Everyday Truths

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Well, hey, y'all, and welcome to the Everyday Truths podcast where we make faith real and relevant so we can live it out in our everyday lives. My name is Sheri. I'm the creator of Everyday Truths. And before we jump in today, I just want to ask you, if you're not already, to subscribe to the Everyday Truths podcast, wherever it is that you're listening or you're watching today. Also, to leave a rating or comment or like or share

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this episode, because we all need everyday truths, truths from scripture that we can go and we can live out in our everyday lives.

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And so today we are continuing the conversation about temptation. Now, temptation isn't something that we always love to talk about. It's kind of an ugly part of the human experience. But if we really want to walk out our faith well, temptation is something that we are going to have to address and acknowledge and learn to overcome.

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the goal of this series of episodes is to learn how to overcome just the way that Jesus overcame temptation. We're looking at when He was tempted, how He responded, and how we can take the tools and take the perspective that He had to help us overcome temptation as well.

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in the last episode, we began to look at the first of the three temptations that Jesus faces in the scripture. These certainly weren't the only temptations that He faced, but these are highlighted in scripture for us and can teach us so much.

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And so right before, this is important, right before Jesus goes into the wilderness to be tempted, He is baptized. And when He is baptized, He receives the Holy Spirit.

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And the Holy Spirit is such a critical part of overcoming temptation and is one of the reasons that Jesus was able to overcome temptation.

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an advocate and the Spirit of truth. And we need the Spirit of truth in our lives to overcome temptation. And so after He's baptized immediately afterwards, He goes into the wilderness to be tempted. And He is there for 40 days. And in this time, He is fasting. And by the end of this, He is starving. And the tempter, Satan, He comes to Jesus when He is at His weakest, when He is at His most vulnerable.

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And the first temptation that He faces has to do with the hunger that He's experiencing.

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Satan says to Him, "If you are the Son of God," right, each time He's going to challenge Jesus in this way, and He's going to try to get Him to prove Himself in some way. He says, "If you are the Son of God, turn these stones into bread."

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And what we looked at in this temptation is how the temptations that we face, giving in to them almost always looks justifiable.

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giving into this temptation, would have met a legitimate need, but God will never ask us to do the right thing the wrong way.

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And so we looked at three different tools that Jesus used to overcome temptation. The first was the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth. He received the Spirit, the same Spirit that we receive from Jesus. That we receive God's Spirit that lives within us right beforehand. And we need to rely on the Spirit to overcome temptation too. We looked at how He relied on Scripture. When He is tempted, He responds with Scripture. He says

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that man is not meant to live by bread alone, but by every word of God. And so He in this moment says, "Hey, I understand this is a legitimate need,

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but I am called to something different. We are called to something different. We are called to rely on God."

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And so that was what we looked at, and we're going to build on that today. And oh, actually, I said that there were three tools I only highlighted to the Spirit, Scripture. And what we also see here that we can't miss in this first temptation is how Jesus really

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prioritized relationship, His relationship with God, which ultimately safeguarded our relationship with God.

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so those same three components we're going to see be so important in this next temptation as well.

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so let's take a look at the next temptation that Jesus experiences. And for us today, I want us to kind of look at it from the angle of pride. So let's talk about pride for a minute before we jump into Scripture.

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when I say pride, I am not talking about the good kind of pride, how we may be proud of an accomplishment, when we might be proud of how we've overcome something, perhaps, of the kind of pride we may have in our children and in the people that we love.

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I'm talking about the kind of pride that elevates itself, the kind of pride that puts itself before others. And it's kind of anything that says, like, "I'm better than you." Like, my words matter more.

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My feelings are more important than yours. My time is more precious than yours. I come first, and everything else can come next. And we may not say it that directly, but that somewhere underneath are those thoughts when pride shows up in our lives.

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think most often this comes up in our language or maybe this is where it comes up most obviously. Like, if we were to say something like, "I work with a bunch of idiots," like, underneath that is, "I'm so much smarter than everyone else." Or, "I'm not doing that. Nah, I'm too good for that." Or, "Everybody needs to learn how to drive." It's, "I am a superior driver to all these inferior drivers." It comes out in our language, maybe even in the way we apologize. Like, "I'm sorry that hurt your feelings, but I'm not sorry. I just want another excuse to tell you why I am right." Or, "I don't need help. I can do it by myself." Like, you know, "I can figure this out better. I can do it better. Why on earth would I need your help?"

