Biblical Faith - In Temptations

We've been in the study on faith, and what we've tried to do is to lay the foundation concerning biblical faith. We saw that as you go through every passage in scripture in the New Testament on the word faith, you could divide these passages into four major aspects of faith. The essence of faith, when we went to Hebrews 11-1, where it said that faith is the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen, that faith, that is, pure, biblical faith, is the substance of things hoped for, is reality. The word substance there means reality.

And the things hoped for are the things of God. The word hope means absolute certainty. So the Word of God comes at us in its reality, in its absolute certainty. That's where we get the essence of faith. And then we saw another category of faith, the faith, where there's the definite article in front of the word faith. What does it mean when it says the faith and there's a definite article? Well, we've seen so far that the faith could be referring to the entire essence of faith, the entire revelation that's given to us in the Word of God. Or the faith could and does often refer to a portion of the Word of God.

Or, the third aspect of the faith was personal faith. And that was the next aspect of faith, is one's personal faith. That is, personal biblical faith is that faith which rests and trusts in the essence of faith, that which is revealed from the Word of God. Then, faith as a principle. And this is the way that God wants us to walk the Christian life.

And in Colossians 2.6, Verse 27, the Lord gives us the walk of the Christian life, as ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him. And we received Christ by the principle of faith, personal faith, resting and trusting in what God revealed through the scriptures about our condition in Adam and who we were in Adam. and the conviction of sin, and who Christ is about the person and the work of Christ. That's how we receive Christ. We're to walk the same way. We're to walk by the principle of faith, personal faith, and the Word of God. We've seen that in this time frame that we're in, after we have received Christ, there's this whole process of sanctification. God is setting us apart. The word sanctification means to be set apart, setting this apart from sin unto himself. And it's a process. So that's the foundation that we've laid. Now, many questions have come up, and we've documented the questions. We haven't answered them, except for the first one.

Last week, we looked at what is non-biblical faith. Because you and I, as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, We are going to walk by faith. And it's either biblical faith or non-biblical faith. But we're going to walk by faith. There's going to be one or the other. Now that the foundation has been laid, I think you can answer many of these questions. What I'd like to do today and next week is tackle the last three questions. Because these are questions that most believers have concerning testimony. concerning trial in our lives, then the question is, how does faith determine our walk?

And as I said before, we're going to walk by faith, and the object of faith is either going to be the Lord Jesus Christ or self. Those are the two objects which we're going to walk by, one or the other. Biblical faith is having the Lord Jesus Christ as our object. Non-biblical faith is having self as the object of faith. How does our faith get energized? Is it by the pastor giving good sermons? I hope you don't rely on me to energize your faith. But your faith gets energized, and we're going to look at that next week. Okay, I want to look at trial, testing. One of the most puzzling things in a believer's life is when trials, when suffering, comes into their life, and it overwhelms them. Does God allow testing? Does God allow trial? You betcha.

In fact, in 1 Thessalonians chapter three, it says that we're appointed to suffering. We're appointed to trial. It's a beautiful word there for appointment. It's like the president appoints an ambassador to another nation, to represent Him and this nation to another nation. And we're appointed the same way. We're appointed to trials. We're appointed by the Lord to represent Him and to represent the country in which we come from. It's not here, but it's there. Our home is in heavenly seated with Him. And that's the country that we represent.

Now, oftentimes believers say, well, If it weren't for the trials and the suffering in my life, I would have no problem living the Christian life. Really? My question is, then, who is living the Christian life? Because if you're saying that I could live the Christian life if it wasn't for these trials and suffering and all the circumstances that come at me, then you are attempting out of self to be living the Christian life.

But what does Paul say? Not I, but Christ. Not I, but Christ who lives the life. He is our life. And he's the one that lives his life through us and manifests his life through us. We don't live the Christian life. He lives the Christian life through us.

In trials, this is the most major question that I get. Why is this happening to me. Some people say, I thought I was a child of God, and God is allowing all this to happen to me. I'm kind of wondering now if I'm really His child. I can't believe that God would allow this to happen in my life. Or someone will say, God must be in a way, because He's certainly not with me.

