[SPEAKER_01]: You are listening to audio from Citizens Church located in Plano, Texas.
[SPEAKER_01]: For more information about this ministry or to give to this ministry, please visit citizenschurch.com.
[SPEAKER_01]: Good morning.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you have a Bible, turn to Matthew chapter three and find verse sixteen.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to be in Matthew three.
[SPEAKER_01]: sixteen through four eleven this morning and would love if you had that right in front of you to walk through as returning to my name is jayman I'm one of the pastors here if you're new to citizens welcome we don't take for granted that everyone here is comfortable in church or take for granted that everyone here believes what we believe so if that's you just know that you're welcome here and we are honored that you're worshiping with us if you're here and you call citizens home it's good to see you
[SPEAKER_01]: We're in a series this fall called becoming like Jesus.
[SPEAKER_01]: Christ's likeness is the will of God for the people of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the point of being a Christian, that's the point of church, to form Christ's likeness in Christ's followers.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we don't want complacent Christianity.
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't want consumer Christianity.
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't want Christianity that's compartmentalized or incomplete.
[SPEAKER_01]: We want Christ like Christianity.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we want to look like Jesus in all the ways that it means to be human.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we want to think like Jesus and love like Jesus and feel like Jesus and act like Jesus.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's our series.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is week two of think like Jesus.
[SPEAKER_01]: Mike did a beautiful job last week and I just want to add to it.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you remember the longest sermon series we've ever done in the history of our church is our wisdom series.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was a year and a half long with some breaks here and there.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm hoping you remember something from that series.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you remember how we defined wisdom?
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to give you a chance to audibly finish this sentence.
[SPEAKER_01]: So lock in.
[SPEAKER_01]: Wisdom is living in
[SPEAKER_01]: He crushed it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I would have been so disappointed if nobody had seen anything or if nobody remembered that.
[SPEAKER_01]: To be wise is to live in God's world, God's way.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what the wise do.
[SPEAKER_01]: The foolish living God's world their own way, which really means they live in this world thinking it's their world.
[SPEAKER_01]: And as I started for that series, it wasn't the first time I saw this, but it really just something stuck.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a theme that I saw that extends throughout the whole story of the Bible and mark your life and marks my life.
[SPEAKER_01]: A proverb starts with this verse, listen my son to your father's instruction.
[SPEAKER_01]: Throughout the Book of Proverbs, we get lots of verses like this.
[SPEAKER_01]: Wisdom calls out.
[SPEAKER_01]: She makes her voice heard.
[SPEAKER_01]: Here's the theme.
[SPEAKER_01]: We live in a world of competing voices and who you listen to and how you hear determines how you live in the world and who you're becoming.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the words I found for it are simply this, you've heard me say this before, whoever has your ear controls your life.
[SPEAKER_01]: As much as we pride ourselves in being free thinkers and independent and self-defined individuals, everyone is a disciple of the voices they give authority in their life.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone, there is no exception.
[SPEAKER_01]: Whoever has your ear controls your life.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because our lives are shaped by our listening and our listening forms are thinking and our believing and our beliefs in our world view and nobody arrives at that all in their own.
[SPEAKER_01]: Nobody arrives at that without outside influences.
[SPEAKER_01]: So a simple example
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe you've had this experience, but sometimes a kid will come home from school or come home from somewhere else.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they'll say, Dad, did you know?
[SPEAKER_01]: And then what they say is something that's not true.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes it's crazy.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'll ask a question.
[SPEAKER_01]: Who told you that?
[SPEAKER_01]: Where did you hear that?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because it came from somewhere, it's not my voice, not mom's voice, someone else's voice.
[SPEAKER_01]: Our believing, our thinking, our living is the outworking of our listening in our hearing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And whatever voice as we give ultimate authority to in our life, they shape how we live and shape who we're becoming.
[SPEAKER_01]: Whoever has your ear controls your life.
[SPEAKER_01]: And throughout Scripture, we see this reality.
