The Lord
blessed us with a beautiful Wednesday evening gathering for fellowship and
study. We have been looking in the Gospel according to John, at how our Lord
Jesus befriends people like the fishermen: Peter and Andrew, James and John.
We have also looked at how He befriends religious people like Nicodemus, and He
befriends a Samaritan woman whose name we do not know. Indeed we have a
wonderful friend in our low places of life and also we have a friend in High
places too.
It is
written, "Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the
heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession.
“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to
sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every
way, just as we are - yet was without sin” (Hebrews
4:15).
The King James Version says that Jesus is
“touched with the feeling of our infirmities.” He is “touched” by the weakness
of our feeble flesh. Whatever touches us, touches him. To say, “I feel your
pain”, has become a cliché today, but in Jesus’ case it is absolutely true. He is moved by our sorrow, aware of our
tears, and touched by our failure. He knows what we are going through.
How good
it is to know that Jesus was tempted just as we are. The text means that Jesus
faced every kind of temptation we can face.
Basically, every temptation
falls into one of three categories: the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh,
and the pride of life (cf. 1 John
2:14-17). Jesus defeated the devil in those three areas. Where we
failed, He succeeded. Where we gave in, He stood strong. Where we collapsed
under pressure, Jesus obeyed his Father. He was tempted, yet He never sinned by
giving in. I find great comfort in these words of C. S. Lewis in his book Mere Christianity:
A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting against it, not by giving in. You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in....Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means (p. 142).
This has enormous implications for our spiritual
life. Because Christ was tempted
and never gave in, we may be sure that he is never surprised by anything we say
or do. We gave in too early so we never felt the full force of temptation,
but Jesus let the waves of temptation rush over him and stood like the Rock of
Gibraltar. When we pray we don’t have to worry that we will somehow shock him.
He’s heard it all and seen it all. We can go ahead and be totally honest about
our failures. He knows about it even before we tell him.
And we don’t have to prove ourselves worthy when we pray. We are accepted by God only on the basis of what Jesus Christ has done. Because Jesus knows how sinful we really are, we don’t have to play games when we pray. We can come to God just the way we are, clinging only to the cross. “Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need” (Hebrews 4:16).
When we pray, we are invited to come to the
“throne of grace.” Because of Jesus, the throne of God’s justice is now a
throne of grace. It is written that, when we come to the “throne of grace,” we will
“receive mercy” and “find grace.”
There are many times in life when the only thing we can do is to cry out, “God,
have mercy. Lord, have mercy. Jesus, have mercy.” We are assured
that when we pray like that, we will find the mercy we need from
God.
We have been given the Good News that we can find
“grace to help in our time of need.” One modern translation says we can find
“grace to help in the nick of time.” I like that. The last phrase literally
means “at the right moment." God’s
answers are always perfectly timed. Not too soon and not too late. Often
they do seem to come “in the nick of time.” We have a friend in high places. Nothing we say
will surprise Him. Let us come boldly. Let us come often.
In Christ,
Brown
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