Well, good morning to all of you.
My name's Tommy.
I'm the rector here at Church of the Advent.
And so if I haven't had a chance to welcome you,
hopefully we'll get a chance to at least meet
and shake hands after the service.
I want to make sure you know we do have a newcomer's brunch
right after the service downstairs.
So if you're new, even if this is your first Sunday with us,
we'd love to have you.
So please hang around and come downstairs
and hopefully we'll get a chance to chat.
Many of you are probably familiar
with the story of the Titanic.
A movie came out about it.
If you haven't seen the movie, I'm going to spoil it,
but you had your chance.
But the Titanic, obviously this incredible,
as it was said, feat of engineering
that was celebrated as a marvel of accomplishment,
human technology, and it was said it was virtually unsinkable.
So when they set out on their maiden voyage,
ship full of people, it wasn't even equipped
with enough life rafts for half of the people,
total number of passengers on board,
and that's because they didn't think they would need the lifeboats
because this boat was unsinkable.
Despite warnings about icebergs in the water,
large icebergs that could tear ships apart,
they ignored the warnings.
The lookout didn't even have binoculars to look out for the icebergs.
The captain did not slow down,
but had the ship going full speed through the water
because, again, this ship was celebrated
as being virtually unsinkable,
nothing to worry about.
Unfortunately, that was not the case.
And as many of us know,
a large iceberg tore a gash into the hull of the ship.
Water came in.
The ship eventually sank.
And over 1,500 people lost their lives.
And this story,
and it's just one story.
There are many other examples throughout history
that stories like this illustrate the same thing.
The danger of overconfidence.
How when we are overconfident in a situation like that,
it will invariably lead to disaster.
And in the passage we're gonna be looking at this morning,
1 Corinthians chapter 10,
the first 13 verses of chapter 10,
the apostle Paul is making much the same warning.
He's warning us about the dangers of overconfidence
when it comes to temptation.
The message is essentially this,
is that if we are overconfident
when it comes to our ability to face and deal with temptation,
that that road will invariably lead to disaster.
It will lead to catastrophe.
So we're gonna look at this,
and in this passage,
Paul gives us several ways
to be prepared for temptation
when it inevitably comes,
so that we'll know when it comes,
so that we'll know how to face it,
so we'll know how to overcome it together.
So we're gonna look at that.
First, I'm gonna give us a little context
so we know where we are,
and then we're gonna look at what the apostle Paul
has to say to us about overconfidence and temptation.
Let's pray,
and then we'll open God's word.
Lord, we thank you for your word,
and we thank you for this season of Lent.
Lord, this is a time where,
as Jeff said earlier,
we reflect on Jesus' time in the wilderness,
and we go there with him, Lord.
We follow in his footsteps
in this journey to the cross,
to the tomb,
to the resurrection,
to the new life.
Lord, we pray that you would bless us
as we seek to walk with him,
to journey with him.
We pray that you would open these words,
and through these words,
we would come face to face with him
and be united with him.
Lord, that's our prayer,
and we ask this in his holy name,
in Jesus' name.
Amen.
So first of all,
let me give you a little context.
We're dropping right into the middle
of a letter here,
chapter 10.
This is a letter that Paul wrote
to the Christians in the city of Corinth.
Corinth was a major urban center.
It was the capital of the province,
a lot like D.C.
It was very cosmopolitan,
and so the early Christians in Corinth
had to ask a lot of the same questions
that those of us who are Christians
ask as we live here in D.C. in 2025.
They were asking,
how do we live lives of faithfulness
in a major city center
with such an incredibly diverse population?
How do we participate in public life
when we are surrounded by people
who have so many different beliefs,
so many different values,
so many different lifestyles?
How do we live lives of faithfulness
in the public square?
And the specific question
that Paul is addressing concerns food.
Should Christians eat meat
that comes from animals
that had previously been sacrificed
as a part of pagan idol worship?
That meat was widely available
in the markets.
When you got invited over
to your friend's house to eat,
a lot of times you would be eating meat
that had previously been sacrificed
as a part of pagan ritual,
and so the Christians were asking,
should we eat that meat or not?
Is it okay or not?
And so this starts a few chapters earlier
in chapter eight.
Paul is trying to address this question.
Some of the Christians were overly cautious.
They were teetotalers.
