Hey, I'm Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible Hour Podcast. You remember a couple weeks ago as we were working on the beginning of Matthew chapter 4, as we work our way all the way through the book of Matthew, a tiny little bit every weekday. Do you remember when we were talking about the temptation conversation and how we think of temptation as being this thing that pulls us toward naughtiness or scandalous behavior, super sneaky dirty stuff? Or maybe it pulls us toward indulging a little bit too much in delicious things we like to eat or drink. And all of those things are, you know, of course, valid expressions of what temptation just means definitionally as a word. But as we talked about that, I was kind of making a case for the stakes of the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness with the devil at hand being much, much higher than I might indulge a little bit or be a little bit naughty. And so we we see these three temptations come and go. One that appeals to Jesus' base physical human needs, one that appeals to the human propensity to want to be very, very exalted and popular and famous, one that appeals ultimately to the final thing that people who succeed at a lot of stuff and get their way a lot will ultimately want, which is power and control over an increasing and increasing and increasing amount of dominion, eventually wanting to be God themselves, or maybe I should say eventually wanting to be God ourselves, because I'm no better and I suffer from the same temptations. Well, where we all fail these temptations, and the only two reasons we don't give in to them is because I think of reason or God's work in somebody's life that would cause us to demonstrate some kind of restraint. And the other reason we don't give in to them is because lack of resources or ability to do so, lack of ability to get other people to go along with our plan for self-indulgence. Unlike us, Jesus resists these things exclusively based on his character, that is God in the flesh. And he does so, I think, for the benefit of everyone who will hear about this story by leaning into the Word of God. And we've talked about this. The Word of God, I don't think just refers to stuff God wrote down or inspired, but it refers to truth, who God is, what God has done, what is revealed about God in any of the many ways that revelation occurs. So all of this stuff unfolds surrounding the notion of temptation, and we realize after looking at it, yeah, this really is a lot more complex temptation than the stuff that maybe faces you or I. And wow, not only is it more complex, not only are the stakes higher, but Jesus handles this in a way that is way, way beyond our capacity. Still, I think it would be weird if we worked through this passage all about temptation and didn't step down to a little lower level, a personal level of interpretation, to just consider what we do with this. And is there something that the Christian is supposed to look at here and take as an example? Is there something that we're supposed to do? Well, I think really obviously, we're supposed to embrace the same priorities as Jesus. He is into this kingdom thing, he's into the plan of his father, and so he prioritizes that highest. What does that exactly look like in your life, your job, or where you go to school or with your family or your circle of friends or whatever difficult thing you're going through right now? I don't know. It's the internet. Uh, it's very hard for me to tell that from a distance, but I think it is possible for you to know. But even though I'm in no way prepared to make a list of how to avoid each type of temptation in someone else's context, I am prepared to take us to 1 Corinthians 10, 13. This is a verse that I would guess in like 50% of sermons that have ever been preached on the temptation of Jesus, we we bounce over here at some point because it really is relevant. It says, No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful. He won't let you be tempted beyond what you can bear, but when you are tempted, he'll also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it. Okay, now for the sake of accuracy, what we're talking about in 1 Corinthians in general, in this portion of 1 Corinthians, is kind of a church run amuck. Things have got messy and weird. Paul has relationships with these people, he was there for a decent amount of time. Corinth had serious problems with crazy licentious behavior. And look, it is not my job to go around and judge exactly where everybody else draws the lines in terms of what makes sense morally or how God has put that together. That's another discussion. But I think pretty much everybody could agree that if we heard a robust description of what was going on in Corinth, that it was a dumpster fire and that it was very difficult for these fledgling Christians to even know what to do there. And so they're trying to resist this stuff that, again, is more than just scandalous. The scandalous stuff was closely tied to a rejection of God and an embracing of local patron pagan deities. Look, I've been to Corinth, and hey, if you got kids, like you might want to mute it for a second or just hit pause. I really do like to warn you about stuff like this. Okay, five, four, I really am serious. Three, two, one, great. Um, I've been to Corinth. They have sex statues there. I'm not kidding. They they have statues that are. I'm still gonna be delicate because I bet some of you didn't actually pause this or plug your kids' ears. They have statues from the time that 1 Corinthians was written that are sculpted in such a way so as to allow for physical interaction with a needy or desperate person. And they also had shrine prostitution, which again, these are all, these are all religious acts of worship, not just sexual indulgence. I mean, both of which are well, both of which are very problematic biblically, one of which is double problematic. So when Paul is saying, hey, you're gonna be tempted by some really