Luke 3:21-4:13 with Aaron Searles

Transcript

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So I want to start off just talking about something maybe that we've all experienced, or to some degree have at least heard about in our lives, and that is the job interview hiring process. Um I uh you know would ask, you know, what's the hardest interview question that you've ever been asked? Trying to get that position, trying to get that role, and you know, maybe it was a surprise, maybe you weren't ready, maybe it was from left field as far as that question. When I was graduating college, I was ready for the uh employment world, starting my career using my history degree to get a college admissions job that I wanted. I would take anything, I just needed a job. Um, and so I had an interview for that, and uh unfortunately the circumstances were I was sick as a dog in this interview process, and I didn't realize that you could maybe reschedule or maybe kind of communicate, I'm not really feeling well. I didn't think that that would be received really well when you're trying to get a job, like I'm sick, I can't really take on this interview. I didn't think that would be received well. So I went went through with the interview, and my nose was a waterfall. And so you can imagine being in an interview, and your nose is just running like crazy, and the visual of that and the assumptions that they might make because of that, not knowing what I was going through. So I was ready though, I had my suit on and I was dressed up, and I would say looking back, fortunately, I did not get that job. Not sure if I would even be here today had I got that job. I would have stayed in Pelos Heights, Illinois. I wouldn't have moved back home and met mentors and done church internships, and again, trusting God's plan for all of that. But, you know, but again, looking at that process of hiring and finding the right person for the right role, and you know, what are the things that it takes to kind of go into that process? We need a resume, and we gotta tweak our resume and have our maybe objective and our uh education, our training, our uh experience that we've had. And so if you're gonna be a software engineer, you need to put on your resume that you know how to write code. And I don't know, I could throw out some C or um that's that's what I know. Anything else I would I I don't even know that, I'm just saying the word of it. But if you're gonna be a software engineer, if you're gonna be a teacher, you need a teacher certificate. You've got to get a certain degree, you've got to prove that you actually care about education, you've got to have whatever the requirements are to get it be a teacher. If you're in the trades, uh you've got to have the experience, you've got to have the training, you've got to the journeyman. I'm not sure, again, kind of like with the language code, I'm not a tradesman, but you know, whatever it is, you you've got to get that experience, you've got to get that education to get that role. And as we all know, the more experience that you have, the better you are qualified for a job. And, you know, there's a recognition, you know, of the efficiency and the wisdom that you bring into a job if you have experience. You you've tackled challenges and problems, you know how to problem solve, you're not overwhelmed, you know kind of the process by heart if you have experience. So today, why am I talking about this? Okay, today we're talking about the job requirements or the role requirements to be the Messiah. So the passages of Scripture that we're looking at will all give us insight and understanding in the role requirements to be the Messiah. And we'll look at the life of Jesus and we'll look at these different passages of Scripture three to be focused on. And, you know, our sermon series is called Christ Our Certainty. Christ Our Certainty. Well, today we're gonna grow and have more certainty in Christ based on looking at the criteria, the job requirements to be the Messiah, and how Jesus, spoiler alert, fulfills and has all those requirements. So we're gonna be looking at, to begin with, Luke chapter 3, verses 21 and 22. So it says this. Now, when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heavens were opened. And the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form, like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, you are my beloved son, with you I am well pleased. So just two verses to describe this monumental moment from Luke's perspective. There is a lot packed in there. So again, this is a shorter version compared to Matthew and John's gospel. Again, the benefit, the blessing, the amazing thing about having four, in a sense, biographies of the life of Jesus' ministries, we get different angles, again, different perspective, different highlights, different kinds of testimonies of the same event. And just thinking about this, I remember reading this in the past or in a commentary, talking about this story, and asking the question well, did Jesus need to hear the voice of the Father in this moment? And I would present to you, no, he did not need to hear the voice of the Father. He's in commune with the Father all the time. Who needed to hear the voice? The witnesses, the hearers in this moment, those that were experiencing this moment of Jesus being baptized. And this moment really is the baptism of Jesus is, you know, what I would present to you as a Trinity moment. