FOLLOW | Resist

If you will remain standing for the reading of God's word. Also, if you're joining us online on the podcast, thank you for jumping in. Matthew four, verse one through 11. Then Jesus was led by the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting 40 days and nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, if you are the son of God, tell these stones to become bread. Jesus answered, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. If you are the son of God, he said, throw yourself down for it is written. He will command his angels concerning you and they will lift you up in their hands so that you will not strike your foot against the stone. Jesus answered him, it is written, do not put the Lord your God to the test. Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. All this I will give you, he said, if you will bow down and worship me. Jesus said to him, away from me, Satan, for it is written, worship the Lord your God and serve him only. Then the devil left him and angels came

and attended to him. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. Hello. What a joy to worship in this room together. My name's Reagan, if we have not met, I have the joy of serving on staff here at Church of the City as the youth pastor and I am excited to jump into God's word together. If you've been following along in the reading plan, hopefully you've already been hearing from the Spirit in the book of Matthew and today's reading actually was the teaching text, which is fun, so you maybe have already spent some time in this passage, but I'm excited to dive into what I believe God has for us tonight. I'm gonna start with a question. What do you believe is possible for your life? If you think about it, what do you believe would constitute a good life? For about 250 years, Americans have been chasing the American dream, giving our lives away to trying to build happy and comfortable lives, dreaming of landing the dream job that would secure us the brownstone in Cobble Hill, dreaming of finding the right person to marry and building a family with them and going on a few good vacations along the way. And these are not bad things, but I do think that for 250 years, Americans have been finding

that even when they reach all they've dreamt of, when they get to the end of their life, they find that all that a world without God has to offer still leaves them without true satisfaction and without lasting significance. What do you think the disciples saw as their vision for their life when Jesus found them? Catch some fish, collect some taxes, resist the Romans, try to please God. They were probably doing the best that they could, given the means that they had, but with very little hope for lasting significance. And then everything changed. Jesus, the son of the living God, the long-awaited Messiah, approached each and every one of these teenage guys and he said two words that changed everything. He said, follow me. Jesus invited these guys to be his disciples, to follow him, to walk closely with him, to do the things that he did, and he would later invite them to do even greater things than these. This was an invitation to intimacy, to identity, and to purpose. They were not simply being invited to worship him or to serve him. They were being invited to follow him. This was a call to intimacy again, and the man with the most eternally significant life in the history of the world,

you, a tax collector, a fisherman, you can be like him. A life that would at best be happy, but relatively insignificant, can now be something of eternal significance. And as we enter into this follow series, Jesus looks at each and every one of us and asks us the same question. He gives us the same offer. Follow me, become like me, do the things that I did. You can have a life of intimacy with the living God, of a secure identity as a child. of God and of purpose that is eternal and significant. We just have to accept this invitation to follow him. So what is possible for your life? Will you settle for all that the American dream has to offer, for being able to get the bag, the shoes, the vacation, but ultimately getting to the end and realizing that your life has little lasting significance or true satisfaction, or will you follow Jesus into a life of kingdom significance and intimacy with the living God? What will you decide is the greater prize. Each week of this series, we will walk through the book of Matthew, we'll look at the life of Jesus and we'll ask, how can we follow his way of life? This week we find ourselves in Matthew four and this is specifically the story of Jesus's temptation and we're gonna ask the question, how did Jesus resist the devil? If we long for a life of following Jesus,

of getting our lives to be lives of eternal kingdom fruit, what Jesus is gonna show us here is that we must learn to resist the devil. We see in this story that there is an enemy of God who is known as Satan or the devil and from the beginning of time, he has been opposing God and opposing his kingdom. And then Jesus has this one-on-one encounter with Satan, it's a private moment but because it's written about in the gospels, we know that he leaves this moment, he goes to his disciples and he tells them about it. Why? Because he knows, if you're gonna follow me, you're gonna need to know this, you are gonna need to know how to resist the devil. So now, so many years later as we read about this in the gospels, we too must see that if we're gonna follow Jesus, we must learn to resist. The problem is that we are not particularly good at resisting. We, I would say even more than the disciples in their time, live in a culture that tells us to have what we want when we want it. We live in a microwave, fast food, Amazon same day delivery kind of culture. We live in a culture ruled by the flesh where quickly satisfying our desires is just generally an option. So this muscle of resisting, of saying no to a lesser thing

