Sermon Tone Analysis

*Intro* – Two elderly ladies had been friends for many decades, sharing many adventures.

But age took its toll and eventually limited them to simple activities.

One day, while playing cards, one looked at the other and said, "Now don’t get mad at me.

I know we’ve been friends for a long time, but I can’t think of your name!

I’ve thought and thought, but I can’t remember it.

Please tell me what your name is." Her friend glared at her – for 2 long minutes.

Finally she said, "How soon do you need to know?"

I tell you that story because it illustrates why we have difficulty with temptation.

It’s because we forget who we are.

Every temptation creates an identity crisis.

This is because we want the benefits of being a Christian, but we don’t always want the identity.

We want to be a Christian on Sunday, but we’d just as soon be one of the boys during the week.

We’d just as soon be part of the gossip society during the week.

We’re easy pickings because we have a mixed identity.

The tests that come into our lives are intended by Satan to confuse our identity, but they are intended by God to further establish our identity as one of His own.

Who wins?

That’s up to us!

We’re taking a bird’s eye view of temptation from Luke 4. We’ve seen God’s part – He actively allows, administers and accompanies every temptation.

They are intended as tests by Him – bounded opportunities for us to.

Then we saw Satan’s part – to make the temptation look as enticing as possible, while behind the scenes viciously and persistently plotting our downfall.

So, today, the question is, how do we line up with God’s testing purposes intended for our good rather than Satan’s tempting purposes intended for our demise?

What is My Part?

*III.

My Part – Find My Identity in God*

Simple.

My part is to act like who I am in Christ.

My part is to refuse the identity crisis of Satan in favor of further establishing my identity as God’s son or daughter.

Sounds easy.

It’s not; it is perhaps the hardest thing in the Christian life.

Given that every sin is the result of an identity crisis, and consider that there is a lot of sin, and you see how tough this is.

Temptation was about identity from the start.

Remember?

God put Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and told them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Gen 1:28).

Who was to have dominion?

Adam and Eve.

Over what?

Every living thing that moves.

Then we come to Gen 3:1: “Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made.”

What is the point?

The point is that the serpent, while crafty, is still a living thing under man’s dominion.

But the opposite happens!

The serpent asks the questions, and Eve answers, becoming subordinate.

The serpent takes the lead, usurps authority, so right off the bat, everything is upside-down.

She’s in the image of God, not him.

She has dominion, not him.

But she gave it up the moment she answered.

To put it bluntly, he persuaded her to see herself as an animal instead of the image-bearing ruler for God that she was.

Before she ever sinned, Eve already had an identity crisis.

At the very beginning –the key question was: Who are you?

Eve didn’t even see it and most of the time, neither do we.

Temptation is about – Who are you?

So, who are we?

Jesus says we are the light of the world.

Matt 5:16, “In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”

To counter temptation, we must remember who we are.

Paul reminds us in Rom 8:17 that we are “heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.”

Do you see?

Those who are true heirs of God live like heirs of God.

They don’t take the easy way.

Paul says in Eph 4:22-24 that real believers know “to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, 23 and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, 24 and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”

Be who you are, not who you were.

When the enemy gets us focused on pleasing self, we have an identity crisis.

Or if he can get us thinking ourselves irrelevant, unimportant, self-loathing – identity crisis!

That is not who we are in Christ.

In him we are redeemed, forgiven, adopted, sealed.

Every temptation makes us question in some way, Who am I?

A frustrated executive called maintenance one day when his computer failed.

He asked to for Ahmed (A H M E D) who he knew managed the department.

Shortly a man came on the line and said, “Hello, Ed speaking.

How can I help you?"

The exec replied, “Sorry.

I was looking for Ahmed.”

The man replied, “This is Ahmed.

How can I help you?” “I thought you said your name was Ed?” said the caller.

The guy replied, “It is.

But whenever I say ‘Ahmed,’ people think I’m saying, ‘I’m Ed.’

So I figured it’s easier to just be Ed.”

Easy way out.

Change identity.

Just what we do when we give in to temptation.

When the enticing pictures pop up on the screen, it’s just easier to be the old me than to fight the temptation and ace the test.

Far easier to harbor the bitterness than seek or give forgiveness.

Better to think myself unworthy than to act positively.

We’d rather change identities than change behavior.

Rather be the old me than fight to be holy as our Father is holy.

The youthful Prince of Wales got good advice from his father, King George V.

During the roaring 20’s, he told his son, “No one has ever had the chance like you to mix with all kinds of people but you must never forget your position or who you are.”

Tragically, the Prince forgot.

He forgot long enough to take up with a twice divorced American named Wallis Simpson.

When he became King Edward VIII in 1936, he thought he could marry her and still have the throne, but it was not to be.

When his plans became public, there was a huge backlash due to Wallis’s past.

He lost the throne because he forgot who he was.

If we are to overcome temptation and grow as God intends, we must be always alert – never forgetting who we are.

This passage shows us two ways to do that, beautifully modeled by Jesus Himself – two imperatives to winning over temptation.

*A.

Be Filled with the Spirit*

The first imperative to winning over temptation is to be Spirit-filled.

That is emphasized in Luke 4:1, "And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness.”

Both Matthew and Mark also mention this ministry of the Holy Spirit in Jesus’ life associated with His temptation.

So what does it mean to be filled with the Holy Spirit?