Let me pray and we'll continue on. Father, I pray as we are gathered together today in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, the name that is above every name, that Father, our hearts are full with the glory that belongs to him. as the one who has come and accomplished all that you have purposed. Your people Israel lived throughout their entire history with a deep and a woeful sense of their own failure, their own inability to fulfill their election, fulfill their calling. To be your covenant sons and daughters on behalf of the world. And yet through all of that, they held fast to the fact that their God would somehow come. He would somehow put right all that had gone wrong. Somehow the power of the God of Israel through the son of David would see Israel become what they were called to be. And to see in Jesus that one who took up Israel's burden, took up Israel's unfaithfulness, took up Israel's failure as covenant son, and bore that in himself, ultimately condemning and putting to death all of that unfaithfulness for the sake of the world. Father, we thank you that you have shown yourself faithful in the incarnate one. That in the most marvelous and unexpected way, you did return to your people, not to put your Shekinah back in a temple, but to actually take up the temple of their own human existence. To have your will and your determination become incarnate in the Messiah, the word become flesh, to tabernacle in the midst of Israel for the sake of its renewal, for the sake of the world's renewal, for the sake of the summing up of everything in the heavens and the earth in Jesus our Lord. So Father, as we consider his ordeal of testing, I pray that you would help us to see that travail through this lens. not simply as a man who was hungry or a man who was tempted to self-remedy or a man who was buffeted by the satanic adversary, but a man who was taking up the challenge, the burden, the obligation of the ages in order that in him, all things would be made new. Lord Jesus, we thank you for that love. that would not let go, that love that compelled you to bear the world's brokenness, that it might be adorned in you. So fill our hearts with joy and fill our hearts with a truly reverent devotion and worship. Instruct us and Father, build us up May we be truly transformed by the renewing of our minds. We yield ourselves to you in this time. We thank you that you are amongst us by your spirit and we pray that this will be a fruitful time. We put all of these things in front of you with the confidence, the hope, the joy that is ours in Christ our Lord. Amen. Well, we've seen that these tests, this wilderness episode is given to us in all three of the synoptic Gospels. Mark simply mentions this time of testing. Matthew and Luke are the Gospel writers that actually give us the unfolding of it. And we saw last time that this time of testing is summarized in these three kind of core tests. And somehow this was a tradition of Jesus' own testing of his own experience that he made known to his disciples and became a part of the church's understanding of him. Because again, he was alone in the wilderness. This was not something that anyone was there with him. But somehow he communicated these things to his disciples and probably this was foundational even in his own assertions of the enemy having nothing in him. The Satan's assaults against him that he had already shown this intent and the beginning of this binding of the strong man. And this was the beginning of that confrontation through which Jesus prevailed and would ultimately point towards the triumph of the cross. Whereas he was preparing for that, he said, now is the hour. Now is the hour of darkness. The enemy is coming, but he has nothing in me. but that the world would know that I love the Father, so I go and so I will do." But we saw last time then, and I'll read this section with you after this opening comment, that Jesus' wilderness ordeal was a test of his sonship. It was specifically a test of his sonship. ordained and orchestrated by his father, who had affirmed him as his well-pleasing beloved son at his baptism. We talked about how the baptism episode and the wilderness testing are connected very tightly together, the Spirit being the conjoining piece of that. The Spirit descends on him, he's anointed by the Spirit as Mashiach, Yahweh's Messiah, and then he's driven out into the wilderness. So in that sense, Satan, the diabolical adversary, was simply the instrument or the servant of this testing. This was Yahweh's testing of his son. If you look at Matthew chapter 4, and I'll back up to verse 13 of chapter 3 and then read through this first seven verses of chapter 4 to set the context, you see this connection that I'm talking about. Matthew records in verse 13, Jesus arrived from Galilee at the Jordan, coming to John to be baptized by him. But John tried to prevent him, saying, I have need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me? But Jesus answered and said to him, permitted at this time, for in this way it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness. And so he permitted him. And after being baptized, Jesus went up immediately from the water and behold, the heavens were opened and he saw the spirit of God descending as a dove and coming upon him. And behold, a voice out of the heavens saying, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. And the tempter came and said to him, If you are the Son of God, and his assumption is you are, if and it is so that you are the Son of God, then command these stones to become bread. But