The Temptation to Do Good — Norman Grubb

Next, we're going to have David Heisler. Is that your name? Come on up. Come on up. I am his. What I love about David, not that he isn't brilliant and all that good stuff. Is there something you don't love about me?

No. Well, the main thing I love is your humor. And I'm trying to think if anybody knows a good line about laughter and humor. I want to put something on the wall of my new living room. I want to have it across there about.

Well, that would work. Thank you, Elvis. There's an Elvis spotting. And it would bring forth a lot of questions, don't you imagine? That's good. That's what I want to do anyway. But David is from Lake Arrowhead, California, and he's married to lovely Susan.

I knew that. She was here several years ago. We enjoyed having her. And he's an attorney. Right. Not in the usual sense, you understand. His love is defending fathers in custody suits because he had his own steps that way.

So that's all I know about you. That's enough.

This is a very serious topic. My wife says that I never listen to her. You know, I think that's what she said. But usually I make the coffee in the morning. And just a few days ago I said I'm not doing it anymore.

And she asked me why. And I said, well, I read the Bible. And it said Hebrews. I'm done. Do one more joke or just get right into it. One more? Okay. I'll tell you one more. But it's a true story. This summer I had the honor and the privilege of traveling with the missionaries, okay, with John and Fred and Boyd for a week.

And they sent me home. But I was so honored and so appreciative of them allowing me to travel with them that when we drove through Los Angeles. This is a true story. We drove through Los Angeles. I took them to the Beverly Hills Hotel so Fred could use the restroom.

I took them to the Beverly Hills. How many people have been to the Beverly Hills Hotel? They threw us out. Now, I have to say one thing. You know, my greatest fear is I'm going to fall off the back here.

But anyway. No, no. Okay. That's okay. I need to live on the edge. I spent 30 years in doing public speaking as a high school teacher for 10, a lawyer for 14, and I fit in some stage acting in the middle.

And I have to say this, that it scares me to death to stand up and do this. Okay. And why do I say that? The point is that every one of us is a teacher because a teacher is within. And when you've got something, if you're scared to death, go with it and grab that microphone and teach the rest of us what you know.

God Reveals Himself as the Fundamental Truth

Okay. That's the important thing. But don't think that, you know, that I know Fred's scared to death and he gets up here and is natural as possible. But that's, you know, you have to do that. You have to just get past that.

And I want to say another thing. This occurred to me the other day. We always talk about, you know, God showed me this. God showed me that. God gave me the revelation. And I think in my early days as being a believer, I thought that if I could just get enough of this and that, you know, and the truth is, and what I've been coming down to is basic truth.

Okay. And basic truth is God doesn't show you this and that. God shows you himself. And what you see is him. And that because, and that kind of, you know, that's basic fundamental truth, which is the most important truth.

Okay. And the rest of the stuff is maybe superfluous to that. Which reminds me, the first time I heard Norman speak, I was 19 years old. And I went there with a seminary student friend of mine, Southwest Baptist Theological Seminary.

He was a student. I was a student at TCU. And we went to hear the old missionary. And at the end, I'll tell you more about that later, but he had, there was two books out. And I wanted to buy one of the books.

And it was The Deep Things of God and The Spontaneous You. And so my seminary student buddy, he said, well, I'm going to get The Deep Things of God because I want to get into the deep stuff. And I thought, that's too deep for me.

I'm going to get the surfacy stuff, The Spontaneous You. And, but the reality is that The Deep Things of God are really not so deep. They're very, very simple. Very, very simple. The deep things of God are, you could sum it up in about three sentences, which I have recently.

God is love. He is for others. He is us, lives his life as us. Therefore, we are for others. Our ministry is a ministry of reconciliation. And if that's as deep as you go in God, that's as deep as you need to go.

Because that's a simple truth. Not much more to it. And all truth is built on that. And if it doesn't pass that litmus test, toss it out. Because that's the simple stuff. The name, I always give a title to what I do.

The Temptation to Do Good

And I always do it in the alternative. The title of what I'm doing is Christian Ethics, Morals, and Values. And I was going to do a joke. Maybe I will. And since there is no such thing, thank you very much.

