When You’re Tempted
Notes
Transcript
You know what one of the superpowers you get when you become a mother is? Supervision
Next week let us know
I don’t know how many of you have seen the movie Fight Club, but in the movie, the narrator, played by Ed Norton has this problem. He has a good job and a decent life and everything the American dream could possibly offer him, his issue is he is still unfulfilled in life and is longing for something more. He ends up destroying everything he tried so hard to create to make himself feel better, but along the way he reaches out to all kinds of men who feel the same way and they find this enjoyment and fulfillment in being the opposite of the people they were to get into the places they found themselves comfortable. So, they have this fight club, with these rules, and some of you probably know them because they are recited over and over again. But the Narrator has something and is enticed for something more in life.
This may be even more evident in The Matrix, as Neo is living this completely normal life and is compelled by Morpheus to look for more. He is told the world he is living in is not the real world, there is so much more for him if he just takes the blue pill he will be able to wake up and think freely. He won’t be forced to believe the things the matrix is causing him to believe and see because those things are not even real; take the pill and see the world as clearly as you could ever imagine - as it truly is.
If you listen really carefully you can almost see this similarity to what happened with Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. In the garden, they had been living with God and he promised to take care of their every need and desire, all the food they would need was there, all the water they needed was there, in fact before the fall they didn’t even know what thirst and hunger were, these were all consequences of the fall. In the garden, God gave them some simple rules, don’t eat of this one tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Seems easy enough right, anything you want you can have, except that one. That one you are not allowed to partake of. What we find is soon after the serpent comes and begins to speak to Eve, and he tempts her. He tells her, look, I know God told you you couldn’t eat from this tree, but you can, you won’t die, he just doesn’t want you to eat from it because if you do, your eyes will be opened and you will become like him. I have heard the question, did they really have an idea of what it was like to be like Him? Did they understand what they were doing, did they understand what it was the serpent said they would receive? I think there has to be some concept here, because look at what we read in Genesis 3:6
6 When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.
She knew it had something to offer her, it would make her wise, and with this talk of wisdom from the Book of James it should kind of hit us in the face, as we understand we come into full wisdom as we die and enter into communion with God in eternity. However, that wasn’t the issue, the issue is they disobeyed, they broke the covenant, and the world entered into sin. Why? All because they were tempted and fell into this temptation; the enemy came and whispered softly into their ears the things they wanted to hear and they allowed it to overcome them. This is exactly what James is warning us about this morning, what to do when we are tempted. Let’s read his words in James 1:13
13 Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone.
14 But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust.
15 Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death.
16 Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren.
17 Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.
18 In the exercise of His will He brought us forth by the word of truth, so that we would be a kind of first fruits among His creatures.
Right there in the middle of all of these verses are the words that kind of put the first half and the second half of this chapter on equal footing, its the shifting point and the point that ties it all together. He says, do not be deceived my dear brothers.
So before this he has spent an extensive amount of time, okay its 12 verses but there is so much there, telling us, look trials are going to come, we can’t get away from it, and we have to find joy in all of that because it is through those trials and our faith to deepen and grow because we are holding on to him and not allowing our faith to be shifted by the wind, because a faith untested is a weak faith. So, we are tested to prove God is trustworthy and reliable to be with us in our lives, but with temptation, he is showing us God doesn’t give us temptation; temptation is not from God.
The first thing we need to do here is we need to understand exactly what we are talking about when we say the word temptation. We need to be on the same page so as we walk forward we know what we are talking about. So temptation is the enticement, or invitation to sin and evil. What is evil, anything that is contrary to God’s law and His will. Sin is when we break his law, or rebel against him.
So, James tells his people, look I know I told you that all trials come from God, but vs 13
13 Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone.
He says none of the temptation in life comes from God, because there is no evil in God, remember evil is all of the things against his will and his law. The truth is, if God were to tempt us, if he were the one that put the temptation in front of us, it would men there was a part of him that enjoyed evil. Because if he puts it out there to to tempt you it means there is some pleasure he would find in doing wrong, and that is completely impossible is what James is telling us here.
