Ephesians 6:17; Overcoming the temptation to want God to do things our way.

Class Outline:

Thursday July 7, 2022

 

Amidst the tragedy that is fallen human life in a fallen world, God gave mankind the ability to be happy with whatever he has, if he will fear God and keep His commandments.

 

“It is imperative to enjoy life, because that is the way to remember your Creator, that is, to do His will. The brevity of one’s active life, which is itself also a gift of God is an additional reason for enjoying it in the here and now.” [R. N. Whybray, Qoheleth, Preacher of Joy]

 

Keep to God’s way by faith, no leaps in other directions, and God will give you joy in whatever it is you have.

 

The gamble is the idea that we are so precious to God and needed by Him that He will change His own plans to deliver us from our own bad decisions. He clearly tells us in His word that He will not.

 

Jesus knows that the rolling out of His ministry, all that will happen during it is in the sovereign hands of the Father. What times and at what speeds those things come and go, everything leading up to the moment He dies on the cross Has already been worked out. He said what the Father wanted Him to say, did what the Father wanted Him to do, went where the Father wanted Him to go. How often He said, “My hour has not yet come.” Jesus could read what was happening to Him, but He did not control the timing of it. As a Man, Jesus has placed Himself at the mercy of the Father’s timing. He can no more control the times than any other man, unless He uses His deity to do it. Satan tempts Jesus to force God to presently act in a way that is not planned. That is tempting God.

 

MAT 4:5-11

Then the devil took Him into the holy city; and he had Him stand on the pinnacle [Greek: “little wing” - impossible to tell which part of the temple this means] of the temple, 6 and said to Him, "If You are the Son of God throw Yourself down; for it is written,

 

'He will give His angels charge concerning You';

 

and

 

'On their hands they will bear You up,

Lest You strike Your foot against a stone.'"

 

7 Jesus said to him, "On the other hand, it is written, 'You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.'"

 

The devil’s proposal again draws on the assumed privileges of the Son of God. And if Jesus can quote Scripture, so can the devil, and he borrows Jesus’ own formula, “It is written,” in an attempt to make his own mastery and authority over the word of God as equal as the Lord’s.

 

The devil quotes PSA 91:11-12 from the Septuagint and in an abbreviated way. Neither the Greek translation nor his leaving our one small line, “to protect you in all your ways,” alter the sense of the passage. In other words, there are no tricks up the devil’s sleeves other than misinterpretation of the passage.

 

??Psa 91 is a song/prayer that worships God for His faithfulness to bless those who trust Him.

 

Yet, to see Psa 91 in its true light, we should see the psalm that comes directly before it. We will see the value of this when we remember that Jesus has been in the wilderness for forty days and the Exodus was in the wilderness 40 years. He succeeded where they failed and therefore Jesus becomes the true Israel, who in turn saves Israel from their sins. Also, Jesus quotes Scripture that refers to that very time and people, and Paul references the same time and people when he warns us not to test the Lord like they did.

 

A further connection is seen in the fact that Moses wrote the ninetieth psalm and it is a dirge of man’s sin and mortality in contrast to God’s holiness and eternal being. Moses writes directly about what he sees in obstinate wilderness people and laments it while he passionately appeals to God.

 

PSA 90:1-6

A Prayer of Moses the man of God.
 

Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.

2 Before the mountains were born,

Or Thou didst give birth to the earth and the world,

Even from everlasting to everlasting, Thou art God.

3 Thou dost turn man back into dust,

And dost say, "Return, O children of men."

4 For a thousand years in Thy sight

Are like yesterday when it passes by,

Or as a watch in the night.

5 Thou hast swept them away like a flood, they fall asleep;

In the morning they are like grass which sprouts anew.

6 In the morning it flourishes, and sprouts anew;

Toward evening it fades, and withers away.

 

GEN 3:19

“For you are dust,

And to dust you shall return.”

 

PSA 90:1-6, the transitoriness of mankind is set over against the eternity of God.

 

PSA 90:7-12

For we have been consumed by Thine anger,

And by Thy wrath we have been dismayed.

8 Thou hast placed our iniquities before Thee,

Our secret sins in the light of Thy presence.

9 For all our days have declined in Thy fury;

We have finished our years like a sigh.

10 As for the days of our life, they contain seventy years,

Or if due to strength, eighty years,

Yet their pride is but labor and sorrow;

For soon it is gone and we fly away.

11 Who understands the power of Thine anger,

And Thy fury, according to the fear that is due Thee?

12 So teach us to number our days,

That we may present to Thee a heart of wisdom.

 

We will get to it, but look quickly at the contrast with Psa 91.

 

Psa 91

He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High

Will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.

2 I will say to the Lord, "My refuge and my fortress,

My God, in whom I trust!"

 

The solemn sadness of Psa 90 is set in strong relief by the sunny brightness of this Psa 91 of happy, perfect trust in divine protection.

 

PSA 90:7-12, that transitoriness is traced to its reason - sin.

 

This central portion brings out the connection between death and sin. God’s wrath clashes with frail man, but there is no contradiction with the fact that God is man’s dwelling place. God alone would have to provide the way of dwelling with Him and that would mean that He would have to remove our sin, for sin is not only the reason for our death, but because sin cannot co-exist with God, it is the reason for our isolation. How stupid we are to think that even a little sin can dwell in God’s place of eternal life.

 

The years of the Exodus generation perished in the wilderness with a sigh. Their complaints taken away on the wind and heard no more. Their pride (vs. 10) is labor and sorrow rather than labor and joy, for they labored for their own wants and not God’s.

 

The “pride of life” (vs. 10) are the objects, apart from God, men desire to win, and glory in possessing.

 

1JO 2:16

For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world.

 

What makes our lust and pride so ridiculous is that the things that we want don’t even last as long as we do, and we don’t last but a day. The things we attempt to do or get swiftly pass and then we fly away too. However, we come to know that the things God is doing and getting will last for eternity. The thoughts and words and works that we do by His will have an eternal stamp on them. They are real and meaningful and God allows us to chose them over and above tempting Him with something else.

 

Man, then, is to know two things: the power of God’s anger and the measure of his own short life.

 

PSA 90:11-12

Who understands the power of Thine anger,

And Thy fury, according to the fear that is due Thee?

12 So teach us to number our days,

That we may present to Thee a heart of wisdom.

 

Our natural tendency to not look beyond the external works against us. Our tendency to justify our sin also works against us. If we did, we would have a reverential awe concerning the contrast of God’s holy eternity and our feeble, sinful, short lives. And as a result, we would only want His way and not our own, and we would always remember, “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.”

 

“But a small remnant have let the truth plough deep into their inmost being and plant there holy fear of God.” [Alexander MacLaren]