Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Sometimes it can be hard to tell if something is real or if its a fraud.

Whether it be feelings or a letter in the mail, the line between genuine and fake can be hard to decipher at times… There’s a program that runs on KY3 news at times called “On Your Side” where a reporter attempts to investigate some of these scams and help citizens guard themselves against people attempting to cheat others out of money.

Used to these types of scams were easy to tell.

They would have an area code from New York City or Miami or Dallas and you’d be told as soon as you picked up the phone that you had won an all expenses paid vacation to Jamaica or something along those lines and while it might sound really cool, you knew that it wasn’t true.

Nowadays, though, scammers have wisened up!

They have a more believable story.

They have a local phone number.

They act as though they are trying to help you… but it’s always too good to be true.

Deceit has always been a human problem.

We see this all the way back in the Garden of Eden as the serpent deceived Adam and Eve by asking a simple question, “Did God really say?” - we’ll tackle this more tonight as we look at our text, but that seed of deceit has planted its way inside the human heart and it has grown and metastasized in the generations that have followed.

We all face various trials and temptations as James 1 shared with us last Sunday night - but who is to blame for that temptation?

Many people immediately blame Satan - Satan is attacking me.

Maybe they blame another person - maybe a leader - it’s this person who is responsible for my temptation.

Some even blame God! God is the one at fault here… People are people and many of our problems are people problems and sometimes people do tempt us to do things that are wrong, this is why the people that you hang around matter.

If you hang around negative influences who gossip and speak poison about others, chances are you’ll do the same because they tempt you down that rabbit hole.

But people aren’t the biggest temptation we have.

That honor doesn’t belong to God either and it doesn’t even belong to Satan - Satan knows how to deceive and lead people astray, certainly, but many give Satan more credit than he actually deserves.

Who deserves the blame?

James will make the argument tonight in James 1:12-18 that WE are to blame for our own temptation.

That might not sound very positive, but that nugget of truth regarding our sinful nature is the start to understanding the solution to our temptation.

Let’s study tonight to see the choices that we have whenever temptation strikes in our lives

Option One: Blame God (13-15)

We opened up our study of James last Sunday night and looked at the reality of our suffering and trials in this life.

Every single human goes through trials.

We all suffer.

These things unite us as human beings and because of this, people have searched or answers and purpose in their suffering for generation after generation.

Some believe that there is a way to reach a suffering-free life and achieve true peace with the universe.

Others believe that suffering is random and purposeless and that is because our lives are due to luck and chance.

We know that both of these options aren’t true.

We know that we will suffer in this life and we also know that suffering isn’t random and purposeless.

We know that suffering is a direct result of sin as Genesis 3 tells us.

We also know that God uses suffering for something good in the life of His people - because of this, we endure through our suffering as verse 12 reminds us.

We don’t endure through sufferings with the hope of our endurance saving us (that would be a works based salvation).

Instead, we endure through our suffering because God has already saved us.

Endurance is a fruit of a saved life.

The first 12 verses of James 1 are easy to talk about in abstract form, but whenever we really dig deep into how they work in our everyday lives, it can get harder to practice what we preach so to speak.

Why is this the case?

Because we love to blame someone else for our problems.

We love to blame someone else for the temptations that we experience.

Say that we are in a trial and we give into temptation and we sin, whose fault is that?

This is where James hangs out in this passage, at least in part.

This is crucial for us to understand in order to see what sin really is and how God provides a way out during these situations.

Temptation is actually older than human sin - look with me in Genesis 3 to parse this out

The serpent tempted Adam and Eve with a simple question, “Did God really say?” and God goes to Adam asking what happened… and Adam blames Eve for the temptation.

God goes to Eve, asking what happened… and Eve blames the serpent saying that he deceived or tempted her.

We pass the buck.

It’s never our fault!

Think about what Adam said, though… The woman you gave to be with me… who is Adam really blaming here?

On the surface it looks like its Eve, but deep down, he’s blaming God, isn’t he? Adam knows that God created everything and he’s saying that the one woman that God happened to make to be with him was tempted and gave into sin… almost as if, if God has just made a different woman for him then this wouldn’t have happened… but God didn’t… therefore this is the result.

We look around our world and we see the same thing happening.

We see a rise in all sorts of unBiblical and immoral activities and practices taking place and people will say this, “I was born this way.”

What does this mean?

It means this, “My sin is not my fault.”

This isn’t a new statement, although we’re seeing the destructive fruit of this type of self-centered worldview all around us.

Look with me in Isaiah 63:17

What is Isaiah doing here?

Blaming God for the sins of the people.

This is short-sighted… Why do these people stray from God’s ways?

Why do people today blame God for their problems?

Because of our fallen sinful nature.

So what do we need, as people with sinful natures?

We need to remember the truth from God’s Word whenever we undergo trials.

We need to remember that yes, God does give trials in this life.

Trials are not accidents.

They are not random.

They are purposeful and we can rejoice in them!

But, God does not tempt us in the trial.

Because we all go through trials, we all will experience temptations and that’s because of our sin.

To say that you never are tempted to sin is to admit that you don’t understand sin or that you’re already reached a perfect glorified state that we won’t reach until we pass from this life into the next.

Instead of blaming God for our temptation, James shares that temptation does not come from God in the first place because God cannot be tempted Himself.

So what does God do?

We cannot blame God for temptation because He doesn’t tempt - but He DOES test us.

There are many examples of this in Scripture, look with me quickly in Genesis 22 for an example of a test

“God tested Abraham” - Abraham had waited for over 25 years to have a biological son and God provided as He had promised Him a son… and now God is saying that Abraham must sacrifice his one and only son with Sarah?

God tests us and He tests our faith and trust in Him and He strengthens our relationship with Him during these types of tests even when we can’t understand them in the moment.

Abraham did what God commanded but He still had faith that God was going to provide as he tells his servants that Isaac will come back down the mountain with him after the sacrifice is made.

Abraham either believed that God would provide another sacrifice, or (more than likely) he believed that the same God who brought life from a barren womb would bring Isaac back to life from the dead.

There are so many parallels between Isaac and Jesus that we’ll touch on one of these days, but now isn’t the appropriate time.

The New Testament shares in multiple places that Abraham believed in God, he succeeded in trusting in God, and this was credited to him as righteousness.

God tests His people - He does this often and there’s a purpose for it - but He doesn’t tempt us into sin because God Himself cannot sin.

So if temptation doesn’t come from God - where does it originate?

Not the enemy.

Not our neighbor… Scripture teaches that it comes from within.

Look at James 1:14

Church, this is hard to understand and harder to admit to ourselves.

We have a fallen, defective, depraved heart that is prone to ignore, reject, and leave God’s Word and the God of the Word.

Yes, God is in control.

Yes, the Lord gives and the Lord takes away as Job 1:21 shares.

Yes, God is in control - read Proverbs 16 as a whole chapter or Matthew 10:29

But we know that our sin is ours to bear.

We don’t sin because God made us.

We are living in a world that is living in defiance to God’s Word and the reason why is because we are following our heart

What is the danger with this?

Where our evil desire leads… James uses a child birth picture to talk about the ramifications of our sinful nature.

We are deceived by sin because part of ourselves desires that wrong thing and then we follow through with disobedience and eventually that disobedience leads to death.

David Platt shares this 4-fold process with sin.

Deception

Desire

Disobedience