Jesus answered and said, it is written, man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. And then the devil took him into the holy city and he had him stand on the pinnacle of the temple. And he said to him, if you are the son of God, throw yourself down for it is written, he will give his angels charge concerning you. And on their hands, they will bear you up lest you strike your foot against a stone. And Jesus said to him, again it is written, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test. You shall not put the Lord your God to the test. So again, this was the father testing of the son in the power of the Spirit, and specifically at the level of his sonship. God had proclaimed him to be his beloved, well-pleasing son, even as Jesus is showing solidarity with Israel. God is saying, if Israel is my son, my only begotten, who has proven unfaithful from the beginning, and yet I have promised to raise up one from within Israel, in whom Israel will become what I chose it to be, this is my beloved, well-pleasing son. That's the larger context for what's happening at the baptism. So Jesus is showing solidarity with Israel and God is affirming that solidarity by saying, this is the one who is well-pleasing. This is the one who is the beloved well-pleasing son. So this episode must not be understood, as I put here, as is often the case, probably more often than not, it can't be viewed as the devil devising a scheme to tempt Jesus to submit to his own evil agenda. We see this in terms of the caricature of the devilish imp talking in the ear saying, hey, go do some bad thing, go rob, go whatever, go steal something from that store. That kind of talking in the ear, this isn't that sort of a thing. This is from beginning to end the father's doing. Empowered, led out, directed by the spirit, in order to vindicate his own declared assessment of the Son. God has said, this is who this one is. Now this is being proven out. So God intended this testing ordeal that Satan only served to prove out Jesus' Sonship as true Israel and true man. It would cause Jesus himself to recognize and to have the conviction of, as well as demonstrate to the satanic adversary that this one is God's image, son, and truth. He is what Israel was to be. Son, servant, disciple, and witness. Image, son of the living God. The true human being. And so Jesus comes away from this testing fully confirmed in his own messianic self-understanding. He's shown this solidarity with Israel now through testing his father's convictions concerning him have been vindicated and he himself has the full conviction of that self-understanding. And you see him now from this point forward adopting this title as his common way of referring to himself, son of man. He is the son of man. He is man indeed, man in truth, son of Adam, but in order that man would become truly man. So we considered the last time the first of the tests, and we saw that that addressed this issue of Jesus' sonship in terms of his dependent, patient trust in his father. Will he trust his father to provide for him, or will he take matters into his own hands? and most specifically this taking matters into his own hands is the confusing or the wrongly juxtaposing of these categories of son of God as divine son and son of God as human son. Remember the adversary says if you are the son of God then turn these stones into bread. Well that's speaking to him as the divine son. In other words, Satan couldn't say to any one of us, if you are a son of God, change these stones into bread. We'd say, I don't have the power to do that. That's a power that resides with God himself. So Satan is approaching him at the point of his divine sonship, but he's being tested at the point of his human sonship, specifically as son of Israel, right? Son of Abraham. So God had identified Jesus as his beloved, well-pleasing Son in the context of his solidarity with Israel and his anointing with the Spirit, which is a Messianic thing, the Mashiach idea. But remember, the Spirit was also the anointing power in the midst of Israel. For all of the various things that God required of Israel, the Spirit was the one in the midst of them, who empowered them, who led them, who enabled them to do what God called them to do. So Jesus is being tested as God's messianic servant son, Israel. But The satanic adversary is challenging him to exercise his divine prerogative as son of God, in that way seeking to cause him to deviate from the truth of his human sonship, therefore failing in his mission to be Israel in truth. That's what's happening in that first test. Well, the second test is drawing out the same sort of idea but from a different vantage point. This is the second test from Matthew's gospel. Luke records this particular test as the third and final test. So we're going to treat it the way Matthew does, as the second test. But it involved Satan taking Jesus to Jerusalem, referred to here as the Holy City, and having him stand on the pinnacle of the temple. And just by way of passing, because this is often where commentators and even readers go is, well, I thought Jesus was out in the wilderness. You know, how does he end up in the city of Jerusalem? Did Satan take him by the hand and walk him through the countryside and through the city of Jerusalem and take him up into the temple? How did this work? Because he's back out in the wilderness right after this, right? How does he end up in the city? And many scholars believe that this was a visionary sort of thing. Like what you see with Elijah where he's in Babylon and yet he has in