Temptation Island Pt. 1 – Temptation Tricks
I. Introduction
Temptation is one of those things that we keep on the low down. We don’t openly discuss it. We know that all of us are dealing with it, faced with it, and fight it but we don’t discuss it, dissect it, and deal with it. We laugh about it. We make snide remarks about it. We overlook it. All the while we know that temptation is a silent killer. We allow people to suffer in silence and then someone falls and we act like we can’t figure out why. We know why . . . they moved to Temptation Island and couldn’t survive. Temptation Island is a dangerous place because temptation when we don’t understand it and learn to deal with it separates, isolates, and will become the gateway to your demise if you don’t learn to move off the island!
So it is important for us to discuss temptation. I just want to use this morning to explain to you how temptation works because you have to know that, "What is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy’s strategy."
We often say the devil uses tricks on us! How many of you know that a magician’s trick loses effectiveness when you know what the secret is. The devil doesn’t have as much success with us if we understand the way temptation works. We need to expose him and his tricks for what they are!
II. Text
James 1:13-15
13-15Don’t let anyone under pressure to give in to evil say, "God is trying to trip me up." God is impervious to evil, and puts evil in no one’s way. The temptation to give in to evil comes from us and only us. We have no one to blame but the leering, seducing flare-up of our own lust. Lust gets pregnant, and has a baby: sin! Sin grows up to adulthood, and becomes a real killer.
13 Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone. 14 But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. 15 Then, when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, brings forth death.
III. Temptation Tricks
A. Temptation tricks us into passing the buck.
We want to blame God or someone else. Don’t you dare blame God. God isn’t involved in evil.
Earlier James talks about trials and uses same Greek word he uses here for temptation. But first usage of word is idea of things that come at us from without. When he uses the word in this instance it is the idea of things that come at us from within! The temptation comes from our own evil desires. It is our fault. It isn’t your deadbeat husbands fault. It isn’t you unloving spouses fault. It isn’t your hateful bosses fault. It isn’t your crazy kids fault. It isn’t Hollywood’s fault ... if they just hadn’t put that in the movie. It is our fault! We have to own it.
Proverbs 19:3 warns: “A man’s own folly ruins his life, yet his heart rages against the Lord.”
In other words, we want to blame God and everyone else for our own evil desires. The first step to victory for most of us is simply to quit blaming everyone else for our weakness.
B. Temptation tricks us into feeling special. When you are tempted. Not if but when. Everyone is tempted. If someone tells you they are never tempted then you might as well call a mortician because they have to either be dead or they are the biggest liar on the planet.
I Corinthians 10:13 says, “No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. 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.”
Temptation is not only certain it is common. Common . . . it is a shared thing. One of the tricks of the enemy is for him to convince you that you are on Temptation Island. No one has it as bad as me. This is a specialized attack. You don’t have some special form of temptation that no one else has ever faced at a more severe level than anyone else in history.
Temptation is certain and common. The enemy is trying to make you feel like that so he can isolate you and makes you feel all alone! He employs an effective divide and conquer strategy.
That is important to know because if you don’t know that you will resist anyone’s help, advice, or intervention because you will feel like “Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen!”
When tempted you just need to tell the devil “You tricks are tired. I know you have used this before! You are just using common temptation on me.”
Don’t get me wrong common temptation is still tempting! But at the moment we feel like our temptation is unique, exclusive, peerless or unparalleled we play into the enemy’s hands and make defeat possible.
What he is using against you he has used against others. Others do know your pain, your struggle, your issue. There really is strength in numbers. Knowing that others have been faced with the same temptation and overcome helps! When he tells you “no one else or only you!” you have got to call him who he is . . . a liar and the father of all lies.
I want to make sure you understand that just because temptation is certain and common doesn’t give us the right to fall to temptation! Just because you aren’t the first and won’t be the last doesn’t also mean you have to fall to temptation. We will discuss how to defeat temptation over the course of the next couple of weeks.