Or in the alternative, what I'm talking about is the temptation to do good. Okay, so we're talking about temptation. And I got kind of a twist on it. And so I want to talk about that. But I want to say that in terms of the simple approach, I take the Anna approach.

Everybody knows who Anna is and Mr. God. This is Anna. She was, if you don't know, how many people know about Mr. God? This is Anna. Okay, most of you do. She was five years old when this gentleman found her about 1935 on the streets of London.

She lived to the ripe old age of eight. But Anna had it right. And I'm going to quote a couple of things here. When Anna was about five or six years old, the local person said to Anna, Do you believe in God?

Yes. Do you know what God is? He's God. Do you go to church? No. Why not? Because I know it all. And what do you know? Well, I know to love Mr. God and to love people and cats and dogs and birds and spiders and flowers and trees with all of me.

Okay. Talking about Anna, Finn, that's his name, Finn says, The idea of collective worship went against her idea of private conversations with Mr. God. As for going to church to meet Mr. God, that was preposterous.

If Mr. God wasn't everywhere, then he wasn't anywhere. For her, church going and Mr. God talks had no necessary connection. For her, the whole thing was transparently simple. You went to church to get the message when you were very young.

Once you got it, you went out and did something about it. Okay, keeping on going to church because you hadn't got the message or didn't understand it was because either you hadn't got it or you didn't understand it or it was just for swank.

Swank meaning to be stylish. Anna understood basic truth. Now, our topic is temptation. And I really think that it really doesn't matter what the topic is because there is only one topic and that's Jesus.

And whatever we talk about, he is the one we are talking about. Now, what's confusing about temptation? Well, the idea, I think the standard way of thinking about temptation is that and what it's taught is that it would make me a better Christian.

It would help me grow or be a better person. And the true value of temptation as probably anything we go through is to ground you and settle you into who you are. And temptation, like anything that would happen, is not about me.

And that's the standard way of thinking of temptation. Temptation will always be ultimately about others, about the life and love of God flowing through me to others. And I think that the proper way to think of temptation is to think of the grounding and the settling into who you are and perhaps the choices that you have to make regarding the reality of who you are.

Temptation, Identity, and the Flow of Divine Life

Now, I started that, but I want to give just a very brief overview so you know where I'm going. It's like you get in the airplane, and if you don't know you're going to Philadelphia, you might be concerned once you go over Cincinnati, like, where are we going?

Okay, so I'll tell you where Philadelphia is. I mentioned the confusing part of temptation and the basic truth of everything we talk about and the importance of grounding and settling who you are as an expression of Jesus Christ in you, as you, to your world.

And I want to talk a little bit about basically how the church has got the whole thing backwards and everything is about me and about my growth and about, you know, becoming who I am. And I think it all goes back to the Garden of Eden and it goes back to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and we're going to talk about that and the tree of life.

And I think that we are in fact in the Garden and what we go through and the grounding and the settling is what it's all about. And I want to talk about how that produces faith to see reality when appearance seems to be overwhelming.

And you guys know about that. I think a lot in New Orleans about the reality being more real than appearance. And then I want to talk about basically how Jesus, the temptation that he had, and I'm certain that he was tempted far more than we ever know about.

His temptation, the quality of his temptation was exactly like the quality of our temptation. Because I mentioned this last year when I talked about the messianic prophecy and I said Jesus was not born knowing that he was the Messiah.

He had to read the verses and I think that he had to be grounded and settled into who he was and it came through temptation. And I think that we are grounded and settled into who we are through temptation.

And I think that whatever he experienced, whatever Adam and Eve experienced, is also our experience. And I think it's all the same. And I want to try to pull that all together if I can. You asked me to give my testimony.

I forgot to do it so I'll do it later. What's the flow of the universe? I kind of mentioned what it is. The flow of the universe is always out. God is love. He is God for others. Universe being inside of God.

The flow is always out. It's never back. And so we, as his expression, the flow always goes through us. And the reason why I say that is because, again tying it into temptation, whatever happens to you, remember, it's not about something happening here.

It's about something happening here. It's about the flow going out. And temptation, like everything, has got to operate based on the way God designed the universe to operate. And he designed it to operate based on himself.

Now, I don't know. It's really tough to say that God made a choice because it's human language trying to express something. But I suppose if he could have made a choice, he would have had three choices.

