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The purpose of Trials and Temptations we have been seeing together in our ongoing study in the book of James is to test our faith.
That is to say it is to help us discover is our faith real and is it rooted in reality or is it just the power of positive thinking that
that burdens away in the fire. James puts it this way he says consider it pure joy my brothers.
Whenever you face Trials of many kinds because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance.
And just as gold is put into the fiery furnace so that the dross may be revealed burned or scooped off
and the gold flourish in all of its glory so God our Father when we have become his children through faith in Jesus sovereignly arranges the circumstances of our lives.
So that all the fluff all the dross all the impurity gets flushed out into the open and burned off.
And the true gold of the life of Jesus that he plants within us shines ever more brightly.
And I put it out last week that one of the reasons God does this probably the primary reason that he does this is because he intends to share his authority with us in the coming ages.
And so he is particularly concerned that we would be fully mature and complete that is to say fully mature in Christ and fully mature in all the parts of our being.
Hence the purpose of trial and temptation hence God's sovereign arranging of the fires that are needed to bring us to that point.
Well that immediately then brings us to the question is God the author of evil. If God is the one who arranges, if God is the one who is sovereign, if God is the one who is in control of everything when difficulty, when temptation, when challenges come our way, do they come to us from the hands of God?
Is God some malicious mischievous little boy who loves to poke us with a stick to see what kind of rise he can get out of us.
Worst and that is he some kind of a malevolent whatever you'd like to call him who loves to set traps to see if somehow we can manage to avoid them.
Well that's the issue James now begins to address in these verses that we have read together from James chapter one. Listen again to what he says when tempted no one should say God is tempting me.
For God he says cannot be tempted by evil nor does he tempt anyone. So to the question is God the author of evil? To the question does God like to provoke us to the question does God like to set traps for us?
The Bible answers in the words of James with a resounding no. When tempted and remember the word tempted in the word trial in the book of James is all the same word.
When tried when tested when tempted no one should say God is tempting me and then he gives us two reasons why that is the first God cannot be tempted by evil.
That is to say there is nothing in the heart of God that resonates with evil. And so when God comes along and finds a group of people you know planning mischief mayhem or murder.
There is nothing in the heart of God that is filled with curiosity that wants to say wonder what they're up to. I wonder what it would be like to do this that or the other thing God is of pure eyes and to behold evil there is nothing in God that resonates with evil.
And because there is nothing in the heart of God that resonates with evil James goes on to say nor does he tempt anyone. That is to say God has no interest in setting traps for you or for me.
He has no interest in prodding us to see what our reaction will be. It's not part of the character of God. Now I belabor that this morning because I have more than a slight suspicion that whenever we talk about God allowing trials and difficulties into our lives that from a pastoral point of view.
It causes us to question the heart and the character of God. Like who wants to give his heart or her heart? Who wants to surrender his or her life?
God that you can't quite trust that he isn't after you know for whatever greater good to do you harm or to hurt you. God he says cannot be tempted by evil nor does he tempt anyone.
Well that brings you back to the same question then doesn't it? Where then do temptations come from? And you and I are inclined to say well they come from Satan and so they do.
But you know even Satan wouldn't have any power over you or over me if it wasn't for the realization that the real power of temptation comes from inside us.
Each one is tempted when by his own evil desire he is dragged away and enticed. Each one is tempted when by his own evil desire he is dragged away and enticed.
And the word picture there comes from the field of fishing. Now think this through with me and those of you that are avid anglers will know all about this. How do you go about catching a fish?
Well if you catch a fish with a rod and reel the trick is to get the hook in the fish's mouth so you can drag them out of the water and into your boat.
Now no self-respecting fish has any particular interest in putting his mouth around your hook. Fish may not be clever but not that stupid.
So how do you get your fish? Well you have to lure them. You have to bait them. You take your hook.
You put bait on it or if you're a flyfisher you find some kind of what looks like food and the idea is that the food that you are providing will resonate with the hunger in that fish.
And you trick him into taking the bait and then you drag him away. And the difference between a good fisherman and a bad fisherman is that a good fisherman knows how to time the hunger of the fish to the bait that he is using and when you bring those two together you can home with enough fish to eat.
Now when I go fishing I never catch any of them because I haven't learned that fine art even though my name is viscer which means fisherman can help that.
