Temptation and the sympathizing Christ

Our Father, we do thank Thee for these amazing words that we've been able to sing together in Thy presence. To be brought into peace in our relationship to Thee, to sense that we are near Thee and be loved by Thyself, assured that the love that Thou dost have for Thy Son is the love that Thou hast embraced us in. We really can't grasp this.

We pray that Thou would help us to enter into it more as we live our lives daily, to live consciously in the joy of our Sonship, of our relationship to Thyself in the Lord Jesus. Our Father, we pray that Thou would give help in the opening up of Thy Word tonight. We pray that it might be beneficial, that it might be health-giving, that it might create within us deeper appreciation for our Savior.

We seek Thy blessing now upon us as we open Thy Word in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen. Let's read together, first of all, Hebrews chapter 2. Hebrews chapter 2, verse 17 says, Wherefore, in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people.

For in that he himself has suffered being tempted, he is able to succor or to help them that are tempted. Chapter 3, verse 1, Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of a heavenly calling, consider the apostle and high priest of our profession or our confession, Christ Jesus, who was faithful to him that appointed him, as also Moses was faithful in all his house. Now in chapter 3 and 4, he's been drawing a very clear parallel with the wilderness experience of the nation of Israel and how they were unfaithful to God, unbelieving, and many of them didn't make it into the rest.

So in chapter 4, verse 9, it says, There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God. For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his works as God did from his. And it really is the sense of as God did from his own.

Let us labor therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief. For the word of God is quick, that is, it is living and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight, but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.

Seeing then that we have a great high priest that is passed into the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession, and again the word confession would be preferable, for we have not a high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Now, at La Crosse Conference, which is three weeks ago now, I guess, I was speaking on the high priestly ministry of the Lord Jesus, basically giving an introduction to the subject and the recognition that God himself appointed high priests in consideration for our need, that God recognized we needed help in our relationship with himself.

And so God provided priests between himself and us. And the Lord Jesus is the final high priest, the perfect high priest. And tonight I want to think especially of the idea that is brought out in these verses concerning being tempted.

At the end of chapter two, it mentions that in that he himself has suffered being tempted, he is able to succor or to help, to come to the aid of those that are tempted or being tempted. And, again, in chapter four we have the idea of him able to sympathize with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. And, really, I don't know how you relate to the Lord in this aspect, but I think we, at least I, have often felt a certain limitation in being able to enter into how the Lord can actually sympathize with me in view of temptation.

Now, I want you to look with me back in the book of Isaiah, chapter 50, and we're going to look at one aspect, and it's the aspect of temptation that really means trial. Now, I'm sure you know that there are some poetic sections in the book of Isaiah that are called Songs of the Servant, and there are four of them from chapter 40 through to chapter 53, and this would be the third one. And if you look at the Songs of the Servant, each one of them relates to a particular aspect of his service, and this one, which we're going to read from Isaiah 50, verse 4, down to the end of the chapter, relates especially to his ministry as high priest.

So, we'll kind of notice how we come to that conclusion. In verse 4, the Lord God has given me the tongue of the learned, that is, of the instructed or the trained, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary. He wakeneth morning by morning.

He wakeneth mine ear to hear as they learned. The Lord God has opened mine ear, and I was not rebellious, neither turned away back. I gave my back to the smiters and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair.

I hid not my face from shame and spitting, for the Lord God will help me. Therefore shall I not be confounded. Therefore have I set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed.

He is near that justifieth me. Who will contend with me? Let us stand together. Who is mine adversary? Let him come near to me.

Behold, the Lord God will help me. Who is he that shall condemn me? Lo, they all shall wax old as a garment. The moth shall eat them up.

Who is among you that feareth the Lord, that obeyeth the voice of his servant, that walketh in darkness and has no light? Let him trust in the name of the Lord and stay upon his God. The contrast is drawn in the last verse. Behold, all ye that kindle a fire, that compass yourselves about with sparks, walk in the light of your fire and in the sparks that you have kindled.

This shall you have of mine hand, you shall lie down in sorrow. Now, some of this sounds a little bit like a riddle, but I'm just going to try to give a little bit of brief explanation of this and relate it to the passages that we have looked at in Hebrews. One of the things that is striking when you look at these sufferings of the Lord that are referred to here, these are not atonement sufferings.

These are sufferings which he experienced during his trial when, in obedience to the Father, he is brought right into the place of tremendous hatred, oppression, and cruelty. He has been obedient, and yet he's in a terrible place, a terrible spot. You notice that there's really two aspects to the training, the equipping.

