HE was tempted in all points as we are & yet did not sin

♥♪FOLLOW ME, THE MASTER SAID ♥♪

"Jesus said unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me."

God is impressed only by our character
   by:  Zac Poonen

In the New Testament, we read of One with Whom the
 Father was well-pleased, and also of a group of
 people with whom God was not well-pleased. A study
 of this contrast is most interesting.

 God Was Not Well-Pleased With Them

Of the 600,000 Israelites who perished in the wilderness in their unbelief, it is written that "God was
not well-pleased with them" (1Cor. 10:5).

 Those Israelites had been redeemed out of Egypt by
 the blood of the lamb (symbolic of our redemption
 through Christ), they had been baptised in the Red Sea
 and in the cloud (symbolic of baptism in water and
 baptism in the Holy Spirit) (1 Cor.10:2). Yet God was
 not happy with them.

 God was nevertheless very good to them, in that He
 provided all their physical and material needs
 supernaturally. "Your clothing did not wear out on you,
 nor did your foot swell these forty years", Moses told
 them at the end of their forty years of wanderings (Deut.
 8:4).

 God healed all their sicknesses too. The Bible says,
 that "there were no sick and feeble folk among them."
 (Psa.105:37 - Living).

 God did many miracles for them. In fact, no single
 group of people in the world's history has ever seen as
 many miracles as those unbelieving Israelites did, with
 whom "God was angry for forty years" (Heb. 3:17).

 This teaches us that God answers the prayers of
 carnal believers too - and that He provides them with
 their earthly needs, even supernaturally if necessary.
 The fact that God does a miracle for us proves nothing
 about our spirituality. It only proves that God is a good
 God Who makes His sun shine on the righteous and
 the unrighteous alike!

 Jesus also warned us that in the final day of judgment,
 many who had done miracles in His Name would be
 rejected and disqualified because they had lived in sin.
 He said, "Many will say to Me on that day, `Lord, Lord
 did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name
 cast out demons, and in Your name perform many
 miracles?' And then I will declare to them, `I never
 knew you; depart from Me, you who practise
 lawlessness.'"(Mt. 7:22,23).

He was obviously referring to Christian preachers and
 healers who did genuine miracles in His Name. From
 the words of Jesus, it becomes clear that MANY of
 these men (not just a few and not all, but many) who
 have these miraculous ministries are not free from sin
 in their private lives and in their thoughts and attitudes.
 This will be exposed at the judgment- seat of Christ.

 This teaches us very clearly that the working of
 miracles, by itself, is no indication that a man is
 approved by God. Have we understood this
 thoroughly? If not, we will be deceived.

 God Was Well-Pleased With Him

 In contrast to the Israelites in the Old Testament with
 whom God was not well-pleased, we read of Jesus in
 the New Testament that the Father was well-pleased
 with Him.
 When Jesus was thirty, the Father spoke these words
 about Him publicly from heaven, "This is my beloved
 Son in Whom I am well-pleased." (Mt. 3:17). And that
 was at a time when Jesus had not done a single
 miracle or even preached a single sermon!

 What then was the secret of His being approved by
 God? It was obviously not because of His ministry, for
 He had not even commenced His public ministry. It
 was because of the type of life that He had lived for
 thirty years.

We are approved by God not on the basis of the
success of our ministry but rather on the basis of our
faithfulness in the temptations thatwe face in daily life.

 The only two things that we are told about the hidden
 thirty years of Jesus' life (apart from the incident in the
 temple) are - that "He was tempted in all points as we
 are and yet did not sin"(Heb. 4:15), and that "He never
 pleased Himself" (Rom. 15:3).

 He had faithfully resisted temptation at every point and
 He had never sought His own in any matter. This was
 what delighted the Father.

 Our external accomplishments may impress worldly
 people and carnal believers. But God is impressed
 only by our character. It is our character alone that can
 bring us God's approval. And so if we want to know
 what God's opinion of us is, we must deliberately
 erase from our minds what we have accomplished in
 our ministry, and evaluate ourselves purely by our
 attitude towards sin and self-centredness in our
 thought-life. That and that alone is the infallible gauge
 of our spiritual condition.

 Thus, the world-traveling healer/preacher and the busy
 mother who is never able to leave the confines of her
 home, have exactly the same opportunities to acquire
 God's approval.

 This is why we shall find at the judgment-seat of Christ
 that many who are first here in the Christian world will
 be last there and many who were considered last here
 on earth (because they did not have a well-recognised
 ministry) will be first there!

 Christian Fellowship Centre,
 40 Da Costa Square, Bangalore 560 084, India
 http://www.poonen.org/zac
 http://www.cfcindia.com