Sermon Tone Analysis

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*When We Do What We Don’t Want To Do*

The experience that every single human being deals with in regard to doing right or wrong is so universal that every one of us immediately understands and identifies with this picture on the screen.

There’s a man with a little angel on one shoulder and a little devil on the other.

All of us immediately know that we are constantly making decisions about what we do whether good or bad.

And, our experience of constantly trying to make the right decision feels an awful lot like a wrestling match.

That’s the reason the series of messages for this month is called ‘Wrestling Temptation.’

It seems it would be a whole lot better if we didn’t have to constantly grapple with these decisions, but it’s a universal human experience that no one can avoid.

Even if you’re not a follower of Jesus, this is an issue you understand and have to deal with.

Every single one of us wrestles with the problem of often doing what we don’t want to do and sometimes failing to do what we really want to do.

Every one of us has this problem.

What can we do about it?

God has revealed some eternal wisdom about this in the Bible and we can find out what how He wants to help us win this wrestling match with temptation.

In the NT book of James God says:

 

"Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him."

[James 1:12, NIV]

 

The first thing God wants to set straight for us is that there is a difference between a trial and a temptation.

Wrestling with temptation may be a trial, but a trial itself is not a temptation.

A trial is something you endure outwardly.

Difficult circumstances like illness or the loss of your job may be trials, but they are not a matter of doing something right or wrong.

We can lose a job due to company downsizing or get sick because we ate some contaminated food, but those things are not the result of us deciding to do something wrong.

Temptation is an inward desire or motivation to do something wrong.

That’s the difference between a trial and a temptation.

One of the things about Jesus that is very important that makes this series very important is that Jesus did not just come to forgive you of your sin.

Do you know that?

He didn’t come just so you would have this amazingly gracious thing happen in your life that would free you from the penalty of your sin.

Jesus also came so that you could be unburdened from the power of sin.

He came to break the power of sin in your life.

We’re just going to take a look at our desires, and understand a little bit about why we are the way we are in our desires and maybe what God has to say about some of those things that are trying to bring us down.

A book that’s very helpful on this topic is Andy Stanley’s book, It Came From Within.

What we’re going to do today is walk through this section of the New Testament in the book of James that has some amazing insights for life and wrestling down temptation.

"When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.”

For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone;" [James 1:13, NIV]

 

Notice he says, ‘when you are tempted,’ not ‘if you are tempted.’

One of the easiest traps to fall into is to blame God for our failures.

From the beginning of time people have tried to blame someone for their behavior.

This is one of the keynote characteristics of our culture now is that we are not responsible for ourselves.

Ever since Adam and Eve in the garden fell into sin, what did Adam do?

He said, “God, it was that woman you gave me that did this to me.”

He blamed it on Eve, but by implication, he was blaming it on God.

He was saying, “It was all Your fault.

I was fine until you put her in here.”

That’s really what he was saying.

One of the easiest things to do is to blame God.

You know how we do this in our culture?

We do this by saying, “It’s God’s fault.

He made me the way I am.

I’m not responsible for me.

God put these desires in me and it’s all His fault.”

God certainly created the possibility of good and evil.

He had to for there to be a choice for there to be love.

But, the choice is our responsibility.

James opens up this teaching on temptation in a way we all need to hear by saying, “Listen.

It’s your responsibility.

Stop blaming your parents.

Stop blaming people in your life who let you down.

It is your responsibility to make the right choices.

It’s not your teacher’s responsibility.

It’s not your coach’s responsibility.

It’s not your parents’ responsibility.

It’s your responsibility.

Stop blaming God.

So next he says...

 

"but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed."

[James 1:14, NIV]

 

James is stating that we all have this inward wrestling match going on.

Somebody once wrote:  “Two natures beat within my breast.

The one is foul, the other blest.

The one I love and the one I hate.

But the one I feed will dominate.”

That’s a lot of the reason we gather here weekly and we’re in cell groups to feed our souls on the Bible and we listen to music and things that build into our spirit, because the side of us that we feed, will dominate our behavior.

Look at the word ‘entice.’

That is a fisherman’s word.

Back in that day they used that word for the baiting of the hook.

Just think of a big old hook and it’s got this chunk of chum on it--some type of bait--and he says, “that is temptation.”

James is saying that many a mighty shark has been dragged away because it was driven by an insatiable desire and had no knowledge (because of it’s desire it had no knowledge) of the consequences--the hook.

James says that’s temptation.

Notice he says, “by your own evil desire.”

One of the interesting things when we consider this verse is that we also want to blame the devil.

A comedian by the name of Flip Wilson years ago made famous the line, “The devil made me do it.”

Do you know there are things you can fall into and the devil didn’t have anything to do with it now?

It was your desire that allowed you to be dragged away by some opportunity and enticed.

As a matter of fact, some of us fall, not because of what the devil did to us now, but because of what the devil did to us back with the beginning of humans when he downloaded a virus into the DNA of man--a sin virus and now we all a sinful desire within us--a sin nature in us.

I like the old t-shirt that said, “Lead me not into temptation.

I can find it myself.”

Sometimes we don’t even need the enemy’s help.

We can find it totally on our own.

The Bible teaches something that our culture does not want to accept.

It is that we are all born with a sin nature.

And, it doesn’t take a psychologist or a theologian to tell us that something is wrong in the human race.

If you doubt this, just look at the news.

Spend a weekend with your relatives and you will come away convinced that something is wrong with human race.

There is something seriously flawed, and what the Bible says is this:  There is within everyone of us a self-destructive tendency--a gravitational pull that is not outside.

It’s inside.

Here is the lesson of the hook and the bait.

/With temptation there is always more at stake than what we think in the moment.

/Think of a fish with this chunk of bait on the end of the hook.

That fish thinks the only thing at stake is whether I get the bait.

That’s all that is at stake for the fish in the moment.

What do we know differently?

For that fish’s well-being there is a whole lot more at stake.