When James says that you are tempted, and then you give in and sin, who does he say is responsible for your temptation? Is the answer God?; the Devil; your circumstances? The answer may surprise you.
Recognizing My Dangerous Power to Create Life Cycles of Sin
James 1:13-17
Pastor Kerry Kinchen, Bridgeway Bible ChurchPlease turn to James 1:13. We are going to be learning from James 1:13-17 this morning through verse to verse expository study, teaching, and preaching. As we are turning there, I want us to be mindful of an interesting trait that reflects the futility of the Gentile mind that Paul wrote about in Ephesians 4:17. For centuries, men have been obsessed with attempting to create life. Evolutionists have attempted to create life in test tubes. They are trying to prove that life can be manufactured out of raw materials. Scientist have announced this week that they expect to create life within 3 to 10 years. Mary Shelly wrote a novel in the 1800's called Frankenstein. In her fictional horror story, Dr. Victor Frankenstein takes parts of dead people, puts them together, and then through an elaborate process, restores life to the resultant body. The whole concept is not so much based upon the human enterprise of trying to create life, as it is a reflection of the futility of the Gentile mind in its attempt to conquer death. People are intrigued with doing the things that only God can do. God is the only creator of human life. God, in Christ Jesus, is the only conquerer of death. God tells us that He is the Creator of each of us individually as has been revealed to us in Psalms 119:73, and Malachi 2:10. God also tells us that He breathed life into the first man. All who have come later have been reproduced from him, by God, (as we read in Acts 17:24-26). In Romans 5:12 and 5:19, our minds are illuminated with the fact that death also came through the first man. It came because of sin, and the result of sin is death. We also know that God appoints the exact time for each person to live, Acts 17:26. And God appoints the time for each man to die, Hebrews 9:27. And so this is the way things are in this world. All living things come and go in life cycles. In the life cycle, there is conception. There is birth. Then ultimately, there is death. God is the creator of the life cycle. But, even though I have said all of this, we need to recognize that the Scriptures describe a life cycle that each of us here can create. Not only can we create it, but we do create it. It is real. God identifies this kind of life cycle for us. It is hideous. It is even more hideous than any fictional Frankenstein monster. Consequently, God says we must be keenly aware of it, so James warns us about it in our passage under study this morning. Let's go there now and read together from James 1:13,
"13 Let no one say when he is tempted, 'I am being tempted by God'; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone. 14 But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. 15 Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death. 16 Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. 17 Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow."
Let us prepare our hearts to closely examine God's message to us in the sacred preaching of God's word. The theme of this sermon is,
Recognizing My Dangerous Power to Create Life Cycles of Sin
[prayer]
As we go into this, we must understand that the contextual flow of what James preaches up to the point of our passage is very important. James just discussed the trials which test our faith. So the various trials and testing in life is the subject he is on. James says it takes wisdom to understand that the trials, and testing of our faith produce endurance and completeness in our Christianity. In fact, both the poor Christian man, and the rich Christian man are to glory in their state of existence because something better awaits all Christians. The testing comes while living amongst the deceived cursed world that is drenched in sin. It is a world that is opposed to Christ. It is opposed to His Kingdom. It is opposed to God's true children who must live temporarily among the lost, deceived, pride filled, futile realm of spiritual darkness. The world lives according to naturalism and false religions. Christians live each day---each moment---in supernaturalism as those who know, worship, and follow the one true God. So James is moving along with this teaching to the first Israelites in history to be rescued out of the domain of darkness in Christ as the New Covenant, yet they are still living out among the cultures of the domain of darkness, and so James brings encouragement to Gods trial torn, tortured, tested, and tattered by the fist of life, children. He says;
"12 Blessed is a man who perseveres under trial; for once he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love Him."
