In The Beginning

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. We are starting a new series today called Echoes of Eden. And the focus in this series as we approach Easter, Resurrection Sunday, is how hyperlinked, how often certain themes that started in just the first three chapters of Genesis with the Garden of Eden, how they ripple all the way through the entire narrative of Scripture, all the way to the Book of Revelation. And so we're going to look at how the Tree of Life in the Garden becomes the Tree of the Cross at Calvary, and then the Tree of Life that heals the nations in the Book of Revelation. From the first Adam in the Garden to the last Adam, Jesus Christ. And finally, things like the Garden of Eden, how it is transformed into the Garden City of Revelation, where Heaven and Earth are brought together in the perfect marriage feast of the Lamb. So that's kind of our themes today, and we are starting maybe in an odd spot. Instead of an Echo of Eden, maybe a repercussion of what happened in Eden, we're starting in the wilderness, in the desert, kind of the anti-Eden today, with the temptation of Jesus Christ. But it's in the desert because the first temptation was in the Garden. Our primary reading is going to be from Luke chapter 4. And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness for 40 days, being tempted by the devil. And he ate nothing during those days. And when they were ended, he was hungry. The devil said to him, If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become bread. And Jesus answered him, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone. And the devil took him up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time and said to him, To you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. If you then will worship me, it will all be yours. And Jesus answered him, It is written, You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve. And he took him to Jerusalem and set him on the pinnacle of the temple and said to him, If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written, He will command his angels concerning you to guard you, and on their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone. And Jesus answered him, It is written, You shall not put the Lord your God to the test. And when the devil had ended every temptation, he departed from him until an opportune time. One of the reasons, I guess, we are starting in the wilderness is because of this season in what you would call liturgical churches in a lot of different mainline churches. It's a season called Lent. Anyone ever hear of that? Lent for the length that I, where did that word come from? It came somehow probably through Latin, but it's for the lengthening of days as we are in the spring. And it's the 40-day period that started this last Wednesday that runs all the way up until Resurrection Sunday. And during that time, in tradition, many people have set aside a time for reflection, for fasting, for a special time of discipline. I found out actually there was a 40-year period in the Jewish calendar in the fall that kind of follows that same idea up to the day of Yom Kippur or Day of Atonement. And so the Christian church kind of moved it for this 40 days of Jesus in the desert, in the wilderness, in the anti-creation, in a sense. If you look back in Genesis, by the way, you'll find that in chapter 2, God starts in that chapter with a waterless place where no shrub of the field or anything is. It's a dry desert-like environment. It's kind of an inhospitable place. And God then plants a garden, and it's flowing with four different streams coming in, all these beautiful things. And he places Adam in the garden and then Eve in the garden, all these wonderful things that are going on there. And then we see what happens, right? It kind of all falls apart because an interloper comes in from the wilderness named a serpent, gets into that garden, and tempts and tests Adam and Eve. So today we're looking at kind of the inverse of that in Luke chapter 4. And I'm starting there because we also see how in that inverse, God is reversing the order to bring us his salvation. So from this text, from Luke 4, we're going to look at these three points. The beloved Son of God, the complexity and strategy of evil, and finally overcoming evil. Now, the beloved Son of God, why do I start there? Because that's where God starts. Okay? That's where it all starts. In the three Gospels that record the temptation of Jesus, Mark's like one line, but Matthew and Luke as well, right before the temptation, we have the baptism of Jesus. When God speaks, the Father says, you are my beloved Son, with you I am well pleased. The affirmation from heaven itself that this is my Son, the Son of God. No...