for a better thing, of recognizing the thing that sounds good in the moment but in the long run will kill us, this muscle is weak. And in a world that tells us, you do you, follow your heart, treat yourself, this muscle can feel like it's not even necessary. But Jesus is gonna show us, if we wanna follow him, we must learn to resist. So then I wanna ask the question, what exactly are we resisting? Let's get specific here. We see people resist things all the time, right? We watched people climb to the top of the Empire State Building resisting something. We may not all be sure exactly what. So what specifically are we resisting as followers of Jesus? I think we get the answer to this question when we look at the story that happens right before Jesus's temptation, which is his baptism. The language in the text of the gospels implies that he was led out to be tempted immediately after he was baptized. And this is significant, because his baptism was a moment when his identity and his purpose was spoken over him. So this is specifically what is under attack by the enemy. Matthew 3, 16 to 17 says, as soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment, heaven was opened

and he saw the spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. And a voice from heaven said, this is my son whom I love, with him I am well pleased. This is an extremely significant moment in Jesus's life and ministry. It was the affirmation of his identity as the beloved son of God. It was also the affirmation of his purpose as the Messiah that would save the world. God himself spoke from heaven to declare that Jesus was the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. And then immediately, the devil comes after him. Why? Because he's threatened. He is threatened by the identity and purpose spoken over Jesus. As Jesus prepares to live out his messianic purpose on the earth, to live out the most significant years in kingdom history, the enemy whose core desire is to oppose God and to oppose his kingdom, he's threatened and he begins to come after Jesus. This is important for us to see. Because you, when you decide to follow Jesus, also have identity and purpose spoken over your life. The same words that get. spoken over Jesus at his baptism, gets spoken over us as followers of Jesus. John 1.12 says, yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name,

he gave the right to become children of God. And Acts 1.8 says, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you and you will be my witnesses. So Jesus, as he's baptized, God speaks from heaven over him, my son, whom I love, with whom I'm well-pleased. And when we follow Jesus, we get the same thing spoken over us. My son, my daughter, this role of intimacy with the father, it gets given to us. And then the power that comes on Jesus to live out his ministry, the Holy Spirit, this same power gets given to us to strengthen us, to give us the power for our purpose to further the kingdom of God on the earth. And Jesus, he saw this identity, he saw his purpose and his intimacy with the father, he saw this as the absolute greatest prize of his life. It was not applause, it was not power, it was not wealth. And we are invited to see this the same way. So I don't wanna rush past this. I want us to take a moment to really realize afresh that when we follow Jesus, we receive identity from the living God and purpose for our lives that is of eternal significance. And as we recognize that, we must also recognize that when Jesus had that spoken over him, the enemy began to attack.

So we should assume that when that's spoken over us, the enemy will attack and we will face temptation. So to answer my previous question, what are we resisting? We are resisting the enemy's plot to thwart God's kingdom through destroying our identity as children of God and our purpose to forward the kingdom of God. We are resisting the enemy's attack on our identity and our purpose, on our intimacy with God. So if you want to live a life as a child of God with eternal kingdom significance and with intimacy with God, you will face temptation and you must learn to resist. And this could feel a little bit sad, right? We're like, all right, this is nice. We're gonna follow Jesus. We're gonna receive identity and purpose, but it's gonna be hard. But here's what's beautiful about what we see in this story. I actually think there's a truth here that gives us a lot of hope when we realize we will be tempted. And it's in this first verse of today's teaching text. It says, then Jesus was led out by the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. When I first read this verse, I was a little bit confused. It seems like the Holy Spirit and the devil are working together on some sort of weird group project. Like why is the Holy Spirit intentionally leading Jesus out to be tempted? But as I've studied this verse,