They said, absolutely not.
We need to stay far away from that.
It's gonna corrupt us.
It's spiritually corrupting.
Others were more in the opposite end
of the spectrum.
They were almost brazenly overconfident.
They would say, you know,
Jesus has forgiven all of our sin.
He's done away with all the dietary restrictions.
We don't need to worry about that.
We've been set free.
We should enjoy our freedom.
We should be able to eat whatever we want.
Paul's answer is very interesting.
He essentially says, not so fast.
God has set us free.
Technically, we can eat whatever we want.
However, the freedom that you have
can be easily lost if you're not careful.
It has to be guarded.
It has to be protected.
And at the beginning of chapter 10,
which is our passage this morning,
Paul is wanting to make sure
that these Christians have the right perspective
on their situation.
You need to start with the right perspective.
So that's the first thing he gives us
when it comes to temptation is,
here's the perspective that helps us make sense
of our lives and the place that we find ourselves in
as a part of God's story.
Paul refers them back to the time of the Exodus.
Now, if you know about the book of the Exodus,
it starts with God's people living as slaves in Egypt.
And then God raises up Moses.
And through Moses, God demonstrates his absolute power
over Pharaoh and all the pagan gods of Egypt.
And ultimately, he sets his people free.
And God promises that one day he's going to bring them
to a promised land, a home that he has prepared just for them.
But here's where we need to pause
if we're reading and paying attention closely
and stop and sort of ask,
why is Paul bringing this up here to these people?
The church in Corinth was full of Gentiles.
For the most part, these are not Jews.
The Exodus was not their story.
These are Greek and Roman people.
But Paul is referring to the Israelites in the wilderness
as their forefathers.
He says, remember our forefathers.
I don't want you to be ignorant of our fathers.
So you understand what he's saying to these Gentiles.
That was Israel, and that was their story.
But now that you're Christians,
you are part of the church.
And the church is the new Israel.
So that was Israel, but now you are Israel.
You are God's people in the world.
And so what he's doing is he's connecting that story to their story.
He's saying their story is now your story
by virtue of the fact that you're in Christ.
You're the new Israel.
And this is the perspective that Paul seeks to impart to us as his listeners.
Even though we live in a different time,
even though we live in a different place,
spiritually speaking,
we are part of the story of Israel,
which means we are still very much in the wilderness.
He's saying they were in the wilderness, remember.
Now as you continue in the wilderness,
remember what happened to them.
Now this is extremely important
as it relates to the topic that we are exploring this morning.
What does it mean to be in the wilderness?
Well, spiritually speaking,
the wilderness is the space between.
It is a space between freedom and fulfillment.
There's a space between,
and we occupy that space.
That's what the Bible refers to as the wilderness.
Jesus has set us free.
We, those of us who are here who are Christians,
Jesus has set us free from sin and death.
We've been set free from slavery to sin and death.
And he has promised that one day he's going to come again,
and he's going to make all things new.
He's going to restore the world.
He's going to bring the heavens and the earth together.
But he has not fulfilled that promise yet.
That is still something that we're waiting for.
And so we occupy this space between having been set free,
freedom,
and the fulfillment that one day God will make all things new.
So until that day comes,
we are in the spiritual wilderness,
which means the world is still broken.
I mean, most people,
you don't have to try hard to convince them
that the world is broken.
I was just having lunch with somebody this week,
and we were talking about,
we're both very concerned about the state of things.
Right now in the world,
the state of our country right now,
we're very,
lots of concerns,
lots of anxiety.
We know the world is still broken.
We still have desires and longings that go unmet.
We still have to contend with uncertainty,
and grief,
and loss,
and conflict,
and decay,
and breakdown.
In other words,
being in the wilderness means this world as it is,
is not our home.
And that's extremely important to remember.
It's crucial for us to keep that perspective
if we want to make sense of our lives.
What this means is that,
you know,
let's just consider some examples here.
When it comes to our work,
we should all try to find stable careers,
stable work,
and hopefully that work,
those of us who feel called to work outside the home,
seeking paid work,
hopefully,
God willing,
that work is meaningful,
and we enjoy it,
and it aligns with our gifts,
and aptitudes,
and abilities.
But no career is ever going to satisfy
our desire for meaning and purpose completely.
Because this is the wilderness.