And I'm really drawing from verses that I didn't read in Hebrews where it says that he has become perfectly suited, that is, he was made perfect through sufferings. And we know that the Lord didn't need any fixing up. He didn't need to be changed.

So in what sense was he made perfect? Well, it is in the sense of being perfectly equipped, trained for the service that he is about to undertake. And in that equipping, and here you notice the expressions that are used, the Lord God has given me the tongue of the learned. So in other words, it's a ministry of care to other people, a care to us.

And I'm suggesting that it is particularly his ministry as high priest in relating to us in our Christian life, living by faith, living for God, in a world that is opposed to God and his principles. And so it says, the Lord God has given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary. I'm sure we've all had the experience of trying to talk to somebody, and what we had to say may have been accurate.

It may have been true, and yet it wasn't helpful. It may not have been appropriate for the condition that person was in. There's a huge difference in talking to somebody who's all fired up and ready to go and enthusiastic about the spiritual life and everything's going well, and approaching someone who's discouraged, downcast, worn down.

And so this is touching on the reality that not only do we need to be equipped by knowledge of the word of God and the principles of God, but we need to be equipped to be able to connect with people in a way that can draw them in their faith to the Lord. And so that training here is twofold. First of all, it says he wakens morning by morning, he wakens mine ear to hear as the learned.

So you have a submissive heart and mind, day by day, listening to God, hearing the voice of God, communing with God. And that is something that, of course, we all know we need, and yet somehow we can get in a framework where we think we don't need that day by day communion with God. And then we run into a situation in our own lives, and we don't seem to handle it very well, or situations arise in the lives of others and we find ourselves unable to relate to them.

We don't have something in the reservoir that we can bring to them to be a help to them. And so there is, first of all, our personal obedience, our personal relationship with God and our communion. And then verse 5, the Lord God has opened mine ear and I was not rebellious, neither turned away back.

So you see a path of obedient submission to God. But where does that lead him? Well, it leads him right into the place of distress, and being accused, slandered, beaten by those who were wanting to kill him. But the interesting thing is in verse 6, you have his ability to handle it.

I don't know how you have responded to someone's wrong treatment of you, but it's not very easy to give your back to somebody that's trying to beat you. It's not easy to, what does it say, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair, I hid not my face from shame and spitting. This is emphasizing that he was enabled, he was strengthened to be able to endure all the hatred that was being hurled at him, all that he was exposed to because of this strength of his confidence in God and the relationship with the Father.

And all through this, there is a very strong element of what we call the faith chapter in Romans chapter 8. In fact, I would almost think that Romans chapter 8 is built upon this passage. There are corresponding expressions of the triumph and confidence of faith. He is near that justifies me.

Who can be against us? God is for us. The Lord God will help me. Who is he that shall condemn me? And so on.

And so here is one who in his personal life was submissive, obedient, and happy fellowship with God. But he's brought into what we might call the crucible of oppression and hatred. And he accepts it.

He submits to it. He doesn't try to flee from it. And he does it in this confidence that he is in God's hands.

It's something like what we may have been like when we went to the dentist for the first few times. And the only thing that held us on the chair was maybe mom or dad who was there watching us or holding our hand or something. It's that attitude of looking to somebody else and enduring what is being done to you.

And so this aspect of what I'm relating to in Hebrews of temptation or testing is the emphasis here. So how does that now relate? In verse 10, he is now speaking to us. Here are his words to us as this trained counselor.

Who is among you that feareth the Lord, that obeyeth the voice of his servant, that walketh in darkness and has no light? Again, this is looking at our experience of someone who is obedient to God, and who is trusting in God, who is fearing the Lord, and hearkening, listening to the message of God to us, and yet walking in darkness. Life is completely opposite to what we would expect. And there is a confusion, there's a darkness, and we don't know what's going on, why it's happening to us.

Here's the counsel that he is giving to us. Let him trust in the name of the Lord and stay upon his God. And so if you were to take this verse and apply it to the book of Hebrews, you would see that the primary emphasis through the book of Hebrews is a call to faith that endures.

A call to be steadfast, to continue, despite what doesn't look like anything positive on the horizon. The believers in the book of Hebrews have been suffering, they have been persecuted, they are becoming weary, they are giving up, some are defecting and turning away, and it's bringing everybody down, and that's the context of the book of Hebrews. And so this goes along with it and fits very well.

