Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church
Pastor Dennis Tuuri

Please stand for the sermon text. 1 Corinthians 10:13. “No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man. But God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape that you may be able to bear it.”

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for this text. Please open it to us. May your Holy Spirit be amongst us. May he teach us this word. More than that, may he write it upon our hearts, our memories, and transform our lives by it. Help us, Lord God, to leave this place today changed, transformed by your gospel. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

Please be seated.

Where is he running? You running to or from? Well, we’ll see. Many of us are going to camp this week. There are two things that you’re going to find at camp. Actually, there are lots of things you’re going to find at camp, but one thing you’re going to find—and Chris alluded to it in his welcome this morning—is you’re going to find strangers. Last week we talked about hospitality, which is love of strangers and getting to know other people. So one of the messages that we take with us into camp this week—those that are going and those that are staying home—is to extend hospitality, the love of strangers, and get to know people.

I was listening to a book while I had my leg up, still trying to make use of the time wisely. I finally got around to reading it, though I should have done it a year ago. I think it’s called *Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert*. This is written by a woman who was a very committed lesbian political activist and a major professor at a university, overseeing the curriculum for 200 different paths of majors for incoming undergraduate students. She was a very powerful, important woman and very committed to her activism. The story is of her conversion. She ends up becoming a member of a Scottish Covenanter church, the Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America. This is her story of conversion.

I thought about it and I thought, “Boy, this is Abraham all over again.” Because what happens is she writes some article in the paper—I don’t remember what it was exactly—and she gets two kinds of mail from her homosexual and transsexual friends. Some saying “yay for you,” and then from Christians, mostly hate mail, saying how horrible she was. But she gets a letter from a local pastor that isn’t like that. Instead, he asks her about the underlying presuppositions for what she said in the article. It’s different. She sits on it and eventually contacts the guy, and he has her over to his house with his wife for dinner. He extends hospitality to her.

She describes going to his house and how the wife made vegetarian stir fry. Now, I don’t know what their normal diet is, but I would imagine if you’re having this woman over, you’re thinking, “Well, if we serve steak, that may not go well because she’s into these various political causes.” She saw it as accommodation to her, and it probably was. And that’s what Abraham did, right? He looked at the needs of his guests and tried to make them comfortable in his setting. He loved the stranger. He didn’t know who they were at first—at least that’s my belief. He extends himself and goes out of his way to extend hospitality. And that’s what they do. They don’t have her sit there and listen to a blast of a presentation of the gospel and a call to repentance. They ask her questions about herself. They get to know her. They want to know her. They have actual conversation.

And as the months go by, those conversations become more and more directive toward the Lord, with the Holy Spirit bringing her into the body of Christ. It’s a great book. I’m about a third of the way through it. There’s no doubt other things in it that I don’t know what I’ll think about. But it’s really good, if just for that point: when we extend hospitality, we’re doing what God does to us. Hospitality isn’t just having people to your house for dinner. It’s thinking about who they are and what they need. It’s trying to get to know them as a person. It’s giving them respect. It’s affirming them as an image bearer of God, no matter what state they might be in at the particular time you have them over.

So, a wonderful conversion story that really starts with the love of strangers and hospitality. When we go to camp, let’s try not to just hang out with our family or our friends. Let’s try to look at the strangers, get to know who they are. Maybe they’re strangers from the church to you, or strangers from outside the church.

There’s one other thing you’re going to find at camp—but again, there are lots of things. One thing I want to talk about today is that you’re going to find temptations, trials, and testing. You’re going to find sin when you go to camp this afternoon and tomorrow. And if not sin, then temptations, trials, and difficulties. Okay?

Difficulties and temptations are absolutely part of our lives. They’re everywhere. Why? Well, think about the kind of world we live in. Number one, think about your body. Our bodies are incredibly complicated with all kinds of very small things controlling major systems. One little glitch and you’re dead. Another different kind of glitch and you’ve got a stroke. Another little turn of the ankle the wrong way, the knee the wrong way, and you’re laid up for a couple weeks like Gary was. So the body is very complicated. It’s going to put you through trials and temptations and difficulties. Okay? No sin involved, but your body will cause you to be tempted to complain. You’ll be tried by it. It’s a test.

Your body and your soul, right? We’re very limited. We don’t know what we’re doing. We make all kinds of wrong assumptions. We make all kinds of mistakes in interpreting events around us. And that produces trials and tribulations for us. So just who we are. And then throw in our fallen nature. Sin is going to be part of our normal reaction, our Adamic reaction. So just who we are means that tonight or tomorrow when you go to camp, things are going to happen that are going to be temptations, trials, and tribulations for you. Okay?

And then secondly, think of the world we’re in. Now, camp is kind of an isolated bubble environment, but we know what’s going on in the world. There are great trials, temptations, and tribulations. Who knows what the Supreme Court is going to decide in two or three weeks. You should be praying for them now because now is when they’re making their opinions and writing them up. Pray for them now. We don’t know what’s going to happen, but we know our world is increasingly apathetic to the Lord Jesus Christ—if not openly hostile. How do we deal with that? It’s a trial. It’s a temptation. And actually, increasingly hostile to you.

