Temptation and Deliverance

As we come towards the end of the Lord’s prayer we are confronted by a request for very specific help about living in this world.

Temptation and sin are common to all humanity. It doesn’t matter where you live, east or west, north or south, whether you have money or none, educated or uneducated… we all know temptation, we all know sin.

To that end we need a saviour, a deliverer, for none of us is able to save or free him or herself from it’s strangle hold. We all live under the prince of the power of the air and are subject to the passions/lusts of the flesh. As much as we might try to extricate ourselves we can’t.

Praise God Jesus came to do just that. He beat the devil and temptation at every twist and turn of his life. When dragged before the courts on trumped up charges, he was found to be not guilty. Yet, the masses wanted his death, and he was scourged and cruelly crucified on a Roman cross.

In the sovereign purposes of God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – his death is part of the great plan of to bring salvation and deliverance from sin and it’s consequences, and make right with Him all those who would hear and believe the message of salvation – a salvation wholly achieved by Jesus Christ, and not by anything that we have done.

Let me ask you, do you know Him? Have you come to a saving knowledge and experience of Jesus Christ? He is able to save you, forgive you, set you free and give you a new life. The scripture calls us to repent (change our minds and direction), and believe in Him and we will be saved.

Becoming a Christian though doesn’t mean we will never be tempted or not sin again. We still live in a fallen world. We still await the redemption of our bodies. We do have an enemy. Hence the necessity of this prayer, “Lead us not into temptation but deliver from evil (or the evil one).”

Yes, there will be times when you will have thoughts, unexpected thoughts and desires to do wrong. Sometimes they will will be connected to your own particular passions, at others totally out of the blue, like, where did that come from?!

This is about living the saved life. Yes, we are saved and no longer under condemnation, and have a sure and certain hope, but we are still living in a fallen world, and we need saving day by day. Our enemy is extremely cunning, having lost us to the Kingdom of God he is constantly devising strategies to cripple us in our Christian walk. Paul says “we are not ignorant of his devices,”  but it would appear today many are – we need to wise up.

Part of our daily praying should be, “lead us not into temptation and deliver us from evil/evil one.”  1. It will alert us to the fact we can and will be tempted and help to set our antenna, and set our hearts and minds on knowing God’s presence and help, and 2.  It will keep us alert to the fact that it’s not our will power or strength that beats the enemy but knowing the presence and power of the Lord.

One last thought, temptation doesn’t define us. You may be powerfully and sorely tempted. The devil might suggest it’s unique to you, that you are an exception. Don’t believe him. Temptation is not sin. Adam and Eve were tempted prior to the fall, Jesus Christ being without sin was nevertheless tempted in all points as we are. Don’t allow the fact that you are tempted to define or bind you. Go forward knowing that Jesus is present to rescue you from every temptation, to deliver you from the power of the evil one, and that he always provides a way of escape.

Christmas is coming - has come!

It suddenly dawned on me last week that we are in the run up to Christmas! No, it’s not like I didn’t know, after all at church we’ve been preparing for weeks, but rather in the busyness of life I hadn’t realised it was that close – I mean, that close!

I wonder whether it was a bit like that that first Christmas, everyone was going about their daily routines as one day followed another, even as one year followed another. Of course it hadn’t happened yet, so it wasn’t on the annual calendar, nevertheless they had the prophetic promise, a promise that had been passed on from one generation to another, the promise of a Saviour. And O, how they longed and prayed for that day when he would come. But hey, life goes on, living and hoping, hoping and living, and you can get lost in it and not realise where you’ve got to, or what’s going on.

Now I’m guessing that they really didn’t have that much idea either on what that would look like as they had no previous experience, so when the promise finally came to pass they were just going about the usual business of the day, and then….. when he does turn up he looks like the rest of us, a vulnerable little baby, dependent in every way on his mother and father.

I mean, in many ways it was so ordinary, too ordinary – could this be God? In fact it was so ordinary it needed angels to announce the fact that this was not just another child just like every other one, but the Child, the promised One, the prayed for and longed for Saviour. Life didn’t pause or wait for everyone to get all spiritual, feel right good and ready, no, suddenly in the middle of the hustle and bustle of Eastern life he made his appearance, he was born – fact. Not in a synagogue, or at the Temple, or some other religious setting, not even the comfort of a home, but a simple stable. I mean what a way to wrap a present!

I wonder how many today are going about this Christmas, not realising where they are at, and missing the fact that he has come – not as superman or some powerful macho all conquering hero, but as a vulnerable little baby who cried (Yes, I don’t think ‘Away in a Manger’ is correct on this point!), and was as dependent as we were on those around him when we first entered this world. Nevertheless he is none other than the Promised One, the longed for Saviour and we don’t need to wait for another. He has come, and he came ‘veiled in flesh.’