Now the contrast is given to us in verse 11. In contrast to being willing to walk in the dark with no light, here is someone who is kindling a fire, surrounding ourselves with sparks. Now basically this is somebody who has decided, I am not going to suffer.

I am not going to expose myself to danger. I am not going to live my life that way. I am going to protect myself.

So you have instead of faith allowing us to endure through distress and hardship, we have a self-protective lifestyle. Now I've seen this in some cases extremely. If you meet someone who is what you would call an extreme controller, very often you will find that that person has gone through some extreme hardship of life, some trauma of life that has so affected them that they are determined they are never going to let themselves be vulnerable again.

It could be someone who goes through a marriage breakup and they will not commit themselves to another person again because they don't want to be hurt. They control all the interactions they have with people. It may be someone that has gone through a financial meltdown and they will be obsessed with protecting themselves in that realm of life.

So there are many ways that this could be applied. But he is saying here, if you choose, instead of trusting in the God who is watching over you and guiding and guarding your life, if you choose to protect yourself and insulate yourself from danger, what you will end up doing is making yourself unusable for God. Because if we are going to be used of God, we are going to put ourselves in the place of being harmed and hurt.

He says, walk in the light of your fire and in the sparks that you have kindled. This shall you have of mine hand, you shall lie down in sorrow. And this is one of the significant tragedies, if I would call it that, of some believers' lives in which, because of this limiting, controlling influence, they won't be able to be used by God as He wants to use them.

2 Corinthians chapter 1 touches on this in relating to fellow Christians, and maybe it would be worth just reading it so that we get the connection with our own lives. Because not only does it relate to His high priestly ministry, but also to our ministry to one another. 2 Corinthians 1 verse 3 says, Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.

For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also abounds by or through Christ. Whether we be afflicted, it is for your consolation and salvation, which is effectual in the enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer. Or whether we be comforted, it is for your consolation and salvation.

So the Apostle is recognizing, he's willing to live his life exposed to hardship, exposed to danger, exposed to distress, exposed to disappointment. And he's willing to allow himself to become trained in the costly training of experience in order that he might be effective in ministering the grace of Christ to others. Now, coming back to Hebrews, I want to also connect it to the other side of temptation.

And first of all I want to just suggest that there is a relationship between what we would ordinarily call trial and testing and what we call temptation to sin that isn't immediately obvious on the surface. Now let me just give you two scenarios that would seem to be totally in contrast and yet there's a backdoor of connection that's very important. There could be a husband and wife where the wife has been stricken with cancer and the husband is watching his wife die in front of his eyes day by day by day.

And he no doubt has cried out to God to restore her to health, to recover her and the God who could change the circumstance, who could reverse that disease, doesn't. And his faith in God's goodness is tested. He might see other people who are godless people.

They're healthy, everything's going fine. And he's watching his wife, who is a wonderful, faithful partner and everything about her faithful to God and yet suffering. And his faith in the justice of God is challenged.

And there's also faith in the sovereignty of God that's being challenged. Is God really in control? Can you really believe God is in control and this is going on? This is one of the real struggles of faith. So here's an example of a believer who's walking in the dark.

They have no light. Nothing is getting better. There's no light at the end of the tunnel as we say.

And the choice is either to turn against God, to become bitter and disillusioned with God or to choose to trust God in the dark. Now that situation seems totally removed and in contrast to another situation where you have a husband with again a godly, faithful wife and he's being tempted to leave her by somebody else. Now we would look at those two situations.

One we could have all kinds of sympathy for. The other one we wouldn't have any sympathy for and it would be hard to be able to actually help the one in temptation except by reproof and correction. But what is the connection between those two situations? Exactly the same issues are at stake.

When we are being led into temptation to sin, our faith in God's goodness is being tested. Our faith in God's justice is being tested and our faith in God's sovereignty is being tested. Every sin is really a denial of God's goodness.

When I am sinning, I am really saying God is not good enough to meet my need and so I have to meet it on my terms. It is a despising of God's justice because I am daring God to deal with me while I pursue my sin. So you can see what I'm getting at.

That when we are looking at the Lord Jesus and in how God prepared him to be able to be our high priest so that he could be a faithful and yet merciful high priest in relating to us, there is a connection. There is something that is common to undergoing trial that also relates to undergoing temptation. And so that is one aspect of the way in which he, in being exposed to all the sufferings which he was exposed to, his faith in God's goodness was severely tested.

