TEMPTATION

This lesson deals with a very important subject in the life of a
Christian, the matter of temptation. Temptation is the most
familiar experience the true child of God has, after salvation.
Yet, some people seem to be tempted more than others because of
their weakness or because of the special interest the devil has
in their welfare.

No one can escape temptation. Adam was tempted. Lucifer and
Christ were both temptedÄthat is, the devil was tempted and fell;
Christ was tempted and withstood the test. Adam was tempted and
succumbed to the test. Temptation is a testing and is defined in
Genesis 22, where Abraham was tempted by God. Temptation is
interpreted in the King James Bible, scripture with scripture, in
its own dictionary, apart from any Greek or Hebrew scholars'
opinions, as "being tried." "Abraham, when he was tried, offered
up Isaac" (Heb. 11:17). So, here we have the testing or tempting
or trial that comes to the child of God, as it comes to everybody
sooner or later in this life. Martin Luther used to say, "My
temptations have been the masters of my divinity." Somebody asked
Thomas Edison if he was ever tempted, and he said, "No, I'm too
busy." I don't know whether that is so or not. I'm sure he was
tempted to say a curse word once in a while, because he did. The
Lord taught us to include one petition in the daily prayer of the
disciple which says, "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us
from evil" (Matt. 6:13). James 1:12 says, "Blessed is the man
that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive
the crown of life."

James says in James 1 :2-3, "My brethren, count it all joy when
ye fall into divers temptations; Knowing this, that the trying of
your faith worketh patience." Of course, this is not sticking
your neck out and giving the flesh an opportunity. This is
talking about falling into situations where your faith is tested,
not walking into situations to give your flesh a chance to
express itself. The Bible is also very clear about these matters:
"Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God" (Matt. 4:7). Again,
"Resist the devil, and he will flee from you" (James 4:7). "Flee
also youthful lusts" (2 Tim. 2:22). You don't count it all joy
when you expose the flesh and give it a chance to yield. That is
just stupidity.

Some saints are greatly troubled because they are tempted, for
they think they must be very wicked. But, to be tempted is not a
sin. Yielding to temptation is sin. We cannot stop the birds from
flying over our heads, but we can stop them from making nests in
our hair. We cannot stop evil thoughts from passing through our
minds, but we need not accept them or dwell upon them when they
come. The old time theologians had what we call the doctrine of
peccability. In systematic theology the doctrine of peccability
was simply this: sin began long before the man committed the act
of sin, whatever that was. You could have gathered this from
reading the Bible. I mean, as a man "thinketh in his heart, so is
he" (Prov. 23:7). The Lord Jesus Christ said if a man looks on a
woman to lust after her he has already committed adultery with
her in his heart (Matt. 5:28). The Bible says, "Whosoever hateth
his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath
eternal life abiding in him"
(1 John 3:15). So, it is perfectly apparent from studying the
word of God that a man can sin long before he commits the act. As
a famous preacher said, "We say a man is a murderer when he has
killed a man. God says he is a murderer before he kills the man."
That is, we say the man is a murderer because he killed; the Lord
says he killed because he was a murderer. You plan the murder
before you execute it. You are a murderer before you pull the
trigger or use the club or the knife or the jackhammer. You are
already a murderer. The thing is, the law just hasn't caught you
yet. You see?

Now, in the doctrine of peccability we have four outstanding
steps called presentation, illumination, debate, and decision.
All this takes place inside the man before he does anything.
Every man who was ever tempted was, first of all, presented with
the object of temptation, whatever it was. Then he had
illumination about that thing: that is, he had light on that
thing as to the cause and consequences of it, its rightness or
its wrongness. After being shown the moral quality of that thing,
then he began in his mind a debate about whether or not he should
do it. Then he arrives at a final decision that he will or will
not do it. After that, he does it or does not do it. The question
arises: Where does sin enter and where does temptation cease? The
answer is simple. Temptation enters at presentation and
illumination, but once a man begins to debate, the sin has
started. That is the fine line the Bible draws between what goes
on in a man, which is much deeper than the shallow type of
analysis you might get from a Freudian psychologist.