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. If we're to understand the nature of God, we understand Him is Trinity. The word Trinity is never in the Bible. It's a word we use to describe the nature of God, Trinity. You know, and we know that God is timeless, as we talked about. But we see all the persons of God in this moment. And I think it's helpful to ask the question: why did Jesus get baptized? Sam talked about how when people got baptized, it was a moment of conversion. We understand that too today, that we recognize someone when they get baptized. It's a public proclamation of their faith. You know, it's something on the public that's gone out publicly, that's happened internally in their spirit, a faith that they now have that they want to communicate in public. But why did Jesus get baptized? He wasn't converting to Christianity. He wasn't converting to himself. He is the Christ. Why did he do that? So there is symbolic foreshadow in this. Romans 6 talks about we have been buried with Christ and raised with him. In other words, when we get baptized, we're proclaiming the gospel. Fortunately, we're not using dirt to symbolically get buried. We're using the water to symbolically go into the ground to be buried with Christ and raised again. So Jesus was telling us what's going to happen. And we all participate that. We all remember what Jesus did on Good Friday and on Easter Sunday when we get baptized. So it's a gospel declaration. It's a foreshadow of what's going to happen. And again, this is what's so cool, and something that I'm growing in my understanding, like the layers and the dynamics and how God does all these things, all these different dynamics and layers when he does things at the same time. So at the same time, God is symbolically foreshadowing the gospel. He's also participating, again, in that, in that kind of, you know, what people would do when they were cleansed and from an old testament human perspective, but not for Jesus. We know that Jesus, again, spoiler alert, is sinless. So he doesn't need to repent of anything. He's also not converting to anything, but he's providing for us an example. And I would say Jesus' baptism is what I would present as one of my main points of if you have not been baptized as a believing person, he showed us that we need to, if we have faith in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, we need to be like Jesus in faith and get baptized. And we regularly do that in August, the first Sunday, or around the first Sunday in August, and we have a wonderful moment as a church. And the highlights of being an elder in this church is that baptism Sunday. But I would tell you too, I've said this before and I'll say it again. If you want to get baptized, that's my job. We're going to make that happen when you want to get baptized. So if you want to wait till August, but if you'd like to get baptized before that, we'll figure it out. But here is job requirement number one of how, you know, the requirements to be the Messiah, which is, by the way, the same word as Christ. Christ, same Messiah. Okay? Job requirement number one is to be the Messiah, you have to be God. So this reduces the hiring pool to one person. It's hard to find candidates that meet this requirement. Now there are some people who think they're God, but they are not God. Only one person is God. There are some people who think they can tell God who God is, but they are wrong. Only God is God. So this is requirement of the Messiah. It says in this passage, in these just a couple verses, that God was pleased with Jesus. Why was he pleased with Jesus? One of the commentaries uh talked about how he had a humble incarnation. In other words, he had up to this point, up to being 30 years old, humility. We we, I think uh Phil read it this morning. He was gentle and lowly up to this point. And this is speaking to how God is pleased with him. God is pleased with his conduct, with his behavior. How he lived as a human is an example to us, and God, our Father, is pleased with him. Again, why did Jesus get baptized? Again, we identify, he or he identifies with us. You know, whenever God acts, it's timeless. All those that were converting, and all those who put their faith in Christ into the future now identify with Jesus, and Jesus identifies with us. We we pledge our allegiance to Jesus in baptism. And so Jesus' baptism was a multi-sensory Trinitarian event. All actions of God are Trinity, but we see again the Trinity clearly in this moment. The Father