Not Into Temptation | God Is Good

 God is not only better than anything sin offers— God is forever. Te Bible talks about the “pleasures of sin,” and there’s no doubt many sins do bring pleasure. There’s no point pretending otherwise. But the Bible also tells us that the pleasures of sin are only for “a short time” (Hebrews 11: 25, NIV).

By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward. (Hebrews 11: 24– 26) We’re called to look beyond the present moment to eternity. “The wages of sin,” says Paul, “is death” (Romans 6: 23). There is always a price to pay. Often those consequences are in this life: broken relationships, damaged
bodies, a shamed conscience, addictive habits. Always there are consequences for the life to come. “Sin when it is fully grown,” says James, “brings forth death” (James 1: 15). We often focus on the temptation. It starts to fill our minds, and we lose sight of the bigger picture. One person I know broke the cycle of sin he was caught up in after visiting a Christian friend who was dying in a hospice. Suddenly he was confronted with the bigger picture and forced to look beyond his sin.

Think about Moses. We know from the pyramids and sphinxes that Egyptian rulers were extremely wealthy. This was as good as it got anywhere on earth at that time— the equivalent of today’s multi-millionaire lifestyle. As a child of the royal court, Moses had it all. But he gave it all up, choosing to be ill-treated with the Hebrew slaves. Tis was because he recognized that Christ was better than all the treasures of Egypt. The Egyptians locked up their treasures in pyramids in an attempt to take them with them into the afterlife. But they couldn’t do it. In fact, many of their treasures ended up in the British Museum. Moses, however, “was looking [ahead] to the reward.” He realized that what God offered for all eternity was better by far than
anything sin could offer in this life (Mark 8: 34– 36).