Faith at the Breaking Point: Preparing for Hard Times – Program 2

By: Dr. Erwin Lutzer; ©2013

What can we learn from Jesus’ temptation in the desert that can help us when we face difficult decisions?

Facing Temptation

Introduction

Today on The John Ankerberg Show:

Dr. Erwin Lutzer: We’re talking today about faith at the breaking point. And the question is, what would you have to go through in order to deny the Lord and to say “I can no longer believe in His love?”

When you look all around and see little reason to believe that God is on your side, what does God want you to know so that you can believe and trust Him no matter what?

Lutzer: When we are faced with a trial we can either bless God or we can curse Him. And God loves to be believed, even when evidence seems to be against that.

Is your faith at the breaking point? How can we remain faithful to God in the midst of our troubles and heartaches?

Lutzer: Jesus said what we must say, namely, if God wants me to go through this hardship, if that is His will for me, I can endure that without calling into question His love for me. What you do is you believe God’s bare word. In other word, you believe His promises against all evidence that you can see around you.

My guest today is Dr. Erwin Lutzer, pastor of Moody Memorial Church in Chicago, Illinois. Listen as he talks about faith at the breaking point: preparing for hard times, on this special edition of The John Ankerberg Show.

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Ankerberg: Welcome to our program. We’re talking about a very interesting topic today. We’re talking about the desert—the hard times that people experience—the devil, and you. We’re going to talk about temptations. What are the different temptations that come to us? Why does God allow them? What is the devil up to in our lives? What is God up to in our lives? What’s going on in the spirit world behind the scenes as we are experiencing life as we go along? And, Erwin, we’re talking about hardships, the things that people experience in this life that are hardships. And you’ve got one friend who has been going through such difficult times in the last three years. Just tell us a few of the things he’s been going through.

Lutzer: Yes, John, I’ll only tell you a few because the list is very long. He lost his job. He was unfairly let go. And as a matter of fact, his Christian friends did not help him. He hired an attorney. That did not work out. He is living in a house that has been foreclosed. Fortunately at this point he continues to live in it; can’t pay any of his bills, cannot say anything to the creditors. He has a child who is on drugs, who is now in prison, even as we speak. His health is deteriorating. He’s had cancer and some other issues, and has gone through two divorces. And when you stop to think of it, I say to myself, here’s a modern day Job with all of his trouble. And yet we have to ask ourselves the question: What is God doing? What is the devil doing? What would the devil like to see happen in the life of my friend? And that’s why, as you mentioned, you know, we are going to turn to the desert. We’re going to turn to the story of Jesus in the desert to learn what’s going on so that we might be able to resist temptation and look behind in the spirit world, to the extent that we can as you indicated, to find out what is going on and to give people hope and to give them some handles by which they can fight in this great battle that we call life.

Ankerberg: I think it’s absolutely fascinating that you take the Lord Jesus Himself. It’s so eye-opening to realize He went through things similar to what we experience. I mean, just the fact that He had to go through it ought to tell us we’re going to be going through some things too. Let’s take the Lord Jesus. Obviously He’s the God-man and so He’s different in ways than we are, but still the temptations come. And what was the devil up to? What was he trying to do in Jesus’ life?

Lutzer: I don’t think that you can understand the story in Matthew 4 until you go back to the end of chapter 3. Jesus is baptized by John the Baptist. The heavens open and the Father says, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” Chapter 4 opens, it says, “Immediately Jesus is driven into the wilderness.” What’s going on there? Here’s what happened. When Jesus received that revelation from the Father, what the devil now wants to do is to split the relationship that Jesus has with the Father. The devil wants to test this relationship. And what he’s going to try to do is to get Jesus to act independently of the Father, to no longer believe in the Father’s care. You see, you’re absolutely right. God has a purpose in temptation. It is to bring out the best in us. Satan has a different purpose; it is to bring out the worst that is in us. And so whenever you have a temptation and a trial, you have two forces at work. The devil has his interests and God has His. Let’s keep in mind that the devil is called diabolos, which means accuser; Apollyon means the destroyer. So what he wants to do is to separate us from the Father.

Ankerberg: He wants to accuse us before God, and he wants to accuse us and then he wants to separate us from the love of God and get us to doubt that God does love us.

