to take us and just lift us out of the situation. No, the way of escape is through it. You gotta go through it. But He always provides. Every time I have failed a temptation, I can recall back to a verse or verses that came to my mind in the midst of that temptation and I failed to give heed to. Every time. That's the way of escape. And the question for you is, when you're going through a trial, when you're going through a temptation, do you trust God? Because if you do, you won't give in to that evil. Now, you take those tactics that Satan used in the garden, well, he used them again. He's not original with his tactics, but he used them again with Jesus. And he started by raising a cloud of doubt. In fact, over in Matthew 4, verse 3, it says, "...the tempter came and said to him, If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread." And now we find the first temptation in the highest and weakest point in his life toward the end of the 40 days. As I said earlier, Satan kept hammering him repeatedly with an onslaught of temptation, one after another after another. And now at his weakest point, right before the fast ends, right before it indicates that he is hungry, Satan gives him these three major temptations. And the first one is found in Matthew 4, 2 and 3, and Luke 4, 2 through 4. Command these stones to become bread. Why would he start right there? Well, the reason why he started right there, because that's where Jesus was. He was fasting. And as I said, he fasted 40 days and 40 nights. And then it says, then he became hungry. I don't understand that, you know. I can't make it a few hours. Maybe I can. I can't make it a few days. He went 40. And when Satan questions him, he says, if you are the Son of God, Make bread. Feed yourself. Make yourself some breakfast. That conditional term, if, it carries the meaning of sense in the context in this passage. There's no doubt in Satan's mind who Jesus is. All the demons know who Jesus is. We're told in Luke 4.34 on one occasion the demons cry out to Jesus and say, Let us alone. What business do we have with each other, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God. They know. Satan's plan was to get Jesus to violate the plan of God, use His divine power that He had set aside in His humiliation to create bread. But Jesus said, it is written, man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. And just a little footnote, boy, this gives some good evidence for expository preaching. We want to live on every word, don't we? So then study every word, teach every word. This is actually a quotation from Deuteronomy 8 and verse 3. Jesus quotes Scripture. This is how you deal with temptation in your life. Go to the Scripture. Use the Scripture. Here is another reason why you need to memorize and meditate on Scripture like Psalm 119 verse 11 says, Your word I've treasured in my heart that I might not sin against you. The word is in your heart becoming a deterrent against sin. So Jesus tells him, our life doesn't consist of bread alone. Our life consists of the Word of God. Linsky says the sum and substance of this reply is trust. This trust crushed the very suggestion of distrust or mistrust and thus overcame the temptation. Jesus will not abandon His trust in God to provide for Himself. Albert Barnes says, no temptation could have been more plausible or more likely to succeed than this. He had just been declared to be the Son of God and here was an opportunity to show that He was really so. The circumstances were such as to make it appear plausible and proper to work this miracle. Here you are, was the language of Satan, hungry, cast out, alone, needy, poor, and yet the Son of God. If you have this power, how easy could you satisfy your wants? How foolish it is then for the Son of God, having all power, to be starving in this manner, when by a word He could show His power and relieve His wants, and when in the thing itself there could be nothing wrong. There's nothing wrong with Jesus making Himself some breakfast, except for the fact that He entrusted Himself to the Father, and everything that He did was based upon what the Father told Him to do, and He couldn't end that fast, so the Father said, the fast is over. So the devil wasn't successful. Did the devil leave? No. He comes at Him with another temptation now. And he says to him, leap off the temple. Just jump. Do a swan dive. People will see it and believe. Matthew 4, 5, Then the devil took him into the holy city, had him stand on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to him, If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down. For it is written, He will command His angels concerning you, and on their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone." In other words, Jesus, I can quote Scripture too. You want to quote Scripture? I'll quote it back to you. Because that's what He did. Psalm 91. The holy city was Jerusalem. That's where the temple was located. The pinnacle of the temple was actually the part of the temple wall that overlooked the Kidron Valley. It led to a tremendous drop from the top of the temple wall to the bottom of the valley. In fact, Josephus tells us this drop was nearly 450 feet. Translate that to us today, that's 45 stories. That's pretty tall. D. A. Carson says that late Jewish Midrash says that the Messiah would prove himself by leaping from the temple pinnacle. The Midrash, that was actually a mode of interpretation by the rabbis. The word itself means textual interpretation or study or exegesis. And again, that's what they used to say, that when the Messiah would come, he would prove himself by leaping off the temple. That doesn't even make sense. I mean, what's the point? Satan says, again, if you are the Son of God, well, that's just like verse 3. It should be translated, since, because again, Satan knew exactly who Jesus was. So since