So you’re going to have difficulties that you’re going to have to endure because of the situation we’re in. The world is a fallen world. We’re between two ages. The new creation has come in Christ. The old creation is still here. So our bodies, our minds, our souls, who we are, our fallen sin nature, the nature of the world around us, and then throw in individual sinful people in your lives, including members of your family, right? I mean, not just non-Christians. Christians sin too. All this stuff happens. And what it does is produce temptations, trials, and tribulations for us.

And that’s what I want to talk about today from 1 Corinthians 10:13. How many of you have this verse memorized? Well, you should. You really should. If there’s a verse you should teach your kids, this is it. Well, there are lots of verses that I say that about, but this is an important one, particularly for children, and for a reason we’ll talk about in a minute.

Now, this is verse 13. I can’t get into the whole setting, but 1 Corinthians 8 through 10 is kind of a unit. Let’s at least read the first 12 verses. These are verses which used to be very well known to RC Sears because they were part of our original communion liturgy. So let me read what it says in 1 Corinthians, beginning at verse one.

“Moreover, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware that all our fathers were under the cloud and all passed through the sea. All were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.” This is an apology for infant baptism. The whole of the people were baptized, so to speak, in Moses. Okay? Same word as being baptized into Christ. So they all passed through the sea. They’re all baptized into Moses. “And they all ate the same spiritual food and all drank the same spiritual drink, for they drank of that spiritual rock that followed them. And that rock was Christ.”

So they all had sacramental food. This is a strong argument for paedocommunion in addition to paedobaptism. Important text, right? So if you memorize 1 Corinthians 10:13, you’ll remember that this is an anchor text that flows out of an excellent apologetic when you talk to people about why you give your little kids the Lord’s Supper—because that’s what God’s people do. They’re fed sacramentally by Christ.

“But with most of them, and we know almost all of them, with most of them, God was not well pleased. For their bodies were scattered in the wilderness, lying around in heaps in the wilderness—dead bodies, people that God put to death for their grumbling and disputing. These things became our examples to the intent that we should not lust after evil things as they also lusted. And do not become idolaters as some of them were, as it is written, ‘The people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play.’ Nor let us commit sexual immorality as some of them did, and in one day 23,000 fell—died, in other words. Nor let us tempt Christ as some of them also tempted and were destroyed by serpents. Nor complain as some of them also complained and were destroyed by the destroyer.”

“Now all these things happened to them as examples. They were written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the ages have come. Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.”

Now Paul is giving us great texts, but these texts contain a great warning. We used to have this in every communion liturgy. We did this part of the text about them being an example to us. Let us fear because being baptized and taking the Lord’s Supper does not assure you of eternal salvation and right standing in the eyes of God. If you come here and then go away in the week and are sexually immoral, complainers, grumblers, idolaters, he says most of them fell. So it’s a scary text that the Corinthians are receiving from Paul.

And then he turns it on them. “Take heed, thus you who think you stand, you who are overconfident, lest you fall.” That’s the lead-up to this verse.

Now, what I want to do with 1 Corinthians 10:13 is suggest that primarily what Paul is doing in verse 13, after the strong warning of the first 12 verses, is giving comfort. He’s told them, “Look, most of them died. What about you guys? Are you Corinthians all going to die away in the wilderness, so to speak?” So he gives them a comforting text. I think verse 13 is what it is. In a few minutes, we’ll talk about five comforts from the text. Okay? So five comforts from this one verse.

But I think that in our day and age, particularly when people are so irresponsible, when people never want to take accountability for their own actions, when the world has taught you that you’re a result of your environment and whatever you do is a result not of your own choosing or acts of will—this is important. The lesbian convert I mentioned said that she and her husband went to a large evangelical church somewhere. They got back and looked at the bulletin, and it said the prayer of confession was: “Sorry for my mistakes. Thanks for your gift of salvation.” This was the prayer to make you a Christian. Sorry for my mistakes. That’s mistaken. You’re not mistaken. We’re sinners. We rebel against God.

In our day and age, it’s important that we realize this verse also warns us very well—and again, particularly for our children—but they should memorize it to warn us against not taking responsibility for our sins. It says, “Look, don’t blame whatever the conditions were that caused your sin or were related to or preceded your sin. It’s always your sin because God is faithful. I know that whatever you went through was common. I know that God is faithful. It wasn’t his fault. I know that he provided a means of escape so that you could endure the temptation.”

What are your children prone to do? As they’re younger, particularly—hopefully less so as they get older—but teens still do it a lot, and adults still do it a lot. They blame everything around them rather than taking responsibility for their own sins.

Now, there’s an excellent chapter that I think should be used a lot more in our homes, in our churches, and in the culture, out of a book called *Crucial Conversations*. The chapter is called “Master Your Stories.” And here’s the point of the chapter: we have stories. Events happen, and then we interpret those events. That interpretation is a story, a narrative we’re telling ourselves about things that happened to us. Okay? That’s a story. And what we’re tempted to do in our fallen nature is to tell ourselves stories that get us off the hook. We say that we were helpless. We couldn’t do anything else. What could I do?

