What Is The Truth About Trials And Temptations? Series

What is the Truth about Trials and Temptations?

Am service July 13th 2008

1 Peter 1:6-9

Introduction

As I began preparing this message I began to really think deep into the thought the “Truth about Trials and Temptations”, and I thought this about life.

Life should come with a list of side effects. There should be a tag on every newborn baby saying life can be full of fun and adventure and excitement and joy, but there are side effects. There’s illness . . abuse . . . broken relationships. . . betrayal . . . sorrow . . . loss . . . injuries. . . disappointment . . . heartache . . . crime . . .and death.

Actually, life did come with a warning. Jesus said in John 16:33 “that in this life, there will be trouble.” But why? Why these side effects? Why is there suffering and evil and pain?

That “why” question goes back thousands of years. It was asked in the Old Testament by Job and the writers of the Psalms, and it was especially relevant during the 20th and 21st century, where there were two World Wars, the Holocaust, devastating famines in Africa, the killing fields of Cambodia, the emergence of AIDS, the genocide in Rwanda, the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo, and the attacks of 9/11, the hurricanes of 2005, the flooding of this spring. Why all of this if there’s a loving and powerful God? Why do bad things happen to good people?

Before we get down on God about the trials and temptations, we should also ask the question “Why?” when it comes to blessings, because we definitely don’t deserve that from the hand of God.

Today from this passage the Apostle Peter is going to tell us the truth about trials and temptations.

Read Scriptures: 1 Peter 1:6-9

I. I need to know that Life is full of trials and temptations.

Vs. 6 “In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.”

Any thinking person can look around and see that life is bombarded with trials and temptations. We have trials such as sickness, desease, suffering, sorrows, death, disappointment, and loneliness.

We have temptations such as greed, immorality, anger, drugs, alcohol, backbiting, gossip.

The list of trials and temptations could go on and on. For every act there can be the sin of too much or the sin of too little. Life is full of trials and temptations.

This is especially true for genuine believers, because as believers we should stand in opposition to the selfish, immoral, greedy, and unjust ways of the world. We can see the world’s cursing of God, and its flaunting of sex even for advertising purposes. That shows us the world’s opposition to Jesus. We know that we live in a world that is full of trials and temptations. I want you to see two things that is said in this passage about trials and temptations.

1. Trials and temptations are only for a season. They are for a little while, for a short time. The ideas is that our salvation is at hand; we will all soon be delivered from the suffering of this earth. Since that is the case, there is nothing that we cannot endure.

I think of Jesus enduring the cross with its suffering and shame for my sake. When I think of Jesus and what He has done for me, then there is nothing that I cannot endure this side of heaven.

2. Trials and temptations cause heaviness within us. The words “suffer grief” means to be grieving; to suffer sorrow, stress, pressure, and mental anguish. We all know what it is to feel heavy and weighed down with grief; to suffer stress and pressure; to mentally in anguish, wondering, questioning, and suffering under the weight of trials and temptations.

What we need to understand is that temptation is not sin, Jesus was tempted but He didn’t sin. Every temptation that we are faced with God gives us a door of escape before the temptation is acted upon then it becomes sin. So often we feel the heaviness of trials and temptations because whether you believe it are not, or whether you know it or not you are under attack from you enemy satan and his desire is to destroy your life.

The more that you try to live for Jesus, the more he will attack you until he sees that he is wasting his time. The problem is that some of us give in, therefore satan is not wasting his time and he continues the attack until he is successful and wrecking your witness for Jesus, and ruins your life and your family.

The fact is life is full of trials and temptations and you cannot get around it as long as you are alive on this earth. They are only for a season, and they also cause heaviness within us.