The Devil Offered A Deal And We Took It

Psalm 63 starts with a sentence that refuses to stay theoretical: “My soul thirsts for you.” That’s the doorway into a conversation about what we reach for when life feels dry, pressured, or hollow and how quickly our hearts make replacements when worship gets crowded out. We pray, we read, and we ask the uncomfortable question Luke 4 forces on all of us: when temptation offers comfort, status, or control, do we answer with God’s Word or with a deal that slowly reshapes our loyalty?

From Jesus in the wilderness to Jesus rejected in Nazareth, we trace how truth can provoke resistance even among familiar faces. Along the way, we talk about modern idolatry that doesn’t always look “religious” at all: sports, entertainment, fitness, academics, work, and anything we put on a pedestal. We return to Psalm 63 and Proverbs to anchor the episode in integrity, perseverance, and the conviction that crooked hearts and constant lying don’t get the final word.

The back half turns to history and civic life, including a 1946 Dallas public school Bible course outline that required New Testament reading and Scripture memory verses. I make the case that publicly funded education always points somewhere and that a Christian nation should not pretend it can be spiritually neutral, while still respecting individual religious liberty in the home. If you care about Christian discipleship, Bible teaching, public education, and the battle for a nation’s moral center, you’ll find plenty to wrestle with here. Subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

Transcript

Tragedy And A Broken Culture

Welcome And Opening Prayer

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Psalm sixty-three one through three. O God, you are my God. I earnestly search for you. My soul thirsts for you, my whole body longs for you in this parched and weary land, where there is no water. I have seen you in your sanctuary and gazed upon your power and glory. Your unfailing love is better than life itself. How I praise you. Nineteen-year-old woman was killed in a head-on DUI crash by Juan Alvarado Aguilar, an illegal immigrant from Mexico who had overstayed a work visa and had a prior DUI conviction. Hey folks, this is Jesse Cope back with another episode of the American Soul Podcast. Hope y'all are doing well wherever y'all are, whatever part of the day you're in. Sure to appreciate you joining me, giving me a little bit of your time and attention, a little piece of your day. I know y'all have other things vying for your attention. So I appreciate you joining me here. For those of y'all who continue to um tell others about the podcast, thank you. For those of y'all that continue to pray for me for the podcast, thank you. Very grateful. Father, thank you for today. Thank you for you, Father, and your son Jesus Christ and your Holy Spirit. Thank you for your love and your mercy, your grace and your forgiveness of sins. Through the merit of your son, Jesus Christ. Thank you for all the blessings you bestow upon us as individuals and as a nation. Forgive us our lack of gratitude. Forgive us when we take those blessings for granted or when we think that the blessings are due to our own efforts and merit instead of the fact that everything we have, every talent and skill that we have is given by you.

SPEAKER_00 2:12

Help us to be good stewards of all the talents that you have given us, whether it's money or charm, beauty, fame, intelligence, leadership, patience, kindness, courage, wisdom, faith. Help us to share those talents with others.

SPEAKER_01 2:39

Please be with those who defend us against evil. Be with their families, our military, our law enforcement, our firefighters. Be with those leaders in the pulpit and the state who do rule in fear of you. Give them courage and a strong faith. Help them to feel your presence, be with their families. Be with our enemies, Father.

SPEAKER_00 2:59

Around the world, particularly though those in our own nation, our own fellow citizens.

