Alright, we'll welcome guys. We started a new series and let's take a look at the scripture that's kind of the foundation of our series. About that time Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee and John baptized him in the Jordan River. As soon as Jesus came out of the water, he saw the sky open and the Holy Spirit coming down to him like a dove.
A voice from heaven said, You are my own dear son and I am pleased with you. Right away God's Spirit made Jesus go into the desert. He stayed there for forty days while Satan tested him. Jesus was with the wild animals, but angels took care of him.
After John was arrested, Jesus went to Galilee and told the good news that comes from God. He said, The time has come. God's kingdom will soon be here. Turn back to God and believe the good news.
Well, I have always been the kind of a person that I need a competitive outlet in my life someplace that I can sweat and go hard at something and get my stress and energy out. For about a dozen years, cycling was that for me. I'm a bike, raced bikes and a few years ago, a few buddies and I took a trip to Colorado. Here's a picture of us.
This is me on the far right. There's four of us here from Munro area and we met up with some other folks from around the country up there. And we spent six days riding our bikes in the Colorado Rockies. Now that's hard.
We rode 500 miles in six days, 95% of the time you're going up or you're coming down. I want to show you what happened on one of those six days. We were about an hour into a climb that took about two hours. That was just winding and straight up this mountain.
About an hour into this climb, I was coming up on a cyclist that I was about to pass. Which by the way, this group right here, we're not just kind of toodling through the Colorado Rockies. We're trying to hurt each other. We're trying to beat each other to the top and get the bragging rights of sitting down and eating the fruit that they had prepared for us at the top before anybody else got there.
So I was going hard and I was coming up on a cyclist I was about to pass and I want you to check it out. You need to look real closely. So if you couldn't tell there, that man on that bicycle had one leg. And he rode the same six days and the same 500 miles that all of the rest of us did that week.
And as I approached that, man, I'm feeling pretty good about myself. I'm passing another guy. And then I realized I'm passing a man who has half the equipment that I have. And I didn't need a sermon that day.
I needed that man that day. Because challenge has a way of reframing everything for us. I thought it was hard what I was doing. And it wasn't, comparatively speaking, compared to a man doing the same thing with one leg on a bicycle.
And I thought I was at my limit going as hard as I could, as fast as I could. And I wasn't. Now, some people would ask, you know, why do you go spend a vacation week in the Colorado Rockies torturing yourself by climbing a bike up a mountain? And some of you are going, good question.
And that's the answer right there to test ourselves. Because it's there. And we want to see if we can conquer that. And what our limits are and how hard we can push ourselves.
There's something about the human being that innately we want challenge. In fact, we need challenge in our lives. So we are week two in a series called Walking in the Wilderness. And in the series we're looking at Jesus spending 40 days in the wilderness.
40 days without food. I'm 40 days of absolute solitude. 40 days with Satan and with dangerous animals. If you were here last week, let's review what we did if you weren't.
Here's what we learned in the first week of our series. That the wilderness is wild, like life. The wilderness produces something in our lives. And the wilderness is not a detour.
It's not something that just got in the way. The wilderness is a part of what we're meant to deal with in life. So today we're going to dig down a little deeper. And our subject is a time for challenge.
And the question is, what happens? When we embrace the challenge of wilderness in our lives. Because as we saw last week, we all go through it. We all have to face wilderness times in our life.
It's never welcome. We never want it. But it's always going to be there. And what happens in the challenge of wilderness in our life?
So here's what we're going to find. Challenge exposes weakness. Challenge produces strength and challenge promises presence. So let's dig into those three things.
Number one, on the first thing we see is that challenge exposes weakness. So the passage we're about to read from 2 Corinthians, chapter 4, is in the middle of Paul's second missionary journey. In other words, Paul is traveling through what we know of today is the Middle East and Eastern Europe. And he is working to plant churches everywhere that he goes.
And these journeys were fraught with challenge and opposition at every turn. And he writes to a church that he loves in Corinth. And here's what he says in 2 Corinthians, chapter 4, verse 8 to 11. So Paul says, we are pressed on every side by troubles.