This is a huge juxtaposition of everything we have found before in this chapter of James, he is saying, look trials, are of God and he uses those to flex your faith muscles and get them stronger so you can have this Godly wisdom in your life and you will be able to USE the knowledge you have for Good. Remember, that is the difference in knowledge and wisdom, taking the knowledge of God and putting it to work.
So then, you may ask, if temptation doesn’t come from God, where does it come from?
14 But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust.
Oh, that makes sense, it doesn’t make us feel better, but it is understandable. He says our temptation is caused when we are enticed by our own list. I think the ESV says, our own evil desire. So, the important thing here, and I think this is exactly what the NASB is differentiating when it uses the word lust, is not every desire we have is evil. Its not that all of our desires are evil, because they are not, but all of our desires can be evil when we allow them to become selfish and unbridled, which is what lust can almost be defined as.
So, here is James shooting from the hip, its almost like he’s sat in some therapy sessions as a pastor and listened to people try to explain away why they have done something against the will of God. If not that, he has been in a home where a five year old is explaining why they put their hands on their sibling, “Well, they called me a dummy, so I hit them.” It’s their fault, not mine, is the implication here.
Think back to the Garden of Eden, what happened there? After they ate the fruit, God asks Adam what happened here, and Adam says, “It wasn’t me. It was that woman you gave me.” What about Eve? What is her excuse? “It wasn’t me, you see, there was this serpent…” And the blame just goes right down the line.
We do this, we may not always blame people, but we will blame the environment we are in, we may say well, I had no choice, did you see the situation I was in, I had to do it. Or we may just blame the devil himself. I have heard people before expressly blame him, the devil made me do it.
James just comes right out and says, look I know what you want to do is blame everyone else for your temptation and why you failed, some of you are silly enough to want to blame God for it, but what you need to understand is, its all your fault. You know why you sinned fell to that temptation? Because you wanted to.
The key here he says we are carried away by our own lusts, and I think that is very important because what it tells us is what tempts you and I are different. What may drag you in isn’t going to be the thing to take me under.
I can tell you one thing for sure, you will never find me being tempted by someone offering me front row tickets to a Louisville Cardinals basketball game. I’m sure some of you can relate, you probably wouldn’t be tempted to go to a….
I know that sounds fairly easy to understand and simple, but the problem is this is what James is talking about here, we are carried away, we are enticed, in fact instead of being carried away the ESV says lured away. Remember he is using this wording when it comes to our desire to sin to being tempted and I think this makes a lot of sense if you are a fisherman. What are the little things you throw into the water called? Lures. So when you fish you throw this lure into the water, and the hopes are the fish sees its swimming around, and they think, “Man, look at that, doesn’t that look delicious, I mean its just floating around all by itself, oh man on man,” and all of a sudden, the look, the color, the way it jiggles in the water and then stops. It just makes their eyes too big and they have to take the bite.
This is what James is warning us about temptation, he says it just hits in front of us in the water and we see it and we may swim around it for a long time just admiring it. The way it jiggles, the way it moves then stops, the color, and before we know it, if we are not careful, we will jump on it and then we will be in trouble. This is what James is saying, in verse 14, he is telling us, we can’t blame anyone but ourselves.
Can you imagine, you’re fishing, you throw that thing back in the water, and he gets caught up with the other fishes again, and they’re like Carl, where have you been? I got tied up, right, You guys saw that thing in the water, nobody warned me nobody said stop carl! Its all your fault.
James says We look out and we see it and before we know it we take it, why? Because we wanted to. It seemed better than anything else around us and we had to have it. In fact we had time to walk away but our mind just had the desire.
The problem is, unlike trials leading to real wisdom and a real life with God, when we succumb to this temptation you know what happens?
15 Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death.
He says look, that desire in your heart builds up, and when you finally decide you are going to go after it, and it has conceived, that is you have completed it, the result is sin. This is the place of danger friends, this is where he tells us in the next verse to not be deceived in this moment when our desire and our opportunity meet. In the place where our sinful desire can be realized its a scary place to be, if we have opportunity without desire, or desire without opportunity we will probably be okay, but once they come together it gives us this chance if we take it, and if we do sin enters into our lives, and once sin enters our lives, if we don’t do something about it, the result is death.
