Matthew-121

 

 

This is in the Garden of Gethsemane, and in the very profound last moments of the Lord Jesus’ life upon the earth. So Matthew 26:41 tells of how Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane in an agoni­zing passion of prayer. And he sought “a little help”, if you can put it that way, a little companionship from his disciples in that fearful hour, but he could not get it. The disciples were simply unable to give him the kind of shoulder-to-shoulder help in the battle. They could not stay with him, and when it came to joining him in prayer, they simply fell asleep!

Perhaps this is no new experience to you and to me either, that many a time you were trying to pray and what do you discover? The next time you opened your eyes, you found you had been fast asleep! I say this so that we don’t take a condemning attitude of these three apostles as they sought to stay with the Lord Jesus in prayer, but they couldn’t make it. The reason for this is given to us in verse 41, which is the verse we will look at today. This verse of the Lord Jesus’ teaching is so significant that it is important for us to understand the spiritual principle that is enshrined in it.

 

The principle of the battle between spirit and flesh

Here the words are: “the spirit is indeed willing, but the flesh is weak.” The disciples were willing to try and stay with the Lord Jesus in this fearful hour. They were willing to follow him to the end. The willingness was not lacking but the flesh was weak. The flesh pre­vented them from accomplishing what they sought to do. We need to look at this vital principle of the flesh.

First, the word “willing” is a little too weak to translate the Greek word, prothumos, which is made up of two parts, the second part, thumos, expresses vehement passion, very strong feeling. The word actually means very eager. The Lord Jesus credits the apostles with much more than bare willingness or complying. Their spirits were willing in the sense of being very eager. The apostle Peter said, “I will die with you. I will follow you to the end.” That is not just willingness; the readiness to die with Christ is eagerness. But when it came to the crunch, it was not that the spirit was not very eager to do it, but the flesh was the big obstacle.

So this word “eager,” which expresses strong desire is used several times in the New Testament.

In Romans 1:15 Paul says, “I am eager to preach the gospel,” wherever it is not preached, whether it is to the Jews first, or to the Romans, the Greeks or to other Gentiles. He is burning to get the gospel to them wherever they may be. That is the same word in the Greek as in Matthew 26:41.

Another occurrence of this same word is in 2 Corinthians 8:19, and is translated in several ways:

There is eagerness to help brothers and sisters in Jerusalem in their financial need. It’s not they are just willing to help but they are really eager to help, and this gives Paul great joy that the saints have such love and such concern for one another.

The battle between spirit and flesh is a principle which is vital to understand if we are going to get anywhere in the Christian life because we are talking about an empirical fact, something that we can test and experience for ourselves as true; we are not talking about some vague, theoretical ideas. We are talking about the con­flict or the opposition between flesh and spirit which we experience every day, and unless we know how to overcome this problem, we will get absolutely nowhere spiritually because the flesh will block us all the time.

Now this happens from the very first moment you come into contact with the gospel. The moment you think of becoming a Christian, you will experience this reality that the Lord Jesus is talking about. You may now have the willingness to become a Christian, but immediate­ly, the flesh rises up and stops you. The flesh says, “Don’t be silly! Don’t be ridiculous! Don’t do such a thing! You cannot do this to me! Go to church sometimes. They have some nice songs to sing along with, but don’t become a Christian. You can’t get off the hook once you get hooked. It’s very dangerous to become a Christian!” And you ponder what is so dangerous about it. You begin to think of all the possibilities and dangers which lie ahead and the flesh is going to remind you of every one of these things: “Oh, I don’t want to be a preacher. I don’t mind becoming a Christian but a preacher is not for me. What will my father say? What will my mother say? What will my boss say? What will my friends say? My beautiful girlfriend might leave me. What will happen to me? Perhaps I can’t go to the movies, or the opera, or the ballet or other shows anymore. Maybe I can’t go to the dance parties my friends are going to invite me to. How can I dance as a Christian? It’s not done. Maybe I can’t even drink coffee anymore, and this is going to be hard. Maybe I have to wear black suits the whole time.” Immediately, the flesh thinks of every concei­vable obstacle whether it is genuine or ridiculous.

From the first moment that you come into contact with spiritual reality, it is simply a fact of life that there will be the conflict between the spirit and the flesh. It is most important to understand that the Lord Jesus is dealing with a fundamental reality here, not with some hypothesis. The reality of the spiritual life is something that you can experience for yourself from the very first moment you come into contact with the gospel. Ask yourself, “What is opposing this spiritu­al power working in me?” Spiritual reality is not pie in the sky. For those of us who try to follow as disciples of the Lord Jesus day by day, you taste spiritual reality daily all the time.

