A few years ago we had a teen leader in our youth group that became student body president of her school. In her first few months of her leading in that position, she was doing a lot of work, more than you would expect from someone in that role. One day she was telling me about it, and how much work it was. I asked her if anyone had volunteered to help, she said they had, but it was better if she did it by herself.
A common strength of good leaders is that they’re really good at their jobs. They can put together amazing work, because they have innate talents that help them produce good quality things. But that strength is also a weakness. When leaders take upon themselves everything, they can produce good work for a short period of time. Eventually the work load will become too much, which will lead to a drop in quality, and eventual burn out. Just a few months on the job of student body president, along with her schooling, and youth leadership was taking its toll. I gave her this advice, get other reliable people to help. True the quality of work will most likely go down, but it will produce two results: first you won’t be as stressed and overworked, and second it will give others the opportunity to shine. The difference between good leaders and enduring leaders is that they get others to use their strengths to strength everyone else’s.
It’s true sometimes as the leader you just have to power through and get things done, but the more time you build up others, means that you will have to power through less and less, and you will eventually produce better and better results. Reliance on other people is a hard concept to implement in our lives, but it is one that we were created to have.
This idea of reliance that brings us to our fifth week in our Beyond Series where we’re going to move back into the Gospels and look at the Gospel of Luke chapter 4, starting in verse 1. And as we open up to Luke 4:1, let’s look back on the past four weeks of our beyond series.
In our first week, we looked at how, when we accept Jesus’ as our Savior, we are moved from and old life, where sin had us in bondage, to a new life, where the power of sin is broken. It’s in this new life that we are to live today. And so we talked about how trusting in God for tomorrow is key to living in the new creation today. This trusting in God for tomorrow manifests itself in allowing God to change our plans as he determines they need to be changed. In other words, we can make plans, but we must be okay if God changes those plans, and if we are, we are better trusting in God for tomorrow, because those plans are also up for him to change.
Then in our second week, we looked at living in grace-filled relationships. If we are saved by the grace of God, then we have a model of what it means to extend grace to other people. The opposite of grace-filled relationships are legalistic relationships. These relationships require people to meet a certain standard before we will love then. But grace-filled relationships are based on who God is and not who the other person is. And so, we are to love others, because we were first loved by God. Now we can still correct, and stand for godly truth, but the goal has to be fully restored relationships.
Following that we talked about how to live this new creation life. We looked at John 15 and saw three aspects of what we need to do. The first aspect was being okay with God’s discipline in our lives. If we are his, he will discipline us, and that should both encourage us and get us to do better. The second aspect was relying on Jesus for everything. It’s coming to a point where we realize that when we try things on are own, they will amount to zero eternal production. Instead we must rely on Jesus so that we can see eternal results. We do this relying through the final aspect which is putting into practice God’s Word. We must actually do what God says, in order to live in the new creation. Adam and Eve did not do what God said and so fell into sin that we have all been dealing with ever since. As new creations brought out of the bondage of sin by God, we must now do what he says.
This led us into last week. The problem with doing what God says to do, is that we will falter and sin at times. We will have victories and we will have defeats in our new creation lives. Just like a baby has victories when it learns to stand and walk, we too are in our infancy when it comes to experiencing this new creation living. And so, we must not listen to the voices or thoughts that tell us that we are no longer accepted by God, or that we are not good enough for God. As we saw last week, if we are moving, even in small steps, away from our old self, there can be assurance of salvation. But not only that, if we also sorrow over the fact that we have sinned against God, then again we can have an assurance of our salvation.
Now it’s with the mindset that we will fail in this new creation life, and that our salvation can be assured that we move beyond doing all of this in our own strength. I hope that in this new creation life, you see a back and forth. Trust and grace paired with failure and being lifted back up. And in all of this we must remember that we are a recipient of God’s work in our lives, and at every step he is the one that is bringing us to closer himself. And so, we open up to Luke chapter 4 verse 1, where we find Jesus fasting and being approached by satan who seeks to sway Jesus to his side. Let’s read together Luke chapter 4 starting in verse 1.
1 Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, 2 where for forty days he was tempted by the devil. He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them he was hungry.
3 The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread.”
4 Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone.’”
5 The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. 6 And he said to him, “I will give you all their authority and splendor; it has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. 7 If you worship me, it will all be yours.”
8 Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.’”
9 The devil led him to Jerusalem and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. “If you are the Son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down from here. 10 For it is written: “‘He will command his angels concerning you to guard you carefully; 11 they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’”
12 Jesus answered, “It is said: ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”
13 When the devil had finished all this tempting, he left him until an opportune time.
There’s a lot going on in this passage of Scripture. From a parallel of Adam and Eve in Eden, to satan trying to change Jesus’ mission, to the fulfillment of the Mosaic covenant in Jesus. But for our purposes today, we want take two things away from this passage in the light of not living the new creation life in our own power.
