Sermon Tone Analysis

SELF-CONTROL—PART 3

Fruit of the Spirit—April 22, 1990

Genesis 3:1–7; 39:6–12

Let me read to you two passages.

One really has a lot more to do with the attack of temptation.

The other has to do with the defense against temptation.

We’re going to spend the first part in Genesis 3:1–7 and the second part of the talk tonight on Genesis 39:6–12.

1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made.

He said to the woman, ‘Did God really say, “You must not eat from any tree in the garden?”

’ 2 The woman said to the serpent, ‘We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, “You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.”

’

4 ‘You will not surely die,’ the serpent said to the woman.

5 ‘For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’

6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.

She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.

7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

Turn to Genesis 39.

Now we all know Joseph was a servant in the house of Potiphar, and we pick up the narrative in 39:6.

6 So he left in Joseph’s care everything he had; with Joseph in charge, he did not concern himself with anything except the food he ate.

Now Joseph was well-built and handsome, 7 and after a while his master’s wife took notice of Joseph and said, ‘Come to bed with me!’ 8 But he refused.

‘With me in charge,’ he told her, ‘my master does not concern himself with anything in the house; everything he owns he has entrusted to my care.

9 No one is greater in this house than I am.

My master has withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife.

How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?’

10 And though she spoke to Joseph day after day, he refused to go to bed with her or even be with her.

11 One day he went into the house to attend to his duties, and none of the household servants was inside.

12 She caught him by his cloak and said, ‘Come to bed with me!’

But he left his cloak in her hand and ran out of the house.

Let’s end our reading of God’s Word right there

The attack, Genesis 3; the defense, Genesis 39.

We’re talking about temptation under the general heading of the fruit of the Spirit.

We’ve been talking about the last of the fruit of the Spirit, which is self-control.

When we think of temptation, almost immediately we tend to think of the most explicit, specific, and physical kinds of sins.

We think of the temptation of food, the temptation of drugs.

We think of the temptation of sex, but there really are a lot of other temptations.

Actually, some of us are giving in to pride.

There is temptation to despair.

There are temptations to dishonesty.

In 1 Corinthians 6, Paul says, “All things are lawful for me, but I will not be mastered by anything.”

You know, he’s laying down an incredibly important thing.

Anything, whether it’s lawful or good or not, can become addicting, and it becomes your master, and that’s what temptation is about.

Temptation is about something which may be good or may be bad but becomes your master, and therefore, it’s bad.

He says, “All things are lawful for me, but I will not be mastered by anything.”

A lot of us know we’re being mastered by things, and we may get out from under them by rationalizing them.

We’ll see tonight how we do that.

We’re pointing out the fact that in itself there is nothing wrong with it, and yet we know we’re mastered by it.

Now temptation, if you talk about temptation in the Bible, inevitably gets to a subject we have to treat for a minute or two before we get into temptation proper, and that is the Devil.

Cardinal O’Connor recently said there were two exorcisms done in the last couple of years in the Diocese of New York.

I don’t know if anybody read what the responses were, but he was absolutely taken to the cleaners by the papers, by everybody.

People ridiculed him.

Theologians at Notre Dame University said, “Nobody believes in a personal Devil anymore.

How ridiculous!”

We can’t go further in to the subject of temptation unless we deal with verse 1: And the Serpent said, “Has God said …?” Because the first temptation we’re told about in the Bible involves the Serpent, involves the Dragon, involves Satan, and a lot of us have a lot of trouble even talking about temptation because we don’t like even to think about the subject.

The subject, in many ways, seems primitive.

We don’t want to be laughed at, like Cardinal O’Connor was laughed at.

First of all, I think there is a real possibility that in New York City there are some things happening that haven’t happened in 150 years.

You know, 150 years ago, the churches here were absolutely packed to the gills two, three, and four times.

I found a book published in 1859 in our library in Philadelphia where I used to have an office, and it was sermons from the churches of New York City.

It had sermons from 1859 from all these churches up and down Fifth Avenue and Park Avenue, churches downtown, a lot of churches that are still in existence, and a lot of churches that aren’t in existence now.

Every one of them was absolutely overflowing with brand new conversions, constantly.

Wall Street was jam packed with people (businessmen) who were praying every day.

Now for the last several years, the last several decades you might say, there has been almost none of that.

A lot of people have said, “Ha!

The church in New York City is dead,” and it’s not true.

I have a little poem I put here, one of my favorite poems out of a novel.

It has its own place in the plot of that novel, but I put it out here because it tells me a lot about New York, and it tells me a lot about the church.

Jesus Christ says in Matthew 16, “… the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

Do you see it?

All that is gold does not glitter,

Not all those who wander are lost;

The old that is strong does not wither,

Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,

A light from the shadows shall spring;

Renewed shall be blade that was broken,

The crownless again shall be king.

Now, yeah, it has a place in that particular novel in the plot, but it’s getting at something more important.

It’s getting at the fact that you can’t kill the church.

You cannot, you see.

The old that is strong does not wither; deep roots are not killed by the frost, and no matter how bad things seem to get, no matter how much the churches looks like ashes, there are deep embers.

No matter how dark it gets, there is a light.

No matter how broken our swords are, they can be re-forged, and the King can come back, and we can get our blades out, and we can start doing his work and fight his battles.

The reason that for a given period of time in a region the church can look dead even though it’s not, and it’s not, is because of what Paul calls the kosmokratōr.

You don’t know what that means, do you, but you can tell it’s bad news just by the name, can’t you?

The kosmokratōr.

In Ephesians 6:12, talks about the kosmokratōr.

It’s the powers and principalities.

When Daniel, in Daniel 10, is praying and he’s asking God for an answer, after several days an angel shows up.

It’s almost funny.

It’s absolutely true, but it’s funny.

The angel comes in sort of sweating like this, and he says, “Daniel, I would have been here 21 days ago, but the prince of Persia …” That’s where Daniel was praying.

“… kept me from coming to you.

I had to do battle with him, and Michael, the archangel, came and helped me, and I’ve come through in answer to your prayer.”

What the heck is that?

Who is the prince of Persia?

Everyone who has studied that passage pretty much comes to agree Daniel was talking about there a regionally based, demonic force, a prince of Persia.

Because later on the angel gets up and says, “I have to go do battle with the prince of Greece.”

The idea is there are regionally based (the Bible teaches) demonic forces, the kosmokratōr.

Kosmos means cosmic.

Krateō means a strong man or a tyrant.

Cosmic tyrants.