TILL HE COMES Blog

When it comes to ministry, most churches don’t think past their parking lot.

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William Barclay, in his commentary on the Gospel of Luke (1975:42-44), records three temptations that pastors face which are parallel to the three temptations of Jesus. Pastors are tempted:

1. To bribe people with meeting their physical needs.
2. To compromise for pragmatism – the end justifies the means.
3. To give people sensations and shows.

I agree that all three are temptations in pastoral ministry, and many churches and pastors around the world have succumbed to such temptations.

I would however, slightly change the first. Jesus wasn’t tempted to make bread for others, but for Himself. It was a temptation to meet His own physical needs. Pastors face this temptation all the time. How many of us have heard this whispered in our ear: “Your private life doesn’t matter. Image is everything. Do what you want behind closed doors. Nobody is going to see.  What you do in private does not effect who you are in public.”

Or, we assert our personal rights: “I have a right to eat and take care of myself. I prove my manhood by my rights. As a leader, I have rights to certain privileges, a certain salary, a certain level of respect.” Such things are not wrong; but they are not rights either.  

So those are some of the temptations that pastors face. The way we combat them is by recognizing that as followers of Jesus, we have no rights. He surrendured His rights, and in following Him, we surrender ours as well.

This post was based on the Grace Commentary for Luke 4:1-13.

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When Satan tempted Jesus in the wilderness, he offered shortcuts. He pointed out a fast track to accomplishing God’s will, an easy shortcut around the cross. Satan loves to offers shortcuts. He always says, “Hey, here’s what God has promised to give to you, but God’s ways take too long and require too much effort. I can give these things to you right now if you will just worship me.” Satan is the king of instant gratification. He was the one who first came up with the slogan, “Your way, right away.” And the trick to his temptations of this sort is that he always offers us God’s promises, but with a shortcut.

Remember Abraham? What was his temptation? “Abraham, God said that you would have a son. But you haven’t had one yet, so just go and sleep with your wife’s maidservant Hagar. That will give you a son.” And Abraham did it, and we are still feeling the consequences of that choice.

Then there was David. “David, God promised that you would be king. And here is Saul, asleep in this cave. Go ahead and kill him, then you can be king. He does deserve to die, you know.” But David did not do this, and became one of Israel’s greatest kings.

 As you read through the Bible, watch for these sorts of situations. God promises something to someone, and only a few verses or only a chapter or two later, that person will discover an opportunity for a shortcut. They are offered the thing that God promised, but in order to get it, they have to break a command of God. They may have to lie, cheat, or kill, but they get what God promised them, and so they justify their actions in order to “obtain the will of God.” Generally, obtaining God’s goals by breaking God’s will ends in disaster.

Accomplishing God’s will must be done in God’s time and according to God’s ways. Any other method does not truly lead to the result God intends.

This post is based on the Grace Commentary for Luke 4:1-13.

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According to the Bible, the spiritual forces arrayed against Christians are staggering. The pressures to sin that we face can sometimes seem overwhelming. These principalities and powers, these Satanic influences, these fallen angels and demons are ready to crush us, to overpower us, to try to get us to cave in to the pressure.

That is why we should never point the finger at somebody else and say, “They are so weak. How can they struggle with that? How could they have fallen to that temptation?”

F.B. Meyer once said that when we see a brother or sister in sin, we should not look down on them, because there are two things we do not know: First, we do not know how hard he or she tried not to sin. And second, we do not know the power of the forces and the spiritual pressure that assailed him or her.

I might add to that a third reason (which Jesus talks about in Luke 6). Condemning sin in others is often just a way of avoiding the sin in our own lives. So if we are always pointing out the sin of others, it may well be that we have our own secret sins we don’t want to deal with. So be careful about the sin you judge in others. It may just be your own reflection staring back at you.

Remember what you learned in Kindergarten: Whenever you point a finger at someone else, there are always three fingers pointing back at you.