you are the Son of God, throw yourself down. Take this 450-foot plunge. And as I said, Satan quotes Scripture, quoted Psalm 91, verses 11 and 12 from the Septuagint. He omitted the words to guard you in all your ways. He also strategically avoided Psalm 91 and verse 13. Listen to what it says. You will tread upon the lion and cobra, the young lion, and the serpent you will trample down. See, he omitted that part. That takes us back to Genesis 3.15 where it talks about, I'll put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed. He shall bruise you on the head and you shall bruise him on the heel. See, Psalm 91 ultimately emphasized total trust in God, total loyalty to God, not a pretext for tempting Him. God didn't tell him to jump down from the temple. If he had jumped, he would have been acting outside of God's divine will. And then the promise of protection would not have been valid. So what Satan was doing here was tempting Jesus against God's pledge to protect him. Again, how did Jesus reply? Well, He replied with Scripture, Deuteronomy 6.16. He said, You shall not put the Lord your God to the test. And Deuteronomy 6.16 has a phrase at the end, As you tested Him at Massah. And the reference to Massah alludes to Exodus 17, verses 2 through 7, where the Israelites put the Lord to the test by demanding water. This was, as A.T. Robinson says, a sort of manipulative bribery expressly forbidden in Scripture to test God. And so if the pinnacle of the temple wasn't high enough, Matthew 4.8 says, again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in their glory. And now we see what His ultimate goal was. You know what His ultimate goal was? He was attempting to get him to worship Him. Look at Matthew 4, 9. And He said to him, all these things I will give you if you will fall down and worship Me. That was His ultimate goal. He wanted to discredit Him by getting Him to worship the devil. You know, there are people doing that today. Our culture is very ripe for it. Just some recent events that have occurred in our culture that you'd be very familiar with. I don't know if any of you watched the 65th Grammy Awards. I personally don't. But there was a man named Sam Smith and a trans woman named Kim Petras. They were performing a song called Unholy. And while they were performing this song, Sam Smith wore a devil horn hat And patriots performed in a cage while the singers were surrounding them with red robes. It was very clear what they were doing. They were worshiping Satan at the Grammy Awards. Now, beloved, you get the whole backdrop behind much of these actors, right? This is the God they serve. And if that's not enough, a very recent situation occurred on the 21st of this year, 21st of February. And this is where a Sal Khan Valley superintendent had approved an after school Satan club at that middle school. And of course, parents rightfully protested. But they said that they were legally bound to let them do it. Because they had opened the door for other things to be given at the school, they had to let them do it too. The National Campaign Director for the Afterschool Satan Club said this, we are run by the Satanic Temple and we are, the club is brought to you by your local, friendly, self-identified, non-theistic Satanist. End quote. That's what he said. So that battle's still going on. There's a third situation you'd be familiar with. Anybody in here have Disney Plus? Pull out your lighter and set it on fire. Disney is not the same as it used to be. In fact, I believe that Walt would be turning over in his grave if he knew what they were doing. It has now just become a platform for Satanism, a platform for wickedness, for evil, for homosexuality, for lesbianism, the LGBTQ, a whole woke crowd. It's all part of it. And Disney is promoting it in their films. One of the most recent shows that they put out, it was a cartoon, and the cartoon is called Little Demon. Heard of it? The cartoon takes place 13 years after an unmarried pagan woman is impregnated by Satan and follows her and her daughter, literally the spawn of Satan, as referred to as the Antichrist, follows them through everyday life. The series, as they say this, this is what they say. Now listen, the series features demonic witchcraft, pagan rituals, gratuitous blood, gore, nudity, and judging by the trailer that can easily be considered pornographic. That's what they say. So you have satanic performances. Satanic after-school clubs, Disney cartoons. Just a few of the ways that Satan is duping people into thinking that he is not evil as portrayed in the Bible. John MacArthur says, Satan now drops his pretense and makes one final desperate effort to corrupt Jesus. He finally reveals the supreme purpose. to induce Jesus Christ to worship Him. He had first suggested what Jesus ought to do for Himself. Next, He suggested what the Father ought to do for Jesus. And now He suggests what Satan could do for Jesus in exchange for what Jesus could do for Him. This last proposal was so preposterous, Jesus dismissed it by saying, Be gone, Satan! For it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God and serve Him only." If the Son of God would not compromise even in the least important truth in the universe, He would surely not compromise the greatest, that God and God alone is to be worshiped and served. Martin Lloyd-Jones says, the lie of Satan is the lie against God at the beginning. The devil is always waiting to confuse and muddle us. He wants to destroy God's work. He can turn himself into an angel of light. He can produce counterfeits in a very subtle way. He can insinuate in his own thinking, and what starts correctly can end by being terribly wrong. Well, it says in verse 11, then the devil left him. And behold, angels came and began to minister to him. And what you see in that little phrase, the devil left him, is the identity