Now think further along. The moment you think of serving God, the flesh is absolutely in arms! It is screaming and shouting by this time: “This will absolutely not do! Becoming a Christian is fine. Going to church is fine. Getting baptized is also fine. We can tolerate all that. But serve God?! Are you out of your mind? What’s going to happen to me, the flesh? This will not do at all!” The battle becomes fierce to the point of raging sometimes. Then immediately, the flesh protests and makes you think, “How do I know if it is the will of God or not?” Now you are in a state of confusion, and nothing is so effective as getting you confused. You don’t know how to think from there on, and you can forget the thought of serving. I have seen many a Christian come up to this point of serving God, and immediately, confusion arises; many obstacles come in the way. It is really re­markable! This is simply a reality. I have many times sat on the side and listened to reasons given to me as to why a person did not serve God and I made no comment. I just quietly listened and thought to myself, “The flesh has won another battle.”

 

The flesh is exceedingly subtle, using even spiritual arguments against you

I should make it clear to you that if you think the flesh comes simply in a crude manner, you have not understood that the flesh is exceed­ingly subtle. The flesh will approach you and use every conceivable argument, even spiritual ones. If you have been in debate, you will know how skillful the worldly man knows how to debate. Winning by fair or by foul doesn’t matter because winning is all important. The flesh is like that. It doesn’t talk about honesty. So long as it gains its end, it will use any argument, be it ever so spiritual, like the one I just said, “How do you know it is the will of God?” Since most Christians don’t know how to know the will of God, they are out of the running from that point on. They are even going to take time to study the principles of how to know the will of God, perhaps five years, and they are put out of the race for that time. Then, when they get to understand how to know the will of God, the flesh will find something else to deal with them. The flesh is ready to cling to any excuse. It’s so subtle!

I knew a person who wanted to apply to a Bible college. He struggled about this for a long time as the flesh put every opposition in the way, but the day came that he actually managed to complete the application form, seal the envelope and put on the postage stamp. That was an effort because he battled the flesh all the way. He was on his way to post it, and whom should he meet but the local pastor!

The pastor asked, “What are you doing?”

“I’m posting this letter to the Bible college.”

“Which Bible college?”

“The one in Scotland.”

“Oh no! You don’t want to go to Bible college! No, no, no!”

Oh, the pastor said don’t go to Bible college! You couldn’t get a word closer from God than that! Of course, a pastor is a pastor, and it didn’t worry him too much that this pastor was a liberal. That was the end of this application. That was all the reason or excuse, whichever you like to call it, that he didn’t need to go to Bible college. Remember the subtlety of the flesh, that it will use any excuse, spiritual or carnal, whichever is more effective on you.

 

“Weak”: being deprived of strength

The spirit is eager, perhaps. I see many Christians whose spirits are not even eager. In those cases, the spiritual battle is already resolved before it even started! Defeat has already been guaranteed from the beginning. But here, the Lord Jesus is speaking to the apostles, people who are committed to following him right to the end! Peter said, “I will die with you.” No one doubts that he meant it. To say, “I will die with you” is no problem when all is normal and calm, but when you actually see the gleam of the swords and the tips of the spears shining in the light of the torches at night, you speak a little more softly. The Lord Jesus understood well that the spirit of people as committed as that is indeed very eager, but even with all that eagerness, why could Peter not make it? The flesh is weak.

What does this word “weak” mean? This word in Greek, asthenēs is basically made up of two parts, and the main part is the word for “strength,” and the other part is the word for “no”, that is, the word literally means “without strength.” The flesh is weak, being deprived of strength. Now this word is used very, very often in the New Testament of physical illness. When are you weak? You are without strength when you are ill. You are hit by a fever and suddenly, your legs go weak. This week, my daughter came home from school and she said to me, “My legs are so weak.” She had trouble standing up. She just wanted to sit down, which is very unlike her. It is usually very hard to keep her in a seat. But this time, she was really without strength because she was running a fever. That is why this word is constantly used to refer to illness.

For example, Acts 4:9 refers quite specifically to a cripple, a person who was born lame or crippled from birth. This was the person that Peter and John healed outside the temple, at the gate called Beautiful. Also, in John chapter 11, the verb and noun forms of this word are used 5 times of Lazarus’ illness of which he died.

 

The flesh is subject to sin, so it makes us spiritually weak

So the body is weak because of illness, but what is the flesh weak of? The flesh is weak because of sin. Paul tells us in Romans 5:6, the non-Christian’s state of existence is described as weakness:

What does Paul mean by “while we were still weak”? He means that when we were non-Christians, Christ already died for us. When we were in that spiritual condition where sin had dominion over us, the flesh was weakened by sin so we could not save ourselves. We were weak. This weakness is the result and the effect of sin dwelling in the flesh. That is why any suggestion of a salvation by works is utterly ridiculous, because in order to save yourself by works you have to be strong. But by definition, we are weak. This point is so important in the Scriptures. We shall look more at the book of Romans which is about this problem of the “willingness” or eagerness of the spirit on the one hand and the weakness of the flesh on the other.