This post is based on the Grace Commentary for Luke 4:1-13.

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Lots of people wonder if Jesus could have sinned when He was tempted by the devil in the wilderness. The most common theological answer is that while Jesus could have sinned in His humanity, He could not have sinned in His deity. I have heard it illustrated that the deity of Jesus is like a iron bar, and the humanity of Jesus is like a thin wire wrapped around the bar. The wire, or humanity of Jesus, could be bent to sin, but for that to happen, the iron bar of His deity would have to bend, which is impossible.

It’s a nice analogy, but it really doesn’t make me feel that Jesus has experienced temptation the same way I have. I don’t have that iron bar holding me straight. And my wire of humanity feels more like dental floss.

So let’s step back and look at all this a different way.

First, as believers we do (in a sense) have the iron bar of deity holding us straight. We are in Christ, and Christ is in us. In other words, we are encased in Christ. So, just like Jesus, the part of us that is “of God” cannot sin (this is what 1 John 3:9 is talking about). And yet, we do sin, because unlike Jesus, we have the sin nature.

And this, I think, really helps us understand the temptation Jesus went through versus the temptation we go through. Hebrews 4:15 says that Jesus was tempted in all ways, just as we are, yet without sin. We often believe this means that He was tempted, but didn’t sin. While this is true, one of my professors at seminary taught that Hebrews 4:15 means that Jesus was tempted in every way we are except one – He wasn’t tempted from the sin nature, because He didn’t have one. In other words, we could loosely translate this verse this way: “Jesus was tempted in all ways as we are, but not from the sin nature.”

Why is this important? Because it means that the temptation Jesus went through was way more difficult and trying than any temptation we might experience. We tend to think Jesus had it easy, while our temptations are so severe. But it is really the other way around. The pressure to sin that Jesus faced would crush any one of us.

Let me explain. How much temptation does it take for you to sin? For most of us, it doesn’t take much at all. We have a sinful flesh that will lead us off into temptation every chance it gets. And so Satan doesn’t have to come and tempt us, or even send some of His minions to do the job. Our flesh causes us to sin at the drop of hat, and so he doesn’t have to expend any energy tempting us.

Probably not a single one of us will ever, in our entire lives, be directly tempted by Satan himself. He is not like God who can be everywhere at once. He can only be in once place at one time, and with over six billion people on the planet, he probably has more important things to take care of than tempting you or me to cheat on our taxes or watch that dirty movie. Our flesh easily leads us off into those temptations all by itself; no push from Satan is required.

But while Jesus was fully human, He did not have “sinful flesh.” So the devil had to focus all his energy and skill directly at Jesus. Both knew that life and death and the ownership of the heavens hung in the balance. Not a single one of us will ever face the magnitude of temptation and the cunning power of the devil that Jesus faced for 40 days in the wilderness. 

So don’t ever think that your temptation is more severe than what Jesus faced. He has faced down the devil. Most of us have probably never been tempted directly by the devil. And yet every single one of us constantly have the presence of Christ with us and in us, helping us stand in the temptations we face.

Jesus is an iron bar to wrap your frail wire of humanity around. Then you, and Christ in you, will be unbendable, unbreakable, able to withstand the wiles of the devil.

This post is based on the Grace Commentary for Luke 4:1-13.

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Has it ever occurred to you that Satan is probably one of the greatest Bible scholars in the universe? He probably has the Bible memorized and knows all the various views on every passage of the Bible. He probably has learned all the best arguments for every theological position that exists–both orthodox and heretical. He probably invented some of the heretical ones…

Which means, of course, that the devil is an expert with the Word of God. Of course, he uses it wrongly–to glorify himself and tempt us to sin. This is what he did with Jesus in the wilderness. In Luke 4:1-13, Jesus defeated the first two temptations of the devil by quoting Scripture. So for the third temptation, the devil seems to say, “Oh yeah? Two can play that game!” and he quotes Scripture back at Jesus. Satan is a deceiver and one of his favorite ways of deceiving Christians is with Scripture. He twists it, distorts it, and perverts it, and for the unwary, his explanations and ideas sound very convincing.