But we are not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair. We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God. We are not down, but we are not destroyed.
Through suffering, our bodies continue to share in the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be seen in our bodies. Now, look at Paul's challenges here that he describes. And this is just the tip of the iceberg from what we see in other places of the problems that Paul faces. By the time Paul is writing this letter to the church at Corinth, he has been beaten multiple times.
He has been imprisoned. He has been run out of multiple cities. What we read right here is not theoretical theology. This is a field report.
This is what is happening to Paul in real life. So when he says, I'm pressed on every side. That's not metaphorical language there. He is pressed on every side.
Now that word pressed in the Greek is pronounced Thlybo. Thlybo. And it means to squeeze or to compress. And it's the word that you would choose for pressing grapes or pressing olives.
Paul chose that word on purpose. Now, Paul's readers, when they read this, these verses, eight through 11, they would have recognized this as a very common expression in first century. This was known as a catalog of hardships. And Greek philosophers would do this.
They would list a catalog of things that they were going through, these challenges in their life. And Greek philosophers did that in order to demonstrate their self-sufficiency. In other words, they listed these hardships in order to comment on their strength in dealing with these hardships. And so what Paul does right here in his letter is he borrows the form, the catalog of hardships, and he totally changes the ending of it.
So Paul is saying, I'm not tough enough. I'm not strong enough. I'm not sufficient in my own strength to handle these challenges. But there is something outside of me that is holding me together.
Now clearly what Paul is doing is he's saying these challenges are not self-sufficiency, but they're also not evidence of failure. Paul is saying that recognizing that we are insufficient is the first step towards something good happening in my life spiritually. Arthur Miller was a playwright in the middle of the 20th century. And he understood that challenge reveals character.
He wrote a play called The Crucible. And it was turned into a movie in the early 1990s. And The Crucible is a furnace that gets extremely hot. And you put metals in there in order to cause the impurities to rise to the top and create pure metal.
Well, the Crucible play is set in Salem, just outside of Boston, in the late 1600s in America. And during that time, there were what we now know is the Salem Witch Trials. It started actually in Europe, and it finally made its way to North America. It was a time where people were deathly afraid of supernatural.
And what happened here in Salem is that some outcasts who couldn't protect themselves were accused of being witches. And hysteria exploded in this little village of Salem, and soon everyone is being accused of being a witch. And here was the moment, the Crucible moment that happened in every person's life who lived in Salem. When you were accused of being a witch, you were brought before a formal tribunal.
And you were challenged to confess to being a witch. If you confessed to being a witch and named the name of another person who was also a witch, then your life was spared. But if you refused to confess that you were a witch and refused to name the names of any other witches, then you were hung to death on the gallows. Quite a situation, right?
You lie in order to spare yourself, or you tell the truth, and it results in your death. And so this is the context of the play. It's quite dramatic. Some people use this moment in order to settle old scores and accuse someone that they didn't like in the first place.
Some people used it to grab power, and some people simply did what they had to do to save their own life. And the pressure of this moment revealed exactly who you really were. The pressure didn't create who you were. The pressure revealed who you were.
Now there were two of the main characters when Abigail Williams, she chose to deflect pressure that was on her. And she accused innocent people, people that she knew to be innocent of being a witch. She became drunk with the power of being an accuser, and in the process revealed herself in her character to be ugly, selfish, and corrupted at her very base nature. Now the other character, John Proctor, was a very flawed man.
That Arthur Miller did not try to cover up. But when the moment came, that crucible moment, he refused to lie and falsely accuse innocent people being a witch and went to the gallows and died for telling the truth. Now same pressure, same courtroom, same flawed people, completely different results. The crucible doesn't create your character, it just introduces you to your character.
So this is Filibo that Paul talked about. The pressure that reveals the cracks in our nature. The pressure that we go through that reveals the weakness in who we are. There may be some of you who are in a crucible right now.