Right now, we want to look carefully at this word “weak.” In Hebrews 7:28, the writer says,

What does it mean that the high priests were subject to weakness? Does it mean that the high priests were in poor health and became sick easily? Of course not! The high priests were weak because they, like every one else, was subject to sin. Unlike the Lord Jesus, he could not win the battle against sin. He could not triumph in his own strength. He was sharing the weakness of all mankind – the bondage to sin. The whole point of Hebrews is that the law, which could define sin, could not help us overcome it.

 

Spiritual understanding becomes sharper when the flesh is under control

I wonder whether you are even understanding what I am saying. If you have trouble understanding what I am saying, it shows that the flesh is already very effective in your life. Why do I say this? A person may be extremely intelligent but he has great difficulty understand­ing spiritual things because this flesh so weakens us that it makes us ineffective not only in doing spiritual things, but also in understand­ing them.

I am sure that many people are very intelligent, but when you study the Bible, you find it very hard to understand. The language is quite simple, the grammar is easy, but you cannot grasp the meaning, not because you are unintelligent, but because you don’t have the spiri­tual capacity to understand it. As you mature spiritually, you find that you understand with great ease what you couldn’t understand before. Did you become more intelligent as you went along in the Christian life? What really happens is that as the flesh weakens, that is to say, as the flesh is being brought under control, your spiritual understanding becomes sharper.

I think I am no more intelligent now than I was when I first became a Christian. But today, I can understand many things that I found impossible to grasp at that time. Yet today, as I look over them, I find that I can understand them at a glance. It’s so plain, not because I got any more intelligent, but as we went on in the spiritual battle against the flesh, as the flesh was brought more and more under control, it was no longer as effective to hinder my spiritual understanding.

The apostles had a problem of keeping awake just as people found it very hard to keep awake when they first came to church because it was difficult to understand what the preacher was saying. It is easier to understand physics or chemistry than to understand him. In many things, increase of knowledge helps one’s understanding, but even the increase of knowledge will not help to understand spiritual truth, because one depends on insight for that. Insight cannot come to you so long as the flesh has control of your thoughts. This is the carnal Christian that the Bible speaks of. The carnal Christian is someone whose mind is still dominated by the old, fleshly, non-spiritual way of thinking. That makes spiritual things very hard to understand.

Recently, I was asking a friend to what extent this fleshly, materialistic, carnal teaching has made it impossible for many young people in China to understand spiritual things. Since childhood, they are indoctrinated in materialism so much so that their mind is completely dominated by the flesh, unable to think spiritual things at all. Most of us, as non-Christians, are dominated by the flesh to a greater extent. So do you find the message hard to understand? It’s not difficult. Paul says to the Roman Christians in Romans 6:19,

Paul says he speaks more simply using human terms because he realizes that all Christians are subject to this problem of understand­ing spiritual truth. The Greek word is “weakness.”

 

Romans and Galatians deal with the battle between the spirit and the flesh

This being the case, we must look at this problem very closely. Now Paul addresses two books virtually to dealing with this question. Romans is one of these, and the words “flesh” and “spirit” occur constantly in Romans, particularly in chapters 7 and 8, where at the heart of the letter, he comes to this point and deals very specifically with it. Galatians is the other book he deals with this matter very intensely again. It is interesting to note statistically that the words, “flesh” and “spirit” occur 18 times each in Galatians. This is a very high percentage compared to all the other books in the New Testament.

 

Live under the control of the Spirit to break the power of the flesh

The question is: How can we overcome the problem of the flesh? You may have a glimpse of some spiritual truth and insight, some fire may be burning in your heart, you have eagerness, especially when you have been through the lay training, but unless you understand this spiritual principle involved here, you will be put out of effectiveness for the rest of your Christian life.

Every Christian, including the apostle Paul, starts out with the same situation. He has not one bit of advantage over us, but what made him the spiritual giant that he is? And what makes most Christians so average, so ordinary, so powerless? Do you think that Paul was born somehow spiritually with certain advantages? Not at all! He himself describes his own problem in Romans 7:15,

Paul says, “I know from my experience this terrible battle inside of me between the spirit and the flesh. I am constantly defeated.” Paul has exactly the same problem so what makes him a spiritual giant? Because he overcame the flesh by the grace of God. I wonder how many Christians dare to say,

as he says in Philippians 4:13? Notice the word “strengthen” against the weakness. The power of God was so triumphant in Paul that he had the confidence that there was nothing impossible for him to do. You could say he broke the power of the flesh by the Spirit of God in his life, and he tells us how he does it. That whole secret is expounded in Romans chapter 8: He is able to break the power of the flesh by living under the control of the Spirit of God, and be able to accomplish all that needs accomplishing. He could do it, and we can do it too!

