Hebrews Study: God is Faithful Even in Temptations :: By Sean Gooding

Hebrews 4:14-16

14 Seeing then that we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. 15 For we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. 16 Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (NKJV).

Last week we talked about the help we have in Jesus when it comes to temptation. Jesus was tempted, the Bible tells us, in all points like we are, and yet, He never sinned. You and I are tempted, and we sin. Sadly, we sin more often than we would like to be honest about. Jesus did not even sin by accident. We often do. We are caught off guard, and we say, do, or think something that is sinful. Jesus never did that. Not once. This morning I was reading in my devotions, and I came across this verse; it reminded me of what we had explored last week, and I wanted to expand on this to add to the benefits we have in Jesus and His humanity. Paul, writing to the church at Corinth, says this through the Holy Spirit:

1 Corinthians 10:13 “No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, He will also provide an escape, so that you can stand up under it” (Berean Study Bible).

When we add this verse to the verses above, there is an understanding that we are able to say ‘No’ to sin much more often than we do. These are convicting verses. But as with all scriptures, we need to explore all things. God is a practical and realistic God. In 1 John 1: 8-9, John tells us that if we say we have no sin, we are liars, and if we confess our sins, God will forgive us because He is faithful, and He will cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Once again, God’s faithfulness is emphasized as the reason that He will forgive. God is faithful, even in our temptations and even when we fail. So, yes, we can sin less, but we will not be sinless in this life, at least on the outside. Inside we are already sinless as the Holy Spirit lives in us and marks us as children of God.

  • Jesus Will help, Hebrews 4:16

Jesus will help you and me when we are faced with temptation. He is there for us from experiential knowledge, and He is compassionate and kind. Maybe you think this is overkill. But temptation never goes away, even as an old man Solomon’s wives helped to turn him away from the Lord. There is no time in our lives when there is no temptation. We are tempted in many ways: money, sex, power, revenge, and pride. This list is far more exhaustive than this. But as long as you are breathing, you will be tempted. Satan will find a weakness, find a pressure point, find a crack that he can exploit, and it is important that we know that we have a Helper – Jesus, our Friend, who is there to help us.

Sadly, too many of us, myself included, have ‘pet’ sins. We have nurtured them over a lifetime, and the same sin that haunted us as young men/women seems to still haunt us as we get older. Often, and it is true for me, we get better at avoiding or saying ‘no’ to some sins, but for others, we are less able or rather willing to say ‘no.’ These sins satisfy something in us even when we know the end will be shame and guilt. Jesus, our Friend, will help here as well.

  • God will temper your/my temptations, 1 Corinthians 10:13

We are promised that the temptations we face are common to all men. All men, even the greatest evangelists and famous preachers, the apostles and the saints that have gone on before us, were all tempted the same way as you and I. We are not unique, and the sinful opportunities placed before us are not some netherworld concoctions that no one has ever seen before. We are tempted in one of three ways or all of these three ways over a lifetime:

1 John 2:16 16 For all that is in the world— the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, and the pride of life— is not from the Father but from the world” (Berean Study Bible).

These are the only three categories of sinful temptations; all sin falls into one of these. All sin is common to all men, nothing new or unique just for you or me. There is nothing new under the sun, not even sin. But we are promised that God will NOT allow us to be tempted beyond that which we can bear. This is a part of His faithfulness; God does not set us up to fail.

  • God will provide a way out

Sometimes the best way to avoid sin is to run. Remember Joseph and Potiphar’s wife; Joseph ran and left his cloak behind. Run, run, and keep running as far as possible. Often, we need to change the people we hang around with.

Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:33, Do not be deceived: ‘Bad company corrupts good character'” (Berean Study Bible).

One of the hardest things to have to do as a person, and especially as a Christian, is to leave the friends that you are familiar with so as to lessen the power and frequency of temptation. But this may be yours or my way out; this may be yours or my help from Jesus. Some of the ways out are practical: don’t steal, go to work; don’t commit sexual sins, get married, and on we can go. These are practical ways out that we can see and take steps to do.

Not all of God’s ways are miraculous and other-world fixes; some are simple and practically executable and for our benefit. We must also remember that making the right choice may also come at a cost. Joseph still went to prison, even though he did not sin against God. Daniel went to the den of lions, and the three Hebrew boys still went into the fiery furnace. Choosing not to sin is not about earthly rewards; it is about honoring God’s faithfulness to us, even when and if it costs us.

  • God will help you stand

When we have to endure the fight that comes between the flesh and the Holy Spirit in us, God will help us to stand and make the right choices. But if and when we fail, He is just as faithful to forgive, and He still loves us. Standing up is like a muscle, and the more often you use it and exercise it, the stronger it will become. Just don’t quit, don’t give up, and know that when we fail, Jesus is still our Friend, and He still loves us. Grow in this grace, my dear brothers and sisters; Jesus is there to help, and God our Father is faithful.

God bless you,

Dr. Sean Gooding
Pastor of Mississauga Missionary Baptist Church

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The War Upon Us All :: By Geri Ungurean

THIS GIVES A WHOLE NEW MEANING TO “WORLD WAR.”

From canadafreepress.com

More than 60 years ago, John F. Kennedy issued a warning about the “monolithic and ruthless conspiracy” that was using “covert means for expanding its sphere of influence.” He also warned us about the “very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon” by the perpetrators of this conspiracy to advance their agenda.

