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Teaching podcast from the Eagle Community Church of Christ in Mont Belvieu, TX.
Hey, friends. This is John Guenter with the Eagle Community Church of Christ. Thanks so much for listening to our podcast. This week, you're listening to another sermon in our series on the holy spirit. We are in the 2nd week of our, spirit and messiah as we look at, really the beginning of Jesus' ministry and go into his temptation right after his baptism.
John Gunter:So I think there's a lot of of kinda neat things to learn here and, just looking forward to, to finishing up this series and I hope you'll continue to the end. We only have a few more weeks. So, keep listening and if we can do anything for you, let us know. Thanks.
John Gunter:Will be about the Holy Spirit and so as we've come into the New Testament, we're gonna cover some, some fun things there. And, one Sunday, I believe it's August or August 27th, I think. Somebody make sure that's even a Sunday. It just came out of my brain. We'll use that as kind of a vision, Sunday to talk about, talk about our church and, kind of, going forward and how that what that looks like.
John Gunter:And so, really excited to, to talk about all these things. So, I hope you've, enjoyed the the series. I know it's a a longer series probably than you even expected. Again, I have had a lot of people say, Well, this wasn't what I expected. But nobody has said what they have expected.
John Gunter:So, I guess our expectations are what they are. Last week we finished with a Scripture very important to us From Luke 3 starting in verse 21, When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized too. And as he was praying, heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, you are my son whom I love. With you I am well pleased.' Now, Jesus himself was about 30 years old when he began his ministry.
John Gunter:He was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph, the son of Heli. And, of course, kind of implied there is, well, we thought we knew who his daddy was. But Jesus turned out to be much more than that, did he not? And we praise god for that but right after this this instance, right after this baptism, how many of you remember the day of your baptism? Was it a pleasant experience?
John Gunter:I I can still remember going home. We had a 1986 Chevy Suburban, and I remember pulling back into the driveway after I had been baptized, and it was almost like this inner talk, this inner thought, okay, John, Now you gotta live it. That's that's the I remember the I remember the thought. I was so giddy, and I wanted to share it with everybody, and I thought, okay. I have pledged to do this.
John Gunter:Now I am going to do it. But what I do when I, talk to people, especially as they're about to be baptized or, you know, to pledge allegiance in a in a sense to God that this is my life is gonna be about God now is I really bring a warning. Because how many of you have experienced the time I'm closest to god is right when Satan wants to try and get me? The the time I'm trying to draw close to god, god, I want you more in my life. I want to have this relationship with you.
John Gunter:That's the time Satan wants to show up and derail all of that. Something's gonna happen. It's Murphy's Law. If it can go wrong, it will go wrong. And then it's like, oh my goodness.
John Gunter:What is happening here? And that's not unique to us. That's exactly what happens in the life of Jesus because as soon as all of this happens, he comes out of the water, he is, has the Holy Spirit rest on him. Luke tells us this in Luke 4. Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, as we just saw, left the Jordan and was led by the spirit into the wilderness, where for 40 days he was tempted by the devil.
John Gunter:He ate nothing during those days, and at the end of them, he was hungry. The devil said to him, if you are the Son of God, tell this stone to become bread. Jesus answered, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone. The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And he said to him, I will give you all their authority and splendor.
John Gunter:It has been given to me, and I can give it to anyone I want to. If you worship me, it will be it will all be yours. Jesus answered, it is written, 'Worship the Lord your God and serve Him only.' 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. For it is written, he will command his angels concerning you to guard you carefully.
John Gunter:They will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone. Jesus answered, it is said, do not put the Lord your God to the test. When the devil had finished all this tempting, catch this, he left him until an opportune time. My goodness. That's some foreshadowing, isn't it?
John Gunter:You could see that play out in a movie, right now. But what I want you to know is in this time of Jesus, faithfulness to god was not just something you claim. Faithfulness to god was proven in the midst of some kind of, you know, going through a trial in your life, got some kind of thing that you've got to get through, and that's exactly what we see with Jesus. Okay. I'm being baptized, and we think as an example for us, right?
John Gunter:He didn't have any sins to be cleansed up, but probably as an example and and just saying, I am aligning myself with god's will. My life is for god. And so, he says that, but you ever notice that we can be full of talk sometimes? When the rubber meets the road, what do we do? Mike Tyson has a, a famous quote now, everyone has a plan until they get what?
John Gunter:Punched in the mouth, till something happens. That's what we see with Jesus. Okay. I'm aligning myself with with God, and immediately, He has taken He has taken into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan. And notice that Satan comes at him at the most opportune time, not for Jesus, but for Satan.
John Gunter:And so, what we see is Jesus is led out there, and He is fasting for 40 days. I don't know what kind of condition I would be in at 40 days in, but I probably wouldn't want you guys talking to me at that point. And that's when Satan comes to talk. That's when Satan tries to get Jesus when he is weak, tired, and hungry. He really tries to thwart God's plan before it really takes off.