is speaking about his Son. The Holy Spirit is descending like a dove. And Jesus, God in the flesh, is getting baptized. And it says the heavens were open. I believe in the uh the Mark Gospel it says that the heavens were torn open. I like that. Torn open. Can you just imagine that for a moment? Being there in that moment and picturing the sky being ripped open, torn open, the heavens opened, and the Holy Spirit descending. I thought about, you know, all the movies that are made and all the CGI that would be needed to make this look close to even what happened in this moment. I noticed that some recent depictions of the life of Christ chose to skip over this. It'd be hard to make this look good on screen. But that's what happened. And as I think about it, as I think about and wonder about what this would look like, the heavens being open, the sky being torn open, and the Holy Spirit descending like a dove, I think of this as a sign. Again, experiencing this as a human, as someone who maybe got baptized, or someone who's seeing this happen and seeing this happen to Jesus, I see this as a sign, a visual, again, a multi-sensory experience, giving certainty. Like undeniable certainty. Like if you saw this, be like, yep, that's God. Look at what just happened. Look at miraculous things are happening. This is God. And I was thinking later about Jesus and the Pharisees and what did they demand of Jesus? Yeah, they demanded a sign. And Jesus responded with them that they wouldn't get the sign that they wanted, but they would get the sign of Jonah, that in three days, sign, as he was buried in the tomb and came back to life. That's the sign that they would get. But also they missed it. The Pharisees missed it. Again, they missed this multi-sensory dimensional sign of certainty of the humanity and divinity of Jesus Christ. Again, Jesus, the Messiah. And had the Pharisees humbled themselves to the Elijah-like prophet, John, they would have seen this certainty-inducing sign. So it's interesting to think about. Like there was the sign, there was this moment. There was this moment of clarity. And it says the Holy Spirit descended like a dove. And at Youth Group we talked about this. And one of our students talked about and connected the dove to the dove of Noah, or the bird like in Noah. And there's just an interesting connection. God's peace, God's hope, God's future, God's presence. We also think about, or I think about Pentecost and thinking about how the Holy Spirit rested on those who believe in tongues of fire. And so interesting things going on, things that you know we can't even explain. We get to read about, and it's cool. It's also interesting how God the Father says, You, you know, to Jesus, you are my son. And I wondered about that and kind of looked into this a little bit about this language of son. And maybe if we've been in Christianity for a long time, we just kind of like, just kind of glaze over the fact that Jesus is called the Son of God. But it's interesting how in the Old Testament this is actually mentioned several times, pointing to God's Savior, God's plan. In Psalm 2, it talks about how, or prophesies, saying, You are my son, today I have begotten you. That should reverberate that prophecy. This is quoted by God the Father in this moment. We also see this language of son in Isaiah, you know, the Emmanuel, God with us, unto you a son will be, a child will be given. We see this in Proverbs, we see it in Hosea, we see it in Daniel, and we see it in 2 Samuel. Stay tuned because we will actually go, I'll read from 2 Samuel. But it's interesting to think about Jesus, up till he's 30 years old, lived this incredibly humble life. God in the flesh. Quiet, what maybe many would call ordinary life. And there are some exceptions. Obviously, his birth and the angels, you know, I would argue all of the angels singing and miraculous things happening around that. We know when he was a toddler, that the wise men visited and gave gifts, and there was interesting kind of drama that happened around that. So, but for the most part, a very quiet, humble life until he's 30 years old. And we know, and we talked about this when he was 12 years old. He declared when he was in the temple that this was his father's house. Made a declaration, but that's it. That's all we know of 30 years of God in the flesh on earth. And I would just highlight for all of us to know, you know, we talked about in our monthly verse his presence with us. Talked about how he's before us and he's with us, he'll never forsake us. But just to remind ourselves, you know, sometimes we can believe the lie or make the assumption that God is distant or far away or that God doesn't understand. But the life of Jesus gives us the opposite and the truth. Jesus knows us because he lived like us. He is He is human. For those of you in the trades, Jesus was a carpenter. He worked hard. He needed the Sabbath to rest physically. You know, people would say he's a carpenter. You know, we kind