[SPEAKER_01]: You and I are born into a broken world.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're born into a Genesis three world.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that means we are born into a world of two competing voices.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the Bible will name them a couple different ways.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have the voice of the Father and the voice of the enemy.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have the wisdom of God and you have the wisdom of the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have the Spirit and you have the flesh.
[SPEAKER_01]: And all of those voices, each of those camps, once you're ear because they want to control your life.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I want to see together how Jesus handles that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because Jesus lives in that reality.
[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus is born into that world.
[SPEAKER_01]: All of his life is lived between two voices.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we see this magnified moment of it in Matthew three and then Matthew four.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what we'll see this morning, if there's just one overarching point.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thinking like Jesus means listening to the voice of the Father.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Father has the ear of the Son.
[SPEAKER_01]: The enemy tries to take it and Jesus silences him with the Father's voice.
[SPEAKER_01]: So let's walk through Matthew three, sixteen through four, eleven together.
[SPEAKER_01]: And when Jesus was baptized immediately he went up from the water and behold the heavens were open to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him.
[SPEAKER_01]: And behold, a voice from heaven said, this is my beloved son, with whom I'm well pleased.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.
[SPEAKER_01]: And after fasting, forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the Timter came and said to him, if you are the son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.
[SPEAKER_01]: But he answered, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then the devil took him to the holy city and said him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, if you are the son of God, throw yourself down for it is written.
[SPEAKER_01]: He will command his angels concerning you.
[SPEAKER_01]: And on their hands they will bear you up, plus you strike your foot against the stone.
[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus said to him again, it is, again, it is written.
[SPEAKER_01]: You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory and he said to him, all these I will give you, if you fall down and worship me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then Jesus said to him, be gone Satan.
[SPEAKER_01]: For it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then the devil left and behold angels came and were ministering to him.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a period of Jesus' life
[SPEAKER_01]: where we're hearing about his life, and he hasn't begun his full-time ministry yet.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he's not a child anymore, he's an adult, but he hasn't started his ministry as Messiah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he's not performed any recorded miracles, he hasn't called any disciples, he hasn't preached any recorded sermons.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it's a window of time, which some commentators talk about as Jesus' preparation period.
[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, right after this in your Bible, you might have a heading after the temptation.
[SPEAKER_01]: In my Bible, it says, Jesus begins his ministry.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what we just read happens before he began his ministry.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's this ministry preparation season, and it includes two events.
[SPEAKER_01]: His baptism and his temptation.
[SPEAKER_01]: And two voices speak to him.
[SPEAKER_01]: And his baptism, he hears the voice of the Father, and his temptation, he hears the voice of the enemy.
[SPEAKER_01]: And his baptism, he hears the voice of the Father.
[SPEAKER_01]: A voice from heaven said, this is my beloved son with whom I'm well pleased.
[SPEAKER_01]: In his temptation, he hears the voice of the enemy, and the temperature came and said to him, if you are the son of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Two voices, and they say similar things, they both want to talk about the kind of sun Jesus is, but they lead to vastly different ways of living in God's world.
[SPEAKER_01]: They define Jesus' sonship in two different ways.
[SPEAKER_01]: So if you look with me as we continue the story, it's as after fasting, forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.
[SPEAKER_01]: Fasting is a discipline to help us see and feel how dependent we are on God.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're always that dependent on God, fasting helps us see that.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's self-denial in order to feed spiritual hunger for God.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's what Jesus is doing.
[SPEAKER_01]: As part of his preparation for ministries that he's fasting, forty days is a really long time to fast.
[SPEAKER_01]: My wife and I watch a show on the history channel called Alone.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay?
[SPEAKER_01]: Ten people are dropped in the wilderness, some brutal wilderness somewhere, and they can take ten items with them, and whoever lasts in the wilderness, the longest wins half a million dollars.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the show.
[SPEAKER_01]: In the longer I watch the show, the more I become a survival expert from my couch.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm watching, I'm like, you can't store your food cash in the tree, the martins are gonna get that, you know?