We say the other person—little brother, little sister, big brother, big sister, the person at the softball tournament or game, the family camp, whatever it is—we see what a jerk they were being. We turn people into villains by our stories. We interpret their actions and vilify them in our heads as a way to take away our responsibility for our improper responses—grumbling, or whatever it is, striking out.

And then one of the favorite stories we have is that we’re a victim. This victim story is huge in our culture, right? In our society these days, we’re a victim. It really isn’t, again, our fault. We’re just victims. The chapter, which I would love to overview again but won’t today, tells you first of all how to look for signs that you’re doing these things. You’re telling yourself stories. You start to not behave properly in a relationship. So you begin to—okay, wait a minute. What’s going on? What story am I telling myself? And let’s master my story. Then let’s ask some questions of myself.

Like, for instance, if you’re turning the other person into a villain: why would a decent person that I know—my husband, my wife, a rational follower of Jesus—why would they become a complete monster ogre? Well, they probably didn’t. Your story you’re telling yourself is way out of bounds with the facts of the matter. So the idea of the chapter is to train us to think about the stories we’re telling ourselves, then to master those stories by asking questions, by backing out of a situation, asking ourselves questions, and re-engaging—looking for what the real story is. What are the facts apart from the story we’re telling ourselves about the facts?

And this text is quite important for the victim story. This text should be memorized so that each of us—children, adults, each one of us—if we sin tonight, tomorrow, the next day at camp, in our homes, at our work, we accept responsibility.

I love the fact that this morning we changed a confession of sin as we cycle through the church year: “My fault, my own fault, my own most grievous fault.” That’s what this text is saying.

It’s comfort, and we’ll get to that. But first of all, it’s a howling rebuke to the victim story we all tell ourselves and to the irresponsibility of the present culture in which we live and to the kind of evolutionary thinking that says just our environment did this to us. We’re really not in control. The Holy Spirit says, “No, that’s not true.” So first of all, this text is a warning. It’s a caution, maybe even a rebuke, to get us to accept responsibility for our sins.

God set it all up. You didn’t have to sin. Okay? This is not describing a particular instant. This is general principles about how God works in your life. And it’s always your fault if you sin.

Now, secondly, I want to talk about comforts from the text. Okay, that’s the caution. I want to move on to talk about comforts from the text. And then third, we’ll talk about the secret. That’s—you know, some of you, I know that’s what you want to know. What is the way of escape? If he’s going to provide us the way of escape, what is it? And so we’ll kind of touch on that as we go through the five comforts. But then the third point of the sermon will be the secret—the big deal, the real answer to the means of escape. Okay? So that’s what we’re going to do.

Let’s talk now about the text itself. It’s really quite easy. When you do read your Bibles, do a little Bible study at the same time. Talk, think about what the progression of the text is. Look at particular phrases. You know, kind of bring out from each phrase something that’s going to be not necessarily easily understood if you just read it speedily. Outline a little bit.

This is a series of five comforts. That’s one way to look at it.

**What’s the first comfort?** The first comfort is: “No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man.”

So, first of all, the first comfort is: whatever you’re going through, no matter how difficult, no matter how painful, no matter how tempting in terms of sin or difficulty with affliction or tests or trials—and the word here is multifaceted. It can mean any one of those things. It can mean a temptation to sin. It can mean a trial, a test, a tribulation, whatever it is that’s making you struggle.

When that happens, the first comfort is the commonness of the temptation you’re facing. We all think nobody’s gone through what I went through. Think, look—you know, I could trot out all my physical stories, right? All my physical maladies. But the Bible tells me that whatever I’m going through that might tempt me, you know, to kick against the goads, to grumble, to dispute, to shout at my wife or my grandkids, whatever it is—whatever tempts me to do that is common to man. It’s not just me. Okay?

There’s an old phrase: “Misery loves company.” Well, there’s some truth to that. You know, if you’re in a bad state, it’s helpful to know that lots of other people are in the bad state you’re in too, right? Elijah—wow, he thought he was all alone, right? And then the man of God comes to him and says, “Look, there are 7,000 that haven’t bowed the knee.” That’s encouraging. If you think it’s just you that’s being tempted to move away from God and you’re all alone in your temptation, no—7,000 are out there that are still faithful to God in the midst of that temptation.

So the first comfort is knowing that this affliction that you’re going through is common to all men. The text can also be reasonably understood to say that it isn’t just that it’s common to everybody, but that it’s a human kind of temptation. So whatever temptation you’re going through, you’re going through as a human. You’re not going through it with some kind of odd temptation. It’s a temptation that is particularly directed or focused on humanity, on people. So this commonality of the temptation is the first comfort that we have from this text. It’s a comfort of knowing that other people just like us have gone through the same difficulty and gotten through it.