Not only that, He doesn't have a clue in terms of what I'm going through. Then You see what happens, all of a sudden, God is no longer omniscient. He no longer knows what's happening to you. And he's no longer omnipresent because he's in Hawaii and you're here. And he's not in your life anymore. So all of a sudden, God isn't God anymore.

But here's the question that we should be asking in trials and in suffering. Does God have a purpose in these trials and this suffering and the circumstances that are in my life. And then you have to ask, does God have an eternal purpose? And you know he does because we have covered this, but I just want to review two aspects of his eternal purpose in terms of relating to trial and suffering. As you look at God's eternal purpose, It's to reveal His glory. How does He do that?

How does God reveal His glory to you and to me? It's through the Word of God. The Spirit of God comes along and takes the Word of God and reveals to us the truth of God that makes me very personal. So it's through the Word of God by the Spirit of God that He reveals to us the objective truth. The other purpose is to share His glory with us. The glory that we can read out from Scripture. How does He do that? We've seen that we're to walk by the principle of faith. Personal faith, total rest in what God reveals to us, and to believe what God reveals to us. Just to rest in what He says. Rest in facts.

And it's through His Word. that He reveals the Lord Jesus Christ to us. As He does that, there's a process that goes on. He forms Christ in us. This is the whole process of sanctification. God forming the Lord Jesus Christ in us. Or, you could say, conforming us to the very image of His Son. And we're not conformed yet.

Is God's purpose in sharing His glory with us independent of trials and circumstances and suffering in our life? I mean, if this is his purpose, God's purpose, it's independent of all that. Yet, he allows trial and circumstances and suffering to come into our life. So, we ask the question, is God sovereign? And if the answer to that is yes, which he is, then there is no trial. There is no suffering, there is no circumstance that comes into your life that doesn't go through the hand of God, not once, because of the sovereignty.

Then it must follow that God uses these things to share his glory with us, because that's his purpose. He must use everything he allows in life for that purpose, to share his glory. So we can say that one of the purposes of trial and suffering and circumstances that come into our lives is for God to share the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ with us. How does he do that? It's a marvelous process and scripture reveals it to us. Next week, we're going to go through that process. How God shares his glory through trials and suffering.

Today, I want to clear up a misunderstanding between trials and temptation. The word for trial and the word for temptation are used synonymously sometimes in Scripture, so you can't tell the difference between the two. But oftentimes, the word trial and the word temptation are diametrically opposed to each other and used very differently. So we're going to try to understand how they're used in a different sense, not how they're used in the same sense, but a different sense. So we need to learn two words. The first word is dakimazo. The other word is pairadzo. Pairadzo is used to the word temptation or to tempt. Dakimazo is used to the word test or to prove. Dakimazo is to test or to prove with a view towards approval.

It's like if you would take or. and heat it up and boil out the impurities. You're testing this, you're proving this with a view towards approval. You do this because you want the pure stuff to come out and all the impurities to be boiled away. That's the sense of Documento, with a view towards approval. That's the way God tests us, or proves us, Documento.

Now we're not going to use this word today, except when we close. So just put it in the back of your memory, and we're going to be looking at parado. Parado is used in a negative sense. It's used in a negative sense to tempt one's despair. One is approval, one is despair. So you could say parado is a solicitation to sin. So if you're looking at parado, it's a sense of temptation, solicitation to sin.

Now, an example. The Lord Jesus Christ was led into the wilderness. He was led into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil, Pirazo, with a view towards failure, with a solicitation to sin. And so he fasted 40 days, 49, and then comes along the personification of Pirazo, the tempter himself, the devil. So the devil comes with three temptations. And one of those temptations was to fall down and worship Satan. The Lord responded to those three temptations with scripture. And after the third temptation, the devil left.

Now, let's look at how we are tempted. James chapter 1 verse 13. Let no man say when he is tempted, Pyrodzil or parasmas, the noun form. These words are going to be the verb form, or the noun form, or the adjective form, but it's going to be the form of paraso.

