Ian Kerr 24 Jan 2010 Dealing with Temptation
Introduction
As I thought about what God would have me speak about over the next two Sunday mornings I began to think about the question “What are some of the areas in which Christians struggle in their walk with God?” When I say “Christians” I include myself in that group – because I too seek to walk with God and there are areas in which I struggle, even after 34 years of being a Christian.
When I thought about that question I came up with two topics – the second of those is “Guidance – discovering God’s will for our life” – God willing we will think about that question next week.
But this morning I want to think about a topic which is probably even more of a problem for Christians than that of Guidance. But before I do, let me ask you some questions:
Think back to yesterday morning, Saturday morning. Put your hand up if, as you lay in bed thinking about getting up, you said to yourself “I wonder how much sin I can get involved in today?” “I wonder how many ways I can disobey God today?” Nobody! Let me ask you another question: Put your hand up if, when you went to bed on Saturday evening and looked back on the past day you could honestly say to yourself “Well, I just had a perfect day. All of my actions, all of my thoughts were God-honouring. I had a completely sinless day.” Nobody! – and notice that my hand is not up either.
So here we have a group of Christians who started the day with a desire to honour God and obey him completely – and none of us achieved it. Why is that? How could that possibly happen? Let me read to you a passage that will begin to give us some answers.
What happened – entangled in sin
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.
The Bible talks about the Christian life as if it is a race that we are running – that is how it is described in this passage. The writer of this passage (and we don’t know who wrote Hebrews) is talking about running the “race marked out for us” i.e. living the life that God wants us to live as one of his children. And in the context of telling us how to run the Christian race, the writer gives us some advice: He says “let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles”
Note how he describes sin: “the sin that so easily entangles”
Sin is like that isn’t it – yesterday none of us set out to sin – but somehow we get tangled up in it – it tripped us up, and trapped us – so that we didn’t run the Christian race the way we knew God wanted us to run it. It might happen in the middle of a conversation – we might be talking about a mutual friend, and before we know it, we have begun to engage in gossip – we didn’t plan to gossip, but somehow we got entangled in gossip. Or we might be surfing the NET and a link might appear on our screen that we know could be a bit “Sus” but we’re curious to know what it is about so we click on it and before we know it we are looking at images that we ought not to be looking at.
We didn’t plan for this sin to happen – but somehow we got entangled in it – it tripped us up!
Why is it that we allow ourselves to become entangled in sin?
Well there are two main reasons – one we can do something about, and the other we can’t.
The first is found in Romans 7
I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. {19} For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do--this I keep on doing.
The first reason we get entangled in sin is because we have a sinful nature – a natural bias towards doing the wrong thing. Before we became a Christian, we had a sinful nature. And the sad news is that after we become a Christian – we still have a sinful nature – we still have a natural tendency to go our way rather than God’s way. I wish that wasn’t true – but the Bible makes it clear that it is true – and unfortunately there is nothing we can do about it. But our sinful nature isn’t the only reason we sin – there is another – and we don’t have to read very far into the Bible` before we discover what it is.
Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?" {2} The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, {3} but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.'" {4} "You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. {5} "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." {6} When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. {7} Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
The second reason we sin is fairly obvious isn’t it – it is because of temptation. Now the bad news about our sinful nature is that we are stuck with it until we get to heaven. But the good news about temptation is that we can actually do something about it. The Bible gives us a lot of good information about how to deal with temptation – and a good place to start is the passage we have just read.
The scene is the Garden of Eden where Adam and Eve live – a beautiful place where there is no death or suffering or decay – a perfect place to live. Now Adam and Eve had a lot of freedom – they could wander where they liked in the garden – and they could eat the fruit of any of the trees – except for one tree, the “Tree of the knowledge of good and evil”. Now in this story Satan appears in the form of a serpent or snake.
- Note what the serpent says: "Did God really say, 'You must not eat from any tree in the garden'?"
- Note how he is trying to sow seeds of doubt in the mind of Eve about what is the right and wrong thing to do: “Did God really say?”
- Does it really matter if we go over the speed limit every now and then?
- Does it really matter if we eat some of the food that we shouldn’t be eating?
See how temptation works? – Satan sows seeds of doubt about what is the right thing to do
So how does Eve respond?
Well at the beginning, she does quite well:
{2} The woman said to the serpent, "We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, {3} but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.'"
