Overcoming Temptations and Trials Part Two

1Corinthians 10: 12-13 If you think you are standing strong, be careful not to fall. The temptations in your life are no different from what others experience. And God is faithful. He will not allow the temptation to be more than you can stand. When you are tempted, he will show you a way out so that you can endure. (NLT)

Last week we discovered that Scripture shows us that Jesus was led into the wilderness where he was tempted. Another Gospel says He was led into the desert. It is in the desert or wilderness experiences of our lives where the enemy attacks us even more. Last week we examined the strategies of the tempter; the devil. This week we will finish looking at the nature of temptation.

These verses from First Corinthians highlight the truths about temptation so we can better understand its nature and be better prepared to combat it in our lives. The first lesson we need to learn is that over-confidence leads to falling away. Cockiness leads to failure. As God puts it:

Pride goes before destruction, and haughtiness before a fall. Proverbs 16:18 (NLT)

Note the verse says if you THINK you are standing strong. It refers to our state of mind. We can lull ourselves into a false sense of security. David was at the height of his reign when he fell into temptation with Bathsheba. Certainly he must have thought he had arrived. He had been anointed at a young age yet patiently waited on the plan of God. He slew Goliath with a slingshot when all of the fighting men of Israel were cowering. He denied the temptation to kill Saul twice because he knew that he should not touch God's anointed. He had ushered in a new age of prosperity for the nation of Israel as king. David must have felt like he was standing strong in the Lord. But he still fell.

Peter was pretty sure he was standing tall as well. Jesus explained how the disciples would all abandon Him when this exchange follows:

Peter said to him, "Even if everyone else deserts you, I never will." Jesus replied, "I tell you the truth, Peter--this very night, before the rooster crows twice, you will deny three times that you even know me." "No!" Peter declared emphatically. "Even if I have to die with you, I will never deny you!" And all the others vowed the same. Mark 14: 29-31 (NLT)

Emphatically Peter asserts his bravado! Even if I have to die with you! Yet when the challenge came, he too fell away. Our key verses today start with a sobering reminder that it is at those times in our lives when we feel most secure, that we must be most vigilant.

The second truism we need to take from the key verses is that whatever temptations we face they are no different than what everyone faces. The devil does a good job of convincing us that no one can understand what we go through. That nobody knows the trouble we see. This part of the temptation strategy is to divide and conquer. The purpose the enemy has is to make you feel alone. To make you go through your struggles alone. Why? Because we are far easier to defeat alone:

Two people are better off than one, for they can help each other succeed. If one person falls, the other can reach out and help. But someone who falls alone is in real trouble. Likewise, two people lying close together can keep each other warm. But how can one be warm alone? A person standing alone can be attacked and defeated, but two can stand back-to-back and conquer. Three are even better, for a triple-braided cord is not easily broken. Ecclesiastes 4: 9-12 (NLT)

A person standing alone can be attacked and defeated! But a triple braided cord is not easily broken, hallelujah! The enemy seeks to break us with despair. Think about all of the things in your life that you have encountered, dealt with, succeeded over or even failed at. Now how many people in your church could benefit from your collective wisdom about those areas? Simply apply it back to you whatever you are going through someone else has gone through it already. The schemes of the enemy have not changed over the thousands of years he has been tempting mankind. He tempted Eve by distorting God's Word, calling God a liar, and offering Eve the false opportunity to be like God. Sound familiar? That is how the world views itself. They doubt the Word, they make God out to be a liar and recreate Him in their own image. When you practice salad bar theology, that is picking the parts of the Bible you like and discarding the parts that make you uncomfortable, you are making man into God. The lies and schemes of the devil have not changed. That temptation you are facing is not unique. There is strength however, in the fellowship of believers.

The third fact from our key verses is probably the most important God is faithful! Our level of faithfulness need not be measured:

What if some did not have faith? Will their lack of faith nullify God's faithfulness? Not at all! Let God be true, and every man a liar. As it is written: "So that you may be proved right when you speak and prevail when you judge." Romans 3: 3-4

Let God be true and every man a liar! Nothing nullifies the faithfulness of God. Man responds in kind. Those who are nice to us, we tend to be nice to. Those who do not treat us well, we do not usually treat well. We are a conditional people. God has no such conditions:

Here is a trustworthy saying: If we died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him. If we disown him, he will also disown us; if we are faithless, he will remain faithful, for he cannot disown himself. 2Timothy 2: 11-13

Faithfulness is a characteristic of God. He does not change with the shifting sands. He cannot disown who He is. When dealing with the subject of temptation this is a promise we have to rely upon. The first way He shows His faithfulness towards us is that no matter what temptations we face; it will not be more than we can stand. It may not seem that way to our finite minds. We feel overwhelmed but God is still faithful. The problem is we can make things out to be far worse in our minds than they are in reality and we can make excuses.