But no man say, when he is tempted, I am tempted of God. For God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempts he any man. The one thing about paraso, as it's used in the negative sense, in terms of contempt with a solicitation to sin, with a view towards failure, is that God will never, never, never, ever tempt us with a solicitation to sin, never with a view to failure. He will never do that.

I want you to listen to some questions and some reasoning here as we go through this temptation process. First question is, how are we tempted? Along with that comes another question, who are we tempted by? Who desires that we fail? Who solicits us to sin? In order for us to be solicited to sin, the who has to have very strong desires, has to have very strong motives. The who must be capable of making sin very attractive.

Is the who Satan? Because a lot of people will say, it's been tough. You can't believe what Satan is doing in my life. It's like believers think that Satan is like God, that he's omnipresent. But Satan is not omnipresent. He can only be in one place at one time. So if he's at your house soliciting you to sin, he can't be at my house soliciting me to sin. So who's the who? Let's look at verse 14. But every man is tempted when he is drawn away out of his own lust. Who is the who? The who is ourselves.

We can't blame Satan. I can't blame my wife. I can't blame my kid. I can't blame the dog. The who is ourselves. And it's out from ourselves that come these lusts. The word lust there is epiphania. It means very strong desires, inordinate desires. From within ourselves, there are these strong lusts and strong desires.

And if you're like me, you know that they keep coming and coming. It's 24-7. They're always coming at us. and so there must be a power source behind these temptations and behind these solicitations to sin. So, what is the power source? I think Paul defines the power source in Romans chapter 6 and 7 as THE SIN. If you're looking in King James, the definite article is not there. If you look in the Greek and the Interlinear, you'll see the definite article for almost every case. I believe that THE SIN in the context that Paul's talking about is the sin nature. So, the source of our lust is the sin nature.

Take a look at the process that goes on in verse 14 of James chapter 1. We start out abiding in Christ. We're walking in fellowship with him, we're communing with him, and we have this wonderful intimacy with the Lord Jesus Christ as we behold him in his and the Spirit of God makes him real to us.

But then, as verse 14 says, we're drawn away by our lust. So there's the lust, these very strong desires, and as I said, I believe the source is the sin nature, and we're drawn away. The word drawn away is to be lured. It's to be lured away from another. We're being drawn away from abiding in the Lord Jesus Christ, to not abiding in the word of Jesus Christ. Look at verse 14, and when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed, the next word there is enticed.

The word enticed simply means that now there is a bait. There's a bait out in front of you. This power source knows what the bait should be. When you go fishing, You have to know when you go fishing what fish you're going to be attracted to. Worms, spinners, eggs, whatever. At all, the nature knows what that bait should be. It holds that bait out in front of them.

What are some examples? The first thing we think of when we hear the word lust is sexual lust, which is a very strong desire, especially with respect to men. There are so many of these desires that come at us each and every day. How about self-preservation lusts or desires? We're in the business of preserving our image. We don't want to be wrong, and we want to look good in front of other people, in front of other believers. We want to look just as spiritual as they are. There's this self-preservation lust. In my counseling, there's all kinds of desires that come to a person that they don't realize that they're being drawn away or lured away from the Lord Jesus Christ.

For example, women who have been abused, either sexually or mentally abused. One woman, when she was a young girl, she was sexually abused by her father. Every time the word father came up, it just triggered a reaction in her. It triggered a reaction of anger, of bitterness, of resentment. Those were the things that were drawing her away, this anger and bitterness because of memories about what happened to her with her father.

These are enticements. Look at verse 15. And when lust has conceived, it brings forth sin, and sin, when it is finished, brings forth death. When that lust, when that desire conceives, And the word there in Greek is suumbano. It means to become pregnant.

And so there's a point where faith is out in front of us, whether it's that woman walking by, or when we have to tell a little white lie to preserve our self-image, we take the bait. Or when the mention of one's father causes anger, bitterness, and we say, I should be angry. I have a right to be angry. And I have a right to be bitter. And I have a right to be resentful.