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm saying that to a guy who made it thirty-five days in the wilderness, which is thirty-four days and twelve hours longer than I would make it and the wilderness.
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the things that you see on this show, it's like really honest about this, it's really uncomfortable to watch this, is you see how hunger affects people.
[SPEAKER_01]: Many of them go days without eating, or days only eating like berries that they can forge or something.
[SPEAKER_01]: And what you see is stomach pain,
[SPEAKER_01]: and mental fog, and extreme fatigue, hunger affects people, physically, mentally, emotionally.
[SPEAKER_01]: They start to fall apart.
[SPEAKER_01]: It just exposes how truly frail and vulnerable we are without food.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Jesus goes without food for forty days in the Judean wilderness, which is the desert.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it says he was hungry.
[SPEAKER_01]: at the end of that forty days, which likely isn't saying he wanted food.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's true after day two.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's probably describing a hunger that's a intense suffering he's experiencing from his hunger.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's human.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he's got stomach pain and extreme fatigue and mental fog and all that.
[SPEAKER_01]: The scene ends in verse eleven.
[SPEAKER_01]: It says the devil leaves and the angels come and minister to him.
[SPEAKER_01]: Why did they need to minister to him?
[SPEAKER_01]: because he's in pain, he was in need, so they came to care for his health.
[SPEAKER_01]: So Jesus is in the state of deprivation and suffering, days away from starting his ministry as the Messiah, and this kind of suffering is the experience, this deprivation, this self-denial, it marks his entire ministry.
[SPEAKER_01]: Philippians II says that the entire life of Jesus is one of sacrificial service.
[SPEAKER_01]: He existed in the form of God, didn't consider equality with God a thing to hold on to.
[SPEAKER_01]: He humbled himself and He became a servant.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's His whole life.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so the way of His ministry is self-denial and pain and sacrifice, He's experiencing that, and it's in that state that Satan comes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because we're always more vulnerable to temptation when we're uncomfortable.
[SPEAKER_01]: Verse three, the temperature came and said to him, if you are the son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.
[SPEAKER_01]: What did the Father say?
[SPEAKER_01]: You are my beloved son, and whom I'm well pleased.
[SPEAKER_01]: What does the enemy say?
[SPEAKER_01]: If you are the son of God?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, the Father says, you're my beloved son.
[SPEAKER_01]: That was at His baptism.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's full, he's not hurting then.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now he's in the desert, he's hungry, he's in pain.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so you hear the lie underneath the temptation, the true son of God shouldn't suffer hunger.
[SPEAKER_01]: A true son of God shouldn't have to live like this.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's a competing voice, but not a voice that is all lies, it's a voice that's half truths.
[SPEAKER_01]: He doesn't say, God doesn't exist, so stop fasting, because that's not crafty enough.
[SPEAKER_01]: He doesn't say, I'm the one true God, and I'll let you eat whatever you want.
[SPEAKER_01]: That life is just too easy to spot.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's okay, Son of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Doesn't God want you to eat?
[SPEAKER_01]: The Son of God doesn't suffer hunger.
[SPEAKER_01]: Doesn't God want you to be happy?
[SPEAKER_01]: The angel lie is that God's way is not the best way because God is not actually for your good.
[SPEAKER_01]: Here's some fruit.
[SPEAKER_01]: bread, eaten in secret, is pleasant, turn these stones into food.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Father speaks, you're my beloved son, and you, I'm well pleased.
[SPEAKER_01]: Satan says, if that's true, you won't have to go without.
[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus resists, and so Satan tries the same thing a different way.
[SPEAKER_01]: Look at verse five.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, if you are the son of God to throw yourself down for it is written,
[SPEAKER_01]: Just to be clear, Satan is about to quote scripture from memory, Psalm ninety-one.
[SPEAKER_01]: He will command his angels concerning you, and on their hands they will bear you up, unless you strike your foot against a stone.
