Category: theology

God does not tempt people nor can temptation have any sway with Him. This is important to consider when understanding both God and temptation. They are incompatible. God would never consider turning to the Darkness because He is Light. Things just don’t work that way.

Temptation to sin comes to everyone. It even happened to Jesus when he went to the desert to pray before starting his public ministry. This was possible because Jesus existed as a human in the flesh; the Father was not tempted nor the Holy Spirit. Temptation can only be done to flesh, with or without a sin nature from Adam.

The Bible is silent on whether Satan continued tempting Jesus after that, but it is a good bet that Satan did not suddenly wise up and end his futile efforts when Jesus was baptized.

Being tempted does not make you any kind of bad person. God does not count it against us for being tempted. Often times, God allows Satan and his demons to tempt us to sin, merely to “test” and thus strengthen us. If the devil gives you a test, keep it; don’t give in to temptation.

During times of temptation, we might be able to call on Jesus’s name to make the temptation stop, especially if it is from a concerted demonic attack. But, sometimes that doesn’t work.

Temptation may be so strong that it takes hours or even years to resist. But usually, this kind of temptation only happens when we have been involved in that tempted sin for a long time and we are breaking free of the old, bad habits related to it.

Resisting temptation eventually makes the temptation stop. It will return, but less and less frequently. If you don’t give in, demons just won’t see you as a worth-while target.

There are two main things we can do about temptation: prepare and resist.

It’s not if, it’s when temptation comes your way. Read your Bible often. Pray often. Praise Jesus and tell him that you love him often. Focusing on God’s goodness will strengthen you. In the midst of temptation, do the same. Temptation’s appeal weakens the stronger your life in God.

Luke 4:1-13, 1 Corinthians 10:13, James 1:12-15

Unless a seed dies it does not sprout.

When an adult first tells an idea to a child, the child seems to ignore it or even reject it. Actually, God—the Great Gardener—simply let the idea die so that it could grow. Before long, that child will be applying that idea, succeeding with it, and teaching it to others. When a child says, “No way!” he’s almost sure to get it.

You know this because you are that child.

You remember such times of loss and frustration. We wish we would have or could have—those are the times when God summoned our hearts to awaken. We spend the rest of our lives knowing what didn’t happen. Sometimes, we give up and try to prevent anyone else from doing what we didn’t do, just so we don’t feel like we missed out. Other times, we run through life beating our heads like inmates at the asylum, chanting that we “never – ever – let – that – happen – again”. This routine process of “wishing it were different” is more easily understood through the truth of dead seeds: All seeds are dead, which means they had to die.

Look at what God does in the Bible. Satan and his foolish comrades made a mess. God flooded Earth to restore it, now things are much better. Job lost everything, but God gave it all back twofold. Jews were enslaved in Egypt, then God led them to freedom and arguably the most fertile, accessible land on Earth. Ruth lost her husband and her mother-in-law also became a widow; God gave them a new family. Her great grandson, David, spent a decade hiding in caves from Saul, then God made him king. Israel sinned and was taken to Babylon, but God brought them back and rebuilt their Temple, then their walls in only fifty-two days. Jesus was crucified, but came back to life. Christianity was persecuted in its early days, but eventually celebrated. God restores lost crops.

But, if we consider how a seed must die, arguably, God set out to give us more starting from the very moment that everything was taken away. God has been restoring from before the beginning.

Job 8:6; 42:10, Joel 2:25, John 12:24

Morals are not explicitly “taught” in the Bible, they are implied. So, not listing them explicitly in the Bible does not mean they aren’t taught in the Bible. A “Biblically moral” worldview presumes and holds truths to be self-evident, among them: morality and the benefit thereof.

Enoch, Noah, Job, and Abraham were called “righteous” men, even before there was any moral code outlined in the Bible. This goes back to the Biblical idea of basic righteousness: using balanced scales—the same standard for oneself as for everyone. This includes morals about marriage.

In Egypt, Pharaoh wanted to respect Abraham’s marriage. There was no Biblical teaching about marriage and what it meant at that time—there never is a clear definition in the Bible of what marriage is. The way to get a “Biblical” definition of marriage is to look at Bible stories that presume marriage as already defined, where the Bible explains respect for that view of marriage. That is a “working definition” of marriage in the Bible, the only kind of definition there is.

All morals work this way in the Bible, even where specific actions are outlined, such as the Ten Commandments, or generic “evil deeds” described by John in his Gospel and in Revelation and other passages where immorality is frowned upon, but not defined.

God expects that we each already, generally know what is right and wrong. There might be some ambiguity in what God expects of us, though the simple rules of humility toward God and fairness toward each other can’t be mistaken. Some “morality” answers are admittedly fuzzy; some (never all) of those fuzzy answers God allows discretion of each person’s conscience.

Even with the ambiguity on some Biblical morals, nowhere does the Bible allow us to rewrite God’s morals nor does the Bible ever even suggest that morals are purely at the discretion of Mankind to create and alter.

But, never quibble over morals. Run with the people you agree with; respect those you disagree with. We must each answer to God for our own lives, never for other people’s. But, we will certainly answer for how we understand and practice morals, whether clearly presumed, defined, or fuzzy.

Genesis 12:10-20, John 3:19, Romans 2:1-16, 1 Corinthians 4:4; 10:29, Revelation 9:21; 16:11; 21:8; 22:14-15

The God of the Bible—of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—Who took on His own Image, a human in the flesh, as Jesus of Nazareth—this God is unique among all other gods. He is nothing like them.

Most mythologies depict gods who can be appeased through politics and trickery. They can be offended or angered when their scandals are exposed. These mythologies describe demigods, not anything like what the Bible refers to as “God”. Unlike Allah, Adonai—the Lord God, the God of the Bible—does not need to fight to destroy all of His enemies immediately. This is because God is above them all.

By being above every enemy, the need to hate and spit and fret and rage against every enemy in every corner of the universe and beyond simply does not exist. God’s existence goes beyond thought, light, and time. Whatever is true of quantum theory, God’s existence goes beyond metaphysical boundaries that even quantum mechanics cannot cross.

He created the very fabric of the fabric of the fabric of the idea of the fabric of both the physical universe and the time continuum. He is the Most High, there is none beside Him. No one can harm or overthrow Him. He cannot be fooled, caught, or ensnared. He is the origin, the single point to which all questions of origin lead back to.

This gives us confidence—that the Uncreaed God Most High loves us and knows everything about us, even the number of hairs on our heads. Our strengths, our weaknesses, our faults, our lessons to learn—He saw it all before we were born. We can’t impress Him with our achievement nor shock Him with our failure.

When Israel’s kings were evil, Isaiah saw God high and lifted up on His Throne. The God who summons the morning sun, who tells the breeze where to wait, and keeps the light of the moon in His pocket until the time of its fullness—that God is on your side, already fighting whatever battle you woke to this morning when the sun answered His wake up call. Lean on Him and lend a little stability to the people around you.

Deuteronomy 10:17, Isaiah 6:1; 57:15, Daniel 2:47, John 1:1-5, Colossians 1:15-20