June 11, 2008
Job 9:25-35
Luke 22:31-38
Over the years, I have seen the effects of the influence of the evil in my own life. Remember that expression from Laugh In, “The Devil made me do it?” It is all too easy to fall prey to temptation in our discouragement and fear from what is or is not going on around us. Temptation rears its ugly head in our moments of greatest uncertainty and doubt – the very moments when faith is at its highest demand. We cave in when we can’t see light at the end of the tunnel. If “faith is the evidence of things not seen,” temptation is escape from things not seen.
Satan’s temptation of Jesus in the wilderness was an act of desperation by this fallen angel. His appeal was to the human nature of Jesus: “You can avoid all that suffering simply by claiming what is already yours!” It worked with Eve. God had given modernity’s first parents dominion over the earth with one little exception – the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. Satan approached Eve in the disguise of a serpent, bearing good news: “You will surely not die if you eat the fruilt.”
Let me tell you something. If it hadn’t been Eve who caved, it would have been someone else sooner or later, which may indeed seal the Creation metaphor. If Satan were to have dominion over the human race, there had to be something known as guilt – the competing knowledge of good and evil. Satan’s message is very clear: “You don’t have to wait for good things to happen; you can have them now!” Satan’s desire is that every one of us take our eyes off Jesus and the
Prison is a community of folks who have taken temptation to its deadly conclusions. It is comprised of people who have drunken the pleasures of this world with no thought given to the command and control of the sovereign God. We are told that the prison population in the
You are entitled to somebody else’s money. You are entitled to your own or somebody else’s spouse. You are entitled to somebody else’s love and devotion and are entitled to kill if it is refused. The list goes on in this entitlement world.
It should surprise no one, then, that Satan is alive and well in prison. It is a place of delight for Him. You might say that prison is a homeless shelter for Satanites. Where the surprise comes is Satan’s grip on the prison “church.”
The church in prison, both Protestant and Catholic, ought to be the bearer of light, pushing back the darkness. Instead, it has become a place where the Prince of Darkness is enticing with the message, “You don’t have to love to be saved! You are entitled to be fed good Gospel music, a full schedule of sacraments and fiery sermons. You are entitled to your rights! Demand them! Take whatever you can now, and surely you will not die. Besides, Jesus is coming back soon to take you out of here!”
So, we have people pointing out the holiness of others as “anointed” because they have memorized a lot of Scripture and can spout it at a moment’s notice. The great irony is that most of these “anointed” people are the first to make trouble in the church – to condemn others, to rebel against any kind of authority, to pass judgment.
Jesus is hard to find in prison, and it is rare to find Him in His church.
In all these examples of the dominion of Satan, however, one thing stands out. Satan cannot sift you like wheat without permission from God. God is sovereign. He is in control. Contrary to popular opinion, this world is not a world of competing equals of good and evil. Good reigns because God reigns. Evil is present and is allowed to hold sway sometimes even under the guise of goodness. When it comes to God’s people, however, while sin sifts us like wheat at times, evil cannot reign. Satan has no hold on God’s people without permission. No one, Satan or anyone else, can pluck the citizens of the
“Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers” (Luke 22:31, 32).
The original Greek has Satan demanding to sift Peter as wheat. The word for “you” is plural rather than singular. Thus, it ought to read, “Simon, Satan has demanded to sift all of you as wheat. But I have prayed for all of you, Simon, that your faith may not fail.”
Nothing demonstrates the covenantal change in God’s dealing with His people more than comparing Satan’s attack on Job and Peter. Job’s righteousness before God was dependent on his goodness. We are told that there was none like him in all the earth. Satan scoffs by saying, “That is because you have blessed him. Give him to me, and he will curse you.” In all his distress, we are told that Job did not sin. And yet, when he finally understands what is going on, he repents:
I know that you can do all things; no plan of yours can be thwarted. You asked, “Who is this who obscures my counsel without knowledge?” Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know. You said, “Listen, now, and I will speak; I will question you and you shall answer me.”
My ears had heard of you but now my eyes see you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.
