“When Tempted…” (Part 1 of 2)

Not every desire is sinful. All of our desires have the potential for evil. We're continuing our series, Faith That Works.

Here is Alistair Begg. We're going to read from the Bible in James chapter 1. We were in verse 12, and so that means that tonight we're in verse 13. That's the great advantage in working consecutively through the Bible.

It means that at least you know where you have to go next, and it also means that you can't skip the hard parts, and it also means that no one will ever think that you chose a particular section just because of them, unless they are egomaniacs or something. So we're at the thirteenth verse of James chapter 1. When tempted, no one should say, God is tempting me. For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone. But each one is tempted, when by his own evil desire he is dragged away and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.

Don't be deceived, my dear brothers. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who doesn't change like shifting shadows. He chose to give us birth through the Word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created. We'll keep our Bibles open and just pause and ask God's help. What we don't know, please teach us. What we don't have, please give us. What we are not, please make us.

For Jesus' sake. Amen. I think that verse 16 is probably the fulcrum of the section that we have just read. If you like, if a fulcrum is what I remember it to be from school, it is the balancing point, isn't it?

It's the point at which the teacher totters and the totter teeters. And verse 16 said as it is right in the heart of this little section, five words in Greek, six words here with the apostrophe in the word don't, seven words without the apostrophe, do not be deceived, my dear brothers. I think, and I hope to show this to you, that this statement at the heart of this really is the key to our understanding what James is teaching on this matter of temptation. We said this morning that he makes the shift from trials, which we have seen come in all kinds of forms.

They're not uncommon, they're not unusual, they're not obstacles to our spiritual growth. And in these trials, God's purpose and plan for us is that we might be able to stand up to the test and that we might come through them. When it comes to the matter of temptation, then we discover that while God uses trials to test his workmanship, namely ourselves, to test us in order to prove us, to prove that what God is fashioning is actually reliable, God does not operate in the same way when it comes to the issue of temptation. Now, let's just define temptation simply so that we're not in any doubt. Let us define temptation as an enticement to sin and evil.

What is temptation? Temptation is an enticement to sin and evil. And evil is simply that which is contrary to God's law and God's will. We needn't, at least in biblical terms, debate the nature of evil insofar as it is that which runs at countermotion to what God has declared for his people in his Word, in his will, and in his law. So James, as a pastor of those to whom he writes, as a faithful shepherd, is issuing the right kind of warnings and the right kind of leadership. He doesn't, you will notice, in verse 13, enter into a philosophical discussion on the problem of evil or the origins of evil, and I'm not going to either.

There's no reason for me to if he doesn't. What he does, you will notice, is state quite categorically that God is not in the business of tempting his children. God is not the author of temptation. God does not tempt us to sin. If God were to tempt us to evil, then that would require a delight or a capacity for evil in God, which is absolutely impossible.

And that is what he's saying there. God cannot himself be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone. So having said that aside in a matter of a few words, James then goes on to explain the source of temptation. If God is not responsible for tempting us, then what is the process that is involved in temptation?

And in doing so, he is providing instruction, and he is providing encouragement so that we might be forewarned, and so that we might understand this process, and so that we might be enabled, in believing God and in trusting his Word, to resist all and every enticement to sin. We'll work through the verses as simply as we can, noticing, first of all, in verse 14, that temptation begins with our individual desires. Each one, each individual is tempted when—notice the phrase—by his own evil desire. Now, James is not suggesting there—the Bible is not suggesting—that every desire on our part is evil. He is using the adjective evil in order to describe a particular kind of desire that is related to the issue of temptation itself. But we should note that because we live in a fallen world, although not all of our desires are evil, all of our desires have the capacity for evil. So, for example, the desire for food has the capacity for gluttony. The desire for marital fidelity has the capacity for adultery. The desire for the enjoyment of sexual fulfillment within marriage has the capacity for fornication outwith the bonds of marriage. Each desire in itself may not be evil, but because we live in a fallen world, all of our desires have the potential for evil. Now, the reason he points this out, I think, is fairly straightforward.

I'm sure you would agree. Each one is tempted by his own evil desire. Because what he's doing here is he's cutting the ground out from underneath us when we are instinctively wanting to blame our desires, our temptations, and our corruptions on other people. From the very beginning, in the Garden of Eden, we find that both Adam and Eve try and pass the buck. God comes to Adam, and he says, Adam, what do you think's going on here?

