We're looking in our scripture series about the life of Jesus Christ, and we're in the section that talks about him as the Lamb of God. Jesus being born. We look through the circumstances surrounding his birth as we led up to Christmas time, through the Advent season. And now for the last couple weeks and for a few more, we'll be in a section in our study called the Lamb of God. And as the Lamb of God, Jesus is the perfect sacrifice that God had promised to the Israelite people, but not just for the Israelite people.

He promised the Lamb of God for Gentiles, for non Jewish people, for all the world, in other words. I was blessed to be with some Nazarene pastors this week. As we gathered, we do an annual gathering where we kind of were challenged to grow by a few different things. And then we report what God's doing in our local churches. And as we were there, there was some teaching.

And one of the teaching moments talked about, just talked about how Jesus had at one point been healing many, many people. They were being healed. At one point, he had fed 5,000 people with just a little bit of leftover food that they had found, some fish and bread, and he multiplied that to feed over 5,000 people. But then, then Jesus, he got away. He just kind of was like missing, you know, they're looking for him and he's not there.

He had gone off to be by himself, to be in prayer. Hear me. He had gone by himself to be alone in prayer. That's important. You need that in your life.

Jesus, he did this. And then his disciples found him. I guess they knew where his hiding spots were and they found him and they tracked him down. He's a wanted and hunted man, you know, and they hunted him down and he didn't turn them away, but he listened to them. And they said, master, everybody is looking for you.

The people want to know where you are now. It's kind of. Of course you do. If Jesus is healing you and feeding you, you're like, yeah, I want to be there for that. But you know what Jesus said?

And this is what was pointed out to us at that meeting on Thursday. Jesus said, no, let's go to some other towns and villages and preach there. For that is what I came to do as a pastor. I love that verse, right? Like, yeah, preaching is important.

That's not the point, though. Jesus was saying, I came to declare something to them, right? Like, I didn't just come to meet their physical needs. He didn't say, that's unimportant. We believe that as a church, like, we're actively working to do that to the extent of our ability.

Amen. But at the same time, Jesus showed us that the important thing was that he came to preach something. And here's the beautiful thing that was pointed out, and I love this, and this is why I'm sharing it with you.

Every person that Jesus healed died eventually. But every person that Jesus forgave or offered forgiveness to died and went to heaven for eternity. That is why preaching is important. We minister to the body, to the person, so that we can reach the soul. We care about what happens to you after you leave this earth.

Amen. So Jesus was fighting that battle on two fronts. Jesus was fighting in the human side of things. See, Jesus was born as what we call the hypostatic union, which is a big theological word that means he was fully God and fully man all in one. None of us can be there or will be there.

If somebody ever told you that you can become a God like that, they were lying. That's what Satan tried to say to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. It didn't work, did it? And so what Jesus was, was something that was unique, never to ever happen again. Fully God and fully man.

So Jesus is uniquely qualified to fight a battle against Satan and evil and death that none of us could do. We can't do it on our own. And we can't do it even in the power of the Spirit. Only Christ can do it. In other words, you've got sin in your life that you're trying to like, just kind of white knuckle through it.

And you're like, I can defeat this. No, you can't. And you found that out, haven't you? But Jesus defeated sin. And that's what we're gonna look at today.

In Mark chapter one, Jesus defeats Satan. And so it's Christ in you that defeats sin in you. So Jesus fights a battle on the flesh side of things. In other words, the human nature side of things. He fights this human nature battle that only he could do.

We're going to look in mark 1 9, 14. It's brief. It's in your sermon guide, if you have one of those sermon companion books. It looks like this and it's in there. There's notes on the second page of it.

You can take notes. It's beautiful. A little biased. I wrote it, but Anyway.

Mark, chapter one, verses nine through 14. Now, in those days, Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan river. And Just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens splitting apart, the Spirit descending on him like a dove, and a voice from heaven saying, you are my one dear son, and you I take great delight. Other gospels, by the way, add these words. God says, this is my son and whom I love.

Listen to him. It's good words.

The Spirit immediately drove him into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness 40 days during temptations, enduring temptations from Satan. He was with wild animals and angels were ministering to his needs. And after John was in prison, Jesus went into Galilee and proclaimed the Gospel of God. Lord, help us to this morning.

Help us. As we dig into your word, Father, you're speaking to us today. Mold us and shape us, Lord.

Amen.