I've actually found it encouraging. The Greek word here for the word tempted is the word peirazo. And this word is used in scripture in two distinct ways. It could either mean to tempt or to test. When it means to tempt, it means to entice to sin. And it's often used to describe the work of the devil. This word is also used to mean to test and is used to describe what God does when he tests us for our good. Satan actively desires to entice you to sin. He wants to do anything to thwart your intimacy with God and your purpose to live for his kingdom. He is our enemy who actively seeks to destroy our lives with God. But it says in James 1.13 that God cannot entice us to sin. He will not tempt us. A test, however, reveals the truth of what you know and who you are. It allows any pretense to fall to the side and for truth to be revealed. It's an act that's meant to refine us, to lead towards our growth. So we see here that while the devil intended to tempt Jesus in order to undermine his mission, the Holy Spirit was using this moment for Jesus' good through a test that simply revealed his trust in the Father. Why is this encouraging? I think it shows us that while we do have to sit here and acknowledge if we follow Jesus, we will be tempted,

we can trust that the Holy Spirit will actively use those moments of temptation for our strengthening, for our good. These moments of temptation, they can either be moments that water down your faith, which will be what happens if you do not rely on the Spirit and resist, or they can be moments of refining. that strengthen you and leave you with a greater love and purity for God. We see an example of God testing his people in the Israelites as they wander in the wilderness. Deuteronomy 8, two to nine says, remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness these 40 years to humble and test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands. He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. Know then in your heart that as a man disciplines his son, so the Lord your God disciplines you. So this moment of wandering in the wilderness, it was a moment of testing for the Israelites. And it was a test that in many ways they failed, right? We see that they actually start to desire to step out of their kingdom identity and purpose as free children of God and to go back to being slaves in Israel because they miss, I'm sorry, slaves in Egypt

because they miss the food there. But God used this moment to humble and discipline them for their good. He used it to reveal what was in their heart so that they could be strengthened and purified. And this would become so important for all of the history that God would play out in the future. So now we see that Jesus is 40 days in the wilderness that mirrors Israel's 40 years. But where Israel failed, Jesus will triumph. And you are invited into a life like Jesus, secure in your identity as a child of God with eternal kingdom purpose. And because of that, you will be tempted. But in that moment of temptation, the Spirit of God will empower you to resist and will transform that temptation into just a test that will refine you more and more into the person that God created you to be. So we can be encouraged in this truth. Now let's step into this passage. Let's look at how Jesus was tempted. Let's ask, how was he tempted so that we can be aware? And how did he resist? How can we follow him in his model of resisting? And with each of these three temptations in this text, there's a core through line that I want you to see. I believe in all three of these temptations, Jesus is given a choice. He gets to choose between either seeing his intimacy

with God, his identity, and his purpose as the full prize of his life, or to sacrifice it for lesser things. The first temptation begins. It says, after fasting for 40 days and 40 nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, if you are the son of God, tell these stones to become bread. Jesus answered, it is written, man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. This first temptation was a temptation to take immediate comfort over lasting kingdom fruit. Jesus has just finished 40 days of fasting and he's hungry, naturally. So the enemy steps in in this moment of physical weakness and offers him an escape of comfort rather than trusting God for lasting kingdom fruit. Let's think about fasting for a moment. Why did Jesus fast? He fasted to resist the urge of his flesh and instead to seek the kingdom of God. Fasting is this discipline that practices forgoing the temporary to choose the eternal. And it was out of his knowledge of his identity and his purpose that he even chose to go into the wilderness to fast for 40 days, to trust God in this way. But then Satan comes and he uses his identity against him. He says, if you are the son of God,

turn these stones into bread. Satan wants Jesus to misuse his identity, to not trust God for his sustenance and for eternal kingdom fruit, but instead to utilize his power to fix his problem of discomfort. Jesus' purpose was being tested here by saying you're the son of God. You can do whatever you want. Use your power to fulfill your own needs and to make sure you're comfortable. But Jesus' purpose on the earth was to be the suffering servant who would lay down his life for humanity, not to seek after earthly comfort. Instead, he was invited to wholeheartedly run after the kingdom and to trust God to meet his needs. What's beautiful as we look at the life of Jesus is he actually never uses his miraculous power to just meet his needs and make his life comfortable. He gives his whole life to seeking the kingdom, to intimacy with God and trust God for his needs, for his desires. to this temptation would be to sever the trust of his relationship with the Father and his purpose as the suffering servant. This was an attack on Jesus's identity and his purpose. But he responds, he sees through this, and he says, it is written, man shall not live on bread alone,

