How To Fight Your Temptations! (FIGHT) James 1:13-15 April #2 Compass Church

Transcription

1 How To Fight Your Temptations! (FIGHT) James 1:13-15 April #2 Compass Church 1. Please read several times carefully James 1: How does the Bible describe the action or process of being tempted? What does the Bible mean by after desire has CONCEIVED? What does it mean to conceive? It says sin full-grown leads to death. What death? What dies? (Not an easy question so give it some brain power). 2. Consider the following from the sermon: We all have temptations. No one is exempt. No one gets a free pass. Billy Graham was once asked if he had temptations. He said, Every day. The reporter was shocked, so he asked Billy when he thought he would not have temptations anymore, and Billy said, When I ve been dead 3 days. Hebrews 4, verse 15 says that even Jesus was tempted. in every way just as we are yet without sin. Now think about that. If Jesus was tempted in every way we are, that means that temptation is not a sin. It s only when we give in to temptation that sin happens. So if vile thoughts pop into your mind but you fight them off, don t let Satan make you feel guilty about those thoughts. You won the fight! You resisted. You beat your temptation! That s a victory, not a sin. I googled the top 5 temptations of people. But there is no such list because we all have different temptations. Susie s are not mine...and my temptations are probably not yours. We are all tempted but in different ways. So what have been your temptations? Maybe it s your computer. Every time you use your computer, you are tempted to click on this or that website. Every day you are IN THE RING AGAINST THAT TEMPTATION...AND maybe you are losing the fight most times...and now you are beginning to tell yourself that it s no big deal. You enjoy it so what s the problem? Or your spouse wants you to do what you know is wrong. Or it s your friends who keep tempting you and telling you what could be wrong if it s so FUN! Remember Peter loved Jesus with all his heart but PETER tried to stop JESUS from going to Jerusalem to be crucified for our sins, and Jesus said to Peter, Get behind me Satan.

2 Peter was not actually Satan, but Satan was using Peter s mouth to tempt Jesus not to fulfill God the FATHER S WILL OF paying the debt for our sin on the cross so that we could be forgiven. To one of His best friends Jesus had to say Get behind me Satan. You are tempting me to do what is wrong. You have become the mouth of Satan and I won t listen. Satan can use best friends as a source of temptation. It happens all the time. Surely someone here has friends who are tempting them? Underline the most important sentence and say why? Peter was well intentioned; he loved Jesus but Satan was using Peter to tempt Jesus not to die on the cross. In a couple of sentences how could a good friend or even a spouse be used by Satan to tempt us? Specifically, name 2 things a wife could tempt a husband to do that is sin in God s eyes? 2 things a husband could tempt a wife to do? So how can a husband and wife protect against Satan using each other to disobey God s Word? How can you even talk about that? You can t say Get behind me devil! So what can you say? 3. So let s dig deeper into these verses. Consider the following explanation: James 1, verse 14 says Each one is tempted when he is dragged away and enticed. As I said in the Scripture reading, dragged away is a hunting term for a hunter setting a trap with meat he knows his prey likes. And then the word enticed is a very picturesque word for a fisherman baiting his hook to catch a fish to eat. A good fisherman always knows what is the bait fish are biting on. Worms are good bait for some fish. Marshmallows for others. Lures for bass. Flies for trout. A fisherman studies what he wants to hook and then covers the hook with the bait so that it is hidden. The fish thinks there is no danger, only something delicious that he wants. He cannot see the hook.the fisherman has hidden with the delicious bait. He makes a temptation look delicious. We cannot see the hook hidden by what looks so desirable. We need to sober up!!!!! Satan is fishing for you; he is hunting you.

3 Jesus calls the devil the tempter. The Bible says Satan hates you. Why? Because he hates Jesus, and even though he tried to destroy Jesus, he couldn t. So what does the devil want to do? To destroy you. Why? Because Jesus loves you. You are precious to Jesus, and Satan wants to hurt Jesus by hurting you. I ll bet you know people who have been destroyed by their temptations. So Satan studies your weaknesses and baits the hook and sets the trap for you. The KGB has done this for decades. It targets someone they want to reveal secrets of America and uses the bait that they are weak against. They study the person. The person may be in debt or love luxury, so the bait is money. Or it may be sex and a good time so the KGB uses an agent to seduce a man and then blackmail him for the secrets they want. A very famous example of this is Anna Chapman. She is a very attractive woman who successfully seduced men for their secrets until she was caught and deported. Satan studies your weaknesses. He s hunting you. He is baiting hooks to drag you down. Are you awake enough to realize the hooks that have been baited for you in the last few weeks? Maybe to lie, to lose your temper, to be selfish, to get revenge, to you fill in the blank. How does Satan know what bait to use? Well every day he watches what you do. Every day he listens to what you say on the phone or when you get home at night to your spouse. He knows what you complain about and who you envy. He knows what makes you badmouth a person. He knows what makes you angry and lose your temper, so he knows what bait to use. Today he will set traps for you. And tomorrow and the next day. And all week. And you will be in the RING FIGHTING not to take the bait. Will you win or lose? It matters. What is the most challenging sentence and why? You have a supernatural enemy Satan and he is baiting you every day. (Personal and private so be honest) What are the 2 most successful baits Satan has used on you? So, if Satan hides the hook with tasty, seductive, appealing things, how do you plan to protect yourself in the future from taking the bait? 4. Have you ever seen a person decompose or decay. Slowly. Always slowly, they unravel the person they could have been. Consider the following quote from the message about how that happens: C.S. Lewis in his fiction writes about a man who became an Un-man. An un-man. He had taken Satan s bait so often he had lost his humanness. He was deformed. Not his body but his attitudes and behavior had become so deformed from what God intended him to be that he is only a shadow of the woman or man God wants them to be. Literally his or her humanity has faded to only a shadow of what a Christian is meant