Two of the biggest excuses we use are "the devil made me do it" and "God knows my heart." Let's dispel these one at a time. First of all, the devil wants you dead. So, if he could make you do something, he would have killed you already. The truth is that the devil uses free will. He presents a choice and we have to be the one to make the decision. Now, he may push the buttons he knows you will respond to best. He may distort the truth and make things that are deadly as though they were harmless but in the end, the devil cannot make us do anything. He presents a choice, something for us to consider believing. It is set up in opposition to what we should know already, the Word of God. Achan knew he should not have taken the devoted items. Solomon knew he should not marry foreign women. David knew that adultery and murder were wrong. Even Peter was told specifically that he would deny Christ three times and he did it anyway! These are not examples of the devil making people do something they know is wrong. They are examples of people making decisions. Our life is nothing more than a series of decisions we have to make. Instead of the devil made me do it, we need to be able to say that devil offered me something to believe, but I rejected it because I know how faithful my God is!

And God knows my heart is not good theology either. We all have used this from time to time to justify something we have done or said. We have made a decision, probably not a good one, and want to excuse it away by pretending that our heart was in the right place. Here is how God views our hearts:

"The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is? Jeremiah 17:9 (NLT)

God knows how bad it is. The most deceitful and desperately wicked. We need to own up to the decisions we make in this life. God is a forgiving God. He understands that we will fall. He expects us to be honest and repent which means turn from the mistake and towards Him. Whatever we faced was not more than we could have endured, we just gave in to it.

Lastly, God is faithful by always showing us a way out. Once again, it may not seem like it when we are facing the temptation or trial, but there is always a way out. Let's take a closer look at the fall of David with Bathsheba. As we know, David was at the height of his reign as king of Israel. He had done so much right and was considered a man after the very heart of God. But he made the mistake of placing himself somewhere he should not have been. At the time when kings went off to war...David stayed in Jerusalem. The result was he was tempted when he saw Bathsheba bathing while he walked on his rooftop one night. The Word tells us that he sent someone to find out about her. Here was the first opportunity God gave David to avoid the temptation before him:

and David sent someone to find out about her. The man said, "Isn't this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam and the wife of Uriah the Hittite?" 2Samuel 11:3

David finds out that she is married. God is begging David to not go through with this. David knew adultery was forbidden by God but he did not heed the warnings. Similarly, God will try to provide a way out of the troubles we walk into and we too can ignore what we know is wrong. David sends for Bathsheba and sleeps with her. Bathsheba conceives and now David is in cover-up mode. We have all been there before, trying to cover up what we have already done, instead of taking it to God in repentance. David sends for her husband Uriah hoping that when he comes home from the front lines of war he would sleep with his wife and think the baby was his. But Uriah would not sleep with her. God tries again to provide a way out of the path his temptation was leading him down.

Uriah said to David, "The ark and Israel and Judah are staying in tents, and my master Joab and my lord's men are camped in the open fields. How could I go to my house to eat and drink and lie with my wife? As surely as you live, I will not do such a thing!" 2Samuel 11: 11

God is again begging David to not go through with this self-destruction. He shows David that Uriah is a righteous man hoping that it will convict him of what he has done and so he can turn from the path as only an adulterer. David does not heed the conviction however. Instead, he sends Uriah back into the front lines with a letter to Joab instructing him to place Uriah where the fighting is fiercest and then withdraw from him so he could be struck down and killed. David's temptation had now led him down the road to being a murderer.

God tried to give David a way out, on more than one occasion. God likewise speaks to us in the midst of our temptation and is begging us to turn from the path. He is faithful to do so because he knows the immutable law of sowing and reaping will mean that we will reap destruction for our sinful acts. Paul summarizes for us:

I put this in human terms because you are weak in your natural selves. Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness. When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. What benefit did you reap at that time from the things you are now ashamed of? Those things result in death! But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 6: 19-23

We will all face temptation beloved. We will all face trials. We have the promises of God however to rely upon. We must trust His faithfulness because we know He cannot disown His own character. He will not allow the temptation to be more than we can bear and will always provide us with a way out if we are sincere about looking for that way out. We know that whatever we face it is not anything that is unique or uncommon. The enemy seeks to divide and conquer but we know that we need to rely upon one another during times of great trials and temptations. Lastly, we need to remember that no matter how far we have come, no matter how far we have made it in Christ as long as we are in this flesh we are vulnerable. King David would learn the hard way. He would lose his kingdom and two sons would die as a result of falling to his temptation. God would restore him because God will always forgives true repentance but how much better would it be for us to simply hold onto Jesus and all the promises God has for us when we are faced with the temptations of this life. Amen.

Reverend Anthony Wade October 26, 2010