2 Corinthians 5, 21 says that the one who had no sin became sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God. There's a couple places in Scripture where it says, this is a profound mystery. In other words, this is confusing. Today is one of those scripture passages. Like, I'm gonna.

I'm gonna complicate it today is what I'm saying. Like, sometimes I unnecessarily do that. Hear me? I understand that. I'm sorry for those times where I do it.

Like, sometimes I'll say it. I'm like. Especially when we're in our classroom, and I'm like, okay, guys, you know, And I'll lay it out, and I'll get a couple of these faces that are kind of like, huh? Oh, all right, let me try again. I didn't do it very well.

You know, today is one of those days where I will necessarily complicate it. Not unnecessarily. I'll try to unravel that. So hang with me. There's some doctrine, some theology that we need to understand.

If you're a believer in Christ or you're, like, saying, like, I'm open to learning more about Christ, there's some things you need to understand that are deep. But as one or two preachers I've heard say, if you can figure out how to order off the menu at Starbucks, you can learn some of this stuff. And some of you are like, no, I don't go to Starbucks for that reason. And because I don't like spending seven bucks for sugary coffee, you know. So anyway, the one who became sin, the one who had no sin, became sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God.

We could spend probably a long, long time just on that one verse. And I'm not. That's not the central focus of it. But I want you to see that. That Jesus had no sin in him.

He's sinless. He's pure. He was born that way. But in his human flesh, he had to maintain that. Hear me.

Jesus experienced all the temptations that you and I experience.

I'm not saying he lived them. I'm saying he was tempted by them. To be tempted by sin is not sin, right? Like, to be tempted by something evil is not evil. That just means you have, like, human blood in you, flesh and bones.

You are a human being. To give in to that temptation, to track it down, and to seek after the fulfillment of that temptation is sin. Jesus won that battle. And that's what happened in our scripture, and that's what we're going to be talking about in this message. Jesus was born with no sin, no sinful nature.

The sinful nature is something that we inherit just by the simple fact that we're born of human beings. Our first parents, Adam and Eve, sinned. This bent towards evil, we call it, where you're kind of leaning towards it. You're kind of like desiring a little bit towards evil. Things that's built into us.

We're born with it. It's called in inborn sin. Or you could even say inbred sin. You know, like people that are inbred a little bit, they got some weird characteristics about them that just kind of make them tick a certain way. That's what sin, the sinful nature does is kind of inbred into you, where you're kind of bent towards doing bad things.

Parents, you've seen this in your kids, right? You're like, where did they learn to do this stuff? Like, why are they belligerent and just arguing with me on everything? People with, like, teenagers and older kids, does it stop, okay, all right, I'll buckle down. Like, it's going to continue.

We're born into that. Something must be done that breaks us of that and bends us towards God, right? Like we're bent towards evil. And there's even times in that where we're saying, like, I don't want to do those things. And yet I still seem to have this desire for them.

I. I want to lean towards God. We call that being entirely sanctified, entirely committed to Christ, and God has to do this. We call it a second work, a second cleansing or a second working of grace, where the grace of God flows over us. And it's not that we're incapable of sinning or where he removes the ability or desire to sin completely, but he replaces it with a desire for God. It's kind of like you start out as a Christian and you're like, yay, this is great.

I love God. This is fantastic. And then you find I'm still sinning. It's like the apostle Paul says, oh, wretched man that I am, the things I don't want to do, I keep doing, and the things that I want to do, I find so hard to do. And so we find ourselves in that.

We reflect in that, that that's who we are so many times and in so many ways. But thanks be to Christ Jesus that he overcame sin in his human nature. Now in his divine nature, he would do on the cross what only he could do, that none of us could do. That's what we celebrate with communion. That's what we commemorate when we participate in communion, is that Jesus Christ, the God man, the Deity side of him, the God side of him was the one that can defeat sin on the cross, his perfect sacrifice, and is the only one that can do that.

You and I cannot. Not only because we've committed sin and therefore we are not the perfect unblemished sacrifice, but because only God can do what only God can do, and we can't do that. But Christ's death on our behalf takes care of sin. You just have to receive that gift from him. But here, in this time where Jesus is led into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan, he is having a very human battle, a fleshly battle.

Jesus is operating out of his humanity here. And so what he has to do is he has to prepare for this moment. First he goes and gets baptized. Now, I want to say baptism doesn't save you, right? The Scripture is clear on that.

