Temptation in the Christian life pt 1
James 1:13-15 · Andrew Molloy · Feb 19, 2023
James, No. 06
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49261930155071

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Okay, so we're in James chapter one. We're down to verse 13 through 15. We're looking at temptation today in the Christian life, part one. Roger, and we're gonna talk about sin. Roger assigned me to this because I'm the expert in sin. Okay, all right. I would assume that's why I'm on this list. Well, you're a good, Paul said he was, Chief of Center, so you're good. Yeah, I'm his vice chair.

So James 1, 13 through 15 reads, I like that King James, how it starts, let no man 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 carried away and enticed by his own lust. When lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin, and sin, when it has run its course or is completed, brings forth death.

Those are our verses for today. So review so far. In verses 1 through 12 of James' letter, we're told to count it all joy when we fall into various trials and circumstances of trials, that's Pirosmos, the Greek word, because he says, knowing from our experience of God's purposes in trials, that he uses these trials, these Pirosmos trials to approve our faith. And that word approve is documatso, so that we become battle tested. We reach We will reach his goal, which is perfected faith, finished faith, complete faith, which is lacking in no parts in our faith, full spiritual maturity. If we need wisdom in the trials, we just simply ask without doubting. And he promises simply without restrictions or caveats or strings to provide us with the wisdom to go through the trial.

These so far have been Pirosmos trials from the outside sources used of God for our growth. Today, we're going to look at these verses are the inner temptations, better translated as Pirosmos temptations, which come from ourselves. And those are temptations to sin. These temptations are brought, here's a little preview. These temptations are brought on by our own desires, lusts. And the source of those desires is our old nature, our sin nature. So. You'll recognize this gentleman. I wanted to put this in previous lessons, but I haven't yet.

But the value of documentary testing, which is testing for approval, right? So Bob is a doctor, and that weast circular that was put out in ancient Greek, The word for doctors of medicine was basically Documento. They have passed an examination and they're approved as a practitioner of medicine. So there you go. Bob is Documento and his medical board, I think he probably still has to test out probably every three years, you know, and keep up his license. So that's, uh, that's what DocuMoto is right there. Um, passing the test. Another gentleman, let me get that up is, so he, uh, he is not a doctor, but he does, he did DocuMoto.

So he did a lot of testing at his last, um, assignment in the Air Force. He was with AFOTEC, the Air Force Operational Testing and Evaluation Center. So you see in the acronym for that, but you see that operational testing and evaluation. Well, that's documento, isn't it? That is testing Air Force systems, war systems with a view to approving them, putting them in battle scenarios and then testing them and making sure that when the Air Force purchases these systems, that they're going to work out in the field. So that was his whole job for about two or so years. And then he retired from that AFO tech. So that was his last job. Now I don't know what he's doing. He's not testing anything, I guess.

So yeah, DocuMazzo testing, just two examples of how it's used in the real world there. Uh, here's a good, I like this illustration about the sources of trials and temptations. They're both external and internal, and you can be, you can be hit with trials, Pirazzo, tribulations, which is Philipsis.

Afflictions. Afflipsis. T-H-L-I-P-S-I-S. Am I pronouncing that right? Yeah. Afflipsis. Afflipsis, yes. Yeah, and then you can be tested. Pirazzo. There's two words for testing. Pirazzo and Documazzo. You can be tempted. Temptation is Pirazzo. So all these things and suffering. You can suffer too. God will allow you to suffer. Pascho is the Greek word for that. So you see this smiling couple here are being hit with all these arrows or as Ron Merriman calls them, the trials of life or stressors, you know, life stressors. So soon when these arrows hit this couple, they won't be smiling anymore and they'll be. It's an illustration. I like that. They're very happy. So James 13, and we'll look at the first part of that. James 13, let no man say when he is tempted, I am being tempted by God.

And this is an imperative command in the active voice present tense. So it's happening now and you're the one doing it. You, you can't say, you should not say I'm being tempted by God. Um, but that temptation is passive. That Piarazzo is, uh, in the passive, uh, that, uh, verb there is, is passive. Um, but, uh, but when you say I'm being tempted by God, that's in the present. Does that make sense? I'm kind of mixing those tenses, but that's how it is.

So you can't say, you're commanded not to say, this temptation is coming from God, is in plain English, what that's saying. This is an internal temptation to sin, pirato, to sin internally. This is not, we looked at the good sense of trials and the bad sense of trials. This is not the good sense. This is the bad sense.

The good sense of trials or temptations is what God allows us to fall into, to prove out our faith and to have us seek escape in him, which is his peace. To endure the trial, to undergo the trial and endure, not necessarily to be delivered from the trial, but to endure it. Examples of the good sense of Pirosmas trial is Paul's thorn in the flesh, second Corinthians 12, seven.

