It was the height of my basketball career...8th grade. Back when I thought I could be the next Larry Bird, as you can see that grade school dream didn’t quite happen. But as I studied these verses from 1 Corinthians, it took me back to a grade school basketball tournament. We had a great team, we had height, ball-handlers, shooters, the works and we made it to the championship game and our opponent? A team of six guys, all under 5’4”, from a tiny school in a small town. We felt like Team USA versus South Sudan. We thought this would be the easiest tournament win ever, until it wasn’t. Those sub 5’4” players could play. Drilling 3’s left and right, playing suffocating defense. We lost, and it wasn’t pretty. We looked at the opponent, underestimated them, and got burned. Complacency is a dangerous spot to find yourself, not just in basketball but in life. As you face the dangerous opponents of Satan and sin, do you take them seriously? When temptations enter your life, are you ready? Here’s today’s question: What is your game plan when temptation strikes?
The Corinthians’ game plan was off. Picture a bustling city. As you walk around this city or fly over it, you see places of worship scattering the landscape. You find out that this city has a strong love for sports. It always had something going on, does any of that sound familiar? And the Christians in this city were special. The Lord had blessed them abundantly, he had given them so many spiritual gifts and had even sent a pastor named Paul to minister to them. They were a baptized, Bible-believing people belonging to God’s family. Sound familiar? Maybe, just maybe, Christians at Divine Savior Church in West Palm Beach, Florida, aren’t too much different than Christians in Corinth, Greece.
Look at what Paul says about these Corinthians, your and my ancestors in the faith, “For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. They all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ.” The Corinthian church like ours was a baptized group of Christians who were learning God’s teachings in their version of START class, they even could join in the Lord’s Supper. God had put his name on them, they were his, chosen by him. Like our Israelite ancestors, the Corinthians and you and me ate the same spiritual food of the Word and drank the same water of life, the water that flows from the Rock of the Messiah, Jesus. The Israelites were chosen, the Corinthians were chosen, we are chosen. We were given the same spiritual blessings just like our ancestors from 3,500 years ago and 2,000 years ago. Like us and the Christians in Corinth, the Israelites had all these undeserved gifts! I say all this, because Paul is trying to make clear how similar we are.
Now if you are anything like me or like a Corinthian in church that day this letter from Paul was read, you might start to get suspicious about this comparison. “I’m not like them, Lord! I haven’t been as unfaithful and foolish as those wayward Israelites!” But then, Paul tells you something else. “Now these things occurred as examples to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things as they did.” These are examples for us? Paul, what does this have to do with me? God hasn’t struck me down in the wilderness, I don’t desire evil! I’m not like them, Paul! But as Paul goes on with a bleeding pastoral heart, your self-perception changes.
Paul, with his heart reaching out, warns the Corinthians and us, “Do not be idolaters just as some of them!” The Israelites got complacent. God himself was a pillar of cloud leading them and they went off and worshipped a piece of metal in the shape of a cow. I don’t know about you, but I don’t worship some handmade heifer god on my dinner table and yet, how often do I struggle with worry! Worrying about my kids, our church, myself, the world, our country. And how often I look at worry as a “little sin” when in reality it is taking God off of his throne and not taking him at his Word. Maybe idolatry for you is placing your trust and hope in a certain politician instead of the One who put those men and women in power in the first place. Idolatry is every time we prioritize someone or something above God, and it happens so often, doesn’t it?
Or maybe you’re seeing complacency in how to deal with sexual temptation. The Israelites were blessed in every way, but they fell into sexual danger so greatly to the point “that in one day 23,000 were put to death.” Complacency tells your heart that “little” sexual sins aren’t going to harm you. Temptation carelessness says, “I’m alone, in my office, in my room I am not having sex with someone. After all, isn’t viewing some pictures and videos on a computer or a phone better than actually committing adultery with a person? Isn’t reading a romance novel, just a piece of literature? Sexual tempatation is difficult to handle especially in a culture where pretty much anything goes, but also minimizes peoples’ identity to sexuality when God’s grace has so much more in mind. Do you see what temptations do? They trivialize and they confuse, and can lead us to test God.
That’s why Paul warns, “and let us not put the Messiah to the test, just as some of them put (him) to the test and were being destroyed by the snakes.” The Israelites demanded that God help him, they tested his goodness: “Why did you bring us out to die in the desert, Lord!” “We were so well better off in Egypt!” “Do something to change our minds!” This soon led to grumbling and complaining: “We are a holy people, we are children of Abraham, this wilderness thing, it’s beneath us!” And what did God do because of this grumbling? He sent venomous snakes into the Israelite camp to turn them back to him. Are you and I any different? “Lord, I am a WELS Christian. I have followed the truth and purity of the Word, I have been chosen by you from before eternity. Yet, you bring family problems, financial strain, unfixable situations. Do something about my problems, God! Lord, I am so above such treatment! Why do you even allow temptation? Have you ever thought that way?