One must remember that modern psychiatry is a very shallow
maneuver and never gets down to the bedrock, not more than ten
percent of the time. Psychiatrists have been preeminently
successful in dealing with people with genuine problems; that is,
pathological problems, problems where there has been brain damage
or damage to nerve tissue. But, in dealing with neurotic
problems, the standard school solution at the "shrink university"
is to charge the patient anywhere from fifty to one hundred
dollars per hour to come in and sit down and talk until he is
convinced that he is all right. Now, that may be
oversimplification for some of you people who resent that because
you make your money by making it complicated, but those of us
with some common sense are not as dumb as we look. The problem
with the person who is mentally disturbed is to convince him that
everything is all right. What you do with the mentally disturbed
persons is build up their ego to the place that they think they
are all right, when they are not. That is how you do it. And that
is why on the psychiatrist's couch you will hear very little talk
about demons or the blood of Jesus Christ. After all, the
psychiatrist works in a purely materialistic level, and only
where he bows occasionally to recognition of an energetic field
or force field of energy will he dabble with such things as
telepathy and hypnosis and various things that may not have a
physical content to them. But, even these things come under the
heading of phenomena that can be measured, by electrical impulses
and so forth, and they come eventually under physical catagories.
After all, the founding fathers of psychiatry, Young, Pavlov,
Menniger, and Freud, these gentlemen never believed in literal
demons anyway, nor did they believe in a Satanic being from
whence these things could issue. Therefore many mentally sick
people can find no permanent solution at all in any kind of
psychiatry because the psychiatrists refuse to recognize the
problem that is there.

Now, we will repeat the ground; there is presentation; there is
illumination; there is debate. This goes on inside the man, and
no psychiatrist even knows this takes place unless he is honest
with himself. When the debate starts, the sin has begun. Someone
asked a little girl what she did with temptation. She said,
"Temptations are like the devil knocking at my heart, and when I
see him there I tell Jesus to answer the door."

James said, "Blessed is the man that endureth temptation." To
endure temptation means to put up with it and resist it. You are
to resist it. You are to resist it by the word of God, by prayer,
and by the blood of Christ. One of the great promises in the New
Testament that every child of God should learn verbatim and
memorize verbatim is 1 Corinthians 10:13, which says, "There hath
no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is
faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are
able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape,
that ye may be able to bear it." Now, that is a must for
memorization. There are certain verses in the Bible that
absolutely have to be learned if you are capable of learning. If
you are capable of learning the words to a popular song or
capable of memorizing your social security number or your bank
number or your zip code or your area code, then you are capable
of memorizing 1 Corinthians 10 :13.

Now, we are going to talk about the sources of temptation, the
reasons tor temptation, the method of temptation, the types of
temptation, the results of temptation, and how to get victory
over temptation.

The sources of temptation are positive and negative. Negatively
speaking, temptations are not from God. James 1:13 says, "Let no
man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot
be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man." In the case
of Job, as in most cases, God gave Satan permission to tempt Job
within certain restricted boundaries. Notice first of all, when
the devil is turned loose on a man by God's permissive will, that
God Himself determines how far the devil can go and how far he
cannot go, which is a comforting thought to the saint. The Lord
said to the devil on the first occasion, "Behold, all that he
hath is in thy power; only upon himself put not forth thine hand"
(Job 1:12). So, Job lost all his family and his property,
exclusive of a nagging, contentious wife. However, he suffered
nothing himself. When the next blow came it came closer to home
because, "Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give
for his life" (Job 2:4). And when the next blow came the devil
was getting permission to put forth his hand and touch his bone
and his flesh, but the Lord defines his boundaries again: 
"Behold, he is in thine hand; but save his life" (Job 2:6). In
the third step where God gives the devil permission to take a
man's life and the devil is said to have the power of death,
Hebrews 2:14, the Lord will say, "Take his life, but don't touch
his soul," and that is the case for the child of God.

Now, if you are an unsaved person, the devil executes his power
as prosecuting attorney and county solicitor and brings the
charges against you and obtains permission to give you capital
punishment or the death sentence. If you are unsaved, he not only
gets your life; he gets your soul. That is why Christ said, "For
what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and
lose his own soul?" (Mark 8:36). In the case of the Christian, no
matter what the devil does he can't get the Christian's soul,
because the Christian's soul is in Christ by virtue of a new
birth that has placed him spiritually in Jesus Christ's body.

Now, speaking positively, the sources of temptation are the
world, the flesh and the devil. These are called "the lust of the
flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life" (1 John
2:16). That is, the world comes in three installments. The flesh,
of course, is manifest; the lust of the eyes, the world that you
look at; the pride of life, which is Satanic. The author of pride
is found in Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28, the devil.

The world works on a Christian. The Bible says, "If any man love
the world, the love of the Father is not in him" (1 John 2:15). I
would say by far the greatest enemy the modern Christian has is
the world. The modern Christian is so fouled up in scripture, the
devil doesn't have to work on him there; leave him alone and he
will fall to pieces anyway. The average Christian knows enough
about the flesh to imitate or profess a separated life as far as
his own personal conduct is concerned.

The brainwashed American Christian is a sucker for the world
system, and that is why he talks about "sharing his
Christianity," instead of preaching the truth. That is why he
talks about "sharing a verse of scripture", instead of quoting
it. And that is why he talks about "sharing his salvation,"
instead of witnessing. The word share is a word used by the
godless liberal news media to convince you that you ought to
share your income and eventually your propertyÄas in a Communist
state. So, the devil doesn't have to work on the average
Christian. The average Christian is immersed in the world system
to the degree that his vocabulary is the vocabulary of
international socialism.