A good example of this kind of place where desire and opportunity meet would be in the life of David with Bathsheba. Now, most people will tell you when David went to the roof it was innocent until he saw Bathsheba. I just want you to know, that is a lot of bologna. Here’s the thing, David knew exactly what he was doing when he went out onto that roof. This is what people did, Bathsheba didn’t have some new practice, it was common what she was doing, so it wasn’t that David was on the roof and some desire hit him as he saw Bathsheba in the water. On the contrary, David had a desire, and he had an opportunity, he could go out on the roof to see what he could see, and he could have chosen not to do that, to walk away from the opportunity, but the desire and the opportunity crossed paths, and you know what happened? He went onto the roof to fulfill that desire, and that decision his lust was conceived, and it gave birth to sin as he saw her and sent for her, and you know what the results were in his life and the havoc it caused.
Thats why verse 16 is so important. James says,
16 Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren.
Don’t do it, don’t go out on the roof, don’t let that desire get you, it will ruin you. Its not going to fulfill you like you think, its only going to make things worse.
I can only tell you how many people I have talked to that are addicts who tell this story, I relapsed because I thought it was what I needed, I thought it was going to be exactly what fulfilled the desire in my heart, and for a moment it was good, but then it was right back to misery.
See, this is what the enemy does to us, he makes us believe these lies telling us we will be better, thats the essence of the temptation, its going to give us something better. The idea is what it will offer us is better than what God has offered us so we give in much like Adam and Eve did. I think this is what the atheist in the world want us to believe, they want us believing God isn’t good because he won’t allow us the real pleasures of life because they are measuring by the wrong scale. The hopes of the enemy is we will measure by a worldly scale and believe what he has to offer is so much better.
So why shouldn’t we give ourselves over to temptation, why shouldn’t we believe the enemy when he tells us what he is offering is better, when he says, “Oh, he just knows your eyes will be opened and you will be just like Him,” or “You don’t have to listen to Him, he wants you to have this pleasure, he created it, go for it.” James tells us in the very next verse why we shouldn’t listen to the lies look what he says.
17 Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.
Look, you don’t have to give yourself over to that temptation, because anything that is good, anything that is perfect, comes from God. You don;t have to reach for the things of the world, and listen to the leis of the enemy because every good gift comes from Him, you can’t think he is withholding it from us.
In fact, he tells them, what you have to believe is exactly this, God gives us all the Good gifts, and I know you see the starts he has created and you have seen how they twinkle and move across teh night sky, but what you must understand is God never changes, He is always good, all of the good things in our lives are a direct result of him.
And you may say, thank you Pastor, thank you for telling me all good things are from God, and we need to not be deceived, but what am I supposed to do when I’m tempted, how do I keep from falling?
The easiest thing for me to say would be, “pray,” and we should pray, we should ask him to keep us from falling into sin every single day. But I know so many people who would tell you they prayed and it felt like nothing happened. So what did James tell us the biggest danger is? In the place when desire and opportunity meet. For most of us, the problem is we don’t know how to turn off desire, so the best thing we can do and we can take control of us, opportunity. We remove ourselves from the opportunity to sin in this way.
Person cheating… leave the room or resturant…
dealing with alcohol/drugs leave the friends/enviroment
dealing with wanting our eyes to see things they shouldn’t? Put a block
(Do I need to use these examples of temptation earlier as well?)
IF you are here today and you are feeling tempted over and over… I’d love to pray
If you are feeling tempted and you are giving in to that sin over and over, and you feel like you are giving up becasue you jsut feel like it doesn’t matter. Nobody even cares, it won’t be a big deal, what I want you to know, every single one of you, is you have a purpose. Whether anyone has ever told you that before or not, whether you have ever felt like that, you need to know that you were created with a purpose. God has a place for you in his plan. When we talk about changing Georgetown and reaching into the world with the Love of Jesus, you are here for a reason; There is a part for you to play in all of this. You are so valuable to the mission in your own life, and what he is calling you to in this church. You are needed. You are wanted. You are desired. Even when it doesnt feel like it.
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I love your voice… you have led me through the fire…through darkest nights…you are close like no other… I’ve known you as father… I’ve known you as friend..oh I have lived the goodness of god
Not a believer… I’d love to pray