He could have been alone. Or he could have made the creation to serve him. But in fact, the choice, if in fact he made a choice, he made the creation to love and serve the creation. And that's the flow of the universe.

And that's basic truth. Everything flows from the inside out. And so temptation, to understand it, has got to align itself with basic truth. That the result of temptation, the ultimate result of temptation, will always be the life of God flowing through you.

And that is true. The universe operates by God's design, regardless of appearance. And appearances always seem to be to the opposite of reality. And appearances, if you read the newspaper, you look at TV, if you went by appearance, it would look like the world has gone to hell and always has been.

And the devil's in control and so on and so forth. But that never confused appearance with reality. Now, temptation can be viewed negatively or positively. Again, negative being appearance, positive being reality.

So if you view temptation as by appearance, by negative, that would mean that it's about me. And 95 of Christianity view temptation as something that's about me. Making me better. Making me a better Christian.

Or it might be because God is punishing me, so this is happening to me. Or you view temptation positively. Reality. Reality. This is not something that's happening to me except for the grounding and the settling part.

But the ultimate truth is whatever the temptation is, it's about the love of God flowing through me. And you can think of, and if we just pause for a moment, you can think of anything that happens to you, I don't care what it is, where you're tempted to do something.

And when you stop for a moment and you say, who am I? Who am I at this moment? And you become grounded and settled in the reality that you are Jesus Christ at this moment. You're Jesus Christ, you're his expression at all times.

But the moments of temptation are kind of like the spikes that happen. Now human beings are the only part of creation that need their minds renewed. And Christians especially, to be able to see reality.

And what I mean by that is humans, and especially Christians, are the only ones who have a problem just being who they are. And if you think about it, all of creation just is what it is. Fish are fish.

Birds are birds. The first bird in the formation is not turning around to the other one saying, now I want you to be better birds. I have this lesson for you. So you can be a better expression of bird.

So love the other birds more so that they'll come to believe in Jesus like we do. All of creation just operates. Trees are trees. You never see a tree saying, maybe I'm a stone, I don't know. But it's Christians who, for the most part, they're the ones that need the mind renewed.

And especially on this issue of temptation. Christians view Christian growth as, again, something happening to me. And we're going to talk about that more in a moment. Now Christians, of course, have an excuse.

Because who they are, and we're talking about who you are, who you are changed at the moment of salvation. Who you are changed from being a container of Satan to a container of God. So Christians do have an excuse as to why they're confused about who they are.

And sometimes the moment of salvation, you know it. I know it. December 17th. I said that and now I'm thinking it was December 16th, 1971. But I know the moment. And it's not important to know the moment.

I do because it was traumatic. I went from Judaism to Judaism. Just like that. I think I told you once that I try to make a point with... The very few times I ever talk to Norman, I try to make a point with him.

Well, I'm Jewish. And he said, so am I. And the point is... Okay, so then we got into the conversation. Now, let's talk about original temptation. Okay? And original opportunity. There's a saying, which I paraphrase, that I learned everything I needed to know in kindergarten.

Right? Something like that. Well, kindergarten for us is Genesis 1, 2, 3. And in the first three chapters of Genesis, it's pretty much everything you need to know. What is original temptation? Because original temptation is still our temptation.

The Fall, the Two Trees, and the Choice to Do Good

This is not... You know, what happened to Adam and Eve in the garden is not history. Okay? That is us. We are them. Right there. Okay? God had warned Adam that if you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, that you would die.

Okay? And he meant a spiritual death because he continued living after that. But Satan, in the form of the serpent, said unto the woman, no jokes about that, you shall surely... you shall not surely die.

For God doth know in the day that you eat thereof, your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. Satan is a liar from day one. Okay? And the first lie he ever told anybody is the same lie he tells today.

You talk about someone on one note. Okay? He's a liar. He's a liar. Okay? So, Satan said, knowing good and evil. This is so simple. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Satan promised if you knew good and evil, you would be like God.

And that sounds good, doesn't it? Well, I would like to be like God. Okay? And that's the same temptation we get today. And the temptation... Satan wants everyone to think that temptation is just about doing evil.