of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus had authority over Satan. Jesus has authority over everyone. And when he told him to leave, he had to leave. No ifs and buts about it. He had to leave. R.C. Sproul says, and I agree, I do not think that we understand a fraction of the stress that hell imposed on Jesus in this situation. He withstood everything that Satan had to throw at Him. In his frustration, Satan left, but let us note two things. First, he departed from Jesus until an opportune time. This would not be the last time in Jesus' life or ministry that Satan would throw everything he had against the Son of God. No, he'd be back. All of us have been tempted. Some of you maybe have dealt with that this morning. Some of us have been tempted directly. Some of us have been tempted remotely. But I want to remind you of what James 1.13 says, that God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone. So when you're tempted, don't say, God tempted me. God led me into this sinful situation. Ultimately, that's what Adam did. Adam said to God, when he was confronted with taking of that forbidden fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he said to God, the woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me of this fruit and I ate. In other words, if you had not given me this woman, I would not have fallen into temptation. He blamed God. Don't do that. And don't even do it remotely because that's what James 1.13 is actually saying. It's not a direct attack on God, it's a remote attack. It's like this. I wouldn't have been tempted if God wouldn't have put me in this situation. If God wouldn't providentially arrange my life so that I happen to be here in this moment when this happens. It's God's fault. James says, you are tempted when you are carried away and enticed by your own desires. Beloved, I believe this. We don't have to have the devil tempt us. We have enough evil in our flesh to tempt us away from God. You know what I mean? We don't need any help. James ends that by saying, don't be deceived. I began a few moments ago asking three questions. Did we answer them? Let me recap them. Is temptation a sin? What's the answer? No. Temptation is not a sin. Yielding to temptation is a sin. But to be tempted is not a sin. You go out to lunch today and you pull out that menu, and you see something over here, just the mention of it, maybe there's a picture of it, and it tempts you to get it. The picture's not a sin. Now, if there was something pornographic on the page, yeah, that would be sinful. But sometimes we think that because we've been tempted, We've sinned. Yielding to the temptation is the sin. Second question we asked, did Jesus sin when He was tempted? What's the answer? No. Not at all. In fact, the Bible tells us, answering the third question, and the third question was, could He sin? Hebrews 4 says that He was without sin. So what's the answer? No. He couldn't sin. And then you say, well, if He couldn't sin, how could He be tempted in all points like we are? How could He identify with us? Beloved, He doesn't have to sin to identify with you. He doesn't have to sin to understand what you're going through in that temptation, or what you're going through in that trial. As I said, He was tempted in all manners, all points. And this 40-day fast that he had, and 40 days out there in the wilderness, he was tempted the entire time. That's why I say with what Sproul says, I don't think we understand a fraction of the stress that hell imposed on Jesus in this situation. Jesus didn't sin. And beloved, do you understand the ramifications if he did? If he sinned, then he's not God. Because God cannot sin. It says in Titus 1, God cannot lie. There's some things here that God can't do. He can't sin. His nature does not include it. I want you to pay attention to this next quote. It's a little lengthy, but I want you to hear it. And it has to do with your thought life. When I read this quote yesterday, I was thinking, man, I wish I'd have read this a few months ago. Because sometimes we get bombarded with thoughts. Now, here's the question. Are those thoughts sin? Now, wait before you answer. Listen to this. Again, Martin Lloyd-Jones. He said, The Lord Jesus Himself was tempted. The devil put thoughts into his mind, but he did not sin because he rejected them. Thoughts will come to you, and the devil may try to press you to think that because thoughts have entered your mind, you have sinned. But they are not your thoughts. They are the devil's. He put them there. He illustrates this. It was the quaint Cornishman, Billy Bray, who put this in his own original manner when he said this. You cannot prevent the crow from flying over your head, but you can prevent him from making a nest in your hair. John says, so I say that we cannot prevent thoughts being insinuated into our mind. But the question is, is what do we do with them? We talk about thoughts passing through the mind and so long as they do this, they are not sin. But if we welcome them and agree with them, then they become sin. He says, I emphasize this because I have often had to deal with people who are in great distress because unworthy thoughts have come to them. But what I say to them in this is this. Listen to what you're telling me. You say that the thought has come to you. Well, if that is true, you are not guilty of the sin. You do not say, I have this thought. You say the thought came. That is right. The thought came to you and it came from the devil. And the fact that the thought did come from the devil means that you are not of necessity guilty of sin. Temptation in and of itself is not sin. All wool gathering is Satan taking control of your thoughts. That's what he's trying to do. Now, he can't read your thoughts, but he sure can read your behavior. And you and I are creatures of habit that we repeat our behavior over and over again. So