Each one is tempted when by his own evil desire he is dragged away and enticed.
And James says what you have here is a word picture of how temptation works and what gives temptation its power the word for evil desire is the Greek word epithumia.
And it really means just desire it means you're getting it means longing one characteristic of human beings in that we are created is that we have been created with hunger that is to say we have needs that need to be met.
We have needs for food we have needs for intimacy we have needs for affection we have needs for touch we have needs for affirmation we have needs for success we have needs for for for meeting the longings and the yearnings of our hearts.
And as you know so well in the original creation God's plan was that those needs in us would be met through fellowship with him he is our father and if you look at Adam and even the garden everything that you and I pray for in the areas of need God provided for them freely.
You know the story they fell into sin turned away from God and what were normal natural human desires now went over the top and became evil desire.
And so hunger becomes gluttony the need for intimacy becomes sexual perversion the need for fame becomes a desire to exercise power the need for recognition becomes a concerted effort at putting oneself forward.
And every fallen son and daughter of Adam and Eve have evil desires that is to say our longing to meet the needs of our hearts now let me point out that when you come to Jesus he puts those to death we'll talk about that later on and he delivers us from those evil desires but outside of Christ your life is controlled by both says.
By the passions of body and mind most people spend most of their time and most of their energy looking for ways to satisfy their illegitimate needs and hunger.
And that's what Satan capitalizes on if he can take our hunger our evil desire in whatever area then he will come along or we come along with our need over here he will bait a hook with a promise to fulfill it over here.
And when he can bring those two together he can get us to snap at the bait and only afterwards do you discover there's a hook in it and you are dragged away because you have been lured and enticed.
Paul talks about that later on when he says what causes fights and quarrels among you don't they come from your desires the battle within you.
You want something but you don't get it you kill and covet but you cannot have what you want your quarrel and fight you do not have because you do not ask God temptation would have no power over your life or over my life if like God it didn't resonate with an unmet hunger inside am I making sense.
Can you see that working its way out in your own life whether that's over eating whether that's over sexing whether that is you know trying to be something or somebody that you're not.
The appeal is always to that hunger and the more broken we are the more we need to experience God's grace in those areas because the more vulnerable we are to Satan's offer to bait us.
Why do some people continually make bad decisions about bad relationships why do they not learn from past experiences because the hunger is simply too big and every time the little worm dangles in front of their faces they go and they're caught.
Now just to drive that point home James goes on then to change the analogy from fishing to obstetrics for he says in verse 15 then after desire has conceived it gives birth to sin and sin when it is full grown.
It is full of sin and sin and sin and sin and sin and sin and sin and sin and sin.
When the egg of a woman meets with a sperm of a man in the fallopian tube travels down the fallopian tube and gets implanted in the wall of the uterus connections are made blood supply is accomplished.
And being equal and things going well nine months later that baby has grown and is ready for delivery.
Now James uses that common analogy from life as an example of the progression of sin.
It begins as always it begins with hunger and a proposed answer to that hunger coming together when sin has conceived it always involves making a decision.
And if you're wrong there's nothing wrong with temptation you cannot avoid temptation it is what you do with the temptation that really matters.
Once those decisions have been made once you have yielded to the temptation once you have been deceived into thinking that this will somehow make the hurt go away satisfy the longing make me complete then it starts to grow inside you.
Now you may not know that it's growing inside you for quite a long period of time it may be almost imperceptible but imperceptibly your life will begin to change because you have said yes where you should have said no.
And now what happens is that your thinking begins to change and whereas before maybe you were fully devoted to your service to Jesus whereas before you really wanted to walk in the pads of righteousness now all of a sudden to things of God begin to to leave you well not quite as enthused not quite as excited in fact you become more and more enamored by the world.
And whereas before you wanted to make sure you never took that second look you wanted to walk away from it now there is something in your heart that keeps drawing you back again and again and again and every time you get drawn back it gets stronger and stronger and stronger pretty soon it begins to involve your thinking increasingly you begin to look for opportunities to satisfy that need.
Every time you satisfy the needed grows stronger the grace of God and you grows weaker and now pretty soon you start running around with the crowd you ought not to be running around with your conscience has been deadened things that bothered you before no longer bother you and you're probably patting yourself on the back saying why land I don't understand why used to be so troubled before or why I try to fight this thing so hard.