of think of what a carpenter is today, but my understanding of Jesus in the trades is like all of the trades in that first century time. Stone cutting and I don't even know. Just all of it. Hard, hard, calloused hand work, back breaking work. Jesus lived that way. We know that he was from this town Nazareth, and we've talked about, you know, a one-stop sign or a one-stop light kind of town, a no-name town that nobody knew about. That's how he grew up. Not a place of significance, but became a place of significance because of Jesus. They called him later the Nazarene. Actually, in the Middle East, they refer to Christians as the letter N or Nazarene. It's interesting. And for Jesus in this and no-name town, you know, there is no power place, there is no state representation or Israel representation. He didn't take any political office. He didn't lead anything that we know of or have any influence in the region. He just lived this humble, quiet, in a sense, unseen, again, what we would understand his ordinary life, up to 30 years old. Can we not all identify with God in the flesh living this way? And all of this happened until, until, in God's timing, the way was prepared by John the Baptist. And Sam talked about that. So that's the first part. Jesus is God. He meets the requirements. Now to the second part. I'm going to read the genealogy of Jesus from Luke chapter 3, verse 23 through 38. And you're all going to give me grace and mercy and understanding as I read these names. I have practiced this, but I can assure you I will not read every one of these names. But it's God's word, and I'm going to give it my best shot, okay? So I thank you for your grace, mercy, forgiveness. All right, verse 23. Jesus, when he began his ministry, was about thirty years of age, being the son, as was supposed of Joseph, the son of Heli, the son of Methat, the son of Levi, the son of Melchi, the son of Janae, the son of Joseph, the son of Matthias, the son of Amos, the son of Nahum, the son of Elsle Elsli, the son of Nagai, the son of Math, the son of Matthias, the son of Simeen, the son of Joseph, the son of Jodah, the son of Joannon, the son of Resa, the son of Zerubbabel, the son of Shaltil, the son of Neri, the son of Melchi, the son of Addi, the son of Kosim, the son of Elmadam, the son of Ur, the son of Joshua, the son of Eliezer, the son of Joram, the son of Methat, the son of Levi, the son of Simeon, the son of Judah, the son of Joseph, the son of Jonam, the son of Iliakim, the son of Meli, the son of Menna, the son of Meth Metatha, the son of Nathan, the son of David, the son of Jesse, the son of Obed, the son of Boaz, the son of Salah, the son of Nishon, the son of Emanindab, the son of Admon, the son of Arni, the son of Hezron, the son of Perez, the son of Judah, the son of Jacob, the son of Isaac, the son of Abraham, the son of Terah, the son of Nahor, the son of Zarug, the son of Reu, the son of Paleg, the son of Eber, the son of Shela, the son of Canaan, the son of Epheraxid, the son of Shem, the son of Noah, the son of Lamech, the son of Methuselah, the son of Enoch, the son of Jared, the son of Mehalil, the son of Canaan, the son of Enos, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God. Alright, so now let's go back to the human author, inspired by the Holy Spirit, to write this down, Luke. Why did Luke do this? Well, there are a lot of things that happen, and in a lot of ways, this was uh genealogies were a way for the ancient world to connect, to provide context, to find their place on the timeline. You know, we would maybe say in the year, whatever, and we wouldn't, you know, connect it necessarily to other things, but this is how they they understood their place in the world was by the genealogy. And it also does a lot of other things. All the names have and help connect this bloodline to Jesus. The obvious one being Adam, which makes the point that Jesus is human. Others, like Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, you know, in the bloodline of the ancestors. David, which I'll highlight again later. We know that the tradition, you know, and we can see Joseph a lot in here. We see these names that we can recognize in here, and um, you know, from his father's genealogy. I'll get into what I believe this genealogy is in a little bit, but we see, you know, Jesus was given his name Jesus, and it wasn't in this kind of uh genealogy. Actually, Joshua, but get into that later. But Jesus' name again means Yahweh saves. Or in other words, I am who I am saves, which connects him to Moses again and Joshua. And again, Jesus begins his ministry at 30 years of age. But the point I want to highlight to you now is the requirement for the Messiah. Okay, so God in the flesh, he must be God. Requirement met, number one. Now, number two, a promise, a covenant was made to David. So to be the Messiah, you must be in the Davidic bloodline. And as we know time and time again throughout Scripture, God keeps his promises. God foretells