All right; We have the flow of thought. Our imaginations can visualize all kinds of testing that an early Israelite Christian who is dispersed out among the Roman regions must be going through. We can also think about the blessed man that James portrays who perseveres under the testing. He is approved. Ultimately he gets rewarded. Because James mentions perseverance in respect to testing, and rewards, and approval, and all of this kind of thing, and that wisdom from God is what tells us that the test brings endurance and completeness, his audience should be getting it by this point. Right? They, and we Christians right here and now, should be recognizing the supernatural battle while we live among the natural world, and we should be recognizing that the battle is, in fact, because of the supernaturalism of a cursed world in contrast to God's perfect spiritual kingdom. In other words, it is not some fanciful fantasy of godless theories of the survival of the fittest in a chaotic cosmos that has no reason for anything happening. We don't say,
My belief as a Christian just happens to be different than your belief as an agnostic, or Hindu, or atheist, or Muslim, or whatever, but it's inconsequential. After all life is tough for everyone,
kind of fuzzy reasons that don't recognize the unique reasons involved in why God's children experience trials in this world by God's sovereign hand. The early Israelites who are saved, (and we) should be understanding that God, in His sovereignty, is divinely orchestrating it all to bring spiritual growth. All of it is to bring a wake up call to the contrasts of the two spiritual domains. They, and we today, should be understanding that all the trials bring endurance in our lives while keeping in mind that the crown of heavenly life is being ordained for our glorious future. Okay, this is the context. Now think about how people can get all haywire and think wrongly about this kind of revelation of God's sovereign hand. James anticipates the natural reasoning of the human mind, so he says,
"13 Let no one say when he is tempted, [or tested] 'I am being tempted by God'; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone."
When this letter was first sent out, the Israelite Christians would have seen the same Greek words being used that James has been using the whole time to describe the various trials as testing. In other words, they would have read to this point and would see this much like the Bible in Basic English words it for us in our language;
"Let no man say when he is tested, I am tested by God; for it is not possible for God to be tested by evil, and he himself puts no man to such a test:"
In light of God's sovereignty, and what all James has said concerning our trials, this can seem really confusing, and so this is why the majority of English translators have put tempted, and tempt here. Follow me, because the majority of English translations have not compromised the Greek. They are very accurate, because test and tempt are both legitimate translations of the Greek. The dynamic equivalency of tempt is used here to avoid confusion, and get out the more accurate nuance of what James means. The main point is that the Greek word can mean both the verb to test, and the verb to tempt. When James uses the word at the beginning of the letter, in verses 2 and 3, he is using its noun form. Here, James uses it in its verb form. This helps us to recognize that James is wanting to make a stark distinction between God's sovereignty in the daily trials of the world, and the concept that God would never tempt us to sin as part of various trials we face that present us with opportunities to sin. James knows that Israelites who understand God's providential sovereignty, may be inclined to think that God is the one who is tempting them to sin. But, this type of religiously wrong thinking is not the true wisdom thinking that comes from God that James says to pray for to understand the trials of life. Wisdom teaches us that God ordains all trials in His comprehensive sovereign determination of all things. The world does not exist and function according to the godless philosophies of naturalism. But, at the same time, wisdom does not teach us that God tempts us to do evil.
Now, lets think about this for a moment. Think about where the wrong thinking process can lead. First it leads to a very wrong view of God, and of God's sovereignty; and so it is easy for people to think that God is testing them by tempting them to do evil things. In other words, the philosophy might suggest that God tests people to do evil because God wants to see if they will fail. It is like thinking that God is a big game player and we are the participants. We have to endure all of His requirements, and then after persevering through the sin-obstacles that He supposedly uses to tempt us to sin, we will be saved. This kind of thinking is weird, it's foreign, and it's wrong. It amounts to thinking that for God to make sure we endure, He will tempt us to sin, to see what we will do; as if God doesn't know the future anyway, or does know the future, but ordains that we Christians sin by tempting us to do so. So, with this false belief in mind (that God is tempting us to sin), it is believed that He must be testing us toward evil. But James doesn't care how philosophical we are. He simply says,
"13 Let no one say when he is tempted, 'I am being tempted by God'; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone."
meaning He does not tempt anyone with evil toward evil. We must recognize that for an Israelite Christian, doctrinal thoughts would normally go to the illustration of Abraham that James uses a little later in his flow of thought. They had all heard the story from childhood. They knew it well. The writer of Hebrews gives the same testing as an illustration of Abraham's faith, where we read,
"17 By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, ..." Hebrews 11:17
God told Abraham to take Isaac into the wilderness and offer him up as a sacrifice. When God did this, clearly God was testing Abraham; but some very pertinent questions emerge at this point:
Was this a temptation with evil for Abraham to sin by not obeying God?
Does such a temptation mean that God tempted Abraham to sin?
