Sermons

James 1:13-18

February 21, 2016 Speaker: Reid Strahan Series: James - A Portrait of Living Faith

Passage: James 1:13–18

Everyone is chasing happiness. Everyone is doing what they believe will, in some way make them Happy. Peter begins 1 Peter 3:10 “Whoever desires to love life and see good days” must turn away from evil and do good. Peter addresses everyone who wants to love life and good days because he knows everyone deep down desires to love life and see good days. Temptation works on our desire for life and good days and deceives us into thinking that something OUTSIDE OF GOD is the way to get that. Your heart is deceived into thinking that something sinful will be good for you – that it will give you life and good days.

A woman who used to visit this church had an affair with a sales rep that called on her at work and left her husband for this man. In explaining her decision to Cindy and me she said, “I know it is not what God wants but I've decided it is best for me”. She foolishly believed: to really enjoy life I am going to have to go against God.

The constant message of the world is that sin will make you happy. It says, one night stands, sleeping with your boyfriend, affairs, pornography, drinking, partying, self indulgence and self promotion, will make you happy. The world says, come on have a little fun, dress seductive, compromise your principles to fit in, to be popular... all this will make you happy. This message comes from kids at school, conversations at work, from movies, sit-coms and advertisements. Sin is good; sin is fun.

James tells us, while sin promises life and good days, it delivers death and bad days. You cannot get good things by sinning! Good gifts come down from the Father! ONLY what God has for you is good! Any thing, any choice, any attitude, any habit, that is not in line with God's will for you is terrible for you! Good things come through God! God's way is always best! Doing marriage God's way is the good way, handling your sexuality God's way is best, having the attitudes that God wants you to have is best, speaking words that God approves is best. God's way results in loving life and seeing good days, living any other way ends in death and a death-like existence.

Your battle with every specific temptation is largely won or lost based on whether you believe that God is good or that sin in good.

In chapter 1, James pivots from trials to temptations. The fact that the same word is used for both, shows that they are closely associated. A trial can become a temptation very easily. A person hard pressed in their finances may be tempted to embezzle, a person who is having difficulty in their marriage may be tempted to have an affair. A person having difficulty with a brother or sister at church may be tempted to neglect fellowship altogether. A person in humble circumstances may be tempted to jealousy.

Some people reach the conclusion that God has made things so hard for them that the only way out is to sin. Some reach the conclusion that God is somehow to blame for them turning to sin in their situation. They don't put it just like that, but they say things like:

I just don't have the power to resist that some people have. God expects too much from me. The pressures were just too great, I had to do it. My wife makes me sin. She does things and says things and I explode and I just can't help it. Adam was the first to say this... that woman you gave me... I had a dysfunctional family and you know people with my background do this and can't change. God just made me this way. Or I am genetically predisposed to behave this way. Well what do you expect me to do? My wife didn't meet my needs. Anyone in my situation would probably do what I did.

In some way or another all of these attitudes are saying that God tempted me to sin, or God put me in a situation to fall. Therefore, I am not really to blame. My sin is understandable. It is excusable. And the blame for sin is shifted off ourselves and onto God. And James in his bluntness says, “Baloney! Don't you dare say that!”

Vs 13: “Let no one say, when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God”; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and he himself does not tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.”

If there is a persistent sin problem in your life, pornography, lust, envy, gluttony, drunkenness, anger, cursing, self pity, or even anxiety, bitterness, the reason you may be in bondage to that sin, is that you have never acknowledged in your heart that no one else is to blame for it.

The root problem is your desires. Notice that James does NOT blame parents, or spouses, or a dysfunctional family, or being tired, or a hard day with the kids, or a bad day at the office or disorders …. He wants you and I to acknowledge that the problem is in us. It has to do with your own desires.

ESV says desires. NASB says lusts. This same word for desire is used many places in the Bible in a good sense. Desires, in and of themselves are good things. Life would be totally boring if you had no desire. But God in his goodness always provides a good and righteous way for desires to be fulfilled. The problem is when we want something too much or in a way that is out of bounds. For example, the bible says, “The marriage bed is pure and undefiled”. Within the safety and beauty of marriage, sex and the desire for it, is a good gift of God. But out of bounds it leads to judgment – “fornicators and adulterers God will judge”.

I think we would all say it is good to desire to provide well for you family. I wouldn't want my granddaughters to marry a man who did not have a desire to provide for them. Paul said those who don't provide for their own family are worse than an unbeliever. BUT this good desire can turn into lust or greed to become rich. Paul also said, those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap, and into many foolish and harmful desires.