He says in Colossians 1:29, and I like to read it so often,

God’s power was flowing unhindered through his life! No wonder this apostle could shake the whole Gentile world! God can take any one of us, a spiritual nobody, and make us channels of his power and release it into the world, if only we are not only willing, not only eager, but also we know how to let the flesh and its weakness be dealt with. I aim to look at some very vital principles here, which we will be able to implement fully if we live under the control of the Spirit of God. It is urgent that in this generation, God’s power is again manifested to the world!

 

The church is: Eager in spirit, but don’t want to surrender fleshly desires

What grieves my heart all the time is when I look at the church, I see the flesh not broken by the power of God’s Spirit. When I say “church,” I am not speaking against others. I am part of the church. I want to condemn myself, if others might be saved through this self-condemnation.

What do people see in us but the flesh? All we want is money to build this and that. We claim that we need a nicer building, a new facility. What do we need this for? Did the Lord Jesus need this? Did the apostles need it? Did they build anything? For them, they needed none of these things. Yet we say to ourselves we need it.

We need money for missions. I am willing to give money to missions any time, but I want to know who are these people being sent? Are they making the right kind of converts? What kind of Christians are they making? Is it the kind that says, “Yes, I’ll become a Christian; just give me the bowl of rice and I’m there”? I am not going to support this kind of work.

You see conflict in the church. If you ask: What is the root of that conflict? Again, it is the flesh. It is the flesh all the time. I went to Calgary recently, and what do I discover there? The churches are in conflict with one another. It’s a disgrace! Why? It is the flesh in the church. What about the pastor? The pastor wants more pay and he meets with the Board of Trustees and says, “The pay is not good here. If you don’t raise my pay, there’s another church that is going to give me more. So make up your mind, raise the pay or I leave. Men of God also have to live. You’ve got to think about that.”

I also heard in Calgary that the pastor said he was leaving because God called him to go to the other church. I won’t mention which church because it doesn’t matter. Presumably, “the calling of God” should be interpreted in terms of how big the salary is. He will never say outright, “I’m going there because the salary is better,” but he will pastor another church for that very reason. You see the flesh camouflaged in spiritual terms.

Chinese churches in North America are very short of pastors. But on the west coast, there are a lot of Chinese, and the churches are big, so the pay is good. Therefore, go west because that is where the gold still is. We are on the east coast, the wrong part of this continent. Perhaps it’s not too bad either in New York, because there are a lot of Chinese. This is what I mean by the flesh. Often, even a pastor does things in a carnal way but gives spiritual reasons for doing so. We do this kind of thing often, don’t we? It is absolutely vital that we learn to deal with the flesh. The church must be revived! And until God can find his people through whom he can release his power, it’s all in vain.

Again, I see in the church a lot of willing spirits, even eager spirits. They are really eager, but they have not won, and don’t seem to know how to win the battle against the flesh. I have been deeply grieved, with tears in my eyes, when I counseled some young people whose spirit is so eager but they just cannot win the battle against sin. In the final analysis, they feel that for some reason or other, they don’t want to fully surrender their fleshly desires. So the best intentions are neutralized.

 

1. “Set your mind on”: Preoccupy with spiritual thoughts so that worldly thoughts are an intrusion

How then does Paul deal with this matter? He says in Romans 8:5,

We know what it means to set the mind on this and that, but what is Paul driving at here? How are we to understand setting our minds on things of the Spirit and not things of the flesh? I do try to set my mind on prayer when I pray, but it’s not successful. That is precisely the problem. I do set my mind, the willingness and eagerness are there. The problem is not that I don’t set my mind, it is that I cannot successfully set my mind on it. Paul is not saying just one act of setting the mind upon something; the word is to think and to be preoccupied with a particular thing. He is not talking merely about what we can do, but what happens when we have taken certain actions so that our minds tend to be set upon something. The mind of the fleshly person is constantly preoccupied with worldly, fleshly thoughts. He is called fleshly because his mind is on that. The basic principle is: What you think is what you are.

Catch yourself any moment during the day and see what you are thinking. That is your spiritual pulse. Just take your pulse and see what you are thinking about. Maybe your prospects, your future, or especially your girlfriend or boyfriend are constantly occupying your mind. That is your chief preoccupation. These things are all worldly things, not things that pertain to the heavenly or to the spiritual. Even if your mind is preoccupied with intellectual things, they are worldly, but we don’t always associate the intellectual with the worldly. What preoccupies your mind? What do your thoughts indulge in most of the time? There are only these two possibilities: either with worldly or spiritual things. Whatever your mind is mostly preoccupied with, and delights to preoccupy itself with, will show you whether you are fleshly (carnal) or spiritual.