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And what's funny is if you're listening right now and this like applies to me so much too, you may be thinking something along the lines of, you know, "Well, my my coworkers are idiots," or, "I am a superior driver," and this highlights something so important and that's

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that pride always looks like the truth from the inside. Pride always looks like the truth and often it feels justifiable.

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pride can absolutely wreak havoc in our lives, in our marriages. If you are married, when we insist on being right and having our own way, it erodes our relationship and what our relationship is meant to look like and the love that we're meant to share with one another. It's funny because I was, I was counseling a couple one time and I

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Sometimes I say something in sessions like that and I go, "Oh, should I have said that? Is that the right thing?" But anyway, I was sitting in front of a couple and finally, in kind of the tension that they were experiencing, I finally said,

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"Do you want to be right or do you want to be married?"

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And maybe that wasn't the wisest thing to say, but sometimes we are so convinced that we need to be right, that we need to have our own way, we get sucked into our own perspectives, that we're unwilling to see someone else's perspective. And that's pride

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in our relationships with our friends. When we refuse to apologize and when we just demand our own way, that's pride. And it can deteriorate and even wreck friendships

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in our relationships with our children. My goodness, this is so important because our kids need to know that we are proud of them in a good way, even when they aren't the first chair, even when they aren't on the top of the podium, even when they're not on the A honor roll. It is so easy for us to live vicariously through our children. And so when they fail or they don't meet an expectation,

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it wounds our pride. We take it kind of personally, rather than seeing them as a person, just like we are, just like we want others to extend us grace and things like that,

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And we need to be careful that pride isn't hindering our relationship with our children and living vicariously through them.

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And that provides what our priorities are. And pride does not protect relationships. Pride protects itself. And if we want to get really raw and we want to get really vulnerable, pride is a mask that is trying to cover up very raw and vulnerable needs that are underneath that. And they're into these needs that we all have. It's like, see me, accept me, love me, respect me. It's these really raw needs that we have underneath.

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And pride stands as a mask in front of those very real needs. Temptations meet real needs. They meet legitimate needs in illegitimate ways.

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In the last episode, we talked about a verse that I want us to look at again because I think it's so significant. I'm going to kind of bring it back with each temptation because it lays this out so beautifully and

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this is in 1 Corinthians 10.13 and it says, "God is faithful. He will not allow the temptations to be more than you can stand. When you are tempted, he will show you a way out so that you can endure."

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And so right now, let's look at what this looked like for Jesus in the second temptation.

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So, let's jump into Matthew 4, 5, and 6.

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The devil took him to the holy city, Jerusalem, to the highest point of the temple and said, "If you were the Son of God, jump off. For the Scriptures say, He will order His angels to protect you and they will hold you up with their hands so you won't even hurt your foot on a stone."

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Now,

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reading through, straight through this verse, this temptation may seem a little bit odd. Like, why on earth would Jesus desire to jump from the top of the temple? Like, that's not something that sounds tempting to most of us. And so, we kind of need a little bit of context to help us understand what's happening here and why this is so tempting to Jesus.

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So, Jerusalem, where the temple was, this was the center of the world for the Jewish people. It had been for thousands of years before that and it still is today.

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And so, in the middle of Jerusalem is the temple. And the temple is so much more than a church. The temple is where the presence of God is for these people. And within the temple, there are these concentric circles or courts. And the further in that you were allowed, the more important that you were.

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they were the most influential people. They were the religious elite. They were the ones who people would have thought had their acts all together. They were the people that everyone listened to.

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Alright, so, Satan takes him to the top of the temple and

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says, once again, "If you are the Son of God, jump for the Scriptures say."

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Now this needs to give us pause right here because Satan is quoting scripture. This scripture that he is quoting comes from Psalm 91. He's not making something up. Scripture does, in fact, say this. Like this is truth in the sense that like the words are accurate from the page. But this is a false and a twisted application of scripture.

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temptation, it looks like the truth. And in this instance, Satan is saying something that is true.

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And temptation looks like truth in our lives too. Like getting hammered will make you feel better. The hookup can make you feel less lonely. The hit can help you to forget for a moment.

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Telling somebody off can make you feel big and bold and tough.