And I don't need to describe what that is. You're living it right now, a pressure cooker. And as a follower of Jesus, why is this important? Well, it's important because these pressure moments in our life reveal the cracks in our character, which is revealing the places that God wants to work, the places where God wants to mold you and me into the people who are like Jesus.
It takes courage for us to go through a crucible moment and admit those squishy places in our life. Admit those messy places where I need to become stronger and better. But that's exactly what the Christian does. In fact, it's an integral part of what it means to be a Christian.
We are growing. Now this is the first thing that challenges do, challenges expose weakness. But that's not the end game, challenges to expose what's wrong in our life. It leads to number two.
Challenges produce strength. Now, somebody wonder what this stuff is over here. This is pure olive oil right here. Now, what produces olive oil?
Pressure. Pressure produces olive oil. So this is a press right here. So this press brings the pressure to whatever's inside.
So there's a basket here. And you would place olives in here. There's tiny little holes right here. And whenever those are in there, these levers are pressed.
And you achieve a seven to nine bars of pressure is how they measure it. And with enough time and pressure from the top, what comes out of these olives is this pure oil. So this is filibo. This is the pressure that produces something in our life.
The pressed doesn't mean destroyed necessarily. The pressed means that something is extracted that could not be extracted any other way, except from pressure. There's no way to get this from this without the pressure. So this is exactly what Paul is describing when he uses this word, filibo.
And remember what we talked about last week if you were here, that Jesus is in the wilderness for 40 days. And when he walks out, he walks out preaching clearly with a message that could be summarized in a single powerful statement. And this wilderness experience produced something in Jesus. It changed something in him.
And this is what pressure does. Now look at, again, what Paul says about challenges. Same passage. I'm gonna focus on the second part.
So Paul says we're pressed on every side by troubles, but we're not pressed, we're perplexed, but not driven to despair. We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God. We're not down, but we're not destroyed. Here it is.
Through suffering, our bodies continue to share in the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be seen in our bodies. Now we see the troubles happening around Paul, but what's happening inside of Paul? Well, we see it right here. Transformation is happening inside of Paul.
Paul is becoming more like Jesus. Through suffering, through challenge, our bodies continue to share in the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be seen in our bodies. In other words, becoming like Jesus only happens through pressure, the challenges of life, is what truly changes our character to become like Jesus himself. This is not passive endurance that Paul's describing.
It's not grit your teeth and bear the challenges of life. This is active participation. This is cooperating with God, so that my character is changed. Because here's the thing.
We resist change. We don't like change. Change is hard. Change hurts.
And we'll do anything we can to avoid it. And we'll make our way through it by gridding our teeth and bearing it. But that's not what the Christian does. Note through suffering our bodies.
Now I don't want us to go too deep into the Greek weeds on this passage, but I just wanted to say this. This Greek meaning of this sentence here carries the idea of ongoing, continuous action. In other words, every trial, every pressing, every moment that we're not down is a part of a continually transforming process that's taking place in here in our life. And here's the key.
So we see it right here in this verse. As the dying happens, the living appears. You see it? As the dying happens like Jesus, the new life appears in Jesus.
So here's what I need to tell you about the press. The pressure alone doesn't produce the oil. There's got to be some olives in that basket right there. It's not depressing that creates the oil.
It's the olives in there. It's the cooperation that happens between me and God. I can go through all kinds of pressures and challenges. Challenges don't automatically make you stronger.
Sometimes they just squish people. You know somebody right now who's getting squished by some problems in their life, don't you? And lots of people in our world are getting just trampled underfoot by problems in their life. So this doesn't happen automatically.
Challenges don't automatically create new character. I've got to participate with God. I've got to cooperate with what they're revealing. Okay, what's being revealed in my life, the weakness where God wants to work.
And am I going to cooperate with God to make those areas of strength? When the crucible shows a weak point, you have a choice. You can survive that crucible. That's what Abigail Williams did.
She survived. She was accused of being a witch. She started the whole silly mess. She was accused of being a witch and what did she do?
