Sermon Tone Analysis

Ministry of Temptation

STRANGE MINISTERS

Ron Dunn

1 Corinthians 10:13-14

 

        There is something that all of us have in common.

No matter who you are, your position, your education, your spirituality  That is the experience of temptation.

The Bible makes it very clear in a number of passages that temptation is the appointed lot of all of us.

Failure to understand the meaning and the ministry of temptation can lead to a great deal of frustration and failure in the Christian life.

As you and I come to know Jesus in a greater way, and as the experience of the Apostle Paul in Philippians 3 becomes ours (when he said that I may know him, that I may come to know him as I've never known him before), there is going to be at the same time greater knowledge of temptation.

By that, I mean experiential knowledge of temptation.

You are going to be facing more temptation.

Listen as I read verses 13 and 14 of 1 Corinthians, chapter 10:

There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man:  but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.

Wherefore, my dearly beloved, flee from idolatry.

There hath no temptation taken you:  the word taken means to see and hang on.

Doesn't that graphically describe some of the temptations that you and I have to endure?

It not only seizes us suddenly but it just seems to hang on doggedly and stubbornly.

Some of us struggle with the same temptations day after day, month after month, and year after year.

We wonder why these things come upon us.

Why is it that God allows some of these experiences?

Is it because we are still sinful?

Is it because we are still not right with God?

Many times I have talked with Christians when facing severe temptation, and their first reaction was:  well, I must not be right with God.

Maybe he really isn't Lord in my life.

Maybe I'm not even saved.

You need to understand two or three things about temptation if you are going to enter into the ministry of temptation.

I think it is remarkable how everything that God brings into our lives, or allows to come into our lives, has a ministry to perform.

I praise the Lord that he is in such absolute control of all circumstances and situations that everything that happens to me and comes to me performs a ministry—even if it is tragedy.

At a couples retreat some time ago, we had some testimonies.

I was overwhelmed by two or three of the testimonies as young married couples stood and testified of tragedy in their lives.

One child had been run over by a car and killed.

Another child had died of leukemia.

As these couples stood and gave testimony of how God used those experiences to bring them to Jesus, and to bring their home together, and to bring them to a full and abundant life, I thought how amazing it is that God can take the worst things that befall us and use them as a ministry for his glory and for our ultimate good.

You need to understand this, Christian, everything that happens to you does not happen because of some impersonal, unknowable fate.

It happens because there is a loving Father in heaven who is seeking to work and carve out his purpose in his life.

There is a ministry of temptation.

We are going to say three things about temptation as revealed in these two verses.

First of all, God permits the experience of temptation.

God permits us to be tempted.

Notice what the Apostle says:  There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted above that ye are able.

That little expression God will not allow you to be tempted tells me two things.

1)  It tells me that temptation itself is not a sin.

If it were a sin, God would not allow it to come to me.

God allows me to be tempted.

Temptation itself is not a sin.

I find increasingly that Christians don't understand this.

The devil comes and tempts us, and at the same time accuses us because we are tempted.

He says:  if you were really right with God, if you were really saved, you wouldn't have those thoughts.

Those thoughts would never occur to you; that desire would never well up within you if you were really right with God.

You need to understand that the temptation itself is no sin.

The book of Hebrews says that Jesus Christ was tempted in all points, not a few, such as we, yet without sin.

Jesus was led of the Spirit, driven by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.

Jesus was sinless; yet he was tempted.

When the devil tempts you, don't let him bluff you into thinking that the temptation itself is a sin.

It is no sin.

This phrase also reveals another truth to me.  2)  God allows the temptation.

He permits the experience of temptation in my life.

God himself tempts no man.

It says that he allows the temptation.

He himself does not tempt us.

Listen to James, chapter 1, verse 13: 

Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God:  for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man: but every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.

What about those accounts in the Old Testament where it says that God tempted Abraham, and God tempted Israel?

The word temptation is used in two different ways in the Word of God.

It is used with the meaning to entice to evil, enticing someone to sin.

God never tempts anyone in that manner.

God never tries to get you to sin.

He never entices you to evil.

James says that when a man is drawn away to sin, when he has this impulse to sin and do that thing which is unholy, he cannot accuse God of bringing that temptation.

Temptation is used another way in the Bible:  to put to the test, to try something to see if it real or not.

God does tempt us in this way.

He puts us to the test.  1 Peter, chapter 1, speaks of the trial or testing of our faith.

In other words, God leads us into experiences to test us, to try us to see if our faith we profess is really genuine.

Abraham had made his profession of faith.

He had said, Lord, I am yours.

I put you above everything that I possess and everything that I love.

So God tried his faith and put him to the test.

God does test us and try our faith.

God never entices us to sin.

The enticement to evil never comes from God, but God permits us to be tempted.

Why does God permit us to be tempted?

What is the ministry of temptation?

I think there are two basic reasons that God allows you and me to be tempted.

Every person here has been tempted.

Some of you have yielded to temptation, and that is sin.

Some of you have been confused by the temptation, and it has caused you to be filled with doubt and uncertainty about your relationship to God.

Why does God allow this temptation to grab hold of me and doggedly hang on?

God allows us to be tempted to expose us to our own weaknesses.

In Deuteronomy, chapter 8, God is giving an explanation why he led the people into the wilderness for forty years.

In verse 2, Moses says: 

And thou shalt remember all the way which the LORD thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, (Now, why did he lead them into the wilderness?) to humble thee and to prove thee,  (That word prove means to examine, to expose.) to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldst keep his commandments, or no.

Do you know what the children of Israel had said on one occasion?

Whatever the Lord tells us to do, we'll do it.

They were lifted up with pride and self confidence, and God allowed them to be tempted.

He permitted the experience of temptation to expose to them their sinfulness, wickedness, and rebellion that was in their hearts.

One of the easiest things for a Christian to fall into is spiritual pride and spiritual presumption.

You and I get to the place where we think that that we have arrived.

I came, I saw, I conquered all things.

God says that you don't realize the wickedness that is in your own heart.

It is very difficult to see the weakness and sinfulness in our own hearts so God allows the devil to tempt us to evil so that we might recognize the sinfulness in our own hearts.