Actually there may have been a temptation for Abraham not to obey God, but we do not find it in the actual account, and further, we never find in the account that God was testing Abraham with evil to see if Abraham would sin. God does not test anyone to sin, yet He tested Abraham. Keep this in mind, because this is the principle key to understanding how God tests you, and how he tests me; but yet not with temptation toward evil. This is why we need to ask ourselves,
how are we to understand this for our own lives in light of all of the facts?
It is really very easy to understand once we look at this from God's perspective. You see, God tests us Christians, but He always tests us for the outcome of good. God never tests His people for the outcome of evil, and so He never tempts us with evil. Again, for simple clarity, God tests His people, but He tests them for the outcome of good. This is what James means at the opening where he says to count it all joy when encountering various trials, knowing that the testing of our faith produces the goodness of endurance. Then we are to let endurance have its good, and perfect result, so that we are lacking in nothing good. Let me illustrate this with an analogy. Let's say, for example a Christian man is out on an extended business trip. He is out of town. In fact, he is in another country. No one there outside his hometown knows who he is. No one in his home town knows what he is doing with his spare time. Every day, at his hotel, at the end of the day, the man is confronted by women who are approaching him and making themselves available for immoral activity. The confrontation with the women is a temptation for him from another source other than God, but the confrontation is also a test unto good, which is from God. As a test of faith for good, such encounters demonstrate that the man cleaves to his wife in a strong way; the man is obedient to the Lord, and the man is living in victory over the darkness of the world. The man glorifies God in his life as a triumphant Christian salesman away from home. God did not tempt the man toward evil. God, in His sovereignty over all things ordains the test for good, where God recognizes that the man receives spiritual growth, endurance, wisdom, and a pure witness right now as a result of the test. God tested the man with good to do good, in that God used good regeneration, good Scripture, good morals, and good conviction from the good Holy Spirit, and the good marriage covenant, to test the man toward abiding in those good things. Remember, in the real world, everything is operating in respect to supernatural principles, though it may seem to the deceived mind to be operating according to naturalism. Keep all of that in mind, because at the same time, another Christian man is there at the same place. He is also from another country. No one there knows him. No one back home knows what he is doing with his spare time. He is confronted by all the same women. They become temptations to him for evil, but becoming temptations for evil comes from another source. Unlike the other Christian, this man, like James says, is drawn away by the lure of his own lusts. He is to blame. His own lust consumes him. He is enticed by his desire to satisfy his flesh in disobedience to God. Then the lust conceives like an impregnation, and then the sin, like a baby, is birthed forth. Then comes the high price that is paid. It is the end result of the life cycle. It is death, where he commits adultery, and reaps the curse of the fleeting pleasures of sin. Now he is tainted. He is stained by his deed. The devil is glorified. His marriage has an alteration in it that the wife may never be able to identify, but it is there, and it is very real. God knows about it. The man knows about it, and now his marriage will never be the same. He will never be the same. The death will always have some kind of deadening, killing, mortifying effect, even if the effect is difficult to identify. Yes, he is forgiven enough to go to heaven. No, his sin is not inconsequential. Again, Yes, he is forgiven enough to go to heaven. No, his sin is not without consequences. You reap temporal fruit from the kinds of seed that you sow.
Now I want us to think again about how God tested Abraham for good. How did God do this? God tested Abraham for good to demonstrate Abraham's faithfulness that God knew was coming. Further, God tested Abraham for good to demonstrate God's faithfulness to Abraham by providing a ram for Abraham to sacrifice. More, God tested Abraham for good, to bless Abraham to glorify God by calling that place,
"Yahweh will provide," Genesis 22:14
God tested Abraham for good by recording this great event for all generations as God's revelation as Scripture, where Abraham is the father of everyone who has faith in God, and so much other good that it would take pages and pages to try and identify it all. The point is that God's test was for good.
God will test you my dear Christian. But God tests you by good, as good, to do good. Concerning this point, we notice the details about God's nature that James gives as an explanatory reason for this;
"... for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone.
