Paul Harvey Quote - Timely for Christmas

American radio broadcaster Paul Harvey once told a modern parable about a religious skeptic who worked as a farmer.

“One raw winter night the man heard an irregular thumping sound against the kitchen storm door. He went to a window and watched as tiny, shivering sparrows, attracted to the evident warmth inside, beat in vain against the glass.

Touched, the framer bundled up and trudged through fresh snow to open the barn door for the struggling birds. He turned on the lights and tossed some hay in a corner. But the sparrows, which had scattered in all directions when he emerged from the house, hid in the darkness, afraid.

The man tried various tactics to get them into the barn. He laid down a trail of Saltine cracker crumbs to direct them. He tried circling behind the birds to drive them toward the barn. Nothing worked. He, a huge, alien creature, had terrified them; the birds couldn’t comprehend that he actually desired to help.

The farmer withdrew to his house and watched the doomed sparrows through a window. As he stared, a thought hit him like lightning from a clear blue sky: If only I could become a bird – one of them – just for a moment. Then I wouldn’t frighten them so. I could show them the way to warmth and safety.

At that same moment, another thought dawned on him. He had grasped the reason Jesus was born.”

Fight Like a Man

In Matthew 4, Jesus cites written scripture to defend against Satan's temptations.  It seems natural that, being himself the Word incarnate, Jesus would cite the written law to fend off Satan's attacks.  So, why would Satan even get into a duel with Jesus regarding scripture?  Did he not think Jesus knew it backwards & forwards?

And second, did Satan not know who Jesus was?  Didn't he realize that Jesus already knew he could turn stones to bread?  According to John, all things were created through Jesus.  If Jesus created the stones in the first place, surely he knew He could turn them to bread without Satan pointing it out.  ("Wow, Satan!  I never thought of that.  I've been starving for over a month, and all this time I could've just turned the stones to bread.  You've been a really, really big help.  Thank you so much!")

Of course, Jesus' deity was absolutely known to Satan.  After all, even the demon(s) 'Legion' recognized him on sight.  (Mark 5:9)  But, Satan realized that He was not only God, bu he was now also fully human, and therefore, as vulnerable as He ever would be.  This was Satan’s best chance for victory over God.  Jesus was human.  He was hungry from being in the desert for 40 days.  And, He had the full creative power of God at His disposal. 

I remember times when I was hungry...usually, just before dinner.  On one occasion, I had fasted literally for hours (can you imagine?), and I spied a snack that I knew would ruin my dinner.  But, I justified the snack as being an ‘appetizer’ and ate it, and then regretted it.

That’s a pale comparison to what Jesus suffered.  He was 40 days in the desert, not 4 hours since lunch.  He was tempted by the ultimate tempter, not by a candy bar.  Yet, where I succumbed, he overcame.  He didn’t justify yielding to his temptation.  Instead, he justified his suffering by quoting scripture.

The temptations were fended off not as the Creator of the Universe would fend off temptations.  No lightning strikes.  No powerful winds blowing the Devil into a valley.  No ooh-ah miracles whatsoever.  Instead, Jesus resisted the temptations using the scriptures found in the Bible.  

Maybe this was Jesus’ way of showing us how we should fight Satan's temptations.  Every one of Satan's temptations was thwarted by Jesus' knowledge of scripture.  Not by His deity.  Not by His omnipotence.  Not by His connection to the Father.  It was Jesus the man that fought Satan and won, using the same resource each of us has at our disposal—the Bible.

To put it another way, if Jesus had used his Godly powers to overcome Satan's temptations, then wouldn't man say, "Well, yeah Jesus can do that.  He's God.  We're just men.  We can't stand up to Satan and win."  So instead, Jesus used the tools available to man to defeat Satan's temptations...to show us how to do it.  By his scriptures, by his Word, we have the tools we need to defeat Satan's temptations.  Paul Harvey once said something like, "Jesus lived a good life in a wicked world to show us it could be done."  (He added, "And he died. And he rose again. To show us...we could do that too.")

But, we have to know scripture, and we need to be adept with it.  To own a Bible is a very different thing than to know the Bible.

I have a router table, and it's a pretty good one.  An expert woodworker could probably do amazing things with it.  When I use it though, every once in a while, a work piece explodes in my hands.  I shut down the router, count my fingers, and go looking for the shrapnel and shards that disintegrated in my hands.  It's a good tool.  I'm just not very good at using it.  It's not that I don't have the potential to be good at it.  I do.  But, here's the problem.  I need to work with it more so I can become good with it.  But, it can be hard, and who has the time?  (Yeah, you know it--it's a metaphor.)

Most of us have a Bible.  Most of us who have Bibles, don’t read them regularly.  We wait for our preachers to tell us what we need to know about the Bible on Sunday mornings.  We get biblical snippets from social media that make us feel warm and comforted.  And, that feels like enough.

But, that’s not enough.  That’s like practicing karate by owning a gi and nunchucks, and watching Bruce Lee movies on TV.  We could actually get up and practice the strikes, blocks and kicks.  But, it's hard, and who has the time?

We simply must read and study the Bible if we are ever to use scripture as our shield against temptation.  We must become adept with the Word of God so that we can wield it like a sword.  Otherwise, temptation will make our lives explode in our hands like wood on a router table.