[SPEAKER_01]: Children of God are rescued from danger, like a true son of God is kept safe.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so what Jesus knows is, Jesus knows there's a time coming where and he will be thrown down.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he is trusting that when that happens, God will raise him.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Satan says, we'll prove it now.
[SPEAKER_01]: Don't you want to make sure that God will rescue you, if you fall?
[SPEAKER_01]: The Father speaks to you, my beloved Son, and you, I'm well pleased.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Satan says, OK, create an artificial crisis to prove you're the kind of Son that God will rescue you.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm ninety-one says, doesn't your Father want you to stay safe?
[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus resist.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this is the third try.
[SPEAKER_01]: Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in their glory.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he said to them, all these I will give you if you fall down and worship me.
[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus will get all this.
[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus will get all the kingdoms of the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: Philippians two says, in response to Jesus's obedience, God highly exalted him and has given him the name which is above every name that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's all the kingdoms of the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: Satan offers something, the Father's already going to give him, but the Father gives it as the Son's reward for his obedience to death, even death on a cross.
[SPEAKER_01]: Satan says, I can give you all the kingdoms you want to die.
[SPEAKER_01]: The Father speaks, you're my beloved Son, and you, I'm well pleased, and Satan says, a son of God should not have to suffer like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Worship me, and you can be a king without a cross.
[SPEAKER_01]: So here's the temptation.
[SPEAKER_01]: Be the kind of son
[SPEAKER_01]: that is never hungry, that is always safe and avoids the cross.
[SPEAKER_01]: There is God's voice in God's way.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a son who is confident in God's pleasure and acceptance and willing to endure pain and death to obey the Father's will.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then there's the enemy's voice in the enemy's way.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a painless path to approval and power and control, but it means giving your ears to him and disobeying God.
[SPEAKER_01]: And all of this is pointed at Jesus' very existence in the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: All of it is directed at defining what kind of son and savior and king and Messiah he would be, which way would he go.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, see Jesus, he's entering into the conflict that marks all of humanity.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's entering into this world of two competing voices.
[SPEAKER_01]: Up to this point, everyone has failed.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone has failed.
[SPEAKER_01]: Every other human has given at least for a portion of their life.
[SPEAKER_01]: Every other human has given their ear to the voice that's not God's.
[SPEAKER_01]: Genesis III, verse four says this.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the serpent said to the woman, he will not surely die.
[SPEAKER_01]: For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God knowing good and evil.
[SPEAKER_01]: So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was at light to the eyes and that the tree was desired to make one wise.
[SPEAKER_01]: She took of its fruit in eight, and she also gave some to her husband who is with her and he ate, is where it starts for humanity.
[SPEAKER_01]: The voice, the same pattern, the voice of the Father spoke about humanity in Genesis one.
[SPEAKER_01]: They heard the voice of the Father, and what did he say?
[SPEAKER_01]: Very good.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love the Jesus storybook Bible.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes I read it just by myself.
[SPEAKER_01]: It says this in Genesis about the Genesis one story.
[SPEAKER_01]: God loved them with all his heart, and they were lovely because he loved them.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the reality that Adam and Eve live in.
[SPEAKER_01]: Made in God's image, made for God's love.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Genesis three sentences, okay?
[SPEAKER_01]: But don't you want your eyes open?
[SPEAKER_01]: Surely God doesn't want you to not know.
[SPEAKER_01]: Surely he wouldn't keep something from you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, fine, you're like God.
[SPEAKER_01]: But if you had this, the thing he's keeping from you, you would really be like him.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the voice of God is, you are very good.
[SPEAKER_01]: Follow my voice.
[SPEAKER_01]: The voice of the enemy is, you can be even better if you listen to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's the story of humanity.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not that one, this is so important.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not that one voice offers what's right and the other voice offers what's wrong.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's true, but it's too simple.
[SPEAKER_01]: If said this could make me wise, wisdom is about determining right and wrong.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's about determining good and evil.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the temptation is not just disobeying God but redefining good.