In the time, culture, and regions that the dispersed Israelites were living, the false gods of the Gentiles were given human characteristics. These false gods were able to be tempted by evil, and they would tempt people with evil. They could supposedly look down from a mount where gods lived, and succumb to lust, and so they would come down and do things like seduce girls. The false gods would supposedly play elaborate games with people's lives--often in competition with the other false gods. Such silly fictional creatures were made in the image of man, so the mythological stories reflected impotent beings that could be tempted with evil in respect to the ability to sin and do evil. They would, in turn, tempt people with evil to do evil. But Yahweh, the living God, is not like one of those idols. The Lord can not sin. It is impossible for Him to do so. Further, James makes the point that even if you tried to tempt Him, there is nothing about sin that could possibly appeal to the great God of the universe. God can't be swayed by His creation to do what only His creation can do. He can not sin against Himself. Only beings that are not Him, can sin against Him. God, who defines evil in the first place, is always fair in whatever he does. He is always patient. He always knows the future. In fact, God has ordained the future by speaking it all into existence in His powerful declaration,
"10 declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, 'My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose,' 11 calling a bird of prey from the east, the man of my counsel from a far country. I have spoken, and I will bring it to pass; I have purposed, and I will do it." Isaiah 46:10-11
Succumbing to the human attribute of sin is not something that God has declared will be His purpose that He will bring to pass. Further, God is not a responder, where He changes His mind;
"Also the Glory of Israel will not lie or change His mind; for He is not a man that He should change His mind." 1 Samuel 15:29
God does not sin, He is not tempted by sin, nor does He tempt us to sin. Brothers and sisters, we can have great comfort in this fact. We can rest safe and secure in our loving Father's arms each and every day knowing that He has given us everything pertaining to life and godliness. We can both rest, and be thankful to Him that He has provided His word to us to teach us to avoid temptations. He even teaches us to pray that He will deliver us from temptations, and deliver us from evil. Rather than cornering you into an experience where sin is your great proving ground, God wants you to know that you are the one who has the heart where you become a proving ground to yourself of the fact that you are sinful. You are the one who succumbs to your own lusts. But, just like the fact that God tests us for good, God Himself can also be tested by us. Yes, we can test God. Actually, God requested this of Old Covenant Israel, as we read in Malachi,
"Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in My house, and test Me now in this," says Yahweh of hosts, 'if I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you a blessing until it overflows.'" Malachi 3:10
Again, what do we notice about this kind of test? God asks for it, but we notice that God asks that He be tested for good by the good request that He demands. So, whether we are tested by God, or God is tested according to His own request, it is all for good. This leads us to now consider more deeply that James says that the source of temptation by evil is not God, but rather, the source is really us in respect to our very own lusts. In other words, James says it is you;
- "14 But each one is tempted when he is carried away [ESV--lured] and enticed by his own lust [ESV--desire].
What this means is that there is no excuse. You can't blame your temptation on God in any of the various philosophical ways that the mind can come up with to accuse God. You, as a Christian, can not rightly say,
Well, this is the way God made me, so this is how I am predisposed to act. There is nothing I can do about it. After all, God is the potter, and I am the clay; He molds me and makes me to act in this way.
You know, a lot of Christians think this way. They say they can't help themselves. They can't stop what they do, because this is how God made them. Somehow they think that they are a different kind of new Creation in Christ. They think that they are a kind that God has created to never be victorious in spiritual growth, and so all the continuous exhortations in Scripture to flee from temptation are downplayed for their own life. So ultimately, what are they doing? What they are doing is trying to come up with an excuse for the various life cycles of sin that they create. It's like my father in law says,
You can come up with a reason, but that doesn't mean it's an excuse.
But ultimately, all the wrong kind of excuse thinking crowd must put the blame on someone. In the final analyzation of life, what is really being said is that the temptation, and then the sin that follows, is ultimately God's fault. Do you remember how this was the immediate response of Adam when he fell into sin? Put your minds back there in the lush garden paradise of Eden. It had perfect weather. It had its perfect environment of delicious trees, of which Adam and Eve were blessed to be allowed to eat from any of them if they wanted to, in a covenant of grace, whereby God graciously provided the sustaining means for maintaining life; all except one tree. It was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In grace God warned them not to eat from the tree. Hey, when God tells us to do something, a lot of crybaby Christians call it legalism, but it is really God's grace. You see, in grace, God has lovingly provided boundaries for us. He has provided sustenance. He has provided a way of escape. Oh! If we only understood why God gives us boundaries! But something bad happened in paradise. A life cycle of sin was created that resulted in death. So God asks Adam whether Adam ate from the tree that God (in an act of grace) warned Adam not to eat from, as we read in Genesis 3:11. Basically, Adam was caught red handed. But what does Adam do? A lot of people think that Adam tried to blame his sin on Eve. Well, in a way he did try to blame it on Eve, but we need to recognize the details of what Adam said,
"12 The man said, 'The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate.'" Genesis 3:12
Notice that Adam is trying to suggest that it is somehow God's fault that Adam ate from the tree, since it was God's woman that He gave to Adam that gave Adam the fruit. Adam blamed the temptation, and the subsequent sin on Eve. But Adam did something worse when he tried to justify himself by blaming his sin on God, Who in His sovereignty, gave Eve to Adam as a gift of grace in a marriage covenant of grace. Adam was already practicing the sin of self justification which justifies nobody.