Now, you need to do just one thing: know your Bible. The Bible is filled with stories, right? The Hall of Faith was wonderful at Vidya. The kids recited the whole of chapter 11 of Hebrews—all the things these prior saints went through. That’s a good thing to remember. It’s a good thing to know that you stand in the line of a 6,000-year line of people who by the grace of God had endured similar trials and more difficult ones than you. That’s encouraging.

And so when we know the Bible and then we remember this verse: “Oh yeah, this is common to men. And in fact, I know a few men and women who went through this because the Bible tells me about them.” Nearly every affliction and human suffering and trial and tribulation—at least a good many of them—are found in the pages of the scriptures. The scriptures are what Paul—in fact, Paul has just given us this, right? What does Paul use to help them not fall into temptation and sin? He uses an example. We just read it: “These are written as an example to you. They fell.” It’s a cautionary tale, but he doesn’t grab one out of Greek philosophy or ancient literature. He goes to the Bible, for telling them this narrative that’s a cautionary tale to them.

So it’s common to men, and it’s common to lots of men and women in the scriptures, and the Bible can help provide a way of escape for you by recognizing the commonality of it. It’s comforting to know in our afflictions that our trials are proportionate to us as people and that they’ve been suffered by many other people.

**Two, another “C” word: comfort of God’s character.**

So these five comforts are all C-words. At least I’ve tried to do that. So the first is “commonness,” right? The commonality of the temptation. The second is “character,” and specifically it’s God’s character.

He says: “No temptation overtaking such as is common to man. That’s comfort number one. Comfort number two is the next phrase: ‘But God is faithful.’”

Well, you know, he’s kind of gotten right to the center of things immediately in this description. We are unfaithful people. We know we’re unfaithful. We’re going through trials and tribulations, tests—little ones, big ones, long ones, short ones. And in every one of them, this text tells us that this is common—that’s a comfort to us. But it also tells us that God’s character does not change, and that his character, the person of God himself, is what prepares us to endure the particular difficulty we’re going through no matter how short, how long, how trying, how difficult, whatever it is.

God is faithful, brothers and sisters. Tell yourself that when you’re tempted to sin. You’re tried by somebody else’s sin. You’re under tribulation. You’ve got a bad medical situation. You’ve got a bad family member dying, right? You’re going into debt so bad you’re going to have to file for bankruptcy. You don’t know how you’re going to get through the next week. You don’t know how things are going to work out in the midst of the particular trial and tribulation you have.

Bible number one: remember it’s common. Number two, most of all, remember God is faithful. He has pledged himself to you, brothers and sisters. We’re going to talk in a little bit about how God orders our temptations with his sovereignty and his wisdom. But see, “God is faithful” is the culmination of all his virtues. He’s faithful to his people that he loves. So in the midst of sufferings and difficulties, the way of escape is by meditating on the comfort of knowing that the character of God is faithful. He is always faithful, even when we are unfaithful.

And God’s faithfulness is really his love to you. He has made promises to you in the scriptures that he’ll never leave you nor forsake you, right? He’s made all these promises to his beloved that he’ll see us through, that all things will work together for our good. Those are promises, and God is faithful to those promises. When we’re faithless, yet God is faithful. So the character of God is a comfort to us in trials and in tribulations.

In Psalm 116, David said, “I believe, therefore I spoke, I am greatly afflicted.” So here we have another common story of affliction, difficulty—an example for us to draw on, a particular person. “I said in my haste, all men are liars. What shall I render to the Lord for all his benefits toward me?”

What’s going on there? Well, I believe that when it says, “I said in my haste, all men are liars,” some people say that’s David sinning in the midst of a difficulty. I don’t think so. I think it’s David making an absolutely true confession. When it says “haste,” that word means trial, affliction. Again, so in my difficulty, in my trial and affliction, I said, “All men are liars.” And the word “liar” there means unfaithful, not steady. Man can’t deliver us.

And we have to know that in the midst of our trials and tribulations, if we rely upon unsteady, fallen, not properly thinking, not wise people as the way through our tribulation, we’re going to fail. Man is not faithful. Now, we’re supposed to be faithful clearly, as image bearers of God. And praise God for all the incidences of faithfulness we have to one another, people that you know are praying for me and all that stuff. That’s great. But at the center, that’s not comfort enough.

The comfort that God gives you is that he is faithful, and he is powerful. He is wise. He’s omniscient. He knows just what you need when you need it. I have no idea what you need. I pray, and the Holy Spirit prays for me, because I don’t know how to pray about your situation frequently. God does. And that God who is all-powerful, all-wise, all-loving—he is all-faithful to you.

So David’s right. How can David go through this great affliction and come out the other side as he does in the next verse? “What shall I render to the Lord for all his benefits toward me?” He goes from being in tremendous affliction to thinking, “How can I praise God enough for his benefits to me?” And the way he gets there is by contrasting and showing us the unfaithfulness of men and, by implication, the faithfulness of the Lord who preserves him.

