“Bible promises: No temptation beyond what you can bear”
I Corinthians 10:13
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus.
I’d like to start out this morning with a quiz. Let’s call it “Is it in the Bible or not?”
Here’s the first one: “God helps those who help themselves.” Is it in the Bible or not?
The correct answer is, no, it’s not in the Bible. Actually, that phrase comes from one of Aesop’s fables called Hercules and the Waggoneer, written about six hundred years before Christ. It’s a story about a man whose wagon got stuck in the middle of a muddy road. So he prayed to Hercules--strong man that he was--to help pull him out. But when Hercules showed up, he said, “Get up and put your shoulder to the wheel.”
The moral of the story? Aesop wrote, “The gods help those that help themselves.”
Besides, could we even “help ourselves”? Not a chance(!), for the Bible says in Romans chapter 3, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23), and Romans chapter 5, “But God shows His love for us in this that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).
Or how about this one? “Cleanliness is next to godliness.” Is it in the Bible or not?
While the Bible does offer some pretty strict rules about washing hands and clothes and dishes, the correct answer is, no, it’s not in the Bible. Apparently, that saying comes from the ancient Babylonians, with a little bit of help from Francis Bacon and John Wesley who, in his sermon On Dress, said, “Cleanliness is indeed next to godliness.”
So if cleanliness can’t do it, how is godliness possible? Not by washing your hands and clothes and dishes, but only by the blood of Jesus! For Peter wrote in his first epistle, “You were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver or gold…but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot” (I Peter 1:18-19). And Paul wrote to the Corinthians: “You were washed, you were sanctified; you were made right with God in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God” (I Corinthians 6:11).
In other words, you can wash your hands all you want, but only God can cleanse your heart.
And how about one more--”This too shall pass.” Is it in the Bible or not? Once again, the answer is no, it’s not.
Apparently that phrase originally came from the ancient Persians, and then a speech Abraham Lincoln once gave at a Wisconsin State Fair, just a few years before the Civil War. Though he was simply supposed to talk about agriculture, he instead wanted to give a message of hope. So he said, “How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction! ‘And this, too, shall pass away.’”
And while it’s true that the Bible says heaven and earth will pass away (Matthew 24:35), it also says in the book of James, “Consider it pure joy, dear brothers and sisters, when troubles of any kind come your way, for when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow” (James 1:2-3).
As long as we’re at it, there are a few other phrases you’ll never find in the Bible, like “Hate the sin and love the sinner,” “Money is the root of all evil,” (actually, the Bible says, “The love of money is the root of all evil” (I Timothy 6:10)), and “When God closes a door, He opens a window.” None of those are in the Bible either.
And one more--”God will never give you more than you can handle.”
Ever heard that before? You probably have! But you know, it’s not in the Bible.
Instead, as one commentator wrote, “If we could handle everything that came our way, we could take care of our sin problem. But we couldn’t and we can’t. That’s why we needed (and continually need) Jesus.”
So far in our time together, we’ve looked at quite a lot of Bible promises. God said in the Garden of Eden: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; He shall crush your head, and you shall crush His heel” (Genesis 3:15), and He said to Noah in Genesis chapter 9: “I have set My bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between Me and the earth” (Genesis 9:13). Moses said in Exodus 14: “The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent” (Exodus 14:14). Joshua said, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15). And Isaiah wrote, “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool” (Isaiah 1:18).
From Genesis to Revelation, from one end of the Bible to the other, there’s one promise after another!
And today, we’ll look at yet one more. As Paul wrote to the Corinthians: “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and He will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation He will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it” (I Corinthians 10:13).
Right about twenty years after Jesus died and rose again, the apostle Paul was on his third missionary journey, preaching and teaching the people of Ephesus. And while he was there, he soon discovered that the church in Corinth was going through trials and troubles of all kinds. And so he wrote first one letter, and then another letter, what we today call I and II Corinthians.
He said, “I could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready” (I Corinthians 3:1-2). He said, “Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God. You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body” (I Corinthians 6:19-20). And he wrote, “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it” (I Corinthians 9:24).
Now here in chapter 10, he takes a moment to remind them that, even though God had blessed His people, the people of Israel, with one miracle after another, they kept on sinning against Him. And so he warned them, “We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in a single day” (I Corinthians 10:8). And he said, “We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did and were destroyed by serpents” (I Corinthians 10:9).
