Which is Stronger; Our Enduring Faith or Today’s Temptations?
Exodus 32:1-19; 1 Corinthians 10:1-13, 23
This past Tuesday morning I had finally settled down into my easy chair to read the daily news paper. As always, I turned to the editorial section of which is one of favorites, besides the daily “Frank and Ernest” cartoon. There I found a very interesting Readers Commentary entitled, “Catholic Lifestyle is Counter Cultural Today,” written by a Mount Savage resident, Nancy E. Thoering.
One of the paragraphs jumped off the page at me as I read her commentary about not just living a Catholic lifestyle but living a Christian lifestyle as well. Her statement just kept sticking with me as I continued to read the rest of the morning paper, to the point that I returned again to the editorial page and re-read the entire commentary.
The paragraph that really spoke to me and I now share with you is this: “Faith, after all, is a way of life, Church is our springboard into the mystery of God, where we strive to live by His commandments and prepare to return to Him in eternity.”
She then continues: “For Christians, adhering to God means embracing Christ’s cross and hoping to share in His resurrection.”
In a nut shell, Ms. Thoering’s commentary was about how times have changed and that we as Christians have altered the state of our belief systems to become politically correct and culturally acceptable. What do you think?
Have we become so impatient with life that we will do whatever it takes to be accepted even if it means going against the grain of our Biblical based faith? Have we become so lost in our worldly culture that we are willing to forego our belief system in order to gain social acceptance? Where do you and I and the entire church stand when it comes to the temptations of this world to engage in the idol worship of status and prestige?
PRAYER
“No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it” [1 Corinthians 10:13 NIV 2011].
Temptation: allurement, enticement, lure, seduction. These are the words to describe this vice in which we find ourselves faced with on a fairly regular basis. We are human and therefore will always be bombarded by temptation. No one of us is left out. We all have temptations that come our way each and every day that we breathe and they will not end until we draw our last breath.
So if we are to remain faithful in our relationship with God, through the Lord Jesus Christ, how can we overcome the forces of temptation when they occur? Or is it even possible to do so? Can we really continue to live by following God’s commands and precepts as taught by the Christ? Is it achievable? Is it plausible?
Even before these questions can be answered there are a few things that we have to grasp and hang on to if we are genuine in our search to find ways to overcome the temp-tations of life. It takes patience! It requires patience, with our self, with the rest of man-kind and with God, the Father. It also entails having great faith! It takes faith in one’s self to have a steadfast assurance with God, the Father knowing He is always there, no matter what!
A great illustration from the Book of Exodus is the story of Moses, the Children of Israel and the Golden Calf.
Moses is up on Mount Sinai (the mountain of God) and the Children of Israel are encamped at the bottom awaiting His return. Moses is talking with God and the Israelites are becoming very impatient. Moses is receiving the Law and they are about to break the very first one.
Even Aaron, the temporary leader appointed by Moses before his exit up to the mountain, has become a little restless and is already contemplating a way for the people and himself to find a bit of relief from their impatience. As far as they know, Moses has been up there on the mountain for an extended time and even possibly dead for all they know. And as for God, He too has moved on the mountain and no longer protecting them with the cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night. “Is Moses ever coming back? Is Jehovah leaving us here in the middle of this desert to die?” they ask each other.
Now something we all need to understand before we go to pointing fingers. Mankind has been created with a burning desire to have a personal relationship with some type of higher power and deity. This is the basis for the origin of all religions. It is why religion in any form exists today.
It is the same in this story with the Children of Israel. They have had a taste the personal contact with the Living God and have come to where they are at the moment because of His careful, watchful concern. And now, after waiting and waiting they have become impatient for more.
So, Aaron remembers the influence that the Egyptians had had upon his people. The Egyptians, even though they worshiped multiple gods, had fashioned idols out of metal, stone and wood to worship as representations of their various gods. These edifices would be bowed to and worshiped as the very gods in which they represented. They were tangible and easier to be worshiped rather than just using one’s imagination.
He turns to the Israelites and beacons them to bring all their gold jewelry to him and that he will create something observable and touchable that will be a representation of Jehovah God. This graven image, a golden calf, will suffice in Moses’ and God’s absence.
