Hey, my friends is Matt. This is the 10-Minute Bible Hour Podcast, and we've talked before a little bit about this idea of corruption in fantasy writing and even science fiction. Anytime you get into that realm and you read the really sophisticated good stuff, there will almost always be this theme of the hero or the heroes or somebody you care about being tempted by something. And that temptation, it's almost like it's radiation or something. It's corrupting to the soul. And the longer you're exposed to that thing that you lust for and long for, the more it weakens your resistance. You lose your resolve, you lose your sense of clarity. And then certain characters in these kinds of stories will buckle and break. They'll give in to madness. Their whole character will change. Whereas at first, that temptation, when they encountered it, they were like, ha, yeah, not for me. They do okay at first, but it wears them down. And so there's this additional theme in not just storytelling, but even in video games and table games and things like that, of one aspect of a complex character being their resistance to corruption, their ability to be exposed to temptation a lot and somehow not be worn down, broken down by that over time until eventually they break. Obviously, this theme is most pronounced and most well known from the Lord of the Rings and even the Hobbit and Tolkien's universe in general. I mean, because the whole idea is you've got this ring of great power that is massively corrupting. And somehow it's the simple little country folk who like a gardening and smoking pipe weed, who are the ones who can resist that temptation the best. And particularly this one character who is Frodo, who's the guy you're rooting for throughout the whole thing. But it's so easy when you're watching those kind of stories from a distance to see people start to be exposed to that corrupting radiation and for you to watch. Come on, resist. No, dude, don't do that. What about all the kids? You're protecting the kids. If you do that, they won't have a protector. Don't do it, don't fall. It's so easy when I'm not the one who's about to get the payoff of whatever the pleasure or reward is from giving into that temptation. It's so easy for me to sit there and just root for the heroes not to do it. Yet, man, there are a lot of things in life that when I'm the one who's actually in the situation, that temptation is a lot more potent because I like it when I get things and I like me and I like to feel good and I don't like to feel bad. And self-control, even self-discipline, like I talked about yesterday. In the short term, it makes me feel bad. And the short term is the term I'm in right now. So why would I want things that make me feel bad in the what I'm in, which is right now, when I could have things that make me feel good in the right now? Like what if later never even comes? It's real easy to write these rationales in our own brains. And in a lot of ways, you can see the characters on screen doing this as well, as they are subjected to sustained heavy doses of temptation and struggle to resist that corruption. Now, look, we've got characters in the Bible who get exposed to things that challenge their self-control, which is a fruit of the spirit, the final in the Galatians 5 list of the fruit of the spirit that we've been talking about for a few days. You can think of Joseph in Egypt. That's a pretty great story. He was subjected to massive corrupting power by Potiphar's wife, and even to his own embarrassment under pressure, he resisted that. What a remarkable man. But for every story of resisting obvious and overt temptation, you run into a lot who weren't able to resist. I mean, the first people we meet in the whole Bible aren't able to sustain this. The first time we see temptation put in front of people who are made of the same stuff as you and me, they don't pass the test. And frankly, they fail it pretty quickly. It's just over. It's like it's nothing they can do. I mean, we talked a couple days ago about David. David gets exposed to temptation, and I don't know, maybe there's a bunch of stories that weren't in the Bible of other naked ladies bathing on roofs near King David's palace. And maybe he saw him and was like, No, I shall be chased. I shall not look any further at that bathing beauty. Uh, maybe like 200 times. Dude got that right. And the Bible calls him a man after God's own heart. Maybe it kind of stinks. The only thing we know about David in this regard is when he got it wrong. But boy, that story of when he got it wrong, it stings. It's got lasting ramifications, and it's a train wreck in slow motion. It's brutal to read through it as you see that radiation, that corrosive effect of prolonged exposure to temptation, power, lust, or whatever, finally get the best of good King David. And you see him going through with that on screen in the Bible, and then you see what he does to try to weasel out of it by basically clerically, through order giving, having her husband killed. Like, ay, aye ay, what happened to the kid who caught King Saul, who was trying to murder him in a cave? And instead of killing the king, he cut off a corner of his garment and sneaked away and then was like, I wouldn't raise my hand against the Lord's anointed, I wouldn't do it, I'm principled, it's wrong. Where'd you go, kid David, who had the faith to trust God with five little smooth stones and a slingshot to fight the world's greatest warrior? Well, life is long and it's complicated, and temptation can shipwreck just the best of people. It doesn't make it any less sad, and thank God for his mercy and forgiveness. Because for every one cautionary tale like this that gets written down to warn future