So today is the big game and, and so just curious to try to read the room here. How many of you are pulling for the Chiefs this morning? Ok. How many of you are pulling for the Eagles this morning? How many of you could care less about either team? All right. Well, whatever, whatever camp you find yourself in, if, whether you watch the game or you don't watch the game. What I know to be true is that both teams showed up to Arizona this weekend with a game plan, you don't make it this far in any professional sport just showing up. Well, what should we do? And in reality, you don't really make it anywhere in life, just showing up that you have to make some intentional decisions, some purpose driven decisions. Wow, things might change. Just like tonight in the game, things are gonna change. They're gonna have to make adjustments. And while I don't know the outcome of the game, I do know that both teams have come in prepared, ready to win. So the question I posed to you this morning is what is your game plan? Because you can live your life by default or by design, you can live your life by just waiting for things to happen to you. Right? Riding the roller coaster of circumstance and emotion and there's plenty of things outside of your control. But while there are plenty of things outside of your control, what I wanna address today is what's in your control? And are you making some intentional decisions, intentional commitments in your marriage, in your work and your relationships in your finances? Because Jesus did. And if you're taking notes this morning, you know, we just started this new series of Who is Jesus, we're taking a look at the most, talked about figure in history through studying the least, talked about gospel account in the Bible, the gospel of Mark. See, Mark's Gospel really is someone who he followed Jesus had some interaction but also was an apprentice, an assistant if you will to Peter also worked some with Paul. But because he worked so closely with Peter, some even call this the gospel of Peter and through his words. And so he shares this story and we shared last week that the entire book of the Gospel of Mark can be broken down into two sections. First section is the crown chapters, one through eight. And the second section would be known as the cross. And we shared how Jesus has both the power and the passion to save. And that we, we declared that Jesus demonstrate that power when he came into the scene and then when he was baptized and he gave us that model to follow. And so now we pick up the story in verse 12. We're gonna finish chapter one today. We're not gonna have time to read the entire chapter. I invite you to do so. But if you're taking notes, here's what we're gonna discuss today. I want you to write this down that Jesus is our savior to worship and our model to follow. He's both. He's our savior to worship. He's powerful, he's the king and he's our model to follow. It's a both and not either or you see in being a savior of the world, he demonstrates his power in chapter one by defeating three things, Jesus. He's gonna show us this morning that he defeats distraction, specifically, overcoming temptation of the world. He defeats detachment where Satan tries to separate and isolate everyone. He actually builds community and then he actually goes into miracles and he's, and he defeats disease itself. The Gospel of Mark. Well, it is the shortest account of the gospels. Only 16 chapters actually records the most miracles records 20 miracles and 18 of those happening in the first eight chapters. So it's, it's, it's immediate, it's action based. It's, it's not just telling you who Jesus is, but showing you who Jesus is. And so we're gonna walk through this together. So Jesus was just baptized in the previous verses, baptism by the way is also uh uh connected to the story of creation. Because in creation, you have Jesus, the holy Spirit and God, the Father coming together as one, the power of God and the power of spoken word. In the baptism of Jesus. You have Jesus Christ himself, the spirit of God hovering like a dove coming down and then the voice of God, the Father saying with you, I am well pleased. So in Genesis one, he, he speaks into nothingness and creates the world. Let there be light in Mark Chapter when he speaks and says, this is my son affirming his deity and power and the launching of his ministry. And so while it's connected there to the Genesis account, then the next part, what we're about to read the temptation of Jesus is connected to the exodus of the early Israelites in the Old Testament. So let's read this here, start in Mark chapter one verse 12. So this is right after his baptism. So the spirit immediately drove Jesus out into the wilderness and he was in the wilderness 40 days being tempted by Satan and he was with the wild animals and the angels were ministering to him. But that's all he's gonna say right there about the temptation of Jesus. But this is a parallel or building upon to the audience who was reading this. So people in Rome were reading this letter, they didn't have a physical book yet, but they were they could be reading this gospel account. A Roman audience here. And for those that had any religious background could actually tie it to the Israel story because the Israelites were in the wilderness when they escaped with Charlton Heston. Ok. Not Charlton