So as we go through difficult trials, temptations, and tribulations—little ones, even young people—as you go through this stuff, God is faithful, okay? So it’s the faithfulness of God that is one of the greatest comforts that the text provides us here, and it’s something we’re to always meditate upon.

Bottom line: David said, “The way I got through this stuff is not by relying on the faithfulness or steadiness of man, but by reminding myself of the faithfulness of God. And as a result of that, he provided the means of escape from my particular difficulty, trial, or tribulation.” The Lord God is faithful. That is who he is. That is a central attribute of who he is. If we were to list the attributes of God, faithfulness isn’t just one—it is a summary statement of who God is.

I think I have a text here I’d like to read. I remember that Lex Luthor quote, right, from Superman. Some of you have heard me say this before. Lex Luthor has this plan to destroy—or have some kind of like half of California fall into the ocean. He buys the real estate in the desert so he can make a lot of money on real estate. And somebody asked him, “Well, why are you going to do that?” And Luthor said that his dad told him this: “Son, stocks may rise or fall. Utilities and transportation systems may collapse. People are no damn good. But they’ll always need land. They’ll always need a place to stay.”

Well, he’s right. At the end of the day, we are not good for being steadfast suppliers of what you need most as you go through a tribulation. The Lord God’s work is redemptive and great. Praise God for that. But look—folks, David says, “I believe correctly that if you rely upon man and his faithfulness in the midst of your tribulation, you’re dead.”

Deuteronomy 7:9-10 says this: “Therefore know that the Lord your God, he is God, the faithful God, who keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations for those who love him and keep his commandments.” Okay, how does he summarize the character of God that is a comfort to us? “Know that the Lord your God, he is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant.” God has made promises to you, brothers and sisters, and he is faithful to fulfill those promises.

Again, in Isaiah 49:7: “Thus says the Lord, the Redeemer of Israel, their Holy One, to him whom man despises, to him whom the nations of whores, to the servant of rulers, kings shall see and arise. Princes also shall worship because of the Lord who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, and he has chosen you in spite of all the difficulties, trials, persecutions from nations that oppress.”

Brothers and sisters, may we sing songs reminding ourselves of the Lord’s faithfulness as we endure trials and tribulations. May it ring in our hearts. May it be engraved in huge gold letters, as it were, on our hearts to rely upon God. He is faithful. He has made you promises. He will keep those promises in the midst of your darkest hour and your most difficult trials and tribulations, as well as the small ones. Remember always that God is faithful. What a comfort!

So there’s commonness of the temptations we go through. There’s the character of God.

**Third, the comfort of God’s control.**

God controls things, okay? His supervision of the temptation. Here’s what I mean: “No temptations over you such as is common to man”—commonness. “But God is faithful”—his character. “Who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able.”

He’s in control, not just in some general vague sense. He’s in particular control of the difficulties, the trials—the mom yelling at you, the little brother or little sister bugging you and kicking you. He’s in control of whatever that temptation is. You’ve got a child or a loved one close to death and dying. The Lord God has promised that he will control that temptation, the trial, the tribulation in a way that will allow you to find the means of escape.

So it’s not just God’s character of faithfulness. In his faithfulness, he is directly involved in the minutest details of the affairs of your life. And particularly here, it’s said that God will not allow a temptation to go beyond what you’re able to endure.

Now, this should immediately cause to come to mind: who? Job, right? Job is the picture for us. Satan wants to try Job, put him through temptations and trials. He’s got to ask God. And then God sets the terms, right? He said, “Well, here’s how it’s going to work. Here’s what the temptation can look like. Here’s what it can’t look like.” This is very practical stuff. And this story, this narrative the scriptures give us, gives us great hope because now we know God isn’t just generally faithful—it’ll all work out somehow. God is specifically in control of the bounds and the means and how you’re going to be tempted and tried. He doesn’t tempt any man, but he controls these circumstances. They’re common. His character is involved. And in his character, he controls the bounds so that you won’t be able to go beyond what you can endure. He’ll either restrict the temptation to what you have strength to endure, or he’ll lengthen the trial and tribulation, giving you more strength for that trial. Either way, you have the comfort of knowing that whatever difficulty you go through—great or small—this coming week, this afternoon, whenever it is—the Lord God is in control of the particular circumstances of your trial or tribulation. He is in control.

So by his control, what does this mean? It means his power. He’s controlling every circumstance of what’s going on in your life. But it also means his wisdom. He knows what you can take and what you can’t take. He’s not going to give you things you can’t take without the grace of the Holy Spirit to go beyond what you think you can do—which is frequent. But he’s not going to do that. So it’s his power, it’s his wisdom, and it’s his love. It’s part of his superintending providence—his faithfulness to you. He won’t allow things to go beyond what they’re able.

So all the characteristics of God are kind of wrapped up here at the center of this important verse, reminding us that the way of escape is being made by a God whose character is faithful and whose control over your circumstances is an indication, a revelation of his sovereignty, his wisdom, his power, and his love for you. So that’s the third comfort: God’s control, his providence maybe would be a word that kind of sums it up, but it’s not a C word. So: commonness, character, control.