It's not our home.
We shouldn't expect that.
If you're called to marriage,
you should look for someone who shares your faith
and your values,
someone with whom I think maybe this is one of the most important things,
someone with whom you can develop a deep,
lasting friendship.
Very important.
But even the best marriage is not going to fulfill you.
There's going to be stretches in your marriage,
even if it's the best marriage,
where you still feel lonely.
There's going to be maybe seasons where you wish that you weren't married.
There might be moments here and there
where you wish you were married to somebody else.
There might be moments where you feel like,
I have no idea who this person is that I married.
I thought I knew them, right?
That is to be expected.
It's one of the things we do in premarital counseling.
As we help people understand,
it's very important to have realistic expectations about marriage.
This is the wilderness.
This is not our home.
So there's no person out there
who's going to perfectly fulfill and complete you.
The wilderness is not the place
where God promises to fulfill
all of our longings and desires.
That's going to happen when we're home.
And the wilderness is the place
where God prepares his people for their home.
The wilderness is not a place of fulfillment
and happiness and contentment.
The wilderness is a place of profound transformation.
It's a place where God works
in the hearts and lives of his people.
Now, sometimes Christians forget this.
There are famous, popular Christian leaders out there
who make it sound as though when you come to Jesus,
everything's going to get better.
All of your longings and needs
are going to be satisfied in him.
Christianity is about living your best life now.
It's a very popular message,
but if you believe that and buy into it,
you're setting yourself up
for a lot of disillusionment and disappointment.
One day that's going to be true.
We're going to be satisfied in Christ,
but not yet.
We're still in the wilderness.
Now, here's why this is so important.
This perspective is crucial
because we need it to make sense of our lives.
This world is not our home.
With this reality comes a warning.
This is the second piece that Paul gives us.
You have the right perspective.
We're in the wilderness.
With that comes a warning.
The spiritual wilderness is a dangerous place.
It is a dangerous place
because the fact that we have unmet needs and longings,
the fact that this is a place of struggle and hardship
makes us extremely vulnerable to temptation.
When you're living your life
with lots of unmet needs and longings,
it makes you extremely vulnerable
to all manner of temptation to sin.
And Paul essentially makes this point.
He says, listen, I don't want you to be ignorant.
By the way, when Paul says,
I do not want you to be ignorant, brothers,
he typically, it's a nicer way of saying,
I think you're pretty ignorant of this.
And so he says, I don't want you to be ignorant
about what happened to Israel.
Think about their story.
And he's pointing back and he's saying,
listen, they had every advantage you have.
They had every advantage you have.
And it didn't make any difference.
Look what happened to them.
So he's saying, just like you,
God set them free from slavery.
He, in a very provocative way, says,
just like you, they had their own versions
of baptism in the Lord's Supper.
They passed through the Red Sea.
They were in covenant relationship
with God through Moses,
the covenant that God had established through Moses.
Just like you, God sustained them
with spiritual food and spiritual drink.
Obviously not the bread and wine that we have here,
but not the bread and wine that we have here.
In some way, Paul is connecting this meal
back to God's provision for them in the wilderness.
God provided for you.
He gave you manna.
He gave you quail.
He made water spring out of the rocks for you.
And just like you, in a manner of speaking,
Christ was with them, not in body, but in spirit.
Christ was with them.
The presence of God was with them,
sustaining them, blessing them, providing for them.
Nevertheless, he says, most of them
were overthrown in the wilderness.
Now, that word that he uses, overthrown,
actually translates more laid low.
The image that Paul is giving us is,
imagine a desert landscape littered with bodies.
There's bodies everywhere you look.
Most of them were laid low in the dust.
Now, why did this happen?
Well, Paul cites multiple examples of times
when the people of Israel were lured and tempted
away from God into sin and idolatry.
Through the Old Testament, in places like Exodus
and the Psalms, you see these references
to being lured and enticed.
And one of the words that you see showing up again and again
around the sin of the people of Israel
is the word ensnared.
They became ensnared by various things.
Now, what has ensnared me?
When I was a kid, my uncle told me
that if I wanted to catch a bird,
what I had to do was to sneak up behind the bird,
maybe you've heard this,
and to pour a little salt on its tail.
Anybody heard this?
Maybe it's just my family.
