Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

How often have we heard or used these phrases:

• “It’s the other person’s fault.”

• “I couldn’t help it.”

• “Everybody’s doing it.”

• “It was just a mistake.”

• “Nobody’s perfect.”

• “I didn’t know it was wrong.”

• “The devil made me do it.”

• “I was pressured into it.”

We also tend to make excuses, saying, “if it is so bad, then why do I desire it so much?”

We also follow up with “Why is it so good?”

We want to make excuses and allow for temptations to enter.

We desire something, and then we work to make that desire good and what is right.

Augustine wrote in his Confessions, “Sin comes when we take a perfectly natural desire or longing or ambition and try desperately to fulfill it without God.

Not only is it sin, it is a perverse distortion of the image of the Creator in us.

All these good things, and all our security, are rightly found only and completely in him.”

That is what we will look at today from James 1:13-18 and look at “The Desires of Our Lives”

When we say things like I first mentioned, “the devil made me do it, why is it so bad if I desire it so much, and why is it so good” because we naturally desire many things.

We want things and we tend to make them into something more than they are meant to be.

We also, do not want the blame for when it goes bad.

We make these excuses because we want to be in the clear.

Well, we can be in the clear when we understand what the temptations are and where they come from.

We can be in the clear when we recognize what God’s desires are for us.

We can live a faithful life in the Lord when we recognize who He is and what He does for us.

We can grow to faithful and committed followers of Christ through trials and withstanding temptations through His power to do so.

But before we can we need to see where temptation stems from.

In verses 13-15 we see that we are...

Tempted by My Own Desire (13-15)

We see here that James uses the same word for temptations as he did for trials.

Yet, this is the more narrow meaning of the word.

What we see from this wording is that within every trial there is a temptation to evil.

We may become disheartened and decide the trial is too much and look for an easier way out and bam, there is the temptation.

This may be to drink away the struggle, to drug away the struggle, that woman or man may begin to look better and more inviting.

Maybe that petty cash that is never locked up is looking easier and easier to get.

No one will know that I have skimmed a little to make it by this month, I will put it back before anyone notices.

Only to not do so and to continue to skim here and there.

This is what James is speaking of.

The trial is from God but the temptation is from within you.

It is not even from the devil, but you.

He says that my desires draw me to bad.

Temptations are in me because of my nature.

Paul tells us this when he said 1 Cor.

10:13 “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.”

He says God will not let you be tempted beyond what you can handle.

God does not tempt you, but allows it, He tests you and tries you but He does not tempt you.

Tempted means “enticed to wickedness.”

We could alter verses 13-14 to read as, “Let no one say when he is enticed to wickedness, “I am being enticed to wickedness by God,” for God cannot be enticed to wickedness with evil, and he himself entices to wickedness no one.

But each person is enticed to wickedness when he is lured and enticed [drawn out like a fish] by his own desire.”

We are lured by our desires and drawn to wickedness by them.

Look at what the text does not say.

It does not say God sets those temptations up.

It says we are drawn by our desires.

It says God does not tempt us, we do.

Think about this for a moment.

If you had no desire for drinking would a beer be seductive to you? Drugs?

Lustful intentions?

Money?

No, they would not.

Yet, we have desires within us and Satan will use those desires to draw us into that temptation.

He does not make us, he just crafts the situation to look more inviting because he knows our natural desires.

God has said of our hearts Gen. 6:5 “5 that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.”

That Jer.

17:9 “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?”

Basically, if we were not evil, we would be free from evil desires and impulses.

Yet, we are not we fall and struggle.

But we do not have too.

We can rise above the temptations and difficulties.

We can because we have Jesus Christ as our savior.

We can because we have the Holy Spirit within us.

We can because Christ has promised that the helper, the Holy Spirit, would guide us into all truth (John 16:13).

We can rise above temptations through trusting in Jesus to strengthen us through His word.

When we do this we will see that we are not perfect nor can we be perfect.

We will realize we are sinful people even though we have been saved by grace through faith.

We will then see that it is by faith we can make it through.

Not of my will, your will, or anothers will, but by the will of God.

Now, think if you will of people we know who try to control the desires we all have by what is called asceticism.

This is the practice of severe self-discipline.

They will not do anything because they believe they will fall into sin.

They will be like the desert fathers of the early church.

The desert fathers would go and get into monasteries or caves away from everyone and almost starve themselves.

Wear rough clothing that was abrasive to the skin.

They would not keep good hygiene.

They lived alone and avoided contact with anyone.

One Simeon Stylites sat on a platform on a pillar for 37 years to avoid contact with anything.

We can relate this to those who avoid sleeping enough because they do not want to be called lazy.

Those who do not eat enough because they do not want to be called fat.

Those who deny themselves any pleasure in this world because they think that will lead to sinful desires.

These people have become less than human because they have taken the life out of life.

They do not have the steam to move forward and become sinful because they become bitter and angry.

The desires we have can be turned to good and used for good.

We cannot do it by denying ourselves good things.

We cannot do it by our strength.

But it can be done.

It can be done by this little secret that Warren Wiersbe gives, “The secret is in constant control.

These desires must be our servants and not our masters; and this we can do through Jesus Christ.”

(The Bible Exposition Commentary, vol. 2 (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1996), 342.)

We can do it by the power of Jesus Christ.

Tests are good temptations are bad.