So don’t trust someone just because they can quote Scripture. Don’t trust someone just because they use Scripture persuasively. And I’m saying that about myself also. Don’t trust me. I’m sure I’m wrong in my theology somewhere.

How can you learn the truth? Study Scripture and listen to others who have also studied Scripture. Weigh what you hear with what others have said and with what you yourself have learned. Pray. Seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit. I firmly believe that as we do this, as we humbly seek God, asking Him for wisdom, He will guide us into all truth.

This post is based on the Grace Commentary for Luke 4:1-13.

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It often happens in the Christian life, that after the blessing comes the battle. After the mountain top comes the valley. After feeling so close to God, there comes a time when you feel so very far away from God. Sometimes, the greatest temptations follows the greatest victories. The greatest trials follow the biggest triumphs. This is true of most of the great leaders of Scripture.

Elijah
Remember Elijah? He went to Mt. Carmel to have a contest of gods. He took on the 450 prophets of Baal. And if you have read the story in 1 Kings 18, you remember that it was a great victory and a great display of power for the Only True God in Heaven, and Elijah was so excited that, on his way back to town, he was able to outrun the horses pulling the chariot. But then, only one chapter later, in 1 Kings 19, we see Elijah as low as he has ever been. He’s hiding out in the desert wishing he could die.

Paul
The Apostle Paul is another example.  He received a revelation from God on the road to Damascus and believed in Jesus for eternal life.

According to Acts 9:20, Paul immediately tried to start a ministry to his Jewish brethren. It says he was winning arguments and debates with them. But even though he was winning debates, he wasn’t winning any people. Instead, he almost got himself killed. So he fled to Arabia for three years, probably to study Scripture in light of his new belief that Jesus was the Messiah (Gal 1:17-18). Then, after three years, he probably decided he was ready for ministry again, and so he returned to Damascus and then went to Jerusalem to see if he could help the apostles in their work. But the disciples there wouldn’t trust him (Acts 9:26). Nevertheless, he went out and tried to start a ministry to the Hellenistic Jews in Jerusalem. But again, the only fruit of his ministry was that he kept making people mad, and he almost got killed again (Acts 9:29). The apostles decided they had to get rid of him, so they sent him off to Tarsus.

The account in Acts 9 is very humorous. It says that after they sent Paul away, the church began to prosper (9:31).

Can you imagine what Paul is feeling? Jesus Christ told him on the road to Damascus that he was going to be used greatly by God, but every time Paul tried to be used by God, all he did was cause problems and make people angry, to the point that even the apostles didn’t want him around. And it is only after he leaves, that the church begins to prosper! And so what did Paul do? Well, he served, quietly, in a church, in the boondocks of Tarsus. For 14 years he was there. He was unknown (Gal 1:22). He was unrecognized. People forgot about him. He probably began to think that God had forgotten about him too.

But God had not forgotten. God sent Paul to Tarsus, I am convinced, to teach him humility. To teach him how to get victory over his temptation of pride. God put Paul on the back burner for 17 years in order to teach Paul how to speak the truth in love. And when, after 17 years, Paul had learned this lesson in the wilderness of Arabia and backwaters of Tarsus, God said to Paul, “OK, now you are ready to be used.” And Paul did turn the world upside down for God. But he had to spend time in the wilderness learning getting molded by God.

Jesus
Even Jesus was not immune to such wilderness refinement and preparation. The first four chapters of Luke are all about Jesus’ preparation for ministry. Chapter 1 contains the events leading up to His birth. Chapter 2 relates His birth and an event during His childhood years. In chapter 3, He was prepared for ministry through the baptism of John and the affirmation of God the Father.