Heston. But that's why I picture as Moses, right? And they go through for 40 years and in the desert, in the wilderness for 40 years, God provided and ultimately gave them deliverance. Now, Jesus is in the wilderness for 40 days. He's fasting, he's tired, he's hungry. Isn't it interesting that Satan waits till you're isolated, alone, tired, hungry. And that's when he's coming in, right? So it comes in. But yet Jesus now provides the alternative, the solution, the way out and actually defeat Satan and this defeats distraction and goes through and it's pretty incredible story. Now, what were the temptations of Jesus? If you're not familiar with this story, I'll kind of share this with you and invite you to read Matthew four where it's a more detailed account, but Jesus was tempted with three things. The first thing was Satan there in the wilderness said, if you're hungry, which if you haven't, I'm, I'm hungry after not eating for 40 minutes. So if you're fasting for 40 days, you gotta be pretty starving. And he says, well, if you really are, who you say you are, turn the stone into bread in response. Jesus actually quotes Deuteronomy eight verse three and it says that man should not live on bread alone. But every word that comes from the mouth of God. The second temptation, Satan takes Jesus to the top of a temple, top of a tall building and says, if you really are, who you say you are. And he tries to make reference to Psalm 91 that quotes where really the angels will protect the Son of God. He says, well, throw yourself off this building and we'll make a show of it and the angels will catch you. And in response, Jesus actually quotes Deuteronomy chapter six verse 16, it says, you shall not put God to the test. And then he takes Jesus a tall mountain overlooking all of creation. And, and I thought this last one was a little bit of a weird temptation because Jesus created the world, right? So how is it tempting for Him to say if you worship me? I will give you all of this. But then what I realized in my study was that he wasn't just tempting him to rule over creation. He was tempting him to avoid the path to lacrosse. It was a shortcut to what God called him to and see, Satan cannot create anything. God creates. Satan counterfeits, right? God creates relationships. Satan tries to come in. God creates financial stability and principles and processes and work ethic and Satan comes in and tries to destroy that. But because Satan can't create anything, he only has three plays. I can tell you that whatever team wins tonight is going to run more than three plays in the game. And here's how I know Satan can only run three place because the temptation of Jesus mirrors the temptation there in the garden mirrors the temptation repeated in the Old Testament Tower battle uh Babel uh King David Israelites itself, the whole book of judges, like all these things come in to play. But we see it summarized there in first John chapter two, verse 16, in which the writer puts it this way, it says for all that is in the world says the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes and the pride of life is not from the father, but from the world. And so here are the three plays that Satan's gonna run. And if Satan tempted Jesus with these, I promise you, he's gonna tempt you with the same three things. So it helps to know what he's gonna come at you with, right? It helps to know what is the play. He's gonna try to run to get you distracted, to get you pulled away from what God has called you to do and who God has called you to be. Well, the first play he's gonna run is called the Lust of the flesh. This is really, really described as hedonism, the pursuit of pleasure. Now this was stone to bread. But so many things in life are just a craving that somebody has. Right. And isn't it interesting that we tend not to crave the healthiest things? Right. At light, uh, late at night and alone and tired? Right. We don't drift toward being productive when we drift towards being distracted and this is what it means to have it. So we think of less of the flesh. It could be sexual, it could be emotional, it could be physical. It could be mental like those little cravings and you, it's when you take something that you want and you tell yourself it's something that you need. I am satin is. But what Christians do is not that hedonism itself is, is sin. But rather we, we, we settle for less. We settle for the counterfeit version. In other words, we don't pursue pleasure enough instead of pursuing a Godly marriage and relationship. We settle for what we might look on the computer or something. We, somebody we meet out in the public or something. Why? Why I'm craving that? And God wants me to be happy, right? And we settle for less. We, we go after the things of life that we think we need would really, it's just what we want and we think this will make me happy. But then it doesn't why, because as soon as you get that thing, you're craving the next thing and then the next thing and the next thing and that's how sin works. He'll pull you in saying you need this, you, you commit the sin and then you wake up the next day and you feel guilty and you feel shameful and you pull away. That's how he works. That's how he runs. The play says, no, you want the greatest joy. You want the greatest purpose, the greatest pleasure it's found in me and who I created