his prophecies and gives us this to give us certainty. And so I'm going to read to you 2 Samuel chapter 7, verse 12 through 16, when it says this. This is what God said to David. Who shall come from your body? And I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. When he commits iniquity, I will discipline him with the rod of men and with the stripes of the sons of men. But my steadfast love will not be part depart from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I put away from you before from before you. And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established forever. Three times we see the word forever in this promise from God to David about his bloodline. And we know Solomon builds the temple. We know that Solomon falls short. He he seems like a good king, but he makes mistakes. He obviously makes moral mistakes and doesn't isn't obedient to God. And this is kind of the picture of the bloodline of David. I mean, David himself commits adultery and murder and terrible things. And just a picture of the bloodline of humans falls short. We fall short of the glory of God. Even if we are this promised royal bloodline, they all fall short. But it also speaks to this prophecy, and we can see this, and this can be a reason, you know, to give certainty for us is seeing the promises and the prophecy of God fulfilled in Scripture. It can give us certainty in our faith that God is timeless, God is powerful. We can see that God is true. Again, give us certainty. We can see that God controls time and circumstance and humanity. So God can make a promise because he knows the future, because he's in the future. He's before us, as we're memorizing this month. So some other things to just point out to you about this genealogy. It's in reverse order. It's back to Adam, again, making that point, but it's also back to God, the Son of God. And what some scholars and some famous preachers believe, and I tend to agree, is that Luke gives us a genealogy of Mary. Okay, the son of Heli. But it also speaks to Luke gives us a genealogy of Jesus' adoption. And with that, how that makes sense is Joseph, I call him the earth dad of Jesus. So, in a sense, Joseph adopts Jesus, born of Mary, the virgin. And so, you know, I won't get into this today, but there's a lot of reasons and connections through these genealogies, and there's certain kind of other connections made or curses on some descendants of David that need to be kept, and that's why we have the blood line through Mary, and we have the legal line through Joseph being of David. So it's interesting. It's also interesting to notice that Jesus later in 1 Corinthians 15 and other places is called the last Adam, or what other people will call the second Adam. As we know from the story of Genesis, Adam was innocent until the fall. He was sinless. And the last Adam, or the second Adam, Jesus, doesn't sin. He stays innocent and sinless. It also talks about in scripture that I think is connected in the Bible that Jesus is the firstborn of the dead, which means he's the firstborn of the resurrection. So these connections to and why this genealogy, you know, these layers and understandings and dynamics that are going on. Again, so Jesus is God. He meets that requirement. He's also human. We can nerd out on that a little bit, talking about the theology about God in the flesh, fully God, fully man. And this is something that's been was debated a lot in the first 400 years of church history. And it's clear in Scripture, again, that God is man in the flesh, fully God, fully man. Okay, let's move on to our last passage. I'm going to read to you from Luke chapter 4, verses 1 through 13. And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness for forty days, being tempted by the devil, and he ate nothing during those days, and when they were ended, he was hungry. The devil said to him, If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread. And Jesus answered him, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone. And the devil took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, and said to him, To you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. If you then will worship me, it will all be yours. And Jesus answered him, It is written, You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve. And he took him to Jerusalem and 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 will command his angels concerning you to guard you, and on their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone. And Jesus answered him, It is said, You shall not put the Lord your God to the test. And when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time. So, just again to go back and look at this, forty days of fasting. Forty days of fasting. Imagine the hunger, the physical human hunger in this moment. And the devil tempts him in three ways. We see food. We would see what I would call power on earth, a temptation, power on earth. We see a third temptation, a spiritual