For example, when you are watching TV, maybe a hockey game, or football match, or baseball match, or movie, your mind is preoccu­pied with what you see on the screen. Everything else is an annoying distraction if it interferes with this preoccupation.

 

Most Christians find the spiritual intrude into their worldly preoccupation

I think preoccupation with spiritual things is somewhat rare to find. Most Christians are preoccupied to a great extent with worldly things that even spiritual things sometimes come as an intrusion. For example, if you are preoccupied with your studies, you even allow worship to go by. At exam time, you will see that students disappear from the church. Any student who has to use those two hours of worship time to study for his exams must really be in a bad way! If you have not studied for the whole term and you need those two hours for study, it doesn’t say much for the kind of student you are. You can gauge the type of students they are if they disappear from church at exam time. I hope I am not being too insulting at this point. I think it must be the truth. Anyone who does his work all through the term will hardly need to skip church for those two hours. Can’t he spare two hours to worship God? That is very strange to my mind. Perhaps my way of studying was very different because I never seem to let exams worry me. In the Lord’s grace, I managed to get through them all. I could never understand why it was necessary to function in the way that our minds are so preoccupied with the intellectual that the spiritual becomes a distraction, and we want to stay with our preoccupation. Now that is one thing.

 

Many Christians are “spiritual hobbyists”

The other thing is we don’t preoccupy ourselves with spiritual things normally, but we still enjoy doing them. For example, you may be an engineer, or a chemist, but you enjoy planting vegetables; you don’t see gardening as an intrusion upon your concentration on whatever else you are doing. No, you find it very relaxing. Your gardening is not a preoccupation, it’s a hobby which you enjoy. Now this point is particularly dangerous when I’m talking about the conflict between spirit and flesh. What many Christians have done is that they have accepted Christianity as a very interesting hobby they enjoy, but it is not their preoccupation. It is not as Paul says, “to set your mind on,” to preoccupy with spiritual things.

I wonder what Christianity is for you, what the gospel is for you, what spiritual things are for you. Is it a preoccupation or is it a hob­by? A large proportion in the church is what we might call “spiritual hobbyists.” I think it is very honest to say that spiritual things are not a preoccupation, isn’t it? It’s a hobby which you really enjoy doing. You enjoy reading the Bible just like you enjoy gardening, or your hobby. It is very pleasant, very relaxing. Then you can go back to your preoccupation again, whatever it was you were doing. The flesh has really got us where it wants us, because in this way, we have compromised on spiritual things so effectively. And yet we don’t know it, do we? Oh no!

You must understand well Romans 8:5-6.

Does life have to do with simply enjoying reading the Bible? No! That is a good step forward. It’s very good to enjoy reading the Bible. What does Paul say? “To set your mind on things of the Spirit is life.” To be preoccupied with spiritual things is life, not that you simply have a willing, or rather, a very eager spirit; not even that you enjoy reading the Bible, or even enjoy going to church to have fellowship with other Christians. For the most part, Christians are nice people and you enjoy meeting with them, although there are always some exceptions. It’s such a good feeling to be together, and we enjoy it!

 

2. The new man sets his uncompromised passion on spiritual things, just as he used to set on material things

God so transforms us by the renewing of our minds as Paul says in Romans 12:2, that we become new creatures. And being saved has to do with becoming a new creature. It is a whole new lifestyle. And this whole new lifestyle has to do with the renewing of the mind. The Bible does not talk about “a reformed thinking” (思想改造), it talks about “a transformed thinking” (思想革新), a complete renewal of your thinking, an utter revolution of mind, which is something entirely new. Once we set our interest solely on material things, in the new man we set our interest on spiritual things with that same passion and intensity. You will say, “The goal is too high for me!” Is it? But look what Paul says. That is the road to life.

In the Bible, salvation has nothing to do with an “easy believism”, as many people would like you to believe. Salvation has to do with faith that transforms your whole way of thinking. Faith means a new way of looking at things with a spiritual mind. Faith is not just believing that Jesus came, that Jesus died and that he rose again. That is all true and we can accept all that, but that doesn’t do any good. As James said, the devil believes all that too because he knows that is true. That doesn’t save him because in him there is no renewal of the mind. Saving faith has to do with the renewal of the mind. The hope of eternal life is not within reach until the mind is renewed.

What is more, do not let the flesh deceive you. In your tug-of-war battle against the flesh, do not finally decide to compromise! You may very well say, “I can’t go all the way but I’ll go part of the way. I will accept Christianity as something very interesting. I will accept the church as nice people. I will accept all this as a hobby.” Of course, you don’t use the word “hobby.” I’m coining the word. It is a “hobby” by definition because it’s not something that preoccupies your mind. It is something which is a valuable side-line, but just a side-line. Let me say to you from my heart, for the most part, we have not come to the standard of the New Testament Church! In the New Testament Church, you have a people who do not treat the gospel as an interest­ing hobby. They have come to do one thing: to learn to set their minds on the Spirit.