How many times have men and women in history done this?
Maybe you have found yourself doing this too. You may not be saying,
Hey, if you hadn't given me the woman all this fruit eating would not have happened.
But, you may be saying,
If only God would have done such and such, then I probably would not have sinned against my parents--on the job--when I gossiped--when I was immoral, when I was cornered, and so I lied, and on, and on.
If only God would have stopped the temptation from coming, then I would never have sinned.
You see folks, No matter how you word it, you can't get away with blaming your temptation to lust, steal, lie, hate, be prideful, to gossip, to tear down the body of Christ; treat your spouse like a dog; treat your children like mindless objects; treat your parents with disrespect; you can't blame any of it on God. Further, James is telling us something else too. Christian, you can't blame your own lust that you are drawn away by, its conception, and the sin that is birthed, on the devil.
What do you mean Pastor?
Well the devil is the great tempter, in that this cursed world is permeated with His work, and I know that a lot of folks think that focusing on the devil when it comes to temptation is the height of spiritual wisdom. But here, James is going deeper than even that. James is focusing the blame focus upon someone else. James is going inside of you and me. So we need to follow the substance of what James is specifically saying in this particular word from the Lord that James has been given to penetrate our souls and to probe our hearts. James' point is that You can't even blame your temptation on a nude woman bathing on a rooftop, like Bathsheeba did when David looked down upon her from His palace. We can't do it, because James says that our temptation, and the subsequent carrying away, which in the Greek suggests being drawn out by a lure, comes from being enticed by our own lust, which is our own desire, which is our own lure that we create and cast in front of ourselves with our own fishing poles. So, James is urging us to be honest with ourselves and put away any pass the buck theology to justify our actions. We need to understand and admit that our own carnal desire is the lure. Then when we sin, we are like the fish that is trapped and killed, yet it willingly went for the bait, because that is what it wanted to do in its own lust for carnality. This describes sin's cycle of life. We create it, and there is nobody else to blame but ourselves.
This leads us to look at the progression. First we are tempted when we are lured and enticed by our own lust. In this way, anything, and any situation can become an instant temptation. If you are at work, and you come in contact with an attractive person, this can become an instant temptation. But think about this type of situation with me for a moment; Don't we typically come in contact with attractive people all the time? I know some of us might be hermits, but we go to the grocery store, or we have neighbors, or whatever. The point is that we come in contact with people, and some of them are attractive people. Just so I don't get misunderstood, What I mean is that they are emotionally, sexually, erotically attractive in a physical, passionate, relational way. Okay? We are pricelessly prudent in our wisdom, but we are not pretensive prudes in our piety. So, keeping this in mind, we know that when we come in contact with these attractive people, our contact is not always considered temptation to sin with those people by trying to pursue some kind of immoral relationship with them, or having some impure thought concerning them. Why is that? The reason why some attractive people do not become temptations to fantasize about, or to flirt with, or to develop a sexual relationship with of fornication and lasciviousness, is because we personally did not make those people into a temptation. This is the principle of honesty where you admit ownership of your temptation. Write that in the margin of your Bible--ownership of my temptation. James is saying to you here, like Nathan said to David,
"You are the man." 2 Samuel 12:7
The same kind of temptation can come for us to tell a lie. We all communicate. We communicate truth to one another. If our lure of temptation comes and entices us, then we desire to tell a lie. Pride is the same way. Pride is the sin that afflicts everyone no matter what measure it comes in. If our lure of temptation comes and entices us, and we desire to bolster our selves, or be arrogant, or not back down because of self exaltation, then we have been lured by our own selves toward the most insidious sin of all. Pride is the sin of the legalist. Pride is the sin of the man who believes the lie that all sin has been eradicated from his life. The point is that James is urging us to recognize that we are the ones who make the temptation become temptation, where we are lured away by our own desires. Then from our own self generated lure, here is what happens next,
"15 Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and when sin is accomplished, [or fully grown] it brings forth death."
