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"Temptation: A Case Study" Text Comment
We return to the same text we considered last Lord's Day morning because, as so often with the text of Holy Scripture, the same paragraph conveys various truths at the same time. No doubt every paragraph of Scripture can be preached in different ways, each way entirely consistent with the Holy Spirit's mind in the passage, and were we to extract all that we might, we would still be in Genesis 1 and in danger of never getting out! But, I could not leave Gen. 12:10-20 without drawing from it the wonderfully practical lessons of a believing man under temptation, and all the more as I have not had occasion to preach on this theme in some time. It is a theme of paramount importance in the Christian life and I have looked for an opportunity to address you in connection with it and have found it here in a perfect form. In days long ago Christians used to think a great deal about temptation, that is, about anything that tends to make a man or woman, boy or girl sin. That is what a temptation is, anything that tends to make us sin -- a word, a circumstance, a sight, an event, a thought, an inner craving -- anything that tends to make us sin, that inclines us to sin, that invites us or encourages us to sin. And, as I say, Christians used to be far more expert at temptation than they are today. They used to think deeply about how temptation worked, by what means it gained the upper hand in a Christian soul, and how best Christians were to resist and finally repel the thousand and one temptations of their lives. Great works on the theme were written and avidly read by spiritually minded people, works such as John Owen's Of Temptation: the Nature and Power of it or Thomas Brooks, Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices. John Bunyan has a sixteen verse poem on the way of temptation with the soul. The best of Christian autobiography and biography has long featured this aspect of the life of its subjects -- the battle with temptation and the ferocity of that battle and the manner of it through many years -- from Athanasius on St. Antony to Jim Elliot in our own day. Read the Journals of Jim Elliot and see a young man struggling to stave off the roaring temptations of youth! These men were students not only of the Bible, but of their own hearts, and had learned from their own experience the intricacies of this part of the Christian life. And well they should, for it is a very large part of that life. Our Savior told us to watch and pray that we might not enter into temptation; in order to live his holy life he had to fight off temptations on every hand, the most subtle and diabolical temptations any man has ever had to face, and he left us an example that we should follow in his steps. Much of the Bible's teaching about godliness, about Christians living worthy of the grace they have received, concerns the necessity of their resisting temptations. We are regularly treated in the Bible to accounts of godly men and women who succumbed to temptations so that we might see what destruction is wrought when a Christian capitulates, what spiritual weakness and fruitlessness comes in the wake of temptation's victory in a Christian's life. Abraham, Moses, David, and Peter are simply prominent examples among a large number that might be named, indicating the importance the Holy Spirit attaches to this subject. Contrarily, we often see believers rise above their temptations, repel them, and ride on the heights of the land because of it. Joseph, Gideon, Hezekiah, and Paul are but a few such exemplars of those who watched and prayed their temptations into the dust at their feet. In so many ways we are taught that if one would live godly in this world, he must defeat temptations. And the Bible leaves us in no doubt as to how that is to be done and why. What we have in Abraham's ill-fated journey to Egypt is a classic case of biblical instruction in these great themes. I. First, we see here the way in which temptation gains power and mastery in our lives. Abraham was in the midst of the same spiritual struggle we face in our lives today, exactly the same struggle against exactly the same enemies within and without, enemies that gained strength from the same, the very same kinds of temptation. It is the first part of our wisdom to know how temptation works, to understand how it gains strength against us and how vigilant we, therefore, must be if we are to wage a successful resistance to it. In Abraham's case, we see in two obvious respects, why we must never take temptation lightly or underestimate our susceptibility to it. A. First, it is ever-present; it never leaves us alone. This is a lesson taught so often in the Bible and taught first clearly here. There is never a time that temptations cannot undo us; never a time when we can relax our guard. If ever there was such a time in Abraham's life, this was it. If ever there was a time when we might have supposed Abraham to