**Four, the comfort of conveyance.**

That’s a bad word, but the point is it’s used in the old sense. A conveyance is a way to give a gift to somebody in real estate, right? There’s a conveyance. So what I’m going off of here is the very next phrase: “You won’t allow to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape.”

Not only is it common, not only is God faithful in a general sense, not only is he superintending the trial—but he’s actually going to give you something as well. There’s a gift involved in the midst of trials, tribulations, temptations, and testing. It says that he will—with the temptation—will also make. He will give you the way of escape. So along—this is that in counseling you, “I’m tempted. Well, yeah, but God has made you the way of escape. He’s gifted you with this thing. He’s given you something. It’s this way of escape thing.”

And so it’s a comfort to us to know that God, in his character and in his control, in addition to that, he’s conveying a gift to us: the way of escape. Now, you know this way of escape, right? So what is it? Well, I think it’s a general statement here because that’s the way it is. Every situation, if you want to think of a particular way of escape, is going to look differently. But the important thing here is to be comforted by knowing that God indeed will give you this. He gives us things in our trials and temptations.

Listen to James 1:2-4. “My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.”

So in the midst of your trial, God gives you this gift of patience. In the enduring of the trial, as a means of escape, okay? So God gifts you in a temptation or a trial. It’s not just getting through it intact. It’s accepting the gift, the conveyance, the way of escape that God is providing for it. And frequently it’s improved character in our lives.

James 1:12 says: “Blessed is the man who endures temptation, for when he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised.”

So there’s a gift involved in every tribulation, every testing. And that should be a comfort to us—a conveyance.

**And then five, the last comfort: the comfort of can.**

The comfort of can. Again, and probably the alliteration wasn’t a good idea. But the knowledge of knowing that you can endure the trial. Because what he says is he provides you this gift, the way of escape—to what end? That you may be able to escape it, to avoid it, to get away from it. No, it doesn’t say that. It says “that you may be able to bear it.”

You can, brothers and sisters. I preach to myself: I can endure the temptation. I can endure the trial. I can endure the affliction without grumbling, without kicking against God, without falling into sin, without any kind of swaying away from the path of Christ.

The fifth comfort is knowing God tells you in this text: you’re worried that you’re going to fall. At least the Corinthians were. And he says, “Well, another comfort for you is: you can endure. This is God’s plan.”

Now, as I said, it’s not the plan we want. Usually, we don’t want to go through the Red Sea. We would rather go around the Red Sea or over the Red Sea in boats, or we’d rather turn and God give us supernatural ability to kill all of Pharaoh’s pursuers. But God says he’s not going to provide this means of escape so that you don’t have to go into the Red Sea. It’s so that you can endure the fright of walking into a sea that looks, in all likelihood, like it will absolutely drown you and your children.

God says you can do the trial that he has provided, overseeing for your well-being and the well-being of your usefulness to other people. So God says you can do it.

So God says whatever you’re going to go through at camp this week—it’s common. God says, you know, in his character he’s faithful. Even though you’re unfaithful, the people around you causing your difficulties, your body may be unfaithful, God is faithful. God says that he is going to continue to give you blessings in the midst of it. He will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you’re able. He controls it, right? So it’s common. The character of God, the control of God with the trial. He’s giving you a conveyance, a gift. He’s giving you the means of escape. And that frequently means increased character. And then finally, he tells you that you can endure this thing. You can go through the difficulty.

So whatever you’re in, understand that the Lord God says these are great comforts to you in the midst of our trials and our tribulations. We’re tempted to run away. We’re tempted to make our own way of escape, right? We’re tempted to take care of things ourselves and use our rationality and our wisdom, right? But this is it. Bottom line: our reliance, our “can-ness,” our ability to persevere knowing that we can—is based upon doing it God’s way. That we’re doing it God’s way with his means of escape, not coming up with things outside of what he prescribes in his scriptures as what we’re supposed to do.

So when we go through these trials, we will go through them. They’re many, they’re manifold. How can you get away from them? The kind of world we have, with our bodies, our minds, our fallen nature, the fallen nature of other people, the world system that we’re in—particularly these days, apathetic and now growing hostile to Jesus Christ—tribulations, trials, and difficulties are going to be endemic to your life. You’re going to have lots of them. You know this. You know you had them this last week.

But in the midst of them, God says, “Take responsibility. Own up to them.” And then he says, “Let me give you some comfort. These things are common. My character will get you through it. I’m going to give you the assurance of knowing that I’m superintending your difficulties, and then I’m actually going to give you the means of escape so that you can endure and go through this trial or tribulation.”

May the Lord God enable us to do that as we move into this week.

One last point: I know some of you—maybe all of you—were looking forward to the secret, the way of escape. Oh, you know, this guy’s not running away from things. He’s running into the Red Sea. So you know that part of it. But what’s the secret? What is the way of escape? And there is one, I think, in the text.

