Here Comes Trouble-Part B

The desire that leads to deception, that brings you to a decision, something happens. There's a fourth step and that's death. James says, then when desire has conceived it gives birth to what? To sin. Sin is born and sin when it is full grown brings forth death.

It might not happen for a while. You might live a long time before it ever comes, but it's so cute at first. It's a baby. Look at my baby sin. That's kind of cute. A lion is cute as a baby. If it grows up, it'll eat you. Sin can look appealing, but you have to remember that it's a deadly trap.

The cost will always be greater than you think. Today on Connect with Skip Heiting, Skip shares what you can do in the fallout of your own failure. Because no matter where you are, God's mercy will meet you there. Right now, we want to tell you about a resource that will help you live in the power of the Holy Spirit. Counselor, Comforter, Advocate, Helper. These are some of the names for the Holy Spirit found in the Bible. The Holy Spirit isn't a warm, fuzzy feeling or a vague cosmic force. He's a person who loves you, cares for you, and wants to empower you to be everything God calls you to be.

Here's Skip Heitzig. I think there's a lot of Christians who have heard the term Holy Spirit, obviously, but they have a very vague idea of who the Spirit of God is and what he's supposed to do in their lives. We want to help you better understand the Holy Spirit by sending you Expound Holy Spirit, a DVD study from Pastor Skip. And for a limited time, we'll also send you a booklet by Lenya Heitzig called Empower, Discover Your Spiritual Gifts. Both resources are our way to say thanks for your gift of $25 or more to help keep this Bible teaching ministry on the air, connecting you to God's life-changing truth.

Call now to request your copies of these resources, 800-922-1888, or give online securely at connectwithskip.com slash offer. Now, as we join Skip Heitzig for today's teaching, we're in Joshua chapter 7. Jim Elliot, the missionary said, God always gives his best to those who leave the choice with him.

Isn't that great? God always gives his best to those who leave the choice with him. But he saw, he coveted, he took.

Those are the stages. Now, I asked you at the beginning, did I not to turn to or to mark James chapter 1? So turn there for a moment. I want you to look at two verses, James chapter 1 gives to us, we could call it the anatomy of temptation. It's like he's a scientist and he dissects temptation to show you the different stages, and it's like he has been reading Joshua chapter 7.

James chapter 1, 14 and 15, I'm going to begin in verse 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. But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Then when desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and sin when it is full grown brings forth death.

Notice the stages. First stage, desire. Desire.

James says, each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires. We all have desires. There's nothing wrong with having a desire.

They're normal. You couldn't function without desire. You have a thirst drive, you have a hunger drive. We have a sex drive. God put that in the human race. There's nothing wrong with desires. What's wrong is when you seek to satisfy those desires outside the will of God.

That's the problem. So for example, eating is normal. Gluttony is sin. Sleep is normal. Laziness is sin. Sex is normal. Adultery is sin. Wanting an education is normal. Cheating on the test, that's sin.

You get the point. Begins with desire. The next step is deception. After desire comes deception.

You'll notice in verse 14, James tells us, each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires. See the word drawn away? It's a hunter's term. It means to lead an animal or lure an animal from a place of safety into a trap.

I have a friend who is helping me solve a problem. I think I have some kind of critters at my house. He thinks they're squirrels.

So he says, I got the solution. I'm going to trap these squirrels and then I'm going to let them out somewhere far away. So he has these trapped. The door's open and he put a little container with just a little bit of peanut butter in it. I love peanut butter. I'm tempted by it. I won't let my dog out because he'll get trapped. So that little door is open and that little cup of peanut butter is sitting there to lure an animal from a place of safety into a trap. That's the idea of drawn away. Come here, little squirrel. Also look at the word in that verse, enticed.

Do you see it? Each one is tempted each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. Now this word comes from the word that means to bait a hook, to take a hook and put bait on it. So you throw a hook into the water. You don't want to leave it like the hook because the fish is going to go, forget you. But you put bait on the hook and he's going to think there's breakfast, not knowing he, he is the breakfast. That's the, that's the point of baiting the hook. You're hiding that lure from them.