It's the blood of Jesus Christ that saves you and cleanses you from all sin and unrighteousness. Baptism is a couple things. One, it is a sign and a symbol that says like a I have allowed Christ to cleanse me. When we're dunked under the water, it's as if you had died to your old self. And when you come back up, it's symbolic of being raised to new life in Christ.

Now the old me is gone. The new me is raised to new life. I live now in the power of God. Amen. That's what baptism does.

I believe one other thing happens in baptism, and I only have one thing to prove that from Scripture. I believe at baptism, God calls you to more. He calls you to do more, to believe more to trust more, to serve him more. When you're baptized, it's like saying, okay, I'm not on the bench anymore, alright. Like, I'm out on the field, alright, Jesus.

And here's what I have to prove, that Jesus gets baptized. John, at first, his cousin, the guy that's doing the baptizing, doesn't want to do it. He's like, no, this is all backwards. Why would I baptize you? You're the guy.

You're the one. You're the whole reason I came here. Why would I baptize you? Jesus says, do it now. Well, okay, if you say so, Lord, do it now.

We must do this to fulfill all righteousness. So Jesus gets baptized, one, for an example for you and me. Two, because at that moment is when his, his ministry kicks off. But the first thing that he does is he goes into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan. Now Jesus, he gets baptized.

He comes up out of the water though, and the heavens open up and we hear the voice of the Father speaking words over Jesus, this is my son. Now if God says, this is my son, that's kind of a code word for don't mistreat this guy. You know, like if you go and find the King's sons and you go start attacking them, you're going to have problems, right? Like the King is not going to like that too much. Except here's the difference.

This king, the King of heaven, God himself sent his Son here and allowed us to mistreat, abuse and kill him for us. That's the most weird, like, reversal of anything that makes sense. And yet this is what God was doing for you and me.

So Jesus, he prepares, he's getting baptized, the Father speaks, the Holy Spirit descends out of heaven as a dove, landing on Jesus. Now there's a couple things that are happening here. One, it's a sign for John the Baptist because God had already told him, the one that you see the Spirit land on, that's the one. That's the Messiah. That's the guy that you came to prepare the way for.

Two, it is to fill Jesus with the Holy Spirit. Now here's another bit of theology. This stuff that I said, I'm going to necessarily complicate it. True or false. If you are a believer, a Christian, born again, whatever you want to call it, you've received new life in Christ, you have the Holy Spirit in you.

True or false? True. True, Correct. Why then did Jesus have the Holy Spirit with him? Yeah, Scripture tells us when he was in the womb, he's filled with the Holy Spirit.

Jesus himself is filled with the Holy Spirit since before he's born, by the way, on Sanctity of Human Life Sunday, I'll just kind of reiterate and point out. If the Holy Spirit fills babies in the womb. Jesus, John the Baptist and others, would it be logical to ever say that that is not a viable baby, a viable human life, that it's just some clump of cells? I don't think so, no. God says that this child is knitted together by his word and his works.

He will fill that baby in the womb with his Holy Spirit. Come. God sees him as special, and so do we. Now, Jesus, he's filled with the Holy Spirit since he's conceived. Then why would he.

It says, now, have the Spirit fill him in this moment before he goes into the wilderness. Because there are moments in your life where you need what's called a filling of the Holy Spirit. You need to be prepared for a specific moment. You might have, like, some job that you need to go do somewhere. Maybe not, you know, maybe you're helping somebody fix something at their house, their cars broke down, and you're like, okay, I'm going to get a toolbox.

I'm going to throw in the tools that I need because I can't take the whole garage with me unless you're like Pastor Kendall, who has a whole, like, outfit of that as he does that stuff for a living. But anyway, he's got all these tools in his, like, well, it was a van, now he's getting a trailer. But anyway, you know, most of us aren't like that. We can't just hook up and pull all the tools with us. So, you know, we've got to throw the things in the toolbox that we need for that job.

I'm really not trying to compare the Holy Spirit to a toolbox, but I'm saying there are times where we fill that toolbox for the specific task at hand. There are times in your life where you're about to go through something and you need to be filled with the Holy Spirit specifically for that task. Jesus is about to go through something. I don't know if he knew in his flesh beforehand just what he was going to experience, but what he does is he prepares. He gets baptized, he's filled with the Holy Spirit, and then he goes off into the wilderness.