Now, there are things hinted at already, right? I’ve mentioned before: the Bible. The Bible is a key way of escape. I mean, when we look at the Lord Jesus Christ, right? He endured trials and tribulations. It began with the tempting of Satan in the wilderness. How did Christ endure the tempting, the temptations—the three temptations of the wilderness? Every time—maybe you young kids don’t know—he quoted the Bible every time. Bible. Bible. Bible. The scriptures are the way of escape from one perspective. They’re absolutely critical.

Don’t go through a trial and tribulation this week unaware of what the scriptures have to say. Immerse yourself in the word of God. Know the word of God. That’s what Jesus did. He’s our model for endurance according to Hebrews, right? “For the joy that was before him, he endured the cross.” How did he do it? He did it by knowing his Bible. Well, so that when trials and tribulations came, he could quote it back. 1 Corinthians 10:13 had not been written yet, but that’s one you should know. You should know the Bible well enough to give you a means of escape in the midst of temptation to sin or trials and tribulations—a temptation to just quit, a temptation to quit talking about Jesus to your friends because they’re always making fun of you, whatever it might be. Know your Bible.

What’s the last great time of Christ’s temptation, tribulation, and trials? He’s on the cross. He’s dying for you and me. What does he say in the greatest agony? “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” What’s he doing? He’s quoting the Bible, Psalm 22. So our Savior, who is the model for enduring trials and tribulations, doesn’t—by knowing the word, right? So, so certainly that’s a part of the way of escape that is very important for us: to know the Bible.

That’s kind of part of what it means to get through this stuff. And then, part of it is not expecting things you won’t have. Paul, in leading up to this, said, “We’re at the end of the ages. Look, we know new creation has come, but we also know old creation is here. Don’t expect too much. Don’t expect too little. Don’t be overly pessimistic and see everything as a difficulty. It’s not the way it is. We’re in the new creation. But don’t think the new creation is fully here and the old is done away with—and so why am I going through trials and tribulations? I must be a horrible sinner.” No. Understand where you’re living. That’s part of the way of escape.

The third part of the way of escape, again, is God’s character. Meditating on all the things that he’s told us in 1 Corinthians 10:13. But there’s another verse I want to point to, and actually it’s the next verse in 1 Corinthians 10—verse 14. He says, “God will give you the means of escape. Therefore”—what does he say? Do you know? “Flee idolatry.”

Therefore, flee idolatry. That is the secret to flee idolatry. What does it mean? Well, here’s what it means. I think the secret is having a life of coherence. Paul had earlier said in 1 Corinthians 9:25: “Everyone who competes for the prize—and remember this is a unit—is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a perishable crown, but we an imperishable crown.”

Now what Paul is saying is that the reason why Olympic runners can have what we call self-control—a properly ordered desire—is because they have an overarching goal, right? They’ve got a passion for what they’re doing. And it’s a passion that orders everything else under it.

What’s idolatry? Idolatry is taking one of those things that is not the top passion of our life—one of those good things that God gives us: sex, money, power—even running, you can make an idol of anything. It’s taking one of those great things that God has given to us and making it number one. It’s taking number two, three, four, five, 26, 27—whatever it is on the list of priorities—and making it number one. That’s the problem.

The key to making it through trials and tribulations and resisting temptation to sin is that number one has to be number one. Anything other than having this passion at the top of your life is instead idolatry. So Paul says to flee making things other than number one your passion. Flee that because that’s going to do you poorly in a time of trial, tribulation, affliction, and temptation.

The key, the means of escape, Paul tells us, therefore, is fleeing idolatry. It’s properly ordering our lives. And if we look at what Paul taught us earlier in chapter 9 and just in chapter 10, then we know that the proper ordering of our lives means the worship of the triune God and loving him so much that we are driven to serve other people and help them to hear that song being played, to read that book, to see that movie—that is the grandeur and glory of the triune God we serve that we’ve just had discussed in verse 13.

That’s the means of escape. That’s the secret.

Now here’s the thing: self-control is an oxymoron, right? I mean, the self is what you’re trying to control. So how can you control yourself by yourself? You can’t. If you have all these different things going on—your desires and things you want to do—how can you control that? The only way to control it is to order it under an overarching desire. The desire of your heart is what will determine how you order the other priorities in your life, how you’ll go about doing things.

And so the means of escape, getting safely through trials and safely through temptations, is a properly ordered—what we could call—a self-coherent life. Well, yeah, but under what? Well, it’s interesting because Paul says here, in terms of the runner, he competes for a crown. And Paul says that we compete for an imperishable crown. So Paul says the reason why, if you made a list of the 10 most influential men in history, men and women in history, where would the Apostle Paul be? What—way up there. But you never hear him talked about, do you? It’s kind of interesting. But think how important his life was to you. We’re talking about him all the time. We’re talking about what he wrote, you know, inspired by the Holy Spirit, but very influential guy. Steve Jobs? Forget it. Had nothing on the Apostle Paul over the last thousand years, okay?

