This morning we are going to be talking about overcoming struggles, not the struggles that we face from without, but the struggles that we face from within – today we want to talk about winning the battle over temptation.
A mother told her son that he was not allowed to go swimming that day. However, when he returned home that afternoon his mother noticed that his hair was wet and that he carried under his arm a wet bathing suit.
“Johnny!” his mother scolded, “I told you not to go swimming today.” “I couldn’t help it, Mom. I walked by the lake and it looked so clear and inviting. I was just going to stick my feet in it for a minute, and the water was so warm and felt so good on my legs. I just couldn’t resist!” he said with a big wide smile.
Mom looked at Johnny and said, “One question son, why did you take your bathing suit with you when I had told you that you couldn’t swim today?” “I didn’t trust myself Mom, so I took it with me just in case I was tempted.”
Webster’s Dictionary tells us that temptation is “the act of enticement to do wrong by the promise of pleasure or gain.” Now isn’t that just like the Devil, getting us to do something wrong by promising us something good?
There isn’t a day that goes by in any of our lives where we aren’t tempted in some way. Temptation comes packaged in a variety of ways; we are tempted to lie, cheat, gossip, over eat, to hold grudges, to steal, and yes, to not give the Lord the first fruits of our treasure, time and talent.
The Bible tells us that we should give 1/10th of all we have to the Lord. That means that if we earn $100 that $10 of it should go to the Lord. After all, He has given you 90% of all you earn!
Besides money, we should also give the Lord at least 10% of all our time. There are 24 hours a day. When we divide that up we find that we should be devoting 2 hours and 24 minutes of every day to doing His work, reading the Bible and praying for our friends, church, country and families.
So many times we cheat the Lord out of what is rightfully His.
A 4-year old girl was caught by her Mom standing on a stool in the kitchen eating cookies. Her Mom had told her that she was not to be eating those cookies until after dinner. When caught red-handed and confronted by her Mom, she said “Mom, it’s not my fault, honest! I climbed up on that stool because I just wanted to smell them, and my tooth got caught!”
This morning we’ll look at four undeniable facts about temptation. Fact number #1 is that temptation is Inevitable.
You can count on it! You can depend on it! It’s going to happen. Notice what James said in the first line of verse 13 – “Let no man say when he is tempted….” – notice James didn’t say “if” he is tempted, he said “when he is tempted.
Now it would be wonderful if we could live life without facing temptations, but the simple fact is that we cannot. Just as sure as hardships are an unfortunate reality of life that we all must face at one time or another, so too is temptation.
Now if you think you’ve found some wonderful, peaceful place or location where there is no chance that you will be tempted there, my advice to you is that you don’t go there, because when you do you’re going to spoil it!
You see, the problem is that when you go there you will take with you your mind and your thoughts – and these are the vehicles of temptation. We will never be in a place on earth where there is no temptation. As long as we live within these fleshly bodies and on this world we will face temptation.
It doesn’t matter if you are the monk that lives in the monastery in the Swiss Alps, the businessman in Atlanta, the housewife in New York City, the student in Richmond, the Professor in Bible College, or even the pastor that stands in this pulpit today – we all face temptation.
And sometimes when God allows us to suffer, we have a tendency to use our trials as an excuse for sinning. Hard times can often lead to temptation. When we are suffering the evil one is quick to come to our aid and offer us one of his solutions.
Sometimes he whispers in our ear that we need some pleasure in our life that will numb the pain. So what if it’s illegal! The Devil will tell us that we should be angry with God – that a loving God would never make us suffer such an overwhelming loss in our life, such a tragedy. Sometimes he tells us to be bitter and that we should resent God!
The Devil knows all the tricks and he’ll use his best ones on us when we are at our weakest.
The 2nd point about temptation is that temptation is never directed by God.
When tempted, no one should ever say. “God is tempting me.” Look at the rest of verse 13 in James – “for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man!
How are you at accepting responsibility for your actions? When you do something wrong do you admit it, or do you blame someone else?