Basically Eve gets it right – she has a fairly good understanding of what God has allowed and hasn’t allowed her to do – she understands God’s word, and she can quote it – so far so good
But Satan doesn’t give up:
{4} "You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. {5} "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."
His first statement is a direct lie: “You will not surely die”. Satan is a blatant liar – in fact Jesus said he was the “father of lies”
You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father's desire. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.
Satan’s blatant lies can be a trap e.g. “Heroin won’t hurt you” – “You won’t get AIDS”. Satan’s blatant lies can be a real trap – but what is worse are his half truths – and we see that in verse 5:
{5} "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."
This is a half truth – If Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit their eyes will be opened – and they will know good and evil. At first glance, these seem like good reasons to eat the fruit – but see what happens when we look closer, Satan is saying “Eat the fruit and your eyes will be opened – and like God, you will know good and evil” – and the implication is that this is a good thing. But the reality is that at this point in their life, they only knew good – they didn’t need to have their eyes opened to see evil – it would have been much better to remain innocently ignorant.
See how subtle Satan’s half truths are?
Think about this: “If you see just a little bit of pornography, you will be able to understand the problems that pornography causes”. That’s a half truth isn’t it?
If you did see a little bit of pornography, you would have a better understanding of the problem – and that sounds like a good thing. But the reality is that a person doesn’t have to have any experience of pornography to know that it is destructive – there is plenty of research available to show that it is indeed very destructive – and seeing just a little bit could cause the person seeing it to become entangled in it – this has been the experience of many people, including Christians.
Statements like this are a half truth. And listening to a half truth, which may sound good when we first hear it, will in fact lead to harm, not good. There are lots of half truths around aren’t there? e.g.:
- You don’t have to go to church to be a Christian
- A couple of drinks aren’t going to hurt you
- Too much study isn’t good for you
- If you live with your girlfriend/boyfriend before marriage you will find out if you are compatible
These all sound pretty good – until you examine them carefully and find out that what they are saying or promising is not as true as it first appears. So we should be very wary of Satan’s lies, and half truths. But that’s not the only thing we can learn from this passage – see what Eve does next:
{6} “When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.”
Most people read this passage and think that the next thing that Eve did was to eat the forbidden fruit – but there is something else that she did before that – Can you see it? The clue is at the beginning of verse 6 “{6} When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye,”. How did she know that the fruit looked very palatable? How did she know that it was “pleasing to the eye”? Answer: She went to the tree! Had she stayed away from the tree, the temptation to eat the fruit wouldn’t have been all that hard to handle – if you can’t reach it, you can’t eat it, it’s that simple. So Eve’s first big mistake, apart from having a discussion with Satan, was to go to the tree.
You see, there’s a big connection between temptation and the situations we put ourselves into.
Supposing you are tempted to eat too many vanilla slices (I’m speaking from personal experience here) – Where is the worst place you could go? – Answer: The Bakery! When I am driving my car up the Bruce highway in the middle of nowhere and I am tempted to eat a vanilla slice, the temptation isn’t all that difficult to deal with, because I don’t have a vanilla slice. But supposing I drove up to Morayfield shopping centre and go into the food court – and I looked in a glass cabinet and there is a tray of delicious vanilla slices, and I have some money in my wallet – It is going to be very hard not to buy one and eat it!
Suppose that you have a problem with using your credit card – by a problem I mean that you are tempted to buy things with it that you can’t afford. Imagine that you are sitting in your tinny fishing off the beach at Redcliffe. You are about 500 meters from the shore and the fish are biting – and all of a sudden you are tempted to buy a new 100cm LCD TV – with your credit card, because you don’t actually have that kind of money in the bank. How hard is it to resist that temptation? Not very hard! There are very few LCD TVs for sale in the middle of the ocean – and certainly no EFTPOS facilities. But imagine that you have caught enough fish, you have gone home and had a shower – and now you have arrived at Harvey Normans – and you go into the electrical department – and there are rows of large LCD TVs – all turned on with beautiful sharp images on the screen, and a salesman keen to tell you how wonderful they are – and how the sale ends today and then the price will go up. How hard is it to deal with the temptation now? – Much more difficult.
See how it works?