James is using strong metaphor to make a strong point about all of this. Think about what he is saying about the life cycle. Folks, your own lust is like a harlot to you. You are enticed by your own harlot that you created. Her name is your lustful desire. Your lust conceives like an immoral impregnation, and then your sin, like a baby, is birthed forth. Then comes the price that you pay. It is the end result of the life cycle. It is death. We find this same progression in Proverbs 7 in respect to how an immoral woman seduces her prey. As I read, think about the life cycle of sin that James is talking about, because the picture that is painted in Proverbs by Solomon to warn young men to use wisdom, is painted with the same brush, the same pigment, and the same palette that James is using in James 1:14-15;
"10 Behold a woman comes to meet him, dressed as a harlot and cunning ... 21 With her many persuasions she entices him; with her flattering lips she seduces him. Suddenly he follows her... 23 ... he does not know that it will cost him his life ... 25 Do not let your heart turn aside to her ways, ... 26 For many are the victims she has cast down, And numerous are all her slain. 27 Her house is the way to Sheol [meaning grave], Descending to the chambers of death." Proverbs 7:6-27
It's a bleak picture, but notice the life cycle. The poetic progression in the Proverb is that the physical harlot persuades, and so there is persuasion, and then there is enticement, and then there is seduction. Suddenly he follows her, and sin is conceived. Then comes payday; there is the cost of life. In fact many victims are slain in this way. This Proverb describes James metaphor of the life cycle of temptation and sin to a T. This leads us to get seriously honest with what James is preaching and recognize that we can make anything into a harlot of seduction if we want to. Let me repeat that because it is so important. You are the one, my dear Christian, who produces the curse of the life cycle of sin in your own life, because you can make anything into a harlot of seduction if you want to. Even in the Proverb, we read Solomon saying,
"25 Do not let your heart turn aside to her ways, ..." Proverbs 7:25
And for all the sisters in Christ, this means, do not let your heart turn aside to his ways--the way of the lure; the way of the gigolo. The point is that we are the ones who let our hearts turn aside, or not. We are lured away by our own lusts. God, on the other hand, produces goodness, and perfection for us as gifts to us because He loves us. He always draws us to what is right, with what is right. He does it by His word through the Holy Spirit. Solomon affirms this principle in the beginning of the Proverb where he says in the preceding verses to keep his words, and treasure his commandment within you; keep His commandments and live; bind them on your fingers, write them on the tablet of your heart--say to wisdom, "you are my sister," and call understanding your intimate friend, and then Solomon says why;
"5 That they may keep you from an adulteress, from the foreigner who flatters with her words." Proverbs 7:5
God gives us all of those resources to extinguish our lustful desires that draw us away in creation of the life cycle of sin. James goes on with this same contrast in his point, saying,
16 Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. 17 Every good thing given [ESV--gift] and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow."
Keep in mind that James just said, in verse 13, that no one should say that he is tempted by God. We've got to remember that James is correcting wrong thinking in lack of wisdom. Now, here James says, "Do not be deceived." In other words, James is still correcting wrong thinking. Everything from our Father-God above, is a perfect gift, and it is always good. Our salvation, which James goes on to say is from God in verse 18, is perfect, and it is good. This leads us to consider that part of what is good in our salvation in respect to when we are tempted. Three things should be brought out here as we wrap up this morning:
1) God always provides a way of escape when we are tempted.
The escape is good.
2) God is the one who empowers us to live the Christian life.
God's power is good.
3) When we succumb to lust, God forgives us through His grace.
God's grace is good.
/1/
First of all, God always provides a way of escape when we are tempted. We read,
"13 No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it." 1 Corinthians 10:13
This is the great principle that we have looked at already, but it is worded a little bit differently. All temptations are common. What we go through when we wrestle with our lust lure that wants to draw us away to conceive sin, is not something that is uncommon. The great principle that we covered was that God tests us for good. Here, even in our own temptation, God is still there with provision for us to conquer our own temptations beyond what we are able to do ourselves. And this is the point. The point is that you can't resist the temptation in your own sinful flesh. Sin can not resist sin. You are not powerful enough to resist the temptations of this world. They are too strong. They are the magnetic draw of the lust of the flesh. They are the powerful pull of the lust of the eyes, and they are the enticing attraction of the boastful pride of life.
