“You are weak, my dear brother; so weak, so flagging,
so destitute, so beaten down in body & spirit that you find yourself unable
to surmount the least temptation. Truly you would be unable if you had to
triumph in your own strength, but do you think that our Lord triumphed in the
wilderness in his own strength? Perhaps you consider him a stranger to all your
grief, tranquil, imperturbable. But who portrayed him to you that way? It is
your imagination, not the Scriptures. The Scriptures present the Messiah to us
as “a man of sorrows, & acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3)...
Where, then, does Jesus find strength? In God. The spirit of the whole
temptation is to detach him from God. The goal is to get him first to meet his
own needs without God’s providence (Luke 4:1-4), then to receive the heritage
of the nations without God’s gift (Luke 4:5-8), & finally to display his
divine glory without God’s command (Luke 4:9-12). But Jesus holds fast to God.
It is not in his own strength that he struggles & triumphs; it is in his
Father’s strength.
If you are not as strong as Jesus, your God is no less strong than his God, so
let his rock be your rock, & his strength will be your strength. For Jesus,
for Adam, for you, it is not a question of strength; it is a question of faith.
Your own strength cannot deliver you if you do not believe, nor can your own
weakness hurt you if you do believe. Your weakness will even help you if you
know how to deal with it properly, & through the sense you have of it
pushing you to seek God’s, you will experience the truth of the phrase, “When I
am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10).
Strange paradox! Sublime truth! Instead of stopping at merely discussing it,
believe it, live it. My dear brother, are you flagging, impoverished, and
beaten down in body and spirit, unable to surmount the least temptation? Good.
You are precisely in the desired state for being victorious. It is now, when
you are deprived of the illusions of pride and absolutely despairing of
yourself, that you are going to “be strong in the Lord and in the strength of
his might,” and that you will “put on the whole armor of God, that you may be
able to stand against the schemes of the devil” (Ephesians 6:10-11).
Hold fast to God, as the branch holds fast to the vine. In him you will “find
grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16). Note well the phrase “in time of
need”. Strength is promised to you for your moment of need. You would like to
get it ahead of time, so that by casting a self-satisfied glance at your
spiritual supplies you could reassure yourself about future terrors. But this
is not the Lord’s way. He does not give today the things for tomorrow, but he
will certainly give today the things for today, and tomorrow for tomorrow. The
man with the withered hand and to whom Jesus said, “Stretch out your hand”
(Matthew 12:13, Mark 3:5, Luke 6:10)
would never have stretched it out if he had waited to receive the required
strength for this movement ahead of time, but at the Lord’s word he stretched
it out, and there it is, healed. “If you believe, you will see the glory of
God” (John 11:40).”
— Adolphe Monod, Jesus Tempted in the
Wilderness: Sharing Christ's Victory
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