difficult stuff, but what he's also saying is that God is faithful and that God is interested in the success of his children, of his followers, the citizens of his kingdom, he's not giving a crystal clear promise of exactly what that will look like. But I think we can get a little bit of a sense of it and what that specifically might look like from bouncing back over to Matthew chapter four. You remember when the week of the podcast was sponsored by Hebrews 4:12, all that stuff about how big a deal the word of God is and what it does? And I know we already all memorize this, but I'm just gonna reel it off to you anyway. For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any double-edged sword. It penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow, it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Look, Jesus was absolutely rooted in the word of God and had every sense of the meaning of the word word of God or phrase word of God. And so every time he faced something that would have withered a lesser person, he's able to withstand it in part because he's deity, but also in part because he's using something you have access to and that I have access to. I can memorize that to exactly the same 100% accuracy level that Jesus had it on lockdown at. That's available to me. I'm struggling to pull any clean example off the top of my head, but uh imagine um this is some movie where you've got a main character who has struggled with this weakness, this fatal flaw throughout the whole story. And we see them blow it so many times, and in the most pivotal moment where they just need to get it right, they're about to screw the thing up again. No, don't do it. But then they look and they see a thing that reminds them of their family or the person that they love or a thing that's true, or a mentor that made a sacrifice. Why can I not think of even one example of this? But they they see this thing, and that has this reorienting, like lighthouse in the midst of the storm effect, and suddenly they remember that the enemy's gate is down and everything comes clear and they get it right. I think that is part of what is extended to us as people trying to imitate the path of Jesus in resisting temptation, which again is about so much more than just doing something naughty. There's that, but it's ultimately the temptations we face really are the same temptations Jesus was subjected to, to put our physical pleasure above all other desires, to put our own exaltation and pride and lust for fame above humility and occupying a right position and posture before our king, a right role in his kingdom, and further to ultimately imagine that we are our own personal deity and to try to exalt ourselves over other people with an impulse to control and violence and even rejection and usurpation of God's position. But in all of this, I've seen a lot of weird versions of Christianity where the whole version of that faith gets crafted around and measured by how well an individual resists temptation and then how sorry they are afterwards or what they might do to their body to punish themselves. But this isn't what Christianity is about. The way we see things play out in the New Testament, we'll have to get to all of the specific examples later, is the idea that people are transformed by being a part of this kingdom and being subject to this king who's Jesus. And gradually they embrace these kingdom values that we're going to get to in Matthew chapter five. And the world starts to flip upside down for them. And the point is no longer to get everything you can before you die and get it in while you can. The point is no longer to get over on everybody else who's such a jerk. The point is no longer to draw attention to our own awesomeness, to show up people from high school who bullied us or something. The point is to be a daughter, a son of the king, an heir to the kingdom, a participant in this greatest, grandest, truest, realist story of all. And so what we see instead in the New Testament is when you screw stuff up, you can just approach the throne of God's grace with confidence. If we confess our sins, he's faithful and just and righteous to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. I butchered that quote a little bit, but I'm almost sure that's 1 John 1:9. The idea being that forgiveness is readily accessible because of the work of Christ. There is a way out from temptation, but there's also a way out from when you botch it involving temptation. Even the ugliest and grossest of things that you could botch, like rejecting God, which Jesus was tempted to do and passed, and then Peter was tempted to do and failed. Right after he got warned that he was going to do it and swore that he'd never do it, Peter screwed that up. Look, we're gonna do stuff like that too. I wish we wouldn't. I don't want to. I feel gross about the times I have screwed it up, but if we confess our sins, he's faithful and righteous to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we want to avoid those temptations, we have the model and the example from Christ to be able to do it. So we obey God, first and foremost, as an act of gratitude and obedience to a king who deserves to be obeyed full stop because he can pass these tests, because he is the king who was promised, because he is different and other and better than us, and he deserves it. Avoiding temptation, it's avoiding the temptation to reject God, exalt self. It's embracing our role as people who are a part of what God is doing. And even when we screw that up, God's forgiveness is real. So I guess there's my quick little foray into the what do you and I personally do with Jesus' example for temptation. I think it's important to grapple through some questions like this because some of these passages really get beyond the academic and I think do demand that we ask some questions about ourselves and what we're doing. Thanks for processing that with me. I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do it again soon.