Finally, in verse 13, our Bible promise for today, he said, (this time from a more contemporary translation): “The temptations that you experience are no different than anyone else. But God is faithful, and He will not allow the temptation to be more than you can stand. But when you are tempted, He’ll show a way out so that you can endure” (I Corinthians 10:13).
Notice it doesn’t say, “God will never give you more than you can handle.” Instead, it says, “He will not allow the temptation to be more than you can stand.”
So if the Bible doesn’t say “God will never give you more than you can handle,” is the opposite true? Does God sometimes give us more than we can handle?
I’m afraid that He does!
Take, for example, a woman named Caroline Albanese. She tells the story of when she moved across the country with two toddlers and, within a week of moving, was surprised to learn she was pregnant with boy-girl twins. Meanwhile, her husband had changed careers and was trying to figure out a brand-new field on his own.
Later, when she gave birth to the twins, one of them had Down syndrome. Then Covid hit and she had to supervise her two older children doing school work from home while she cared for the newborn twins. And while she and her husband were reeling from the news that they were suddenly parents of a child with special needs, they also discovered that the other twin had a rare disease that would require multiple surgeries followed by in-home medical care. Besides that, her baby with Down syndrome began to have seizures that required multiple hospitalizations.
She said, “The emotional toll on our family was incredible! Suffice it to say, the weight on our souls has felt absolutely unbearable, and we’ve been clinging to Christ for dear life.”
Or how about this--in an article entitled Life Issues, Stress, Fear, and Anxiety, author Daniel Im writes, “In September 2019, my wife Christina and I and our kids were on our way to the airport. It was a sunny day, and we had just passed Costco. We were less than a couple of kilometers from the terminal, and then BAM! A car ran through a red light, T-boned the truck on our right, which then slammed into us on their left while trying to swerve away. A few months later, in December, we were on our way to dinner at a Chinese restaurant in Edmonton’s west end. We were less than a couple of kilometers away from the restaurant, and then, BAM! A car decided to take a left through the intersection while we were right in the middle of it. A month later, in January 2020, I got a call from my sister saying that my dad had just been diagnosed with cancer. And if that wasn’t enough, then Covid hit, things started to shut down, and our kids were sent home to finish the school year online. BAM, BAM, BAM…”
So does God sometimes give us more than we can handle? I’m afraid to say that, yes, sometimes He does!
But if you’ve ever felt that, know that you’re not alone. Think of David in Psalm 38. It’s where he wrote, “My wrongdoings are stacked higher than my head; they are a weight that’s way too heavy for me” (Psalm 38:4), and he wrote, “I’m worn out, completely crushed; I groan because of my miserable heart” (Psalm 38:8).
Think of Elijah, running for his life from Queen Jezebel. It’s when an angel came to him and said, “Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you” (I Kings 19:7).
And Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “Brothers and sisters, we don’t want you to be unaware of the troubles that we went through in Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death” (II Corinthians 1:8-9).
Or think of the people of Israel with their backs up against a wall, with the Egyptian army on one side and the Red Sea on the other, or David standing before a giant with nothing but a sling and a pocketful of stones, or twelve disciples with fives loaves and a couple of fish--a laughable amount of food to feed a crowd of five thousand.
Did God give them more than they could handle? He MOST certainly did!
Why? Here’s the key--to remind them that even though they could not, could not, do it on their own, they could lean on Him, cry out to Him, and hold on to Him, because absolutely everything depended on Him.
And so it is for us! For as Peter wrote: “Cast all your anxiety on Him, because He cares for you” (I Peter 5:7). And Paul wrote: “We glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering helps us to endure” (Romans 5:3). And he wrote: “I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am,” what? “Strong” (II Corinthians 12:10).
One more thing---whenever you fly on a commercial airline, the flight attendants always do the same thing. They stand in the aisle and show how to latch and unlatch your seatbelt, (in case you didn’t already know), how to use your seat cushion as a float, and how to open the emergency doors.
Now they don’t do all that to scare you. They just want you to know what to do in case of an emergency, before it’s too late.
And God has an escape plan for you too! As Paul wrote to the Corinthians: “God is faithful; He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, He will also provide a way out so that you can endure it” (II Corinthians 10:13).
And how is all this possible? It’s all because of the cross--the cross that reminds us not only of the brokenness of this world, but also that, even in our times of pain and suffering, He is with us. And because He is with us, we will never, ever, be alone.
We are weak, dear Father, but You are strong. We are nothing, but You are everything. Help us in our frailty and weakness to lean on You that we might find our hope and strength in You, for Jesus’ sake. Amen