Sneak up behind the bird, pour salt on its tail,
and then my uncle said,
well, salt will mean that the bird can't fly,
and then you can catch the bird.
So I put on camouflage,
and I went out in the woods behind our house,
and I spent hours, if I'm honest, days,
belly crawling around the woods
with a salt shaker in my hand,
trying to sneak up on birds.
Now, maybe I'm not the brightest bulb in the box,
but I eventually realized
that's not how you catch a bird.
My uncle was a bit of a joke.
It turns out, if you want to catch a bird,
there's a better way to do it.
You need a snare.
There's a reference in the Bible
to the fowler's snare.
A snare is essentially a loop of wire or string.
Typically, it has a slipknot
so that it'll tighten up,
and it's attached to a bent branch
or a bent tree or some other spring mechanism.
Maybe the boys will learn how to do this in trail life.
Maybe you've already learned how to do this in trail life,
but you lay the loop down,
and you kind of maybe put some leaves over it
so that you don't really notice it,
and then you cover it with seed.
You cover it with whatever the food is
that the animal that you're trying to catch,
and so the animal will come along,
the bird will come along,
and it becomes so focused on the food
laying there in a nice pile on the ground
that it doesn't notice the snare
until it starts to eat,
and it springs the trap,
and it gets caught,
and then it can't fly away,
and it just has to hang there
waiting to be killed and eaten.
That's the fowler's snare.
And this, my friends,
is how the Bible talks about temptation.
And the Apostle James actually tells us how it works.
He says,
each person is tempted
when he is lured and enticed.
Again, those Greek words
are actually hunting and fishing terms.
He says,
lured and enticed by his own desire.
Then desire, when it is conceived,
gives birth to sin.
And sin, when it is fully grown,
brings forth death.
So he's painting a picture
of what it looks like
to be lured and enticed
until we become ensnared.
You start off with a need or a desire.
It could be hunger or sexual longing
or loneliness
or the desire for safety or comfort.
And these desires
are not inherently evil on their own.
They're just desires.
It's a part of what it means
to be a human being
living in the wilderness.
We have desires.
And so we have this desire,
and then we come across,
either in person
or in our own imagination,
that pile of food.
You know,
some way of satisfying that desire.
And we come across
a way of satisfying that desire
that runs contrary to God's will.
Right?
And you know in your mind
that this God
does not want me to do this,
but it looks so good.
It looks so satisfying.
It's just right there.
It would be so easy to take.
Right?
That's like the bird seed
being spread over the ground.
And at this point,
by the way,
there's still no sin.
You've noticed it.
It's there.
You feel the desire.
That would be a possibility for you.
But at this point,
there's still no sin.
But then at some point,
James says,
we allow ourselves
to be lured
and enticed.
We sort of give ourselves
to that longing.
We begin to imagine
what it would be like
to have that thing.
We begin to fantasize,
to indulge the desire,
to nurse it,
to kindle the craving.
So this is like the hungry bird.
We're lured closer and closer,
and then the trap is sprung,
and before we know it,
at some point along the way,
we went from just beginning
to give ourselves
to that desire
to before we know it,
we're ensnared,
we're dangling,
waiting to be killed
and eaten by,
as he references at one point,
the destroyer,
the evil one
who is behind all of this.
So, you know,
an example of this,
think of a classic example
of David out on the roof
seeing Bathsheba,
who's married to
one of his best friends, Uriah.
David is out there,
a lot of commentators say,
why is he out on the roof?
What's he doing out on the roof?
Was he hoping
he might see something?
And he's out there,
and he's looking around,
sees Bathsheba.
At this point,
there's no sin,
but instead of turning away,
instead of immediately
turning away
and going back in,
saying,
that's,
I shouldn't be doing that,
he continues to look.
He begins to fantasize
about being with her,
and then he summons her,
and then he sleeps with her,
and he's ensnared.
And then that just leads
to more and more and more sin.
Ultimately,
this leads to David
arranging to have
his best friend Uriah killed
in order to cover up the affair,
the affair that,
by the way,
everybody at this point
already knows about.
So here's what Paul is saying.
He says,
when we're still
in the wilderness,
which means we have
all of these unmet desires
and longings,
the wilderness,
we have to recognize,
is a very dangerous place.
And it makes us
extremely vulnerable
to temptation.
