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, the scripture, prayer and meditation, and then continue that conversation with him throughout your day. Your hopes to strive as find the pastor at the Inland Vineyard Church in Corona, California. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Daily Together on Mission Podcast where we begin a conversation with Jesus, and enjoy him in the morning, and then look forward to that conversation continuing throughout the rest of the day, because that is the great adventure, partnering with God, and what God is doing within his world. And so I'm in Matthew chapter four, we're going to read about the second temptation of Jesus, the second form that sin can take in our lives, and since I have a microphone, I'm just going to go first.
I want to be spectacular, and I hate to admit that, but I think it's true for all of us. Now, we would all describe spectacular differently, but I want to knock it out of the park. You know, I want to amaze people. I want to be extraordinary.
I want to be, you know, better than others, or wiser, or more articulate, or more accomplished. I want to dazzle, you know, I want to impress, and I hope I have some company. And this desire, this need, is underneath so much of what we do, and it's underneath so much of how we are, and what we say, and what we think about, and how we strategize. And let's just be honest, this is heavy.
I mean, it's a burden, it's exhausting. And I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself, but when we go to the book of Matthew, when we go to the temptation narrative, we find beginning in verse 6, Satan says to Jesus, if you're the Son of God, throw yourself down, right? This is, he's at the highest point of the temple. For it is written, God will command His angels concerning you, and they'll lift you up with their hands.
You're not going to strike even your foot against the stone. And so we see the second temptation, and at first it's like, what kind of temptation is this? What's the second form that sin takes in our lives? And the devil takes Jesus up to the, you know, the highest point on the temple has Him stand up there and says, all right, throw yourself down, right?
It's the temptation to be spectacular. This is the temptation to wow everyone, right? To wow everyone as a mother, or to wow everyone as a speaker, to wow everyone as a leader, to be spectacular. And for some of us, that might mean be perfect.
Be the perfect leader, be the perfect mother, be the perfect father, be the perfect provider. It means to stand out in some way, shape, or form. And this is not a new temptation, this temptation to be spectacular. It's not new that it's heavy and burdensome and exhausting.
But this is the second form that sin takes, be spectacular. Even if you have to twist yourself out of shape, go for it, do it, impress everybody, be spectacular. The Pharisees, of course, were doing this, and they were choosing Torah, law observance to be spectacular. And they would stand up on the street corners and they would make long prayers and they would impress themselves and they were hoping that they would impress other people.
The Herodians and Pontius Pilate were using power and influence, and they were spectacular, and they were lording their power over everyone else. Remember Pilate says to Jesus, don't you know that I have the power, right? That's like, all right, Pilate, you're trying to be spectacular there, and Jesus called him on it. Zacchaeus was seeking to do that with money.
The rich young ruler was seeking to do that with money. To be a notch above, you know, and Torah observance, power and authority, money, these are not bad things, but there's a temptation in these things. It's like the enemy will take us to the pinnacle of the temple and he will say, okay, be spectacular. Present this.
Posh to yourself in this way. Pose in this way. You know, be perfect. Be spectacular.
And of course we all know the word from growing up, the word poser. Poser, you know, means that we're faking our way through something. Well, we are posers and the second temptation that the enemy tries to seduce us into is this temptation to pose. And the enemy has a plan to take us out.
And so it's good to understand his plan so we can stand when the enemy comes to us and tempts us to be spectacular in whatever way you would love to be spectacular. The temptation is to present something. It's to put on a mask to try to get other people to think a certain way about us. And we're probably not okay unless they do.
And I think here's a really good question. When you walk into a room, what do you need or want other people to think about you? Or when you leave a meeting and a party, whatever, when you leave a room, what do you really, really need other people to think about you? That's a great way to get into this temptation to be spectacular.
The temptation to present something. And God will help you do that. And so there's this crafty summons into this kind of life where we are presenting. And we may be so accustomed to it.
We are hardly even aware. We may be incredibly defensive when someone tries to get in or get passed or poke holes in or pull down what it is that we're trying to hold up and present. In fact, another good question that helps us understand whether we're being duped into this temptation is what are you most defensive about? Because very often the last thing we want to hear is the thing we need to hear the most.
The enemy loves this temptation. And as most of us have probably recognized, this is an exhausting path. And the enemy will use God's word to lure us into it. And when we collude with this, when we throw ourselves off the temple, when we throw ourselves into presenting and posing, we leave behind the powerful things like authenticity and vulnerability and compassion and truth and brokenness and even weakness and truly connecting with other people because what begins to fade into the distance when we begin to pose and present and posture ourselves is actually connecting with other people on a genuine level.
And this has disastrous consequences in our relationships and in our leadership roles and in our families with our children. Yeah, we so often are lured into this presenting, posing, posturing, being perfect. And so the invitation this morning as we kind of meditate on this passage, and Jesus does say to Satan in verse seven, don't put the Lord your God to the test. Don't try to test God by presenting something that is not true yet.
Be comfortable with who you are, with who I am, with what God's given you, with what God has given me. Let's drop the mask. Let's open up. Let's quit trying so hard to be spectacular, to be a notch above whatever that would look like for you.
Let's follow Jesus into this refreshing and restful life of not needing to present anymore. And so today as we consider this temptation and possibly how we've been caught up in it, let's just go for the power of authenticity, the power of encouraging others, the power of letting down that guard or that mask and just allowing the unique freedom of who we are to be, what other people see. Because after all, that's what God sees, it's what God loves, and it's what is actually true. 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 with us on our brand new app, which you can find in the Google Play and the App Store, and check out our social media pages like Facebook and Instagram, or even check out our website at inlandvignard.org.