be too strong to be bothered by, even to notice his temptations, this was that time. He had just been called of God, he had just exercised a great faith and become God's pilgrim. He had just had a personal conversation with the Almighty in which extraordinary promises had been made to him. Abraham no doubt understood that he had been singled out, among all men in the world, for an unequaled greatness. What favor God had shown him, what reward he had received! And immediately before he left for Egypt, so we read in v. 8, he had given his life again in worship to God. But not a one of these great advantages and blessings prevented him from a terrible fall virtually moments later. Faith and obedience do not so easily become habit forming as do sins of various kinds. And how true this is for you and me. We are built up in our faith, in worship, in the Word of God, in prayer, in the fellowship of the saints, by the blessings of God, only to grow less vigilant, less watchful, and suddenly our temptations have cast us to the ground again, and we have done, we have sinned as we thought we would never just moments or hours or days before. The sin that is within us has no greater ally than our own complacency and self-confidence. B. Second, Abraham's fall teaches us how subtle temptation is. Here is a second way that temptation gains power and mastery in our lives: by its insidiousness. Had Pharaoh come up to Abraham and said to him: 'Curse God or die!' I suspect that Abraham would have done well; would have stood the test. Had David been offered the alternative by Nathan the prophet, when he was looking at Bathsheba for the first time: have a fling with this woman and destroy your family or remain faithful to the God who has been so exceedingly generous to you, David would have stood that test and chosen rightly. But temptation is never so crass; never so obvious. Consider Abraham's case. The entire situation was brought about by a famine. That certainly wasn't Abraham's fault. It only made sense to go to Egypt during a famine -- it was the prudent thing to do and multitudes of people did it because the Nile provided a reliable source of food when other countries were suffering drought. What is more, Abraham's fears were not irrational. Pharaohs and other great kings of that ancient world were not above murdering a man so as to take his wife. And, then, low and behold, there is a ready-made way out of Abraham's dilemma: Sarah was Abraham's sister, half-sister anyway, as we read in Gen. 10:12 -- the daughter of Abraham's father but not of his mother. It wouldn't be, you see, a real lie. Temptation had boxed Abraham in, just like it so often does with us. It provides us a ready set of reasons why we can't pay our tithe, why we have to have now that thing we cannot really afford, why we should have a critical spirit toward a brother or sister, why we haven't time to pray and why we should not speak to them of Christ, why this and why that! It is spiritual alertness to temptation, to the fact that we are being tempted to sin that is called for, that Abraham did not have here. Some of you are reading Thomas a Kempis' classic, The Imitation of Christ. And perhaps you have come upon Thomas' famous description of the successive steps of a successful temptation. There is first the bare thought of the sin. Then, upon that, there is a picture of the sin formed and hung up on the secret screen of the imagination. A strange attraction or sweetness is then let down from that picture drop by drop into the hear until that sweetness secures the consent of the entire soul and the deed is done. Sometimes that process takes very little time, sometimes more time. But, do you see, where the process must be stopped. Early on, before the temptation has had its chance to work and awaken our desire for sin. But we will never stop it early -- venture all on the first attempt, that was Owen's advice in dealing with temptations -- but we never will unless we know that we are being tempted, unless we are awake to what is happening to us, unless we recognize those thoughts, those responses, those desires, that attractiveness for what it is! And we will not unless we carry about with us a vigilance that comes from the knowledge that temptations are everywhere and come at us all the time from every direction and that they are exceedingly subtle and so we must be on guard, thoughtfully examining our ways at all times to see if we might, in fact, be falling prey to a temptation we otherwise would never recognize until far too late. And that leads us to the second lesson. II. We see here, in Abraham's case, what temptation can make us do, its danger to us. A. First, we see here what evil it can lead us into. Abraham was a man of faith and obedience and courage and sacrifice. We've already seen him in all of those roles. But temptation, one temptation, turned him suddenly into a coward, a cheat, a Judas to his wife, a defiler of the covenant God had made with him, and an ungrateful wretch