Picture if you will, the Scriptures put forth, and Jesus reinforces this understanding that he is both fully God, and fully human. We cannot go into all the reasons or verses that show this right now, but let’s just take that as a starting point.
So being fully God and fully man in this moment we see a couple of things. First, Jesus has been out in the wilderness for forty days and he is hungry. I know from personal experience, going even a few days without food does not put you in the best of situations. But even before this we see that he went into the wilderness led by the Holy Spirit. This is important because every part that follows is based on this reality. Jesus is led into the wilderness and in that time, satan takes the opportunity to try make Jesus fall as he had gotten Adam and Eve to do.
We are given three temptations, with Jesus responding in the same way every time by quoting Scripture. Jesus says, “it is written” twice, and “it is said” once. When confronted with temptation to rely on himself, which he could because he is fully God, instead he relies on what has been previously reveled in the pages of Scripture.
In this short passage, we see Jesus not rely on himself four times. First he relies on the Holy Spirit to direct him into the wilderness. Then Jesus relies three times on the revealed Word of God.
And you know what’s great about what Jesus relies on here? You and I, who have put our trust into Jesus as our Savior, also have access to both of the things Jesus relied on.
The first thing that we see is, Jesus relied on the Holy Spirit to direct his path. Peter, in his first sermon after Jesus’ ascension to heaven, reaches back to the Old Testament to the prophet Joel and said this in Acts 2:17-18, “In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams. 18 Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy.”
Jesus said of the Holy Spirit in John 16:7, “But very truly I tell you, it is for your good that I am going away. Unless I go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you.”
Paul states this about believers, in 1st Corinthians 3:16, “16 Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst?”
Our reliance on the Holy Spirit who dwells with us and who is in us, cannot be understated. If we try to live out this new creation life on our own, we we fail time and time again. Which will lead us to always questioning, am I really saved? When we give up and say, okay God you move me where you want me, it might be to a wilderness where hard times are ahead. But if he leads we must follow.
The second thing we see Jesus rely on is the revealed Word of God. In our prosperous Western World, anyone of us can grab a copy of the Bible. We have Bibles at our welcome table, we have Bibles on our phones, the Gideons give out free New Testaments. You can get a Bible in any size, font, binding, and translation you want. The Word of God is accessible to anyone that would want it. And as believers we should desire to have the Word of God in our lives. I’m not telling you we have to memorize every verse of every chapter of every book, but we must know the Word of God well enough to combat the enemies of God when they come against us to tempts us to walk away from him.
Over and over in the Scriptures the call to God’s Word appears.
In the first chapter of the Joshua’s book, God speaks to him saying, “8 Keep this Book of the Law always on your lips; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful (Joshua 1:8).”
Psalm 119:11 states, “I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.”
In his second letter to Timothy, Paul writes, “14 But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, 15 and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work (3:14-17).”
Our need to live this new creation life in the power of the Holy Sprit and our need to internalize God’s Word is extremely important if we are to see a rapid moving away from the sin that so easily entraps us, and into the new creation life that Jesus has saved us to experience.
It’s in the life of Jesus, as he is in the wilderness where we see both his reliance on the Holy Spirit and God’s Word, that we see the victory over satan. But it’s in Jesus’ exit out of the wilderness that we get to see the result of what happens when we rely on both the Holy Spirit and God’s Word. In verse 14 we read, “Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside.”
When we follow the example of Jesus, relying on the Holy Spirit’s direction and internalizing God’s Word, the new creation life that we are called to live, will be lived in the power of the Spirit.
It’s at that point where we will truly live as Paul stated he was living in Galatians 2:20, “20 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
This is the verse that we have been pointing back to, time and time again throughout this series. This is new creation living, not I but Christ. Not I but Jesus who died. Not I but the Holy Spirit who was sent.
The greatest failings that we will experience, is when we try to live this new creation life on my own. That will never work. Being fully God and fully human, Jesus could have easily done everything in his own power, yet, he gave us the example by which to live: in reliance of the Holy Spirit, and with God’s Word internalized in us.
So this week I want to challenge you to live in the power of the Holy Spirit and internalize God’s Word in your life.
Start off your day with a prayer that goes something like this, “Lord I want to live the new creation life that you have saved me to live, help me to rely on your Holy Spirit to be led however he will lead me today.”
Then I want to challenge you to memorize one of these two verses: Proverbs 3:5-6, Psalm 37:5. These both speak to relying on God instead of ourselves.
Let us be the people that God has saved us to be. People that are following the Spirit’s direction, and walking in the way of God’s Word. Amen.
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