you to be. And so that first play is The Lust of the Flesh. The second one is the Lust of the Eyes that's seen as materialism. And we especially love that here in America, we are bombarded with billions of messages. It seems like every day, right? People are spending millions of dollars to get in front of your eyes for 30 seconds to tell you you need something interesting play. Actually, just to be on the look for today actually is a large Christian group of investors who are actually putting out some Christian messaging tonight if they called the He Gets Us campaign. So be on the lookout for that. There's gonna be some commercials promoting Jesus this tonight. And so, but the world for the most part is going to be saying you need this, you need this, you need this, I need the new car, the phone, the whatever and we and we go after we go, after we go after now in the less of the eyes here. That's why I say you can say Jesus, you can have all of this without any pain, without any sacrifice, without any commitment. Isn't that what Satan does? You can have this without commitment, you can have this without sacrifice without discipline. It doesn't work that way. And then he comes in and the last one there is the pride of life seen as egotism, right? They are in the temple saying, yeah, throw yourself off if you're so great. But Jesus says, I'm not going to throw myself off to prove to you who I am. I'm gonna prove who I am by laying my life down and freely giving it up for you. And for me, Satan only has three plays. How many of us know someone that we see on TV? Or in the church or parent or child, or sibling or friend or coworker whose life was messed up because of the pursuit of pleasure, right? Pursuit of materialism, right? Or pride. 2000 years later, he's running the same play. So we need to be ready for it. But the beautiful thing is that Jesus actually overcomes that meaning that he gives us the power to overcome, that you are not a victim to your circumstance, but you can be victorious and the God who loves you and saves you and empowers you that if Jesus defeats death itself, then we can have that power and celebrate that. All right. So now he continues on, he begins his ministry. So he defeats distraction. But next, he's gonna defeat detachment because I think it's interesting to note that Jesus didn't come down and just live an isolated life or rather he builds relationships. We see this here. Verse 14. Now, after John, the Baptist was arrested, Jesus came into the Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God saying that the time is fulfilled and the Kingdom of God is at hand repent and believe in the gospel. The gospel, meaning good news. Notice that other religions provide good advice. But Christianity provides good news, right? And he's preaching this here and he says, passing along the sea of Galilee, he saw Simon. That's another name for Peter. So he saw Peter and Andrew the brother of Simon casting a net into the sea for they were fishermen and Jesus said to them follow me and I will make you fishers of men. It's a great definition for discipleship also found in Matthew 419 to follow Jesus to fellowship with believers and then to fish for people. This is what it means to be a Christian to follow Jesus. He says this here and immediately they left their nets and followed him. This is interesting to me because you don't have to understand fully to obey immediately. I love strategic plans. I love details. I love going through that they're not wrong, but sometimes you don't have all the answers ahead of time. You just have a call from God and you don't have 10,000 steps lined up. You just have the next one and the disciples, in that case, they didn't negotiate with God and with Jesus and say, OK, God, but I wanna have this many miracles and I want this vacation time and I want these things and then what's my contract here, Jesus? Right? I'm giving up a lot here. But to spend time with the one who's gonna save the world, they didn't understand fully, but they obeyed immediately. And they, and Jesus starts building these relationships and the disciples and ministering. And next he calls James and John who are called the sons of thunder. And he starts calling these people out and you can only follow someone really when you're close. So there's connection, there's community and then things are starting to get busy. But then we get to verse 35 and read, this is rising very early in the morning while it was still dark. Jesus departed and went out to a desolate place and there he prayed. See, even when Jesus got away, he wasn't just getting away because Peter was a little much, right? If you have multiple Children, you probably have at least one. That's a little bit like a Peter, right? What are we gonna do next? What are we gonna do? What are we gonna do? What are we gonna do? Right? Like I'd wanna get away too, but he gets away to actually turn down the noise, turn up the connection with his heavenly father. And he prays how many of us have used the excuse. I'm too busy to pray. I know I have before. But the reality is the busier. You are the more you need prayer. You're too busy. Not to pray. Why? Because the most important relationship in your life is between you and the God who made you and Jesus gives us this example. Right? Loving God and loving people is breathing in, breathing out like you