The Blame Game Series

The great British playwright Oscar Wilde once said, “I can resist everything…except temptation.” Has a truer statement ever been spoken? And what’s unique about temptation is that each person is tempted by different things. Some people are tempted toward materialism. Others are tempted to always get revenge. Some people are tempted to eat pickles, while others of us are committed to going to heaven…you get the idea. But the universal thing about temptation is that it is a common struggle. It is a part of our fallen nature. Ever since the Garden of Eden, humanity has been tempted to want what it should not want. That’s why we need Jesus, not just to save us from hell, but to reorient the affections of our hearts.

Here’s some good news for our common struggle against temptation – God wrote a book. And according to 2 Peter 1:3, the Bible is totally sufficient for everything we need for life and godliness. So turn with me this morning to the book of James as we continue the series we started last week called Faith and Works. At the beginning of chapter one, we learned that God use trials to make us more like Jesus. Trials are God moving towards us, not turning away from us. We learned that faithfully enduring trials is one of the evidences of genuine salvation. Saving faith will always be persevering faith. And because trials are for our good, as counter intuitive as it sounds, we can actually rejoice IN them because we have confidence that God is at work in us. And now this week, we’re going to see James transition from talking about trials, to warning us about temptation.

James 1:13-18

Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. 14 But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. 15 Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death. 16 Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. 17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. 18 Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.

And so as James moves from trials to temptation, here’s the first thing I want you to see about the temptation to sin…

1. DON’T PLAY THE BLAME GAME – vs 13-16

It’s really one of the most devastating parts of any relationship: blame. If you were to Google “The Blame Game” you’d come up with several different books with the same title. Lots of people have written about it. There’s even a Berenstain Bears book called the “The Blame Game.” And I think we can all agree that if the blame game is affecting the Berenstain Bears, then the rest of us are in real trouble. The Blame Game is what we do when something doesn’t go our way…we blame someone else. Think about it. In Genesis 3, the very first time sin was introduced to the world, the response of Adam was, “It’s Eve’s fault.” And do you remember Eve’s response? “The serpent deceived me.” You see, we all love the idea that somehow our struggles are not our fault…even if we’re the common denominator in the midst of all of them.

And here’s what I’ve learned over the years. When it comes to all the evil and pain in the world, God receives a lot of the blame too. In fact, this is a huge reason why so many people walk away from the faith…because some how, some way, God didn’t do right by them. In fact, let me go back and read from Genesis 3: 11 “Who told you that you were naked?” the LORD God asked. “Have you eaten from the tree whose fruit I commanded you not to eat?” 12 The man replied, “It was the woman you gave me who gave me the fruit, and I ate it” (NLT). Did you catch that? Adam was very quick to remind God that HE was the one who gave Adam the woman in the first place.

But before you find the speck in Adam’s eye and cry, “Oh, the audacity,” guess what? Sometimes WE are little Adams…and if we’re not careful, we’ll place the blame at God’s feet for something that goes wrong in OUR lives. And here’s how we might do this. We blame God for trials, because we view them incorrectly as something God is doing TO us instead of FOR us. And listen to me closely, if we are not careful, we can fall into Adam’s pattern and even blame God for the temptations that overtake us.