But look at what the name of the tree is. Good and evil. That's why I say my talk is about the temptation to do good. Because I want it to apply to us. But with temptation, always come with original temptation, you know, original sin, but there was also original opportunity.

And that's where we fit in, because we avail ourselves of the opportunity. I assume that the opportunity that Adam and Eve could have availed themselves of were to say to Satan, you know, we are a branch of the tree of life.

We are connected eternally to the tree of life. And we bear his fruit, and we're his expression. So we're really not interested in the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Okay? And they missed that opportunity.

And I'm not... You know, that's the way it is. And that's what God had planned. But that is also our opportunity. Okay? Because our temptation is exactly like Adam and Eve's. Okay? I think that when we experience temptation, we are also standing in front of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

And the real choice, whether it's to be evil or whether it's to be good, the real choice is to be yourself. Okay? And that's the renewing of the mind and so on. But that presentation is always made. And to be yourself, obviously, is to be...

Well, you already are yourself. That's not the point. This doesn't always know. Okay? So this is what's got to be renewed. To be the expression of who you are, which you are a branch of the tree of life.

And I quote, we see the uniqueness of the gospel is that when he who is self-giving love takes over human life, the one who has taken over himself becomes another lover. And not just... And not just blessed, but a blesser.

And not just healed, but a healer. And not just loved, but a lover. And you know who I'm quoting. That's Norman speaking. Now, original temptation produced original religion. I think that... And this is how it really applies to us.

Okay? The temptation in Genesis chapter 3, given to Adam and Eve, is the exact same temptation he has presented to the church for 2 ,000 years. Okay? It is the call to live a life... Remember what I'm talking about.

Christian ethics, morals, and values. It was a call to live a religious life. Okay? If you know the difference between good and evil, this is what Satan said. If that's where your mind is, okay, if your mind is about avoiding evil and doing good, okay, that's a call to the religious life.

Okay? That's a call to Christian ethics and morals and values. And that notion is... In other words, what Satan was calling Adam and Eve to do was to do good. Okay? I mean, how many people have thought about it in those terms?

Okay? I mean, when that struck me, the call of Satan was to an ethical life, a religious life, which runs totally contrary to the way you think of temptation. And I'm going to go over this in a second, but Satan is described in Genesis 3 -1 as the most subtle of all the beasts of the field, of all the creation.

And that's part of his subtlety. Okay? He does not want us to think in terms of the call to do good. Because, see, that's always at... Good and evil is always at a much lower level than where we're at.

The tree of life is the tallest tree in the garden. Okay? And when you're part of the tree of life and you climb to the top, you're above all of it. Okay? You're above religion. You're above good and evil.

Okay? It's not even on your radar anymore. That's not how you live. That's not how you think of yourself. Okay? But... How did I begin to think about this subject? Okay. I go to a non-denominational church.

My wife is a member. My stepson is a member. I do not want to go to the new members' class. I want to be able to attend the church for a while. I will have to speak if I go to the new members' class. I'm not going to do that.

But I like the music. I like being with my wife and my stepson there. So we go to the... Anyway, on every Wednesday, they have a guest speaker. Okay? And this guy was going to speak for two Wednesdays.

And he's a fireman. And he teaches ethics, morals, and values to other firemen and policemen and other government workers. And so, when he speaks to church groups, he changes to Christian ethics, morals, and values.

You know, and you can imagine what it was like sitting through this for the first hour and a half. And at the end of the first Wednesday night meeting, okay, I went up to him privately, and I said, you know, I'm a lawyer.

I have no ethics, morals, or values. You know? And he did the same thing. He thought that was a joke. And then I said, I corrected myself. I'm a Christian. And I have no ethics, morals, or values. And he didn't think that part was funny.

And then I corrected myself. I honed down what I said. I said, I have Jesus Christ living his life in me, as me. And I am not at all thinking about ethics, morals, and values. And we talked a little bit.

And then it came to me like that. I said, what do you think Satan was doing with Adam and Eve in front of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? He was doing exactly, and I was bold. You know, he's a little smaller than me.

But I'm a black belt. Okay? And so I kept my distance. He's a fireman. I don't know. But I said, I said, what do you think about what you're saying? You have a hundred, you know, whatever people here, captive audience.