Evil associations will tempt a Christian. Proverbs 1:10 says, 
"My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not." Christian
friends can be used by the devil at times to guide you the wrong
way. The best friend Jesus Christ had among the disciples, the
one who loved him the most, was Simon Peter. John may have been
the beloved disciple whom Jesus loved, but the one who loved
Jesus Christ fervently was Simon Peter. And yet one time the Lord
Jesus Christ had to turn to Simon Peter and say, "Get thee behind
me, Satan: thou art an offense unto me" (Matt. 16:23). The devil
used Simon Peter. Before Hudson Taylor went overseas he had many
of his best friends try to dissuade him from being a missionary.
When John Paton went to the South Pacific and did his great work
there among the cannibals, his saved Christian friends and
relatives did everything they could to keep him from going. One
of them said, "Why, do you realize you might be eaten by a
cannibal?" John Paton said, "Well, what is the difference in
being eaten by a cannibal and being eaten by worms?" I mean,
after all, when you die the worms are going to get you. What s
the difference?

The reasons for temptations. First of all, it is a test of your
faith. Secondly, a test of your obedience. James 1:2-3 says, "My
brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations;
Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience." 
One famous preacher told the story of a railway company testing a
new bridge on a mountain. Two locomotives arrived on the bridge
at full speed, then pulled the brakes and left the engines
running at full throttle for half a day to let the vibrations jar
the bridge to its deepest foundations. The bridge stood firm.
After that nobody doubted the ability of the bridge to carry a
heavy load. A bridge will be tested. A car will be tested. In
boot camp the new recruit is tested. In the first four or five
months of marriage the patience and love of the newly married
couple is tested. When the children go to school their IQ and
their ability to read and write are tested. You won't get through
life without being tested. This, of course, is a crucial thing,
and this is one reason why the so-called "gay" people, whether
saved or not, are worthless as Christians. The reason why they
are worthless is because they can't stand any kind of a test that
deals with their own private, personal sin. They will not stand a
rebuke about their sin; they will not stand to be preached to
against their sin; they simply cannot stand the test. Or, to put
it in plainer words, they flunk. Jesus Christ was severely
tempted on earth. If Jesus Christ can't help you out of
temptation, He's not your Saviour.

You are tempted as a test of obedience. In Genesis 22:1 Abraham
was tried when he offered up Isaac. God tests men to know the
depth of their love, sincerity, and obedience. Words are easy: we
say we love God and we are to obey Him under all circumstances,
but how can this be proved except by some form of testing? The
martyrs were tested to the limits of their endurance to see if
they would deny Jesus Christ. The idea of some sissified people
thinking that they are suffering because people are talking about
their dirty, rotten, filthy habits! Why, they ought to be ashamed
of themselves! The Christian forebearers that went ahead of you,
some of them saw their wives beheaded, their children thrown to
pigs and eaten alive, their friends sewed up in bags with
rat-tlesnakes to be bitten to death. Some of them had a sword put
in their hand and were forced to kill their own children. Some of
them were hung upside down in a fireplace and roasted to death
and thrown to the lions, resisting sin. And who are these
miserable little punks to talk about "situation ethics" and
lifestyles? Why, they ought to be ashamed of themselves. If I
were in their shoes, I wouldn't even profess the name of Jesus
Christ where anybody could even hear it. The very idea!

First Corinthians 10:13 says that the Lord will not let you be
tempted above what you are able. God knows our load limit, our
stress limit, what they call our "tolerance." He knows how much
we can take, how much pressure we can withstand. Sometimes we see
a sign on a bridge that says "Load LimitÄ10 tons." This means
that heavy vehicles must detour to a stronger bridge to carry the
weight. Now, the Lord knows how much weight you can carry. The
Lord limits our temptations by setting a time limit on
temptation. He knows whether in one more hour we might have
yielded to the attack. He sets the timing on the temptation. He
allows it when we are mature enough to withstand that particular
type of temptation. He guides the stress or amount of pressure
during the temptation. That is, the eyes of the Lord are over
every child of God each moment. Just when we think we are
weakening in sin, the Lord can remove the pressure and make a way
to escape.

We can be tempted through poverty. The writer of Proverbs 30:9
said if he was poor he might steal and take the name of his God
in vain. Conversely, too much money or too much prosperity can
make a man sin. The writer of Proverbs 30:9 says if he got full
and had what he wanted he might deny God and like Pharoah, say, 
"Who is the Lord...?"

We can be tempted through worldly honor. Balaam was tempted to be
promoted to very great honor (Num. 22:17) if he would just do one
wrong thing.