But you know that not only that, he was tempted. He was brought into the wilderness and he was tempted very, very severely by Satan. I want to look a little bit more at that aspect.

But first of all, I want to pick up on a reading in chapter 4 and verse 12. And I want you to think about the place that the Word of God has in all of this relationship with God, our relationship with faith and our preservation. In Hebrews 4 and 12, where it starts speaking to us about the Word of God being living and powerful or effectual and energetic and sharper than any two-edged sword.

Now, for a long time when I read this verse, I always associated all of these terms with the sword analogy. And it's funny with the word quick, it's hard to remember that it really means living. And you think of something that's fast-moving.

But if you think about it as being living, this is more the idea of the Word of God being a source of life to us. The Word of God nourishes us. And if you remember, what was the first temptation in the wilderness? At least if we want to call the climax of all temptation after the 40 days.

Well, it was the issue of food. Turning stone into bread. If you are the son of God, why are you suffering lack? And the Lord's answer was, it is written, man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God shall man live.

And so again for us, our provision here in this world is first of all His Word. That is the first provision for our need, for our sustaining, for our faith. If we are not nourishing ourselves or being nourished on the Word of God, our faith is going to become dim, it's going to become faulty, and we're going to err in many ways.

So the Word of God is living, it is nourishing, and again, we need to challenge ourselves. Are we really living on the Word of God? Are we nourishing ourselves? I think it's fair to say that we must feed on something. That's part of the human condition, that we're never satisfied very long.

Like, have you ever gone to some wonderful performance or watched some wonderful thing and it's just amazing, and then it's over. Well, that's why they get to sell tickets over and over and over again, and why entertainment is such a great industry to be in, because people's appetite and satisfaction, it never, never is completely satisfied, and it needs to be again and again and again. So what are we feeding and nourishing ourselves on? Is it what only entertains us, only draws us temporarily, and then it's over, and then we need it again and again and again.

Or is it the living Word of God that nourishes us from His presence, His truth? It's also effectual, energetic. It is life-supporting, life-sustaining. It could also be connected to the idea of the sword that we have following, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing, even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, joints and marrow.

Now you notice that this is the prominent thought that is following through into the next verse. The ability of the Word of God to discern me, to distinguish my inner thoughts and intentions, my soul and my spirit, the very joints and marrow, things which we could not necessarily distinguish on our own, but it pierces to the dividing asunder. It separates and distinguishes.

And why is this significant? Well, what this is telling us is that the Word of God, if we allow it to have its effect upon us, it will open us up into transparency, into reality, into the very depths of our being, and we will get to know ourselves as we really are. Now, why is this important? Because of the issue of sin. Because sin is so deceptive that on our own, we often are only recognizing what it is after it's already fulfilled its desire.

It's one thing to say, yeah, I blew it. It's another thing to recognize it as the process of temptation is beginning to discern that thought, that intention, that desire, and to be able to recognize the presence of evil and to be able to separate ourselves from it. Now, I know I've given this analogy before, but if you've heard it before, well, that's good.

You've got a good memory. The Word of God can be, it's our first, not only is it the first avenue of nourishment and sustaining for us, it's also the first line of defense against evil overtaking us. And it's like our bodies, which have this marvelous defense system of antibodies, but a virus can invade, and until our body's defenses recognize it as foreign and an invader, that virus just works away, takes over the cells, and we end up serving another master without even realizing it.

And that's how sin works within us. It deceives us into thinking, believing, this is me, this is my desire, this is my will, this is my wishes, this is what I want, and all the while we're just really being taken over by sin in one form or the other. But the Word of God discerns that.

It detects evil. And so that's why in verse 13, neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight, but all things are naked and opened. That's like laid bare, like a surgeon opens up layer after layer until he's right down into where the problem is.

And that's what God is able to do with us. And if we open ourselves up to his Word, he will open our discernment and deal with evil that is within us. All things are naked and laid bare unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.

Now one thing that I think is encouraging in this, and if you don't think that's encouraging, just recognize that God is for you. God is against evil, but he is for you, for your preservation and blessing and deliverance from evil in every form. But if we just ended at verse 13, I think most of us would decide that the journey is not going to be successful.

We're not going to make it into the rest of God. It's impossible for us to live in the presence of such a God and to be able to contain and sustain a relationship with him. But that's where we have this tremendous provision of the Lord Jesus, seeing then that we have a great high priest that has passed into the heavens, Jesus, that's the human name that associates himself with us, the man Jesus who is the Son of God.