Then eventually and this may take many years or it may only take days or weeks depends on who you are and where you come from eventually seen becomes full grown.
It becomes part of your thinking it becomes part of your mindset it now leads to actions and pretty soon those actions will break out over your head and produce what the Bible calls.
Death after desire has conceived it gives birth to sin and sin when it is full grown gives birth to death now there are many examples of that in life and in scripture but the one example that came to my mind as I was working on this is the story of David and Beth Shiba it's recorded for us in second Samuel chapter 11.
Perhaps you know the story it's a story of sexual misconduct a story of serious adultery we could pick any other story because all temptation is similar a place of need with a place of comfort and provision with the devil's hook in it to lure us and to drag us away from faithfulness to go on.
David you recall was a king and one day when the rest of his army was out fighting the enemy he was wandering around on the roof of his house and there on the roof of another house below his palace was Beth Shiba taking her bath.
Now I managed to find a picture with her with clothes on but I rather suspect she had a lot less on than that and the bait was there the trap was set instead of looking the other way he allowed it into his heart and into his life.
He invited her over they had sex she got pregnant he had to cover it up so he got her husband to come home from the battlefield try to send him home so that he could make love to his wife and she could say well the child is yours well.
He didn't want to go home because why should he be in the embrace of his wife while the rest of his companions are dying on the battlefield so David gets him drunk even drunk Uriah wouldn't go home.
Now David's got a problem and so he's got to kill Uriah and if you know the story he gives a command to Joe Ab the commander of the army and he says to him
when you're pressing in on the battle make sure that Uriah is in the front lines fighting the enemy and then when the battle is fierce and when he is surrounded by the enemy then you pull the rest of your troops back so that he will be killed in the battle and that's exactly what happened.
Sin desire having been conceived it gives birth to sin and sin when it's full grown gives birth to death and without spending a lot of time on it this morning let me just again walk you through the progression of this utter destruction that David brought into his own life and into the life of the kingdom by yielding to this one temptation.
That had such incredible consequences it starts as I said by the fact that he had nothing to do I don't know about you but I find in my own life and I'll be frank with you about that if I have no focus and no purpose if I am tired or weary and I bet you the same thing is true for you then I am vulnerable to temptation.
David should have been out there with his men fighting instead of walking around on the roof of his palace getting himself into trouble there's truth to the old proverb that says you know how does it go idle.
Idle hands are the devil's work shot idle hands are the devil worth workshop he has nothing to do and so he sees her bathing now he might not have been able to avoid looking at her but he certainly could have avoided a second look Martin Luther used to say about temptation you can stop the birds from from flying overhead but you can sure stop them from nesting in your hair.
You see there always are choices that are made in the moment of temptation you know it and I know it I know exactly when I cross the line between temptation and there is something in me that resonates with that temptation and I say yes to it and I can tell you a thousand and one reasons why that happens.
But it's the beginning of trouble because the seed gets planted in your heart so what is he do well he says I'll invite her over now there is nothing to say that he invited her over to have sex with her immediately I bet you he invited her over to have scrap or maybe a cup of coffee.
He probably said to himself a guy's really got to get to know his neighbor because that's the neighbor leading to do she'll be honored whatever his reason.
Once you have said yes it has a life and a power of its own and whether they were drinking coffee or playing scrap or doing whatever else they were doing I'll tell you one thing you and I both know where they ended up.
And the ended up having sex.
Now understand and this is fascinating because surely people will not ignorant about the facts of life this woman was taking a bath because she had just finished her ritual cleaning after having her monthly period.
That means it's a month our week after her period is ended she is in the most fertile stage of her life and guess what happens when you have sex when you're ovulating.
You're on a good risk of getting pregnant.
You know they probably said God loves us and he's going to protect our good news for you the more God loves you the more you're going to get caught and I knew more good people that get caught and bad people because bad people are smart enough to stay out of trouble.
Do you hear me? So now she's pregnant.
That's not good news because what do you do? Well they've had sex she gets pregnant and now as I said they've got to try to solve the problem.
Uriah won't go home to make love to his wife. That way they could have covered it up. So now Uriah has to die and I can well imagine that David was you know congratulating himself on how cleverly he handled this.
But if you know 2nd Samuel chapter 11 then you will know that it ends with these very two words the thing that David had done displeased the Lord.