but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. He responds with scripture, a scripture that might be familiar, we just read it in Deuteronomy 8. He's quoting what was spoken over the Israelites to help them resist the temptation for comfort over kingdom and he resists in this moment with God's word because he trusted fully that he would rather give his life to the kingdom and to God than to seeking after comfort. He recognized where true life was found. And I think that this temptation is so important for us in America in 2026 because I think that Satan has gained a lot of ground in the area of comfort since Jesus's day. We idolize comfort. We see it almost as an American value. We pick our career path based off of what will allow us to put the most in retirement, to have the apartment in the elevator building, to just have extra money to do what we want with it. When we look at our finances, we first ask how can we meet all of these needs of comfort and then we might think about giving our money to kingdom things, but comfort comes first. We do the same with our time. We think, okay, how much time do I need to sustain the social life I want, to secure the job that will give me the lifestyle

to rest enough and then if there's a sliver left, I'll think about serving the poor or serving the church. We think through this grid of comfort first. And unfortunately, I think many of us have bought into the lie that God actually owes us this comfort. That if we're gonna live a life following God, that's gonna include being comfortable. Often, the blessings we most quickly praise God for are the comforts in our lives and maybe sometimes those are God's blessings, but what if at times, they are not from God and are actually just us living smack dab in the center of the enemy's idol of comfort, of us just being in the center of this temptation. I think many of us live in the deceit of this temptation without even realizing it because comfort's offered to us. It's easy. We can fool ourselves into believing that we can idolize comfort and follow Jesus, but you cannot serve two masters. It says in Matthew 6. You will either love one and hate the other or you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money. I don't think we can serve both God and comfort. It's deeply important that we understand that the enemy's main goal is not to ruin our fleshly happiness.

His goal is not just to mess up our lives because he hates us. Satan hates God and his goal is to ruin our lives with him. If he could get us to be comfortable but far from God, he's done his job. He's gotten what he wants. The trial Jesus was going through in this story, it wasn't actually the wilderness. Jesus chose to go in the wilderness. He chose to fast and we'll talk about this later, but that fasting has actually become a source of his strength to resist the devil. The temptation here, the real threat, was that Satan wanted to cause division between Jesus and the Father. The threat would be that Jesus or that we would choose comfort over a life of intimacy with God and live for his kingdom. The prize in life is God. It's intimacy with him. It's not ease. It's not comfort. Your purpose is to know God and to live for his kingdom and Satan wants to sidetrack you with the idol of comfort to get you to choose the temporary and forgo the eternal. And we see that Jesus sees through Satan's temptation and he resists. Through declaring the word of God, he states that true satisfaction is found in God and in his kingdom.

He chooses the greater prize. So the devil realizes he's failed and he moves on to another angle. It says, then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the highest point of the temple. If you are the son of God, he said, throw yourself down, for it is written he will command his angels concerning you and they will lift you up in their hands so that you will not strike your foot against a stone. Jesus answered him, it's also written, do not put the Lord your God to the test. This is a sort of interesting temptation. It's a little hard for me to wrap my head around. But I think what Satan's doing here is he's trying to instill in Jesus a spirit of cynicism rather than trust towards the Father. He wants him to test God, to see if he'll really do what he said he will do. Jesus rebuked Satan with scripture, so now Satan comes at him with scripture. He quotes Psalm 91. But what's interesting is that Psalm 91 is a psalm all about trust towards God. It's a psalm about God's promises of blessings towards those who trust him. Satan's trying to get Jesus to dangle those blessings before God and say, if I'm gonna trust you, you're gonna have to prove to me that you will do what you said.