You're bringing them out from a place of safety. You're baiting a hook. Achan had a desire for more. Okay, nothing wrong with having a desire Achan. And then he sees something alluring.

Clothes and cash. Babylonian garment. It's the style now. It fits just perfect. Why let it go to waste?

Looks good on me. It's a lure. So desire, and after that deception, there's a next step, decision. That's verse 15, James 1. Then, notice this, when desire has conceived, see that word conceived, it gives birth to sin. It gives birth to sin. Now that's the terminology of having a baby, but it could be translated when it has spawned, when it has spawned. Have you noticed that all of these terms in these two verses are animal terms?

And I think that's for a very important reason. I think what James is saying is when you live on the level of just getting your needs met, your desires met, you are living no higher than the level of an animal. That's what animals do. They live according to their senses. They just want their needs met any way possible. Any creature can do that. That's animal living. So when you have desire followed by deception, you're faced with a decision.

Do you take it or do you leave it? There's a great book that I've had for years in my library. It's still published. It's called The Fight by John White. It's about the Christian life, but he gives one of the best illustrations of temptation I've ever heard. He said temptation is sort of like a piano. If we were to have a grand piano out here like we have in the back, if you open the lid of a piano and you press the right pedal, the sustain pedal, you can sing a note into the piano and you know what happens?

You'll hear your voice come back to you. Your voice will excite a string or two or three in that key and reflect it back to you. Now, that's not how pianos are meant to work. A piano is meant to respond to the strike of a felt hammer once you activate the keys. You push the keys down, mechanism makes that little felt hammer strike the string.

But, if you didn't use that and you just pushed the pedal and sang into it, it excites the strings and they sing back. Now, if you want to stop that process, there's an easy way to fix it. Close the lid.

Just close the lid. Says Dr. White in that book, he says that's how temptation works. Satan comes along and he calls to you.

He sings to you and that sounds very exciting. In fact, the piano, if it could speak, says White, would be turned on by the human voice. So, you've got to close the lid. Satan calls, gives you something that's alluring and you go, oh, I hear that voice. Close the lid. Walk away from the magazine rack. Get off the computer.

Leave the shoe section of the store. Whatever it might be. Close the lid. Because the desire that leads to deception, that brings you to a decision, something happens. There's a fourth step and that's death. James says, then when desire has conceived, it gives birth.

To what? To sin. Sin is born. And sin, when it is full grown, brings forth death. It might not happen for a while.

You might live a long time before it ever comes. But it's so cute at first. It's a baby. Look at my baby sin. That's kind of cute. A lion is cute as a baby. When it grows up, it'll eat you. It's going to act according to its nature and it can destroy you. Death is always the result of sin.

Always. Some kind of separation occurs in a relationship of trust, our relationship with God, and in Aiken's case, literal, physical death. It wasn't satisfaction. It wasn't pleasure.

It wasn't I'm so satisfied. It's the wages of sin is death. So every disobedience is detrimental. Every sin comes in stages.

That frames two sides of it. Let's go to the third side. Every prayer is not pure. Every prayer is not pure.

Now Joshua prays here. So go back to chapter six. I mean, go back to verse six of chapter seven.

Excuse me. Verse six. As soon as that defeat came, Joshua tore his clothes, fell to the earth on his face before the ark of the Lord until evening, he and the elders of Israel, and they put dust on their heads.

I mean, they are brokenhearted over this. And Joshua said, here's his prayer, alas, Lord God, why have you brought this people over the Jordan at all to deliver us into the hands of the Amorites to destroy us? Oh, that we had been content and dwelt on the other side of the Jordan. Oh Lord, what shall I say when Israel turns its back before its enemies?

For the Canaanites and all the inhabitants of the land will hear it and surround us and cut off our name from the earth, then what will you do for your great name? I appreciate that Joshua prayed. In fact, what marks his success as a leader is that he regularly prays through the book, and I think his prayers were good and effective. I know it was said that Mary, Queen of Scots, said she feared the prayers of John Knox more than all the armies of her enemies. And so I tend to think that Joshua's prayers were pretty instrumental in bringing the children of Israel into this new land.