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This leads us to the second thing that is good. We need it. We must have it. It is simple: God is the one who empowers us to live the Christian life. To halt the life cycle of sin, then, we must first be saved. You must be saved, which means you are positionally in Christ, and Christ is in you. In salvation, you are sealed by the Holy Spirit. It is in this position that you operate in the strength of His might, as Paul explains in Ephesians 6. But, we must be saved to resist. We must be saved, and then because of our salvation, we can live according to the word of God. This is the only way that you can have victory. We saved people must use the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God to fight temptation. Christ was tempted in all points as we are, but without sin. Christ was sinless, so the temptation had to be brought to him for consideration to see if Christ would be drawn away by desires. The temptation had to be offered by the evil devil for it to even occur. It was the devil's tempting scheme, but it was God's test for good. The way Christ annihilated the devil's evil offers is by quoting the word of God. This is the way we resist the work of the devil in the domain of darkness too. We do it in the power of the Spirit of the resurrected Christ through the word.
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This leads me to the last thing of good that God brings out of our experiences of testing. When we succumb to lust, God forgives us through His grace. None of us is perfect. We all fail. This is why Christ is our all in all in His sacrifice for our sins. On the cross, He absorbed God's wrath that we deserve. On the cross, He covered the life cycle of sins that we produce. On the cross, He purchased us when we had no great value to offer Him in our sins. It is because of this great love covenant that God will never leave you nor forsake you--even through the trials--even through your failures.
In the meantime, brothers and sisters, I urge you to recognize that you can be drawn away by your own lusts as quickly as you can think the thoughts. I urge you to consider all the things we have learned this morning. Make it your ambition to be diligent to make every effort to recognize how dangerous your thoughts are as soon as you start to desire to do something sinful. When you do not, and you succumb to wicked thoughts, then James explains that the end result is paramount to death. Clearly this is bad. It is dangerous. So you need to consciously be aware that there really is a price to pay for the life cycle of sin. Don't let yourself be known as the careless Christian who is seemingly unconcerned about the real and present danger of being drawn away by your own lusts. We must do more than merely keep away from blatant sin that we recognize in our midst. To avoid temptation, we must go even further. We go further and take the foundational steps to be transformed by the renewing of our minds by God's word, Romans 12:2. We must go even further and take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, 2 Corinthians 10:5. To avoid temptation, we must go a step further and avoid bad company. Peer pressure is a strong motivation to sin. Also, we need to go much further than that. We go further and we don't toy around with our freedom in Christ. If you start to play around with grace, then you are going to get snared. In such toying, there lies a greater temptation. It is the temptation to turn your liberty in Christ into a license to sin. Then you need to go even further. You and I need to admit our inability to keep ourselves from being drawn away by our own lusts through legalism, and the arm of the flesh. Recognize what Christ really means by telling you,
"Without me you can do nothing." John 15:5
Why? Because without him, you are nothing. You need to go another step further. You need to stay in prayer, where you are talking to Him about your struggles. And you even need to push yourself even further and do the Biblical thing of staying in intimate close accountable oversight that comes with true fellowship with the saints in God's ordained community of the local church fellowship. Get involved with the church. Put away worldly fellowship, and stay energized and accountable to your brothers and sisters, especially the elders He has called and gifted. Finally, do not give up when you fail. Trust in the grace of Christ. He is very familiar with your life cycles of sin. He is not surprised by your sin. He will resurrect you from self imposed death, and forgive you. He will encourage you to go on for Him in the great battle of life as a warrior for Christ. God likes to take the unlovely, and the weak, and the despised, and make it strong for Him. Does this describe you? It describes me. I urge you to recognize that God resurrects His servants out of the ashes of life. Finally, rest in His grace, and don't be deceived and think that He has turned His back on you. Trust that He sees Christ in you as your only hope of glory, and trust your loving glorious Father, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow, that no matter what, he will, in grace for you, and love for you, give every good thing and every perfect gift to you from above.
