You’re a sinner, it’s true. David says in Ps. 51, “Surely I was sinful from birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.” Confessing this entails the danger of acceptance. Why change? Why even try?
In today’s Gospel, the Lord Jesus shows us how to fight sin. But that would not be enough, if we were left to our own strength….
Read MoreTemptations are rarely grandiose. On occasion temptation to a front-page-headline kind of sin comes along. Most of our temptations appear as innocuous choices. Small, daily things tempt us to take baby steps away from God’s Word.
Frequently we should pray the Lord’s Prayer. Jesus teaches us there to ask for help: “Lead us not into temptation.” This takes on urgency once we realize we are constantly under spiritual assault….
Read MoreEvery day is a battle, a battle against the darkness, a battle against the lie, a battle against our own impulses. But David had not gone out to the battle. He had already put himself in a position to sin.
When we skip our prayers and Bible reading, when we take the drink we know we shouldn’t, when we go out when we should go home, a thousand times a day we have opportunities to put ourselves in a position to sin, or a position to do what God has called us to do.
“So David sent and inquired about the woman…”
Read MoreMax Lucado— a prominent evangelical author and preacher—recently apologized for a sermon years ago where he said that homosexuality is a sin. Actress Gina Carano was fired from her show for saying that hating people for their political views is dangerous, likening it to the complicity of the German people in the holocaust.
The views expressed by Lucado and Carano are judged to be on the “wrong side of history.” That kind of language—being on the wrong or right side of history—reflects the idea that the world is inevitably moving towards the progressive utopia.
Read MoreWhat we see in the account of Jesus’ temptation is the One Man who does not succumb to the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. He is the One Man who does the will of the Father. And He does it under the harshest conditions. Jesus redoes, relives, recapitulates the whole history of Israel, and passes every test they failed.
And this means that He has endured every suffering that you know, and has resisted and overcome every temptation you experience. How does He overcome temptation? By means of the Word. Jesus is confident that the Father will be faithful to Him, that He will not go back on His Word, that He will not break His promise.
Read MoreThrough the testing, the Holy Spirit creates in you a holy love that passes the shallow romanticism and eroticism of our culture. This is a love that flows from being loved by God. This love lives each moment as a gift from God. In this marriage, Molly and Shawn, God makes you participants in His own work of creation, pro-creation, of unmerited love, and the joy of giving and receiving gifts.
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