See, fasting is preparation for temptation, because fasting prepares the body for denial. It is an announcement to the body that “no matter how you send me urges, I will not respond. Body, this is a dress rehearsal. You are not in charge. I can feel the craving and resist the response. This is a rehearsal. This is not the temptation. This is the preparation for the temptation so that when I get in the throes of the temptation, I have already trained you that just because I hear ya knocking, don’t mean you get to call me in”. You see how quiet the church got when I got to that? ‘Cause I’m talking foreign stuff. I’m talking that old stuff that nobody does anymore. If I’d have preached that 25 years ago, they’d have shouted me down. But now, if you don’t preach about praise and you coming out, the whole church gets quiet because we are good on the coming out part. But then when we gotta go in to something, we are failing miserably because we do not have the character to withstand the attack of temptation. And we think that God is not delivering us. We want him to deliver us from temptation, but if God delivers you from temptation, how is in temptation? He can deliver us from evil.
We have raised a generation where denial is a foreign thing. “Oh, girl, let him have it. Go on and get them kids what they want”. And now when we are approaching a date with the devil, we have not done the prep to deny the flesh well enough to resist the real fight of the life. The fast is not the fight. It’s the prep for the fight. So we don’t understand the difference between denial and deliverance. Deliver me from evil, but temptation I’ve got to face and learn how to feel the pain and the craving and the lust and the drawings and the shakes and say NO to my flesh. Touch your neighbor and say, “Nancy Reagan was right”. Just say? No! Now, the enemy comes against Jesus with all he got, with all he got. He comes against with all he got, so you get to see all that the enemy has in the wilderness. “If thou be the Son of God,” he says, “turn this stone to bread”.
Now, he’s training his flesh through his fast, but he’s fighting his enemy through the Word. He got dual enemies here. One of ’em is your own flesh nature, and the other one is the influence of Satan. He doesn’t use the fast on Satan. He uses the fast on his flesh. He uses the Word on Satan, and said, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.'” The Bible says, “And again, he took him up to a high place and showed him, in a flash, he showed him all the kingdoms of the world. And he says, ‘All you have to do is bow down and worship me.'” Now he’s trying to get Jesus to break his own law because the Father has said that we are to worship God and God only. “I will have no other gods before me”. If Jesus violates his own law, then he can’t go to the cross and redeem us from the law because now he has fallen victim to His own law. So, he says, “All of the kingdoms of the world will I give you if you bow down and worship me”. And this, you see, is a real test. For later, Jesus prays in the garden of Gethsemane to be able to be the King of all of these kingdoms without the cross.
So now Satan is tempting him, saying, “You don’t have to go through that”. How many times has he told you, “You don’t have to go through that. Come on, I’ll show you another way. Go my way. I’ll show you a shortcut”. Jesus wants the shortcut ’cause he prays in the garden of Gethsemane till great drops of blood fall from his brow, wanting a shortcut, “Father, if it be thy will, pass this bitter cup from me”. Here Satan is offering him a way to bypass the bitter cup, and he doesn’t take it. Temptation can only occur when you want something. You cannot tempt me with what I do not want, so you have to know me to tempt me. And he says, he takes him up to the pinnacle again, and he says, the third time, he says, “Now, I’m gonna take you up here. Cast yourself down off this mountain, for it is written”. Ooh, the devil knows the Word. He says, “It is written that if you cast yourself down off of this mountain, the angels will come and pick you up”. This is the pride of life, the temptation to show off. “If you really are who you are, show off, name drop. You know the angels. You know the angels. Show ’em who you really are”. “You don’t know who I am”. You know, every time you go into that mode – that’s him.
