TEMPT OR TEST?

By Rick Mathes

Luke 4:2 (NASB77) ² for forty days, being tempted by the devil. And He ate nothing during those days; and when they had ended, He became hungry.

The barren desert of the deserted is the devil’s natural habitat. Dry, dusty, forlorn and desolate is the garden of Satan. It’s a place of howling tomb stones covering the suffocating caskets of those encased in a liquid inferno of hysteria, chaos and insanity personified in estreme.

Satan can’t make you forsake Christ but he can attack unexpectedly with the circumstances that weaken your resolve to faithfulness in our Lord. If you just blink and make sin an option, you will eventually exercise that option and cave in to the temptation of counterfeit pleasures.

He attacks you at your weakest point because he knows that that is the shortest distance to the grave because the wages of sin is death no matter how small the infraction. Just a drop of lethal poison in a cold glass of sparkling clear spring water will do and he knows what makes your knees buckle before his smoldering throne. No mercy!

Satan disguises himself in deceitful friendliness. He’s your best friend and favorite neighbor: your spouse and yes, even your pastor. This angel of light, Lucifer, fools even the most cautious because he is the father of lies and you believed him all your life until you met the Way, the Truth and the Life.

The devil’s favorite tactic is to quote Scripture falsely and out of context. He thinks you won’t know the difference because he knows the Word better than you do. His entry level to your fall is doubt which is the opposite of faith. With flagging faith your trust in Jesus fades and you see the power of our own means to mislead yourself and others.

It all stems from the spiritual pride of deceiving others into believing that you are a Christian in good standing when it is nothing more than the selfish ambition to be your own god. This is what caused Satan to fall from glory and it is the temptation he uses to cause you to fall into the undying caldron of boiling fire in hell.

It is my fervent belief that believers cannot be tempted. My logic is that darkness cannot enter light so if you are “born again” the Light of the Savior shines in you and the darkness of the devil cannot invade it. What you experience as a temptation is really a test from the Lord. He has let the devil have a go at you to show all the depth of your faith and love for Him.

So the next time a sin fleetingly breezes through your consciousness, stand against it, say “Depart from me Satan,” resist the sin and then say, “This one is for you Lord!” Pass the test and defeat the tempter.