Marriage Verses And Church Tension

Jesus Tempted In The Wilderness

SPEAKER_01 3:07

Help them to feel your presence, draw them close to you. Guide them to you in a strong faith, Father, and help us to be just a little bit of light in this dark world. To those who are hurting and brokenhearted. And please be with those listening to the podcast, Father. Bless them and their families, their marriages, their children. And guide my words here in your Son's name we pray. Amen. Marriage verse verses for today. 1 Corinthians 11, 7 through 9. A man shouldn't have his head covered because he is the image and glory of God, but the woman is man's glory. Man didn't have his origin from woman, but woman from man. And man wasn't created for the sake of woman, but the woman for the sake of the man. That will definitely get you in hot water, sadly, especially inside the church, right? You just read that scripture and you can already start to feel the tension and the anger, resentment building inside so many churches today, because we're more concerned, folks, with doing what we want, right? I mean, we're all guilty of it to a certain degree. The problem is when we pretend that that's okay. Luke 4, 1 through 30. Then Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan River. He was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where he was tempted by the devil for forty days. Jesus ate nothing all that time and became very hungry. Then the devil said to him, If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become a loaf of bread. But Jesus told him, No. The scriptures say people do not live by bread alone. Then the devil took him up and revealed to him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. I will give you the glory of these kingdoms and authority over them, the devil said, because they are mine to give to any one I please. I will give it all to you if you will worship me. Jesus replied, The scriptures say you must worship the Lord your God and serve him alone. How many of us, folks, have made little gods out of sports or entertainment of some kind or another? Or working out or academics or whatever it is that we put on a pedestal. Drugs, alcohol, sex, those are all the ones that people often talk about, but there's others. Then the devil took him to Jerusalem to the highest point of the temple and said, If you are the Son of God, jump off. For the scriptures say he will order his angels to protect and guard you, and they will hold you up with their hands so you won't even hurt your foot on a stone. Jesus responded, The Scriptures also say you must not test the Lord your God. When the devil had finished tempting Jesus, he left him until the next opportunity came. Then Jesus returned to Galilee, filled with the Holy Spirit's power. Reports about him spread quickly through the whole region. He taught regularly in their synagogues and was praised by everyone. When he came to the village of Nazareth, his boyhood home, he went as usual to the synagogue on the Sabbath and stood up to read the scriptures. The scroll of Isaiah, the prophet, was handed to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where this was written. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released, that the blind will see, that the oppressed will be set free, and that the time of the Lord's favor has come. He rolled up the scroll, handed it back to the attendant, and sat down. All eyes in the synagogue looked at him intently. Then he began to speak to them. The scripture you've just heard has been fulfilled this very day. Everyone spoke well of him and was amazed by the gracious words that came from his lips. How can this be? They asked. Isn't this Joseph's son? Then he said, You will undoubtedly quote me this proverb, physician, heal thyself. Meaning, do miracles here in your hometown, like those you did at Campernium. But I tell you the truth, no prophet is accepted in his own hometown.

SPEAKER_00 7:32

That uh that old saying, You can never go home, there's a lot of truth to that, right?

