The Great Performance // Discovering the Hidden Things of God, Part 5

After we've been serving God for a while – well, we get to feeling that we're entitled to be special in His sight.  And the real temptation – and it's a temptation of pride – is to put God's love to the test. You know we all need encouragement and validation and when we're travelling down a certain path in life it's great when somehow people confirm that we're on the right path, someone looks at the career you've chosen and they say to you, "Gee you do so well at that." I mean that's a wonderful thing isn't it? And so often we want God to confirm that we've chosen the right path too. It would be great to have His confirmation and encouragement but sometimes, you know sometimes at those times God just remains silent, have you ever noticed that? Sometimes we want the Lord to confirm that we're on the right path and He just doesn't say anything and you know, when we're walking in faith and putting it all on the line for God, it would be really nice for Him to whisper, "Well done good and faithful servant, keep going." And yet so often He chooses to remain silent and those times, it can be a real wilderness experience. Why does He do that? What's going on? We like to live life on the surface, you know the externals. The recognition, there's the success and the things we can buy and the comfort and the travel and the holidays, you know all that stuff but God, God wants to go to a much, much deeper plain with us, much deeper way below the surface and that's why this week we've been talking about the hidden things of God. Hidden because it's wisdom that lies below the surface, hidden because it's often not until we have a spiritual wilderness experience that we discover them. This week we've been looking at the wilderness experience of Jesus Christ. If you were with us earlier in the week you would have heard me talk about His public baptism, He went down to the Jordan River, He was baptised by John the Baptist, He comes up and heaven opens up and God speaks down and says: This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. What an awesome thing and immediately following that God picks Him up and throws Him out into the desert where He starves for forty days and the devil comes after Him with a pick axe. He goes from the middle of the river of God out into this desolation, this wilderness and its Gods way to have Him starving for forty days and He's tempted by the devil. Over the last few days we've looked at the first two temptations. The first one was after forty days; the devil tempts Him to turn the stone into bread, to end the suffering for himself, to end His hunger, to meet His needs in His own strength rather than in Gods strength. After all why not, He was hungry? Because that would be turning your back and the will of God for your life even if that will involves suffering and Jesus turns round to the devil and says, "hang on": Man doesn't live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. He rejects the devils temptation to take matters into His own hands. The second temptation we looked at yesterday. The devil took Him up to a high mountain and said: Worship me and I'll give you all of these kingdoms. It's about chasing after worldly success, about taking the world and leaving God behind and that's so easy to do too because there's such a fine line between serving God and falling in love and worshipping the works of our own hands instead of God and Jesus said: No it is written, "You will worship the Lord your God and serve Him alone. For Jesus it was so much more important that He be found humbly serving His Father instead of being given all the kingdoms of this world. Today we're going to look at the third temptation; it's something that Douglas Webster in his book, "Under the Radar" called "The Great Performance". Have a listen: The devil led Jesus to Jerusalem and had Him stand on the highest point of the temple. 'If you're the Son of God' he said, 'Throw yourself down from here because it is written, "He will command His angels concerning you to guard you carefully. They will lift you up in their hands so that you will not strike your foot against the stone".' And Jesus answered the devil, 'It is written, "Do not put the Lord your God to the test."' In his book, "Under the Radar", Douglas Webster puts his finger right on what's happening here when he writes this: The career path for Christian leaders is marked by the cross, an incentive that doesn't have much cross-over appeal into the corporate world or our post modern society. Self-denial is a difficult concept to translate into today's leadership literature. The path leading to a cross is far more humbling than it is heroic and all true leaders are led along this path but the temptation to avoid the path to the cross by trying to achieve something great for God confronts us as did Jesus. We're tempted to escape the cross with our spiritual pride intact; we want to feel enthusiastic about Jesus while avoiding the way of Jesus. You see that's the temptation. You get to a point where you've been walking with God for a while and you've been sacrificing, you've been suffering and you get to figuring, "Well God you know, I've earned something here. I've earned a short cut, it's time for you God to validate me, it's time for you God to do some miracle. To say, 'You're heading down the right path, you're special to me.'" And so we get to asking God for something impossible. Not for the right reasons, not because we want to serve Him and bring glory to Him but in order for Him to validate that we're something special. In a sense we want God to start being our servant rather than us being His servant. This temptation is about turning the created creature relationship on its head and putting us on top of the heap and that that is why Jesus names it for what it is, putting God to the test. Growing old is great as long as it involves growing wiser and wisdom, in Gods economy, starts and ends with one thing. You can read it in Proverbs chapter 1; verse 7 where it says: The fear of the Lord is the beginning of all wisdom. Fools despise wisdom and discipline. In other words wisdom is based on a right relationship with God and when, when you've been doing stuff for God for a while this is a really easy temptation to fall in. And it's the temptation the devil fell into when he tried to put himself above God. To believe in Jesus is to follow Jesus, He's not only the truth He's also the way and in this wilderness we discover the hidden things of God. When we're under pressure and hungry and tired and the devil pulls along side and tempts us … tempts us to provide for ourselves, tempts us to chase after worldly success, tempts us to make God our servant rather than our Lord, this is when we discover who we are, this is when we discover what we believe and this is the place that God would teach us these lessons in a powerful way that would shape who we are. When we are shaped on the anvil of the wilderness and abandonment and vulnerability, we learn the most amazing lessons. This is where we discover the hidden things of God. We discover in the wilderness what humility and persistence and prayer is. In the wilderness we discover who's Lord. It's a special, special time.