 

3. Watch and pray Satan can’t tempt you by the flesh to weaken you

Now this brings us back to what the Lord Jesus is saying in Matthew 26:41, “Watch and pray that you enter not into temptation.” We are not talking about some technique of transcendental meditation. No, we are talking about spiritual survival at this stage. What is the Lord Jesus saying to his three eagerly willing apostles, who are never­theless weakened by the flesh that they could not stay awake in the hour of crisis? He is saying to them, “Watch and pray that you don’t fall into temptation and put your salvation at stake. If you fall into temptation, the enemy will ambush and destroy you!” How should we survive that? Watch and pray.

In all my life as a Christian, I have attended very many churches, but I have never once heard a message on “Watch and pray.” Never! The more I think about it, the more it is astonishing! We are not even aware of the dangers of temptation. As a young Christian, I kept wondering, what does “watch and pray” mean? I didn’t understand. And people were telling me, “Don’t worry about that because once you are saved you have nothing to worry about. You are secure. Why do you need to watch and pray? You don’t need that.” They did not say, “You don’t need it” but that was implied. We are given a teaching that throws us wide open to spiritual attack, that leaves us defenseless, that removes all our alertness because we say that there are no dangers.

 

No one can separate us from the love of God in Christ

The truth of the matter is this: The Christian is invulnerable, that is, cannot be defeated by any external attack. Indeed, all of the verses quoted for security are of that category. All the verses in the Bible that speak of security guarantee us from external attack. What does Paul say in Romans 8:38-39? He said,

There is no external power that can grab you and pull you away from Yahweh God’s love in Christ Jesus. There is no external danger to us spiritually. The Lord Jesus says, “No one can pluck you out of God’s hand.” Persecutors in authoritarian regimes have discovered that. They have seized innocent people who have done nothing against their country. Their one “crime” was that they were Christians. They served their country as chemists, scientists, doctors and surgeons. Their only crime was to be a Christian, and they remained in hard labor camp year after year. The persecutors tried to pluck them out of God’s hand, and did they succeed? No power can do that! You can persecute a Christian, you can even kill him if you like, but you can­not pluck him out of God’s hand by force. All the verses in the Bible on security are of this kind. The Christian is totally invulnerable, that is, he cannot be overcome from the outside.

Satan knows that too. He is not that dumb. He cannot charge at you and knock you down. Satan can even attack you physically, even by strangulation. I have known people who have been attacked physically by Satan. Satan tries that to intimidate and frighten you. But you don’t have to be afraid of any of that. He can do absolutely nothing to you externally! That is the truth of the matter. The other side of the truth of the matter is a joy to us: it is our assurance that no one can separate us from the love of God in Christ.

 

But temptation through the flesh can destroy a Christian

But that does not mean that we can become careless, because the Christian is vulnerable from the inside. He has a “fifth column” inside of him. He’s got the flesh inside him, and the flesh is always working with the enemy outside. That is why the Lord is saying one thing can destroy you. What is it? Temptation can destroy you. Temptation comes from the inside; it is not an attack from the outside. It is not at all physical force. It’s not even spiritual force. Temptation is seduction. It is cunning deceit that gently leads you away.

 

Samson is a perfect picture of a Christian defeated by temptation

In the Old Testament, Samson was invulnerable to attack. The Philistines discovered that to their cost. When they tried to attack and capture him, he killed them with a jaw bone. When they bound him with ropes, he broke free effortlessly. There was no way they could capture him by external force! Samson is a perfect picture of a Christian. His enemies could not attack him from outside. If he has any sense, Satan would not be foolish enough to attack us from the outside. He will try to scare you but he cannot do anything. It is like a lion which tried to scare Samson, but he just tore the lion apart!

But foolish is the Christian who thinks that because he is not vulnerable to attack from the outside, he cannot be taken from the inside. That is precisely what happened to Samson. He went down through temptation, not through attack. The temptation for him was a woman called Delilah. She might have been soft-spoken and beautiful and wore mesmerizing perfume. She might have had shiny, bouncy hair with flowing waves. She might have used the latest mascara, lipstick, and powder and was a fantastic make-up artist. Temptation got him. He was captivated by Delilah, and he followed wherever she went, right into the slaughter! Delilah’s whispering, gooey voice said, “Samson, what is your secret, eh? Tell me! Do you love me? No?”

“Oh yeah, I love you.”

“So why don’t you tell me everything? We have no secrets with one another.”

And Samson said, “No, I’ll tell you everything else but I can’t tell you this one.”