Many good desires can lead you to excess and sinful indulgence. That is true about your desire for food, (to eat) or to do well at work, even for sleep. Proverbs 20:13 says, “Do not love sleep, or you will become poor; Open your eyes, and you will be satisfied with food". When desires become lusts, or excessive or for things that are outside the protective boundaries of God's word, that is the problem.

Temptations REQUIRE your cooperation to go along with them. Temptation is like a con artist. It is your desire for what he promises that makes you fall for the con. The most famous one is called the Nigerian email scam. You get an email from someone claiming to be a Nigerian prince who needs to move millions of dollars out of the country, and it you will put up just a small amount of money, you will be rewarded with thousands of dollars once the money is transferred to the US. Some people will send money and of course there is no Nigerian fortune coming his or her way. A money scam only works if you have such a desire to get rich quick that you ignore the danger signs. Temptation works the same way.

The ESV says “each person is tempted when is lured and enticed by his own desire”. Temptation is like a fishing lure. It is the fishes attraction to it that makes it work.

James may also be addressing a perversion of teaching about God's sovereignty: all things are from God, therefore “I am being tempted by God”. But James reacts strongly to this and says, “When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me”. For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone.” And then in verse 16 he defends the pure goodness of God. He is concerned that anyone would make God out to be evil. He does not want the nature of God to be defamed in this way!

Sin and evil do not come from God but from out of our own hearts or from Satan. God is sovereign and man's sin did not catch him off guard, and he planned for our salvation, but to go any further and say that evil comes from God is to defame God.

Calvin himself strongly denied that God is the author of sin. He wrote, "When Scripture ascribes blindness or hardness of heart to God, it does not assign to him the beginning of the blindness, nor does it make him the author of sin, so as to ascribe to him the blame."

The bottom line is: Our problem with sin is within our selves. And do not blame God.

To overcome sin, something must happen to change your desires. That happens first of all by being born of God, by having the Holy Spirit enter your spirit and making you alive to God. When God saves you, you are made a new creation, the seed of God is in you, you have a new set of desires to do good, to practice righteousness. Titus 2:11 “For the grace of God “teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions.” The grace of God is teaching you to love God and love other people, and to love righteousness. We were released from our bondage to sin by Jesus Christ. Yet, we do face an ongoing battle with sin, but we CAN overcome sin and James tells us how.

To overcome sin you must not blame God or anyone else for your sin problems. If you are always late for work, or you eat too much, drink too much, watch too much TV, look at bad pictures or bad movies, read trashy novels, addicted to Oprah or Ellen or Dr Phil, or lust to become rich or successful, if you give in to gossip, and slander, if you complain, swear, or refuse to forgive that person, or tend to be critical and judgmental, or explode in anger,...whatever sin YOU are easily entangled with...you must acknowledge that you yourself are the primary source of falling to this temptation. Satan has only played the con man. You have agreed to be conned.

James says that your response to temptation, either resisting it or caving into it, is strictly a matter of your own personal responsibility. If you want to be free, DON'T BLAME ANYBODY ELSE! No sin is dealt with in you life until you accept full responsibility for sinful attitudes, words or actions. Freedom begins by saying, I have been sinning, and I am responsible for it. You are not a helpless victim, but a responsible party who can refuse to be carried away by sin

Caving in to sin is a process. And to overcome sin you must stop the process at the beginning. It is a lie that we fall into sin. As if we were just walking down the street and the manhole cover was off and we fell into the hole. It all starts with sinful desires or passions within your heart that are allowed to hang around. Instead of crucifying them, they are coddled, and pampered.

The process works like this: there is the bait. Some thing outside of you, a person, an object, a pleasure, a drink or a drug, an opportunity to gossip, or impress, pulls at you. Charles Stanley said it is a lie that: temptation itself is a sin, or that God is disappointed and displeased with us when we are tempted. I agree. Seeing the attractive bait is not in itself sin......

BUT...If you spend time looking at the bait, thinking about the bait, imagining taking the bait, and the pleasure you THINK you will find, you further inflame your passions and you are preparing to sin. You may glace up and see a seductively dressed woman, the first glance is not sin, it it where you take it from there, that can make it sin.

There is a period of enticement. Where you are drawn away from the safety of godliness and pulled toward the bait. Then there is the actual taking of the bait. As James puts it, sin is conceived.