John Gunter:But as I've thought about this story over the years, I've always thought about it as Jesus versus Satan. You thought about it that way? But the more I've studied it, as I've studied it this week, I think Jesus is not alone. Scripture just told us that. Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, went into the desert.
John Gunter:And so I think, as we read this account, Jesus is not standing there, my will against Satan. Jesus is standing there with the power of god's spirit with him. And that's what he chooses in the moment, not to do what Satan wants, but to follow the will of god. What I want to point out is something very interesting, that's happening right here in these verses. You remember we talked about the expectation of the time was for God to show up and do something big.
John Gunter:Again, they were under Roman rule and they're like, Yeah. We're back from captivity, but we're still not even in power. We want god to show up, and their expectation was that god was going to restore Israel. He was gonna make things right that were not going, that were going wrong in the moment. But look at this.
John Gunter:I've I've titled this, does this sound familiar? Because it will if it didn't already. Number 1, you ever heard of a divine leading into the wilderness in scripture? You heard of that before? Okay.
John Gunter:Number 2, what about 40? 40 days, 40 years. Number 3, Israel as God's Son, God's Son now in the wilderness. What about the testing of Jesus or the testing of Israel? And number 5, Israel rebelled and grieved the Holy Spirit, but Jesus is full of the Holy Spirit.
John Gunter:This could bring up the idea of the exodus. The Israelites wandering around in the desert, and like we've talked with all the anointing of the Holy Spirit, though God anointed people with His Spirit, it doesn't mean that they did everything perfectly. And so, what god is doing in Jesus is showing you, showing all of us, this is the right way to do it. This is the right way to live, and he does so in a way that points them all back to the Exodus, which is so important. That god, in this moment, leads them out of captivity and leads them to a land that he has promised.
John Gunter:And what we see here is that God is faithful. And notice, even the, the tests are similar. The tests that are given to Jesus by Satan, he says here in Deuteronomy 83, notice this, He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. Calling back to Deuteronomy 83, from Deuteronomy 6, Hear, oh Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is how many? 1.
John Gunter:Worship Him, right? Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down, and when you get up.
John Gunter:Maybe we ought to have this scripture on our mind when we've got road rage. What do you think? When someone's in the passing lane going 55 into 75, we don't walk along the road as much, but god is 1. Think about him. Talk about him to your friends, your family, your kids.
John Gunter:Take it with you wherever you go. 1 and only god and and finally, do not put the Lord your God to the test as you did at Mass. And you see how through this testing, we are hearkening back to other things that have happened in Scripture. Again, going from, you did it imperfectly here, but Jesus will show you the way. I want you to notice that Satan in this moment, as he is tempting, Jesus, did not deny that Jesus was the son of god, but he does try to get him to think about himself.
John Gunter:Do you notice that in the temptations? Why don't you think about yourself in this? Because let's think about that for just a second. What can Satan do if he gets Jesus to only think about himself? If I am just thinking about myself, if I'm only thinking about how hungry I am, how much am I thinking about you and what you need?
John Gunter:How much am I thinking about what god wants or god desires for my life? Because if I'm thinking about myself, that's all that matters. You ever been there? Yeah. We're all pretty good at that.
John Gunter:If we come in 1 Sunday and we said, we're going to work on thinking about ourselves, we'd all be experts walking out of here, wouldn't we? That's what Satan tries to do. You are hungry. Why don't you have some food? Maybe we can tap into Jesus' ambition.
John Gunter:Do you really want what God wants? Because I've been given all the authority here to hand all of these things over to you. How ambitious are you? That almost sounds American, doesn't it? Why don't you go out and get as much as you can, pursue all of these other things?
John Gunter:And that's what Satan offers to Jesus, and he says, no, thank you. And then finally, testing God. This idea Satan throws out that that God will save you if you do this. But Jesus says, there's no need to test God. There's there's kind of this idea that that my faith will fall apart if God doesn't save me from every single thing that happens.
John Gunter:We might not think about that again until something bad happens in our lives and then we're, well, God, why didn't you stop that? Why didn't you step in? But faith in God means I am faithful to God. I have faith in God through all of these things, through all the trials, all the hardships. God does not need to save me from everything for me to believe in Him, for me to trust in Him and who He is.
John Gunter:Because last week, as we talked about, god shows Ezekiel dry bones. You know what dry bones mean? Dry bones means they weren't there yesterday as a human being just about to go. I wish y'all been here in class. We had a great discussion on this.
John Gunter:This is not somebody that's just fallen over and maybe they're passed out. This is skeleton stuff. This is Halloween skeleton in the corner trying to scare people stuff. And god shows even at this point, he has the power and ability to breathe life back into those dry bones. And that brings some kind of courage to me to think about the way God has me no matter what happens, no matter who might take my life, no matter how I might go, God has me.
John Gunter:And that's what Jesus knew. When Jesus left the wilderness, He returned in this way in verse 14, Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the what? Baptism, He received the Holy Spirit. It says, He left in the spirit, and He returns in the spirit. You think the spirit was important to Jesus' ministry?