Lutzer: And, you know, before this program is over, John, we’re going to be talking about that directly and giving people some insight as to how to fight against him.

Ankerberg: Yeah, because there’s people watching right now that would say, “Yeah, I feel separated from God. And because of what’s happened in my life, the fact is, I don’t think God wants to have anything to do with me. But I don’t want to have anything to do with God because He didn’t help me.”

Lutzer: Right. So let’s look at the three temptations as the devil gave them. The first is, Jesus Christ is hungry. He’s been fasting for 40 days and 40 nights. “Turn these stone into bread.” Now there are stories in the New Testament where Jesus miraculously created loaves, so it wouldn’t have been wrong, except for this; to do it at this point would have been to separate Jesus from the Father’s will. And you know what Jesus is saying? He is saying, “If My Father wants Me to go through this trial, it’s fine with Me.” So Jesus quotes Scripture and says, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes, that proceeds, from the mouth of God,” Jesus says.

Now here’s where a lot of Christians really do go astray. They think to themselves, when the devil comes, all that I need to do is to quote a verse of Scripture. Well, Scripture’s important, and I’m going to be explaining that in a few moments. But the devil comes back with his own verse. He doesn’t necessarily flee just because we quote a verse of Scripture. We should quote Scripture, but there’s more to the story.

The second temptation is, let’s go to the pinnacle of the temple. Josephus apparently said that the pinnacle is the place where the wall of Jerusalem came together as it falls into the Kidron Valley. He says to Jesus, you know, “Jump, and if Your angels catch You, everyone will see it and that’ll prove Your Messiahship, won’t it?” In other words, what he wants to do is to give Jesus an easy way to gain acceptance. And Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.’”

Parenthesis, but a very important one: Whenever you have a misquotation of Scripture, out of context, Jesus does what any good theologian should do, namely balance it with another passage. And Jesus said, “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.” And so He counters it.

And what does the devil do? He has a third temptation. He doesn’t leave. He comes back and he says to Jesus, “I will show You all the kingdoms of the earth.” The Bible says he took Him to a very high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. We don’t know how he did this, but evidently they were able to see maybe the pyramids of Egypt and the glory of Greece with its Acropolis and all of its buildings. And Satan says, “I’ll give all these to You; all that You need to do is to worship me.” What he was really saying, “I’m giving You a shortcut to what is really going to happen anyway.”

See, the devil reads Scripture. He knows Psalm 2 where the Scripture says that someday Jesus Christ is going to sit upon the throne and rule the world. And because the devil knows that, he says, “All that You have to do is worship me.” You know, theologians differ. They say did he have a right to actually offer Jesus the kingdoms? Some say no, it was a bogus offer. Others say yes, he is the god of this world. Here’s the bottom line: no matter what view you take, ultimately of course, the devil is still in God’s hands and under God’s control.

Ankerberg: Yeah, I love how you’ve explained these temptations. That first one, after Jesus hears the words from the Father Himself, “You’re My beloved Son,” Satan wants Him not to believe that’s true. He also wants us not to believe that we are the beloved sons and daughters of God. And the bottom line is, if you are the son of God, and those of you that are listening, if you’re really a daughter of God, “Why are You hungry, Jesus? Why are You in the hardship? I mean, come on.” And then the second one is, if You are the Son of God, you know, step off, let’s do a miracle here. Prove that You believe the word of God. It’s really a tricky deal.

Lutzer: Right, it’s a very tricky question.

Ankerberg: In other words, you know, “You can pull this off if You really believe it.” Jesus says don’t test God that way. And then the biggy is, “Listen, you don’t have to go to the cross. I mean, that’s really tough to get the kingdoms that way. What You can do is we’ll just give them to You over here on the side if You kind of worship me. And You can, all this blood and guts, forget that.” And Jesus turns him down every time. He was willing to go hungry. He was willing to have no miracles, because He trusted what the Father actually said to Him. “You are My beloved Son.” That was enough. He was just wanting to please the Father, okay. He didn’t have to test the Father. If the Father wanted Him to be hungry or be out there in the desert, whatever it was, that was good with Jesus. We have a hard time being like that. We don’t follow all the things that God has said like Jesus. We don’t believe it because we look at our circumstances and say, hey, God, you know, where is God? He did forget me.

