Temptation Works for Good When......

Temptation is a universal experience. If Jesus himself did not escape it, we can be certain that we will not either. It can be difficult to see any good in temptation, yet we know that God has promised to work all things for our good—even temptation. Thomas Watson addresses this in his book All Things for Good, and offers nine ways that temptation works for our good.

Temptation works for good when it sends the soul to prayer. Quite simply, temptation motivates us to pray to God against that temptation. Not only that, but more temptation generates more prayer. “The more furiously Satan tempts, the more fervently the saint prays.” Without temptation we might not express our reliance upon God through prayer.

Temptation works for good when it motivates us to battle sin. As we are tempted, we battle hard against the temptation and the sin behind it. In this way God works the good of sanctification through temptation, not apart from it. “That temptation which the devil uses as a spur to sin, God makes a bridle to keep back a Christian from it.”

Temptation works for good when it promotes humility. This was Paul’s experience as he battled his “thorn in the flesh.” He knew that this difficulty had been given to prevent him from growing in pride. “Better is that temptation which humbles me, than that duty which makes me proud.”

Temptation works for good when it tries and proves our faith. Some immediately crumble under the devil’s attacks, but others bear up, thus proving the existence and strength of their faith. “The devil tempts, that he may deceive; but God suffers us to be tempted, to try us. Temptation is a trial of our sincerity. It argues that our heart is chaste and loyal to Christ, when we can look a temptation in the face, and turn our back upon it.”

Temptation works for good when it equips us to comfort those who are being tempted. Once we have been tempted in a certain way, we acquire a qualification to better comfort those who are tempted in the same way. In this way we can more effectively minister to them. “He that has felt the claws of the roaring lion, and has lain bleeding under those wounds, is the fittest man to deal with one that is tempted.”

Temptation works for good when it stirs up God’s fatherly heart toward us. What is true of any father—he has compassion on the child who is hurt and grieving—is true of God. God has a special heart of compassion toward those of us who are suffering under temptation. “When a saint lies under the bruising of temptations, Christ prays, and God the Father pities.”

Temptation works for good when it make us long for heaven. Temptation makes us long for the place where all temptations have ceased. We know that in this life we will face unending waves of temptation, but in the life to come, we will be free! “This is to make God’s people wish for death to sound a retreat, and call them off the field where the bullets fly so quick, to receive a victorious crown, where not the drum or cannon, but the harp and viol, shall be ever sounding.”

Temptation works for good when it engages Christ’s strength. When we battle temptation, we have the assurance that we do not battle alone. Rather, we have a friend who fights with us and for us, and in our temptation we get to see him in action. “Christ is our Friend, and when we are tempted, He sets all His power working for us.”

Watson concludes, “Surely if the devil knew how much benefit accrues to the saints by temptation, he would forbear to tempt.” He closes with this comparison: “St. Paul, in his voyage to Rome, met with a contrary wind (Acts xxvii. 4). So the wind of temptation is a contrary wind to that of the Spirit; but God makes use of this cross-wind, to blow the saints to heaven.”

The Climatic Part of Abraham's Story (part two)

Abraham was asked to do something that no one else was ever asked to do, precisely in order to demonstrate to the whole world what hope in God really means. We look upon Abraham's three-day journey with solemn awe. We are amazed by his faith in the God whose promise he had trusted for decades, his obedience to the God with whom he had walked --- the God whose gifts and promises are manifestations of pure grace, to be received from his hand in total submission to the One whose will, whether in light or in shadow, is always perfect.

And so, the very moment that we avert our eyes in unspeakable horror, God acts;

Abraham put forth his hand, and took the knife, to slay his son. But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven, and said, "Abraham, Abraham!" And he said (again), "Here I am." He said, "Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him: for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me."

And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns, and Abraham went and took the ram, and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called the name of that place "the Lord will provide." (22:10-14)

So Abraham received this son back again from the dead. To "believe in" God, to "fear" God, is to trust him totally and to put oneself in his hands totally, even when the road leads out into God-forsakenness, even when the fulfilment of God's promises seem to have receded into impossibility. Our father Abraham, through his three days agony, has taught us how to be believers. God knew that Abraham would be faithful; the purpose of the "test" was not for God to gain new knowledge, but for Abraham to bequeath to his posterity a heroic, unparalleled example of steadfast loyalty to God throughout the journey into apparently hopeless night.