Now, he's been preparing for this moment his whole life, in a way. See, he knows the scriptures. Now, John the Apostle, not John the Baptist. John the apostle that writes the Book of John. In the first chapter, he gives Jesus a specific name or title called in Greek, the Logos.

L, O G O, S. You've seen this. There's software companies and all this stuff that use that word, but it's kind of meaning. It can talk about language. Like an expression is kind of a way to say it. The Logos is the expression of something Jesus, John, says is the Logos of God.

Well, we translate that in English to the Word of God because we use words to explain things. But really, some Greek words that are in the Bible just don't get translated. Well, we have to define them. And then it's better. Like if I define that over and over to you guys and you're like, okay, when he says Logos, this is what he means.

And we talk about Logos, the Logos of God, the Word of God, the expression of God is who Jesus is.

The Logos of God had living in his heart memorized the Word of God. See, if I say the Word of God Like John 1 says, the Word of God memorized the Word of God. That doesn't communicate well. The Logos of God memorized the Word of God. He memorized the Scriptures.

Jesus had the Scriptures, the expression of God. The Logos of God had the words of God dwelling within him. So he goes into the wilderness, prepared by being filled with the Spirit, having a love and passion for the Scriptures and the Word of God. And then there's one other thing that he does. He begins fasting and praying.

He spends 40 days doing this. 40 days weakening his flesh. Now you're going to say, wait a minute, Pastor Nick, didn't you say he goes in to fight a battle in the flesh? Yes. The way that he did that was by weakening his flesh.

He weakens his flesh by fasting and praying for 40 days. If you don't know what the word fasting is, that means you stop eating. Not just a little bit. Like, not just a couple things. We're known a lot of times as Christians at times, like, say, leading up to Easter, there's this period called Lent.

And a lot of times people spend the days of Lent and they'll say, like, well, I'm gonna just stop drinking caffeine, or I'm not gonna eat chocolate or ice cream or I'm not gonna have desserts. Good for you. Like, I've done it too. You know, I'm mocking myself too. There's one pastor I listened to says, neat.

That's not the fasting Jesus did. He didn't just stay off, like, Instagram and Facebook for 40 days, okay? And say, like, well, I'm doing a digital cleanse or digital detox. It wasn't like that with Jesus. He spent 40 days communing, communicating with his Father in heaven and not eating.

I assume he had water. It doesn't say. But medically, I think you kind of have to forget 40 days. Let's just put it this way, though. After 40 days of fasting, denying his flesh of all food, of all nutrition, he probably looked pretty weak.

He was not a sight to behold and to be envious of. Like, his physique did not look good. Jesus is probably looking pretty rough. And Satan thinks, easy, Mark. I've got him right where I want him.

Now, here's what Satan missed. Jesus is full of the Holy Spirit. He has weakened the flesh so that the desires that Satan is presenting to him that are fleshly desires really don't matter to him that much. See, he's subjugated those desires over 40 days. You hear me?

Jesus has taken things that we normally say are good and fine, like, you know, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And that's great. And Jesus is like, I'm gonna show that those things are not the thing that drives me. That is not what I'm chasing after. So Jesus denies himself that.

He weakens his flesh, his spirit strengthens. The spirit of God fills him. And he knows the scriptures. They're in his head, they're in his heart, and he's ready for when Satan comes up to him. It's a whole other sermon about the things that Satan tempted him with.

Mark in this gospel, doesn't tell us those things. Some of the Matthew and Luke tell us about what Jesus was tempted by, the three things that Satan gave, used, or leveled at him that he was trying to topple Jesus with. Because Satan knows that this is a battle in the flesh, but that there's a day coming where there will be a spiritual battle. And if he can knock Jesus out of the running for that, then Satan wins. The problem is he didn't win.

The problem is he loses every time.

We don't win the battle against sin unless we're filled with God's spirit. We don't win the battle against sin in our flesh, in our lives, just on our own might and power. You might have dealt with so many different things. You might have dealt with so much in your life that you're like, I wish I could just stop doing this thing. Isn't the interesting thing that the more things that God allows you to overcome through his power, the more you find there's yet one more thing right after that.

Sometimes he even gives a little break where you're feeling pretty good. You're like, oh, man, God, this is great. Everything's going fine.

