Writer’s Wednesday – Tempted and Tried

For anyone looking for a fantastic and practical Christ-centered resource on the temptation I would recommend Tempted and Tried: Temptation and the Triumph of Christ by Russell D. Moore.  Dr. Moore was one of my favorite professors in seminary due to his consistent emphasis upon the person of Christ and applying what we learned in the classroom to life.  Tempted and Tried is currently on sale for $7 at the Westminster Bookstore so get a copy and when you are done let me know as I would love to discuss this book with anyone reading it!

 

Makeup Monday – The Temptation

During yesterday’s sermon we saw that Luke’s point in the temptation, and in his Gospel as a whole, is not that we need a strategy but that we need a Substitute because this Lion of Judah who overcomes our Enemy, who crushes the Serpents head, is also the Lamb who was slain.  This is increasingly clear as his Gospel narrative moves from Christ’s victory in the wilderness towards His triumph at the cross and the proclamation of that promised victory to the nations (cf. Luke 24:25-26, 44-49; Acts 1:4-8).  If we begin with that understanding of the temptation then we are in a good place to seek to understand how temptation works and ultimately what the tempter is after.  Because temptation is never about the bread, or the authority, or the rescue; temptation is about getting the people of God to question the fatherhood of God.  It forces us to see God’s character through our circumstance rather than viewing our circumstance through His character.  So we are to as Philippians 2 says, work out our salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in us, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.  This helps to frame our understanding of temptation around our Sovereign Substitute rather than our self-righteous strategies because ultimately the glory is His.  Yes we work and yes we toil but we do so knowing that the victory is His.

God has created us in such a way that we have these desires and in many ways our survival is dependent upon the fulfillment of these desires.  There is only so long that you can go without eating or drinking, right?  And so we desire to have our stomachs filled, and we desire to be healthy and financially prosperous, and we desire emotional and physical intimacy, among countless other necessary and unnecessary things.  We were designed to crave our Father’s provision, providence, and protection.  The key though is that we can place our confidence in our Father’s character or we can go about fulfilling these desires in such a way that denies His existence.  These are the tensions we saw in the temptation of Christ:

• The Father’s Provision or Self-Preservation (vv.1-4)
• The Father’s Providence or Self-Glorification (vv.5-8)
• The Father’s Protection or Self-Vindication (vv.9-12)

These are also the tensions at play in our lives on a daily basis.  Keep that in mind when you are facing temptation.  It is never really a question of taking or not taking the carrot dangled before you; no it is a question of whether or not we will trust in the character and fatherly love of our God.