My boys sometimes play a video game called Minecraft.
Some of you might be familiar with it. It's basically like Legos on a television screen.
And you can arrange the Legos and build different fancy things and whatever you want.
It's, uh, it's very fascinating. And one day one of my sons was
building something on Minecraft and he said, "Hey dad, can you come here?"
And I said "Sure." And he said, "I built a castle
on Minecraft and I want to see if you can make your way through it."
So he was, he was holding the controller and he just, I was supposed to give him directions
on where to go through all the different passages and tunnels that he had built within this castle.
And at one point I was walking through and I got to um, I got to a dead end.
I either had to go left or right from uh, from the wall that I'd run into.
And he asked me, "Which way do you want to go?" And I said "Well I'll go left and so he took me
left and within just a couple of steps I fell into a blazing fire and he started laughing.
And I'd fallen into the blazing fire. And then he said, "Do you want to do it again?"
And I said "Okay fine." And so we did it again and made
my way through the castle with him controlling. We got to the same the same place where I had
to decide to go left or right and he said, "Which way do you want to go?"
And I said, "Well last time i went left so, well, this time I'll go right." And so I went right and
within a couple of steps I had fallen off a cliff and it was a bottomless pit that he had designed.
And he started laughing again. He was laughing because there was
no way that I could win. Like, that was,
that was the end of what he had created. I was either going to fall into the burning
fire or I was going to fall forever in the bottomless pit and and it just made him laugh.
And I think that's how temptation sometimes makes us feel, not like laughing,
but that we just can't win.
That I just can't win. No matter which way I go,
no matter how hard I try, no matter how many times I try, there might be certain temptations.
I feel like you just, you just can't win.
And if that's the case I want to point something
out to you about Jesus and his temptation.
Remember that as as we write about Jesus temptation
in the Gospel of Mark it says that angels attended him.
That Jesus, even Jesus, needed strengthening. Even Jesus needed encouragement.
Even Jesus needed a friend to be with him. And it's important to note that
Jesus needed all of these things. He needed a friend to bring encouragement
after he had defeated Satan.
He needed encouragement when he had been victorious.
And if Jesus needed encouragement, even when he was victorious,
how much more is it important for us to find encouragement after we've been defeated again.
You know, as we live our lives for God and as we live our lives in faith and as we help
one another do the same thing, it is important for us to recognize our weakness.
And it's important for us to to recognize and hold on to that significance that we
are weak and we are broken.
But it's even more important to give one another and to give ourselves a friend
who can give us really, really good encouragement.
A friend that can help us remember what true strength really is.
The kind of strength that can really only be revealed when you see the worst work of Satan.
And there are many examples. I'm going to give you one from February of 2018
when a school shooting was happening. A young man walked into a school
and killed 17 people.
But it would have been a lot more
if somebody who worked at the school, named Aaron Feis, hadn't been there.
At one point, he stood between the shooter and other students and used his body as a shield
to protect these vulnerable students. And he saved them.
He saved them with the strength of self-sacrificing love.
And all those students needed to be was vulnerable
in order to end up walking away that day.
And that same self-giving love is something that we see in the life of Jesus.
Just fast forward three years towards the end of his public ministry on earth.
He saw his disciples betray him. He saw his disciples deny him.
He saw, as he was getting closer to the cross, that all of them were just running away from him.
He knows how often his disciples fail in their faith.
He knows how easily we give in to Satan and all of his temptations.
And yet he chose to respond to that weakness, not by pushing us away
or even by pushing himself away to get to a safe place.
But instead, he used his own perfect life to shield our vulnerable souls
so that we could be protected from all of Satan's accusations.
He did that so that Adam and Eve and every other person just like us
who will never live up to the most godly expectations that we have of ourselves
wouldn't have to suffer a hell that Adam and Eve and you and me will will now never experience.
Because Jesus gave us a victory that
you didn't need to win in order to hold on to it for eternity.
He simply gave it to you and it's already yours.
It's something the apostle Paul discovered. In the book of Romans in Chapter 7.
He, he talks about how he's so frustrated with himself. How it's so easy for him to see his defeats.
How the good he wants to do he can't do and the bad things he knows he should never do
those are the things that he keeps on doing. And then in verse 24 he just comes to the conclusion.
And then he answers his own question.
It's the same one who's already rescued you.
Jesus, though you are weak, has already made you victorious.