_{(I am sending Monday’s blog today as I will be in the mountains with little Internet reception.)}

We must be killing sin or sin will be killing us.

John Owen

ne: Facing Your Enemy

Lesson One: Facing Your Enemy

 As I studied the topic of temptation this week, I decided to seek the wisdom of Charles Spurgeon, C.S. Lewis, and Matthew Henry. These are my go-to guys when I am about to teach almost any topic and want to educate myself with commentary beyond the text of the Bible. I found it interesting that when they talk about temptation, the verse that dominates their thinking on this subject is 1 Corinthians 10:13:

No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.

Although these are all men who do not hesitate to call sin what it is- sin, they all find this verse extremely comforting. I do, too.

The foremost point they make is that it is not a sin to be tempted. You are not evil because Satan tempts you—he is. Satan is the enemy, the evil one, the liar, and the accuser. He is all these things when he comes upon an unsuspecting Christian woman and throws the net of temptation over her.  Let me tell you why I say unsuspecting, even though we, of course, suspect that Satan is up to his tricks every day in our lives. In fact, we know it. Still, we are vulnerable to surprise attacks, and that is a specialty of our enemy.

Think of a woman (maybe you) who goes into her quiet time, confesses her sin, is forgiven, is one with the Lord, prays for her neighbors, and walks out of her prayer closet loving others and loving the Lord. Then one of those neighbors betrays her in a way that stuns her. The gut punch hurts and there may be a tinge of anger there. She thinks of all the times she has helped her neighbor, blessed her, listened to her, and stood by her. This stab in the back is not right.

My grandmother used to use a phrase for this, “It flew all over me.” And that is exactly what the temptation feels like in the moment. The sweetness of the morning communion with your Father is suddenly blocked, covered as if with a blanket of shock, disappointment and hurt. Whether you sin depends on two things:

Do you hold on to those feelings of do you fling them onto your Savior for Him to deal with from that time forward?

Do you allow the initial emotions to lead you to anger, resentment, or judging the other person? The judging is not your job; it is the Lord’s and He is much wiser and better at it than you are. The anger and resentment are toxic to your body, mind, and soul. You can almost feel the poison of those sinful emotions as they seep into you.

Disappointment and hurt in the moment festers more and more the longer you dwell on them. You can feel entitled to be angry, hate your sister, or judge others. Resentment and bitterness can grow inside you, hurting you far more than it hurts the other person.

And the same truths apply to any sin whether of the flesh, the mind, or the tongue.

Tomorrow we will see what Spurgeon and Henry have to say about I Corinthians 10:13 and how to handle temptation.    

Lesson Two: Fighting the Creep of Sin in Your Soul

Yesterday, we talked about sin being like a toxic covering that flies all over you.   If something flies all over you, you know (as we all do) that you are prone to sin—it is the nature we have had since the Garden. The minute anything

 flies all over you, start pleading the blood of Jesus to be the greater covering over you. Because of your salvation through Jesus Christ, you can ask for His blood to blot out any initial sinful feelings and to dispel the toxins of any other sin that try to get in. Jesus’ blood, forgiveness, and redemption are the antidote, the cure, the living water that washes away all sin.

What the other person does is up to them. You’re good. You are in Christ. Yes, this offense hurt in the moment, but you have a Savior Who can wipe out the pain and the sin at the same time. But you need to specifically ask Him to do that in prayer. It is important that you go to the Lord and confess that you are helpless to heal your emotions and resist the temptation to sin in your own strength. Go to Him and praise Him for how faithful He is to help you with emotions too big to handle yourself. Matthew Henry talks about the faithfulness and what it meant to the church in Corinth mentioned in I Corinthians 10:13:

But God is faithful – This was the only source of security; and this was enough. If they looked only to themselves, they would fall. If they depended on the faithfulness of God, they would be secure. The sense is, not that God would keep them without any effort of their own; not that he would secure them if they plunged into temptation; but that if they used the proper means, if they resisted temptation, and sought his aid, and depended on his promises, then he would be faithful. Matthew Henry, Complete Commentary