You're going along,
and there are all kinds
of promises
of things that will fulfill
these various desires.
And he says,
these are snares,
and you have to recognize them
for what they are.
It may not be obvious to you,
but they're there.
Right?
Just to give one more example,
maybe we,
you know,
what are some of the things
we long for?
A success,
beauty,
talent,
influence,
normal human desires.
But then you start
comparing yourself.
Right?
You have this kind of temptation
to comparison.
And maybe it's online,
maybe it's just your friends,
the people you know,
your coworkers,
people who seem to be advancing
more quickly than you,
or you have all this instability
in your job,
and they have this rock-solid career,
or you don't have a family,
and they have the family
that you want,
or they're off having
these fun adventures
while you're raising
these young kids,
or whatever it may be,
you start comparing yourself
to their life.
And they seem to have
more of the things
that you want.
And then you allow yourself
to be lured and enticed
into jealousy and envy.
And before you know it,
your mind is looping
on these things,
and before you know it,
you're ensnared
by jealousy and envy.
And what you begin to notice
is at that point,
the joy and the gratitude
are slowly strangled
out of your life.
The slipknot of envy
strangles all of the gratitude
out of your life.
You no longer focus
on what you have,
on the ways that you've been blessed
or provided for.
You're only focusing
on what you lack,
on what you don't have.
And then over time,
joy and gratitude
are replaced slowly
by bitterness and resentment.
And sometimes you may even
get to the point
where you're mentally
tearing down
or invalidating
the good things
in somebody else's life
to make them seem smaller,
to make yourself feel bigger.
See, there are countless examples
that we could give
when it comes to lust
or anger
or bitterness
or envy
or all of the things
that we struggle with.
But here's the warning.
He pulls it together
in verse 12.
Let anyone who thinks
that he stands
take heed
lest he fall.
In other words,
do not underestimate
the danger of temptation
in the wilderness
and do not overestimate
your ability to resist it.
Do not underestimate
the danger of it
and do not overestimate
your ability to resist it.
The good news is
Paul is not about
to leave us high and dry.
That's not the end
of the passage.
There is tremendous comfort
to be found
in this passage as well.
So we have perspective.
We have a warning.
Now the Apostle Paul
leaves us
with some tremendous comfort.
We have three great resources
to help us live lives
of faithfulness
in the wilderness
so that we don't end up
like Israel.
The first
is we have the Scriptures.
The Apostle Paul says
in verse 11,
now these things happen to them
as an example
but they were written down
for our instruction.
He says,
thank God we have
all of this written down
and we can go back to it
and learn from it.
The point is this,
the more that we read
and understand
and apply Scripture
to our lives,
one of the things
that happens is
the more we do that,
the more you begin
to understand
your own nature.
You begin to understand
your own vulnerabilities.
You begin to understand
and see more clearly
your own weaknesses.
As we are reading Scripture,
we should always be
asking the question,
is God saying this to me?
Is God talking about me?
Is God wanting me
to hear this
for any particular reason?
There should always
be a question,
how is God speaking to me?
What is God trying
to tell me through this?
The more we do that,
the more we understand ourselves,
the more prepared
we're going to be
for life in the wilderness.
You know,
the great Harvard psychiatrist,
Robert Coles,
he spent his entire career
studying human behavior.
Entire career
at one of the greatest
universities in the world
and here's what he says.
Nothing I have discovered
about the makeup
of human beings
contradicts in any way
what I've learned
from Scripture.
Anything that I can say
as a result of my research
into human behavior
is a mere footnote
to those lives
in the Old and New Testament.
I mean,
that's amazing,
right?
We have in the Scripture
the best diagnosis,
the best understanding
of the human condition
available.
And the more we internalize it,
the more prepared
we're going to be.
So we have the Scriptures.
Number two,
we have community.
We have community.
Verse 13
is tremendously comforting.
No temptation
has overtaken you
that is not common to man.
That's an amazing
thing to say.
You're not going to face
anything
that the people around you
have not faced.
God's not going to single you out
and say,
I'm going to pour some temptation
on this person.
I'm going to make it
extra hard for them.
He says,
everything that you experience,
everything that you go through,
it's all common
to the people around you.
There are people
who know what it's like.
Now,
on the surface,
our lives may look different,
but underneath,
we all struggle
with the same temptations.