“Samson, what about it eh?”

That soft, gooey voice gets to its goal! With constant persuasion and temptation, Samson finally says, “OK, I’ll tell you.”

She got him! Samson was defeated. He did not watch. He did not pray.

Yet today, we have teaching in the church that tells us not to be scared of falling into temptation. Don’t be so foolish to believe that! The Bible is full of instances of people who collapse. The Christian is invulnerable to attack if he keeps the armor on. But you don’t have to beat the soldier with the armor, just tempt him! He will take off his armor and lay down his sword through temptation, not through battle. I beg of you to understand this point!

 

Enter temptation by walking in the darkness

The Lord Jesus says, “Do not enter into temptation.” You cannot be dragged. The Christian is invulnerable. But you may enter into it just like Samson walked right into the trap. Why do you enter into temptation? The reason is you walk in the darkness. You don’t know where you are going. You walk into a trap without knowing it. Samson was walking in the darkness, so he walked straight into the trap, and he was literally blinded by his enemies. I think Samson is almost a full parable of the spiritual life.

 

4. Watching is: Love another person persistently to conquer the flesh!

What then is watch and pray? Watch and pray is the practical instruction that the Lord Jesus gives to his disciples to keep them­selves free from temptation. To put it very, very briefly, watching means to stay awake; not to walk in darkness where people sleep but to walk in the light. How can we learn to watch, to stay awake? We can take this one step further today. John explains what it means to stay awake in very practical terms in 1 John 2:8-11:

Very practically, in watching, learn to love other people. You know how difficult that is. Why learn to love other people? As you aim by the Spirit of God, to learn to love another person constantly and persistently, you will be constantly winning the battle over the flesh. That is a spiritual secret which sounds simple but is most amazingly effective! Try it! Then, your spiritual life will grow from strength to strength. I don’t want to talk about highfalutin-sounding spiritual laws. I want to talk about very practical Christian life. Learn to live in such a way as to love another person. The reason is the flesh is selfish and inward-looking; the flesh is “I”, “me” and “my”; the flesh is the opposite of loving. When you start learning to love another person, you are denying the flesh, going in the opposite direction from the flesh, and you will begin to experience spiritual reality. The battle will begin as soon as you want to love another person.

When my wife and I say to our daughter, “You have so many toys, why not give them to somebody else?”

“Oh!” she says, “But this one means a lot to me, and that one means a lot to me,” and she can’t part with any of them.

I said, “You have a roomful of this stuff. Why don’t you give half of it away?”

And she said, “Oh no, no, no!” She can’t part with even one let alone half of them! If she could learn to love, to give, she will be winning the battle against self because self and love are opposite to each other.

Watching is not hypothetical when you fix your gaze upon something. No, it is staying awake, and staying awake is walking in the light, and John tells us that walking in the light is to love. If you practice this constantly, by the Spirit of God, you will begin to grow spiritually by leaps and bounds. We will come up as spiritual giants. Yet we, myself included, fail at this point all the time, don’t we? Our failure to love another person limits God’s power from flowing out of us.

 

5. Praying is:

1) Talking to God absolutely truthfully

The Lord Jesus taught “Watch and pray.” When you come to prayer, you will know how your flesh opposes you. No one needs to be told about that. The moment you kneel down, oh, your knees are so painful and your back is so tired, your head is so heavy, and you suddenly remember that you have to do this thing and you have to do the other thing – you’re so busy. When you finally get to kneel down again before the Lord, there is still something else you have to do. Oh, the battle! You will experience this spiritual reality.

We must learn to enjoy praying. When I say Christianity is like a “hobby” that you enjoy, I don’t mean it is wrong to enjoy it. I only say that it’s not enough as far as the Bible is concerned. It is good to enjoy Christianity. And it is wonderful to learn to enjoy praying! Can you do that? You can. How to enjoy praying?

The first point to enjoy praying is to learn to be absolutely honest with God. When you learn to be honest with God, amazing things will happen. That is to say, when you kneel down, you feel that your knees are sore, you will say, “God, my knees are sore. I think I can’t stay in this position for very long because you know I’m weak.” If your back is sore, tell him, “My back is sore. May I sit up to talk to you, God? I’m sitting down and I’m more comfortable now, so I’m continuing my conversation with you.” Do you think God will say, “No, you can only talk to me in the kneeling position”? In other words, make everything honest before the Lord. Don’t say, “Lord, I’m quite spiritual actually, but I don’t have time now. I’ll come back next time and I’ll pray a nice prayer to you, all right? But not today. I’m a bit busy.” This is nonsense and you are wasting time with God!

Talk honestly with him and say, “Lord, I really want to believe in you but I really have trouble. I hear other people say that you are the living God but I can’t experience this. If you are the living God, please help me out of this.” You are talking to the living God. Just keep sharing every problem that you have with him. That is learning to be honest with God.