What does he say? This woman that you gave me. It's not my problem.

It's hers. He comes to Eve, and he says, Eve, we have a problem here. She says, this serpent that came into the garden. And it is absolutely basic, endemic in the lives of people, even in our children. When we want to confront them with responsibility, when they're at the tiniest, they find the capacity to explain that really, it's not their problem. And so, as we grow up, as grown-up little ones, we blame other people, we blame our environment. We may even blame, like Tom Sawyer did, the devil himself. If you've read Tom Sawyer lately, you'll remember that he explains to his Aunt Polly, The devil made me do it.

It was the devil that made me do it. And Aunt Polly grabs him by the ears and does all kinds of things to him. In order to make it clear, Tom Sawyer, you can't escape in that way. And that's what James is saying, first of all. Don't deceive yourselves, he says. You cannot, in this issue of temptation, none of us can escape the fact of personal responsibility. We cannot escape the fact of personal responsibility. Now, the notion of each individual's own evil desire is significant, insofar as not everyone is tempted in the same way, to the same extent, by the same things. For example, I cannot conceive of a circumstance where I would be tempted to steal tickets for an ice hockey game. That doesn't say anything about my ability to resist the temptation to become a thief. But it simply says that I have virtually zero interest, as best as I know it, in ice hockey as it exists. I recognize you may regard me as a Philistine for such an acknowledgment, but then the charge fits me. But for someone else, two of those tickets for the Detroit Whatevers, or the Montreal Somethings, may represent a significant attraction. You say, well, that's a fairly trivial illustration.

Well, yes, I think it probably is. But nevertheless, the notion of attraction which drags us away and entices us is what James is referencing here in verse 14. In the English Standard Version, it uses the verb lures. Lures.

Not dragged away. It reads, Each one is tempted when he is lured and enticed. I think that is a word, and I should have taken time to check it, but I think a lure has something to do with fishing, does it? Is a fishing word. So you actually use lures. What I know about ice hockey is just slightly lower than what I know about fishing.

So I'm on very dangerous territory with this analogy. But I think I've seen it in some of these shops where they sell beef turkey, which is another thing I have zero interest in, incidentally. People who chew on that stuff deserve to spend their life at ice hockey games or fishing. But I've seen those big metal things, all gaily colored and everything, and I think I saw the sticker next to them which said they were lures. And what they do is they lure fish. They have some enticing capacity to them. Now, this is the picture here, and it speaks to the issue of our own individual desires, which we find ourselves lured to, dragged away towards, and enticed by. Now, the way in which we can recognize this in us is when it happens, we will discover that when our minds go into neutral, they will go back to those things that are very attractive to us. That is why, incidentally—and I have no more to say about this—that is why the lure and the enticement of pornography in young boys become such a significant thing at a later point in their life, because they are lured by such a thing. They are enticed by such a thing. They are dragged away by such a thing. And when their minds go into neutral, they are driven back to images which their tiny minds cannot fully process or manage.

And some can speak to that in a way that they would rather not. Now, if we continue the thought in verse 14 of this fishing analogy—and I'm not sure I can speak with any authority about what goes on in the mind of a fish. In fact, do fish have minds? I should have checked.

I don't know. But let's assume for a moment—for the sake of the analogy, we'll assume that fish have minds. And so it's not inconceivable that when Mrs. Carp sent off Freddie Carp on one of his first trips by himself, she warned him, If you get out there, you may very quickly find that there are these things that are dangling in front of you that are gaily colored, that they have all kinds of enticements in them, and you may be tempted to go after them.

But, says Mrs. Carp, don't, whatever you do, do that, because the attractive nature simply conceals the dreadful impact that you will find if you are tempted to take the bait, swallow the lure, or whatever it is. And so Freddie goes off, and as he swims around, he sees one, and he remembers what his mother says, and he swims away. But he's got it in his mind now. And he says to himself, I definitely shouldn't bite that thing, but there would be nothing wrong with just going back to have another little look at it. So he does a 360 and comes around and looks at it again.

