The teacher said...

[He came to my desk with a quivering lip, the lesson was done.

'Have you a new sheet for me, dear teacher?  I've spoiled this one.'

I took his sheet, all spoiled and blotted.  Gave him a new one, all unspotted.  And into his tired heart, I cried...

'Do better now, my child.'

I went to the Throne with a trembling heart, the day was done.

'Have you a new day for me, Master?  I've spoiled this one.'

He took my day, all spoiled and blotted.  Gave me a new one, all unspotted.  And into my tired heart, He cried...

'Do better now, My child'"]

You see?  Ask anyone who's gone wrong what a thrill it is to be forgiven.  Ask anyone who's done wrong what a thrill it is to be told, "you're forgiven".

Satan tempts us with subtlety.  What, then, is the counterpoint?  The counterpoint is this, and with this, I close:

Malcolm Muggeridge put it in these words, after having found Christ.  Listen to them.

"I may, I suppose, regard myself as or pass for being a relatively successful man. People occasionally recognize me on the street – that’s fame. I can fairly easily earn enough to qualify for admission to the higher slopes of the Revenue – that’s success. Furnished with money and a little fame even the elderly, if they care to, may partake of trendy diversions – that’s pleasure. It might happen that once in a while that something I said or wrote was sufficiently heeded for me to persuade myself that it represented a serious impact on our time – that’s fulfillment. Yet, I say to you, and I beg you to believe me, multiply these tiny triumphs by a million, add them all together and they are nothing – less than nothing, a positive impediment – measured against one drop of that living water which Christ offers to the spiritually thirsty, irrespective of who or what we are."



Satan tempts us at the point of our religion, not that we might disbelieve in God, but that we might demand certainty, that kind of certainty of God that leaves nothing to faith, nothing to God Himself.  

These are the moral struggles that have reality, for people such as we are.  That subtle temptation to renounce our duty in favor of what is attractive.  That insidious allurement to a kind of half-goodness, which is the essence of everything bad.  That is what Jesus was faced with.

Every time Satan said something, what did Jesus say?  "Begone, It Is Written-... It Is Written-"  This is the unchanging absolute that the world will always try to relativize.  This is the pillar that the world will try to move so that you may not be sure as to where you are, anymore.

I challenge you to take this Word, written across 1500 years, by so many different writers, across time that it has been attacked, across time that it has been threatened, across time that it has been put to the test.  "It Is Written.  This is the Word.  Test it out in your life."

He says to you, "Come unto me, all you who are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest."

He says to you that there is no temptation that is faced by man that he doesn't provide a way of escape, so that you might be able to bear it.  He always provides that way, that strength, that inner power to withstand those subtle temptations...

-Ravi Zacharias, "Humble" (Relevant Revolution; Sermon Jams Vol. 6)