This week I am quite busy with training for a new position at my job. But let me do a brief post and encourage you all to read, listen to, or watch my pastor’s (John Piper) latest sermon. It is on the importance of having God’s Word abide in us. In the sermon, Piper gave a very helpful summation of Satan’s tempting work. I reproduce the section it is from below. May God use this simple word to encourage and help us in our fight against sin.
And temptation is of every sort imaginable. Don’t just think of immoral behaviors. Think of cancer and his temptation to destroy your faith that way. Think of unbearable pain.
Think of the loss of loved ones, and the sickness of your children, and financial hardship, and marriage tensions, and political strife, and natural disasters, and threatening crime, and mob violence. The word for temptation in Greek (peirasmos) is the same for both testing and tempting. The reason is that all temptation tests your faith, and all testing of your faith is a temptation to forsake the faith.
So when 1 John 2:14b says, “You are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one,” it includes: You have overcome the temptation to live in sin, and you have passed the test that might have destroyed your faith.
How does the word of God help us do that? I will put it in a very few sentences. Satan tempts and tests in only one way: He lies. And in all his lying, it boils down to two lies. In every test, his lie is: God is bad. And in every temptation his lie is: Sin is better. God is bad and sin is better. He has one tune to play, and he plays it in a thousand ways.
[read it all]
Not only does he tell those two lies, Satan has his own 3-point gospel:
point 1: question God’s word – Yea, hath God said?
point 2: sin ain’t that bad – ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil
point 3: you can get away with it – ye shall not surely die.
Right on!