In 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic offered the would-be conspirators an ideal opportunity. The worldwide emergency enabled them to launch a decisive gambit to sidestep the legal strictures of democratic rule and attempt to create a global authoritarian police state. The experience was hugely distressing to the people in almost every nation, but it was also very revealing about the nature, methods, and objectives of the conspiracy. While the public response to the pandemic was unscientific and contrary to the established norms of public health policy, it was also nearly identical in most nations, suggesting that the incoherence was not an error but an integral part of the planned policy response.

This policy, including the media-driven narrative and the draconian censorship of all dissent, was clearly coordinated at a supra-national level. To achieve such policy coordination across the world could not have been achieved without a powerful force of coercion. But what force could explain such uniform compliance with the same destructive policy mistakes by nations large and small, rich and poor, powerful and weak all around the world? Who could force nations of the whole world to obey its dictate, and how?

We had the first glimpse of this force in action in June 2020 when Belarus’ president Aleksandr Lukashenko publicly snubbed a $940 million line of credit from the International Monetary Fund. He rejected it because the IMF conditioned the loan on Belarus’ imposing a strict Covid-19 lockdown policy and a curfew. Significantly, Lukashenko mentioned on several occasions that the IMF negotiators wanted Belarus to do “like in Italy.” Conditioning loans with terms that would severely impair the borrower’s ability to repay makes no economic sense, so the conditionality clearly had different objectives. Deep in debt and with collapsed tax revenues, most governments around the world needed loans, making them prey to the dictates of money power.

By April 2020, 85 nations have formally requested financial assistance from the IMF. To secure the needed funds, they presumably accepted the terms, agreeing to follow the World Health Organization (WHO) dictate. As a result, they extended the lockdowns beyond all reason, destroying countless small and medium-sized businesses, shut down schools, created Stasi-like contact-tracing programs, conspired to obscure effective treatments, and instituted heavy-handed censorship of public discourse. They also agreed to promote vaccinations as the only way for us to return to normal life and cooperated on instituting Covid passes that would condition their own citizens’ freedom of movement on their compliance – first with the vaccine requirements, but ultimately with any demand that the global authorities might deem conducive to their agenda.

Why accepting IMF terms was high treason

We only learned about IMF’s terms because the president of Belarus disclosed them publicly. Other governments quietly accepted the money and agreed to the terms. But in doing so and complying with the WHO policy dictate, government officials effectively took orders from an external power to the detriment of their own nations, economies, and populations.

A public health emergency must not be accepted as a defense. In all nations, taxpayers fund their governments, which keep many domain experts on their payrolls precisely to ensure that government policies are constructive, productive, and lead to improvements in the life of their societies. Uncritically implementing policy measures that were clearly and egregiously contrary to the best interests of their own populations at the behest of external powers from which they accepted funding should, in fact, be regarded as high treason.

Given their positions of privilege as well as responsibility, they should not be able to invoke ignorance or inexperience in their own defense. The very nature of their office obliges them to source the best available expertise and apply discernment in serving their own constituents. In abdicating on these obligations while complying with the dictates of an external power, they have effectively committed high treason and must be held accountable accordingly.

All who were complicit must be held accountable

Public officials could not have done much damage without active and extensive complicity from the mass media and academic institutions. As we know, many of these organizations took funding from some of the same stakeholders who wield disproportionate influence at the World Health Organization, big pharma corporations, and the global financial organizations.

Eyes on the ultimate culprits

What the world experienced over the last 30 months was the greatest crime against humanity ever perpetrated. But while many public officials, media moguls, and corrupt academicians had complicity in this crime, the agenda was formulated and planned by those who had the means and the motive to set the wheels in motion. This “monolithic and ruthless conspiracy” clearly originated from the international banking cartel together with their agencies like the Bank of International Settlements, the IMF, World Bank, the Global Systemically Important Banks (GSIBs), and others who control the issue of money and credit with which they can bribe and co-opt almost any structure in society.

A famous member of that cartel boasted, “Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws!” At money power’s receiving end, French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte understood that relationship all too well: “When a government is dependent upon bankers for money, they and not the leaders of the government control the situation.”

The bankers have long coveted the control of the world, its resources, and its populations. As Carroll Quigley warned us, “The powers of financial capitalism had [a] far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world.… The growth of financial capitalism made possible a centralization of world economic control and use of this power for the direct benefit of financiers and direct injury of all other economic groups.” Quigley wrote those words in his 1965 book Tragedy and Hope, suggesting that this conspiracy was discernible many decades ago. Indeed, over a century ago, Lord Acton prophesized that “the issue which has swept down the centuries and which will have to be fought sooner or later is the people versus the bankers.”

This fight is now upon us. The “monolithic and ruthless conspiracy” that JFK warned us about has unleashed an undeclared war on humanity. It will prove to be the ultimate struggle between our emancipation or our final enslavement. We do not have the choice to decline this struggle, for in yielding, we would deprive our children and their children of liberty, condemning them to a lifetime of servitude. But in destroying the conspiracy and bringing the ruthless conspirators to justice, we can free all of humanity from this servitude and reclaim the liberty and prosperity that is our birthright under God. We are the ones we have been waiting for, and we are many. Join us in this struggle, for we will prevail! SOURCE

Brothers and sisters in Christ, I must add here that ‘winning’ the war against these evil entities would be best for our world, but we are in the end of the end days, and Satan and his minions are waging war against humanity like never before.

Remember that God is in control! And remember the warnings Jesus gave us about these days.

And most importantly, remember Who wins!!

MARANATHA!

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