Temptations To Sin
Notes
Transcript
Anyone ever stolen a cookie? If you just said no I might guess that you were lying. Like come on, you walk into the kitchen and there’s a fresh batch of cookies cooling on the rack but still warm and gooey, smelling absolutely scrumptious and just what your taste buds need…
Anyone as a kid ever take a cookie from the cookie jar after mom and dad said no so you waited for them to leave and climbed up on the counter so you could reach into the jar on top of the fridge to get one of the forbidden pucks of goodness?
Temptation, fresh cookies that are left unattended are among the greatest of temptations known to the human race and it takes an awful lot of self control not to at least have a little nibble… especially as a child who’s emotions are controlled by food.
Today we’re going to talk about temptation. What it is, why it is, and how to fight it.
let me pray and we’ll jump right into it.
Our passage for today is Matthew 18:7-9, it says…
7 “Woe to the world for temptations to sin! For it is necessary that temptations come, but woe to the one by whom the temptation comes! 8 And if your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life crippled or lame than with two hands or two feet to be thrown into the eternal fire. 9 And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into the hell of fire.
Temptations
Temptations
We talk about this idea of temptation all the time. But what is temptation? Where does it come from?
We know that the very basis of temptation is something that is enticing a person to do something. The word temptation itself can be used both to suggest a positive enticement or a negative one, we use it in it’s negative form. That if we are “tempted,” we are being enticed to something not good for us or others or both.
In the beginning of our passage it says “woe to the world for temptations to sin! For it is necessary that temptations come...”
woe to the world, Temptation is going to come because it is necessary? why in the world would temptation be necessary?
well, last week we watched a sermon about being mature ministers, part of being a mature minister is pushing through the trials. stepping up to the plate and not shying away from the battle because that is the thing that will make us grow in our maturity.
The only way we can grow in our strength is through adversity, and temptations are part of that. Think about the way we build muscle… first you break it down, stress it to the point where your body is in pain because you haven’t just built muscle… you’ve broken it down and in doing so you’re muscles have produced lactic acid because of the destruction. It’s not until after this that your muscles begin to build themselves back up. Your body functions the same way as our mental and spiritual selves. In order to build and grow, we must first break down or go through stress.
Forest fires… a forest fire is an incredibly destructive event but what happens to a forest after it has burned? It becomes more fertile and more lush and filled with life. But the forest can’t produce more until it looks to be destroyed by fire.
Trial and temptation that we must battle and push through are necessary for a Christian to grow in both faith in God and perseverance against those same trials and temptations.
Think of temptations as God’s way of producing mentally fit Christians. Your body can’t just run a marathon, you need to train. If you tried to run a marathon without first training your body you would not be able to handle the physical strain that it would take to run that marathon. So, we start small with a 3km run and slowly increase our distance every time we run so that eventually we will be able to run the 10km, then the 15km, then the 20km etc…
Jesus said you will do even greater things than me… well we can’t just do those greater things. God starts us off with small things, little tests here and there and gradually giving us more and more responsibility and greater challenges to face.
Without trial, without temptation… we would not be able to withstand the greater attacks launched by satan against us when we try to fight the big fight that God eventually calls us to.
So, it is necessary. In a crazy way, we need temptation because without it, we would be weak and unable to fight. But, just as we must fight temptation to grow it is also something that all Christians are vulnerable to and the temptations that we will face are very real and designed with the sole purpose to make us fail.
So that brings us to the question… How do we fight temptation? How do we walk through the fire and out the other side without falling to the temptation presented to us?
Fighting Temptation
Fighting Temptation
13 No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.
“No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man...” in essence, you’re not the only one to go through this, many other’s have struggled with the same thing.
This passage in 1 Corinthians starts off with an encouragement that we’re not alone in our fight.
So be encouraged, if you struggle perpetually with the same temptation, you aren’t alone and there are others who have struggled and overcome that thing you are fighting.
the passage goes on to say that “God is faithful and He will not let you be tempted beyond your ability…” Before we move on I want to look at this little phrase because I think that we often confuse it’s meaning to be that God won’t let us face any temptation too great for us… only us, not us and God. So often we read this verse or say it in sermons and we stop there. God won’t let you be tempted beyond your ability. But that is an omission of the most important part of the whole verse because we can’t do it alone.
God will, let temptation that is beyond “our” ability to handle to come against us because through our weakness He is strong. The whole idea in almost every facet of a Christ like life is that we aren’t enough. We can’t and so we need God. Which is why the last part of this passage is sooo important. “but with the temptation He will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.”
