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Blue Mountain Academy

Eric Walsh

Spiritual Staring Contest

A scripture reading for tonight comes from Mark chapter 14, and it says, watch ye and pray lest ye enter into temptation.

The spirit truly is ready, but the flesh is weak.

So Our message for this Vespers Friday night is spiritual staring contest.

Father God, we thank you for this opportunity to study your word.

And Lord, we just ask as we are now in the sacred hours of the Sabbath, Father God, your Holy Spirit would really fall upon this place.

Let him lead us into truth, Lord, and I ask in a special way that you bind the devil, bind the demons, Lord, and cast them far from here.

Remove distraction and let us focus now on Jesus Christ.

All right, so we're gonna go from Mark 1 to Matthew chapter 4 if you want to follow along in your Bible.

We're gonna start in Mark chapter 1 and the Bible says here Mark 1 in verse 12, and immediately the Spirit driveth him up into the wilderness.

And he was there in the wilderness 40 days, tempted of Satan, and was with the wild beasts and the angels ministered unto him.

So our Bible story tonight starts after Jesus is anointed.

John the Baptist baptizes Jesus and as Jesus comes up out of the water, the Bible tells us that in fact the Holy Spirit descends like a dove and God the Father says, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.

What is interesting is after Christ is anointed and this is on the exact day that the 490 year prophecy of the book of Daniel said he would be baptized and anointed on that day Christ is anointed.

The Bible is perfect timing in prophetically.

Jesus comes up out of the water and the Bible says that he's driven by the Spirit into the wilderness and there he is tempted by Satan.

When Jesus was on earth, I do not believe the devil ever delegated the responsibility of going after Jesus to any of his demons.

I think Satan was on, was after Christ from day 1.

Now we're gonna go a little deeper into the story in Matthew 4 and we're gonna expand it to today.

Matthew 4 in verse 1 says, then was Jesus led up of the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.

And when I was talking to the core students this week, we're talking about who is God and there's certain things God cannot do.

God cannot lie, God cannot force you to love him.

And 1 of the things God cannot do is, God cannot be tempted and he cannot tempt you.

So 1 of the students asked a brilliant question.

She asked the question, If God cannot be tempted and Jesus is God, then how was Jesus tempted?

The answer is because Christ was not tempted in his divinity, he was tempted in his humanity.

Jesus when the Bible says he took on our infirmities, our infirmities are the things that make us tired, they make us hungry, they make us frustrated, none of which are a sin, but they lead to weakness where we can be tempted in the effort to get out of that feeling.

The Bible says, Jesus was led up of the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.

Satan saw that he must either conquer or be conquered.

The issues of conflict involved too much to be entrusted to his Confederate angels.

All the energies of apostasy were rallied against the Son of God.

Christ was made the mark of every weapon of hell.

Why is it that Jesus's victory over sin is so powerful?

Because in fact, he was tempted in ways you and I can't be tempted.

He was not just tempted as a human, he was tempted all the time to allow his divinity to solve his problems.

Now I want to say to you that as a young person in many ways you have entered the wilderness.

You are many of you you're going into that age where you are going to be tempted, where you're going to be tested, where many of you have made some decision for God, but some of you haven't even made a full decision for him yet.

This is your time to begin to understand what your ministry will be.

It is the time in your life when you have to start thinking about going from being only a consumer to a producer, Right?

All your life when you're growing up you get to just consume.

You're moving to the stage of life where you're going to have to produce.

And I don't just mean produce like things to eat or clothes to wear.

You're gonna have to produce for God as well.

The second 1, you must start your own inner circle at this age.

Here's where you begin to make the friends you're going to have for the rest of your life.

And a little later on, even your nuclear family, like Christ picked his disciples.

Number 3, this is a time when Christ sacrificed.

You now, many of you as I talk to you around campus, are hungry for success.

You want to do well in school and you want to do better in the next level.

The last 1 is that Satan wants to remove you before you can do damage to his kingdom.

I came to tell you today that you would be shocked at how worried Satan is about some of you.

Some of you, he's very worried that if you figure out what God wants you to do with your life, that you will be a threat to his kingdom.

The Bible says, and the gates of hell shall not prevail.

You, some of you, are called to run down those gates.

But instead, this is what we've seen happening.

In the US, this is the increase in non-religious adults.

And you'll notice young adults, age 18 to 34, are higher than the other adults.

We've watched young people leave the church, be tempted out.

I've showed this here before but this is from the book, We Can keep them in the church, talks about Adventism, it says that of the local church in 1965 the average age was 35.

By 1995 the age had jumped, the average age in an Adventist church jumped to 65.

So this generation is disappearing And this is 1 of the reasons the book says that this happens.

Talking about temptation in the wilderness now.

Like no generation before, our young people have access to limitless information.

They live in a world where social media is redesigning the way people interact.

They live in a world filled with innumerable ideas, belief systems, and ways of life.

And what people tell you is, you just, you can pick which way you want to go, which belief system you're going to have, and you'll just be fine.

There's only 1 way to God, and that is through Jesus Christ.

You're not gonna survive the wilderness phase of your life, these next 10 to 15 years.

You're not gonna survive them if you think you're gonna survive them based on your parents Jesus If you're gonna make it now you've got to become a Christian for yourself And if you don't become a Christian for yourself, you will become 1 of the statistics.

But like many of the people I run into in their 50s, 60s, and even 70s, I run into people who went to schools just like Blue Mountain Academy all across this country and around the world.

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Spiritual Staring Contest

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