And you are, and this is Satan speaking. I don't think I said that exactly. But I said, what do you think? I said, what do you think Satan was saying to Adam and Eve? Live a life of ethics, morals, and values.

Do good. Avoid evil. It's just so simple. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil. You know, Satan is so subtle. You know, if you ask someone about the two trees in the garden, they'll say, I mean, this is the most simple, the most basic story.

Right? And say, there were two trees? And if they remember one, they'll say, the tree of knowledge. You know, I mean, this is the most simple, basic stuff. And, and that's, that's religion. And, and it really began to think about, you know, how subtle Satan is.

And you know, we don't talk about him, and I don't like to talk about him, and I realize why. It's because he gets more airtime in the church than Jesus does. Okay? You know, you know, he's Satan, the gnat of the universe.

The gnat of the universe. Little bug. Okay? But he's, you know, like Norman says, he's God's convenient agent. And, and so we need him doing this. We, we need him, we really do need him to bring us to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Why? So we can reject it. Okay? So I'm not talking about good. I'm not talking about evil. I'm not talking about either. You know, I'm going to climb to the tallest tree, the tree of life, and that's where I live.

Okay? And, and, and so the idea is that temptation, okay, is not a question of, do I do, what is good and evil in this circumstance? You know, and then Satan's got you, got you wrapped around a little finger at that moment.

Okay? That's not it. You talk about, you know, who am I at this moment? And it's a completely different discussion than good and evil. Who am I at this moment? Okay? Because, you know, Jesus, when he got out that whip, okay, and I mean, you know, it's like we were talking about this last night, you know, I talk about wine, and I said, well, you know, in the Old Testament, there was two kinds of wine.

There was non-alcoholic, and, but Jesus drank it. Yeah, but how about the whip? That was a real whip, okay, when he chased people out of the temple. Jesus was not thinking of, is this good or is this bad?

Now, he was like, who am I? And who I am? Is this my father's house? And you get out of here. Take this junk with you. He was not thinking of good and evil. He was thinking of, who am I? Okay? You see, Satan, the subtlety, the subtlety, you know, Satan, he wears a red suit, he has horns, and a tail, and a pitchfork, and he wants the world to see him that way, and getting people to do evil things, okay, and that's the subtlety, you know, and we'll talk about Jesus in a moment, but I promise you, he did not appear to Jesus in the wilderness, wherever he was, in a red suit.

I guarantee you he didn't do it. He was far more subtle than that. Okay. Now, had an image? Okay. Well, that's part of my point. That's part of my point. No, no, no. That's fine. But I think you have to think about that.

Because, I mean, the church has taught, you know, that, you know, Satan was there, you know, Jesus, you know, and it was so clear to him. It wasn't, I don't believe it was clear at all. Would you agree with that, Fred?

I don't think that he saw Satan. And I don't think he heard any words. You know, I think that Jesus was, I mean, at least physically speaking, was totally alone. Okay. And the subtlety, and we're going to get to this in a moment, the subtlety presented to Jesus, the same as our, the subtle lie being presented to us, was to do good.

And I'm going to talk about that in a minute. Okay. That Satan wanted nothing more than Jesus to start a new religion. Okay. Based on good and avoiding evil. Okay. Anyway, I quote again, this trying to do good becomes a believer's cheap sin.

In place of trying to do evil, the sin of the unbeliever. That's Norman, God Unlimited, page 106. Okay. The second thing I realized after, after speaking, after how, realizing how subtle Satan is, the second thing I realized after speaking to the firemen, was that this message is what is preached and taught Sunday in, Sunday out, Wednesday in and Wednesday out, as often as they can get you there.

The preaching of avoiding evil and doing good, and it's a preaching of the, of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And now, now here it is. When a Christian's focus, when a believer's focus is on good and evil and religion, they, they lose their focus and they're grounding and they're settling into who they are.

Christian Growth, Spiritual Maturity, and Union with Christ

And, and I want to talk about, John, first John talks about, I love when he talks about the children, young men, fathers. Okay. Everyone starts off as a child. Okay. And the young man part, that's the part that always interests me, because how, how does he describe young men?

He says, I write unto you young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the wicked one. Okay. And 95 of the church, let's face it, are young men, young men and women.