4 to be. He or she has become an un-man or un-woman. Their personality has become deformed to being hideous in God s eyes. Satan tempts us because he wants to get us on the slippery slide. You see it on the screens. The slippery slide always beings with this thought - - one time couldn t hurt. And then Satan puts out more bait and we repeat our attitude or behavior. And so down the slide we go sliding into becoming very different from the person Jesus meant us to be. Deformed spiritually. We still think we are in control even ½ way down. But we are lying to ourselves. We think we can stop anytime we want. But our attitudes and behavior become more and more a habit until we can t stop. Soon our temptations are controlling our life. We become ADDICTED to our temptations. They are no longer temptations. They have become NORMAL BEHAVIOR FOR US. Habits of our life. We are addicted to these attitudes and behavior now. Addiction is when we have lost the freedom to stop. We are now at the bottom of the slide. No longer are we tempted to be greedy. We are now a greedy person. No longer are we tempted to GOSSIP. We are a gossip. It is our normal behavior now. We are at the bottom of the slide. It happens gradually...but one day we are there. Do you know anyone who is at the bottom of the slide? Maybe you are at the bottom of the slide and you can t stop a bad attitude or behavior and you need help in recovering your life This sounds severe. It sounds impossible but it happens all the time. We become like the devil in our attitudes and behavior. Why? Because we become our choices. Our choices change us for good or bad. So a man develops an anger habit. Lots of things set him off. He doesn t realize it, but he has taken the bait. He doesn t fight his anger. He justifies and blames others, and he slips farther and farther down the slide as an angry man. Increasingly his humanity is being destroyed. He does not fight his temptations and so increasingly the person he was meant to be fades and he s just a shadow of what a Christian or a husband is meant to be. What is the most revelatory or important sentence to you? Why? In your own words write a couple of sentences about the slide and what it means.

5 Explain how a person can be on the slide going down and still think they are in control that there is no problem? How can a person be decaying and not realize it? We become our choices. Our choices change us for good or bad. In a couple of sentences explain why that is so. Why do our choices change us? As honest as you can be, take 10 minutes and think about your choices the last few months attitude, mouth, behavior. Would you be willing to admit a choice you keep making that is putting you on the slide.and let people pray for you. Unless you are perfect, you have choices that need reversal. It may be that you are becoming a judgmental, critical person, and not one of grace. Or it may be you are becoming greedy or a nag or a gossip. What for you is the slide? Choices work the other way too. We can repair our soul by being determined to make a different choice that starts us back up the slide. What would that be for you? 5. How do we avoid taking the devil s bait? Consider the following: If the bell rings, run! When we are tempted, the Holy Spirit always sends a warning. It may be very faint, but a bell rings inside our head that says Wake up. Don t take the bait. I think we know this. We look back on our regrets, or the things that we have done that we know were wrong, and we almost always can say There was a moment when I knew that this was the wrong thing to do, a moment when I knew I should not marry this person, a moment when I knew I shouldn t say this or do what I did. Maybe it was something our mother once said, or maybe a sermon we remember, or simply the Holy Spirit speaking to us, but the bell rings. It s the prompting of the Holy Spirit. Don t ignore His voice, or it will become fainter and fainter. One voice in us said No one will ever know. It will all work out. God will forgive you. You won t get caught. The bell rings and for a few seconds the truth pops into our mind and heart. It may be something our mother once said to us, or a sermon we heard, or a verse from the Bible we remember from a Bible study but the bell rings. The bell rings. And when it does, run! Run! Run before you take the bait that always looks so attractive and get dragged down the slippery slide. Surely some of us hear the bell ringing this morning. Underline the most important sentence and say why it matters. Think about the prompting of the Holy Spirit. Ever experienced that? Did the phone ring and it was the Spirit of Jesus calling? Then what was it like?

6 So there is a war raging inside us between Satan and the Holy Spirit! How exactly and in what area in your life have you experienced this war between choices? Comment: This study has been one of the most important you will ever do.because your destiny depends on understanding you are constantly being baited by an Enemy who wants to drag you down. Your destiny depends on realizing that there are no insignificant choices. Choices accumulate one way or another. Pray for each other and what has been shared. Memory: After desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death. (James 1:15)