2012-11-09
Good Morning Dear Ones,
Last week, the Holy Spirit had me writing about the conflict between our flesh and the Holy Spirit in the sense of what God does for believers to allow them to make rightful choices. Before we came to faith, we had no choice but to sin on a one-way road to spiritual death. However, due to Christ’s Atonement and our willingness to repent and come to faith in Him, He has given us the choice of whether or not to sin. He doesn’t make the choice for us, but gives us the opportunity to choose. Now, we must look carefully at God’s help in the face of temptation.
Our omniscient God knew all along that the original sin would be committed [GN 3: 1-6]. Because we are all descended from Adam and Eve, we inherited their sinful nature and added our own sins to those we inherited. As Paul said in, RO 7: 14-25, “We do what we don’t want to do, because of the sinfulness within us…What can we do? Only Christ provides us with a way out.” We learned further, in GA 5: 16-17 that human desires are the opposite of the Holy Spirit, and they are at war with one another within us. Christ’s Atonement took place on the cross, so that we could have the chance to gain eternal life [JN 3: 16; RO 3: 14-15]. God knew he would send Christ to earth to teach us, to suffer and die on the cross for us, and to be resurrected [1 PET 1: 19-20] as “the First among many brothers” [RO 8: 29]. The problem of mankind needing to repent and profess faith in God was present from the time of the original sin. It plagues every person on earth, but while many are called to come to faith, comparatively few come to it.
The little book of Joel begins using the metaphor of an invasion of locusts as an alarm being sounded to draw the people’s attention to their need to repent before disaster hits. Of course we already know there have been real plagues of locusts coming to places in the Middle East, like Egypt in 1915. The devastation due to it and droughts in Israel, for example, have played havoc with grain and other food supplies. In Joel, this is followed by a direct call to repentance, e.g. JL 1: 13, “Put on sackcloth, O priests and mourn; wail, you who minister before the altar, come and spend the night in sackcloth, you who minister before my God, for the grain and drink offerings are withheld from the house of your God.” JL 2: 13 gives direction on what to do in the face of disaster allowed by God. “Rend your heart and not your garments. Return to the Lord your God for He is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love; and He relents from sending calamity.” JL 2: 28 is a prophecy about the Day of the Lord. “And afterward [when the day of Judgment is over] I will pour out My Spirit on all people. You sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions.” In Israel, the Kidron Valley is also known as the “Valley of Jehoshaphat or Judgment.” JL 3: 2, 12 picks up on this. “I will gather all nations and bring them down to the Valley of Jehoshaphat. There I will enter into judgment against them concerning My inheritance, My people Israel, for they scattered My people among the nations and divided up the land…Let the nations be roused; let them advance into the Valley of Jehoshaphat, for there I will sit to judge all the nations on every side.” These words of God need to be heeded before these events happen by all of us, not just Israel!
In hearing these words of God through the prophet, Joel, we can’t help but think of the anguish Christ experienced the night before his arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane. LK 22: 45-46, “When He rose from prayer and went back to the disciples, He found them asleep, exhausted from sorrow. ‘Why are you sleeping?’ He asked them. ‘Get up and pray so that you will not fall into temptation.’” In MT 26: 41, Christ warns them (and us), “Watch and pray, so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak.” Previously Christ had prayed, in MT 26: 39, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from Me. Yet not as I will, but as You will.” God never wanted His chosen people to be punished in two dyasporas [scattering and loss of nationhood by their enemies] or for any of us to perish due to refusal to repent and come to faith in His Son. Yet these realities are what they are. So is the reality of today’s Dome of the Rock, which stands on the same real estate that once was the place of Herod’s temple [the Jerusalem temple]. It may seem strange of me to write about all of this when the subject is God’s help with temptation, but it surely applies here. We are surrounded by reminders of a coming judgment and the urgency of our need to prepare ourselves to survive it. Remember that the East Gate to the Temple Mount is sealed, but won’t be forever when Christ, on His Day, will enter through it. Can you imagine God’s displeasure at the Muslims building a subterranean mosque in the Temple Mount and destroying evidence of the previous claim on this piece of real estate by the Jewish people? This is happening, and the rubbish from this project is being cast into the Kidron Valley. The temptation of evil is all around us, and we must call upon God to give us the strength to overcome it.
PRAYER: O Lord, once again we approach Your mighty throne with heads bowed in reverence. We are aware of how it pleases You to hear us rehearse the history of the Jewish people and how You have punished them for idolatry, but protected Israel from destruction. For once, Dearest Father, we must pay attention to that history, and we must learn from it to look for Your intervention in our own lives and those of others. When we do, we will see Your goodness, patience, wisdom, and compassion revealed. PS 107: 43, “Those how are wise will take all this to heart; they will see in our history the faithful love of the Lord.” We need to understand Your heart and see how You are working to lead us to the strengths we must have to overcome the wily evil one, who wants nothing more than to cause us to stray off that “hard path that leads from the narrow gate” to eternal life [MT 7: 13-14]. PS 143: 5, “I remember the day of old, I think about all Your deeds, I meditate on the works of Your hands.” As I read this Scripture, I am reminded of the great evidence in the natural beauty around us-mountains, clouds, lakes, flora, and fauna, et al-which are indeed the works of Your hands. No human could have made them. You have given us two important reasons why we should obey and believe in You: 1) A God-consciousness and 2) ability to perceive Your creation [RO 1: 19-20]. You are wise and command us not to worship idols [EX 20: 2-4]. While some think of idols as statues or icons only, they can be anything which leads us off the path to eternal life, e.g. the excesses of greed, immorality, and materialism seen in our present culture. We appeal to You to grant us self-discipline in studying Your word and in having an active prayer life. We ask You to give us the strength and courage of our convictions to avoid temptation where possible and overcome it when it comes to us. You give us the same power You used to raise Christ from death to eternal life to battle the temper and be victorious in the name of Jesus Christ [EPH 1: 18-20]. We thank and praise You and offer You our sincere loyalty in His mighty name. Amen.
NEXT WEEK: There is much more to write about on the subject of God’s help in temptation, and so the Holy Sprit directs me to continue on it. Where “the spirit is willing and the flesh is weak” presents us with the need for some attitude adjustments concerning our covenant relationships with God and how we trust Him. Where we have not trusted Him in the past, we must now. For we are all at the place where the rubber meets the road. Never before has this been more important, as we approach the time when we will either pass into that waiting mode, which is the physical death of a believer in Christ or having “a meeting in the air” with Christ at the rapture [1 THESS 4: 13-17]. We have been given the ability to make right choices, to avoid the muck and mire of giving in to the adversary. We must be alert to him and remember 1 PET 5: 8, “Be alert. Be on watch. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” When we do this, then we can be sure that our Father will pull us out of the slimy pit and set us on a firm Rock, the Rock that is Christ [PS 40: 1-2]. Our God is here for us, and all we have to do when tempted or when any need arises is turn to Him! Praise and thanks be to Him forever!
Grace Be With You Always,
Lynn
JS 24: 15
© Lynn Johnson 2012. All Rights Reserved.
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