So Paul—he’s at the top of the list almost because Jesus is number one, of course. How did he do that? How did he have the discipline to do all this stuff, to endure as he said he endured all kinds of persecutions, trials, and tribulations? Paul was going for a crown. He knew what was number one, which would not be idolatry for him. He knew what number one was, which was serving Jesus. But it isn’t just serving Jesus.

You know, we read this verse and we think, well, so Paul is telling us the number one desire, our crown that’ll produce the proper ordering of our lives, letting us flee idolatry and have a means of escape in times of temptation and tribulation—that Paul is telling us, “Don’t lose your salvation. That’s what the crown is. I want my eternal crown in heaven. I’m going to throw it on the glassy sea in front of God, but it’s my personal salvation.” But Paul tells us in other texts what his crown is. Do you know what it is?

Let me read a couple of these texts here. See if I can find them. 1 Thessalonians 2:19. “What is our hope, our joy, our crown of rejoicing? What is our crown?” He’s going to tell us here. He doesn’t say, “It’s my personal salvation.” He says, “Is it not even you?” He says this in other places. He says, “My crown is not my personal salvation and enduring to the end.” That’s not what properly orders my life. What properly orders my life is you.

He says to the Thessalonians, and he says the same thing in other places of scripture. He says he disciplines his body. He brings it into subjection to get this crown. And then the crown is that—Philippians 4:1. “Therefore, my beloved and long for brethren, my joy and crown—so stand fast in the Lord.”

Paul’s crown that ordered his life properly, that gave him the means of escape, was us. It was other people. It was knowing the wonder of God and relationship with God through the Lord Jesus Christ and loving Jesus Christ and wanting to share that love of Christ and the knowledge of him with all kinds of other people.

You know, we occasionally, when we were younger, went up to the Oneonta Gorge. It’s a little ways out from Multnomah Falls, and you can—I bet you this time of year it’d be quite easy going up the gorge because we’ve had no rain. Usually you have to wade—like chest high. You get very sharp walls on either side, and you get to this beautiful pond at the end. The first time we went up there, there was a guy playing a flute or something. It was just an idyllic scene. It’s like you’re in some beautiful place.

And you know what we’ve done since we went there a couple of times? We’ve told a lot of you about it. You know, when you see something beautiful, what do you want to do? You want to share it with other people, right? Nothing more frustrating than reading a great book and not having anybody to talk to about it, or hearing a great song and nobody will listen to the song you want to play for them, right? We want to play songs. We want to tell people about movies. We want to tell people about the Oneonta Gorge, whatever is beautiful and wonderful in our lives.

That’s how God has made us. We’re social beings. And Paul said that his crown was not his own personal salvation. It was wanting to share the most beautiful, wondrous reality in life with someone else.

What drove the pastor and his wife to invite the lesbian activist to their house and treat her respectfully as an image bearer of God, as a person, as a human being? They wanted to share Jesus with her, but they wanted to do it right. Right. They didn’t just want to say they’d share Jesus with somebody and then get rejected. They really wanted her to know Jesus. And it properly ordered what they did in terms of how they, what kind of food they gave her, the presentation, the sort of conversation they had. They did all that well, properly ordered.

What’s the secret? Well, the secret is to flee idolatry. Make number one number one. And Paul tells us number one is loving the Lord Jesus Christ so much that you want to share him with other people. That’s his joy and his crown: the people that he shared the gospel with. We’re part of his joy and his crown being part of receiving his epistles, right?

What does Hebrews say about Jesus, who endured the cross for the joy that was set before him? Right? That’s what it says in Hebrews 12. You know that verse. What’s the joy that was set before him? Being at the right hand of the Father? Been there, done that. Being in fellowship with the triune God? Been there, done that, right? Having glory? Been there, done that. Jesus had all that stuff that we normally think of as this joy thing at the end. What didn’t he have until he came to earth and endured the cross? What he didn’t have was you and you—us.

He didn’t have us. I think Jesus was just like Paul, that his joy, his crown was loving you so much. He wanted to share the character of the Father with you through the Holy Spirit. The secret for getting through the trials and the means of escape, Paul tells us, therefore, is fleeing idolatry. It’s properly ordering our lives. And if we look at what Paul taught us earlier in chapter 9 and just in chapter 10, then we know that the proper ordering of our lives means the worship of the triune God and loving him so much that we are driven to serve other people and help them to hear that song being played, to read that book, to see that movie—that is the grandeur and glory of the triune God we serve, that we’ve just had discussed in verse 13.

That’s the means of escape. That’s the secret. That was the secret for Paul. It was the secret for Jesus. And it’s the secret that will help you order your life correctly. Be a man and woman of self-coherence. Put first things in first place. Put other things in second, third, fourth place under the submission, right? Under the mission of you serving other people and bringing them into a knowledge of the wondrous beauty of the triune God.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your scriptures. Thank you again for the riches in them, the depth of them, and how they touch our hearts. Bless us, Lord God, as we go into this week with a remembering of these things. And may the Holy Spirit drive us, Father, into that passion of sharing you with other people. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.