the spirit he's taken into Jerusalem and sees what's going on behind the scenes in the temple. All the unrighteousness and the idolatry and the uncleanness of the worship of the priesthood that's taking place in Jerusalem. He sees it in the spirit. And I think that's probably likely the case here, but neither Matthew or Luke give us any insight into, okay, how did he get from the wilderness on the other side of the Jordan up into Jerusalem? Because they don't care about that. What matters is the test and how Jesus addressed the test. This is a satanic ordeal that's taking place, and the specifics of the mechanics are not important to the gospel writers. So I don't want us to get bogged down in those issues either. But having positioned him on the top of the temple, the Satan, and the reason I keep referring to him that way is Satan is not a proper name. It's not his name like Bill, Bob, George. The Satan means the accuser or the adversary. It's a title, just like the devil means the slanderer. This is not his name. He is the Satan. He's the accuser. He's the adversary. But he challenges Jesus to throw himself down, citing again, as we saw from Psalm 91, one of its core promises. He will give his angels charge concerning you. They will bear you up in their hands, lest you strike your foot against a stone. And once again, his premise is the same. If you are the son of God, son of God in what sense? In the sense that God just pronounced on you at your baptism. This is my son, my beloved, well-pleasing son. If you are that, than throw yourself down because here's what God has promised concerning his faithful sons. Two things I want to point out about this and we'll talk about this more probably in the discussion but at the very end. The first thing is something that I mentioned before which is that this idea that the scripture is like garlic to a vampire for Satan. He can't stand the scripture. All you have to do is quote scripture and he'll go running away. That's how you, you know, fight this spiritual warfare battle, just cite scripture at the devil. Well, clearly here, the Satan knows the scripture and is able to quote the scripture and is able to even bring the scripture to bear in a way that speaks to the situation at hand. Now in a way that is ultimately undermining, in a way that is ultimately deceptive, but nonetheless he is able to interact with the scriptures in context, accurately quoting them in his dealings with men. So the point then more generically is that the scriptures can be readily used to deceive and mislead even when they are accurately quoted in context. And the reason is what I've harped on through the years is that the issue with the scriptures is meaning, not words or citations of statements per se. But what do they mean? What do they mean? Inspiration itself is not a matter of words and grammar and syntax as such, word order and all of that. It's a matter of meaning. Words, grammar, sentences, all of that is how meaning is fleshed out. But the ultimate issue is meaning. So that God's inspired word becomes false when it is misunderstood or misapplied. So when people say, this is God's holy word, this is the truth. Well, if you're not using it properly, it's not the truth. The words may be true as they sit on the page, but the issue is ultimately meaning. And you see this throughout Israel's history, whether with their false prophets or even with others, that God's own promises, God's own words were used in a way that actually led people away from the truth. And flowing out of that then secondly is the danger of the common Christian practice of claiming promises from the scripture. See essentially thus Satan is challenging Jesus to claim promises in the scripture. And this is very common in our day and age. People will spend time mining through the scriptures, looking for all of the promises of God, sometimes even writing them out so they can claim God's promises on their own behalf as determining the circumstances of their life. The idea is, well, God is true. This is his holy word. This is the inspired, authoritative word of God. He said it. I believe it. That settles it. Therefore, if I don't claim these promises, then I'm not upholding the truthfulness of God. I'm, in a sense, denying his integrity, his truthfulness. But there are two key things with this that are missed that make this thing of claiming the promises of God a very dangerous and even an erroneous thing. First of all, the Bible isn't a collection of timeless divine promises and truisms that have universal pertinence. A common example that I've used many times is the National Day of Prayer has as its kind of theme statement, if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray, then I will hear from heaven and I will heal their land. Well, that's not a promise to America. That's not what that's about. So I can say those words and say, there's the promises of God. We need to claim that promise. If we as a country will just get our acts straight, then God will heal our land. Well, those are God's words through Solomon at the dedication of the temple. They have an entirely different significance. So the Bible isn't just a collection of truisms, statements of what God promises to do that apply to anybody that can appropriate them in any generation, in any circumstance. And that's what we tend to want to do. We want the Bible to be a handbook of promises or formulas or whatever that we can just appropriate and make our lives be the way we want them to be. But beyond that, a person's perception of what God has promised isn't necessarily