How did you escape that temptation? Or maybe you didn’t escape at all, but instead you fell to your desire?

I think most Christians who have been around church for awhile know this verse, or at least are familiar with it.

They hear the part about how God is faithful and won’t let us be tempted beyond what we are able, but makes a way of escape.

They hear this. But then they fall to the temptation anyway. And then they scratch their heads and wonder why this verse doesn’t seem to be working for them.

Now if this verse could be taken standing alone, by itself, without regard to it’s context, there would be a lot less Christians who were screwing up their lives and committing acts of stupid.

But lots of Christians succumb to their foolish impulses (their temptations) and then look back and wonder why God didn’t intervene with a “way of escape.”

It’s because the way of escape is not something that just automatically happens. God doesn’t just suddenly grab you by the arm and pull you out of a situation that you probably shouldn’t have been at in the first place.

And even if your place of temptation was somewhere that you arrived at completely by accident, He isn’t going to physically drag you out of that situation.

God’s faithfulness doesn’t work like that. The way of escape isn’t arbitrarily provided to you.

Do you want to know how this system of protection REALLY works? We need to read the previous two paragraphs. They are the KEY to seeing the provision of God’s faithfulness in providing you a way of escape from your temptation.

Ignore the context of this verse and you have taken away it’s power. It’s like having kernels of popcorn but not having the heat to make them pop. You have what you need, but you can’t use it.

First of all, let me just say that there is no doubt of God’s faithfulness. He has certainly provided you the popcorn kernels. AND the heat. But the heat is provided in partnership with you. And the heat can be turned off when you don’t fulfill your partnership role.

The previous verses of this chapter show that the Old Testament Scriptures were provided for us so that we could learn from the examples of those who failed in their walk with God. We can learn a lot by simply meditating on the things that they did that caused disasters in their lives.

When we know the Scriptures, and Paul is specifically speaking about the Old Testament here, because much of the New Testament hadn’t been written yet, the Holy Spirit can draw out their power into our lives and help us navigate safely through the treacherous waters of temptation.

But if you don’t know the Scriptures, then you have nothing for the Holy Spirit to use in providing the way of escape.

You are able to “bear” the temptation from the power within you that interaction with the Scriptures teaches you to be able to draw from.

You are not delivered from temptation from the outside. You are delivered from temptation from the inside.

But this powerful system of deliverance will not work for you if you aren’t studying the Scriptures.

And this is why so many Christians fall to temptation instead of being delivered from temptation. They have failed to study the Scriptures.

Do you see now how critically important studying the Scriptures is? The only reason that Christians fall to temptation is that they were ignorant of the Scriptures that would have been their way of escape.