We've just taken the baby. So we take the baby. And then we become pregnant. And let's conceive. And you know this, that when you become pregnant, there's no going back. So you must go forward. So what happens? Well, the baby is born. And there's the birth. And the birth is sent. What happens then?

Well, the text says that sin leads to death. There's the process of temptation. One woman said to me, you know, that doesn't picture my experience when I'm tempted. My experience is that there's no steps going down like that. There's a ramp, and there's grease on that ramp. And I just slide right down. Do you find that to be true? I do.

OK, so the question is, what's death? Is death physical death? No, death is not physical death. Remember, death means what? Separation. And so the question you have to ask is, separation from what? Here's the start, we're abiding in Christ. There's the finish line, death, we're abiding in that, it's in nature. That's death. Death means separation. loss of fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ. So now the question is this, how do we get restored back to fellowship and abiding in Christ? How does that happen?

I want you to take a look at how wonderful God's plan is to us as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. So here's this temptation process. Now, prior to taking the bait, This whole process of lust coming at us, these strong desires, and drawing us away from abiding in Christ. And even the bait, being lured by the bait. That is temptation. That's paradozo, a solicitation to sin.

But it's not sin. So many believers think that when they're tempted, and there's this solicitation to sin, that, oh, the sky is falling. that they just lost their salvation. But temptation is not sin. But when we take the bank, then it's sin. We've missed the mark. Sin is missing the mark. We've missed the mark, and the mark is the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. How do we get from death, separation, and loss of fellowship to the Lord Jesus Christ?

God has provided for us. In 1 John 1-9, says if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from every unrighteousness. And He only may convict us of one sin or two sins, but He'll cleanse us from every single sin.

Now, is the Christian life then going from abiding in Christ down to death, back to abiding in Christ, then abiding in self, then confession, and then abiding in Christ and then abiding in self, then confession, abiding in Christ. Many believers live their Christian life that way.

I think I told you the story of a gal who was here who said that she counted one day how many times she confessed her sins. And I think it was like 382 times. What did God want us to do? Well, during this phase of temptation, we should reckon. And Romans chapter 6 verses 10 and 11 talking about reckoning. And the word reckoning means just to count it as truth. Count what is said as truth. That's all it means. How do we do that?

Well, we walk by the principle of faith. Personal rest and trust in the essence of faith. The essence of faith are the things of the Lord Jesus Christ. What are the things of the Lord Jesus Christ? Verse 10, it says, one of the things of the Lord Jesus Christ is that He died.

And He died unto our sin nature. He condemned it. He rendered it inoperative. He cut us loose from it. When we were unbelievers, we were in union with our sin nature. When we put our trust and faith in Jesus Christ, He set us free. He cut us loose from sin nature. So we no longer need to be a slave to sin nature.

And Romans 6 verse 10 goes on to say, not only did he die unto the sin nature, but he lives unto God. And verse 11 follows, and it says, likewise, you reckon yourself dead indeed unto the sin nature and alive unto God. Reckon yourselves that you're cut loose, that you no longer need to be a slave to this sin nature. So when these desires come, When the solicitation for sin comes at you, you can reckon, you can count it as true by faith that you're dead to that sin nature. You don't need to be a slave to it anymore. Then what happens?

James chapter 1 verse 12. Blessed, happy, mature is the man that endures temptation. The solicitation for sin. Blessed is the man that endures that, for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life. Better translated is, having become approved, that is by test, he becomes approved. And the word in verse 12, for when he is tried, guess which word that is? Daktimadze, a test with a view towards approval. It says, blessed is the man that endures another beautiful word, to abide under, and can abide under the temptation.

That temptation may be for a long period of time, but one is abiding under it. One is not going on and taking the bait, but he's abiding under the temptation. He's wrecking himself, dead and beaten, into the nature of a lie unto God. He's abiding under the temptation.

And what the Lord says, is that blessed is that man having become approved because this becomes then a test of one's faith. Are you by faith going to reckon yourself indeed dead unto the sin nature and alive unto God during temptation? Look what he says in verse 12. He shall receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to them that love Him. God uses these things to share His glory with us. Amen.