Temptation Might Not be What You Think

I experienced one of the most uncomfortable situations in my life in a courtroom in Kampala, Uganda. My wife and I had just arrived in time for our long-anticipated adoption court date in 2010. We were sleep deprived and stressed from navigating the intricacies of legal adoption in a foreign culture. As we awaited our turn on that morning’s docket, I had to use the restroom. I asked our attorney where to find one, and he pointed me around a few turns to what I thought would be a big, American-style public restroom. Discovering a stuck door, I applied some force from my right shoulder. With the door now ajar, I realized that I had not entered a public restroom; I had walked in on someone in a private restroom!

I quickly apologized and scampered back to the courtroom waiting area hoping to never see that gentleman again. A few minutes later, our names were called to stand before the judge. At that moment, I came to the horrifying realization that the victim of my intrusion was none other than the judge presiding over our case. I had caught the most powerful person in my life that day in the most vulnerable position imaginable.

In 1 Samuel 24:3, David likewise catches the most powerful person in his life in a vulnerable position. King Saul had raised an army of 3000 men to find David and kill him. Meanwhile, David is hiding out in “the wilderness” with a motley crew of 600 of his own loyalists. Here’s what happens next: “And he came to the sheepfolds by the way, where there was a cave, and Saul went in to relieve himself. Now David and his men were sitting in the innermost parts of the cave.”

We need to know one important detail if we’re going to fully appreciate David’s response. God had already rejected Saul as king and had chosen David as his replacement. David knew this. So David finds himself in a situation where he can easily end the threat to his own life and simultaneously expedite the process of claiming the throne. With one thrust of Goliath’s sword, David can dramatically improve his life. And everyone with him thinks he should do it (v. 4). He would be crazy not to. This is the day!

But David refuses. Saul is the Lord’s anointed. David believes it’s not his place to expedite the process. More importantly, he believes that if God has made a promise, God is in control of when and how that promise comes to fruition.

David’s experience in the cave in the wilderness is a test. In fact, it’s a replay of a test we see recurring in the Bible—a test of faith. In Genesis 3, Adam and Eve face a similar test and fail. God tells them not to eat of the tree, and they listen to a different voice. They refuse to trust God and decide instead to take matters into their own hands. In Israel’s time in the wilderness, they too are tested. Will they trust God’s provision on their way into a land “flowing with milk and honey”? They don’t. They complain. They refuse to wait. They fail. Finally, Jesus is “led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil” (Matthew 4:1). The devil shows him all the kingdoms of the world and promises them to him right then and there if Jesus will just worship him. Jesus knows he’s going to inherit all the kingdoms of the world anyway. Satan was tempting Jesus to skip the cross.

David passes his test in the cave, but he would eventually fail a similar test on a rooftop. Jesus is the only one who passes every time. In fact, Jesus is qualified to be our Savior because he was tempted in every respect as we are, yet without sin (Hebrews 4:15). Jesus is our righteousness, our Better Adam, Better Israel, and Better David.

I’m struck by the nature of these tests. We typically think of temptation exclusively in terms of being allured to do something forbidden by God. However, in each case above, the temptation is not toward something forbidden, but toward something God has promised but not yet. Even in the garden, there’s good reason to believe that God was going to eventually grant Adam moral knowledge at a time when he was ready for it. The temptation we face most often is the temptation to rush God, to claim his promises in our own timing and in our own way. We fail the test because we are not willing to wait, to trust, to submit to God by faith.

Are you willing to trust God, not just for the end he has promised, but also in the process toward getting there? Here’s the principle: The end God ordains must be reached by the means God approves.

As Christians, we must resist the shortcuts that promise blessing apart from faith. We must continually be on guard against the offer to get ahead without the hard process of learning to wait on God. We must resist the plethora of quick fixes that promise to get us to the destination apart from our own time in the wilderness. We must say “no” to purchasing the Disney “fast pass” whereby we get to skip the line. For Christ’s people, the process is also the goal. We are learning to trust him in the wilderness of life because we are heading toward a future where we will be like him. There’s no shortcut to the destination.

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