[SPEAKER_01]: so that you do evil, believing you are doing right, the judges refrain, throughout the book of judges, everyone did what was right in their own eyes.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the fight for the heart of humanity is between these two voices and each voice claims to offer what is good.
[SPEAKER_01]: Proverbs nine one, Wisdom calls out.
[SPEAKER_01]: She calls from the highest place in the city, and she invites everyone to enter her home and find life.
[SPEAKER_01]: She's not the only one who speaks.
[SPEAKER_01]: Proverbs nine, thirteen, folly calls out from the highest place in the city, and invites everyone into her home to find life.
[SPEAKER_01]: Both present as Wisdom both offer a way to live in the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: Both claim to be good, one leads to life and one leads to death.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the Proverbs Lindsay read for us just names this, in such helpful language.
[SPEAKER_01]: Trust in the Lord, Proverbs three, five.
[SPEAKER_01]: Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding in all your ways, acknowledge Him, and He will make straight your paths be not wise in your own eyes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Fear the Lord, turn away from evil, be not wise in your own eyes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do not define for yourself what is good and right, humble yourself under the voice of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Turn away from foolish voices, obey God's voice.
[SPEAKER_01]: In the story of the people in the Old Testament is largely a story of people who failed to do this.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a song where God is lamenting the disobedience of His people, Psalm Eighty-One.
[SPEAKER_01]: Listen, my people, and I will administer you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Israel, if you would only listen to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: There must not be a strange God among you.
[SPEAKER_01]: You must not bow down to a foreign God.
[SPEAKER_01]: I am the Lord, your God, who brought you up for the land of Egypt.
[SPEAKER_01]: Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But my people did not listen to my voice.
[SPEAKER_01]: Israel did not obey me.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts to follow their own plans.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's terrifying.
[SPEAKER_01]: If only my people would listen to me and Israel would follow my ways.
[SPEAKER_01]: The title on that song and my Bible is, oh, that my people would listen to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is the story of the people, the Old Testament.
[SPEAKER_01]: My people did not listen to my voice, so I gave them over to follow their own plans.
[SPEAKER_01]: I will give them what they want, so that they might see that what they want is not what they were made for.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the question that lingers over your life, beloved.
[SPEAKER_01]: Started in Genesis three extends all the way now in the questions which voice will you listen to, who's going to get your ears, which wisdom will you choose?
[SPEAKER_01]: We're living in this.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're born into this conflict.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not saying Satan's bothering you.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know how all that works.
[SPEAKER_01]: I imagine these bothering more important people.
[SPEAKER_01]: No offense.
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like that's probably how it works.
[SPEAKER_01]: But Ephesians two talks about the world, the flesh and the devil.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's this unholy trinity that wants to sabotage your life.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's spiritual, the devil demons.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's internal, the flesh, and it's environmental, the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: And collectively, that voice lies to you about what's good and leads you away from God, entices you to live in God's world.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're away to be wise in your own eyes.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we, me, you.
[SPEAKER_01]: like Adam and Eve, and like Israel, and like all foolish humanity, have not listened like we were made to listen.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is what Jesus steps into in his temptation, not just his temptation, but we see it magnified for us here, facing the same choice that Adam and Eve face, the same choice that Old Testament is real faced, the same choice that Proverbs nine names in the same choice that we face.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know what happens?
[SPEAKER_01]: Look at verse four.
[SPEAKER_01]: He answered, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Verse seven, again in his written, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test.
[SPEAKER_01]: Verse ten, then Jesus said to him, be gone Satan for it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve, then the devil left him.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the angels came and were ministering to him, where everyone else has failed Jesus is faithful.
[SPEAKER_01]: where everyone else is foolish, Jesus is wise, where everyone else gives their ear away, Jesus listens to the voice of the Father.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hebrews four, fifteen and sixteen says this, it's such good news.
[SPEAKER_01]: For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in every way as we are yet without sin.