what he actually promised. Paul brings this up even with respect to the nation of Israel in Romans. If God is a faithful God who keeps covenant and nothing can separate the people of God from his love, right? That great doxology in Romans 8, if God is for us, who can be against us? He says, well, then what about Israel? Haven't his promises failed to Israel? No, it's not as if the promises of God have failed. You've just misunderstood how this works. From one vantage point it can seem that way, but if we don't understand what God has actually promised and how he actually even fulfills what he's promised, then we can bind him to something that he never really even was promising. So both of those things show how foolish it is, and ultimately even sinful, to carelessly claim scriptural promises. Almost inevitably, we end up attempting to bind God to our own notions and expectations. And we do that all in the name of believing God and trusting Him, because He's true and His word can't fail. So if God says that I believe it, that settles it. So those are kind of two fundamental things, and they're actually even important in what's being done here in this temptation. But as with the first instance, and with all three of these actually, as they kind of summarize Jesus' time of testing, the devil is tempting him with respect to his sonship, once again pointing him back to God's pronouncement at his baptism, Son of God as connoting both divine and human sonship. As I said in the first test, Satan draws on Jesus' divine sonship in a way that will cause him to undermine his human sonship, draw upon his divine prerogative to provide for himself, and therefore show himself unfaithful with respect to his obligation of dependent trust, waiting, patient trust. In this second instance, the devil is again targeting Jesus' human sonship, but from a different vantage point. Here, he's enticing Jesus to violate his human sonship by fully embracing it. In the first instance, he was trying to get him to violate or undermine his sonship in solidarity with Israel, his human sonship, by enticing him to draw on his divine prerogative. Here he's saying, okay, if you're the son of God, if you really are going to hold tightly to that, here's what God says about his faithful sons. Psalm 91 is an Israelite psalm, right? This is about the faithful Israelite in relation to God. Okay, well, if you really want to show yourself to be faithful to God, here's what it looks like. Here's what God has promised to the faithful children. So he's being enticed to violate his sonship by fully embracing it in accordance with his father's own word of promise. We read Psalm 91 and you see it is this jubilant summary of the triumph, protection, blessing that marked the relationship between Yahweh and his faithful children. The riches that are the portion of the faithful man. And it was penned to be a point of encouragement and exhortation to the people of Israel to become those sorts of sons and daughters. It was a psalm penned to Israel to encourage them to be that sort of children. As I said earlier, it's essentially an ode to man as truly man. What it looks like when man lives with God in a relationship of perfect intimacy, loving devotion, complete trust. And that's the reason that the adversary shrewdly drew on it in his temptation. And notably, he orchestrates that temptation from the temple. That kind of passes by us and we just say, okay, well, that was a high place. If Jesus is going to throw himself down and he's going to be miraculously delivered, he's got to be more than six feet off the ground or what's the point, right? Okay, what's the highest point? Okay, the temple. That's a high point. So he's just finding a high place to put him on. But that's not really the point. And a Jew would have understood this. The temple epitomized Yahweh's presence and care and promises and covenant faithfulness. Yahweh's veracity. The temple was the place where you encountered God, where God was with you and ministered to you and you were in this posture of intimacy and encounter with Him. And this is the place at which He's being challenged to demonstrate fully that you are the Son of God, you are the true Israel, lay hold of the promises of God. So here's in a sense what He was saying. He's saying to Jesus, God himself has openly affirmed that you are his faithful and beloved son. You are preeminently the sort of man that the psalmist extolled. You are the true Israelite. That's what this is all about. And thus you will demonstrate your faithfulness to your sonship by fully owning the relationship of care and provision that the psalm celebrates. Indeed, anything less than that indicates distrust of your God and your Father. Do you really trust Him? Are you really a faithful son? If you would honor your sonship and your Father and the integrity of His pledge to you, then you must embrace and act upon His promise of care and protection. That's how you show that you trust Him. So this is presented as an exhortation to faithfulness and trust. But Jesus knew what was going on. And if you notice, he didn't deny that the psalm pertained to him. And he also didn't accuse the Satan of twisting its meaning. He didn't say, get away from me, Satan, you are misquoting the scripture. Get away from me, Satan, you're guilty of eisegesis. Get away from me, this doesn't pertain to me. He doesn't say any of that. But he did recognize that it was being misused, and we'll see how that was the case. So his rebuke then is, yes, this is written, but again it's been written, you shall not put Yahweh, your