Careful. In those times where everything feels like it's going fine, pride sets in, self sufficiency sets in. Jesus did not allow himself to feel self sufficient. The God, like he created the universe, like at his word it was created. The Father has Jesus creating the universe, and he's the word of God through which everything came into existence.

John 1 says, and yet he did not allow himself on this earth. He limited himself. See, there's things that Jesus left behind, like parts of his deity that he left behind as he was born of this world. There's things that he left behind and there's things that were part of his deity, his godly nature that he has that he leaves behind and doesn't tap into. He could have done any number of things.

In fact, that's some of what Satan tempted him with, was to say, oh, you have a holy righteous mission on this earth. Well, I can just make it real easy for you, like if you'll bow down and worship me. You don't even have to mean it. You can just act like it. If you just act like you mean it, that's fine.

Bow down and worship me and I'll just yield all of this to you. I won't even step foot in this realm anymore. Jesus, you can have it all. You can accomplish your mission. Jesus quotes scripture to him every time.

See, the word of God was living, dwelling in the heart of Christ. And when Satan, even Satan quotes scripture to Jesus and he misquotes it and misappropriates it. And Jesus is like, no, no, you missed the point. He quotes another scripture that knocks it out. And so it's just this beautiful, like, scripture battle.

I used to do those in youth group. We had those when I was a teenager growing up. We would argue different things and you were only allowed to use arguments with scripture verses. It was so much fun. I always picked like the wrong side just to be like, literally the devil's advocate, I guess.

You know, I was arguing like Satan did. And it was fun because I was digging into the scriptures I was learning. It's like, you know what I did find though, is you can make an argument. If you twist straight scripture, you can make an argument for anything you want to do. And there's churches doing it today, preaching it from their pulpits and trying to allow people to sin more and to be involved in things that God never intended us to be involved in.

And they're using scriptures and twisting it to try to give permission to people. I promise you, I will never intentionally do that. I'll get some things wrong from time to time. That's why there's a thing on like, the backside of your page that says, I think the preacher got it wrong here. Like, call me out on that.

Maybe not right in the service, but, like, seriously, like in Sunday school class afterwards would be a great time to do that. If you. Seriously, if you don't come to that class, you're missing out. Right? Seriously.

Oh, it's a good time. So Jesus here, the Logos, the word of God, he wins. He banishes Satan by a word. He says, away from me, Satan. For it is written, you shall worship the Lord your God and serve him.

Only in this time here, where Jesus goes off to be tempted by Satan, he wins. And he won in his flesh. As his flesh was weak and his spirit was strengthened, he's able to serve God in this way. And the next thing, the last verse we read says that later, John the Baptist gets imprisoned and Jesus goes into Galilee and begins preaching the good news of the gospel. John, by the way, we won't get a chance to finish his story through our sermon series.

It doesn't really fit in there. And so I want to finish his story just a little bit, just as a little side trip here, a little side quest, if you will.

John the Baptist is riding on top of things, right? Like, he's got crowds coming out to him. He's got. I think we talked a couple weeks ago. Like, you got people that are tax collectors and Roman soldiers and Jewish leaders and common people.

Everybody's coming out to see John and to listen to him preach as a preacher. He made it, right? Like, he's at the top of his game. You can't ask for more than this. Now he's there when Jesus shows up and John recognizes who he is, the Messiah, and he knows that that's who he came for.

He says, hey, that's the guy. He's the savior of the world. Two of John's disciples end up leaving him for the day and following Jesus, literally stalking him. Like, Jesus is walking along Jordan River's over here, you know, Doo doo, doo, doo doo. Okay, Doo doo, doo.

Do you guys want something? You could read the story for yourselves. It's cool. He's like, what do you guys want? Like, this is getting a little creepy.

You're following me. They're like, nothing real Crazy. We just want to see where you're staying. Okay. Yep, Definitely creepy, right?

Like, have you ever tried that with someone? Just start following them and saying, where do you live? No. No, you probably haven't. You know, it's not a good plan.

Most people, they start calling the police when that happens. Jesus says, why don't you come and find out? And he shows him where he's staying. Now, he doesn't own the house. He's just hanging out somewhere.

And they stay with him for the afternoon. And they listen to him because he hasn't been teaching or preaching yet. But their master, their rabbi, John the Baptist, had said, this is the Messiah. We need to get to know him. By the way, it took him two days of hearing John say that before they responded.