James shifts from fishing metaphors to using the human life cycle: conception, birth and death. Conception takes place when a man and woman come together in the act of marriage to make a child. In the same way, sin is conceived when you join yourself to, that outward opportunity to sin. James says, it gives “birth to sin”. And “when that child (sin),is fully grown he brings forth death. Sin is seen as a child who when is fully grown he turns on you and murders you. Sin has a terrible end, every time.

One reason James gives us this progression is so that we will stop at the very beginning. John Owens said, “Rise up mightily against the first actings of your temptation. Do not give it the least ground”. Romans 6:12 says “Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey it's evil desires”. 1 Thessalonians 5:22 says “Abstain from every appearance of evil.”. People who fall into sin, have been tolerating evil and compromising with evil, in secret for a long time. Romans 13:14 says “Clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh in regard to it's lusts.” Don't provide a way for yourself to sin. Run away!

To overcome sin you must see where sin will take you. James says, Sin leads to death. Ultimately, it leads to eternal spiritual death. Paul says, “It is because of these things that the wrath of God will come upon the sons of disobedience” (Eph 5:6). But it also means death as opposed to life, right now! IE sin will lead you into a “death-like” existence. Paul said in 1 Timothy 5:6 “But she who lives for wanton pleasure is dead even while she lives”. She is wasting her life. She is dead to the purposes for which God saved her. Sin saps your strength, oppresses you, enslaves you, makes you feel guilty and defeated, leads to lack of confidence before God, and the end result is hell. Everything about sin is the OPPOSITE OF LIFE.

Sin will never do you any favors. It ruins you life, it brings misery. The worst consequence in the world is death! That is where sin leads!

Listened to a Pastor who asked this question: How can you change your desires? And to answer that question, he pulled out a bag with a fresh donut, made this morning and anyone who loves donuts can come get it. And some dear lady came up and took it. Then he said I have another donut. And I can tell you something about this donut that will make change your desire for it. I filled this donut with rat poison. What James is doing in vs 15 is showing us the rat poison.

The world glamorizes sin. It never tells you the ruin, the tragedy, the broken homes and lives, the unbelievable guilt. OR the eternal death that waits all who live in sin.

To overcome sin yon must become an undeceived person. Vs 16 says, ”Do not be deceived my dear Brothers”. Vs 16 Do not be deceived into thinking life and good days are found in sin. Do not be deceived into thinking there is NO HOOK in the bait!

AND furthermore....Do not be deceived into believing there is any good apart from God, and his gifts. Vs 17 “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above....coming down from the Father....the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow of change. In the exercise of His will He brought us forth by the word of truth, so that we would be a kind of first fruits among His creatures.”

The truth is God is good! All his good and perfect gifts are given to you, and you can enjoy everything God gives you in righteousness and joy with no shadow of sin. God is all good, all the time, for all your life, for all eternity. John says “God is light and in him is no darkness at all”. He does not change from being good one moment and evil another. He will never do anything to you that is evil, or dark, or destructive.

He is a good father! Jesus is the good shepherd! He has proved that he loves you more than life itself by sacrificing his life for love of you. God always acts for whatever is most advantageous for your perfection, wholeness and completeness. If you want life and good days, you want God, not sin!!!

Vs 18 “He chose to give us birth, through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of first fruits of all he created”. Out of HIS goodness, and by his own will, he made you his child, and gave you all the blessings of salvation, love, acceptance, favor, the Holy Spirit, Heaven, eternal happiness and joy. Paul said, God “saved us so that in the ages to come he might show us the surpassing riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus”.

The first fruits were the first ripe sheaves of grain from the harvest that were offered to God as a sign that the entire harvest belonged to God. To be a first fruit is to belong to God. You belong to God who is amazingly and perfectly good. No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly. Sell out to him, not to sin!

Four gospel truths to remember in times of temptation”

One: Jesus is able to come to the aid of those who are tempted. Hebrews 2:18.

Two: Jesus can sympathize with us, in our world of temptations. For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are – yet without sin.

Three: When you are tempted immediately begin talking to Jesus about it. (Therefore) let us approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and grace to help in time of need.” Hebrews 4:15,16

Four: When you do sin, turn immediately to Christ who keeps you righteous before the Father. John 2:1, “I write this to you so you will not sin. But if anyone sins we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense, Jesus Christ the Righteous One.”

More in James - A Portrait of Living Faith

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The Important Work of Turning a Wandering Brother Back to God

July 3, 2016

God's Pathway to Healing

June 26, 2016

Healing and the Heart of God

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