Okay. You are strong. The word of God abides in you. You overcome the wicked one. Now, and people are very proud of that. But remember, that's all about me. Remember, temptation is not about me. Okay.

Nothing is about me. It's all about the flow. Okay. Because that's the way God designed the universe. But the, but the young man is all about me. I am strong. The word of God abides in me. I have overcome the wicked one.

And the point that I've gotten with that is that John, in writing that, never said that was good. All he said was that that's indicative of where you are. And he never said, and you need to stay there.

Okay. Because when fathers, okay, fathers know him. And that's all you need to know. That's basic. Okay. Anyway, I went, I went back the next Wednesday, because it was a two Wednesday night, thinking, you know, I made an inroad.

And I wasn't laughing. Okay. And I didn't. There was no inroad there. So I was going back to second Wednesday. Okay. Satan's Fall by Norman Grubb. Satan authored his fall not from being evil, but by trying to be God.

And his influence on us, trying to be God, is by trying to be good. I don't, you know, I talk about young men, and I talk about where the church is at, and I don't, I don't blame anybody, or talking down about where anybody's at.

Okay. The reality is everybody's at where God has them. Okay. That's the reality. So if 95 of the church is in the young man, okay, that's fine. That's where God has them. But life is full of the paradox.

Okay. The paradox is I'm where I'm supposed to be too, and if that means that I go up to the young man and say, come on, you know, let's move on from here, that's fine too. Okay. So that's the paradox.

And, you know, you don't really know exactly, you know, why God has revealed a son in you. You know, and I can't explain, you know, it's grace. I can't explain, you know, why I had only been a believer for about 13 months.

I was 19 years old when I heard Norman speak for the first time, and it took seven and a half years to get it, but I don't know, you know, why, you know, and I don't know why people spend 40 or 50 years in young man Christianity and all about me and standing at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

But I do know that this is addressed ever, you know, you think about the church for the most part and ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Now I say this, that the heir, as long as he is a child, and a young man is a child also, differeth nothing from a servant, though he be Lord of all.

Okay. And the reality is, of course, that every, I just want to touch on this briefly, that every believer is a father. Am I over my time? I'm getting it. The reality is every believer is already a father.

And I liken every Christian at the moment, at the moment of salvation, like I said, you don't need, I know when mine happened, but you don't have to know when it happened. At that very moment, you are a father.

You're an other lover, you're an intercessor, you're a father. And I liken it to a fertilized egg, a human fertilized egg. Now I checked with a doctor on this. Okay. And the doctor has assured me that the fertilized egg is 100%, at least genetically speaking, everything that they will ever be.

And at the moment of Christian conception, you are everything you will ever be. You are a father. You will not improve. Okay. Then what is it? Well, you know. Okay. It's the knowing. It's the seeing. Okay.

It's God revealing his son in you. Okay. But you're already a father. And that's the reality. So what is the Christian growth process? Okay. And through temptation or through whatever it is, it's the grounding and the fixing into who you are.

I'm an expression of Jesus Christ. He lives his life in me, as me, through me. That's who I am. I quote again. Just here lies the error of God's people and the deceit of Satan. He will always make it appear to us that there is still this old separation, the fruit of the fall.

And that, of course, is the young man stage. God is still a way out there in heaven while we're here on earth, whereas the scripture says, even with regard to the risen and ascended Christ, we are raised and seated with him, in him in the heavenlies, even as he is in the earthlings, a spiritual union beyond adequate description by human language.

Satan knows that if he can keep us in the delusion of separation, which is young man, looking at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil as a call to an ethical life, a religious life, we feel our weakness, but won't bewail our ignorance, for we see our separate selves and know the limitations and corruptions, and the best we can do is attempt to, is to call on God, send help from above, and struggle to believe that he will.

That's Norman, page 27 of Touching the Invisible. Now, I want to talk about Jesus becoming fixed into who he was by his temptation. And I've said the most subtle lie of Satan to the Christian is a temptation to do good, the call to religion, the call to the ethical life.

Jesus’ Temptation and His Messianic Mission

And I know that his temptation and his temptations were of the exact same quality as ours, same thing. And I know that because though he were a son, yet he learned obedience by the things that he suffered.