power, commanding angels. Until an opportune time. But here's the third job requirement for the Messiah. Must be God, must be in the Davidic bloodline, the royal bloodline that establishes the throne of God forever. And third, you must be sinless. So let's pretend for a moment that you can be sinless. It's impossible, but let's pretend. Let's pretend that you sinlessly desire to die for everyone's sins. Here's the reality: you can't. Only God can take on the sins of the world. Only God can be the Lamb of God who atones for our sin. We place our sin, the consequences of our sin, upon God, who dies in our place. Again, we're understanding our Christology, what we believe about Christ, what we believe about Jesus. Only God, in the fulfillment of the Davidic bloodline and prophecy, and sinless can die for your sins. This is how God saves you. By putting our faith in his grace are we saved. Hebrews chapter 4, verse 15 says, For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Hebrews chapter 2, verse 17 and 18 says this, therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to though to help those who are being tempted. So this is the requirement. This is what it need we needed in a Messiah. And we can take comfort in this that God has been like us and God has conquered sin. He's overcome temptation, and that gives us hope when we face our sin and our temptation in our lives. One question I can't help but wonder is what did Jesus know? Fully God, fully man, what did he know? We know that he knew he was God because he called God the Father his Father when he was 12 years old. And so I just wonder that, not to not to tell you what he knew because there is mystery in that, but I think it's again to be in awe of God. Again, we know that he was fully human, so we know that he suffered in that temptation by Satan. But Jesus, in his example, in his perfect example, teaches us how to respond to temptation. Again, this temptation would have been connected again. He was in the wilderness. It's again this multi-layered time thing going on because he's in the wilderness and that's what the Israelites went through in the wilderness. They were tested in the wilderness. We also see this connection to Joshua bringing in the people into the promised land from the wilderness. We know we've talked about in the Joshua series that Jesus is the promised land. He is our hope, he is our supply, he's our future, he's our everything. So Jesus, in every temptation, this is how he equips us when we go through trials and testing and temptation. Well how does Jesus respond? He says, It is written. He quotes scripture back to Satan. One thing also to notice that Satan uses scripture to go after Jesus. What a picture of our world today of how people can twist scripture to make it try to accomplish what they want to. But in our common sense and in the help of God and God giving us the truth of his word, but this is what Jesus does. This is how he combats the temptation of Satan. And the three quotes he has are all from the book of Deuteronomy. So it's interesting, the cross-referencing. We've done this visual, we've seen the visual of God cross-referencing. Jesus is cross-referencing, he's pulling from the last book of the law, the book of Deuteronomy, to combat. And so I would challenge you and challenge myself, as it says in Psalm 119, as we continue to focus on the monthly verse, to store up God's word in your heart. Other translation is to hide God's word in your heart, to combat temptation. What's the verse that you've got on immediate recall in your brain to combat the sin struggle that you have? The temptation that you have. What verse do you pull out like a sword to combat that thought, that temptation, that sin in your life? That's a takeaway for you. To have those verses on the ready to unsheathe against temptation and sin in your life. That's how you combat sin and temptation in your life. So on the surface, it looks like temptations we all deal with, what Jesus is being tempted with. They are human temptations. But again, there's depth in these temptations that only God in the flesh is also being tempted with. Satan tempts Jesus' divinity in these moments as well. Jesus says, I mean, Satan says, if you are the Son of God, what a poke, what a prod, what a temptation. If you are the Son of God. This is God in the flesh, as we already know. And Satan's tempting him by questioning if he is the Son of God, kind of trying to lure him out. Again, on the surface, they're human temptations. Hunger, power, fame, acknowledgement. Those human temptations. But again, they're deeper temptations for Jesus. Again, questioning his divinity. But it's really questioning God's timing, God's trust, God the Father's trust. Again, if you are the Son of God, turn these stones into bread. You're really, really hungry, 40 days. You have the power, if you're the Son of God, to do what you want when you want. No, that's the temptation. Because Jesus is God. But he's in the timing of