Like, they heard it. One day John says, look, the Lamb of God. And it's like Groundhog's Day, if you remember that movie. Like, same thing again. Like, look, the Lamb of God.

You know, it's just the same thing again. They're like, oh, that's important. We need to go find out about him. So they spend the day with him. One of those guys is.

Andrew is his name. And Andrew is Peter's brother, right? And so Peter becomes, like, the big guy, like, one of the biggest disciples. And he goes and he tells Peter. He's like, brother, I think we found the Messiah.

We found the one that God has promised. So John the Baptist, his own disciples start leaving him. But that's okay. He knows what he's here for. Then his followers stop.

Like, his crowd of people that's gathered around him. It's kind of like people leaving and going to another church. It's equivalent to that for what a pastor goes through. Like, John's followers leave him and start following Jesus. After, though Jesus had gone into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan.

See, after Jesus is tempted, then he's able to begin his mission. And so these people start. They leave John and start following Jesus. Time passes. Jesus disciples are baptizing people now.

Like, he's not even the one doing the baptizing. His disciples are. And John's still doing it, though. Like, he's still baptizing. He's just doing it with a smaller crowd.

And John's disciples that stayed with him say, master, look, that guy, the one you pointed to when we were at the Jordan, that guy, he's baptizing more people than you are. Like, don't you care about that? What are we gonna do? What's our marketing strategy? What's our Ploy.

Hmm.

John said, he must increase and I must decrease. John understood his role and his mission and his assignment. Later on, John changed his tactics. He stopped preaching to the common people, to those that would show up. He starts attacking the ruling class.

A man named Herod Antipas had taken. He divorced his wife so that he could marry his brother's wife. Yeah, that's some family drama for you right there, isn't it? Makes Thanksgiving a little bit awkward. I actually had a friend that had literally had that story, you know, like, his brother married his ex wife.

You know, like, wow. All right. They were actually on Maury Povich long time ago. He had a VHS of it. I never got to see it.

He wouldn't share it with me. But anyway, fun times. Like, once you make it to Maury, you know, your family wins in, like, the messed up. You know, like, yeah. John starts preaching against this.

He's like, it's illegal for you to have this woman as your wife. By the way, whether they're politicians and rulers or regular people, they don't like hearing preachers and prophets say things that affect how we're living. My bedroom is my bedroom. How dare you tell me love is love. Don't tell me about these relationships.

We don't like it when we. When you start talking about my sin. And guess what? Herod Antipas didn't like it. So he arrests John.

But he didn't know what he's going to do with him because he also still liked John. And he wanted to hear from him, but he just wasn't ready to, like, commit to it at all. People are like that today still. They want to hear the message and the good news. But maybe that good news is just for other people, not for me.

That's how Herod treated it. But one day, Herod throws a party. It's a big, you know, drunken party. It's crazy times. And his wife has a daughter, and she's apparently kind of attractive and a good dancer or just exotic dancer, whatever it was.

And he summons her in, and he's like, hey, if you'll dance for my party, you know, like, I didn't plan entertainment, but they want something. And if you'll dance for them and kind of, you know, probably pretty erotic and provocative. If you'll do that, I'll give you whatever you ask for. Which is really stupid. And kings did it all the time.

They would say, like, even up to half the kingdom, that's dumb. That's a good way to lose your entire kingdom. So she dances for them. And then she's like, I don't know what to ask for. And she goes and finds her mom.

She's like, mom, what should I do? And she's like, well, I really hate that guy John. Why don't you ask for his head? But nothing else, you know, just take the head off the shoulders. So she asked for that.

They bring it to her on a platter. John's life is over. Truly. John decreased as Christ was increasing. What ends up happening is Jesus.

He has disciples that come to him and they tell him what happened with John. Jesus goes away into seclusion and he talks to his disciples. He's grieving, he's praying, he's processing this. This is his cousin, and he loves the man. This is the man that played a divine role to set Christ up for his ministry.

Jesus, when he speaks to the people, he ends up saying this. He says, what did you go out into the wilderness to see? A great man dressed in robes and fine linen, purple cloth. No, he wasn't anything special. He was a man that wore camel's hair and had a leather belt around his waist, ate locusts and wild honey.

He was not a guy that was something to behold by the eyes. And yet you went out to see him. Why? Because he was a prophet, he says. And I tell you so much more, he says, before him, there were all the prophets.

Nobody stacked up to John. He was the greatest prophet that was ever born of a woman. Amen. Thank God for his work in doing that. But then, you know what Jesus says?