She deflected the attention off of herself. She put it on someone else and she survived. Very different from what happened to John Proctor. John Proctor also was accused, but he looked at himself and saw the ugliness of who he was and said, no, I'm going to change.
And his character became transformed. So this positive change doesn't happen by itself. Unless you've been living under a rock the last month, you know the name Alyssa Liu. This is her.
So Alyssa has become an America's sweetheart. She's the first American woman to win the gold medal in figure skating in 24 years. And she joined in doing that, a very select club of eight women, eight women who have in the history of the Winter Olympics won a gold medal for the United States. And she did it with grace and style.
And I found this quote from Alyssa Liu, which many of you have probably seen because it's been all over social media. She was interviewed before the Olympics about and asked a question about the grueling training process as a skater and she said this, I love struggling, actually. It makes me feel alive. Clearly, she didn't just endure the pressure.
She cooperated with it. And she leaned into the pressure and what it does turn her into gold. Now, I don't know what Alyssa Liu believes by know this. She discovered something on that ice, that Paul, the apostle, knew from a prison cell.
And that is that struggling is not the enemy of the good life. That it's actually how we experience the good life that God has called us to live. And a part of the Christian faith is to embrace that struggle and that process that God takes us through in transforming our character. And we embrace that on a deep spiritual level.
Now, what does that look like for you? Well, it might look like addressing that habit that you've been excusing or admitting that thing that you've been hiding or getting off the sideline and into the game. I don't know what it looks like for you. But whatever, it looks like it requires your cooperation with God.
God provides the pressure in you, show up for the work. So will you do that? Will you show up for the work? Well, let me answer that question for you.
Yes. You will, eventually. You will. Because this is a part of what it means to be a Christian.
A Christian must be growing. Now, sometimes it takes longer for us to learn those lessons and to begin to cooperate with God. But we can actually save ourselves a lot of time in trouble by cooperating with God now. But this is a part of the process of growing in Christ.
Now, here's the third thing I want us to see. And that is that challenge exposes weakness, produces strength. And number three, challenge is promise presence. So when we're in the wilderness, our instinct is to get out, not find a companion there.
But that's an instinct that we need to fight against. Now, what does that mean? Well, we're so focused sometimes on getting out of the wilderness away from the challenges that we miss a real blessing there. And that is God's presence with us in challenges.
Paul's not writing here in 2 Corinthians about relief that comes after the wilderness. No, Paul's describing God's powerful presence that was there the whole time in all of these pressing challenges that he faced. Now watch, let's read it again. We're pressed on every side by troubles, but we're not crushed.
We're perplexed, but not driven to despair. We're hunted down, but never abandoned by God. We're knocked down, but we're not destroyed through suffering our bodies continuously sharing the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be seen in our bodies. Now notice there, Paul uses four great but not statements.
I call these big butts. Never ignore a big but. Yep, that's what I'm saying. Never ignore a big butts.
Now, there's important things that happen around big butts. You know, here they are. Pressed on every side butts, not crushed. Pressed but not into despair.
Hunted down but never abandoned, not down but not destroyed. Now notice Paul never says. He never says the hardship stopped. He never says it got easier.
He never says God explained what was happening. But Paul gives one big powerful truth. I'm still here. And something is still holding me together.
That's the big powerful truth. Now, the only explanation for that, God's presence. And if we're praying for the exit to our problems and miss the fact that God's been with us the whole time, right there, never wavering, then we missed it. What if the challenge that we're trying to escape is actually the thing that's trying to make you into who God wants you to be?
That is actually the secret of happiness and the secret of the good life. So the invitation of Lent is not to endure the wilderness. It's to let the wilderness do the work that it's designed to do. So that man on the bike in Colorado, he didn't need easier terrain.
He needed to be on the road. And so do you. And so do I. Let's pray.
Father, thank you that the challenges of life are the very things that you use to create us into Jesus's image. And that continue to change us and make us the people that are overcomers that embrace challenges as a way of you refining and helping us to become the people that we're meant to be. This week to help us to get on that road towards becoming like Jesus for it is in Jesus' name. We pray.
Amen.