Spurgeon talks at length about the comfort we can find in the Lord when we are tempted in his essay “Comfort for the Tempted,” 1883. He talks about how the Lord limits what Satan can do to us and how long the He will allow it to last. He knows us. He knows our limits. Spurgeon says:

If he intends his servants to pass through the fire, and not through the water, Satan himself cannot make them go through the water. God counts the drops of bitter tonic that he administers to his ailing saints, and not a drop more shall they possibly have than he measures out to them. So, dear tried children of God, you shall not be tempted above what ye are able so far as the number of your temptations and trials is concerned. Comfort for the Tempted,  Spurgeon, Charles Haddon, 1883

However, Spurgeon says we are expected to live in a state of readiness, because we know our enemy Satan is always prowling around looking for a good time for a surprise attack. Below are some quotes from Charles Haddon Spurgeon about being strong and ready through living close to the side of Jesus through prayer and Bible reading  so we are less vulnerable:

• If you will tell me when God permits a Christian (to put) aside his armour, I will tell you when Satan has left off temptation. Like the old knights in war time, we must sleep with helmet and breastplate buckled on, for the arch-deceiver will seize our first unguarded hour to make us his prey. The Lord keep us watchful in all seasons, and give us a final escape from the jaw of the lion and the paw of the bear.

Charles Spurgeon (2016). “Morning and Evening”, p.209, Discovery House

• Some temptations come to the industrious, but all temptations attack the idle.

• Watch constantly against those things which are thought to be no temptations. The most poisonous serpents are found where the sweetest flowers grow. Cleopatra was poisoned by an asp that was brought to her in a basket of fair flowers. Sharp-edged tools, long handled, wound at last.

• Has there not been, sometimes, this temptation to do a great deal for Christ, but not to live a great deal with Christ?

• In all states of dilemma or of difficulty, prayer is an available source. The ship of prayer may sail through all temptations, doubts and fears, straight up to the throne of God; and though she may be outward bound with only griefs, and groans, and sighs, she shall return freighted with a wealth of blessings!

Lesson Three: C.S. Lewis – No Man Knows How Bad He is, Until He Has Tried to Be Good

“No man knows how bad he is until he has tried very hard to be good. A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is; after all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting against it, not by giving in. You find out the strength of a wind by walking against it, not by lying down. A man who gives into temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people in one sense know very little about badness. They’ve always lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it, and Christ, because he was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows the full what temptation really means.” C.S. Lewis.

In wrestling with the reality of sin and forgiveness, C.S. Lewis began to realize his own self-serving motives. “He began to understand that he wasn’t wanting God’s forgiveness as much as him to be excused of sin, and that makes all the difference. ‘Forgiveness says, ‘Yes, you have done this thing, but I accept your apology; I will never hold it against you and everything between us two will be exactly as it was before’,’ Lewis explains, but excusing says ‘I see that you couldn’t help it or didn’t mean it; you weren’t really to blame.’”

Sure, sometimes there’s a mix of sin and excuse for the sin, whether against someone or against God, and Lewis points this out, but we are often more anxious to summon up an excuse for our behavior or thoughts then to seek a remedy in God’s mercy. In our hurried excuse-driven world, we are likely to forget our position when it comes to our inadequacies before God, that despite the ‘legitimate” excuses, ‘the bit left over, the bit which the excuses don’t cover, the bit which is inexcusable but not, thank God, unforgivable,” says Lewis, needs the redemptive work of God. If we satisfy ourselves with our excuses, we’ll never get to a penitent place and be, “too easily satisfied about ourselves.”