Unparalleled, that is, until the day when God's own Son, His only Son, whom God loved, cried out on the cross, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" For Isaac, there was a substitute --- Abraham found a ram in the bush. "God himself will provide the lamb for a burnt offering, my son." But when Jesus was brought to the cross--- the Lamb of God who would bear the sin of the world into fathomless darkness, God did not withhold his Son, His only Son, whom He loved. It is no accident that this story is read during Lent, and also on Good Friday. God the Father and God the Son together, with a single will, offered the perfect sacrifice once for all. What Abraham at the last moment did not have to do, God did.

And what this means for you and for me is that there is nothing so unspeakable that God has not already thought of, and nothing so evil that God is not victorious over it, however long the journey may be, however indefinitely the fulfilment of the promises may seem to be postponed. What this means is that you and I, as children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, have received our lives from God as pure gift, sustained by his hand, according to his purpose, destined for the completion of his plan, living solely by his grace, and that is the impetus for all resistance ---  All resistance to the use of nuclear arms and every other form of evil. In the life of faith lived by Christians, we bear witness to the biblical testimony that nothing  --- nothing at all --- can destroy the promised future, because the promised future belongs to our God.

Quoted from the book "And God spoke to Abraham" by Fleming Rutledge.

Not Ashamed

The Climatic Part of Abraham's Story (to kill his own son).

In chapter 12, Abraham is asked to cut himself off from the past; in chapter 22, he is asked to cut himself off from the future.

What sort of God would do such a thing? That is the question we ask. But apparently, according to the story the answer to the question is that it is the same God that Abraham has known and believed and obeyed from the beginning. This seems incredible to us, but it is a feature of the story that Abraham seems to believe that God is entirely within his rights to demand this of him.

The most dreadful part of the story, of course, is that Abraham is supposed to do the deed himself. God doesn't ask Abraham to send Isaac out to play in the street so God can come along in a truck and mow him down; that would have been bad enough. What is infinitely worse is that Abraham personally is supposed to slit the boy's throat. The writer does not altogether suppress the human side of this, but the restraint shown in the telling is a clue to us that the meaning of the story lies on the theological plane. Isaac does not function in the story as though he was just a boy; his primary role in the story is as the embodiment of God's promise this should not lessen the peculiar horror of the situation, however, for the narrator allows us to feel it fully as Abraham makes his three days' journey.

Three days! Conceivably one might carry out an unthinkable order on impulse, in a moment's blind recklessness; but God sends Abraham on a three-day journey to a distant spot so that he will have plenty of time to think about what he has been asked to do. Even Martin Luther quailed at the prospect; he said we could view the journey to Mount Moriah only from a distance, and that he himself could not have been a spectator, let alone a participant or the executioner --- in fact, he compares himself and us to the donkeys that were left behind at the foot of the mountain. Again, we emphasise the uniqueness of the story: God asked Abraham to do something that he would never again ask anyone to do. And, be it noted, the hearer of the story is told something that Abraham does not know --- namely, that God never had any intention of going through with the killing; he did it to "test" Abraham.

Is this some kind of cruel joke? God already knows everything; why then does he put Abraham to the test? A clue is found in Romans when Paul calls Abraham "the father of us all." The Christian tradition has always known Abraham to be the "father of believers." It is Abraham's faith, the meaning of it, the depth of it, the application of it, and above all the source of it that is central to the story of the sacrifice of Isaac.