the plan, of the saving plan. You know, we know that later the uh the Pharisees tempt him and they think they're in control, and Jesus refers to, I could call on a legion of angels to come to my rescue. So we know that Jesus willingly went to the cross and suffered for us. You know, tempts him with human power and human worship. But we know that every knee and every tongue will worship God in the future. So it's a matter of a temptation of timing, of trust for Jesus. And again, thinking about the perspective of Jesus. Jesus again is God. And he's at the same time submitted to God the Father in his humanness and his mission. And so he, in his timing and in his patience, we know that Jesus is king. He's the king of kings and the lord of lords. So there's timing in the natural, in a sense, waiting for the right time. There's timing in the supernatural when all of heaven and all of earth will worship God. We also need to remember Jesus, 30 years old, is living a humble, quiet life, again, from an unknown town with no influence, and at the same time, he deserves every lyric, every note, every shout, all the glory of the world timelessly is what he deserves. And Satan is tempting him to grasp it in this moment. Because he does deserve it. And Jesus, in a sense, fasted from what he deserved in his nature as God. Yes, with food, but also in what he deserved in worship. Up to this point. So to end today, in conclusion, the job requirements for the Messiah is to be God. We know this that Jesus is in his baptism. We know it is to be in the Davidic bloodline, which he is, as we see in the genealogy. We also know the job requirements to be Messiah is to be sinless. Jesus conquers the temptation, the greatest temptation that any of us could even imagine. He lives the perfect life. He meets all the job requirements to be Messiah. He is the Messiah. So with this truth in mind, we need to trust in Jesus Christ. He is God. He is the fulfillment of prophecy. He is the sinless sacrifice for our atonement. That's what propitiation means. Our atonement. He takes our place and he saves us not in the temporary, but for the eternal. So we trust in Jesus Christ, our Savior, our Messiah. We trust in his timing as we go through valleys, as we go through hard things, we trust in him for his timing. Jesus is God. We trust in our identity in him. We are children of God and we wait for his timing. And when we are tested and when we go through trials, when we in our sinful nature sin, because we are not like Jesus in that we are needing him to rescue us from ourselves. We also need to take our thoughts captive. We need to recognize who's testing us, who's tempting us. Is it a person in your life? Is it a person in your history? Maybe your family origin? We need to recognize, Jesus recognized who was tempting him. And Jesus, God will never tempt you, he'll never lead you to sin. But there are people in your life that will. They'll try to pull you off track. They'll try to pull you away, maybe even unconsciously, from the narrow way that Christ has put you on. So who do you answer to? Who do you answer to? Just because someone challenges you or tests you doesn't mean it's valid. Again, Satan used scripture to try to tempt Jesus. We need to take our thoughts captive, recognize who we're answering to in the trials of this life. Again, if it's if we're not dialoguing, if we're not in commune with Jesus, if we're not listening to the Holy Spirit, we need to recognize that in our life and recognize our trust, our timing, and as we go through our things is only found, our strength is only found in Jesus. So I want to end today with reading Philippians chapter 2, verses 5 through 11, and then we'll pray. Meditate on this. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that the name of Jesus, every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Let's pray. God, we pray that you help us in the trials and challenges of this life, God. I pray that you would help us to absorb these truths into who we are, God, that we can, in a sense, rely on them and rest on them as we face again hard things. And God, when we are tempted, when we are when we commit sin, God, I pray that we would repent and be convicted of that and turn to you, God, in your grace and your mercy and in your forgiveness, God, to pursue and walk in righteousness, to glorify you, God, in all that we do. Pray that you would help us to do that, God. God, help us to trust in you. Help us to trust in your timing. Help us to trust no matter what we're going on, whatever's going on in our lives, God. And God, I pray that you give us again that certainty that we're focusing on in you, Jesus, in our relationship with you. And I pray that everyone in here knows and has that certainty, God, in your plan, in your purposes, and your sacrifice for us. God, we love you, and it's for your glory that we live and worship and and and are in this church, God. We pray you bless us as we go from here. In your name we pray. Amen.