Necessary Suffering | Matthew 4

welcome to our together on mission podcast when we seek to be with and like jesus as we begin a conversation with jesus in the morning scripture prayer and meditation and then continue that conversation within throughout your day your host is travis twyman the pastor at the inland venue church in corona california good morning everyone and welcome to the daily together on mission podcast this is travis and i'm in matthew chapter 4 we're going to finish up this incredible iconic unbelievable story where jesus is tempted in the wilderness and temptation to sin comes in three different forms and in past podcasts we looked at the first two so we're going to look third this morning and tune into the enemy strategy so that we can be sober-minded and alert and prepared to stand in the midst of temptation so the title of this podcast is necessary suffering and life as you know as i know is full of necessary suffering then there's unnecessary suffering which we'll get to toward the end of the podcast which is a very important point but i don't get ahead of myself life is full of necessary suffering and necessary suffering is what we must walk through in relationships spiritually emotionally physically um the result of being a broken fallen world necessary suffering is what we must walk through it can't be avoided and that's the point because the third form that temptation to sin takes is a temptation to avoid necessary suffering either passively or aggressively for example if there's a conversation that we really really need to have but it would involve some necessary suffering to do so to avoid that conversation is avoiding necessary suffering and that's a passive way to do it or we can enter that conversation with explosive anger right to win or have our way or over talk and that would be an aggressive way to avoid necessary suffering or we late at night can have a few more drinks so that we don't have to think and feel the necessary suffering that is entering into our lives and so i think a good question this morning right before we read this text would be how are you experiencing necessary suffering and how is the enemy tempting you to avoid it either passively or aggressively because this is the third form that sin and temptation takes in our lives so the enemy comes at jesus again beginning in chapter 4 verse 8 the devil took jesus to a very high mountain showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor all this i will give to you satan said to jesus just bow down and worship me and jesus said to him away from me satan for it is written worship the lord your god and serve him only now in order to understand this third and probably most difficult temptation a little bit of historical context is important satan knew that jesus was going to the cross that was necessary suffering for jesus and so when satan says hey just quickly bow down to me i'll give you all this power i'll give you all this authority i'll give you all this splendor just right now you know let's do it quick let's let's avoid the the necessary suffering of the cross let's just get this done bow down and worship me the enemy is trying to get jesus to avoid necessary suffering and this happened all through the ministry of jesus jesus's family his israelite countrymen even his best friend peter all tried to get him to avoid the cross when jesus was on the cross he was tempted to come down off the cross and use violence in order to avoid necessary suffering the cross was necessary suffering for jesus and the great temptation and the third form that temptation takes in our lives is to either passively or aggressively avoid the suffering in our life that is necessary it would have been so easy for jesus to use violence to avoid the suffering of the cross and that's what everybody wanted him to do it also would have been easy for jesus to run into the hills and be a hermit or anessine and passively avoid the necessary suffering of the cross and so we may want to pause for just a moment and take a little bit of inventory as to how we're either using violence or force or overpowering or power to avoid the necessary suffering in life or how we're using running or passivity or avoidance in order to avoid the necessary suffering in our lives and we probably want to think about our close relationships our families the relationship with our kids i mean in this world we're going to have trouble jesus was very clear about that in this world you're going to have necessary suffering now take heart because i've overcome the world but this necessary suffering will come to us all and the enemy will always be there to try to offer us an aggressive or a passive or an addictive way to avoid necessary suffering and so some of us have teenage kids or young adult kids and we're needing to let them go and that's necessary suffering and the enemy will always come along and say hey why don't you choose control why don't you try to make them do this or force yourself into their lives in this way or whatever which is a temptation to avoid necessary suffering anytime there's this invitation or something to be generous anytime we part with a little bit of our stuff that's necessary suffering right it's good it forms us but the enemy will always tempt us to hold on to choose greed over generosity which is a way of avoiding the necessary suffering of life some of us are feeling you know pain frustration hurt and we don't want to feel it but we need to feel it and that's necessary suffering and the enemy will always come along with some sort of experience or substance so that we can remain on some sort of high instead of entering into that necessary suffering and some of us are in relationships where we need to be honest we need to share some pain we need to bring something up we need to be vulnerable about that and that's necessary suffering and the enemy will always provide a back door that we can slip through and choose to hide and not share and you know pretend everything's okay and avoid the necessary suffering and i could go on and on but here's part of the point and when i make this point let's think about the life of jesus ironically anything that we do to avoid necessary suffering creates so much more suffering in the future and that's what we would call unnecessary suffering so the suffering that we create right that unnecessary suffering is a result of avoiding either passively or aggressively the necessary suffering of life and one of the things that we see in the life of jesus is he never experienced unnecessary suffering he never experienced the suffering as a result of avoiding necessary suffering and so that's that's a really good thing to think about because so much of life is unnecessary suffering as a result of avoiding the necessary suffering that shapes us informs us into the kind of people that we're called to be so we must be sober-minded we must be alert we must understand this third form that sin and temptation will take in our lives this luring us into actively aggressively or passively in avoidance avoiding the necessary suffering of life and i'll just end with this idea suffering transforms us having that conversation or bringing that up or being generous or saying yes that's appropriate or saying no that's appropriate the necessary suffering in our lives literally forms us into the kind of people that have the kind of character that can handle the power and the responsibility that god wants to share with us both now and forever so jesus our master our king our savior he chose not to avoid necessary suffering he chose to face it to pick up his cross and he turned toward his disciples and he said pick up your cross and follow me we'll talk soon thanks for listening to the together on mission podcast we truly hope that you were blessed and encouraged by it today if you had any questions about the inland vineyard church our ministries or our sunday services feel free to connect 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