John Gunter:Say yes. Absolutely. That He walked, and I said this a few weeks ago, as Jesus went around doing ministry, everything that Jesus did, I believe you can say for certain He did in the power of the Holy Spirit. He wasn't some superhuman walking around just with all this power, but He relied on the power that God had given the Holy Spirit into His life. But again, and news about him spread through the whole countryside.
John Gunter:He was teaching in their synagogues, and everyone praised him. He went to Nazareth where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day, he went to the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling in, he found the place where it was written, the spirit of the lord is on me. Right?
John Gunter:So, Isaiah said it and Jesus finds that spot and said, this is where I'm gonna read. He says, the spirit of the lord is on me because he has anointed me. He's given me this to do a job, to proclaim the good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. Jesus left in the spirit.
John Gunter:He came back in the spirit. Jesus ministered in the spirit. He says through all of this, and we we read the rest of this couple of weeks ago, that he gets done and he says, this has been fulfilled today in your hearing. You know that thing you read about in your scriptures all of your life? You have just witnessed it happening today, that God has sent the anointed one to make things right, and that's exactly what Jesus planned to do.
John Gunter:And I know sometimes when we think about Jesus' life, we may think of it in a way that, Man, I just can't live that way. Because we know ourselves, don't we? We know our temptations. We know the ways that, Man, it's going good this week, and something happened. Satan got me at just the right time, at the opportune time.
John Gunter:And so, I think we look at Jesus' life and think, Man, that's great for him, but I believe in the Holy Spirit, but I just, man, I don't know if I can do that. An interesting verse is, what you have
John Gunter:on your bulletin this week.
John Gunter:At the very top, Jesus says this in Luke 11. He says, which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? If we've got a father in here that will fit that mold, we need to have a talk. I'd like a fish, daddy. Have a snake.
John Gunter:Using some, you know, some some humor here, really, How many of you would actually do this way? You're not that evil. Right? Or if he asks for an egg, we'll give him a scorpion. Even worse, I think.
John Gunter:If you then, though you are evil, though you're not perfect in all of this. You don't do everything right, we don't show the kind of love we should all the time, if you then, though you're evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, listen to this, how much more will your Father in heaven give the what? Holy Spirit to those who ask him. I think our issue a lot of the times is not that the Spirit is not there, but we are not asking for the power of the Holy Spirit. That we are set out on our own ambition, that we are worried about ourselves or our abilities or lack thereof, and we either completely forget or reject that god has offered his holy spirit to each and every one of us.
John Gunter:To show the the kind of love and compassion that we wanna show. How many of you we pray for this all the time, but how many of you have had a family crisis of some sort. You've lost someone. Something's happened. And at some point in that, you experienced a peace that you could not explain.
John Gunter:Just nod your head. Yeah. We pray for that, don't we? We pray for people to receive peace when all of a sudden this freak accident takes a life. When something happens, someone gets a diagnosis they don't want, and we pray for it, and often we get it.
John Gunter:I've shared the story before in the past, but Katie and I wanted to adopt a little girl that was was in her extended family. And, on her first birthday, she went to the the doctor, and they said she's great health. She was behind on her shots, so she got several that day. Went home, had a little birthday party with a big old cupcake and a candle, and and she passed away in her sleep that night. And we had been able to babysit her.
John Gunter:That was before Evan came along. And, they didn't give her enough exercise, so she was just a little bitty chunky monkey. And I would beatbox, not well, and I'm not gonna do that today, but she would dance on rhythm, of all things. I mean, we could learn something from her. But we lost her, and it was crushing.
John Gunter:But I'll tell you, in those moments of testing, in those moments of everything is not going right, I think we experienced the greatest graces from God, the blessing, the peace that we didn't think was even possible the day before. I have never cried like I cried for that little girl. Nobody should ever have to hold a casket that small. But in that moment, I think god cries with us. God experiences that that he sent his son to experience the world just like we did.
John Gunter:Jesus lost friends and he even lost his own life for his allegiance to god. Because of that, we have seen how we can do the same that god's got us, that he will take care of us. He would give you an extra measure, I believe, of the Holy Spirit and what Jesus is saying. We understand Acts 2:38 that you repent, be baptized, every one of you, and receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes that manifested in the New Testament as spiritual gifts.
John Gunter:Sometimes I think, it wasn't the same. People looked around and said, well, I can't do what they're doing. But god still walks side by side with us as we go. And so I pray we're a church that leans not only on our own understanding, on our own courage, on our own abilities, but we lean on what god can do with us. Because I think if we do that, no one's gonna stop us, and the sky is the limit.
John Gunter:I wanna encourage you if you haven't begun that walk with Jesus, then you can do that today. You can put on Christ in baptism. If you've strayed from the path and would love to, to pray with the church and have the church pray with you, we'd love to do that as well. Jacob's got an invitation song picked out. Would you come as we stand, as we sing?