Job has a problem. He has nobody to plead his case. “If only there were somebody to arbitrate between us, to lay his hand upon us both, someone to remove God’s rod from me, so that his terror would frighten me no more. Then I would speak up without fear of him, but as it now stands with me, I cannot” (Job 9:33-35).
What the New Covenant offers to Peter that was not available to Job is someone to arbitrate between man and God: “Simon, Satan has asked to sift you like wheat. But I have prayed for you.” Jesus steps forward as an intermediary that neither Eve nor Job had.
Another critical change in God’s dealing with His people is that with the death and Resurrection of Jesus, Satan symbolically was thrown out of Heaven. In both instances of Job and Peter, Satan is one of the “sons of God” – the angels – and was able to present himself before God’s throne. He is impatient. He is frustrated. He is demanding, insisting and asserting. Satan thinks he has rights, and he wants us to think we have rights!
But what was just around the corner was that he could no longer barge into heaven for an audience with God:
But now has come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Christ. For the accuser of our brothers, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down…Therefore rejoice, you heavens and you who dwell in them! But woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you!
He is filled with fury because he knows that his time is short (Rev. 12:10-12).
Woe, then, is us! If the disciples who saw Jesus fell so horribly when Satan sifted them, how can we stand in the face of hate-filled acts of desperation? The answer is in those 6 words of Jesus, “Simon, I have prayed for you.” Jesus is announcing Himself as a Mediator who stands between God and His disciples in the face of Satan’s demands.
How does Jesus pray? We are treated to His means of mediation in John 17, where He says, “I pray for them (the disciples). I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours…My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one…My prayer is not for them alone. I pray for those who will believe in me through their message…” Jesus’ prayer for His disciples and for us is that God would keep them, preserve them, protect them, guard them, hold on to them, keep their faith from failing.
That is our defense, is it not? That is also our hope. To be sure, we would rather have had Jesus ask God to deny Satan’s demand to sift the disciples. We know that is true because that is what we want for ourselves, is it not – that we not be sifted like wheat? Jesus’ prayer is not that the disciples might not stumble in sin, it is that they might hold onto their faith in the face of their sins, repent and be forgiven.
In heaven, Satan has lost his standing as an angel. There is no more bargaining with God – challenging His people. Jesus implies that Peter will not only stumble and fall, by denying his Lord three times, He implies that Peter is going to repent: “When you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.” Turning back is a given – not an option. Once you have tasted of the beauty and holiness of God, you will never forget and will always turn back. No matter how out-of-sync with God you may feel, take comfort in Jesus’ words, “When you have turned back…” You will always turn back. That is God’s mission with you.
Here is both the weakness of the disciples as well as the strength of the Lord. While we fall, Satan is not able to tear any of us from God’s hand because God honors Jesus’ prayer. Are we weak? Yes! Are we sinful? Yes! But we know that God has chosen the weak things of this world to confound the mighty (1 Cor. 1:27). Let the weaknesses of Peter and all of us come out. Let Satan find lots of evidence of weakness and sin and unworthiness in the people chosen for life. Let it be God’s act of grace that chooses and restores, rather than our own acts of righteousness. Let these things be so that by example we may demonstrate how rich and glorious and powerful God is!
The word “sift” is no stranger to you who have farming backgrounds. By shaking the wheat back and forth, the kernels work their way to the bottom of the sieve and fall through the mesh, leaving the garbage behind. Satan wants to put Peter in to a sieve, shake him, throw him around and give him a rough time to show God that Peter is nothing but chaff.