Lewis provides us with two remedies. “One is to remember that God knows all the real excuses very much better than we do,” he says. “If there are real ‘extenuating circumstances’ there is no fear that He will overlook them.” As he does with the example of a toothache elsewhere, Lewis brings in a medical example and says, “When you go to a doctor you show him the bit of you that is wrong—say, a broken arm. It would be a mere waste of time to keep on explaining that your legs and eyes and throat are all right. You may be mistaken in thinking so, and anyway, if they are really all right, the doctor will know that.”  The second remedy is simple but difficult given our excuse-laden selves. We must truly believe in the forgiveness of sins. Lewis says that our excuses are bred from a place where we don’t really believe in God’s forgiveness, that he, “will not take us to Himself again unless He is satisfied that some sort of case can be made out in our favour,” Lewis says. “But that would not be forgiveness at all. Real forgiveness means looking steadily at the sin, the sin that is left over without any excuse, after all allowances have been made, and seeing it in all its horror, dirt, meanness, and malice, and nevertheless being wholly reconciled to the man who has done it. That, and only that, is forgiveness, and that we can always have from God if we ask for it.”

Let us give up the excuses that keep us in our own self-righteousness, trapped in our own cave. Let us cut clear and, like Moses in Exodus 33, know that God will show himself to us and will shelter us. The Psalms speak to this truth: “The children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings” (36:7), until the storm passes (57:1), where we sing for joy (63:7), and where we find his faithfulness (91:4). Jesus echoes these promises when he weeps over Jerusalem’s inability to see God’s want for them. “How often would I have gathered your children together,” he says, “as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing!” (Matt. 23:37).

Might we be willing to admit our failures, our sins, our inadequacies, and know afresh this Lenten season that the God who carries all our burdens, will be faithful to complete his work in us?

And Excerpt from God Knows All Our Excuses from the C.S. Lewis Institute

Note from Casey: When I am assailed by temptation, I pull out some of my go-to verses and think on them to make me a better warrior against the enemy’s tactics. Some simple but sustainging advice can be found int Matthew 26:41: 

Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

Other good advice is to run—run in the other direction from sin:

James 4:7 ESV / 620 helpful votes 

Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.

Finally, learn Ephesians 6: 10-17 that tells you all about the armor God has given you for the battle. Each part of the armor fortifies and protects you against Satan’s wiles and strategies to defeat you. It is a good practice to put this armor on very consciously every morning before you face a world riddled with temptations.

The Whole Armor of God

¹⁰ Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. ¹¹ Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. ¹² For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. ¹³ Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. ¹⁴ Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, ¹⁵ and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. ¹⁶ In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; ¹⁷ and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God,  Ephesians 6:10-17

Lesson Four: Quotes from C.S. Lewis About Temptation and Drawing Closer to the Lord

• The more we let God take us over, the more truly ourselves we become – because He made us. He invented us. He invented all the different people that you and I were intended to be. . .It is when I turn to Christ, when I give up myself to His personality, that I first begin to have a real personality of my own.

• Christ died for men precisely because men are not worth dying for; to make them worth it.

C. S. Lewis (2002). “The World’s Last Night: And Other Essays”, p.94, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• Christ offers something for nothing: He even offers everything for nothing.

C. S. Lewis (2012). “The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics”, p.127, HarperCollins UK

• God has landed on this enemy-occupied world in human form…The perfect surrender and humiliation was undergone by Christ: perfect because He was God, surrender and humiliation because He was man.

• When Christ died, He died for you individually just as much as if you had been the only person in the world.

• Christ says, ‘Give me all. I don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want You.’

C.S. Lewis (1996). “Joyful Christian”, p.179, Simon and Schuster

• For the church is not a human society of people united by their natural affinities but the Body of Christ, in which all members, however different, (and He rejoices in their differences and by no means wishes to iron them out) must share the common life, complementing and helping one another precisely by their differences.

C. S. Lewis (2009). “Collected Letters Volume Three: Narnia, Cambridge and Joy 1950–1963”, p.68, HarperCollins UK

• Jesus Christ did not say, ‘Go into the world and tell the world that it is quite right.’

C. S. Lewis (2014). “God in the Dock”, p.293, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

• [To have Faith in Christ] means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you.

• Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.

C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.30, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

• Some people feel guilty about their anxieties and regard them as a defect of faith but they are afflictions, not sins. Like all afflictions, they are, if we can so take them, our share in the passion of Christ.