And remember this, that where he is now, we are going. We are going to enter into that awesome presence of God and we are going to enter it in the perfection of all the blessing that he has brought us into. Let us hold fast our confession.

Let us not give up on our confidence that the God that has brought us to himself through his Son has provided for us every step of the way into his presence. So verse 15 continues that, for we have not a high priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities. That is, we have not a high priest that is not able to sympathize with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.

Now, infirmities, I can't be dogmatic about what infirmities are, but I'm just going to suggest that they are the weaknesses, the tendencies that we have because we have been, you might call it crippled by sin. It's the susceptibilities that we have, the predisposition towards failure and sin. So then how can he sympathize when he has never sinned, he has never been weak, he has never been wayward? Well, the first thing we must acknowledge is that he cannot sympathize with evil.

So it's not that there's any sympathy for sin, but he sympathizes with us in our battle with sin. And again, we tend to feel that the Lord Jesus is such a contrast to ourselves in the whole conflict with sin that it's hard to understand how he can ever be sympathetic to us in this way. One thing that encourages me is in recognizing that when we were born again, God severed between me and the sin that has been left resident within my being.

And as a child of God, I am born of God, and sin is foreign to me, even though within my body. So if you can connect that way and recognize that as he is, so are we in the world. He is the Son of God, and while he never ever had sin within him to deal with, there was temptation that was external.

For the Lord Jesus, it was always an external temptation, a temptation coming from the outside, someone outside of himself trying to lure him away from God. But at the same time, it was an internal test. So someone has put it this way, in every temptation, there's a test.

And in every test, there's a temptation. And that again is making that backdoor condition, connection between the two things. But if we can recognize that we are in our relationship to God, a new creation, and the Lord Jesus always deals with us on the basis of our relationship to God as born of God.

So he relates to you and to me as a brother. That's what we learned back in chapter 2. He's not ashamed to call them brethren. So he is, as a brother, helping a brother in the battle against evil.

We have been severed from the sin that is still stubbornly resident within us and always trying to take over. And he is dealing with us in that relationship. But I also believe that it comes closer than this.

Just thinking about this idea, we have not a high priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace. Why is that possible? Well basically, we are being told that he does know, and he does understand, even when we are experiencing temptation to sin and even when we have failed in sin.

Now I want to explain how and why. The answer, I believe, is found at Calvary. The Lord Jesus never experienced sinning, but he did experience the consequence of sin.

He experienced on the cross God's wrath, God's indignation that belongs to sin. And so we can say that what always accompanies sin, the sense of shame, that sense of guilt, that sense of displeasure, all of those are the outcomes, the consequences of sin. And I remember quite a number of years ago, there was a certain kind of problem that came up that Becky and I were trying to, in trying to help some other believers, and it dawned on me that that particular kind of problem helps to understand the high priestly ministry of Christ.

I'll just explain what I'm getting at. You know, if you were to go out tonight and be walking home and somebody jumped you from the shadows and beat you terribly, you would probably be afraid to walk in the dark again. You would be traumatized.

It could affect you for the rest of your life. But you would never feel the shame or the guilt of that crime. You wouldn't associate yourself with the person who did the wrong.

You might be afraid of them and disgusted with them, but you would never identify with them. But there is a certain kind of victim who does exactly that, and that's what we call sexual abuse. Because of the nature of the sin, victims of sexual abuse have this added horror or trauma in that they feel the shame of the perpetrator.

And this is one of the worst things that people who have gone through that have to overcome. And many of them have resolved it by blocking it out entirely. It's very common for people who have experienced that in childhood to not even be able to remember it or even deal with it until midlife.

And it's a very sad thing to have someone in their 40s or 50s whose life is just melting and they can't even cope with ordinary life and they can't cope with ordinary relationships because this is all just overwhelming them because it's come out into the open in their minds and conscience and so on. But this is the particular horror of that crime in that the victim feels the shame and the guilt equally with the perpetrator, and maybe sometimes more. Now, why I'm saying and bringing that out is simply this.

On the cross of Calvary, the Lord Jesus identified completely with me and with you. And in taking our sins upon himself, he has felt our shame. He has felt that guilt, you might say, of that evil.

He experienced the indignation of God upon his being. And so when I come to him at the throne of grace and I have failed, I am coming to the one who actually knows that sin better than I do, who actually himself has borne its shame, has felt that judgment upon himself for it. And so what this is telling us is that don't let anything keep you from the presence of God.