[SPEAKER_01]: Therefore,
[SPEAKER_01]: Let us approach the throne of grace with boldness so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus lived in God's world, God's way, tempted in every way, but sinless every time, always listen to the Father's voice, and then he, sinless wisdom, dies on the cross, raises in victory over sin and death to silence hell and make a way for you to hear from the throne of grace.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know what's beautiful?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because of Jesus' obedient life, selfless death, and victorious resurrection, what the Father says to the Son and His baptism, He says to you right now, Christian, you are my beloved child.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you, I'm well pleased.
[SPEAKER_01]: He restores what was lost in the garden.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the Father says, you're very good.
[SPEAKER_01]: You are lovely because I love you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hebrews calls Jesus our great, high priest who cares about our weakness.
[SPEAKER_01]: What do priests do?
[SPEAKER_01]: They speak to God on behalf of the people.
[SPEAKER_01]: So Jesus did not just silence the voice of the enemy in his temptation.
[SPEAKER_01]: He speaks a better word than the voice of the enemy over you right now.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is good news.
[SPEAKER_01]: A friend of mine said it this way to me a few days ago.
[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus is way better at being a Savior than you are at being a sinner.
[SPEAKER_01]: Praise God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Here's the point.
[SPEAKER_01]: You are born into a world of competing voices.
[SPEAKER_01]: two wisdoms, two ways, and this is not moralism.
[SPEAKER_01]: We are not looking at this first and foremost to see how we can get some helpful tips from Jesus on how to listen to the voice of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not get better at listening to positive influences in your life.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, we commit cosmic treason.
[SPEAKER_01]: All of us.
[SPEAKER_01]: We give our ears to things that are not God because our hearts are far from God.
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't look to Jesus' temptation and think, oh, I can do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I can't.
[SPEAKER_01]: He did.
[SPEAKER_01]: Tempt it in every way as we are, yet without sin, only ever listened to the Father's voice.
[SPEAKER_01]: And because he did,
[SPEAKER_01]: because he did, and because he died, and because he rose, there is mercy and grace to help in my time of need in your time of need.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the gospel invitation is not just be forgiven of sin.
[SPEAKER_01]: The gospel invitation is because, and only because of our merciful and obedient Savior, Lord, and brother, you can give your ears back to the Father.
[SPEAKER_01]: Listen to His voice.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can live a life of listening to the voice that you were made to hear.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what comes next only makes sense to a people who have heard and responded to the gospel.
[SPEAKER_01]: Have a question, Christian.
[SPEAKER_01]: Who's voice are you listening to?
[SPEAKER_01]: Who has your ear?
[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus did not succeed where we fail that we could continue ignoring the voice of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Be not wise in your own eyes.
[SPEAKER_01]: Fear the Lord.
[SPEAKER_01]: As a loved and forgiven people, we want to live in God's world the Jesus way.
[SPEAKER_01]: We want to learn to think like Jesus by listening to the voice of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it means two things.
[SPEAKER_01]: They don't want to highlight.
[SPEAKER_01]: Verse four, he answered, is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but every word that comes from the mouth of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Verse seven, again in his written, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test.
[SPEAKER_01]: Verse ten, then Jesus said to him, be gone Satan for his written, you shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.
[SPEAKER_01]: What is all that?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the Bible.
[SPEAKER_01]: What book of the Bible is that?
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you want to know?
[SPEAKER_01]: Deuteronomy, I think I heard Deuteronomy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus is quoting scripture from memory.
[SPEAKER_01]: He listens to the voice of God by knowing the word of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: You saw this coming.
[SPEAKER_01]: We hear God's voice through God's word.
[SPEAKER_01]: God speaks, three ways.
[SPEAKER_01]: God speaks to his word, his people and his spirit and his word is the standard by which we measure whether the other two are actually his voice.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's my application from last week to hear the voice of God, we need the Bible, we need to know the Bible, we need to read the Bible, we need to study the Bible.
[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus could have just quoted Himself in response to Satan.
[SPEAKER_01]: John one says, Jesus is the word of God, the word made flesh.
[SPEAKER_01]: So he did not need these due to our enemy passages.