Parents – your child comes home from school with a bad grade on a paper. How many times have you heard them say “It was that dumb teachers fault! He didn’t clearly explain to us how to do that!”
Something happens and you get angry and lose control. How many times have you heard someone say, “I was minding my own business. I wasn’t going to say a word, but they just went on and on and finally I just lost it and I sure put them in their place! It was their fault. They made me lose it! Serves them right!
There is an epidemic in our society today of people failing to take responsibility for their own actions, and also for their own inactions. Everyone blames everyone – it really wasn’t my fault! And this, my friends, is the way it has always been since the days of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
As soon as Adam and Eve heard the sound of God walking in the garden, what did they do? They ran off and hid. And the Lord called out to Adam, “where are you?” Adam answered and said “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.”
And God said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?” Adam answered and said “the woman that YOU put here with me – SHE gave me some fruit from the tree and I ate it.” Adam blamed God! It was his fault because he had given him Eve. Then he blamed Eve because she had given him the fruit from the tree. But he didn’t have to eat it, did he? So in reality, whose fault was it? Of course, it was Adam’s fault. He had yielded to temptation.
Yes, God permits temptation, but He never directs it. God does not direct us into sin. He has given us a free will to make our own choices in life.
God hates sin! In I John 1:5, the Bible says, “God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all. What this means is that God cannot fellowship with sin. He cannot tolerate it, nor does He direct us into it. When we sin, we sin by our own choice.
The 3rd thing I want to share with you about temptation is that “Temptation is an individual matter.”
Back to the Garden of Eden again – after God questioned Adam, he turned to Eve and asked her, “What is this that you have done?” Eve said, “the serpent deceived me and I ate it.” Who was Eve trying to blame? Certainly not herself! She was the first person to truly coin the phrase “the devil made me do it!”
Yes, the devil tempted her. No, he didn’t force her to eat of that fruit. And ever since that day when Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, sin has been a part of this world. It’s what we have come to call “the Adam nature” that is in all of us, for we are all descendants on Adam.
Where does temptation really come from? James answers that question in verses 14 and 15. “But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.
It was Adam and Eve that brought sin and death into this world. And it was God’s gift of grace through His Son, Jesus Christ, which gave us the opportunity to overcome sin and death, and to share Heaven with God.
When you and I yield to temptation, it’s an individual matter, and we can’t place the blame on anyone other than ourselves. Nothing outside of ourselves is strong enough to cause us to sin, not even Satan. The Devil didn’t make us do it, we made ourselves do it.
The final thing about temptation that I want to share with you this morning is this. Temptation that leads to sin always follows the same pattern.
I’m going to assume that most of us here this morning have done some fishing at one time or another. In order for us to become a good fisherperson, we have leaned that we must provide bait that interests and entices the fish.
Depending on what type of fish we want to catch, we may use night crawlers, minnows, corn, shrimp, or some other bait. We bait our hook and cast our line into the water.
Now here comes this fish casually swimming around, doing whatever it is that fish do, and he sees this bait. And the fish thinks “wow! That sure looks great! I’d like to have me some of that. Now at this point the fish has to make a decision. He can stay in his hiding place, safe and secure, or he can go after the bait. If he yields to the temptation, goes after the bait, and gets caught, we all know where he ends up later, don’t we?
He ends up cooked and fried and becomes someone else’s dinner. That’s exactly the way that temptation works with us. The bait is dropped and it is something that looks really good to us, appeals to us, and interests us. And we have a choice to make as we look at that bait dangling there before our eyes. Our choice is to bite or not to bite.
And let there be n o mistake about this at all – the best fisherman in the world is Satan. He knows where we are the weakest. He knows what temptations we are most likely to fall for. He knows the best bait to use on each of us and he uses it.
So our question this morning is “how do we handle the temptation in our lives?” There used to be a show on TV called “Hee Haw.” Yeah, I know it was before your time, okay? In one clip a patient that says he broke his arm in two places confronted Dr. Campbell. Dr. Campbell had some rather unique advice for this man; he said, “well, stay out of those two places!”
