Sermon Tone Analysis

NOTES:

This is a manuscript, and not a transcript of this message.

The actual presentation of the message differed from the manuscript through the leading of the Holy Spirit.

Therefore, it is possible, and even likely that there is material in this manuscript that was not included in the live presentation and that there was additional material in the live presentation that is not included in this manuscript.

Engagement

The sunset camel rides advertised on TripAdvisor’s Viator website offer a leisurely guided tour through the Moroccan desert, with breathtaking views and stops at a traditional berber house for a snack over mint tea.

But in late 2019 a New Jersey woman filed a lawsuit that claimed the serene image was just a mirage.

Instead, she claimed she was placed on a pregnant camel that broke away from the tour and tossed her to the ground, resulting in serious injuries.

I guess in her mind he website should have included images of people falling off the camels and breaking their arms.

That particular lawsuit is just one example of the fact that we live in a culture where it’s always somebody else’s fault.

Tension

Unfortunately the church is not immune to that same mindset when it comes to our sin.

One of the consequences of sin is that it makes us delusional.

It will convince us that it is everyone else’s fault except our own:

My spouse doesn’t make me happy so I’m going to get a divorce

Money is tight, so I had to cheat on my income taxes

It’s not my fault that I lusted.

That woman shouldn’t come to work dressed like that.

Or the one that’s in the news right now.

I didn’t know what I was getting into when I took out those student loans, so I shouldn’t have to pay them back now.

But even worse we go one step further and we blame God for our sin.

I know right now most of you are probably thinking I’d never do that, but my guess is that you have probably done it without even realizing what you did.

And that shouldn’t be a surprise since that is the very first thing that Adam and Eve did when they sinned.

Look at Adam’s response to God when he sinned:

Genesis 3:12 (ESV)

12 The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.”

Adam is obviously blaming Eve for his sin, but He is also blaming God, because God is the one who had given him Eve.

Eve doesn’t do much better:

Eve blames the serpent, but in truth she is also blaming God since He is the one who created the serpent and allowed it into the garden.

None of us will probably ever say the words “God caused me to sin.”

But there are two things that we say or think that are essentially making that claim:

The first way we do that is to say something like this: “God created me; He gave me my temperament, knowing I would be weak in resisting this sin; it is not my fault I fell into sin; God is at least partly responsible since He made me this way.”

Here’s the second way we can essentially blame God for our sin.

If, as we saw last week, God is sovereign over every circumstance that comes into our life, then, we reason, when those circumstances cause us to sin, then it must be God’s fault.

Truth

But, as the passage we’re going to study this morning teaches:

When I yield to temptation, I have no one to blame but myself

Let’s pick up where we left off last week in James 1, beginning in verse 13:

As we pointed out last week, the verb that is translated “tempted” here in this passage is the verbal form of the word that was translated “trials” back in verse 2. We said then that the underlying word carries neither a positive or negative connotation so we have to look to the context to know how to translate it.

In verse 2, James uses the noun to describe external affliction, so it is correctly translated “trials”.

And we saw last week that God brings or allows those trials into our lives for the purpose of proving the genuineness of our faith.

So in verse 12, James writes that the man who remains steadfast under trials is blessed.

Beginning in verse 13, he uses the verb form of the same word to describe an internal solicitation to sin and evil.

So it is correctly translated “tempted” there.

I think at least one of the reasons that James ties these two sections together by using the same word is that if we don’t handle those external trials properly they can become a temptation to sin.

But that still doesn’t mean that I can blame anything or anyone else for my sin.

As we said just a moment ago...

When I yield to temptation, I have no one to blame but myself

As we’re going to see, the ultimate responsibility for my sin lies completely with me - not with anyone or anything else and certainly not with God.

I want to do two things with this passage this morning:

First, I want to show why God can’t possibly be the cause of our sin.

Until we have a clear understanding of that, we’re going to have a really hard time with the second part of the message.

The second thing I want to do is to develop some very practical principles to help us make sure that our temptations don’t become sin.

WHY GOD CAN’T BE THE SOURCE OF MY TEMPTATION

We’re going to answer that question by looking at verses 16-18

Because of who He is

This is the essence of James’ argument.

Because of who God is – holy and good – He cannot violate His own character and have anything to do with evil.

And He is certainly not going to do anything to cause someone else to be drawn to evil since that would violate who He is.

James further underscores that idea when he points out that God gives only good gifts.

In fact, in verse 17, the verb “coming down” is a present tense verb which emphasizes that God is continually showering His children with gifts that are good and perfect.

So clearly anyone who in any way suggests that God is the cause of their temptation to evil is deceived because if He did that He would be acting in a way that is completely contrary to His character.

Because of who He has made me to be

In verse 18, James reminds his audience that it is because of God’s own will and not anything that they have done, that they have been brought into a relationship with God.

James makes it clear that it was by God’s original design that He chose to bring us into a relationship with Him through trusting in what His Son, Jesus, did for us on the cross.

And by doing that for us, God has made us to be His firstfruits.

That idea of being God’s firstfruits is so deep that at best, we’ll barely scratch the surface today.

At a minimum, that concept reinforces the idea that God has called us to be His ambassadors here on earth and to reproduce our relationship with Jesus in the lives of others.

And because of that, God would obviously never do anything that might cause us to sin and damage our ability to fulfill that plan for our lives.

Hopefully you have a firm grip on the idea that God can’t possibly be the cause of our sin and why I am 100% responsible for my sin whenever I give into temptation.

With that in mind, we’re now ready to deal with the practical teaching in the first part of the passage.

Application

HOW TO TRIUMPH OVER MY TEMPTATIONS

Understand the process of sin

We tend to think of sin as a single act.

But James very accurately shows us that sin is the result of a process.

In this passage, he lays out for us the four steps in that process.

That is really helpful to us because it enables us to identify where we are in that process and to then take the appropriate steps to make sure that we don’t succumb to our temptation and enter into sin.

Step 1 - Desire – an act of my emotions

The first step in the process is “desire”.

The Greek word that James uses is compound word that describes a strong passion of the soul.

In fact, many of our English translations translate that word “lust”.

While that is certainly an accurate translation, we tend to think of lust only in terms of sexual desires, but the word can describe any kind of strong desire.

This kind of desire begins with a feeling, with our emotions.

We want something that we think will satisfy us or give us happiness or make life easier.

Often the underlying desires themselves are neither good nor bad.

In fact many of these desires actually arise out of the way that God designed us.

I have a desire to eat and drink because I need food and drink to sustain my body.

I have a desire to sleep because my body needs rest.

I have sexual desires because God designed me to multiply and fill the earth.

But what often happens is that we take these good and perfect gifts that God has given to us and we pervert them.

As we’ll see more in a moment, we often take these God-given desires and we try to satisfy them in a manner that is not consistent with God’s plan for our lives.

Step 2 - Deception – an act of my mind

Once we move beyond the emotional desire, the next step is to begin to justify in our minds our right to have that which we desire.

In our mind we believe that fulfilling that desire will bring satisfaction and happiness.

James uses two pictures to describe how that occurs.

He says that a person is tempted when he is “lured and enticed by his own desire”.The first verb – “lured” – is a hunting term and it describes luring an animal into a trap.

The second verb – “enticed” – is a fishing term that describes catching a fish with bait.

I really enjoy fishing, particularly stream fishing for trout.

In order to be successful I have to entice the fish to bite my hook.