God, to the test. This is Deuteronomy 6, we read that chapter. So the spirit had led Jesus into the wilderness to undergo an ordeal of testing. This is what Matthew says. This is a time of testing. Testing to prove out his father's affirmation of him and his sonship. And now Jesus is rebuking the devil as attempting to provoke him to test God. In both instances, the same Greek verb, test, is being used, but in this verse here and also in the counterpart in Luke, there is a preposition added to this verb which focuses it and intensifies it. In other words, it focuses it and intensifies it by pointing to a test whose specific purpose is to prove out the truth or falseness of a claim or status. that's why it's rendered put to the test. Like when you would take some, you know, iron ore and you put it in the smelter and you burn off the dross to prove the ore, right? To determine the quantity and the purity of what you actually have in the ore. This is a proving out process. And this is used of the children of Israel. When we read in chapter 6, and I give you some citations here, also in chapter 8, God says, He let you be hungry to test you. He let you be thirsty to test you. He brought you through these things to test you. In other words, to prove out the truth of whether you would really hold fast to him, whether you would hold to the covenant. He wasn't trying to make you slip up, he was trying to prove who you really were and whether you would really keep his covenant. So here it's Yahweh who is to be tested, as Jesus cites from Deuteronomy 6. And that testing of Yahweh is itself going to test Jesus' solidarity with Israel. What do I mean by that? Simply this, and that was part again for reading the passages that we read. Jesus is being challenged to put God to the test. Israel's whole history was putting God to the test. See, this is a very shrewd thing. You have been identified by baptism, by the Spirit, as the faithful, well-pleasing, beloved son, the true Israel. Is he going to show solidarity with Israel by joining them in their testing of God? Or is he going to resist that test and show himself to be a different kind of Israel? That's why I say that testing of God, this seduction or temptation to test God is itself testing Jesus' solidarity with Israel. What is the true nature of his solidarity? Has he taken up Israel's own life and lot in order to heal Israel or to fall into that same pattern that marked Israel throughout its relationship with God as son, servant, disciple, and witness? Well, as I noted, he answered from the same context, Deuteronomy 6-8. in which Moses was exhorting the Israelites to be mindful of their God, their own calling, their own election, the way he dealt with them, as now they're preparing to enter the land. And he warns them about becoming complacent, self-satisfied. Once they're enjoying the abundance, the rest in the land, that ease is going to encourage forgetfulness and neglect, and they're going to find themselves very easily straying from the Lord and embracing the culture and the gods, the idolatrous practices of the people. So Moses warns them, this is the citation that Jesus draws from, Moses warns them, Yahweh's children, Yahweh's covenant sons, Moses warns them about putting him to the test when they get into the land, just as they had done for 40 years in the wilderness. And he points to that Massah, Meribah episode in Exodus 17 as kind of exemplifying this whole pattern of unbelief and fear and doubt and unfaithfulness. Masa and Meribah get pointed to repeatedly as exemplifying Israel's unfaithfulness as covenant son, putting Yahweh to the test. So here's the point then. The sons of Israel didn't test God by tempting him to do something evil. They charged him with evil intentions and actions when they suffered. Oh, you brought us out here to die. Oh, you've abandoned us. Oh, you don't care about us. They charged him with evil intentions, but they would never tempted him to do something that they regarded as evil. The way that Israel tested Yahweh was by questioning and even denying his integrity and his faithfulness. and requiring, this is important, requiring that he prove his veracity, prove his faithfulness to their satisfaction by meeting their own judgment, their own expectations, their own concerns. The way that he would show himself faithful and true was when he complied with their criteria of what it looks like to be faithful and true. And when he didn't meet their expectations, when he didn't meet their judgment, when he didn't meet what they thought it should look like, then they concluded he's unfaithful. He's brought us out here to die. Where's the water? Where's the food? It's not here right now. He brought us out here to die. So this was the issue in the second temptation. This is the point at which the Satan is coming against Jesus as a new Israel, which is what the wilderness was all about. He's re-undergoing in himself Israel's 40-year testing. And at the heart of Israel's 40-year testing was this constant putting Yahweh to the test. and finding him to fail. They were trying to prove out Yahweh. Is he true? Will he keep his word? Is he faithful? Is he a God of veracity? But measured against their own judgment, their own standards, their own criteria, and they found him wanting. So fundamentally what the adversary was attempting to do was to get Jesus, as was the case with Israel, to confuse presumption and faith. In that way he was challenging Jesus as true man and simply not as true Israel. But recall again, Israel was to be the beginning of the new renewed