This baptism was a mountaintop experience for Jesus. He came up out of the water after being baptized by John, and God thundered out of heaven, “You is my beloved Son; in You I am well pleased.”

But rather then immediately launch into a successful ministry, the Spirit takes Jesus out into the desert, not to the adoring multitudes. Immediately following the blessing is the battle. Jesus goes from the heights to the depths. From the lush banks of the Jordan and hearing the voice of God, to the barren wasteland of the wilderness, where He is confronted and tested by the devil.

You Too
All of us experience such wilderness times in our own life. And if you haven’t, you will. Your spiritual life and ministry landscape will become hot, barren, and dry. Sometimes, this lasts a day or two, or maybe a month or more. Sometimes it lasts years.

When you find yourself in the wilderness, realize that such periods help you gain strength, maturity, and humility. Use these times to gain victory over temptation and sin. Grow in your knowledge of God and His Word. And wait patiently on God. When the time is right, He will raise you up, restore you to life, and through you, advance the Kingdom of God.

This post is based on the Grace Commentary for Luke 4:1-13.

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Just as a note to my readers… Don’t buy QuickVerse software. Stay away. This company is greedy and rigs their software so it eventually stops working, and you have to pay for an upgrade.

About seven years ago, I bought one of their Deluxe software packages. I didn’t really care about the “searching” capability or anything like that, I just wanted a great deal on lots of books.

Well guess what? Now I can’t use any of those books unless I buy the new upgrade. I called and complained and they said that if I wanted to access those old books that I purchased, I have to buy the new software. I argued that if I bought a paper book, I could read it as long as I wanted, and wouldn’t have to buy the new edition when it came out. They woman on the phone rudely informed me that they don’t sell books, they sell software, and when the software expires, I have to buy new software if I want to keep reading the books that came with the software.

…Are you kidding me?!

So…Don’t Buy QuickVerse unless you want to keep buying the same books over and over for the rest of your life.  If you want Bible Study Software, go with Logos, BibleWorks, or E-Sword. It appears that none of these excellent companies recharge you for books you already bought. The E-Sword software package is always free, so once you buy a book, you should never have to pay to upgrade it.

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Added Note: Guess what I found tonight! Bible Explorer for Windows! It also is free, and supposedly allows me to bring my old QuickVerse books into it! I’m going to give it a shot. I’ll let you know!

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Added Note: Well, While Bible Explorer is free, and they have over 200 free titles, it appears that to transfer titles from QuickVerse to Bible Explorer, I have to pay a small fee per book. By the time I do all this, I could just pay for the new version of QuickVerse….

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I’m sure it’s just me…but I sometimes panic when I realize how few books I will read during my life. There’s so much to read and so little time! Is there a phobia for this…The fear of not being able to read?

Look at it this way: The average reader reads only four books per year. Over the course of a lifetime of 80 years (with reading taking place between the ages 15 and 95), this would be only 320 books!  

But let’s say you read more. Let’s say you are an avid reader, and can read one book a week, or about 50 books per year. Over the 80 years of reading, that is still only 4000 books! That’s about how many books I already have in my personal library! So even if I never buy another book, I will not be able to read all the books I already own. That’s depressing…

And yet, every time the Christian Book Distributor Catalogue comes, I find another book or two that I want to read.

So I guess the lesson for me is that I must carefully select the books I read. Every time I pick up a book, I ask myself, is this a book that I want as one of my 4000? It makes me sad to think of some of the pointless books I’ve read. Maybe I need to become a speed reader so I can read a book in eight minutes…

Anyway, below are some books I am glad I have read, and may even read again, thereby taking up not just one, but two spots on my list of 4000 books. These books have shaped my thinking in amazing ways. In the future, if I read some list-worthy books, I will include them in the comments.

-The Bible…I know, I know. Do I really have to say it? But it should be one of the books you read regularly, which over the course of your life, will take up multiple spots on your list…80 spots or more if you read it annually.