God provides the way of escape. The temptation that God allows to come against us is not beyond our ability only if we turn to God to help us find our way out. And notice that it doesn’t say He will help us conquer, it says He will provide the way of escape in order to endure.
This is interesting because it suggests that we can’t get rid of that temptation, we can only flee from it. Which is why, the next part of our passage in Matthew 18 says this
8 And if your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life crippled or lame than with two hands or two feet to be thrown into the eternal fire. 9 And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into the hell of fire.
Of course we shouldn’t take this to literally mean chop off our hand or to gouge out our eyes. Temptation always has a trigger, it doesn’t matter what kind of temptation it is. whether it’s sexual temptation, food temptation, temptation to be lazy, temptation to work too much… there’s always something that causes a chemical release in your brain that makes you start wanting whatever it is that is that is the temptation.
For example, if you and your family watch a movie every night and every time you watch a movie you eat snacks… when you go on a diet and you’re trying not to eat the snacks any more, sitting down to watch a movie is going to be a trigger for your brain to want snacks because it knows that it get’s snacks with movies.
or perhaps it’s an addiction to drugs, alcohol or pornography… the trigger for those would be smell, or imagery that causes your brain to want those things.
Depending on the temptation there can be triggers everywhere, and unless you know what those triggers are for the temptations you are trying to flee from you won’t stand a chance.
And I think that’s where God comes in. He can show us those triggers and He can provide us with ways to avoid said triggers and in doing so we are cutting out the thing that is causing us to sin.
Sometimes that might have to be a drastic action like selling your laptop or not allowing snacks in the house at all no matter who’s eating them. But, in order to flee we must cut off all connection to that temptation.
One of the reasons I think the imagery cutting off of hands or feet is so effective is because temptation and it’s subsequent sin in our lives is like a weed. When you weed a garden, you can’t just pull the leafy, thorny part of the weed out… you have to get your fingers into the soil and grab it by the root because if you leave any part of the root the weed will just grow back and all your work will be for nothing.
So, get rid of it. whatever it is, God will show you what and how but you have to be willing to accept His help.
One thing God doesn’t do, is just help us without us asking. Last time I spoke, I spoke about being humble, well we need to humble ourselves and admit that we can’t do it alone and we need God. He want’s us to want His help, to ask for it because He knows if He just does things for us whenever we’re in trouble we won’t learn anything and we would become like spoiled children who can’t take up any responsibility because mom or dad always just does everything for us.
Luke 22:46 says
46 and he said to them, “Why are you sleeping? Rise and pray that you may not enter into temptation.”
Just like the weeds in our garden, when we root out the temptation it will always be looking for an open door back into our lives. You can’t just weed the garden once, it has to be done all the time and the gardener is constantly looking for new weeds that have sprung up.
If we manage to flee from temptation and then we are without it for a while, there is a tendency to slip and unintentionally open the door again to that thing that was tempting us. “Rise and pray that you may not enter into temptation...” What does the bible tell us to do with prayer? Pray without ceasing.
If you haven’t noticed yet, most of everything I teach on ends up coming back to the concept of praying without ceasing and reading our bibles frequently as a necessity in our lives.
Pray, be on the lookout for old and new temptations that may be trying to enter your life and cause you to stumble into sin. God will provide the way out. He will provide an escape to freedom. And if you’re in the fire right now, and your life is in turmoil, remember that God is a God that takes His people through the wilderness, through the desert, through the sea, through the famine and the drought. He is not a God of going around because He want’s us to be strengthened.
2 Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, 3 for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. 4 And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
When you are in the fight and struggling against temptation, rather than doing the thing satan wants you to do and become discouraged, get excited about it because while satan thinks he’s knocking you down, God knows that this thing is just making you stronger so that when you come out on the other side you will be wiser and stronger in your faith than when you went in.
Know this, God’s plan doesn’t make sense and never will… we are incapable of understanding. But it is always for beauty, Always victory even in defeat because He loves us and because He has the absolute best in mind for us and won’t accept second best.
Be encouraged, God is with you and with Him, you can walk through anything satan can throw at you because Jesus died on the cross to defeat sin and death and nothing can stand against Him. Read your bible, pray without ceasing, and walk with God.
You are the hands and feet of Christ, you are a kingdom people… go be blessed and bless others this week.