But Jesus responds again with scripture. It's also written, do not put the Lord your God to the test. Jesus fully trusts God. He trusts that he will meet his needs. He does not need to test him to find out. Satan has been trying to instill cynicism in the human heart since the beginning of time. The very first temptation in Genesis is to Adam and Eve. He says, did God really say? Are you sure? He's trying to get them to have cynical hearts towards the word of God, towards what God says. His desire for you is that you would distrust God and the word that he speaks. You would test him, that you would live with some just level of cynicism in your heart, not fully trusting that God will do what he said. When I preached on a Sunday for the first time, I got a cold the day before. And am I the only one in the room who every time I get a cold, I'm like, this is clearly the worst possible time for me to have a cold. But I really felt that way this time. I was like, I was losing my voice. I was like, I'm gonna need my voice. And so I felt like the enemy got in my ear and was like, Reagan, if God really loved you, he'd heal your cold.

Like you better go to him and tell him that if he wants you to preach tomorrow, he's gonna have to heal you. And I found myself praying these prayers of cynicism towards the Lord, being like, God, if you want me to preach your word, like you're gonna have to fix this. And I was asking for healing, but not from a place of trust towards God, from this place of cynicism. With this belief that for God to be good, he needed to do exactly what I wanted him to do. I was giving him an ultimatum. But then the spirit convicted me, thankfully. And I had this realization of what I was doing. And through that, the Holy Spirit spoke to me, Reagan, I want you to trust that you can go and preach, not from your own strength, but from my strength. God was using this to strip me of my strength. And I will say, I got to come preach without my whole voice. He did not take away my cold, but I got to preach with so much freedom because I had been stripped of trusting in my own strength. It became this gift that God gave to me. God used that temptation as a test that refined me. But the enemy wanted to use it to plant a spirit of cynicism inside of me. And I think that as New Yorkers, we can tend to value a spirit of cynicism. We see trust and being too trusting as being weak.

But trust is a core piece of intimacy. So if Satan can sow seeds of doubt into our hearts, then maybe that cynicism can slowly harden our hearts and drive us further and further away from intimacy with God. He wants us to dangle the things we want before God as things he needs to do to prove his love for us, to prove that he's good, rather than trusting his will for our lives. And I want to note here that God does invite us to wrestle with him. He invites us to bring our frustrations, our doubts, our needs, our desires to him. But he invites us to wrestle from a place of intimacy. And Satan wants us to push God at an arm's length in a spirit of cynicism. But Jesus, again, out of deep trust for the Father, he uses the word of God to resist the devil. So Satan, with one last attempt, he's failed at getting Jesus to be sidetracked with comfort. He's failed at planning a spirit of cynicism in Jesus. So he tries one last time. It says, again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. All this I will give to you, he said, if you will bow down and worship me. Jesus said to him, away from me, Satan, for it is written, worship the Lord your God and serve him only.

This final temptation is a temptation to take destiny without intimacy. Satan takes the very thing that God has actually promised to Jesus and offers it to him without trust in the Father. Father's path. He offers him the fruit of the cross without the suffering of the cross. So God has already laid out a path for Jesus to receive all the kingdoms of the world, but that path involved dying on a cross. But that was God's will. Jesus was asked to trust God. So to bow down and worship Satan would be to sever all intimacy with God, but Satan tempted Jesus to want this outcome, to want this destiny so bad that he would abandon the giver of the outcome. Tim Keller says it this way. He says, what Satan does is he takes a good thing and he seeks to inflame your imagination so that it becomes the ultimate thing, so that you want it more than God, with or without God, so that it becomes more important to your identity, more important to your happiness, more important to your meaning in life, more important than God. And when that happens, a good thing becomes a vehicle for demonic force in your life.

He doesn't say to Jesus, just worship me. He says, look at this. Don't you want this without a cross? Don't you want this with or without God? We cannot allow anything that God offers us to ever become more important to us than God himself. One of the core goals of temptation is to thwart in your heart and your mind what the ultimate prize is. The ultimate prize of the human existence is God. It's intimacy with God, and if anything ever tries to thwart that, if anything ever threatens that, it is a lesser prize. And if you get anything tonight, this is what I want you to get. If this is not a truth that you believe in your heart, you will give in to temptation. I invite you to wrestle through that with God tonight. If you don't truly believe that he is the prize, you will give in to temptation. If a marriage, your dream job, the affirmation of friends and family, a specific serving role at church, or the affirmation of a pastor, if even heaven itself, if any of these things feel more like the prize in your life, this will give Satan a foothold to offer you that thing without God. And you will end up sacrificing the greatest prize.