-Reign of the Servant Kings, by Joseph Dillow
-Transforming Mission, by David Bosch
-The Grace Awakening, by Chuck Swindoll
-The Grace NT Commentary on James, by Zane Hodges
-Expository Preaching, by John MacArthur
-All books by CS Lewis
-Orthodoxy, by GK Chesterton
-The Gutter, by Craig Gross
-God at War, by Greg Boyd
-Satan and the Problem of Evil, by Greg Boyd
-The Shaping of Things to Come, by Frost and Hirsch
-The Forgotten Ways, by Alan Hirsch
-The Last Word, by NT Wright
-Jesus, and the Victory of God, by NT Wright
-The Other Side of Calvinism, by Laurence Vance
-Beyond Calvinism and Arminianism, by C. Gordon Olson

That’s all I can think of right now off the top of my head. By including these books on this list, I am not saying I agree with everything written in them. All I am saying is that these books stretched my mind, and brought about paradigm shifts in my life and thinking. A few of them caused earthquakes.

Feel free to post your own suggestions below. Oh, and by the way, novels are okay as well. Novels can sometimes shape your life and theology more than a book on theology. One of the novels I am glad I have read is Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card. I’m not really into Sci-fi novels, but it was so good, I read it twice.

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Do you know any Christians who talk incessantly about the Holy Spirit? Every time you talk to them, it’s the Spirit this, and the Spirit that… Why is this, do you think? It certainly does not seem to be the way the Scriptures approach the Holy Spirit. He, it seems, tends not to prefer the spotlight, but to stay hidden in the wings.

Take Luke 3:21-22 as an example. This is one of those passages in Scripture where it’s easy to go off the deep end in speculations about the Holy Spirit.

Much ink has been spilled about what Luke means when he writes that the Spirit descended in bodily form, and whether or not He came he came in the appearance of a dove, or just in the same manner as a dove. I read one person who wrote that the Spirit descended as light in the form of a man, and floated down from heaven in the manner of a dove, and when He reached Jesus, it appeared that Jesus absorbed this man of light into His own body.

My first thought was, “Oookaaay….I suppose it could be, but how does he know, and why does it matter?”

Then there are all the arguments about whether the Spirit came into Jesus, or just onto Jesus, and whether Jesus was filled with the Spirit before this event or not.

And somewhere along the way, tempers start to rise, blood begins to boil, and in the process, the Spirit is grieved. It’s ironic that passages about the Spirit (Who is supposed to encourage unity) are some of the most divisive passages in Scripture. And in reality, most of these passages are not really about the Spirit! Oh sure, He is mentioned, but He is not the focus.

Again, take Luke 3:21-22. Are these verses really about the Spirit? I don’t think so. The passage is about Jesus. Luke’s point is not to describe a supernatural event involving a strange manifestation of the Spirit, but simply to show that Jesus was empowered by the Spirit.

All this raises the questions: Why are we so enamored by the Spirit? Why do we treat him like a magical power? Why do we want to place Him so much in the spotlight, and give him so much glory, when really, His goal is to glorify Jesus? (John 16:14)

I’m not saying we should ignore Him. I’m not saying we should treat Him like the estranged uncle that nobody talks about during holidays. In the Seminary I graduated from, this is the way He was often treated. In my class on “Trinitarianism” which was supposed to cover God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, over the sixteen weeks of the course (3 hours in class per week), we spent 12 weeks (36 hours) on God the Father, and of the final 4 weeks (12 hours), we spent 11 hours on God the Son, and only 1 hour on God the Holy Spirit. This clearly is not giving enough attention to the Holy Spirit.

But we must not go the other way either, and spend all our time talking about the Spirit, speculating about the Spirit, preaching about the Spirit, singing about the Spirit, and praying to the Spirit. Such behavior grieves Him, because His job is to glorify Jesus (John 16:14). Balance is the key.

This post is based on the Grace Commentary for Luke 3:15-22.

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