And if even to this point, you think Paul isn’t talking about you and me, he unveils our mistaken eyes point-blank. “These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the culmination of the ages has come. So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall!” How do you feel right now? I feel compromised and exposed. God specifically included these tragic consequences of sin as examples for me, for you. He wanted your eyes to see them and your heart to be crushed by them. When temptation strikes, where does complacency lead? It leads us, the ones who think they are standing firm, ones blinded to our sin, entirely away from God. But, in his mercy, God preaches to us his holy law and his judgment for sin. It’s a love-thing. God’s law tells us of the reality of our inability to overcome temptations, it drills us through our chests.
How can I ever possibly stand firm when these temptations assault me? How can I have hope when I am surrounded by God’s judgment, why should he offer me any hope? When temptation strikes, what can I possibly do to overcome it? Will my struggles define me? Then this beautiful verse comes: “No temptation has seized you except that which is common to humanity.” Just when you think that temptations are unbeatable and insurmountable, Paul tells you just the opposite. Jesus has the devil and his cohorts on a leash. No temptation or test you face is any different from what human beings have gone through. Satan will never hold more power. Do you know why?
Because “God is faithful.” The reason no temptation has “overtaken us except what is common to mankind,” is God’s undeserved, perfect, never-lying, faithfulness. He promises to be patient with us and to fight for us. Think of God’s faithfulness which promised to you a place in his protected family through baptism. Think of God’s faithfulness in every promise of Scripture, because he has kept every single one, including his promise to be with us always, even in moments of test and temptation. He is faithful in his promise that there is always forgiveness for a repentant sinner who lost a battle to the devil. But God has even more to say to you and me today.
God says through Paul, “I will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, I will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.” It’s not that God is a coach on the sideline saying, “I believe in you!” He’s on the court of life with you, saying, “I got this.” It is your faithful Lord and mine who through Paul is telling us that he will never allow temptations that are beyond capability. But this has nothing to do with our own capability to defeat them, it’s not that God is believing in us. It all has to do with us believing in him. This verse is not commanding us to pull up our spiritual bootstraps and knock out Satan and his traps set to kill us, not in the least. This verse is throwing us over Jesus’ shoulders as it reminds us that our victory over temptation only comes through Jesus’ victory. Jesus faced every kind of temptation, everything Satan had in his arsenal and he not only never fell to a single one, he dominated and completely obliterated Satan. Why should you and I fear an opponent who is already defeated? Why should we shudder as we look at a conquered foe? Through faith, he gives us that same power. Through faith, we too have Jesus’ perfect record against temptation. Through faith, there is no temptation beyond us, because we have Christ fighting for us! He is our way out!
But, what exactly is this “way out” from temptation? Where is my escape? When temptations come at you and me, remember that your escape is Jesus. He is the one who provides you the “way out” because the way out is “enduring it.” Trying to avoid temptation is not only impossible, it’s exhausting. Temptation is an inevitable part of life. Notice how Paul doesn’t say if you are tempted, but when you are tempted. God is telling you, you will be tempted, but he is also telling you not to hide from that. Because, when temptation strikes, you will win! God’s strength is your strength, your overcoming power given to you through the King of Kings who never lost one mere skirmish with the Lowlife of this World, the devil! How does this empowering reality affect how you see temptations in your life?
You begin to see temptations not as things beneath you, or things so far beyond your power to beat, but as opportunities and blessings to see God’s faithfulness work within you! As you overcome temptation through Jesus, you will do so by approaching God’s throne in prayer and by drinking the spiritual drink of the gospel through the Word and Sacrament, and as you encounter these temptations in life, you will see God giving you strength despite your weakness! You and I will rejoice and give thanks because we know how time and time again temptations beat us when we fell to despair and complacency, but now with God fighting for us, temptations can do nothing to us! Temptations tell you you’re not enough, or even more accurately that God isn’t enough, but by faith you know otherwise. Because we know Jesus is enough, grace opens our eyes to see temptation differently than ever before. You and I will see the blessings that come through temptation. They drive us back to God and his grace and constantly remind us how desperately we need him. Rejoice when you are tempted! Temptations not only keep spiritual complacency at bay, they also reveal ever more brightly how mighty our God is! When temptation strikes, we will overcome through Jesus’ strength and we will marvel at how his strength is made perfect in our weakness!
If we dwell in spiritual complacency toward temptation and sin, we have no hope. Temptations left unfought lead to spiritual defeat and eventually a total loss of faith. But take heart. Because you are not a solo warrior in the fight, nor is your darkness and struggle unique to just you, nor do you have an aloof God who keeps you at a distance. You have a God who’s not only there. He fought for you all the way to the cross and he still fights for you today. As Charles Spurgeon put it, “There is no believer who fights sin alone. Jesus is in the trenches with us, bearing our burdens and fighting our battles. His presence is our assurance of victory.” Dear temptation fighters, you’re not battling for victory, but from victory. You’ve already won, because Jesus has won and Satan can’t touch that fact. Amen.