He says, the one who is least in the kingdom of heaven. See, this is what Jesus was preaching about. The kingdom of heaven, God's kingdom here on this earth. If you are in Christ, you are part of that kingdom. And what he's saying is that kingdom stretches both here now and into eternity.

In other words, you will die one day on this earth, but your soul will go on forever. And it matters where it goes. You can live apart from God in opposition to God, and he will not force you to be with him. You'll go to an eternal punishment in hell. You don't like hearing that, but it's true, and the Scripture says it.

But then those who are in Christ, you will go to live in eternity with Christ. If you've wanted to be with Christ, now you, he will take you to be with him for all eternity. Amen. And that kingdom that starts here on this earth and stretches all the way into forever, Jesus said, those who are even the most humble, the least, the lowest in the kingdom of heaven are greater than John. John was the greatest prophet ever to live up until his time.

But now God is calling us to even greater things than that. You can't live that life on your own. You can't live that life in the flesh. You can't live that kingdom, greatness, life in your own fleshly strength. But through the filling of the Holy Spirit of God, you can do that because the Spirit of God fills us.

And that verse that I talked about at the beginning in 2nd Corinthians 5, 21 says that he who had no sin became sin for us. So that those are important words so that we might become the righteousness of God. See, you don't just act righteously or do righteous things or become a little bit better over time. God himself puts his righteousness the righteousness that Christ attained through his life, ministry, death and resurrection. His righteousness is given to us.

There's a scriptural word, a theological word, called imputed righteousness. He imputes it onto us. He gives it to us. It's his, and he puts it on us. If you can learn the Starbucks things, you can learn this, right?

Actually, you know what's harder than Starbucks is French restaurants. None of their words make any sense unless you know French. I went to a French cafe in Nashville back in the day, and I'm like, I don't know what to order here, but can I have something with like, for breakfast that has like, eggs, meat and potatoes, you know, like, that would be great, please. Thank you. It was a great restaurant, though.

But I didn't know any of the things. I'm like, I'm not ashamed to tell you I don't understand this stuff on the menu. Can you explain it to me, please? So I try to explain some of these things to you because they're important. The righteousness of God gets imputed to you.

So to wrap this up, I want to say this. Don't try to walk through life alone. Don't try to walk through life without being filled with the Spirit of God. You will go through trials and temptations. You will go through hard times.

And if you try to white knuckle through it and to muscle through it in the flesh, and you will lose every time. But if you spiritually prepare, even by fasting, not for a specific thing, sometimes somebody says, well, I'm going to fast for this. It's like you're trying to manipulate God into giving you what you want. He don't play like that. You can't just get God to Do what you want him to do.

Because you're like, I'll go on a hunger strike against you, Lord, no. We fast so that our flesh is weakened and subjugated and put down into the proper perspective so that we can say, lord, I need your spirit. In the Beatitudes, Jesus says, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. I want to encourage you. If you don't have a passion, a growing passion for more of Christ in you, start asking him what it is that he wants you to do for that.

Do I need to fast more often and pray? Do I need to memorize the word of God or get on a reading plan where I'm reading through the scripture in a year? Do I need to just spend more time on my knees in prayer? Because I don't have that specifically laid out as a time part of the schedule of my day. What is it that I need to do to weaken my flesh and allow the spirit of God to fill me?

Pastor Kendall, if you've come up, I encourage you to pray that the spirit of God would fill you more and more in your life on this earth. Amen. Would you stand this morning for our closing prayer and a benediction? If at any time God speaks to you and you need one of us to pray with you, let us know. We're always available for that.

We care about you and your obedience to God. Let's pray this morning. Father, we love you. We're so conscious of your love for us, and we're conscious of the fact that we don't really understand fully the. The way you love us and the way that we can love you back with our lives and with our thoughts and with our desires, and then how we can love the people around us.

Help us, enable us as we. As we read your word, speak to us and show us how to be better servants of you. Show us how to. How to just give up our lives for you, for your service, and you will bless us for it. Father.

Go with each one of us this week. Help us to be your ambassadors. That's what we're called to do. Help us to disciple people and to just share your love with those around us. In Jesus name I pray.

Amen. Now would you go knowing that your Savior is with you through the storms of life. He's going to walk with you and you're going to come through it. Amen.

Sam.

Jesus.