Lutzer: Exactly. And you know, John, Satan wanted worship and he still wants worship today. And next week, by the way, on our program we’re going to talk about a time in the world when he does get worldwide worship. People need to be sure that they tune in at that time. We’re going to be talking about the rule of Antichrist. But, you see, during this period of time Jesus totally submitted to the Father, and He believed God’s bare word. And, you know, we’re going to be talking about our conflict with Satan so that we better understand how we can fight him.

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Ankerberg: Folks, we’re talking about the desert—the hard times of our life—the devil and you. What’s going on in and around your life spiritually, in the spiritual world, that you don’t see? But what are the purposes of God for you? What are the temptations that Satan has? What are his purposes for you? And, Erwin, you’ve got a neat illustration here that sets this up and it has to do with mousetraps. And you and Rebecca, when you were first married, had an apartment, and you have some acquaintance with mice.

Lutzer: We do. And the point is simply this: that if Satan came to us as Satan and said, “I am the devil,” we’d be terrified. We’d stay away from him. But he doesn’t do that. Instead he sets up traps, just like we did. We couldn’t catch the mouse with our bare hands, because the mouse would see us. But by putting a trap there, and putting some cheese on the trap, we were able to catch the mouse. And my point is that behind the trap is the trapper, and behind the temptation is the liar, and Satan is a liar.

Before we get into this, John, I have to explain to people how Satan works. I think we have a wonderful example actually in Acts 5 of Ananias and Sapphira. You remember they lied about the land. They wanted to look better in the eyes of the church than they really were, and so they lied about how much they sold the land for. Now, I can imagine that they’re having breakfast together, maybe bagels, whatever it is that they served, and they’re discussing this. They had no idea that Satan actually had put that idea in their minds. In fact, that’s what it says. When Peter comes into the room he says, “Why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit?” They were unaware of that. So it is so important for our listeners to realize something. Satan likes to put ideas in our minds that we think are our own so that we don’t fear them. And what we are actually doing, however, is following his deceptive ways. And there are ways in which Satan tries to get through to us. What he tries to do, as somebody says, he’s the splitter, to split us from the knowledge that God loves us and cares and that we are God’s children, even as he tried to do during the ministry of Jesus.

Ankerberg: And some people say, “Erwin, I’m not sure God does love me.”

Lutzer: Right. Let’s talk about that in just a moment. First of all, he uses circumstances. I can imagine, for example, there are those who say, indeed, “God doesn’t love me.” Jesus could have said that in the desert. He could have said, “As I look around this wilderness, I’m hungry here, and I’m going through all this. The Father’s love must have been taken from Me.” But instead Jesus said what we must say, namely, “If God wants me to go through this hardship, if that is His will for me, I can endure that without calling into question His love for me.” And that’s one of the things that Satan wants to do. So he uses circumstances.

Maybe right here is a good illustration of Job. You remember, Job was a wealthy man. God had blessed him and he was confident in his knowledge of God. Out of the blue Job’s 10 children die by a natural disaster. We all know the story. Ten fresh graves on the hilltop. Imagine that. And Job’s wife comes to him and says, “Curse God and die.” And Job, what a theologian he was, he said, “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord.” And Job refused to curse God.

Now Hebrew scholars tells me that the word “curse” in Hebrew and the word “bless” are essentially the very same root. When we are faced with a trial—and this goes back to your question of a moment ago—when we are faced with a trial, we can either bless God or we can curse Him. And God loves to be believed even when evidence seems to be against that. And Job, therefore, was honored by God because of his faith.

So first of all, God uses circumstances and we need to be able to respond to that. But you know also, second, John, and this is so critical.

Ankerberg: It is.

Lutzer: Satan uses guilt. You know, the Bible says in the book of Revelation—and we’re going to be talking about this again next week, by the way, and the people should tune in.

Ankerberg: Right.

Lutzer: It says that he accuses them day and night. Now, how does Satan accuse us? Not only by words, but by feelings. There are those who have come to Jesus Christ; they’ve believed on Him; they’ve trusted in Christ. And yet they are overcome by a sense of guilt for sins that have even already been forgiven.