[SPEAKER_01]: They weren't his only option for responding to Satan, but what he models for us is what it looks like to know God's voice.
[SPEAKER_01]: When we know his word, we think his thoughts.
[SPEAKER_01]: We hear him.
[SPEAKER_01]: So this hear me.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is about the right information.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's about right doctrine.
[SPEAKER_01]: We cannot listen to a voice that we don't know, and there is only one true God who speaks.
[SPEAKER_01]: We cannot know the voice of that God apart from his word.
[SPEAKER_01]: The God who speaks to us is the historic God of the Christian faith handed down over centuries through his word, preserved by his people.
[SPEAKER_01]: So much to say here.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let me choose one thing to press.
[SPEAKER_01]: That means you have to make time for it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Make time.
[SPEAKER_01]: To know God's Word.
[SPEAKER_01]: Make time to study God's Word.
[SPEAKER_01]: Make time to read God's Word.
[SPEAKER_01]: Make time to experience God's Word in Christian community.
[SPEAKER_01]: Make time for God's Word.
[SPEAKER_01]: We are inundated with information and content, inundated like no other generation in human history.
[SPEAKER_01]: It reminded me of this quote from Pastor and California named Brett McCrack and I've quoted this a few times.
[SPEAKER_01]: Our world has more and more information, but less and less wisdom.
[SPEAKER_01]: more data, less clarity, more stimulation, less synthesis, more distraction, less stillness, more pontificating, less pondering, more opinion, less research, more speaking, less listening, more to look at, less to see, more amusement, less joy, and then the line that just stings is true.
[SPEAKER_01]: There is more, but we are less, and we all feel it.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's more but we're less.
[SPEAKER_01]: And what that may mean for some of us is we need to commit to the inverse of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: We will become more only when we consume less.
[SPEAKER_01]: Take a consumption audit of your life and consider how much of that is the word of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: How much of it is Scripture reading and Bible study and spending time knowing the voice of God through His word.
[SPEAKER_01]: to listen to God's voice from most of us means like knowing what he sounds like for most of us that when we turn the volume down on other things.
[SPEAKER_01]: Look, friends, I think actually doing this in our day is not simply about avoiding the objectively evil voices that distort our mind.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's also avoiding the morally neutral ones that simply steal our attention.
[SPEAKER_01]: I am on track to consume so much football content this fall, so much.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I watch games.
[SPEAKER_01]: I rewatch games that I already watched.
[SPEAKER_01]: I listen to podcasts.
[SPEAKER_01]: I read articles.
[SPEAKER_01]: And here's what's true.
[SPEAKER_01]: None of that content is going to make me look more like Jesus.
[SPEAKER_01]: None of it is going to help me hear the voice of God, especially because the teams I root for.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just going to hurt.
[SPEAKER_01]: And some of it's a joke.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some of it's not.
[SPEAKER_01]: The morally neutral things that get our attention can be just as dangerous.
[SPEAKER_01]: because they're not bad, but they're not best.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like if you have time for your fantasy league, you have time to learn about God through his word.
[SPEAKER_01]: We need less reels and more scripture.
[SPEAKER_01]: Giving our ear to God is about making time for his word.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's not enough.
[SPEAKER_01]: See something in this conversation.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not enough in what comes next is comforting.
[SPEAKER_01]: Both Jesus and Satan believe in God.
[SPEAKER_01]: Both Jesus and Satan, no scripture.
[SPEAKER_01]: Both Jesus and Satan can quote God's word from memory.
[SPEAKER_01]: Satan quotes Psalm anyone.
[SPEAKER_01]: Both know the voice of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: What's the difference?
[SPEAKER_01]: Only one of them relates to God's voice as a son.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thinking like Jesus is not simply right doctrine and true facts.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not just intellectual, it's intimate, it's relational.
[SPEAKER_01]: A.W.
[SPEAKER_01]: Tozer,
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know if you've ever heard me quote him before.
[SPEAKER_01]: He says this theological knowledge is knowledge about God.