And these are the same struggles
that human beings
have faced throughout history,
which means,
and here's the good news,
we can help.
We should help one another.
It means this,
whatever you're going through
right now,
whatever you're wrestling with,
whatever's bubbling in your mind
as you're sitting here right now
listening to this,
chances are
there are people in this room
who either have gone through that,
are going through it right now
at the same time you are,
or will go through it.
We have no hope
of overcoming temptation
if we try to go it alone.
So you need at least
a few people in your life
who know you well enough
to be able to step in
when you need help,
who know you well enough
to know when they might need
to step in
even when you're not asking for help.
People you're close enough with
that they know
they have permission
to speak into your life.
They don't have to dance around
and say,
hey,
I gotta bring something up,
it's gonna be hard,
are you gonna be okay,
is it gonna jeopardize
our friendship,
and I don't wanna offend you,
that you don't have to do
any of that dancing around.
You can say,
we need to talk,
I got something
I wanna bring up.
Take it or leave it,
pray about it,
but I'm concerned.
And you say,
okay,
that's what friends do.
You know,
there's that great story
from Homer's Odyssey
where Odysseus is warned
about the power
of the siren song.
He's warned
that if he gets too close
and he hears the song,
he's gonna go mad
with desire
and he's gonna
run his ship
into the rocks
and like so many
other unfortunate sailors,
they will all die at sea.
So he tells his men,
before we get too close
to the sirens,
I want you to plug your ears
with beeswax,
but I wanna hear
the siren song,
but in order to keep us safe,
I want you to lash me
to the mast
so that when I hear
the song of the sirens,
no matter what I say,
no matter how much
I threaten you,
do not let me go
until we're clear
of their song.
And the men are good men
and they do exactly
what he says
and sure enough,
he's lashed to the mast
and they get close
and he begins to hear the song
and he immediately
loses his mind
and he starts begging them
to release them
and he's begging them
and pleading with them
to go to the sirens,
to go to the rocks,
but his men are good men
and they don't listen to him
and instead,
they tie him even tighter
to the mast
until they're free of the song
and then he regains his mind.
And of course,
the reason he tells them
to do that
is because he knows
that there's probably
gonna come a point
where he loses his mind,
he's not in his right mind
and at that point,
he needs them to step in.
The point is,
we need people like that
in our lives
who can tie us to the mast
when necessary.
You know,
when you're not
when you've just had
a massive
just guts out
on the floor fight
and you're like,
I am done,
I am out of here,
I'm through this marriage,
I'm never going back,
I can't do it another day,
I'm out of here.
You need somebody
to tie you to the mast.
Or when you're
in an incredibly abusive,
harmful relationship
and you're like,
I can change this person,
I can save this relationship,
I can hang in there
for one more day,
I can endure it,
it's not that bad.
Maybe you need
to get out of the relationship
and you need somebody
to tie you to the mast
and say,
no,
it's time for you to leave.
When you're ready
to throw your life away
for some stupid obsession
that doesn't seem stupid
at the time
because you've lost your mind,
you need somebody
to tie you to the mast,
right?
There are times
when you need somebody
to step in your life
and say,
no,
I'm gonna tie this down tighter
until you come back
to your senses.
We need people like that
in our lives.
So the next time
you're going on a work trip
and you know
that you tend to struggle
with lust
and there's a chance
that you might wanna
go out and meet somebody
because you're in a place
where nobody knows you
and there's no accountability,
line up a couple of people
to talk to on the phone
while you're on that trip.
You know,
if you tend
towards self-pity
and adopting
a victim posture,
deputize a couple
of people
to help you notice
when you're going
down that road
of self-pity
so they can say,
hey,
is there anything
that you should
take responsibility
for here
or is everything
somebody else's fault?
Maybe,
and we all have
different tendencies.
You need people
who know those tendencies
so they can step in
when they need to step in
and we do this precisely
because we know
that sometimes
we're not gonna be
in our right mind.
So these are the resources
we have.
We have scripture,
we have community.
Lastly,
we have God's amazing promise
in this passage.
Verse 13,
God is faithful
and he will not let you
be tempted
beyond your ability
but with the temptation
he will also provide
the way of escape
that you may be able
to endure it.
This means we can never say,
you know,
I would have resisted
but God just poured it
on too heavy.
