Temptation Comes at the Best Moments

From Gospel Translations

When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with the humble is wisdom. . . . Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall. (Proverbs 11:2; 16:18)

If you were going to ambush a believer and lure him with some temptation, when would you do it? When do you think he would be most vulnerable, most likely to ignore all that he knows about God and holiness and joy, and to believe — even for one devastating moment — that sin might be more fulfilling and satisfying than all of that? When would you strike?

Satan himself might say (if it’s possible for him to be honest) that we are most vulnerable on the heels of a major victory or deliverance. John Newton noticed this troubling (and illuminating) thread woven through the spiritual giants in Scripture:

I have observed that most of the advantages Satan is recorded to have gained against the Lord’s servants, have been after great and signal deliverances and favours; as in the cases of Noah, Lot, David, and Hezekiah. And I have found it so repeatedly in my own experience. (Letters of John Newton, 175)

How many times have we seen the same? God seems to suddenly pour out anointing and favor on a faith-filled ministry, only to have that person betray his grace with a false kiss — with some equally surprising act of unbelief. With egregious sin.

Sure, we expect Satan to come in trials and griefs, to prey on the confused and hurting. But do we expect him when things are going unusually well? We really should.

Falling in Days of Winning

When did Noah fall? We remember the humiliating scene: “Noah began to be a man of the soil, and he planted a vineyard. He drank of the wine and became drunk and lay uncovered in his tent” (Genesis 9:20–21). And when did that happen? Right after one of history’s greatest deliverances, when God’s mighty flood wiped out every family on earth but one.

Noah was “a righteous man, blameless in his generation” (Genesis 6:9). He didn’t fall when God asked him to do the impossibly hard thing. He didn’t fall when the crowds ignored his warnings and mocked the ark. He didn’t fall when forty days had come and gone on the boat, and yet the dove still came back empty-mouthed. No, he fell in the days of his vindication.

When did David fall? “In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle . . .” (2 Samuel 11:1). The verse may ring hauntingly familiar, even if you’ve never tried to memorize it. David sent good men off to war while he “manned” the couch. “It happened, late one afternoon, when David arose from his couch and was walking on the roof of the king’s house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful” (2 Samuel 11:2). Then he summoned the woman, slept with the woman, and had her husband killed.

And when did all of that happen? Right after David had ridden into battle and delivered a crushing blow to the Syrians, killing tens of thousands of enemies (2 Samuel 10:18–19). He didn’t fall when Saul repeatedly slandered him and tried to kill him. He didn’t fall when his son Absalom betrayed him and stole the throne. No, he fell in a day of victory.

And so it was with Lot, who fell right after God plucked him out of the sulfur and fire falling on Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19:30–38). And so it was with Hezekiah, who fell right after God healed the king when he was on the brink of death (2 Kings 20:12–19). Temptation, it seems, often comes at the best moments — the moments when we’re riding some spiritual high or enjoying some spiritual victory. Garrett Kell sounds the warning: “If sin seduced the strongest man (Samson), the wisest man (Solomon), and the man after God’s own heart (David), it can outsmart, overpower, and overcome you too.” In Solomon’s own words, “Pride goes before the fall,” because Satan knows the crash is harder and more destructive when we fall from the mountaintop of God’s favor (see Proverbs 16:18).

A Battle Plan for Better Days

Have you recently experienced a breakthrough of some kind? Has God blessed the ministry in your church or neighborhood? Is God answering big prayers in your work, and giving you new measures of success? Has a long-lost family member finally come to Jesus? Has some horribly broken relationship been restored and sweetened? Don’t let this sudden and obvious grace from the Lord become an excuse to relax and stop fighting. No, “be sober-minded; be watchful” (1 Peter 5:8). Your enemy still prowls, maybe even nearer than before, in days of great victory.

Proverbs 3:5–8 lays out a battle plan against the proud complacency that so often plagues days of favor:

Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
and do not lean on your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make straight your paths.
Be not wise in your own eyes;
fear the Lord, and turn away from evil.
It will be healing to your flesh
and refreshment to your bones.

When God blesses the work of your hands, remember that it’s ultimately the work of his hands. Acknowledge him in all your ways, and refuse the thought that your success proves your wisdom and strength. The next verse drives the point home: “Honor the Lord with your wealth and with the firstfruits of all your produce” (Proverbs 3:9). Take whatever he blesses you with — in health, in spiritual insight, in marriage, in parenting, in ministry — and find a way to honor him with it.

And if you, like Noah or David or Lot or Hezekiah, have already fallen from some high place into temptation, know that God holds out great grace even for great falls. In Newton’s same pastoral letter, just below the warning above, the good pastor says,

When we have said all we can of the aboundings of sin in us, grace still more abounds in Jesus. We cannot be so evil as he is good. His power is a good match for our weakness; his riches for our poverty; his mercy for our misery. We are vile in ourselves; but we are complete in him. In ourselves we have cause to be abased; but in him we may rejoice. (Letters of John Newton, 176)