When the devil had finished tempting Jesus, he left him until the next opportunity came. [Luke 4:13 (NLT)]
While I expected bear sightings when we lived in the mountains of Colorado, I never expected a bear to find its way into our Florida community and scavenge in a neighbor’s trash bin on her driveway! While bears generally prefer natural foods like berries and nuts, as civilization encroaches on their habitat, those foods are becoming less abundant. Driven by their need to eat, bears will go where they can find any food. With a sense of smell that is seven times greater than a bloodhound’s, it’s estimated they can smell a food source from as far away as 20 miles. Opportunistic creatures, they take advantage of whatever is easily available, whether bird seed, pet food, barbecue grills, or garbage.
Tenacious and intelligent animals, bears will spend hours solving a problem if food is involved but, since they lack opposable thumbs, bears couldn’t open the lock on our community’s “bear-proof” dumpster in Colorado. At the time, however, the doors on Subarus didn’t require thumbs to open and the hungry bears in our Colorado town eventually learned how to open the doors of unlocked Subarus. After that, no unlocked Subaru in town was safe from a bear! Once a bear gets inside a car, the door often closes and traps it. By the time the imprisoned angry animal manages to make an exit, the car’s interior is wrecked and the bear has done what it usually does in the woods! Nevertheless, just as people often forgot to latch our dumpster, some people still left their cars unlocked!
Satan is as opportunistic and tenacious as any black bear and, if we let him, he can leave our lives even more messed up than a bear does a Subaru. Rather than sniffing out the aroma of a garbage can or a candy bar on the dash, he has an uncanny way of sniffing out our vulnerabilities and spotting our weaknesses. Think of the story of Job. When Satan couldn’t get him to curse God by taking his wealth and livestock, servants, herdsmen, workers, and children, he came back and took the man’s health. Although Job never cursed God, he lost perspective and cursed the day he was born. As determined and unwilling to admit defeat as a black bear, Satan probably was behind the words of condemnation spoken by Job’s wife and friends. Like a hungry bear, the enemy does not give up easily. When the devil failed to tempt Jesus in the wilderness, he departed “until the next opportunity.” Like the Terminator and hungry bears, Satan will be back.
Just as storing garbage inside, latching bear-proof dumpsters, and locking car doors is a way to prevent bear problems, being aware of our vulnerabilities is a way of protecting us from Satan’s attacks. Recovery programs often use the acronym H-A-L-T as a reminder. Standing for Hungry, Angry, Lonely, and Tired, these feelings make us susceptible to Satan. While we often think of hunger as that grumble in our tummies, it is more. Hunger is dissatisfaction, frustration, a desire for something more or different and often has nothing to do with food. Anger isn’t just being mad at someone. Anger is holding on to unforgiveness, hostility, and resentment, and often includes casting blame. While lonely seems self-explanatory, we don’t have to be alone to be lonely. Even when surrounded by people, we can feel isolated, unappreciated, deserted, and desolate. Being tired can be physical exhaustion, but it’s also apathy, feeling drained by circumstances (or people), or wanting to abandon both hope and effort.
Being aware of these feelings when they arise helps us take extra precautions to protect ourselves. Instead of locking our dumpsters and cars, we redouble our efforts to study God’s Word, pray, worship with praise, offer thanks, gather in Christian fellowship, or even seek Christian counseling. When we leave ourselves vulnerable with hunger, anger, loneliness, or tiredness, we’re little safer from the enemy’s attack than people who keep their food in their tents when camping, store their garbage outside, don’t lock their Subarus, or fail to latch bear-proof dumpsters. Whether from bears or Satan, we’re just asking for trouble.
Satan loves to fish in the troubled waters of a discontented heart. [Thomas Watson]
The Levites (descendants of Jacob’s son Levi) were set aside for religious service. While all priests were Levites, not all Levites were priests. The most sacred tasks, like offering the sacrifices and conducting ceremonies, were reserved for the priests (kohanim) who were descendants of Aaron; the rest of the Levites supported the priests in their duties.
Evil is anything that contradicts the nature of God and it’s easy to see Satan’s presence in malevolent acts like terrorism, genocide, slavery, torture, and human trafficking. The enemy, however, is usually far more subtle. Evil also includes things like anger, pride, fretfulness, immorality, pettiness, selfishness, deceit, envy, spite, unforgiveness, hatred, hypocrisy, envy, jealousy, greed, and unkindness. Although we’re more likely to find them in our hearts than genocide or murder, they’re not as easy to recognize. Because it’s easier to see the evil done by others than it is to face the evil in our hearts, we don’t spot Satan when he comes slithering into our lives.
When writing about nitroglycerin recently, I realized there’s something else in our lives much like this strange chemical that is both helpful and harmful. Like nitroglycerin, man’s capabilities are a dichotomy between good and evil, constructive and destructive, and beneficial or detrimental. The same mind capable of creating a vaccine that saves thousands of lives is capable of creating a nuclear bomb that can take those lives. James speaks of this incongruity when writing about the way we use our words, “We use our tongues to praise our Lord and Father, but then we curse people, whom God made like himself. Praises and curses come from the same mouth! My brothers and sisters, this should not happen.” [3:9-10]
Aaron’s four sons were priests and, in Leviticus 10, his oldest sons Nadab and Abihu offer incense to God in the Tabernacle. The incense symbolized the people’s prayers rising up to God and the coals used for burning it were to be taken from the altar of burnt offerings outside the sanctuary. Although priests were required to fulfill their duties precisely, Scripture tells us the two offered “strange” or “unauthorized” fire and were immediately consumed by fire from God!
Because the literacy rate in the 1st century was around 10 to 15%, only a few people could read the Hebrew Scriptures or Apostolic letters. By necessity, the new faith came about through public reading and preaching. In his letter to Timothy, the Apostle Paul warned of a time when sound doctrine would no longer be tolerated. Rather than reproof, rebuke, exhortation, and instruction, people would want to have their itching ears knéthó (meaning tickled or scratched). Rather than knowledge and doctrine, they’d be more interested in myths, sensationalism, and viewpoints suiting their desires. I fear that time has come!