We can be tempted through discouragement. Elijah desired to
commit suicide under the juniper tree. Jonah asked to let God
take his life. Moses got so tired one time and so burdened down
by the children of Israel that he asked God to take his life
because he couldn't bear the burden alone. Getting worn down and
beaten down and getting tired out can tempt you to quit.

There are different types of temptations. We all have a
temptation to unbelief. Job's wife told him to curse God and die.
We have a temptation to presume upon the mercy of God and stick
our necks out and trust God for more than God will do for us. God
won't do anything for a man that he can do for himself. This
modern faith healing, faith prayer, prayer faith, faith, faith
business sometimes gets not only ridiculous and preposterous, but
blasphemous. The idea of trusting God to do something you can do
for yourself! That is presumption: that is tempting God.

We are tempted to worship the devil according to Matthew 4:9. A
lot of people have already yielded to this temptation. Satanism
and astrology and all that is big business these days in America.

We can be tempted to pride, like Daniel 4:30, where
Nebuchadnezzar got to patting himself on the back until he broke
his arm. We have a strong temptation to the sins of the flesh. We
read in 2 Timothy 4:10 that Demas forsook Paul, "having loved
this present world." We can be tempted to climb up through
society and get carnal and worldly in doing it, like Lot's wife
in Genesis 19. We can be tempted to be covetous and want things
that are bad for us and that we do not need. Achan (Josh. 7)
coveted gold, silver, and garments, and it cost him his life. We
can be tempted to commit fornication and adultery, as the case of
Solomon and David and others in the Old Testament. We can covet
money, like Judas Iscariot, who sold his soul for thirty pieces
of silver. We can be tempted to a false humility. The devil can
tell us, "You're no good, you can't do anything. You can't
preach. You can't sing," and give you an inferiority complex and
get you down in the mouth where you are not willing to do
anything for God, when you should do something for God.

Temptation, if yielded to, becomes sin. If resisted, the Lord is
glorified, the saint grows stronger, the saint grows in faith and
maturity, and his obedience is confirmed.

This brings us to the most important part in today's discussion
on temptation: How does a child of God get victory over
temptation? First of all, absolutely by the faithfulness of God.
If God didn't help you, you would be sunk. As a matter of fact,
if God didn't help any of us, we would all be sunk. The Bible
says that He will confirm us to the end. The Bible says that He
will preserve us blameless unto the end (l Cor. 1:8). Basically,
it is God's job.

Now, you say, ''Well, I'm not tempted to do this and that." Yes,
but you are tempted to do something else. We have in America a
bunch of whitewashed Pharisees who like to brag about their
"fundamentalism" because they don't drink and don't smoke and
don't support modernism. Some of these whitewashed Pharisees are
as proud as Satan himself. I'll show you what I mean: do you know
how proud some of those people are? They are so proud they think
they can correct the King James Bible in 31,000 places. Do you
know what that is? That is the old fleshy, carnal nature in the
believer coming up in pride and envy. Pride and envy were the two
root sins (Isa. 14). Alongside pride and envy, smoking and
drinking amount to absolutely nothing at all. Now, you had better
think about that a while. Jesus Christ was delivered to Pontius
Pilate for envy. Cain killed Abel because of envy. Joseph's
brothers sold him into Egypt because of envy. The people resented
Moses being chosen by God because of envy. Saul tried to kill
David because of envy. The mobs that rejected the gospel in the
book of Acts were jealous of the crowds that the gospel drew. If
envy and pride abide in you, don't you talk about separation. You
are separated to Satan.

You can get victory over temptation, first of all, by the
faithfulness of God, and secondly, by using the word of God. When
Jesus is attacked three times by Satan, He quotes the scriptures
three times without correcting a verse. Not one time does He say,
''A better translation should be....'' Not one time does He say,
''A better rendering would be....'' Not once does He ever refer
to any original autographs or any original scripture. He says, 
"It is written," and quotes.

We overcome temptation by the intercession of Christ. The Lord
Jesus Christ is praying for us according to John 17. We need to
add to His intercession our personal prayer. Matthew 26:41 says, 
"Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation. "

Another way to get rid of temptation is get up and run. "Flee
also youthful lusts" (2 Tim. 2:22). When tempted avoid
temptation. "Avoid it, pass not by it, turn from it, and pass
away" (Prov. 4:15). James says, "Resist the devil, and he will
flee from you" (James 4:7).

Finally, accept the way to escape given to us in
1 Corinthians 10:13. Temptations are common to all men. Every
Christian must expect to be tempted. He will overcome by the word
of God, by prayer, by using his legs, by resisting the devil, by
looking for a way to escape and taking it when the Lord opens the
way.

We trust this lesson has been a blessing to you and an
edification to you and that you may apply it in your own personal
life to get victory over the world, the flesh and the devil, the
three adversaries that seek to hinder your growth in grace and
your service for the Lord Jesus Christ.