Now, I’ve had this experience. I remember one day I was riding in a car and I had this real sense of guilt, and yet I was supposed to speak at a conference. And I thought, “How can I get up there and speak after feeling so guilty?” I just felt restless. So I was alone in the car and I decided to quote Scripture. And if you’re going to quote Scripture, maybe you should be alone in the car! But I quoted from Romans 8: “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? It is God who justifieth. Who is he that condemns? It is Christ that died. Yea, rather that is risen again and is even now on the right hand of the throne of God who also maketh intercession for us.” And, you know, after quoting that Scripture, that sense of guilt and heaviness left us. So, one of the ways in which we combat the devil when it comes to guilt, again, there’s no great secret here: it always comes back to the promises of God, believing God.

Now, as we mentioned earlier, just because you quote a verse of Scripture, that doesn’t mean that the devil flees necessarily. He’s back. But we have to continue to resist him and not give in to him.

But, John, there’s something else that absolutely needs to be emphasized, and that is the fact that Jesus won a victory over him. It says in Colossians 2 that Jesus disarmed all principalities and powers. You know that he has already been sentenced. He’s out on bail now, the devil is, but in the end, as it says in Luther’s famous hymn, “Lo, his doom is sure.” And we need to stand on that.

Let me give you an illustration. One day I was watching a basketball game with my grandson, actually and he already knew how the game was going to turn out. He said it doesn’t matter what the score is now, our team is going to win. There was some kind of a scenario like that. I said, “How do you know?” Well, he was right because it was a replay. He already knew how the game ended. And I say to everyone today that when you read the Scripture you can read how it’s going to end: for God, He is going to win, and if you trust Him you also will win, because for God it’s only a replay. The final score has already been posted on the board: “Jesus wins! The devil loses.” As a matter of fact, he is going to be suffering in hell forever and he knows it.

And I would say to people today, whenever Satan reminds you of your past, would you remind him of his future as to where he is going to be: in the lake of fire and deservedly so. And we need not give into him.

Ankerberg: Erwin, to summarize what we’re trying to say, you’ve got a great illustration that came out of watching the Animal Channel. Tell us about it.

Lutzer: Well, the reason I mentioned that, John, is because in addition to the ways we talked about fighting the devil, another way is to be with the people of God; to pray together and to be encouraged together. You know, when it says that we should take up the shield of faith, apparently shields in those days were beveled together so that when an army went to war it was like a wall going to war.

Bottom line, I saw a herd of buffalo and some lions were running after one of the buffalo. One lion took, you know, one leg, one back hind leg, the other took the other. And pretty soon this big animal was brought down. And then, of course, the others began to pounce on the animal, and we can only visualize about what happened after that. But there were a 100 buffalo looking from a distance, watching. If they had gone thundering after those lions you know what would have happened. In fact, there have been instances where buffalo have just taken their horns and thrown lions right into the air. But they just watched. I don’t know whether or not buffalo can think. But if they can I suppose they were saying, “Oh, I’m sure glad that’s not me.” I can imagine it.

And sometimes we see a brother or a sister going through a terrible trial and we back off and say, “Boy, I’m sure that I’m glad that’s not happening to me.” Your brothers and your sisters, they need you in moments like that. And when the church of Jesus Christ bonds together and prays together we are so much stronger in overcoming the enemy. God never intended that we overcome Satan alone, but that we do it within the community of God’s people. But together we win. Jesus is victor, King of kings, Lord of lords. And we stand on that as we face the future.

Ankerberg: Great word. Next week we’re going to take this to the last nth degree. We’re talking about faith at the breaking point. What would it take, folks, those of you that are watching right now, for you to deny your faith in Jesus Christ? At what point, what would have to happen for you to say, “I can’t trust God anymore; I’m willing to deny Him because of________,” and you fill in the blank? What is it that would drive you away from God? You would deny Him, you would deny the faith? And then, how do you combat that? We’re going to talk all about that next week, and we’re going to do it in the context of the great tribulation that’s coming in the future. The Christians that are living at that time, the people that are saved during that tribulation, they’re going to be martyred. We’re going to talk about it and use it as an illustration to help us during this time. And so I hope that you’ll join us next week.

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