How To K.o. Temptation

How To K.O. Temptation!

I Corinthians 10:13

I. Introduction

a. Rocky video

i. There Rocky stood… toe-to-toe with this huge mammoth of a man… the Russian, Ivan Koloff (or something like that).

ii. And the threat comes towering down… “I must break you!”

iii. I don’t know about you… but that would be pretty dang intimidating… it would seem like a hopeless task!

b. Today I want to talk to you guys about another pretty intimidating thing… and that is temptation.

c. Our pastor has been doing a series on the invisible world and recently he has talked about Satan.

d. So I thought it would be appropriate for me to piggy back that message by talking about Satan’s greatest weapon… the weapon of temptation!

e. No one in this room today is a stranger to what I am talking about. Temptation has been around since the garden of Eden and it is abundant in the world we live in today.

f. Temptation starts from the very beginning of our lives.

i. That is why we child proof our houses.

ii. If I have glass full of drink on our coffee table… I can tell you this… that is a temptation for Wyatt.

iii. I could tell him no a million times (and he knows what NO means), but if it is there… it is a temptation he cannot resist!

g. But as believers in Christ, our desire is to worship God through our lives… and a part of that worship is overcoming temptation, and not falling into sin. You see, it is not a sin to be tempted.

i. The Scriptures say, Jesus was tempted in every way but did not sin.

h. None of us are perfect… but we can improve… and that’s what I want to talk to you guys about today… How can we K.O. (that’s Knock Out) temptation?!!!

i. But before I get into the passage today, just let me say this… you are not looking at a world champ when it comes to this.

i. This message is birthed from the soils of failure… this message comes from one who has been on his face many times b/c temptation has tripped me up!

ii. So, just know this, this morning… we are in this fight together.

j. We are going to look at a very well known verse today and it is in this verse that we will camp for the most part.

k. Read I Corinthians 10:13

l. We know that temptation is big, ugly, and intimidating for the disciple who is truly trying to worship God in obedience… so how do we K.O. temptation? How do we win this constant battle in our lives?

II. We Must Connect with Others! (I Corinthians 10:13a)

a. Connect with lessons from the past!

i. “No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man…”

ii. I don’t care what you are struggling with… it doesn’t matter what face your temptation wears… someone has struggled with it too!

iii. In the beginning of this chapter Paul talks about the failures of the fathers of Israel, but then he says in verse 6, “now these things happened as examples for us, so that we would not crave evil things as they also craved.”

iv. We need to look in the past and learn from the failure of others.

v. The Bible doesn’t sugar coat it… it is blatantly truthful when the forefathers of Israel messed up. Why? So we could learn from their mistakes.

1. Here’s an example… if you read about the conquest of the promised land, you will see one huge mistake they made was they intermarried with the people of that land.

2. The result was that they eventually were enticed by their now wives to worship the idols of that culture.

3. How can we learn from that mistake today?

4. I am constantly telling the youth… and I will in the next few weeks… that dating a non-believer is NOT a good idea, for the same reason God didn’t want the Israelites to intermarry with the Canaanites.

vi. Hey, saw some of the mistakes that my older brothers made and the beatings that ensued… I didn’t make those mistakes.

vii. Not only should we learn from the failures of others in the past… we should also learn from the successes of those who went toe-to-toe with temptation and won.

viii. Joseph was tempted by Potiphar’s wife in Genesis to have an affair with her… but he didn’t… we knocked out temptation.

ix. Jesus… went toe-to-toe with temptation and the weaver of temptation himself (Satan) in the wilderness, and yet He won (I’ll talk a bit more about how He did that in a moment).

x. Let’s connect with and learn from the past.