But having said that, I want to say something else. I wish Joshua would have prayed earlier, not later. Before the defeat, not after. I wish he would have prayed before this battle like he prayed before the battle of Jericho. They did pray. Chapter 5, they prayed before the battle of Jericho. They didn't pray here. No record of that. They assumed, this is a small town, it's po-dunk, it's easy, you don't need to pray about this.

I got this. What Joshua should have done is said, come here guys, let's get before God. God, thank you for that miraculous work at Jericho. This looks like a small town, but we don't want to presume anything.

We still need you. That's what he should have done. No record of that. If he would have done that, he would have saved the lives of 36 men and the grief of 36 families. Because God would have said to him, you know what? Don't go into that city, because there's sin in the camp. You got to deal with that. You got to deal with that.

God will tell him that, but that's 36 dead men later. Years ago, I'm going way back now, some of you, just a few of you may remember it, if there's any left from this era, but we were in a building on Eubank, our church was, 1660 Eubank. We needed a bigger place, so we moved to a place down the street, 9610 Snow Heights. We built it out, we got all excited, we announced next week we're going to meet there, come Sunday morning for our service. In between that Sunday and that Sunday, we were opening, that Sunday and the next Sunday, the fire marshal showed up at our new building and said, you're not opening for anybody. You're not up to code.

This wall isn't rated for a firewall. Now, we thought it was. We thought we knew what we were doing. We had a bunch of pastors building walls, so that shows you the mistake off the bat. And I remember getting so angry with the Lord after that and pleading with the Lord because of that. But if I would have had that prayer meeting earlier and consulted builders along the way, I'd have saved myself a lot of grief. Like Joshua, had he done it earlier. If you pray in times of victory, you won't have to plead in times of defeat.

But Joshua does. Now, as you read this prayer, did you catch the tone of this prayer? Joshua's blaming God.

Did you catch that? Why have you brought us here, Lord? This is your fault. We could have just stayed on the other side of the Jordan, but you brought us here. In fact, you know what this reminds me of, interestingly? Years before, when Moses sent 12 spies out into the land, scouts, to look it over. Ten came back with a bad report, two, including Joshua. Joshua and Caleb came back with a good report, men of faith. The children of Israel cried out and said, God, why did you bring us here?

We should have died in Egypt. If I were Moses, I would have said, yep, been a lot easier. Joshua seems to adopt that kind of prayer, that fatalistic, sure-fault God. Why did you bring us here into this land? So that's the prayer meeting.

It's not over yet. Look at verse 10. God is going to answer his prayer, but not like you might think. So the Lord said to Joshua, get up. How's that for an answer to prayer? You don't want to hear that when you pray.

Get up. Why do you lie thus on your face? Israel has sinned and they have also transgressed my covenant, which I command to them. For they have even taken some of the accursed things, have both stolen and deceived, and they have also put it among their own stuff. Therefore, the children of Israel could not stand before their enemies, but turned their backs before their enemies, because they have become doomed to destruction. Neither will I be with you anymore, unless you destroy the accursed from among you. Why would God say that?

Here's why. Because there's a time to pray and there's a time to move. There's a time to get on your face.

There's a time to stand on your feet, and now's the time to stand on your feet. I appreciate your prayer, Joshua, but now's the time to stop your whining and deal with the problem at hand. You remember when Moses was leading Israel out of Egypt. They came to the Red Sea. The armies of Egypt were behind them.

I mean, right on their tail. They come to the edge of the Red Sea. Moses thinks this is a good time to have a prayer meeting. So he starts praying and the Bible says this.

The Lord said to Moses, why are you crying to me? Tell the people to get moving. Moses, I love your prayers, but now's the time not to have a prayer meeting. Move, buddy, move. Get into that water.

Go. All of that to say prayer is good. Prayer is essential, but not every prayer is pure. Sometimes a person can pray to cover up disobedience or laziness. He needs to get up. Action without prayer is atheism, but prayer without action is presumption. You think you can just presume to shoot up a prayer and not obey God?