Satan wants to demonstrate to God that Peter is as vulnerable as he was when he rebelled against God as the angel Lucifer. His mission is to show that Peter is not sincere in his love and zeal for God. He wants to collect evidence that Peter is not worthy to be God’s child. He wants to show God that Peter cannot be of any use to Him – that he is too sinful to have a place in the
Is that not where we tend to go when we are being sifted and falling victim to doubt and sin? “God is not listening to me anymore; God has turned His back on me; I am not worthy of His love.” Satan starts with the leaders of the church. If he can make the leaders go astray, it will be far easier to wreck the work of the church. That is why so many pastors are tempted to commit adultery or commit the sin of pride or refuse to listen to Godly advice. Satan wants to destroy the church and the
A number of years ago, there was a mass suicide of the “Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God” cult in
Jesus says an astounding thing in v. 32: “When you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.” Jesus knew about Peter’s fall beforehand. He knew all about the denials, the lies and the cursing. He knew all about the bitter tears after the rooster crowed. He knew about the pride, the fear, the reckless boasting, the shameful denials and the broken heart. He also knew what Peter needed, and He prayed for that. And He did nothing to prevent it from happening. We have to ask ourselves why.
The best answer comes from the book of James: “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking in anything” (James 1:2-4).
Unless we are tested, we do not mature. What happens to us when we face trials of many kinds, stumble and fall but do not lose our faith?
1. We come face-to-face with our sin and our sinful natures. We come face-to-face with our inability to stand as righteous under our own power. We see that our only hope is in a Savior who prays for us that we will not lose our faith.
2. We are stripped of our pride. We realize we cannot stand on our own for even a second. We realize we are not any better than anyone else, including those whose sins are expressly forbidden in the Scriptures. Peter thought he was more courageous than the others – that he was willing to go to prison and be killed for his Lord. When the rooster crowed, he was broken and wept bitterly.
3. We become totally dependant upon God. We realize that we are nothing without Him. We need His grace, His mercy, His strength, His power, His Spirit, His prayers. We realize that only through Him can we make a contribution to the
4. We become prepared for greater work in the church and in the Kingdom. Peter had to fall so that God could raise him up again. The falling part was Peter’s doing; the raising part was God’s doing in response to the prayers of Christ so that Peter might do wondrous things for the church and the kingdom.
What do we do, then, when we are tempted to fall into these sins that grip us from time to time? We are told in the Scriptures that we are not to fall into temptation. Yet, we seem to be unable to prevent it. In fact, it is the very falling into temptation that strips us of our pride and prepares us for a life of service.
The question is not so much that of what you do when temptation creeps up on you but how you confront it when you see it cominng. Do we meet temptation head on and boldly confront it, or do we slide in and slide out without much thought? Certainly, there is more thought on the way out than on the way in, isn’t there? Nobody has to tell us that God is watching us. But God’s eye is of less concern to us than that of somebody catching us. The fear of being caught keeps us from falling into temptation, but that has nothing to do with overcoming temptation.
What did Jesus do when He faced temptation? What did He do when He struggled with the will of the Father? Hebrews 5:7 tells us, “During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death…” At
Jesus is tempted to opt out of the suffering. Who wouldn’t be? So He prays. And the Father hears and answers the prayer of His Son. “An angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him” (Luke 22:43).
Is it possible that we can pray-in an angel to help us, as God did for Jesus in the wilderness and at
One minute Jesus is sweating drops of blood and pleading to have the cup of God’s wrath removed from Him. He prays, the angel comes, and the next thing you know He gets up to meet those sent to arrest Him. After struggling with God in prayer, His fear of suffering and death that in the first place brought on the temptation to escape has left Him.
Perhaps the answer for us, then, is that we have a choice between prayer and temptation. That does not mean that people who pray will not fall into temptation. The reason Peter fell, however, was that he was resting in his own ability to stand firm when Jesus was accused. He did not pray. He did not follow the example of Jesus at
Those sins that keep recurring in our lives – those vices we struggle against day after day, year after year. How do we handle them? The approach Jesus takes is to “Pray that you will not fall into temptation.”
That’s easier said than done, isn’t it? We like to pat ourselves on the back for the progress we have made in the Christian life. And then it happens again! We fall off the wagon. Then, when others find out that we are not living up to what we pretend to be, we fall even further.
Try this theory on for size. Jesus seems to be implying here that Peter’s fall was to strengthen the brothers: “When you have turned back, strengthen the brothers.” Is it possible that God uses our falling to strengthen the church by sharing with others our experience of His abiding grace?
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