humanity, right? Israel was to be the beginning of a new human race, the son through whom the nations would become sons of God. Why do I say this is at the fundamental level of humanness? Because mistaking presumption for faith is inherent in all human religious practice, all interaction between people and the divine. The way people naturally interact with forces, powers, gods, deities, the divine, is through this thing called presumption that they believe to be faith. Because it's fundamental to our broken relationship with God. Presumption is how people naturally conceive and express faith, but the two things are antithetical. Presumption is a hallmark of the natural mind. Faith distinguishes a renewed mind. Presumption defines natural human interaction with God. Faith and faithfulness define the relationship of true image sons with the Father. Presumption reflects a life governed by sight, which is antithetical to faith. You've heard me say many times through the years, human beings can live according to one of two principles, faith or sight. And sight doesn't just mean what your eyeballs see. Sight means what you think is true, what you think is proper, what your judgment says, what your assessment says, what your experiences tell you, what you know about life. Sight is simply living out of your own mind. Faith is living out of God's mind. And how do we live out of God's mind? Well, we're transformed by the renewing of our mind. We have the mind of Christ. Ultimately, when we think our thoughts, when we live in our own mind, we're in perfect sync with the Father's mind because our mind becomes one with His. So presumption defines Adamic man because man is effectively his own God. If we say, if we boil down all this stuff of sin and uncleanness and unrighteousness, what does it all boil down to? At the very base level, it's idolatry. It's man thinking and judging and acting out from himself independently of God. And it doesn't mean that he's irreligious. It doesn't mean that he doesn't believe in the true and living God in some sense. But even his knowledge of God and his interaction with God and his relationship with God is devised and orchestrated and lived out through the lens of his own notions, his own speculation, his own perspective, his own judgment. So man as his own God cannot help but assess and appropriate God's words through the lens of his own personal judgments, sensibilities, concerns, and expectations. Presumption puts God to the test because it demands that God submit his veracity, his integrity, his truthfulness, and his faithfulness, his commitment to what he has promised. Presumption demands that God submit his veracity and his faithfulness to human judgment and determination, specifically my judgment and my determination. Presumption takes truth away from the one who is truth and makes it the servant of the sovereign self. So how do we, okay, presumption, what's the difference between presumption and faith? And we'll talk about this more, but what is a simple test? How do we know when what we think is faith is actually presumption? This is what Jesus is being tested at the point of. Show your faith in God's promises by doing this, because he's promised to rescue you. He's being seduced to confuse presumption and faith. Well, how can we tell? Presumption seeks and insists upon what it believes God has promised. Faith entrusts itself to the one who has promised. And something else that you've heard me say through the years We do not believe the promises of God. We believe the God who has promised. And what's the difference? Because when we say, I believe the promises of God, All I'm doing is saying, I believe the promises as I understand them, as I interpret them, as I think they're going to take place. Israel believed the promises of God concerning the Messiah, the messianic work, the messianic person, the messianic kingdom. And when that came in their midst, they couldn't see it. Paul was absolutely committed to the God of Israel who had promised, and he was waiting for the messianic coming, the messianic kingdom, God's triumph, God's return, cleansing, renewal, the restoration of the Davidic kingdom. Paul was absolutely convinced and committed to those promises, and yet when they arrived in Jesus of Nazareth, all he could see was an imposter. That's what happens when we believe the promises of God. All we can do is attach ourselves to what we think He's promised, to the way we think it's supposed to work out. If we bind ourselves to the God who has promised, then we'll never be disappointed and we'll never miss it. Because now we're not looking for certain outcomes. We're simply saying God is faithful. the satanic deception here was to try to provoke Jesus to test whether God is faithful by putting some, prove him out, prove that God is faithful. I'll put this test in front of him because here's what he said and so therefore this is what he must do if he's to be faithful. And we say, well, I would never fall for something like that. Well, our whole lives are lived fighting against that very thing. I mean, how many Christians, how many people who profess Christ walk away from the faith because something bad happened in their life and God can't be good, God can't be true, God can't be faithful, God can't be loving if this bad thing happened to me. Right? And probably he doesn't even exist. Because if God is love, then he is fill in the blank. If God is good, then he is fill in the blank. And everybody fills in his own blank. And it's a constantly moving target. Today the faithfulness of God looks like