We Are Holding To Our Faith
Hebrews. 4:14-16; Matthew. 4:1-11;
(Please read to get the picture, thanks.)
Starting off in faith is a good thing but staying in faith in also a great thing! We need to be cautious that we don’t lose a firm grip on our faith. If we do, we will find ourselves really floundering around unproductive. There are two things that can help us to hold firmly to the faith: First, Christ as our high priest understands our weaknesses and is sympathetic to helping us, we don’t have to be alone, and second, Christ gives us His own example on how to find the various kinds of temptations that Satan uses to draw us away from our faith being focused properly.
If there is one thing the Bible is clear about, it is that faith has to be exercised in order for us to stay firm in it! This will certainly be the case in these last days where the Bible states that many will be deceived, and even the elect of God must be careful that they are not deceived! The one thing we can be sure of is that we will be tempted, and if we yield, we will not have firm faith.
We need to understand the nature of human flesh, and nature of holy faith! The Bible teaches us that when we are tempted God is willing to help us. Christ faced temptation and beat it, and what He used is available to us today too. "let us hold firmly to the faith" In Hebrews 4: We are given encouragement to keep faith firm! Look at Hebrews. 4:14-16;
14 Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession. 15 For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. 16 Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need. Hebrews. 4:14-16;
People quit when they feel they are alone and no one understands! No one likes the feeling that something can’t succeed. No one likes facing something that seems overwhelming So often we feel God doesn’t understand the pressures we go through, that in His perfection He couldn’t possibly know pain and loneliness This is where the incarnation comes in! Jesus came in human flesh as God so that there would be a way for Him to "feel" and know our human weaknesses. God did not stay out of harms way; He faced it squarely so He can help us through the storms of life and when we feel our faith is slipping!
Joseph Mallord Turner an old English painter, invited Charles Kingsley to his studio to see a picture of a storm at sea. Charles Kingsley was ecstatic over what he saw and he exclaimed, "It’s wonderful! It’s so realistic! How did you do it?" The artist replied, "I went to the coast of Holland and hired a fisherman to take me out to sea in the next storm. Entering his boat as a storm was brewing, I asked him to bind me to the mast. Then he steered his boat into the teeth of the storm. The storm raged with such fury that at times I longed to be in the bottom of the boat where the waves would blow over me. I could not, however. I was bound to the mast. Not only did I see the storm in its raging fury, I felt it! It blew into me, as it were, until I became a part of it. After this terrible ordeal, I returned to my studio and painted the picture."
It is written of the Savior, "For in that He Himself hath suffered being tempted, He is able to succor them that are tempted" Hebrews 2:18;
Christ can understand completely our struggle and pain, He has experienced it all. He both shows us the way to hold on by His example as well as ministering to us because He also knows our human frame! Christ sympathizes with our struggles, and He conquered them using the same tool available to us, God’s Word! Knowing all this, we can come to the throne of grace with confidence where we will find "mercy" and "grace" to help us in our time of need: "Mercy" is not getting what we do deserve! "Grace" is getting what we don’t deserve!
God’s desire for those who will come to Him is to help them! The throne of God is available, we can even come boldly! We are told we can come boldly even when we are struggling! God is our High Priest who is touched by our experiences and struggle to fight against temptation, He died to redeem us, not reject us! The first temptation Jesus faced in the wilderness was the temptation to turn to material things to satisfy His needs. Ironically, this was basically Israel’s early tests as well, food and water. Israel griped about the "heavenly bread" and wanted "flesh" instead. They failed this test. There certainly wasn’t anything wrong with Jesus making a stone into bread to satisfy his natural hunger, but to do it at Satan’s request would have been to get sidetracked from the real issue at hand. He was about to begin His earthly ministry, and natural bread was not supposed to be His focus, that is the focus of this world.
The temptation here was to lose focus, from a spiritual one to a material one! This will be a constant struggle as we live as God’s people in this world! While it might not have seemed like a big thing right at that moment, to start out with a focus on the material would certainly have led Jesus further and further away from His mission which was spiritual in nature! We don’t always see the price of yielding to temptation all at once, it is usually a gradual process that takes us from point "a" to point "b". Jesus avoids the temptation to start down the road of material appetites, for this would have corrupted His mission in the end!
Notice how Jesus "holds firm to His faith", He says, "man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God." Matthew 4:4; Heavenly bread is far more important than physical bread! Israel got sick of the "bread from heaven" (Manna)...God provided it for them for every day to meet their full needs, but they tired of it!
Jesus never tired of the Word of God, and neither should we tire of it. The Church and the Christian will always be in trouble when it turns away from the Scriptures, when the Word of God is diminished and the needs of human flesh are the focus. When this happens, we are in trouble! Christ’s security was not in physical bread, it was in the Word of God! Since Jesus fought off this first temptation with Scripture and won, we can too since the same thing is still available for us today!
You will always do well to win over temptation if you have the Word of God ready at hand! Jesus doesn’t use tricks or fancy miracles to beat this temptation, He uses the Word of God so can we! This is perhaps the greatest temptation for people today, to choose the spectacular rather than the Scripture!
It is interesting to see how Jesus used miracles, most of the time He did a miracle He instructed those who received it to go and tell no one! Many times, Jesus refused to do miracles because the crowd came just for that reason! see Matthew 12:38; ff. In this passage Jesus said it was a "wicked generation that seeks for signs", and the only sign He would give was the sign of Jonah, the image of 3 days and nights in the bowels of the earth, Christ’s death and resurrection! Basic salvation stuff! The main focus of Jesus’ ministry was pretty basic: "repent and be saved!" see Matthew 11:20;
Perhaps this is why a man like Billy Graham who had no spectacular miracles accredited to his ministry except that millions found Christ as Savior, he kept the message basic and focused! John the Baptist was said by Jesus in Luke 7:28; to be the greatest man born of woman, yet in John 10:41; it says, "though John never performed a miraculous sign, all that John said about this man was true" referring to Jesus. John the Baptist never did perform a single miracle, he only preached the Gospel, and no man was greater said Jesus!