That ain’t gonna rebuke the devil. You have to have the Word down in your own heart and in your own spirit and say, it is written! Slap your neighbor and say, “I’mma whip that devil when I get home. I’m gonna fight him again. I shook, and I didn’t beat him. I dashed, and I didn’t beat him. I cried, and I didn’t beat him. I got depressed, and I didn’t beat him. But if I whip that Word in this hand! When you go through this kinda stuff, and he’s in the desert, and the enemy has attacked him sore, and he’s passed the test, there is something that happens to you when you’ve been in a real fight, and the fight is over. You think you gonna shout when the fight is over. You not, not this level of fight. When you go through this level of fight, you don’t have nothing left to shout with. You oughtta get the stats on the divorce rate of couples who have fought cancer or leukemia or dread diseases or had dead children. The divorce rate is astronomical.
You say, “How could you love me enough to fight all the way through the cancer or the death or the suicide and then not love me enough to stay”? It’s because you’re empty. It’s you’re drained. It’s fatigue, it’s emotional fatigue. It cost you so much to get out that you don’t have anything left to live off of. I had enough energy to take us 40 years, but we spent it in 4. So many things hit us that now I’m empty. And you’re hitting the ignition, but I’m out of gas. So, Jesus is up against the ropes, and he is out of gas. How do you know he’s out of gas? Because the moment he has emptied himself, fought the fight, overcome the hurdle…
And you’re saying, “What’s wrong with me”? And you’re ashamed to admit to anybody that you’re tired because you’re everybody’s hero. And the Lord brought you here this morning because he gave me something to tell you. Stop being ashamed that you’re tired, and stop being ashamed that you’re empty. And stop being ashamed that you’re up against the ropes, and stop being ashamed that you’ve run out of smiles and you’ve run out of courage and you’ve run out of strength. And he said, “You don’t have to perform, and you don’t have to impress, and you don’t have to stand up and smile and grin and parade around as if you were a machine. You have been punched and kicked and stabbed and rode over. You’ve lost loved ones. You’ve gone through afflictions. You’ve faced crisis and you have never stopped at any time to receive anything. Everybody in your life is pulling at you, draining from you, asking for more, more, more, more. But God said, “That season in your life is over”.
Help me tell ’em, Jesus. God says, “Stop it, stop beating on yourself because you can’t get no more gas. Stop beating on yourself ’cause you can’t stand up like you used to. Stop beating on yourself. Take your boots off and your cape off and all your little Superman stuff off. You’ve been through enough, test after test after test after test, trial after trial after trial after trial. You’ve lived your life like you were a robot. Even Jesus came to the point that he was finally emptied out”. And the Lord told me to tell you, “The angels are coming”. I don’t know. Whew, I don’t know who I’m preaching to. I don’t know who’s up against the ropes. I don’t know who’s out of gas. I don’t know who’s come to the limit and you can’t take anymore.
All I know is that all day long God’s been talking to me in my house, giving me this word for somebody. The angels are coming. They’re coming to get you. They’re coming to minister to you. They’re coming to strengthen you. They’re coming to put back in you. They’re not coming to take nothing from ya. They’re coming to give you something back. And you oughtta lift your hands and open your mouth and thank God for angels on the way. And I wanted to preach a shouting message, but it kinda feels like a crying message. But I need you to help me get word to somebody who’s about to die, ’bout to faint, ’bout to collapse. Would you just touch two or three people and tell ’em, “The angels are coming, they’re coming”. The angels are coming. The angels are coming. Don’t die, don’t die, don’t die. The angels are coming. Don’t quit, don’t collapse, don’t commit suicide, don’t faint. The angels are coming. God’s gonna restore ya. God’s gonna renew ya. God’s gonna revive ya. It was just a test. The test is over. The test is over.
And the Bible said that “the angels came and ministered to him”. And I feel ministry in this room. I feel ministry in this room. I feel ministry in this room. You’re watching over the Internet. Here comes ministry coming to you right there, right in front of your computer, right in front of your iPad. The angels are coming to lift you up. You have nobody to pour into you, nobody to feed you, nobody who doesn’t need ya, nobody who’s not draining from ya. Everybody’s asking for more and more and more, and God said, the angels are coming. That’s why you’re losing the battles. That’s why you’re being defeated. That’s why your morals are falling. You’re tired, you’re empty. You got no strength left. You got no fight left. The angels are coming.