The depth of Abraham's faith is suggested by the degree of anguish which afflicts him. Typically, the narrator does not describe this directly. Rather, it is implied, hinted at, evoked in the twice-repeated statement that, after the servants were told to stay behind with the donkeys, "the two of them went on together." Some of the greatest imaginations in the world have been applied to the matter of what Abraham and Isaac said to each other as they were "going on together." But once again, the singular artistry of our storyteller defeats all such attempts:

As the two of them went on together, Isaac spoke up and said to Abraham, "Father?"
"Yes, my son?" Abraham replied.
"The fire in the wood are here," Isaac said, "but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?"
Abraham answered, "God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son." And the two of them went on together. (21:7-8)

The reticence and economy with which the journey is described contrasts with the detailed account of the preparation of the sacrifice. The narrative pace slows to an excruciating crawl:

Abraham built an altar there,
and arranged the wood on it;
he bound his son Isaac,
and laid him on the altar,
on top of the wood.
Then he reached out his hand,
and took the knife
to slay his son (11:9-10)

And we are to understand, make no mistake, that for Abraham this does not mean the death of his personal hopes only. For Abraham, and therefore for us, the hearers of the story, the end of Isaac means the end of hope for the salvation and blessing of the entire world. It means the end of the purposes of God.

When I went to see my mentor with my fears about nuclear annihilation and the end of civilization, my question was really whether I could go on believing in God in view of what I had seen in my mind's eye when I looked out over the Statue of Liberty. I remember in particular the thought that if there was an all-out nuclear exchange, the survivors would not even be able to find bread or water --- let alone wine --- to have the Lord's supper. This seemed to me to be the ultimate in the destruction of a human future.

I am sure my professor had many things to say that day, but I remember only one. He said, gently, "Fleming, did you think that God had not thought of that?"

I don't know if this works for you. All I can say is that with those simple words my hope in God was restored to me. I realised that, as Paul writes, the God in whom Abraham believed is able to raise the dead and to call into existence the things that do not exist.

Quoted from Fleming Rutledge's book, "And God Spoke to Abraham"

to be continued .......

God's Wrath against SIN not US

SIN not sins Explained by the Apostle Paul

We can read the Gospels from year to year and not understand what sin is unless we have Paul to explain it to us. In the Gospels, it is easy to think of sinning as cheating taxpayers, adultery, stealing, abandoning one's sheep, withholding money from God, being critical, and various other discrete acts which can be defined as "sins".  We read that Jesus eats with sinners, and we assume that this means people who have been condemned by society for their specific sinful actions. When the Lord says "I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners" (Matthew 9:13), we naturally assume that he divides up the world into two categories that way, so we do the same. It comes as a surprise to us therefore, in Romans 3, when we hear Paul say,

All human beings, both Jews and Gentiles, are under the power of SIN ..... None is righteous, no, not one .... There is no distinction ..... All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God .....

"Under the power of Sin." That is the clue. Sin (with a capital letter) is not the same thing as sins. Sins are individual misdeeds that you can tot up at the end of the day, or that God will add up at the end of your life. You can make a list of sins and then congratulate yourself because you haven't committed very many of them. If we think of Sin in this way we will never understand what the Son of God came to do.

Sin is not the sum total of a bunch of individual transgressions. Sin is the fundamental condition of man, the disease that we have all got, "a deep interior dislocation in the very centre of human personality." The human race is enmeshed in the consequences of a vast primordial catastrophe, as John Cardinal Newman put it. The world has been thrown blatantly off course by an alien power hostile to God, and paradoxically, each of us is responsible for his own part in the resulting mess. According to Paul, Sin is both "and enslaving power" external to man, and "man's own culpable act" for which each human being singly and all human beings collectively deserve the judgement of God. This is true whether we know it or not, whether we feel it or not. Paul does not begin his discussion of Sin with subjective feelings of guilt, which his hearers may or may not have; he begins with our objective situation before God as fallen creatures in bondage to a Power far greater then we are. The tragedies and follies and depredations that we see all around us in our world are signs that "the Wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of human beings" (Romans 1:18).

So, to recap what we've said, the prologue to Paul's story (and it is a story, even though it might not look like one) is his declaration of God's mighty acts of redemption: "I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation" (Romans 1:16). Only when he has made this clear does he embark upon his long passage about the Wrath of God against Sin, which goes on for two chapters and a half in the course of this passage he is counting on us to understand that God's wrath is against Sin not against us.

Quoted from Fleming Rutledge's book, "Not Ashamed of the Gospel"

Fear

Focus