Try praying like this, being absolutely open and honest with God, and you will be amazed how God answers your prayer! I have done it time and again, and he has staggered me with his response. God loves an honest person, a truthful person, who doesn’t come around making fancy prayers to him and doesn’t mean a word of it. There are too many prayers you pray that you don’t mean. Don’t say a word you don’t mean. That is what I mean that you say every word that is honest before God, and you will soon enjoy praying because you are going to see what God will do. God will do things beyond your expectation. He just loves us to be truthful with him.

If you find reading the Bible difficult, you say, “Lord, I find that your Word is too hard to understand. I just don’t know what you are saying here. Please help me to understand what you are saying.” You’ll be surprised what he will teach you. He will give you insights you never expected! Then you will begin to realize that you are walking with the living God!

 

2) Being practical: Speak about real problems in your life

Secondly, learn to be practical when you pray. What do we mean by being practical? It means don’t say the things that you think God wants to hear. Maybe we are brought up to say things that we think pleases the other person even if it’s not true. “Your hair is so nice today.” But you really mean, “How ridiculous! What hairstyle is this!” We feel we have to say something flattering. “Where did you get your shirt from? It’s so nice!” We try to say the thing we think pleases the other person, and this is not only dishonest but it is also really not accomplishing anything spiritual.

What do you mean by being practical? It means speak about the real problems in your life. For example, you have a problem with sex. Many people, especially young people have problems with sex but they dare not talk to other people about it. It’s so embarrassing! You hide it in yourself. Why do you hide it in yourself? God wants you to be practical. Say, “Lord, I’ve got a problem here. I’ve got this strong desire within me. Show me how I should deal with this.” Talk with him about it, and you will discover that God knows more about sex than anybody else does!

You will say, “What are you talking about?” Why not? Read Genesis chapters 1, 2 and 3. God created man. He knows all about us. Sex is not something invented by us. God created us as we are. That is what I mean by God knows more about sex than anybody else. So what is so embarrassing to talk to him about it? If you want to understand the mechanics of a car, the best guy to talk to is the engineer who designed the car because he knows absolutely everything in that car. He can straighten the problem for you any time because he knows the car. God made us. He knows our problem. Be practical right down to these details of daily life with God. Don’t hide a problem from him.

 

3) Being specific

Thirdly and lastly, be specific. So be honest, be practical and be specific when you pray, and you will enjoy prayer. Speak specifically to the Lord. Don’t make vague statements that mean nothing and ask nothing in particular. All of us have experienced that when people come to your house, and you ask, “What would you like to drink?” They say, “Anything.” Many times, I have looked at the housewife’s face and saw her expression. What is she supposed to do? What is anything? Is it a cold drink? Is it a hot drink? Anything is anything, but she might give you something that you don’t like. So what is anything? So many times, the housewife tries to hint mildly at her displeasure with such an answer by saying, “Well, we don’t have a drink called ‘anything.’ So kindly say what you would like.”

Why don’t you answer the housewife by saying, “If it’s convenient to you, I’ll be happy to have a cup of tea.” The housewife will know what she is supposed to do. If it’s not convenient for you to have a cup of tea, she will tell you. Don’t say, “Anything.” I myself did that too. When I said, “Anything,” people gave me a frustrated looked. We think we are being considerate, but that is not being considerate at all. It doesn’t help the other person.

And we think when we come to God and say, “God, anything will do.” God will say, “Well, you’ve got anything. Why are you complaining, ‘Why did God do this to me?’ Did you or didn’t you mean ‘anything’?”

So it’s important that when you come before God, make your prayer specific. If you have a headache, say, “Lord, I’ve got a headache. Please remove my headache for me.” That is being specific. If you don’t make a specific prayer, you have no clue whether or not God answered your prayer.

When George Mueller prayed, he would ask specifically, maybe for a loaf of bread. He would say, “Lord, I need a loaf of bread.” And you will know that God is a living God when he answers you. That is why Mueller was able to say he had prayed 50,000 specific prayers. And Mueller, like people of German origin are very meticulous, he recorded these prayer requests. He made 50,000 specific requests and he had 50,000 specific answers! That is why he knew God as the living God.

When God answers your recorded prayer once, you will realize, “Oh, so God is real!” The next time you will get more specific too. God is not afraid of your specific requests. We are talking about the living God. Speak to him exactly what you have in your mind, and let him show what he will do.

That is the challenge that the Lord Jesus puts to us, his disciples: “Live your life for God like me. Preoccupy your mind with God, and with obeying his commands like me, then God my Father will take care of you and your needs. He will answer your prayers far beyond your expectation.”

Let us be quiet before God in prayer.