C.S. Lewis (1996). “Joyful Christian”, p.171, Simon and Schuster

• The Christian is in a different position from other people who are trying to be good. They hope, by being good, to please God if there is one; or — if they think there is not — at least they hope to deserve approval from good men. But the Christian thinks any good he does comes from the Christ-life inside him. He does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us; just as the roof of a greenhouse does not attract the sun because it is bright, but becomes bright because the sun shines on it.

C. S. Lewis (2012). “The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics”, p.64, HarperCollins UK

• The Christian life is simply a process of having your natural self changed into a Christ self, and that this process goes on very far inside. One’s most private wishes, one’s point of view, are the things that have to be changed.

BBC Radio Talk: “Beyond Personality — Mere Men”, Broadcast 21 March 1944, BBC Home Service Radio

• A man can eat his dinner without understanding exactly how food nourishes him. A man can accept what Christ has done without knowing how it works: indeed, he certainly would not know how it works until he has accepted it.

C. S. Lewis (2012). “The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics”, p.58, HarperCollins UK

• There have been men before who got so interested in proving the existence of God that they came to care nothing for God himself, as if the good Lord had nothing to do but to exist. There have been some who were so preoccupied with spreading Christianity that they never gave a thought to Christ.

“The Great Divorce”. Book by C. S. Lewis, 1945.

• Q. What is your view of the daily discipline of the Christian life – the need for taking time to be alone with God? Lewis: “We have our New Testament regimental orders upon the subject. I would take it for granted that everyone who becomes a Christian would undertake this practice. It is enjoined upon us by Our Lord; and since they are his commands, I believe in following them. It is always just possible that Jesus Christ meant what he said when He told us to seek the secret place and to close the door.

• I need Christ, not something that resembles Him.

More Scriptures on temptation follow to help you understand how the Lord sees this lifelong battle against temptation and to equip you to fight effectively:

James 1:12-16 

Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him. Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death. Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers.

Hebrews 2:18 

For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

Matthew 4:1-11 

Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. And the tempter came and said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” But he answered, “It is written, “‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” Then the devil took him to the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple …

Ephesians 4:27 

And give no opportunity to the devil.

James 1:12 

Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him.

James 1:3 

For you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.

Luke 22:40  

And when he came to the place, he said to them, “Pray that you may not enter into temptation.”

James 1:2-4 

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

Hebrews 4:15 

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.

1 Corinthians 6:13 

“Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food”—and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.

Hebrews 12:4 

In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.

1 John 4:4 

Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.

1 Peter 4:12 

Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you.

1 Corinthians 6:18-20 

Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

1 John 2:16 

For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world.

Romans 6:12-14 

Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.

Lesson Five: A letter from C.S. Lewis to His Friend About Temptation

From Volume III of the “Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis” edited by Walter Hooper:

Dear Mr Karlsen-

Your letter did not reach me till to-day.  Of course I have had and still have plenty of temptations. Frequent and regular prayer, and frequent and regular Communions, are a great help, whether they feel at the time as if they were doing you good or whether they don’t.  I also found great help in monthly confession to a wise old clergyman.

Perhaps, however, the most important thing it to keep on: not to be discouraged however often one yields to the temptation, but always to pick yourself up again and ask forgiveness.  In reviewing your sins don’t either exaggerate them or minimize them.  Call them by their ordinary names and try to see them as you wd. see the same faults in somebody else – no special blackening or whitewashing.  Remember the condition on which we are promised forgiveness: we shall always be forgiven provided that we forgive all who sin against us.  If we do that we have nothing to fear: if we don’t, all else will be in vain.  Of course there are other helps which are mere commonsense.  We must learn by experience to avoid either trains of thought or social situations which for us (not necessarily for everyone) lead to temptations.  Like motoring – don’t wait till the last moment before you put on the brakes but put them on, gently and quietly, while the danger is still a good way off.  I wd. write at more length, but I am ill.  God bless you.

Yours sincerely,

C.S. Lewis

NOTE: One of my favorite references to temptation is in The Lord’s Prayer. Pray this prayer today in light of what you have thought about this week in regard to temptation:

After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.

¹⁰ Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.

¹¹ Give us this day our daily bread.

¹² And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.

¹³ And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.

Matthew 5:9-13