generations about the danger of temptation, there's about a billion that just come and go quietly and nobody ever hears about. But God's forgiveness is needed for them all, and God's forgiveness is real for all of that. Yet here we have these examples that are preserved through the centuries, through the millennia of good people, people who got a lot right, getting beat up by this ancient curse. Samson is another example. I don't really need to go on and on about him, but he had the same Achilles' heel. He fell for things he shouldn't have. And in the end, it was calamitous for him. You get all these stories of tests like what happened in the Garden of Eden, that these beloved characters throughout the Bible face, and they they miss a lot. But then you get to the beginning of Matthew with this new character on screen, who it seems like in the first couple of chapters is probably the one who was promised to come and reign on the throne of David forever and to be the Christ, the Messiah, the one who's going to get everything straightened out, God with us, the Redeemer. I mean, it kind of looks like that as you're just reading it cold through the first three chapters of Matthew, and you get to the end of the third chapter, and he gets baptized, and the whole trinity shows up for the baptism, and you're going, okay, I think that's him, but he's not a coward, he's just never been tested. I'd like to think that if he was, he would pass. And then Matthew 4 comes along and he gets tested right after the Trinity shows up for Jesus' baptism and confirms, yeah, this is who you think it is. Then he goes out into the desert, led there by the Spirit, by the way. It isn't the devil who tricks Jesus and gets the best of him to get him to go out into the desert. Jesus goes out there to face the ordeal, to face the trial that all of humanity has failed. Nobody, I mean, Joseph, like he did great in that situation, but nobody has fully resisted corruption. Nobody. Everybody failed the test in the garden, just like Adam and Eve. We've we're all we're with them. If we were there, we'd all do the same thing. But would Jesus? Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, If you're the son of God, just tell these stones to become bread. And Jesus answered, Well, it's written, Man doesn't live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. Well, then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. If you're the son of God, he said, throw yourself down, for it's 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. But Jesus answered him, Yeah, it's also written, Don't 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 of this I will give you, he said, if you'll just bow down and worship me. But Jesus said to him, Away from me, Satan, for it's written, Worship the Lord your God and serve him only. Then the devil left him, and the angels came and attended him. Well, there you have it. Somebody finally passed the test. Somebody finally, completely and ultimately resisted the corruption. The cycle is now primed to be broken, and the rest of the book of Matthew follows Jesus'. He's given plenty more opportunities to get it wrong, to screw it up. He doesn't do it. He's playing for something bigger. He demonstrates anger used properly, that is in proportion with his right to judge. If anything, he demonstrates tremendous restraint in terms of his righteous anger. We see him demonstrating tremendous self-discipline, mastery over his body, 40 days and 40 nights he endured in all of this. He continues to be the same way. And we see him resist corruption and resist temptation. And as a result, he's passed a test that we couldn't. He's passed a test that he has to be able to pass in order for him to be the Messiah, then who we need him to be. And in the end, his passing all of that test and enduring all of that temptation is something that the author of Hebrews flips around to reassure the person who's living life by the Spirit that God is with us in the face of temptation. Hebrews 2.18. Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. So I think it would have been real easy to get to the end here and be like, all right, we got to be done with the fruit of the spirit. Self-control, come on, y'all know what naughty things are. Don't do it. I'll just do one little episode where I'm like, hey, delete an app on your phone. Maybe think about that and we'll call it good. But I think it was right for us to try to break this out into its component parts and think about this over the wider view of scripture. And I think it's a good place to wrap it up too, because I like the symmetry of the way this last fruit of the spirit comes along with this theological promise born out of the character and work and reputation of Jesus for us to get help with it. It's symmetrical. Remember, all of this is the fruit of the spirit. It's all from God. The whole self-control thing, that's from God too. Left to our own ends, we don't really ultimately have mastery over the flesh. We can't use the flesh to defeat the flesh. This lands the plane in a really nice place on this whole principle that we're dealing with in Galatians 5, because it's a reminder that our capacity to bear the fruit of the characteristics of God in this way is a result of the grace of God. It's a result of the work of God in our lives. Our ability to demonstrate any kind of indulgence of the awesome stuff or resistance to the corrupting stuff, that isn't a product of our amazing self-discipline because of our amazing flesh and our amazing character. That is the gift of God. That is the work of Christ. That is life by the Spirit. And now, after however many episodes that was on this one little passage, we will now move forward.