couldn't do that before, right? It wouldn't be like, hey John, you need to breathe. Oh I'm too busy to breathe. I can't breathe right now. Prayer is that way. See, scripture reading the Bible is how you get into the word prayer is how scripture in the Bible gets into you. And when you align yourself with God and you turn down the noise and you turn up the volume in that relationship, you get that piece, that connection and that direction that you're searching for. And we see this modeled by Jesus. If you don't think you need prayer, are you telling me you got it more together than Jesus? Because if you have it in there, if you understand who God is, he gives us this example, right? And then as he's connected, he starts healing people and he defeats distraction, over temptation detachment because he connects with the disciples and he connects with God Heavenly Father and then he defeats the disease itself. We don't have time to read all the miracles here. But let me just kind of run through them. OK, that he's preaching with authority. He heals a man with an unclean spirit. He goes that we don't know much about Peter's wife. He was married. But what we know is that he heals Peter's mother in law. Now, some of you might have in laws that you're wanting healed right now. I don't know. But uh but no, what we see here is that he goes into Peter's house. We don't know much about his wife, but, but we see that he heals the mother in law who was sick and there's a connection there that might, might explain actually where Peter's marriage was still strong and connection and that the wife was involved and supportive of all that Peter was doing as he saw the transformation in her own mother's life. But then he even goes up further and heals many more, heals many in the town and then even heals a man with leprosy, which was a skin disease and where everyone was afraid to at someone with a skin disease and would look away. Jesus leaned in, got close and actually touched and healed the person who had that. So you have this incredible story of the power of Jesus we see in here that Jesus saved people, that he defeated temptation, that he is healing people that he's building relationships. And so what we see is that Jesus has the power to forgive sins. And so we see that Jesus is a savior that's worthy for us to worship. But then also he gives us the model to follow. So yes, he saves us and he's powerful. But then he also gives us the game plan. See the stories we just read actually gives us five things that was available to Jesus that's also available to you. And to me, I mean, well, of course, Jesus could defeat all these things because he was Jesus. That's an unfair advantage, right? But these five things that we read from Mark one actually are still available to us. Number one, we have the Holy Spirit that you are correct. That on your own, you cannot do something in your own strength. But with God, if your spirit filled spirit led, you can do anything, right? And you see that power working within you that the spirit was present with Jesus, it can be present with you. Second, we see that Jesus used scripture when Satan tempted him, he responded with the word of God. We think so often that the best way to avoid sin is just to run, right. We're like, ah run away what the carpet moved almost fell. That would have been memorable. Um And I don't want you to fall. Let's see. Let's see. Ok. Um Here's the thing though. We so often fight sin by just trying to avoid it. But what happens is a lot like this don't think of a purple elephant right now, whatever you think about. Don't think of a purple elephant. What do not think of a purple elephant right now. The last thing you should be thinking about is a purple elephant. What are you thinking about right now? Purple elephant. There's always one person that goes, huh? Blue elephant. But we do that right. We take the sin. We're like, I don't wanna sin. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna get really close to it and just say, don't sin, don't sin, don't sin, don't sin. But instead play some offense to play defense. Meaning what are you filling your mind with? Are you filling it with the word of God? Right? We can't just tell ourselves. Don't worry, don't worry, don't worry, don't worry, don't worry, I am. If you don't know the outcome of your situation, maybe lean into the God of your situation. And while you don't know the outcome of your circumstance, you do know the power of God's promises and you can recite those and you've been good. You are good. Your promises are good, you're powerful and you, you remind yourselves those things and then you give the word of God just like Jesus himself quoted scripture to Satan Hebrews 412 says that the word of God is like a, is a living sword double edged to be factual there that we can use as a weapon that we're not harmless. We're not defenseless against Satan that we can use the word of God just as Jesus did. So of the Holy Spirit. We have the word of God. Next, we have community life is too difficult to go through this thing alone of the people that are taking that step of faith, getting baptized every single one of them. When I talk to them mentioned the value of others in their lives, right? We are stronger together. And Jesus gave us that example. Do you have a relationship with others? And do you have a relationship with God? Next thing we have is prayer, this prayer. Are you having regular conversations with God? Not just talking but also listening. God remind you me who you are your kingdom come. What are you calling me to do today? Right? When I pray, often, often times I'll connect these together and I'll start reciting scripture, God. You are for me, God, you are with me, God, you are in me, God. You work through me and you love beyond me. Sense. Those are true. Not if since those are true, what have you called me to do today and go do that, right? And here's the last thing because sometimes we read miracles and do I believe miracles still happen today? 