It can be easy to lose sight of what is important! Jesus is being asked by Satan to do some extraordinary miracle that will "wow" the crowds at the Temple, then He could avoid all the mundane efforts or daily traveling, working, and preaching, the day-by-day hard work. Jesus’ miracles certainly did attract crowds, but they never kept them for long! While the crowds often followed Jesus anxiously after He did a miracle, as soon as He began to teach repentance and faith, to give a glass of cold water, to visit the sick, to visit those in prison, to clothe the naked, to bind up the broken hearted, to forgive others, and yes to tithe!...then the crowds left!
Remember in John 6: after the crowds were awed by Jesus, He said that they must "eat His flesh and drink His blood" or they would have no part of Him, read John 6:66; "from this time many of His disciples turned back and no longer followed Him!"
It is also interesting to note that one of the characteristics of the last days will be "signs and wonders" both from God and from the deceiver! Hence in I John 4:1; we are called upon to "test the spirits" The Bible even talks about the elect being led astray if that were possible, simply meaning that this undo emphasis on signs and wonders could even draw aside Christians if we don’t stay on guard. Jesus even talked about those who will do miracles in His name, but not necessarily be living for Him. He declares about these that "I never knew you!" Miracles done even in Jesus name don’t necessarily indicate the godliness of those who "do them" the message they bring does this! Miracles are not a guarantee that something is right, but the Message of God’s Word about Jesus Christ is always right!
In Matthew 11:20; we read this: "Then
Jesus began to denounce the cities in which most of His miracles had been
performed, because they did not repent." Salvation was Jesus goal, not
performing signs and wonders for the crowds to be awed over! Note how the
crowds were not much different for the Apostles: In Acts 14:8-20; we read about
Paul and Barnabas having just laid hands on a lame man and he was healed. The
crowd went crazy and started to worship Paul and Barnabas as two gods, Zeus and
Hermes! The Apostles had a hard time trying to get the crowd to accept them as
humans when along came a few Jews that turned the crowds against Paul and
Barnabas so quickly that they stoned Paul and left him for dead! How fickle the
crowd was, they liked being wowed, but not confronted for their sins! It is so
much easier to look for the spectacular and miss the obvious!
A little boy
was talking to the girl next door. "I wonder what my mother would like for
Mother’s Day." The girl answered, "Well, you could promise to keep
your room clean, go to bed when you are told, brush your teeth after eating,
and quit fighting with your brothers and sister, especially at the dinner
table." The boy looked at her and said, "No, I mean something practical!"
Jesus was facing a tough hard road, many days of ordinary ministry punctuated by times of great events, how tempting to bypass the every day ordinary stuff by doing something spectacular before the crowd at the Temple that would "wow" them right off!
Remember, these 3 temptations are taking place just as He is about to start His public ministry! The lure was to avoid the basic stuff, go for the spectacular! Satan will use the "spectacular" in the last days to deceive people. We have got to know the "message"! Jesus once again defeats this temptation with the Word of God. "do not test the Lord your God". In other words, don’t even think you can bribe God into avoiding the message of the cross!
It is noteworthy also that Satan never did quote the whole verse of Scripture when he attempted to use the Bible to tempt Jesus! He conveniently left a part of the passage out! It is the whole of the Bible we need to adhere to keep from false doctrine!
The final temptation represented the desire for a "shortcut" to the right goal! For Jesus to be Lord over all the kingdoms of this earth! Satan merely states here that since Jesus is going to get them anyway, why not let Satan give them to Him now and avoid the cross altogether! This is the "ends justify the means" problem of our society today! "What difference does it make how we get there as long as the end result is good!"
All Jesus had to do was bow once and worship Satan! How many bows to Satan does it take to lose? Just one! The temptation here was to avoid all the suffering, all the day by day efforts, all the routine servant hood stuff, just take the kingdoms now! This is the heart of the world, avoid sacrifice, suffering, serving, "just give me the reward now!" The temptation here is to see the "ordinary" as somehow not the extraordinary yet it is! This temptation to take a "shortcut" is very real, and many take it today!
There are no shortcuts to Holy living, it takes effort, daily routine serving, faithfulness over protracted periods of time! It takes time and work to build a healthy ministry, to be a healthy Christian, to do a fruitful work for God, it doesn’t come in an instant like many of the instant things we have in society today! There are "no shortcuts to glory"! Jesus wins the day again through the Scriptures, and so can we! Jesus fought every temptation with the written Word of God the same source of fighting Satan’s temptations is available for us too!
If Jesus had used some other power to resist Satan besides the Word of God, then we could not have seen Him as a High Priest we could identify with we have the same Word to use today that He used to win! This is how we "hold firm to the faith"! In the last days the Bible says "those things which can be shaken will be shaken" only those who have a firm grasp on God’s Word are going to be able to walk a clear path! If we lay hold of God’s Word, it will lay hold of us! Avoid the shortcuts, "Let us Hold Firmly to the Faith"
People lose their firm faith when 2 things happen; first, they think they are alone without help, and second, they lose focus on Christ! Christ offers a remedy for both of these problems, He is able to understand us and offers help, and He shows us by example how to keep the focus! Are you firm or flimsy in your faith? Let us hold firmly to the faith!
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