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About 15 years ago, I listen to a podcast of a men’s prayer breakfast and the speaker was if I remember correctly was called Bob Burnham who at that time was assistant chief of police for the LAPD. He told a of a story so dramatic I have never forgot it. He told a story of how as young new qualified police officer he pulled over a large limousine for what he thought was a potential minor traffic offence. He walked up to the window and asked to see the drivers driving licence. He then notices what he thought was some suspicious activity in the rear of the car that he suspected was people trying to hide or dispose of something. When driver noticed that the police officer was getting suspicious, this is what he said. I Quote.
“Suppose I was to pop the boot of my car and suppose you where to find a suitcase in the trunk with £250.000 dollars in cash in it. And suppose If you were to take that suitcase and drive off, do you realize I would not have been able to see your badge number”
How’s that for temptation. He immediately arrested the driver who got fined for a drug offence but got off with the driving offence. Interestingly he also got off with attempting to bribe a police officer because of the carefully chosen words he had used. But that was quite some temptation, wasn’t it? We all face temptations in life, yours may not be so dramatic or so potentially financially lucrative as that one, but your temptations will be just as real, none the less. But just as significant to your spiritual well-being, none the less. Your temptation may be to take something that wasn’t really yours or to repeat something you heard that you should not repeat. One of the problems we have in this day and age is we don’t really think that much about temptation, we don’t analyse what is going on so we can spot it before it happens and because of that we are often not prepared to resist it. So, what I want to do over the next couple of episodes is ask, what is the nature of temptation? And by looking at some of the things that Satan does here in the book of Genesis, we can recognise how he tries to tempt us.
This is the one passage in the bible which probably better than any other defines how Satan works and how he tries to tempt us. It is also the most useful of passages in pre-arming us in how to respond to any temptations we might face in life. It is of course the story of the temptation that takes place in the garden of Eden, here in Genesis chapter three. But is has a much wider application for us living here today than you might possibly imagine. And it begins for us in 3:1
Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”
(Gen 3: 1)
This opening verse is packed with insights about how Satan operates. So, what I want to do is look at it closely, and we will begin that process next time.