[SPEAKER_01]: While this is indispensable, it is not sufficient.
[SPEAKER_01]: It bears the same relation to man's spiritual need as a well does to the need of his physical body.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is not the rock-lined pit for which the dusty traveler longs, but the sweet, cool water that flows out from it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is not intellectual knowledge about God that quenches man's ancient heart thirst, but the very person and presence of God himself.
[SPEAKER_01]: These come to us through Christian doctrine, but they are more than doctrine.
[SPEAKER_01]: Christian truth is designed to lead us to God, not serve as a substitute for God.
[SPEAKER_01]: There is a way to get the knowledge right and miss the point, to get the well and miss the water.
[SPEAKER_01]: The heavens part and the Father does not say, this is my perfect theologian and whom I'm well pleased.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's true.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just not the same as this is my beloved Son.
[SPEAKER_01]: So to think like Jesus is to listen to the Father's voice, not simply to get it right, but to get Him, to get Him.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's close this way.
[SPEAKER_01]: God's speaking today.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, to you, the voice of the Father's speaking.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is not everything he says, but here are a few things he has said from his word.
[SPEAKER_01]: You are my beloved child.
[SPEAKER_01]: You are his beloved child, Christian.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can trust me with your life.
[SPEAKER_01]: Listen to and obey my voice.
[SPEAKER_01]: the Father saying all of those things this morning.
[SPEAKER_01]: You are His beloved child.
[SPEAKER_01]: Jesus was faithful where we fail so we can come to the throne of grace, in Christ you are lovely because He loves you.
[SPEAKER_01]: You can trust Him with your life.
[SPEAKER_01]: The enemy is lying.
[SPEAKER_01]: He's lying.
[SPEAKER_01]: God is not holding out on you.
[SPEAKER_01]: There is not better bread somewhere else.
[SPEAKER_01]: God is for you and for your good even when it hurts.
[SPEAKER_01]: Listen to and obey his voice, live in his world the Jesus way, knowing his word, give him your ears and giving him your ears, give him all your obedience and giving him all your obedience, give him your very life.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I want to invite us to pray these things together and praying these things you are thinking the thoughts of Jesus.
[SPEAKER_01]: Would you pray with me?
[SPEAKER_01]: Would you pray, friend?
[SPEAKER_00]: I am a beloved child of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have all of our right thinking.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have all of our right doctrine.
[SPEAKER_01]: We don't want to stop it the well.
[SPEAKER_01]: We want the water to know you God.
[SPEAKER_01]: So can you pray this friend?
[SPEAKER_01]: Can you think the very thoughts of Jesus in prayer?
[SPEAKER_01]: He has secured this for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I am a beloved child of God.
[SPEAKER_00]: I trust you with my life.
[SPEAKER_01]: Trust your ways.
[SPEAKER_01]: I trust that you know what you're doing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Would you pray that?
[SPEAKER_01]: I trust you with my life.
[SPEAKER_01]: There is no other voice that wants better for me than you.
[SPEAKER_01]: Heavenly Father.
[SPEAKER_01]: I will listen, I will listen to and obey your voice, whatever you ask.
[SPEAKER_01]: help us so God to keep thinking these things.
[SPEAKER_01]: As we listen to your voice, I'm a beloved child of God.
[SPEAKER_01]: I trust you with my life.
[SPEAKER_01]: I will listen to and obey your voice.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you, Jesus, that you only and always thought those things faithfully.
[SPEAKER_01]: Help us.
[SPEAKER_01]: Help us, Lord Jesus.
[SPEAKER_01]: I confess God that I am far too easily pulled away far too easily pulled away Lord God.
[SPEAKER_01]: I confess that there is an appetite in my heart for trivial things.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I thank you, God, that in every temptation where I have failed, Jesus has stood faithful and victorious.
[SPEAKER_01]: So here you God, your people, hear your voice, help us.
[SPEAKER_01]: Cover our failures, cultivate in us a faithfulness like our Savior.
[SPEAKER_01]: Amen.