Lead Us Not Into Tempation

In: Personal Reflections on the Study of God's Word
Published:

The book of Job focuses mainly on the lessons Job learned as he went through the trials inflicted upon him as Satan tries to shake him loose from the faith and trust that he has in God. His friends tell him he is suffering because he has some secret hidden sin that he needs to confess, his wife tells him to just give up and curse God and die, but he refuses to let go of God. When we look at the beginning of the book we find the curtains drawn back so we can see what is happening behind the scenes (something that Job, his wife, and his friends did NOT have) observing interactions between God and Satan. In chapter 2 God is addressing Satan for the second time highlighting Job's faithfulness despite Satan "inciting [God] against him to ruin him without cause."

When we jump over to the new testament Matthew 4 begins by stating "Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil." It would be easy to conclude from the story of Job and the temptations of Jesus that God is the one who tempts us, or at least leads us into temptation. That brings us to our Lord's Prayer phrase for this week "Lead us not into temptation" (#LeadUsNotIntoTemptation).
 
How do we reconcile the idea from Job and Matthew that God places us in the path of temptation with Jesus telling us to ask God to not lead us there? Does it mean that God will lead us into temptations path if we DON'T ask Him not to? What is the difference between living in this world, where we WILL face temptation, and God intentionally placing us in the line of fire?
 
In Jesus prayer for His disciples in John 17 He states "I am not asking You to take them out of the world..." (we will look at the rest of verse 15 next week!) In James 1:13 we are told "No one is to say when he is tempted, 'I am being tempted by God'...He Himself does not tempt anyone." Here we find Jesus telling us it is necessary for us to be "in the world" and as a result trials and temptations will come, but James reminds us that being tempted is NOT sin, but it becomes sin when we dwell on it and become enticed by our own desires for something that God has not designed that we should have.
 
Job was able to withstand the temptations of Satan (through his wife and friends) because he refused to abandon his belief that God was with him. He didn't know why he was facing the trials that were happening in his life, but he knew God was with him through them all. Jesus was able to resist the temptations of the devil when He refused to focus on His own situation, choosing instead to focus on God's direct statements about who He was and what He needed to do to redeem the world.
 
Satan's temptations of Jesus focused on two ideas - you can't believe what God has said in the past and God's plan is not the best way to reach your goals. The temptations that we face will focus on these two ideas as well - you can't trust God's word, and He doesn't have your best interest at heart. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 10:13 that with every temptation that we face God has provided a way to endure it. James 4:7 tells us "Submit therefore to God. But resist the devil, and he will flee from you."

 

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A number of years ago as I was attempting to understand God's methodology and His timing I came to the realization that from my perspective God is always a day late and a dollar short, but from His perspective He is right on time with just enough. My challenge is to stop seeing it from my perspective and start seeing it from His! These past few weeks as Lisa and I have been preparing for and implementing our move from Texas to Tennessee it has been essential for us to NOT view this move from our perspective but from God's.

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50 years ago this evening I was impatiently waiting for the new day to arrive. I had spent several weeks visiting my grandparents in Loma Linda, California and on July 4 we were going to Disneyland! It wasn't actually my grandparents who were taking me (although they went along) it was my uncle Ken and Aunt Ruthie and it was a reward for helping Aunt Ruthie with her daycare (it was called baby sitting back then!) while she took her children, Heidi Ranalla and Adam Turk to swimming lessons. I still don't know what possessed us to think that it was a good idea but on July 4, 1976 we went to Disneyland!
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In the movie Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home Chekov and Uhura have beamed into the reactor room on the aircraft carrier Enterprise to harvest radiation from the nuclear reactors. Due to failing power on the Klingon starship Scotty must beam them back one at a time. At 1:14:27 into the movie as the guards on the Enterprise are closing in Chekov makes an effort to contact Scotty to be beamed out of the reactor room making a desperate plea "Scotty, now would be a good time!" How often when things aren't going the way we think they should do we ask God to resolve the issue in the way that we think would be best. Like Chekov we declare "Now would be a good time!" for God to solve our problems.

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