2002-01-01
Good Morning Faithful Ones,
The Holy Spirit is taking us on a path that will allow us to find many wonderful lessons for our lives from the story of Christ's temptation in the wilderness. Yesterday, we dealt with the first of some questions that arose out of this story of Satan tempting Christ with hunger, testing God, and granting earthly territory. That question was: Would there be any temporal advantage to Christ in yielding to Satan’s temptation? Today, I am led to look at a second question: How would yielding to temptation affect His relationship with God? This is an important and intriguing question with heavy-duty implications for us.
I must speak from my own spiritual experience, because that’s what I know best. It is my belief that one of the most profoundly important elements of God’s will is that He wants us to have a relationship with Him. Since I was raised as a traditional Jew, I will begin by sharing some citations that in my mind make this crystal clear. GN 12: 2-3, [God speaking to Abram], “I will give you many descendants, and they will become a great nation. I will bless you and make your name famous, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, but I will curse those who curse you. And through you, I will bless all the nations.” GN 15: 17-18 a, “When the sun had set and it was dark, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch suddenly appeared and passed between the pieces of the animal. Then and there the Lord made a covenant with Abram…” To these we must add the Ten Commandments found in EX 20: 1-17 and repeated and elaborated upon in DT 5: 1-22. DT 6: 4-5, “Israel, remember this! The Lord –and the Lord alone-is our God. love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.” 2 SAM 7: 12-13, God speaking through the prophet, Nathan, to David] “When you die and are buried with your ancestors, I will make one of your sons king and will keep His kingdom strong. He will be the one to build a temple for Me, and I will make sure that his dynasty continues forever.” JER 31: 33-34, “The new covenant that I will make with the people of Israel will be this: I will put My law within them and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be My people. None of them will have to teach his fellow countrymen to know the Lord, because all will know Me, from the least to the greatest. I will forgive their sins and I will no longer remember their wrongs. I, the Lord, have spoken.” Micah 5: 2, “The Lord says, ‘Bethlehem Ephrathah, you are one of the smallest towns in Judah, but out of you, I will bring a Ruler for Israel, Whose family line goes back to ancient times.” ZECH 12: 10, “I will fill the descendants of David and the other people of Jerusalem with the spirit of mercy and the spirit of prayer. They will look at the One Whom they stabbed to death, and they will mourn for Him like those who mourn for an only child. The will mourn bitterly, like those who have lost their first-born son.” MAL 3: 1, “The Lord Almighty answers, ‘I will send My messenger to prepare the way for Me. Then the Lord you are looking for will suddenly come to His temple. The messenger you long to see will come and proclaim My covenant.’”
Yes, Dear Ones, I know that was a long paragraph, but it is certainly ample documentation of God’s will regarding Christ’s and our relationship with Him. Note that I didn’t even get to the NT yet. That was on purpose so that you would see that God holds having a relationship with Him as hugely important. Imagine God’s disappointment had Christ yielded to Satan’s temptation destroying that relationship! It was Christ’s calling to be the perfect, trusting, and yes, suffering Servant as we know from IS 53. As for being God’s chosen King, look at PS 2: 7-9, “’I will announce,’ says the King, ‘what the Lord has declared. He said to Me, ‘You are My Son ; today I have become Your Father. As, and I will give You all the nations; the whole earth will be Yours. You will break them [human rulers who plot] with an iron rod; You will shatter them in pieces like a clay pot.’”
You already have seen me repeatedly quote JN 14: 9, 11, which deals directly with God’s relationship with Christ. Christ does nothing that the Father does not tell Him to do. Over and over again, Christ went to the Father in prayer for direction and anything else He needed during His ministry [MT 14: 22-23; MK 1: 35]. Further confirmation of Christ’s relationship with the Father is found in these citations. JN 5: 30 & 36, “I can do nothing on My own authority; I judge only as God tells Me, so that My judgment is right, because I am not trying to do what I want, but only what He Who sent Me wants…But I have witness on my behalf which is even greater than the witness that John gave: what I do, that is, the deeds my Father gave Me to do, these speak on my behalf and show that the Father has sent Me.’” Every one of these citations leads to the same thing. God wants Christ and us to have a relationship with Him. Imagine the waste if Christ threw all that over just to yield to Satan’s temptation! To my mind that is why God spends so much time and effort and endures so much disappointment in trying to sanctify us. God wants nothing more than for us to endure in our faith as Christ did, so we can enjoy a close and joyful relationship with Him for eternity in heaven. Think about that.
PRAYER: O Lord, we began our lives inheriting sin. Satan loves this. Throughout our lives on earth, Satan sets snares for us and shoots his arrows at us. It pleases him. We suffer in all kinds of way, and Satan laughs. Sometimes, he gains a stronghold on people’s lives, and they are ruined-headed for spiritual death in the lake of fire. Satan proudly chalks up another victory. You have seen our plight as you did for Your chosen people when they suffered in Egypt. EX 2: 23b-24, “Their [the Israelites] cry went up to God, Who heard their groaning and remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He saw the slavery of the Israelites and was concerned for them.” We repeat the words of the Psalmist in PS 145: 8-9, “The Lord is kind and shows mercy. He does not become angry quickly but is full of love. The Lord is good to everyone; He is merciful to all He has made.” We are comforted by the words of PS 107: 43, “Those who are wise will take all this to heart; they will see in our history the faithful love of the Lord.” These citations remind us that You will not stand and allow Satan to win. You would have never sent Your only begotten Son to the cross or sent us the Holy Spirit if You didn’t care. Our relationships with You and with Him are of utmost importance to You, and we acknowledge that. We pledge to do our parts to keep Your wonderful Covenant of Grace and to have a active, dynamic relationship filled with trust and obedience with both You and Him. We know we are imperfect and never deserved the grace extended to us. Yet, we are more grateful than words can express that You are a righteous, just, fair, compassionate, patient, and guiding God. We humbly confess our sin and offer You our adoration, worship, loyalty, diligence, honor, glory, trust, obedience, praise, and thanksgiving. In Christ’s name, amen.
Tomorrow, we will take up another intriguing question that arises out of our close look at MT 4: 1-11. In the meanwhile, we need never feel alone or abandoned when we endure in our faith in God. Our Deity is so just that He will not allow Satan to destroy the lives of those who have rejected evil. While it is true that we will all lose our physical lives eventually, we need never fear that we will lose our spiritual ones. God guides and protects us through our battles with Satan, all the while rooting us on to work through them and thus forwarding our sanctification. The process by which God perfects us, prepares us to answer the call of the last trumpet and meet Christ in the air [1 THESS 4: 13-16]. We must remember PS 145: 20 tells us, “The Lord watches over all who love Him.” He would never do that unless He loved us and wanted a relationship with each of us. Peter and I send you our love too.
Grace Be With You Always,
Lynn