Psalm 63 Again Plus Integrity

Books Reviews And Support Links

Nice Truck Attack And Islam Claims

Medal Of Honor Morris Brown Jr

1946 Dallas Bible Course Requirements

Argument For Bible Centric Public Schools

The Lord’s Prayer And Closing Blessing

SPEAKER_01 7:41

Even if you are the, as we said in the Marine Corps, the duty expert often when you go home, whether you're talking about the place you grew up or your your own house, people don't really believe that you know those things, that you are the expert. They obviously didn't believe that about Jesus. Certainly there were many needy widows in Israel in Elijah's time when the heavens were closed for three and a half years and a severe famine devastated the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, he was sent instead to a foreigner, a widow of Seraphat in the land of Sidon. And many in Israel had leprosy in the time of the prophet Elisha, but the only one healed was Naaman, a Syrian. When they heard this, the people in the synagogue were furious. Jumping up they mobbed him and forced him to the edge of the hill on which the town was built. They intended to push him over the cliff, but he passed right through the crowd and went on his way. Psalm sixty-three, one through eleven. O God, you are my God, I earnestly search for you. My soul thirsts for you, my whole body longs for you in this parched and weary land where there is no water. I have seen you in your sanctuary and gazed upon your power and glory. Your unfailing love is better than life itself, how I praise you. I will praise you as long as I live, lifting up my hands to you in prayer. You satisfy me more than the richest feasts, I will praise you with songs of joy. I lie awake thinking of you, meditating on you through the night, because you are my helper. I sing for joy in the shadow of your wings. I cling to you, your strong right hand holds me securely. But those plotting to destroy me will come to ruin. They will go down to into the depths of the earth, they will die by the sword and become the food of jackals. But the king will rejoice in God. All who swear to tell the truth will praise him, while liars will be silenced. Take a little bit of comfort in that last line, folks. There will come a day when people who consistently knowingly tell lies don't get to tell lies anymore. Proverbs 11, 20 through 21. The Lord detests people with crooked hearts, but he delights in those with integrity. Evil people will surely be punished, but the children of the godly will go free. Countryside. If you are looking for a family-friendly middle gray greed, uh I you would check out Countryside. Here's the first book in the series. The Book of the Wise, and there's some reviews. You can find it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc. Second book. And if you enjoy it, if you would leave a review for one or both, it's kind of like Narnia the Hobbit, Percy Jackson, Harry Potter. I'm not even remotely saying the quality is the same as those authors, but that's the genre. And if you feel like you're getting something out of the podcast, if you would leave a review there too. And if you have five or ten dollars a month you can spare, uh there's a link in the show notes where you can set up that monthly donation, and that helps uh a great deal. So thank you for any or all of those. July 14th, 2016. Nice France. We've read one of these about Nice France before. Uh Muslim terrorists drove a 19-ton cargo truck into crowds celebrating Bastille Day on the Promenade des Anglias. If I said that right, I probably didn't. Uh killed 86 people, including 15 children, injured more than 400 others by deliberately plowing through the holiday parade for over a mile before police shot him dead. What you see is you see Islamic groups celebrating this. What you don't see is you don't see mass numbers of Muslims condemning actions like this. And this is why I say this is mainstream Islam. Just like when we read about the communist atrocities over the 20th century and even into today, that's mainstream for the supporters of leftism, socialism, communism, Nazism, etc. Because if it wasn't, again, just look at the Christian, the reverse, right? If if somebody claimed to be a Christian and did this, Christians across the world would condemn those actions, say there's nothing even remotely Christ-like about that. But you don't see that with Islam. You don't see that with that bucket of isms that falls under that umbrella of leftism because it's mainstream. And man, we need to get our head wrapped around that in America. And it's it's hard. That's that's a hard truth. But the people around you, people you know, neighbors, family, friends, coworkers, whatever, those, this is mainstream. It's not fringe or extreme. There's no such thing as a moderate Muslim, a moderate leftist, socialist, communist, Nazi fascist. Medal of Honor for today, Morris Brown Jr. Captain, U.S. Civil War, Alpha Company, 126th New York Infantry, U.S. Army, July 3rd, 1863, Gettysburg. Capture of the Flag. Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where the tide turned turned. Thank you, Lord. Accredited to Geneva, Ontario County, New York, awarded posthumously, presented March 6, 1869, born August 1842, Hammond's Port Steuben County, New York, died June 26, 1864, Petersburg. So still during the Civil War. Buried Lakeview Cemetery, 1TAC 3, Penn Yen, New York. Tell you what, if these stories don't irritate you when you read and listen to this versus when you see some of the actions of the actors and actresses and entertainers and athletes and politicians who have been given so much by this country because it's a Christian nation. It should. All right, we're going to go back into this Dallas schools. I wanted to read two more things today. Uh, this is from the Dallas School in 1946, a Bible course study in the New Testament, bulletin number 170. And I wanted to read the minimum requirements and the appendix, the required memory verses, if I could. Minimal requirements for the New Testament. The course is itself a minimum course since teachers are expected to supplement rather than subtract from topics included. The following summary requirements are listed for purposes of emphasis and review. One, ability to name and classify the books of the Bible. Two, general knowledge of the New Testament as outlined in the course of study, reading of the entire New Testament as required. Three, ability to reproduce the memory passages indicated in connection with the lessons and given in full in the appendix, and that appendix, the required memory verses. Pupils should be able to reproduce from memory each of the following quotations when given the accompanying lead, the book, chapter, and verse reference. Lesson one, the pre existence of Christ. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. John one, verses one, three, and fourteen. Lesson two. Jesus to the devil in the wilderness, it is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. Get thee hence, Satan. For it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt that shalt thou serve. Matthew 4, verses 4, 7, and 10. There's a little Godwink for you, folks. I I had no clue that that was in here, and that's the scripture we read today. Lesson 3. The purpose of Christ's coming. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. John 3, 16. Folks, if we have publicly funded education in the United States of America, it has to be Bible-centric because we are a Christian nation. Just like if you went to a communist nation like China, their publicly funded education is communist-centric. Same thing with Muslims. When you go to an Islamic nation, their education is Muslim-centric, Quran-centric, Muhammad-centric. Ours has to be Bible and Christ-centric. And if you don't like that, there's other countries that you can go to. That in no way infringes on the individual religious liberty of a person in their home. You want to be Muslim in your home? Fine. You want to be leftist? Fine. There's other issues that are going to come up. But whatever you want to do, whatever faith you have, you want to be atheist on your own, that is your individual right. But as a nation, if we are going to publicly fund education with the purpose of making productive citizens, it has to be Christ-centric. Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not to temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever and ever. Amen. God bless y'all, your families, your marriages, your nation. God bless America. We'll talk to you all again real soon, folks. Looking forward to it.