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But the relief that it brings

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lasts for about that long. Temptation looks like truth. And here as Satan quotes this scripture, he is taking and he is falsely applying it. And this is something that we need to be aware of. And we also need to be careful not to fall into this trap. Because Satan is walking in with an agenda. And far, far too often,

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we show up to scripture with an agenda. We're looking for confirmation for something that we already believe to be true. And when we do that, when we don't look at scripture to find truth, but when we kind of come into scripture with a desire to prove what it is or to meet an agenda, we can so easily twist and take a truth from scripture and give it a false application. And that is what Satan is doing here. And it is incredibly tempting to do this. Because we all like to be right. We all want to be able to back up what it is that we have to say. But no, we need to make sure we're starting from scripture and then going and applying, not trying to find the agenda of what it is that we would like to apply. It should also give us pause the fact that Satan knows. He knows scripture. Satan knows what the truth is. Each temptation he says to Jesus, "Are you really, if you're really the Son of God?" Satan knows exactly who Jesus is. He knows the truth, but he twists the truth.

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So what Satan is saying is true. If Jesus were to jump off of the top of the temple, angels could absolutely, they could come and they could grab him and they could keep him from hitting his foot on the ground.

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And so let's imagine Jesus standing at the top of the temple and below him are the most influential people, the most righteous among them, the people that everyone would listen to and now everyone would say are the most important people in any room that they're in. And he's looking down at them. And if he could get these people on board with who he was, it would have made life so much easier on him. If he had jumped and angels had come down and caught him, the folks that were there would have gone and told others, "Hey, this is the guy. Hey, this is the Messiah. This is who we've been looking for."

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And Jesus would have felt, would have experienced little to no opposition. He's going to spend the next several years of his ministry trying to convince people who he was.

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And these religious elite were going to stand in the way every single time at every single turn. These were the same people who eventually would persecute Jesus, who would plot against him, who would stand as a barrier to the people he loved and desired to serve and ultimately would be the ones who initiated his crucifixion.

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But he could stop all of that right now. He could jump and angels could come and catch him. And he in this big bold move could say, "Look, look, do you know who I am? Can you see how important I am? Can you see that I am the Messiah? I am the person that you have been looking for." Like you think you know the truth? Like, "Brother, I am the truth.

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Jesus jumping from the top of the temple, proving to others who he was. It would have meant needs and desires that Jesus had. Because Jesus came from them too and they would never come to accept him.

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He loves them too. He could have shown them, "Hey, I am here for you. Like, look, I'm the guy. Let's go." And this is why this would have been so incredibly tempting. This meant a need. This was almost justifiable, but God will not ask us to do the right thing, the wrong way. And Satan was challenging Jesus to do, in quotations, the right thing, the wrong way.

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This is how Jesus responds. And this is in Matthew 4.7. The verses that we've looked at of the story have been in Matthew. I don't think I've been referencing them. But this is how Jesus responds.

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"The Scriptures also say, "You must not test the Lord your God." Scripture also says."

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Now Jesus, he goes and he quotes scripture back at Satan, but he is not twisting it

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He is quoting scripture correctly in its context. He is using it as truth not to twist or meet some other kind of agenda.

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And what's great here is that Jesus, the way he responds, he doesn't point towards himself. He's not trying to prove himself. Instead, he points to God. He does this in all of the temptations. He doesn't look inward. He doesn't let pride take over. He focuses and he highlights his relationship with God. Does Jesus want those in the courts below him to recognize who he is? Yes. Does he want to not have to deal with the hardships that are in front of him? Absolutely. We see this in the Garden of Gethsemane right before Jesus is crucified. He says, "Father, if there is any other way, please take this cup from me." We can't pretend like Jesus did not want to face the pain that he did face, but he doesn't look inward in that moment or in this moment here either. He doesn't focus on himself. He looks and he focuses on his relationship with God.

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Why will he not jump? He will not test God. Now, let's think about this really quickly because this is a really, really cool image here. So when you take a test, the person who is giving the test sits in the place of authority and the person who is taking the test is in a seat of submission. So if you go take a test tomorrow, the person administering the test, they're the boss. They're in charge and you're taking the test in a seat of submission to be graded, to prove yourself. That's the seat that you sit in. Here, if Jesus were to jump, he would be testing God. He would be putting himself in the seat of authority over God. And he says, "No, I will not put myself above God Jesus." Even though he was God, it tells us in scripture that he did not see.