- The decision not to drive to the bakery is much easier to make, than is the decision not to buy a vanilla slice once you are in the bakery
- The decision not to load a new game on your computer is much easier to make, than it is to turn off your computer and go to bed at a reasonable hour, when you are in the middle of an exciting addictive game
- The decision not to take your credit card with you to the shopping centre is much easier to make than it is to resist buying something on credit once you are in the shop
So one way to deal with temptation is to plan ahead – so that we don’t put ourselves in situations where temptation will be difficult to deal with
Getting rid of the cause completely
Sometimes, the process of planning ahead to avoid temptation will mean taking some fairly drastic steps – particularly when it is connected to our sex drive. Being physically attracted to members of the opposite gender is not sinful in itself. God gave us these drives when he created us – and he gave them for a purpose. They are a particularly important part of a marriage relationship. But God also expects us to be responsible in the way we respond to these drives – and that isn’t always easy.
Change Trains Illustration
Some years ago I read about a young woman who had been married for only a little while and things were not going well in her marriage. She and her husband had no children and she used to travel to work on a train. After a while she got to know a fellow traveler on her regular train and she found herself very attracted to him. Because her own marriage was not going well, the temptation to form a relationship with another man was fairly strong – she knew that so she wrote to a mature Christian asking his advice. And his advice was very simple: CHANGE TRAINS. Doesn’t sound very spiritual does it – but it was very good advice – based on the very important principle that we have already talked about: “If you don’t go near the forbidden tree you can’t possibly eat the fruit!”
Example of Christian friend addicted to gambling
Sometimes the temptations we have to deal with arise out of some addictive behavior we have become entangled in. I have a Christian friend who became entangled in gambling – it almost cost him his house and his marriage. The only way he could deal with this addiction was to voluntarily have himself excluded from the casino. It was only when he completely isolated himself from the source of the temptation, that he was able to begin to get his life and his marriage back on track.
The only way we can eat of the forbidden fruit – is if we go near the forbidden tree. And sometimes we need to take drastic steps to make sure that we stay away from the tree.
Pornography Addiction Illustration
A little while ago a young married couple talked to me about the problems they were having in their marriage because the husband had got caught up in pornography through the internet. This issue was having a big impact on their relationship – in fact the wife was so upset that she could hardly talk on the phone. When I talked to the husband I suggested that one of the first things he needed to do was to install software on his computer that would protect him from pornography. I told him about the software we recommend – it’s called “Safe Eyes” and can be downloaded from www.safeeyes.com.au – it costs just US$50 for a year’s subscription. This software isn’t foolproof but it is very effective. It blocks unsuitable sites and can be set up so that it will send an email to an accountability partner if the user attempts to access unsuitable sites. The software has an administrator who alone knows the password – that can be an external person or more often it is the wife of the husband who has the problem. It is interesting in the case of this couple that when I asked the husband when he was going to install the software his response was “I guess in the next couple of days” – to which I replied “How about you do it today – and tell your wife that you are going to do it – and then put her on the phone so she can tell me that you have told her – and she can also phone me tonight to assure me that it has been done. This might sound harsh – but this young man needed to be held accountable – not an accountability arising out of judgment – but one which arises out of love.
When we love someone we want God’s best for them – and sometimes it is necessary to express that love in “tough” ways.
What do we do when we fall into temptation?
It would be nice to think that you and I could walk out of this service this morning and go on living lives completely free of sin
- But we all know that isn’t going to happen
- We are going to fall into sin – and we will need to be able to face that situation God’s way
- So why don’t we go back to Genesis 3 and see how Adam and Eve handled the situation when they fell into sin by eating the forbidden fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. {9} But the LORD God called to the man, "Where are you?" {10} He answered, "I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid." {11} And he said, "Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?" {12} The man said, "The woman you put here with me--she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it." {13} Then the LORD God said to the woman, "What is this you have done?" The woman said, "The serpent deceived me, and I ate."
Note how God confronts Adam with his sin in verse 11: “Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?" Obviously he has – but how does Adam respond when he is caught out? Verse 12: "The woman you put here with me--she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it." Note how the “Blame Game” now begins – First God gets blamed “The woman you put here with me” – Adam is making out that God is partly to blame because He was the one who put Eve in the garden in the first place. But it is not only God who gets the blame – Eve gets blamed also: “"--she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it." Note that Eve is also into the blame game – verse 13 “"The serpent deceived me, and I ate." “It wasn’t my fault – it was the serpent’s fault”. When I give into temptation – there is only one person who is at fault, and that is me. I can never say that someone else made me do it – or “the devil made me do it” – because my sin is the result of my own wrong choices. When we become a Christian, God’s Holy Spirit comes to live in us – and He gives us the power to live God’s way. That means that whenever I face temptation, I don’t have to give in to the temptation, because God always provides a way out – that is made clear in 1 Corinthians 10:13
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.