But Jesus refuses to take anything apart from God, even if it means suffering on a cross. So again, he uses scripture to rebuke Satan. And with this third moment of resisting, Satan flees, and angels come and minister to Jesus. I love to picture this moment. What would this have been like? I assume they probably brought Jesus bread and food. They attended to his physical needs. They probably reminded him of God's coverage and plan over his life. All the things that Satan tempted Jesus with, he actually receives. He receives the bread. He receives the ministry of angels, and he will ultimately receive all the kingdoms of the world. But he receives them alongside protected intimacy with the Father. He trusted God for all his needs to be met, and he was not let down. This is a beautiful moment of victory, and this moment of victory is important. Because Jesus had victory over the devil, he now can empower us to have victory over the devil. So now, as we've seen, Jesus has resisted the idol of comfort. He's resisted a spirit of cynicism, and he has resisted taking good things apart from God. But how did he do it? How did Jesus resist?

What did we see in these three moments of temptation? Jesus resisted temptation, I believe, with three things. With a clear vision of the prize, with utter dependence on God, and with a deep love for God's word. I think we often feel frustrated at our inability to resist the devil. I'm gonna assume in this room you guys want to resist temptation. You're not trying to be fooled by the enemy. But I think often we lack the lives that will set us up to have the power to resist. Jesus had so much cultivated in his heart already that set him up to resist. The first thing which we've talked about is that he came into this moment of temptation with a clear vision of what the prize of his life was. It was intimacy with God. So anything that tried to thwart that, he resisted. He also had complete dependence on God. This moment of temptation came after 40 days of solitude and fasting. Jesus intentionally placing himself in a position of reliance and intimacy with the spirit. He wasn't distracted. He wasn't spiritually empty. He was physically hungry, but he was spiritually full. So when the enemy comes and tries to tempt you, are you able to face him from a position of being filled with and reliant on the Spirit?

And lastly, Jesus was filled with the Word of God. He rebuked Satan all three times with God's Word. The Word of God lived deeply in Jesus. I don't believe he just had a lot of Scripture memorized, though he did. I believe he loved the Word so deeply that when something tried to come against it, he couldn't help but resist. It disgusted him. Out of a deep love for the Word of God. What's really interesting to me about this story is that these three temptations, they kind of surprise me. They don't feel all that bad in a lot of ways. They don't feel all that blatantly or obviously evil. Satan's not trying to tempt Jesus to go commit murder, but these are small choices that would move him further and further away from intimacy with the Father, from his kingdom identity and his kingdom purpose. So when you're tempted, the issue may not be that the things you're tempted with are so terribly evil. The problem might be that they're partnering with distrust towards God and would drive a wedge in your intimacy with God. So the question I keep asking that's so important that we ask tonight is what do you believe is the ultimate prize? Is it comfort? Is it getting what you want? Is it getting your destiny or is it intimacy with God? I've recently been in a season

that has felt like a wilderness. My dad passed away very suddenly about seven months ago and it's been the most painful time in my life. And I have watched Satan try to step into my wilderness and tempt me with some of these very same temptations. In my moments of deepest grief, I have had moments where Satan has come in and said, you know what would make you feel better here? You just need to watch a few more episodes of that show. You need to scroll a little longer on Instagram. And those things, again, they're not terribly evil. But what I really need when I'm deeply grieving, when I'm in deep pain of this loss, what I need is the comfort of the living God. And Satan's just trying to get me a little further and a little further from seeking him in those moments. I've also watched Satan step in and try to plant a spirit of cynicism in me. I vividly remember when my dad was in his last days in the hospital, the enemy coming to me and saying, Reagan, you need to pray to God and tell him if he really loves you, he'll heal your dad. Surely he couldn't let this happen and still love you. And this spirit of cynicism, I had to battle with it. And honestly, the thing that gave me strength in this time that I've been reminded of is that my dad was a man who fully believed with his whole life that God was the ultimate prize. He lived his whole life believing