he can tempt you with how you will respond in this situation because this situation is not much different than the previous situation where you did fall. So beloved, being tempted is not sin. Having a sinful thought come to your mind is not sin unless you act on it, unless you sit there and dwell on that thought. So beloved, what say ye? When I think of what we just looked at, I think to myself, there is no way I can overcome any sinful situation in my life apart from Christ, apart from His Word. But I can't tell you how many times to where I've had situations where a thought will come in my mind, Satan trying to get me to dwell upon that, and the only way I knew how to expel that is with Scripture. The same thing Jesus did. I found out some years ago when me and a few friends of mine, we were memorizing Scripture together, and back then we would memorize chapters, chapters in the Bible. And so one of the chapters we memorized was Romans 6. Romans 6 is a treatise on sin and righteousness. I found out that when I'm being tempted, if I would just start quoting Romans 6, something very amazing would happen. And it wouldn't have to just be Romans 6, it could be any other passage addressing sin or addressing that temptation that you're dealing with. But I found out that as I was quoting that, about the fifth, sixth verse into it, there are 23 of them, Right? 23 or 33? Anyway, while I was in the midst of quoting those verses, all of a sudden, the appeal of the temptation left. It was gone. So, what Jesus did in the Gospels there in responding to Satan with the Word of God is telling us this is how we should respond. But see, if the Word of God doesn't have that kind of priority in your life, you're not going to do that. Because it takes work. It takes work to memorize the passage. It takes a lot of work. It takes work to meditate on it, think about it. And then it just gets tucked away. I can't tell you how many times when I stand up here and preach the Word to you that passages that I didn't plan to talk about will come to my mind. Some of them I share, some of them I don't. but many times they are passages related to what we're talking about. And it wasn't something, like I said, in my study that I discovered and wrote down and said, I want to share this passage because it speaks to this situation. No, it happened at the moment. Why do I tell you that? I tell you that because the same thing happens to you. When I'm around somebody that is seeking to saturate themselves with the Word of God, this is what you hear. This is what comes out of their mouth. In the words of Charles Spurgeon, they would bleed biblene. They bled the Bible. In other words, everything that came out of their mouth was something from Scripture. But isn't that what you and I want? I mean, we hear people talking about all the time about having victory over your sin and having victory in your life, and we all want that, but the path to it is right here. And it takes work. And this is worthy to fight for, is it not? So beloved, I want to encourage you As I try to do each week, spend more time in the Word. Not less, spend more. You'll never go wrong spending more time in the Word. You can never overdo it. You need it, I need it. You know, I was thinking about this the other day, and I've had this question kind of asked of me at times. If I wasn't a pastor, would I spend the same amount of time in God's Word that I do as a pastor? Well, my first response is, I hope so. That begins to separate what your purpose is. Because as a pastor, a purpose in studying is to preach the message each week. So there's accountability there by you showing up on Sunday morning and my opportunity to share with you what I have studied. If I haven't studied, then I have nothing to share with you. So the question would be, would I do that if I didn't have that kind of responsibility? Yeah. Yeah, I would say yes. And here's why I would say it, because I have the same reason of wanting to know the scripture as a pastor as I do if I wasn't a pastor. have the same reason, same purpose. The only way you're going to know Christ is through His Word. And so, beloved, I want to urge you, spend time with God in His Word. If you're not doing the reading plan, do something. Okay? Get in the Word consistently, every day, as much as depends on you. I know that sometimes things happen that take your time away. But I'll tell you what, with stuff like this, you can find a way around it. You know, every Thursday, we have a work day around my house. Teresa gives us a list of things that we're gonna do. Mine usually involve getting on the tractor. Yeah, I like that. But it does take away from some of the time I want to spend in the Word. I do try to do some before I go out there, but it's real brief. But what I do is I resort to this. I use this device, and then I take some headphones and put them on, and I listen. I listen to Scripture. And sometimes I'll listen to whole books of the Bible. It's not uncommon to listen to an entire gospel, whether it be 28 chapters in Matthew, 16 in Mark, 26 in Luke, 21 I think is in John. It's not hard to do. It's not hard for you either. I'm not patting myself on the back of the head. I'm just trying to tell you, find the time. Use the resources. Use the tools. Spend time with God. If you want to know how to overcome your sin, you've got to spend time with God. And let me say one more thing before we end, and it's just simply this, and it comes from Romans 8, that the only way that you are going to overcome any sin or put to death any sin is going to be by the Spirit of God. That's it. It says in Romans 8, 13, that if you are living according to the flesh, you must die, but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live. It is by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body. It is by the Spirit that you do not give in to the flesh.