The Passion of Christ

Passion Week

This week we are in the run up to Easter and the story of the death and resurrection of Jesus, and what a story!

The story we have to tell is not a stand alone story, but one that is part of a much larger story that finds it’s origins in the heart of the Triune God in eternity past and carries forward to eternity future.

In between we have creation and the fall into sin, a fall so catastrophic that it required a massive rescue plan quite outside the scope of man, a plan that would lead to the calling of a man called Abraham, a family and a nation, through whom ultimately the heavenly Rescuer, the Saviour, Jesus, would come.

At the right time he was born of a virgin, taking on real human flesh, flesh just like our own – the writer to the Hebrews says, ‘he had to be made like us in every way,’ and Paul says he was ‘made under the law,’ and as the church father Gregory put it ‘the unassumed is the unhealed.’ It had to be the real stuff. God in flesh with man residing. Very God and Very Man. With us and for us.

Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and learned obedience by the things he suffered.

He ate and drank, he grew weary and slept.

He knew joy and sorrow.

He was tempted in all points as we are.

He lived close to the Father, talking to him and listening to His voice; He only did what he saw the Father doing.

He walked and taught and healed and delivered in the power of the Spirit.

He fought the devil at every turn, and beat him back and down all the way.

He lived your life, my life, the life we should have lived, and he did it completely.

Then he took our sin and it’s consequences…. this was to be no mere example of love, not just some moral influence, or just a victory over Satan, it was to be the death of death in the death of Christ. It was substitutionary. It was penal.

And for that reason the run up to Easter would be dark and full of passion. The devil had fought against it all the way, and he thought he had him….

The garden carries the aroma of death, it’s in the air…. God in Flesh sweats as it were great drops of blood…. this is real agony…. so much so that God in Flesh prays, ‘Father if it be possible let this cup pass from me…’ the weight and consequence of sin is huge…. though he knew that this was what he was born for, suddenly the weight of it bears down upon him in the weakness of human flesh….

‘Nevertheless’ he prays ‘not my will by Yours be done.’ The final act of surrender. The course is set….

Reflecting on Jesus

A Concern
Reading and reflecting on the Christmas story I can't help feeling that some Christians/the Church doesn't exactly know what to believe about Jesus.

It seems to me that many Christians have an inbetween Jesus, neither fully God or fully man. An anaemic, insipid, pale reflection of the Jesus of the Bible - a Jesus who would never disturb anybody let alone draw forth worship and obedience.

Flesh
It seems that we struggle with the idea of Jesus coming into this world and into this stuff called flesh, let alone frail flesh. Paul says "flesh just like ours under sin's domain." (Romans 8:3 HCSB) - we need to avoid the theological manoevering that frequently goes on here, i.e. it was only 'like' ours. If that is so we are in trouble with what Paul says in Philippians 2:7, "taking on the likeness of men." When we fall into that trap we end up building doctrines to protect him (e.g. the Roman Catholic doctrine of the Immaculate Conception).

If this is the case it is not surprising that we fail to understand how he can sympathise with us in all of our temptations/weaknesses in such a way as to help us, and if we struggle with this how are we ever really going to cope with Jesus taking our sin and bearing it on the cross? "He made the One who did not know no sin to be sin for us." (2 Corinthians 5:21). What a staggering truth!

Divine
On the other hand we struggle with his Divinity, after all if he really was, and is, God the Son, co-equal with the Father and the Holy Spirit, why do we struggle to take his word seriously - to live under his lordship? We cannot simply see Jesus as our Saviour, he is also our Lord. He has bought us. We are His.

A New Vision of Jesus
It seems that we need to radically reflect on just who Jesus was and is, to remove him from the stained glass windows and the niceities of western middleclass suburban Christianity. To get rid of the sentimentalised convenient Christ of the manger and of so much deadening modern religion. To get back to our Bibles and let the text speak to us in all it's plainness, and let the real Jesus come forth into our lives and into our churches.

The Challenge of Jesus
It was the challenge of Jesus himself, "Who do you say I am?" Our answer to that question will impact the type of Christian lives we live and the churches we build.

The Importance of the Incarnation

"For God loved the world in this way: He gave his One and Only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life." John 3:16 (Holman Christian Standard Bible)

"(God) condemned sin in the flesh by sending His own Son in flesh like ours under sin's domain." Romans 8:3 (HCSB)

The incarnation is as important to our salvation as the death and resurrection of Jesus. As Gregory Nazianzen (one of the old church fathers) put it, "The unassumed is the unredeemed." Jesus therefore had to enter our very real, fractured humanity, in order to redeem it and heal every part of it, and offer it back to God.

Glorious mystery, wonderful Saviour, so great a salvation!