And the second time he looks at it, it looks even better than the first time. And he begins to wonder whether his mother had his best interests at heart, or whether she knew something that was fabulous that she didn't want him to know, and that she was hiding it from him, and somehow or another wanted to deprive him of what it would be to become a fully-fledged, lure-swallowing fish. Well, forget the fish now. Let's just talk about ourselves. These kind of preoccupations, if we're honest, we understand. These kind of attractions are offered in our society in multiple ways in order that we might, by our own evil desires, be lured, dragged away, enticed, preoccupied, and ensnared by them. It's no different, really, what James is saying from the little routine statements that I've made a hundred times and now for the hundred and first, because I figure there's always someone who hasn't heard this and wants to write it down. Sow a thought, reap an action. Sow an action, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character. Sow a character, reap a destiny.

But it begins in the mind. Every sin is an inside job. Temptation cannot be laid at the feet of God.

Temptation cannot be ascribed to our environment, ultimately, or to someone else, or their predicament, or their initiative, whatever that might have been. Everyone, says James, is dragged away and enticed by their own evil desire. And in verse 15, he follows it up, and he sets down the cycle. You, in verse 12 this morning, we saw that there is a cycle that leads to life, perseverating under trial, standing the test, and a crown of life. That's cycle one.

Here in verse 15, cycle two. And this cycle takes us down a path that ends in death. After desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death. You see, the real danger zone, or the intersection to be avoided, is this intersection—the place where desire and opportunity meet. Where desire and opportunity meet is a dangerous intersection.

One without the other, you can probably handle it, but the two together, you're going to be a dead man. When desire and opportunity coincide, it is often the location of disaster. When Sinclair Ferguson preached here, he preached on this passage in the evening. I wonder, do you remember how he described the process, how he described this cycle?

Because he gave us six words, and these were his words. He said that the cycle of temptation goes along these lines, number one, attraction, number two, deception, number three, preoccupation, number four, conception, number five, he said, was subjection. Subjection. And what he meant by that was this, that when you get yourself into that situation, you very quickly become enslaved, consumed, addicted. At first, it's just an attractive proposition that your uncle or your grandmother told you to stay away from. But what do they know?

Those old people. Before you knew where you are, you were deceived by the very circumstances. You became preoccupied by it. Sin was conceived.

And now you're subjugated. And his final word was the word desperation. Desperation. And I remember he said, when the cycle gets to this point, we despair on account of our circumstances. And confronted by our failure, we're told by Satan that we might as well give up completely because we're in such dire difficulty that there is no way back. That's why I say to you that verse 16 is the fulcrum. What does James say? Do not be deceived, dear brothers.

Don't be deceived by this kind of nonsense, brothers and sisters. In the words of the Sunday School song, when Satan says there's no way back, the answer is there is a way back. And the songwriter puts it in these terms. There's a way back to God from the dark paths of sin. There's a door that's wide open that we may come in. And it's at Calvary's cross, that's where we begin, when we come as a sinner to Jesus. That's the message of the gospel. That is Alistair Begg with a grave warning about the source and cycle of temptation. You're listening to Truth for Life and part one of a message titled, When Tempted. At the end of today's message, Alistair referred to a way back to God from the dark paths of sin. If you're not familiar with the gospel, I want to suggest you take a moment and visit our website. Listen to a short six-minute video that explains God's plan of salvation for you.

It's called The Story and you'll find it at truthforlife.org slash the story. Alistair also pointed out that even small children are tempted to sin and they're tempted to cover it up by blaming someone else. That's one reason why it's important for us to teach children about God's word from an early age. So whether you're a parent or someone who works with young kids, you're going to love the book we're offering called Bible Stories Every Child Should Know. This is a hardcover story book that retells more than 120 Bible stories. Each story is two to four pages long, makes it perfect for bedtime reading or to read over the course of a year.

There's even a ribbon attached so you can mark your place for tomorrow's story. Bible Stories Every Child Should Know opens up God's word in a way that will engage the imagination of young children. The stories all include colorful pictures. They introduce kids to people like Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, Moses, King David, all the way up to Jesus and the apostles. We especially like the way this book helps explain the Old Testament stories and how they point forward to Jesus. We highly recommend this book as an introduction to the Bible for your small children or your grandchildren. You can request your copy when you make a donation to Truth for Life today. Just click the image of the book Bible Stories Every Child Should Know on our app or visit our website truthforlife.org slash donate.

I'm Bob Lapine. Temptation comes at us from every angle. It hits every one of our senses, hinting that there's something better, telling us we're missing out. Life is an unceasing battle against Satan's deceptions. But there is an antidote. Listen tomorrow to find out why we don't have to be enslaved to sin. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life where the Learning is for Living.