that a life lived for the kingdom of God was the best thing. My dad died with a life of eternal significance. And this gave me strength to be like, uh-uh, like I'm gonna remember that my dad taught me to resist and I'm gonna resist the devil. And I got to watch, I'm getting to watch that through such a painful time where Satan has sought to come in and derail my intimacy with God, I am experiencing God drawn near to me in ways that I could never have imagined. He's stepping in to use this time to refine my faith rather than water it down or kill it. He's shown me in deeper ways than I could have known that he is the ultimate prize. And he has been the only thing that has sustained me in this wilderness. I've had moments of grief that I'm like, I don't know if I can get out of this. And the comfort of God has drawn near in such tangible ways. I have had moments where I've had to come to God and wrestle with such intense doubts and questions and confusion, but he's met me, he's been so near. He has been the thing that has sustained me in this time. He has shown me that he is the ultimate prize. And as I've prayed through this passage, here is the key thing that I think the Lord wants to speak tonight. We actually don't need to make much of the devil.

I don't think that you need to leave here and be paranoid about, okay, what are the enemy's schemes if we don't miss them? We need to make much of God. We need to make so much of his word, of the identity he gives us, of the purpose he invites us into. We need to make so much of intimacy with him. That when something tries to come in and thwart that enemy, that intimacy, we cannot help but resist. We're gonna be walking through a lot more of Jesus's life throughout the summer, asking the question, how can we follow his way? But I think if we don't get this right, it's gonna be hard for us to step into following his life. Because if the enemy can sidetrack us with the idol of comfort, with cynicism, with things that we take apart from God, with anything that would thwart our intimacy with God, it's gonna be really hard for us to follow his way of life. So I want to invite you tonight to wrestle with this question. What is the greatest prize in your life? If you want to take a practical next step to follow Jesus's model of resisting, I invite you this week to practice fasting and feasting. First, fast. Fasting is an active practice of resisting. You resist giving in to every desire of the flesh and choose instead to prioritize seeking God.

So this week, I encourage you to pick a 24-hour period or pick a meal and fast it. Fast social media or fast television. Fast something that you know will make you push against your fleshly, just giving in to your every fleshly desire. And to instead seek God and his kingdom. As you fast, I want to invite you to feast on the word of God. Richard Foster says, fasting reminds us that we are sustained by every word that comes from the mouth of God. Food does not sustain us, God sustains us. Therefore, in experiences of fasting, we're not so much abstaining from food as we are feasting on the word of God. Fasting is feasting. So spend time this week while fasting to read the word of God, to ask for a deeper love for it. Memorize it, meditate on it, pray it back to God. Enjoy God. Ask him to birth in you a love so deep for himself that when anything tries to come to thwart it, you immediately resist. I'd love to pray over the room and then we're gonna go into a time of response, but I just invite you, I know it's warm in here, but let's not leave here without bringing this before the Lord, without asking him to make himself the prize,

without asking him to birth in us a love for his word, to give us eyes wide open to the schemes of the enemy and to help us choose the greater thing. Let's pray and then we'll go into a time of response. God, we thank you that you are a prize greater than anything we can imagine. God, I thank you that you look at each and every person in this room and you invite them to follow you. Every person in this room, you look at them and you say you have the identity of a child of God. You have eternal kingdom purpose that you are invited into. God, we thank you for what you invite us into. God, I just pray in this time that you would silence the schemes and voice of the enemy. I pray that you would illuminate in our hearts where we have given into the idol of comfort, where we have established a spirit of cynicism or where we have chosen good things apart from you. We invite the voice of your spirit would you remove these things from our hearts and God, I just pray that you would be the prize. God, I pray for anyone in the room who feels like their hearts have grown cold or hard. God, who are struggling to read the word, I just pray God that you would take hearts of stone and give hearts of flesh, that you would birth in us a love for your word. You would come near to cold hearts.

Would you warm them with your love tonight, God? Would you help us see you more clearly? We thank you for your victory over the devil and your power you give us to have victory as well. Come Holy Spirit, let's respond.