willing to cast God's great gifts back in his face! That is what temptations will do, what they can make of us. They made David a murderer, Peter a traitor. In the 17th century they made the saintly bishop Lancelot Andrewes, translator of the KJV and author of the immortal Private Devotions, a sycophant and a coward in the wicked court of King James I, signing his name to despicable judgments because he had submitted to the King's flattery and it had now drawn him in so far he could not get out. Temptation made an unbeliever out of the father of the faithful. In 12:2-3, again in v. 7, God had guaranteed Abraham's protection, but now he has forgotten all that and is fending for himself. And what a mess he makes of it. B. But, we see not only the evil that temptation can lead us into but the web of consequences that follow our falls, our surrenders to our temptations. Abraham found that his sinful course was far easier to enter than it was to leave. His lie caught him and now not only was his wife at risk, his marriage over for all practical purposes, but he had, by having to accept Pharaoh's gifts, sold himself to the King. He would never be able to get out without revealing his duplicity and subjecting himself to an even greater risk of losing his life. It is worse to have lied to the king than to have a beautiful wife he might desire! If the famine ended, he couldn't get Sarai back without exposing himself, even if she wasn't yet inextricably a part of Pharaoh's harem of wives. And then the shame. The discovery; the being lectured on morality by a heathen; the never being able to look on his wife without remorse; and the offense to God himself! How often the Bible paints this picture for us of folk who fall prey to temptations clearly with no thought of the catastrophe they are bringing upon themselves. The temptation will suggest to you nothing of the aftermath of sin. It offers only pleasure, satisfaction, fulfillment. It hides the stinger so that we do not see it until it is too late. But, remember, the Devil hates you; he only wishes you harm! We, therefore, have to think our way through to the end of that temptation, to what will be our lot when God sees to it that our sins are found out, what will we think of that brief pleasure when we are in bondage to the habit or cannot extricate ourselves without shame from the results of what we have done? It is this fear of sin, this fear of falling, this clear-headedness about the wages of sin and the misery that eventuates when a Christian chooses to disobey and not to trust the Lord that makes us sharpsighted and clear-witted and determined that we will not fall and, therefore, that we will reject our temptations, drive them back, scorn their proffered pleasures in the name of our God and of holiness and of Christian peace and joy. And what weapons we have, what arguments with which to put our temptations in their place when they appear before us in their subtle disguises and when they try out on us their subtle deceits and crafty arguments. Here is Philip Doddridge in his great work The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul [166]:
And here is Christina Rossetti [In Whyte, BC, III, p. 36]:
And higher still than these arguments, and more powerful and effective is the example of our Savior who was tempted in all points as we are yet without sin. Ye tempted souls, reflect Dream not of faith so clear 'If thou'rt the Son of God, View that amazing scene! Think not he now will fail That impious "if" he thus To cause despair's the scope 'Buts,' 'ifs', and 'hows' are hurled But here's our point of rest; John Bunyan, in his autobiography Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners tells us that early on in his spiritual life, when he was struggling desperately with a point of faith, he opened his problem to an older Christian. But, he says, "I found that ancient Christian to be a good man, but a stranger to much combat with the Devil." Some of you may be wondering why you are so sorely and so constantly tempted. It seems to you, as you consider your own life and the lives of Christians around you, that you are being tempted more than you share. But it is no virtue to be a soldier that the enemy ignores. It is to no Christian's credit that the Devil sends few temptations his way or hers, while setting his crafty and powerful temptations on others with a hellish and unrelenting fury. "Fight neither with the small or the great, but only with the King of Israel," said the King of Syria. And these are like the orders the Devil gives to his soldiers and to his allies in the world and in your own flesh. Fight to the death with than dangerous young tinker he said to them, pointing to young John Bunyan, and so he says to them today while pointing to you. And I very much hope that all of us will think that we will now live, in the strength of the name of Jesus Christ, so as to make him heartily sorry that he ever said any such thing! |
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