No, no, no, no. Get going. Get moving. You've got to do something, Joshua. Not every prayer is pure.

You've got to do something. Not every prayer is pure because the purpose of prayer is not to inform God of my needs. Do you know that? Do you think when you pray and you tell God something, God's go up there going, wow, thank you for the information.

I did not know that until you brought it to my attention, but now I'm duly informed. The purpose of prayer is not to inform God. It's to invite God to rule your life.

You are letting him have control. So pray early in the process and report for duty. What do you want me to do, Lord? Every prayer is impure.

So we framed three sides of Achan's picture. Every disobedience is detrimental. Every sin comes in stages.

Every prayer is impure. Let's complete the picture. Fourth side, fourth statement, fourth axiomatic truth. Every failure isn't forever. So this is the but to the but. Chapter one, verse one, but the children of Israel. You're going, ooh, after six chapters of good stuff, that's not a good word. But now I want to give another turn in the road.

But every failure isn't forever. So look at verse 26. After they took care of business, it says, they raised over Achan, over him a great heap of stones, still there to this day, the time of its writing.

So the Lord turned from the fierceness of his anger. Therefore, the name of that place has been called the valley of Achor to this day. Why is it called the valley of Achor? What does Achor sound like? Sounds like A-ken, doesn't it?

A-ken, Achor. It's the same word in Hebrew. One is for a person, one is for a place. Same word. They called the valley after the guy who sinned in the valley. It was a pun. It was a play on words.

They named it that, the valley of trouble. So the story of A-ken was a defeat. It was a sorrow. It was a judgment. It was a blot on their national record.

A-ken is executed. He's buried in the valley of trouble because he was a troublemaker. But that's not the end of the story. But that's not the end of the story. Twice in the Old Testament, there is a direct reference to what happened here and the valley of Achor.

I don't have time to look at both of them. One is found in Isaiah 65 where God says the valley of Achor will be filled with pasture lands one day, speaking of a future prosperity. But the second one is found in the prophet Hosea. Hosea chapter 2.

I'm going to read it to you. We'll show you the scripture on the screen. Hosea chapter 2.

The setting is very similar. It's a time of judgment during Hosea's time. It's a time of trouble during Hosea's time.

But he gives a glimmer of hope and he makes direct reference to the incident of A-ken. This is Hosea chapter 2 verse 14. Therefore, behold, God says, I will allure her and bring her into the wilderness and speak comfort to her. I will give her her vineyards from there and the valley of Achor as a door of hope. She shall sing there as in the days of her youth, as in the days when she came up from Egypt.

Here's the point. The place that was associated with defeat and downfall, that will be a place of victory. Now, the immediate fulfillment of that won't take place to the messianic kingdom, the millennial kingdom, but there's a principle in that promise. God is saying, I can take your trouble and turn it into triumph. I can take your defeat and make it delight. I can make a door of heaviness close and open a door of hope from that place of defeat.

So here's the whole story of A-ken. Sin can't be taken lightly. It leads to judgment.

But God uses judgment to turn people to him. And when they turn to him, he offers them hope so that even their worst failure can be part of their testimony in the future. Your failures in the past do not have to mark your future.

You don't have to be defined by, well, I'm this, I'm that, I committed this. That may be, but that can become part of your comfort and your ministry and your help for others who are struggling with that. You can offer, you can open a door of hope in a place of failure.

Every failure isn't forever. To put it in the words of the prophet, to give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. So instead of saying, here comes trouble, when you come around, it could be here comes triumph in the midst of trouble.

That concludes Skip Heitzig's message from the series Crash and Burn. Right now, we want to tell you about a unique opportunity to take your knowledge of scripture to a new level. Personal or small group Bible study is a great way to learn God's word. But what if you want to learn more?

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Again, that's 800-922-1888. Thank you. Tune in tomorrow as Skip Heitzig shares how you can make the most of your freedom in Christ to lead a life of honor and respect. Make a connection. Make a connection at the foot of the crossing. Cast all burdens on His word. Make a connection. Connection. Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never changing truth in ever changing times.