There are places we need to stay out of too.
There was an overweight businessman that decided it was time to lose some weight. He took his new diet very seriously, even changing the route he took to work everyday in order to avoid going past the bakery that tempted him every day. One morning, however, he arrived at work carrying a big gigantic coffee cake.
“This is a very special coffee cake,” he explained. I accidentally drove by the bakery this morning and there in the window were a whole host of goodies. I felt that it was n o accident that I accidentally had gone by the bakery so I prayed, “Lord, if you want me to have one of those delicious coffee cakes, let me find a parking place directly in front of the bakery.”
“And sure enough,” he continued, “the 8th time I drove around that block, there it was!”
Again, we tend to play around with temptation; hanging out near its edge, bringing our swimming suit, driving around the block 8 times.
Let me be more specific; if certain movies make you weak and cause you to have certain desires that you cannot always handle, you’re setting yourself up to tempted, and like the fish, cooked and fried.
If you are weakened by relationships that you have with certain people, you need to avoid them. If you have a problem with gambling don’t hang out near a casino! If you have a problem with drinking, don’t hang out near the bars and nightclubs! Temptation to sin is nothing to play around with – there are places and situations you need to stay out of.
David didn’t walk away from temptation, he walked towards it. He knew exactly what he was going to see when he went up on that rooftop. David played around with the thing that made him weak.
A person is a fool when they know what weakens them but they feed on it anyway. By constantly bringing temptations before your eyes, by driving around the block and letting them sit in your mind, you are playing right into the hands of the devil.
Just as all sickness is not cured by the same medication, not all temptation is handled by the same resistance.
If we are tempted to gossip, God has an answer for that too, don’t do it! A bridle isn’t an answer for gossip, a muzzle is. Stop talking about them. Say nothing. Don’t kid yourself into saying, “we just need to talk about so and so in order that we can pray more intelligently, or because we are so concerned for them that you feel it’s your duty to tell someone about these awful things happening in someone’s life. No! Tell the Lord. He will keep it a secret.
When you face sensual sin – run!
When you face the sin of gossip – hold your tongue!
When you face the sin of laziness – work!
When you are filled with the sin of bitterness – forgive!
When your sin has been holding back and not giving the Lord what is rightfully His - give!
Is sin pleasurable? You bet it is. So much so that people will risk their reputations, their careers, even their families just to taste its flavor. If the bait on the end of that hook did not look like something good to eat then the fish would never bite the hook. Sin is fun and it does feel good. However, as pleasurable as it is, this enjoyment only lasts a short time. You sow, and then you reap what you have sown.
Committing adultery or having pre-marital sex may seem pleasurable at the time; but when the marriage is ruined, you see the kids just on weekends. In the end, the pain sure outweighs the pleasure.
Running around with your friends drinking or doing drugs may seem like a good time. But when you see the flashing blue lights, or your car wrapped around a tree, or the tragic loss of life caused by your drinking the pleasure was not worth it.
Do you think David experienced pleasure that night with Bathsheba? Sure he did, but do you think it was worth it to him when, his child died and the guilt ate away at him, stealing his strength, energy and joy.
When sin looks so appealing to us – when it’s pleasure is dangling on a hook right in front of us, we have to remind ourselves that the pleasure of sin is temporary. And we need to use this truth to help control our desire.
Have you ever seen someone slowly die from a disease? It’s not pretty – and that’s what sin does to us spiritually.
I think that we have all been there more than once – with God on one side and sin with its pleasures on the other side. And we are standing smack bad in the middle. And we begin to yield to temptation and we forget about God. The scales are tipped and satan wins. We must at these times remember that the pleasure of sin is temporary and the pain of sin is deadly.
In conclusion, claim the promise of God. He promises in his Word, found in I Corinthians, 10-13, There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.
Dora, if you’ll come play us a song of invitation please. Please stand as we sing.