We don’t have to fall into temptation, but the reality is that we do fail – whether we have been a Christian for 50 years or for 5 minutes. So what do we do then?. The answer to that is found in a very important verse in 1 John 1:
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
![MPj04225420000[1]](http://narangbabaptist.org.au/sites/default/files/MPj042254200001.jpg "MPj04225420000[1]")
When we fail, the place to start isn’t to blame others, or to try to justify our actions – the place to start is with honest confession to God. When we blow it, and we do blow it, we need to come to God and say “Lord, I am sorry for what I have done – Please forgive me and please help me to never make this same mistake again”. When I was speaking in this church last year I made the point that when we sin our relationship with God doesn’t change – we are still his child, He is still our Father. And when we, as a child of God sins – we know that we can come to our heavenly Father and ask His forgiveness – knowing that he is a God of grace who is willing to forgive us and cleanse us and help us to make a fresh start. Isn’t it great to know that the God we worship is the God of fresh starts – the God who loves us and forgives us and says “Go and sin no more”. Isn’t it fantastic to have a God like that?
Conclusion
I don’t know about you, but I find it difficult to live the kind of life that I know God wants me to live. I wish I didn’t have a sinful nature – but I do – and I know that I am stuck with it until I get to heaven. I wish that Satan didn’t exist – and I wish that I didn’t have to deal with temptation – but in the real world in which we live, temptation is going to keep coming our way – Satan is going to keep probing at our weaknesses. I’m sad about these things – but I am very glad that the God we worship is a holy God – I would not want to worship a God who is any less than perfect or a God who just says “sin doesn’t matter”. Sin does matter – God knows that – that’s why he sent his Son Jesus to deal with our sin problem through his sacrificial death on a cross. I’m also very glad that the God we worship is not a far away God who sits up in the clouds but doesn’t really understand what it is like to live on a planet which is enmeshed in sin.
We worship Jesus knowing that he understands what you and I go through – because the Bible says that he was tempted in every way (Hebrews 12:1) and yet was without sin. I’m very glad that Jesus sent his Holy Spirit to live in us, to give us the power to overcome temptation, so that we might live a life that is pleasing to God. And I’m very glad that when we get to heaven, temptation and sin will no longer be a problem – because we will spend eternity with a perfect God, in a perfect place.
Are you looking forward to that? But as we run towards that goal, let us keep before us the words of Hebrews 12:
“let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.
Let’s pray together
Handout “Strategies for Dealing with Temptation”
Strategies for Dealing with Temptation
Even as Christians we have a sin problem for two main reasons:
- Our sinful nature (Romans 7:18, 19; James 1:13-15)
- Temptation from Satan (1 Peter 5:8; 1 Timothy 6:9)
We don’t set out to sin, but unless we are careful we can become entangled in sin (Hebrews 12:1)
We cannot get rid of our sinful nature, but we can develop strategies for dealing with temptation which is a problem for all Christians.
Some useful strategies
- Don’t listen to Satan’s blatant lies. (Genesis 3:4; John 8:44))
- Be aware of Satan’s half truths (Genesis 3:5)
- Avoid the blame game – accept responsibility for your own failures.
- Plan ahead – Don’t put yourself in situations where temptation will be hard to handle.
- Remember that God always gives us a way out of every temptation (1 Corinthians 10:13)
- Understand the difference between temptation and sin – sin only occurs when we give into temptation. (Hebrews 4:15)
Protection from Internet Pornography
Go to http://www.safeeyes.com.au For US $49.95 per year you can have protection from pornography on up to 3 computers. Once the system is set up, give the administrator password to a trusted friend. A trial version is available from the website.
When you Fail
- Honestly confess your sin to the God who forgives, to the God of fresh starts and receive his forgiveness and cleansing. (1 John 1:9)
- Make a firm decision to never make this mistake again.
If you would like further help
If you would like further help, please talk to your pastor or other appropriate person or contact Ian Kerr at iankerr@alongsideministries.com.au
Some useful verses:
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.
For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are--yet was without sin.
© Alongside Ministries 2007 – Used by permission. May be used without permission if not for profit.
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