The people gather all their golden jewelry and belongings and bring them to Aaron. He then builds a furnace and begins melting the gold into a molten liquid. Afterwards he pours it into a mold in the shape of a calf and then hammers the hardened metal into the finish product in great detail to look just like a real calf made of brilliant gold.
Aaron then urges the children of Israel to worship the calf with dancing and revelry. They bow before it and acknowledge it as their god. The people become so enthralled that they engage in orgies and drunkenness to the point of ecstasy.
Moses returns. As he steps into the camp he sees what they children of Israel and Aaron have been doing. They have been carousing and partying around the golden calf that Aaron had made. He becomes infuriated and even so that he smashes the tablets of the Law, that he had just receive from God, on a nearby rock. Then taking the calf in hands he threw it into the burning furnace and burnt it into ashes, collecting them and placing them in the camp’s water vat, forcing the children of Israel to drink from it.
Aaron, when confronted by Moses, he tries to make excuses for what he has done on the people saying they are the ones who asked him to make the golden calf in the first place. Sounds familiar, right?
The problem of impatience for answers to life and a weakness in one’s faith are all the motives that temptation needs to get its foot in the door. Its then that social acceptability and personal prestige walk right in to become the way of life. God and His Holy Word take a back seat and being politically correct or socially acceptable, the idols of this world, take root and begin to grow.
We must be careful! Once these temptations have been opened and become reality it may be too late! God WILL NOT bless the life that is led by this world’s values and pleasures. Once the idols of political correctiveness and social acceptability have been worshiped, God is righteously angered. God WILL NOT tolerate sin in any form or fashion!
What can we do? How can we overcome the temptations of this evil world? How do you and I hold onto our faith, our belief system in order to remain true to our convictions for the cause of the Christ? How do we say “NO!” to the enticements of society to “behave like them;” to “talk like them;” to “be prejudiced like them;” to “be jealous like them;” to “cheat like them;” and so on and so on?
Remember we are to be different! The Apostle Peter says in his first Epistle: “But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light” [1 Peter 2:9 KJV].
So even though we are to be different than the world around us, how do we conquer the wiles of Satan and his fiery darts of temptation? If we are to survive the bombardment of social acceptance and personal prestige we can we do in order to remain faithful to the Christ?
Listen to the Apostle Paul’s words to the Corinthian church which like us had a problem with the temptations of their society during their time: “No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it” [1 Corinthians 10:13 NIV 2011].
Repeat! “But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it” [1 Corinthians 10:13b NIV 2011].
God will make a way! He has already placed into being an escape clause. In other words, when we are tempted to succumb to this world’s vices God has already made a way for us to bypass the temptation and move on secure in our faith walk without wavering. He has a plan!
The Law which Moses had received from God on Mount Sinai had its built in plan for the children of Israel to overcome their temptation to sin, particularly if they had fallen to the temptation. They would be able to go to the Tabernacle and there have the priests make sacrifices on their behalf. The poured out blood of the sacrificial animal covered their sinful-ness that had been stimulated by temptation. But the individual had to first commit the sin before forgiveness could be granted for the offense.
For us Christians, under grace instead of the Law, it is not a whole lot different. We, too, have to have a blood sacrifice. But indifferent to the ways of the Law, ours has already been completed and has no need to be repeated each time we are tempted and fall. We don’t go to the church building and have the pastor make a sacrifice on our behalf. Instead, the FINAL SACRIFICE has already been completed! Jesus shed His own blood upon the cross for us. His blood has covered our past slips to temptation and will also cover all future falls as well.
All we have to do when we are bombarded by the temptations of social acceptance and personal prestige is to stand beneath the shed blood of Jesus, the Christ. He has already taken care to the temptation and its coinciding sin. We must do so by, “…adhering to God… embra-cing Christ’s cross and hoping to share in His resurrection” [quote from Ms. Thoering’s “Reader’s Commentary” in the July 12, 2011 Cumberland Times-News, Cumberland, MD].
Amen and Amen!