100%? Yes. Right. But do I believe we're just walking down the street every which way you're hailed, right? Like that would be great, but it's not like a superpower you're just pointing people at like PPP. Like it doesn't work like that again. Like God still works. There's so many stories of miraculous healing. I believe God still moves. But let's take one step back. Well, let's, let's look at the thing under the thing. Do you know what every miracle has in common before the miracle takes place? It's the empathy of Jesus and that is something all of us could take with us right now. Ok? And so when the world was looking away at the demon possessed man as the mother in law who was sick as, as the ill, the forgotten outcast of the city to the the man with leprosy, others who were blind and others who can't walk and all these other miracles. When the world looks away, Jesus leans in and he cares, we have a God who came down on earth experience, temptation experience, betrayal was beaten up, was doubted, was questioned, was persecuted. We have a God who gets us. And when the world looks away, he's looking right in at you and saying, I love you. And I'm here. And before every miracle is a chance to be empathetic and sympathetic with someone. And so he church, here's what we can do. Ok? If you want a game plan to experience victory, his life, Jesus gives us the pathway and the plan here you have the Holy Spirit. Are you reading scripture? Are you surrounding yourself with community? Are you praying to God on a regular basis? Do you experience empathy with others? We've developed, I invite you to, to, to look at it. Go to our website Mission Grove church.com uh there and grow in faith. We, we are, we're gonna be releasing videos right now. We've already created eight and a guidebook and leader book and like a whole month long of devotions and stuff called plant grow multiply around these things. Who's the Holy Spirit? How do you read your Bible? How do we pray? We want to help you? OK. But if you want to win, it starts there. And so as the band's coming up, I wanna leave you here with two questions. OK? Understanding that Jesus really is our savior to worship and then our model to follow. And so the two questions are this number one, are you worshiping Jesus? Do you understand that there is a greater power but is not abstract? But is the son of God Jesus Christ himself? And then number two, are you following Jesus example? When he says, follow me, he doesn't say follow me, but I'm not here. Good luck. Figure it out. He actually gives us the way to do it and the path to follow. And an example to all the things he asked us to do he has done because he gets us and he loves us and he leans in and that when we mess up, he leans in further, you cannot outrun the love of God. You cannot out mistake or out bitter the blessing of God. He knows all the things and all the baggage that you've brought into this thing. And he looks down and he says, yeah, I want you, I want you, I want you and those getting baptized today are going public with that belief. Now again, we respect the traditions and other traditions for people who have been baptized as infants. And I get that like the, the reason people do that is because they care, right? Like we lean into that part. But when I've had conversations with people, what I tell people is that we don't see that exemplified in scripture and we get the heart behind it. But the reason we practice baptism by immersion now is because now they're making that choice and saying, I believe this, this is what I believe. And so we celebrate that and if you wanna talk more about it, I'd love to. But if you wanna get baptized, we got towels extra stuff out there, man. Go for it today. We're, we're in OK. Baptism is not about salvation. It's about declaring the salvation that you already have in you and we can do that today and it starts with him. He is our game plan. Will you pray with me dearly father as those who were getting baptized? Get ready. Gotta pray that and just thank you for those decisions and commitments. Yeah. We know that through you all things are possible that you defeated, Satan overcame temptation, defeated detachment and, and build relationship and community, defeated disease and ultimately defeated death. So may we respond and worship but not just in words, but in our lives to be people that are filled with empathy and care and community and turn regularly to your word and to prayer and in the power of the spirit that we can live to be a light into this dark world. And while we cannot be perfect God, we pray to you who are perfect and in the power of your spirit, we humbly submit our lives to you. We love you God. It's in your son's name. We pray amen.