John 10:10 (NKJV) 10“The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.
We have been studying James 4:7 which gives us two commands. First, we must submit to God. Second, we must resist the Devil. God promises that if we do both, the devil will flee from us. In our last two posts we have been looking at what we resist and how. We found that we need to resist the flow of the world where it opposes the will of God. We also must resist sin. If we allow either of these things to influence our thinking or actions more than God, his will and his Word, we will never be successful in resisting the devil.
Today I want to look at another area in which I believe we must resist the devil. We must resist him when he tries to steal the promises of God from our lives. In today’s scripture, Jesus is telling us two important truths. First, that the thief only comes to steal, kill and destroy. That is the goal of his influence upon your life.
The thief is the devil. This scripture points the three ways he tries to keep us from God’s will and God’s best. He wants to steal from you. It is not your “stuff” that he wants to steal. He wants to steal your joy. He wants to steal your hope. He wants to steal your faith, but that is much more difficult. Ultimately, he would like to steal you from God altogether.
He wants to kill you. If he can take your life, you are out of his way. You go to heaven but that is no concern of his. If he cannot take your life, he wants to kill your reputation, your witness and your integrity. His ultimate goal is to destroy any Christian that he can. To destroy you means he would ruin both your legacy and your present spiritual life. There is much more that could be said, but I think you get the idea.
Conversely Jesus only comes to provide you with “abundant life.” The definition of the Greek word is a life that is superabundant in quantity and superior in quality to anything the world has to offer. It means excessive life. That is what Jesus said is his will for us. Taken together, the picture is that the thief comes to take the abundant life Jesus died for us to have. We must resist him in this. We do not have to submit to his efforts to take what God has provided for us.
The will of God revealed in this scripture is why God gave exceedingly great and precious promises (2 Peter 1:4.) Paul echoes what Jesus says in John 10:10 by saying that “all the promises of God are yes and amen in Christ Jesus” (2 Corinthians 1:20.) God wants us to walk in the abundant life Jesus purchased for us with his blood. He wants us to believe and receive the promises that he put in his book.
That is the will of God for you in Christ. There are many teachings, both from denominational perspectives and an incorrect understanding of humility, that seem to say that we are somehow wrong to believe in these promises, especially if we are believing for them in our own lives. This is contrary to what Jesus and Paul taught. He came to give us abundant life. It is the devil who comes to take it away.
There has been imbalance to this truth that has crept into the church. I Timothy gives us some insight.
1 Timothy 6:5-7 (NKJV) 5useless wranglings of men of corrupt minds and destitute of the truth, who suppose that godliness is a means of gain. From such withdraw yourself. 6Now godliness with contentment is great gain. 7For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out.
When we make wealth or, as Paul says, financial gain our aim, we are not trusting God for abundant life. He goes on to say that those who make being rich their goal will fall into “temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition.” It is the love of money that is the root of all evil, not the money itself. There was a point where people began to put pictures of diamond rings and Rolex watches on their refrigerators to encourage them to believe for those kinds of things. That is not abundant life.
There was an interview with a very rich man who was a producer in the entertainment industry. He was asked how it felt to have so much and to be able to buy anything he wanted. His answer was, “Anyone who thinks wealth brings happiness is very mistaken.” Abundant life is not determined by what we have. It is determined by how much of ourselves we allow Jesus to have. If we are controlled by money or wealth, those things will fail us. God and his love never will.
1 Timothy 6:17 (NKJV) 17Command those who are rich in this present age not to be haughty, nor to trust in uncertain riches but in the living God, who gives us richly all things to enjoy.
As we read on from verse 17, we see that God does not condemn those who have obtained wealth. It must be understood that he is speaking of those who obtained it in the right way and not through illegal or deceptive means. If we have obtained wealth because we did honest business or even inheritance, we are not condemned. What he does say is that those who have, must be ready to give. They must be willing to give not just of their money, but also of themselves. Many who are rich give a great deal of wealth away, but since it may be a fraction of what they have, that can be something that can just be done to impress others or to make them feel better. When any of us are willing to invest our lives in others, that keeps our perspective where it should be.
What I think is a wrong idea is that we should not want anything for ourselves. The old monastic philosophy was that poverty was desirable while any kind of wealth was not. If this was true, all our slums would be filled with spiritual people. The truth is poverty is a breeding ground for crime, ungodliness, and disease. Families living in poverty are usually torn apart. The cycle of poverty is very difficult to break from generation to generation. The only thing that can break it affectively is when we bring Jesus into our poverty. He will bring life that can transcend and transform everything.
Abundant life is about trusting Jesus with everything. It is about making our relationship with him the most important thing in our lives. Nothing says it more clearly than Matthew 6:32-33.
Matthew 6:32-33 (NKJV) 32“For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 33“But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.
The context of these two verses is how we should approach things like food, clothing and shelter. He says the Father knows we have these things and as we seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness, it is his will to provide them.
Success in life, victory over our enemy, the devil, and provision for our physical needs are all part of abundant life. 3 John 2 makes it clear that everything else is secondary to the prosperity of the soul. That means that peace in our hearts through fellowship with God is the greatest part of abundant life. However, the promises that apply to the physical part of life are not left out. We need to resist the devil whenever we see that what God said is ours is being attacked. If our heart is right with God and we are seeking his kingdom first, all the rest of what we need to experience abundant, excessive life is the will of God for us. I will not allow the devil to take it away from me or from those I love and am responsible for. Neither should you.
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