So God raises up the prophet Nathan and David goes through nothing but trouble for the rest of his life and for the rest of his kingship.
God doesn't stop loving him. God doesn't reject him but the sin that he allowed into his heart and the action that he took when he yielded to that temptation has produced consequences that have not only troubled his house for generations but you can believe have troubled the people of God for years and years to come.
After desire has conceived it gives birth to sin and sin when it is full grown gives birth to death.
Where does the power of temptation lie? It lies right inside our hearts and when our hearts resonate with a trap that Satan is setting the offer to meet that need.
That's when the process begins and if that process is not stopped by repentance and by faith and by confession then I don't care whether or last a week or takes a month or takes a year or takes 10 years eventually that will bear fruit and we will fall flat on our fannies and do great damage to the kingdom of God.
Obviously then for us the big question as we prepare now for communion is how do you handle temptation?
How do you learn to stand up when your hunger meets up with a promising answer that is outside of and not from God well clearly?
Clearly the answer lies with Jesus. The scripture says concerning the person of Jesus Hebrews 4.15 we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses but we have one who has been tempted in every way just as we are yet without sitting.
See one of the reasons Jesus had to become human. One of the reasons he had to be born as a baby is that he had to go through everything that you and I go through.
And we don't often appreciate the fact that every need that you and I can possibly have Jesus had and every opportunity to fall into temptation Jesus experiences.
As a matter of fact we don't have time to dwell on it this morning. If you will look at the temptations of Jesus and the gospels before he begins his public ministry and you compare those to the temptations that Adam and Eve experienced in Genesis chapter 3 you will discover that all three temptations are exactly parallel the difference being Adam and Eve fell into sin.
Jesus remains standing and because of that he is a sympathetic high priest who understands our weaknesses not only because he has been tempted in every way but because he himself has suffered and was tempted he is able to help those who are being tempted.
He happens when we come to Jesus in confession and in repentance. He not only forgives us in the places where we have failed but he imparts to us his life in his ability.
The more we learn to say no in those places where previously we have said yes the stronger we become and the less prone we are to falling into the trap or to be baited by Satan.
And Jesus himself promises or Paul does in Scripture that no temptation has seized you except what is common to me in and God is faithful. He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear but when you are tempted he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.
See if God were to let the devil have a full goal at you or me with every armament that he could throw our way there is another one of us who would be strong enough to stand but God is not out to destroy us.
God is out to flush out the draws. God is out to manifest the goal. He is out to make a strong in the ways of Jesus. And so as the story of Job that James ends the book with illustrates so clearly Satan can only go so far and God uses even Satan to purify the saints.
And I think one of the things the devil is going to kick himself for all through eternity when he burns in the fires of hell is that God has even used his nasty tricks to establish the people of God and to bring glory to his name.
And so this morning as we turn to communion here's what we need to do. We need to own our own sin. We need to own those places where we have played with the bait where we have yielded to it and we've ingested it.
And it's taken us away from Jesus. It's made our hearts cold and it's robbed us of our strength. We need to be honest about that. We need to confess that to God. We need to confess if need be to one another.
And then we need to turn to Jesus not only for forgiveness but we need to invite his searching power within our own lives so that the next time we face this hunger we experience this need and we see the bait hanging there.
We can turn away from it because we know that tempting though the bait to be inside is a hook that wants to rob me of my freedom and take me places where I don't want to go.
And the good news of the gospel is that God is faithful. No matter how weak we are, no matter how badly we fail, no matter how badly we've blown it, no matter how badly we're put together, no matter how intense is our need and our hunger and our longing that never seems to get filled.
Jesus says whoever drinks with the water that I will give him will never thirst again.
Come to the Savior now. He gently calleth me. Enter repentance for me for him and my name.
He waited to be sung salvation, peace and war.
And in the name of Jesus. Come to the Savior now. He will have gone and gone.
Enter your soul, for his fire I heal. Come, my poor one, do she return to his foe?
There's our lost faith in him, his love will never go home.
Come to the Savior now. He offers all to be. Believe it's where it's now, there's never any pain.
The only excuse is for the feelings to not stay. The only excuse is for whatever's sent away.
Come to the Savior now. What are your burdens here? Here I is now. He called best all your care on me.
Come and for every greed in Jesus you will find.
For save and show me the loving friend and God.