C. Temptation tricks us into falling for hookers.
Pressure - It is a constant, daily, build up of pressure. The most effective temptation builds up. It comes one wave after another until like a pressure cooker if we are not careful builds up to destruction. That is why when we start feeling the pressure we have to be even more on guard rather than letting off steam.
James talks about temptation using the life cycle to reveal how temptation works. Temptation is begins at conception. That is when the desire starts. Then there is a birth which is sin. I hear parents talk about having a baby by accident. How many of you know that is impossible! You don’t just accidentally have a baby. There are steps that lead up to the conception of that baby. The same is true of sin. Temptation starts with desire then has a baby. There are steps necessary to conceive the sin!
No one falls into sin. We plan it. Sin is a direct result of not stopping temptation before it grows up. No one accidentally has an affair. No one accidentally lies, steals, and cheats. The issue is that we fail to recognize the process the enemy uses against us and therefore we dwell on, fantasize, and play with temptation and when we don’t stop temptation at conception it will grow up to adulthood and produce death. The wages of sin is and will remain the same. We don’t get to miss getting paid if we fail to deal with temptation.
Temptation is a process and progression that we must head off. Desire/thoughts lead to action, actions (cross one line crossing 2nd line is easier) lead to death.
If you are going to successfully defeat temptation you have to cut it down at its conception. The great defense against the air menace is to attack the enemy’s aircraft as near as possible to their point of departure. Winston Churchill
You got to be ruthless at the jump off point in order to kill the temptation before it grows up!
Bait and switch – James uses a word picture to help understand the way temptation works. He says we are “drawn away”. That word is a fisherman’s term in the original language. It is a term that would describe a fisherman who catches a fish by using bait or a lure. He baits us into getting hooked!
USE ILLUSTRATION OF FISHING POLE. He dangles things in front of us to lure us away from God!
What is your weakness? What lures you in? What is your blind spot? You have to discern that because you need to know that the enemy of our soul is a great fisherman and he will use that on you. You have to deal with the bait! You have to know what he uses.
Paul says to the folks in Corinthians "We are not unaware of the devil’s schemes or devices." Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster.
My concern is that if we are not careful we either are unaware or worse we play like we are unaware and so we continue to fall prey to the same exact bait over and over again.
I submit that we need to get to the place that we force the devil to change bait. Some of you haven’t required any change in strategy for decades. Just dangle the same exact temptation time after time and we fall and act like we can’t figure out why! I want you to become so aware of your own weakness (so that you will become strong) that the enemy will have to try this (HAT). He has to throw everything at you. He tries everything at you because he can’t find anything that works!
The lure of sin is that it looks better to us than God! It is designed to draw you away but always leaves you gaining nothing for the trade. That is the hook! It looks better
than it is!
Eve was deceived into thinking that God was holding out on her and that happiness and fulfillment could be found outside of what God had said. The lives of so many of us have gone wrong at the exact same place as Eve’s. We’ve allowed the seduction of an empty promise to whisper into our hearts. We’ve begun to think that the apple, the dream, could somehow give us something that God could not give us and that somehow God has been holding out on us.
John Piper got it right when he said, “sin gets its power by persuading me to believe that I will be more happy if I follow it. The power of all temptation is the prospect that it will make me happier."
The devil is a good fisherman. A good fisherman hides the barb otherwise we could just put a bare hook on the line. What we have to know is that just because the barb is hidden that doesn’t diminish the reality of the barb! We have to learn to look past the bait and see the hook again! Even as attractive as the bait may look we have to remember the barb will be painful. A little hook is dangerous! You have to remember that or you will keep falling for hookers. One moment. One look. One taste. One drink. One time. And he sets the hook and we are caught!
It is time to realize the price of admission to temptation . . . separation. It separates from God. The price is too high! Count the cost! Don’t live on Temptation Island! It is lonely. It is painful. It is deadly.
Next week we will look at how to deal with temptation. I feel like the first step is to clearly understand how the enemy works on us. So just say no to hookers! The bard is still there. Learn what acts as bait to you!