There has been a provision made that enables us to come whatever our life experience is at the moment. In whatever need it is, whether it is to be delivered from temptation, that's what we have grace to help in time of need. Or whether we have already failed and we come before him, there's mercy.

There is mercy and grace to help in time of need. I would suggest the mercy is for the failure that has occurred. Grace is to preserve us from failing.

And that expression, in time of need, is literally in the nick of time. And so again, if we can recognize this, that God has, through the life experiences of the Lord Jesus, through all the trials, the suffering, the brutality, the hardships that he experienced, all of that has fitted him to connect with us when we're going through trials, when we're being tested, when we are going through hardships. And when it comes to the issue of sin itself, he was tempted.

He never yielded, he never responded. There was nothing within him that ever could respond to sin. But at the cross, he identified himself so completely with us that he died accountable for our guilt.

So we get that amazing statement in 2 Corinthians chapter 5, God has made him who knew no sin to be made sin for us. We can't really plummet the depths of that, but I believe that he has been perfectly equipped so that wherever we are at, whatever we have been through, whatever we're going through, we can draw near to him. It is a throne of grace, a throne of help to us in our need.

Now, I didn't really go through the temptation in the wilderness, but I'll just give you just how it appeals to me at least. The first temptation in the wilderness, relating to hunger and turning stones into bread, that external temptation was an internal test of the Lord's faith and dependence upon God. He was hungry, was God really good? Would you let your son or daughter or friend be 40 days without any food? And yet he submitted to that privation.

So that is the issue of faith and dependence on God's provision. And that is an ongoing test that we go through in life. Now, the order of the next two is switched in Matthew and Luke, so I'll just take the one as the kingdoms for worship.

The issue of who to worship. What kind of a test was that? Well, that's the test of his love and his loyalty to God. His loyalty to God's preeminence, rather than worshiping Satan, who was willing to give him.

He says, here you are, you're serving God, who won't even give you bread to eat. I'll give you the kingdoms of the world. I'll give you everything.

It'll all be yours if you will just give me first place. And the Lord Jesus, in remaining loyal to God, he was staring in the face the issue of God's justice, because he was looking at the cross and what he was going to be made accountable for. He could have had all the kingdoms of the world.

God also was promising him all the kingdoms of the world, but the pathway to that kingdom lies through the cross. And yet he accepted it from the hand of the Father. And that is the greatest worship that could ever be directed towards God.

That the Son of God manifested through that temptation and fulfilled it by going to the cross and waiting for God to give him the glory and honor and worship that belongs to him. The last one of being up at the temple and throw yourself down. Now, there's different aspects of that that we could look at, but I'm just going to, because it's related to Psalm 91, the psalm of God's protective care, protective hand.

The promise through that psalm is that disaster, danger on every side is not going to come near you, because you've put your faith, your trust in God. And so Satan, in quoting that psalm, was really putting him to the test as to his confidence in God's protection and power. And so I'm going to suggest that that is primarily the sovereignty of God that is being challenged.

And so, if you can remember these three characteristics of God's nature and being, his goodness, his justice, and his sovereignty, you can really fit every issue of life into a challenge of those three characteristics of God himself. And every temptation to sin confronts those three issues. Every trial that we will ever experience confronts those three issues of God and his character, shall we pray.

Our Father, we come to Thee, and we recognize that so often we are just thinking of our own protection and comfort, and when we run into problems of life and things do not turn out as we had expected or anticipated, we sometimes turn within ourselves and isolate ourselves from involvement in other people's lives. And we know how often that our service has been and can be limited by our unwillingness to be put in a vulnerable position, to be hurt again. As we think of these examples of the Lord himself supremely, and as the Apostle Paul himself also was willing to put himself in the place of harm, willing to suffer adversity, willing to be brought through trial, in order that through his life, and through his witness and testimony and encouragement, he could be a strength and a stability to other saints.

Our Father, we think of the Lord Jesus and how completely and how perfectly he is suited to be our Great High Priest. He has passed into the heavens. He is enthroned with complete authority.

And as he cares for us, he watches over us tenderly. He is not negligent. And we thank thee that every kind of circumstance of life that affects us, we are invited to draw near to the throne of grace, to be sustained, to be preserved, and even to experience again restoration when we depart from fellowship with thyself.

We bow before thee and pray that thou would help us to love thee, to obey thee, to serve thee, and to be willing to suffer as thou might choose to leave us, in order that our lives also might become more useful and fulfill thy great purposes in this world. We commit ourselves then to thee, in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.