The chair was moved away from the table. A mother’s head peeked around the corner and saw that it had been pushed against the counter and used as a stepping stool for a pair of three-year-old legs. The quest was the cookie jar. And at just the most inopportune moment, with his teeth crunching excitedly and his arm immersed to its pit straining for the next cookie, he saw his mother.
The crunching stopped and then his mouth opened to suggest a quick explanation. With crumbs escaping his mouth, he offered, “I just climbed up to smell them and my teeth got caught!”
So it is with temptation. As writer and pastor Haddon Robinson has noted, “Temptation stirs the blood and influences the imagination. If we were revolted by it, it would not be temptation at all. Usually, though, temptation doesn’t seem very bad, so we play with it, flirt with it, and invite it into our lives….It brings flowers and perfume and offers life and good cheer, good times and enlargement. It bribes us with wealth and popularity and entices us with promises of prosperity and unbounded freedom.” But it brings failure and frustration, because we have failed to count the cost.
So Paul’s words two millennia ago still ring with truth and relevance: “Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall” (1 Cor. 10:12; NASB).
It isn’t that we don’t know the cost. We just don’t consider it. Neither did the Israelites. Idolatry? They embraced it. Immorality? They chased it. Impatience with God? Yes, that too. Grumbling and complaining? They were the experts! And for all these sins and more, they paid with their lives (cf. vv. 6-10). In itself, that was tragedy. But the greater tragedy is when we follow in their paths of unfaithfulness. After all, the very reason we have the accounting of their failure is for our instruction — to assure that our futures are not mortgaged on similarly bankrupt sins.
There is no one who escapes the powerful attraction of temptation. All are susceptible to it. All (read v. 12 again, just in case you doubt it). Even Christ was tempted (though obviously without sin; Heb. 4:15). All are susceptible to the temptation, but none must give in to the temptation. The power of the gospel has freed us from the bondage that enslaved us to sin. In His faithfulness, God does not allow Satan to have more access to our lives than we are spiritually able to carry, and in His faithfulness God also provides a way of escape from the temptation.
What is this escape? At the risk of being overly simplistic, let me suggest three words: Watch (Mt. 26:41), Pray (2 Thess. 3:1-3), Obey (Js. 4:7). Be on guard against any infiltration of evil — be discerning. Ask for God’s protective hand to guide you. And follow His counsel explicitly.
The antidote to a godless temptation is God and a sanctified memory, a discerning eye, a prayerful submission, and a godly obedience.
Words of Grace 