That in fact,
God says,
you're never gonna be
in a place
where there is not
some way out
if you choose it.
I'm never gonna put you
in a situation
where there is not
some way out
if you're willing
to choose it.
He always gives us
a way out.
So God always gives us
a way to persevere
in that situation
without having to resort
to sin.
He never puts us
in a position
where we have to sin,
where there's no other way.
In other words,
victory over temptation
is possible
in this life.
And I think this is
an extremely important
note to end on
because up until now,
I think it's been a lot
of hard stuff to hear.
But it ends with this promise
that actually victory
over temptation
is possible.
We should expect
to have victory
in this life.
And this is something
that we always need to hear.
But the reason
that victory is possible
is ultimately
because God is faithful.
It's because God is faithful.
God is not a spectator
waiting to see
if we're gonna screw up again.
God is our greatest ally
in the fight.
God is for us.
He's not sitting there
just saying,
ah, there's no way
they're gonna make it.
He's with us.
He's for us.
He wants us to succeed.
And it means
we can always count
on his help.
All we need to do
is ask.
That's why when people
are recovering from addiction,
one of the first things
they learn is
they're powerless.
The first steps
are about admitting
that you're completely powerless.
You can't do it
on your own
and you need God
in order to be able
to do anything.
Right?
The first thing
you need to do
is to learn
how to cry out to God
for help.
You just have to ask.
And the reason
that we know
that God is faithful
is because we see this
embodied in Jesus Christ.
Right?
we need only look to Jesus
who was tempted
in every way
as we are.
We see Jesus
going into the wilderness
enduring and facing
all manner of temptation.
And you know
the temptation
didn't end
after 40 days.
It continued
all the way through
the Garden of Gethsemane
and the desire
to not drink that cup
all the way
through the cross.
At any moment
he could have gotten down
but he chose to remain.
The author of Hebrews says
Jesus was tempted
in every way
as we are
and yet was without sin.
And through his death
on the cross
Jesus defeated sin and death
as we said earlier
so that one day
we will be free
from temptation and sin.
We won't have to contend
with this anymore.
This is just
a light momentary affliction
compared to that life.
But because of the cross
even when we do fail
even when we do find ourselves
ensnared by sin
we know that God
will always forgive us.
That God will always
restore us.
In the words of Psalm 103
and for wilderness people
who are going to fail
as often as we succeed
we need words like this
again and again and again.
God is the one
who forgives
all your iniquity.
Who heals
all your diseases.
Who redeems
your life from the pit.
Who crowns you
with steadfast love
and mercy.
Who satisfies you
with good
so that your youth
is renewed
like the eagles.
Let's pray.
Lord what a great comfort
it is to know
that you are a God
who desires our freedom.
Who has given us
that freedom.
Who protects us
and seeks to help
safeguard that freedom.
And who will one day
fulfill your promise
to fulfill
and restore us
and make all things new.
and we pray Lord
that in the strength
of your Holy Spirit
Lord
and through the finished work
of your son Jesus Christ
that you would give us
the strength
to live faithfully
here and now.
Lord between
between the cross
and the new creation.
We pray that you would
give us the strength
especially Lord
that we now lift up
those who are
particularly struggling
right now.
Lord either because of
stress and anxiety
or grief
related to their
to their work
to their job
to their finances.
Lord people who are
overwhelmed by despair
or hopelessness.
People who are caught
in the trap
of addiction.
Lord
people who are
on the edge
of hopelessness.
People who are
struggling in their
vocation of singleness.
Struggling in their
vocation of marriage.
Struggling in their
vocation of parenting.
Struggling in their
desire to be parents.
Lord struggling
in whatever way
we are struggling now
Lord we lift
we lift these struggles
up to you.
We cry out
just as we said
and we ask that you
would you would
give us the comfort
of your presence.
Remind us of your
faithfulness.
Lord empower us
and strengthen us
with your Holy Spirit
to stand.
Lord if there are
people here who need
others in their life
who need that kind
of community that
we are talking about
Lord I pray that you
would bring those
people to mind now.
I pray that you
would open people's
hearts to one another.
That we would be
willing to share
our struggles and
burdens and bear
them together.
Lord we lift all
of this up to you
and ask this
in Jesus' name.
Amen.