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Elevating himself to that status is something that should have been sought after. Remember that he is 100% God, but he is also 100% a person. He is limiting his Godness. I don't know if that's a good way to say that, but he is limiting himself to human flesh so he can relate to us so that he can live the perfect life and so that he can die in our place. And so he is not going to elevate himself above God.

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And Satan, we see in the first temptation where he tries to get him to prove himself. If you are the Son of God, once again, he says it again, "If you are the Son of God." And when Satan, in these instances, he's testing Jesus, he's trying to put himself in the seat of authority. When Satan comes and he tempts us when we are tempted, that is the enemy trying to put himself in the seat of authority above us. And Jesus, he does not give in to temptation. He does not let the enemy sit in authority over him. And so when that ploy doesn't work for Satan,

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He instead tries to get Jesus to elevate himself above God, to put himself in the seat of authority. I think this is really two cool things that we need to pay attention to, is that when we give into temptation, we are putting the enemy in the seat of authority. We are allowing ourselves to be tested and to give in in that way. And then we also face the temptation of elevating ourselves above God in our mind and in our hearts. We can't truly elevate ourselves above God because God is God. But that doesn't mean we can't do it in our mind, in our heart. It doesn't mean that we can't choose to follow our own feet

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And when we do this in our lives, it's like we're saying, "My way is better."

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And we truly believe that because

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pride looks like truth from the inside.

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but Jesus isn't falling for it because he is not focused on himself. He is not elevating himself above others and especially over God.

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He is focused on relationship. Pride wrecks relationship. Giving into temptation wrecks relationships and Jesus isn't giving in and this is how he overcame temptation.

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Pride is an effective tool of the enemy.

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need to ask ourselves where in our lives are we testing God? Where is it that we are putting ourselves first that

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is a sneaky truth a distorted truth that we kind of need to really really recognize here and is that you are capable you are smart you can figure things out you can make a way you can pull yourself up by your boot straps like all of those things are true

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pride always looks like truth from the inside

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Jesus had everything to gain by giving into temptation he had so much to gain from being prideful and putting himself in a seat of authority over God but he chose something distinctly different and that is how he overcame temptation and it is how we can overcome temptation as

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I want to highlight most is we're kind of ending our time here together is a focus on relationship and I think what we need to focus on is our rightful place in our relationships like really recognizing within our relationship with God like what our part is there because we should not be putting ourselves in a seat of authority above God like we really need to assess that if we want to protect our relationship with God and in our relationships with others like where is it that we are trying to sit in our relationships with others is it above others is it side by side with them like where is it is it in a seat of humility not where we're thinking less of ourselves but where we're thinking of ourselves less like that is a great place to focus and to evaluate because sin hurts relationships pride hurts relationships giving into temptation hurts relationships and so really assessing and understanding our place in our relationships is so critically important understanding how much we need to be emphasizing the health of our relationships

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when Jesus when he's asked what matters most what law matters most like tell us Jesus give it to us plain he says love God and love others that's what we're called to do and it's it's prioritize a relationship with God right when you love someone you prioritize a relationship you build a healthy relationship and so to love God and to love one another and so I think that if we want to be you know proactive in a way as we are kind of learning to become overcomers focusing on relationships is a is a fantastic is a great place to start a great place to root yourself a great litmus test to have and so that as we kind of bring it together I want to I want to jump back really quickly to you this verse that kind of we looked at in the last episode that I want us to take a look at one more time and

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that was that verse first Corinthians 10 13 God is faithful he will not allow the temptations to be more than you can stand when you are tempted he will show you a way out so that you can endure and if I can say this maybe a different way this is kind of Sherry translation if you will

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when you are tempted he will show you a way out so that you can overcome temptation this

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hopefully that gives us a hope and hopefully that can give us a boldness to understand that we do not simply have to be a victim to the temptations in our lives but in fact we have a God

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who can't who can make a way and will not allow temptations to be more than you can stand and so let's make sure that we're seeking him in that today

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I said in the beginning if you haven't already make sure you follow the Everyday Truths podcast share it with others and if you happen to be a parent or somebody else with small humans in your life go check out the Everyday Truths Kids podcast it's where we kind of have simple conversations about faith so that families can have real conversations about faith as well really fun bite-sized episodes

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can check that out at everydaytruths.com slash kids or I'll drop the links down here and if you want episodes to come like straight to your inbox or you want cool updates about what's going on with Everyday Truths head to everydaytruths.com slash subscribe I

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thanks for hanging out today see you next time