this in my life. Tomorrow it looks like that, because here's what I need today. Oh, now this happened. Oh, here's what I need tomorrow. So God, if you're faithful, I'm gonna put you to the test and see whether you're faithful or not. If you don't rubber stamp my agenda or if you don't jump through the hoops that I put in front of you, then I know you're not true. And that's the very thing that undermines our sonship. It's not us owning our sonship. See, Jesus is being tempted, own your sonship. This is what your father has promised you. But if he were to embrace that, he would actually be letting go it. So God actually does test us at this point. He proves out our sonship over and over and over again. It's called life in this world, right? Filled with disappointments, filled with hardship, filled with unexpected things, filled with uncertainties, filled with ups and downs, what the Puritans called the vicissitudes of life. God constantly tests us at this point. How we believe him for his promises is a sure proof of the state and the strength of our sonship. How we believe him for what he's promised. And see, there's a very real sense in which we should say, I have no expectations of my life, day to day, except that God is true. That's the only thing that I know is that God is true. And I don't know what that's going to look like today or tomorrow or in this circumstance, but see what we want God to do is to lay the pebble trail in front of us and give us the silk pillow and line everything out for us. And if he'll do that, then we know that he's good. Then we know that he exists. Then we know that he's faithful. Then we know that he loves us. And so we want to write him into our narrative, but he'll never be written into our narrative. and therefore we will always conclude he's unfaithful, he doesn't care, he's not listening. But if we hold on to him and we know, as Paul said, I know whom I've believed, and I'm persuaded that he's able to keep what I've entrusted to him, and therefore I don't worry about this thing of expectations. I don't have an agenda. I don't have any expectations for today or tomorrow, what it will look like. Or, you know, it's the James thing. Go here, do this, buy, sell, everything's going to fall into place. And we think we don't struggle with this. We do. And God puts his finger on things in our life. And we're like, God, I thought you loved me. God, I thought you cared. How could I be sick? How could I lose this? How could this happen? How could that happen? And so God is constantly proving out our sonship. He's not beating us down. He is teaching us what it is to be sons through the things we suffer. Jesus had to learn this as well. He was a man just like we are human beings. He had to learn what it means to trust his father. Not trust him for certain outcomes, trust his father. And in the end, the father will prove faithful. So how we believe God, how we appropriate his promises, it's not an issue of can we lay hold of God's promises? Yes, but how we do that, how we think about that, is all the difference in this thing of the strength and even the reality of our sonship. It's a very important thing. And this wasn't just about Jesus proving out his Israelite status, because ultimately, as I said, Israel was to be true son of God, and that's what we are in him. So this is very practical to us. Well, let me close in prayer, and then we'll finish with our final song. Father, I pray that you will minister to each one of us, because if we're honest, we all have to confess that we struggle in this area. It's very easy to say that we trust you when things are going well, but when things are hard, when things are agonizing, when things are shocking, when circumstances arise that blindside us and that we don't have any capacity to really understand, and we certainly have no capacity to remedy, that's when we really know whether we are people of faith or not. We want to think that faith means that if we believe hard enough, And if we exert ourselves hard enough, and if we'll be holy enough, that then we can get you to do what it is that we want you to do. If we'll only believe, then things will come together the way we want them to. And Father, I pray that you would forgive each one of us for falling into that trap. I pray that you would help us to truly grow up in all things into Christ who is the head. To be sons and daughters indeed. Those who walk by faith and not by sight. Those who don't meet you in our prayers with expectations, with perspectives and concerns of outcomes. Those who don't meet you with statistics and probabilities and seek from you a nice orderly path through life. I pray that we will be sons and daughters who trust you. And who can say even with Job, though he slay me, yet will I trust him. Bless us in these things. And Father, may we be servants of this way of being sons and daughters to one another. When we spur one another on towards love and good deeds, it is these works of new creation. Life as new sons and daughters, sharers in the life of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what it is to spur one another on. That's what it is to love one another. That's what it is to make right what is our assembling together. And I pray that you would help each one of us. Give us that burden. for our own selves and even for one another in our prayers, in our interaction, in our laboring together. May we prove faithful with what you've entrusted to us. What Jesus has accomplished, we are sharers in. Help us to be faithful. We ask these things in his name and for his sake. Amen.