God sent that to him to keep Paul from getting too full of himself. So that was a good thing. Paul came to realize that was a good thing for him. His medical condition, whatever he had. And then another good sense of a trial is Abraham offering up Isaac as a sacrifice in Hebrews 11, 17. By faith, when he was tested, Abraham offered up Isaac.

But this is the bad sense. So the bad sense of tempting or testing is a solicitation to sin. And it can be external or internal. Externally, it is used of Satan to tempt Jesus. The Pharisees tempted God. The world can tempt. Man. tempted Paul in Acts.

And I have all those copied down all those verse references there. Riches are in temptation and various other sources. We looked at that in the first part of this James chapter one, James one, two, various temptation and trials. Last week, we looked at the temptation of riches, which was, and we referenced that first Timothy six, nine. Riches are a temptation. Even being poor is a temptation as well. So the internal aspect of tempting or temptation is it can come from the heart of a man or the sin nature.

You have Hebrews 3.8 and James 1.14 and 15, which we'll look at today.

The sin nature there and Hebrews 3.8. talks about the heart of a man. So I've added verse 13, the B part, let no man say when he was tempted, I'm being tempted by God, part B, for God cannot be tempted by evil and he himself does not tempt anyone. The temptation to sin cannot come from God and why is that?

I was kind of following my dad's notes here on this sub. He covered this very thing and he asked the same question. Does anybody want to pipe in? Well, God can't be the source of sin. Right. Yeah, that's it. And because it's his character, right? It's essential character in his character. There is no sin. 1 John 3, 5, we looked at. Let me read that real quick. Oh, I had it. Here it is.

1 John 3, 5, and you know that he appeared in order to take away sins, and in him there is no sin. So we know that, and that 1 John, you know, talks about if you're in the light, you can't be in the darkness. And if you're in God, you can't sin. We talked about that a lot in 1 John. You know, there is no sin in him. And when we abide in our new nature, there's no sin there either.

Yeah. Also, isn't tempting someone to sin a sin in itself? Yeah, yeah, it would be. Yeah, exactly. And God cannot sin, so. Yeah, right. Oh, and we're going to look at that right now. So, you know, the verse says God cannot be tempted by evil. But he, the remark is here, God was tempted, wasn't he though? How could the verse say he cannot be tempted by evil when clearly in the Bible you have evidence that he was tempted. And that's true. He was tempted.

And here, again, copying this little chart from back in 2004, God the father was tempted by the Pharisees in Acts 15.10.

He was tempted in the desert by the Jews in the wilderness, Israel in the desert, Hebrews 3.9. Christ was tempted by Satan. He was tempted by the Pharisees a lot. You know, they were always egging him on. He was tempted. Believers can tempt Christ in first Corinthians 10, nine. And then Ananias and Sapphira, they tempted the Holy spirit in Acts five, nine.

So it looks like you, you have, you know, you have a problem here is god the father and christ in the holy spirit being tempted where's the person god cannot be tempted by evil so uh... how does that work well we'll look at that right now uh... andrew i'm always struck how ridiculous it was for satan to try and tempt jesus you know we're discussing the fact that god can't be tempted well jesus was god You know, but Satan tempted him, and I believe he tempted him for the whole, all 40 days while he was in the wilderness fasting. He didn't just tempt him three times, he tempted him thousands of times probably in 40 days. You know, how ridiculous is that, you know? Because Jesus can't be tempted.

Right, right. And I don't know whether it's Satan's, Lucifer's, is he, Is he a madman? Is it insanity on his part? Our old nature is so self-righteous and convinces us that we're right. And I imagine that's Satan on steroids. He couldn't see the truth. He thinks he's right. And he's blinded by his sin, right? He's blind to the fact that He knows, and deep down, he knows that in God, there is no sin.

So, you know, who knows? But this next part, we'll answer a little bit of that. So God can be tempted. He was tempted by Jews in the wilderness, Ananias, Sapphira, and by Satan. But the thing is, he can't respond with evil. It is against his character. Because evil is not in him.

And this other diagram from the 2004 study is helpful. This is the Greek diagrammed out. For God is without temptation. And there you see it diagrammed out. You see those two railroad tracks. And that's, I think that's a paratso, the negation of temptation.

So a, Like saying a temptation is basically he, and you see that little, the evil that it looks like K A K down there. That's the word for evil. And I forget what, but the transliteration of that is. Roy, do you have that evil, what the transliteration for evil is? Cacos or something? Well, one of the things that is, can you hear me? Yeah, yeah. One of the things that K'kon there portrays is, it's not just a temptation to do evil on your part, but it's a joy to lead others to fall into sin In other words, you practice leading others to sin. You have pleasure in that. God does not have any pleasure in that. That's the message here. God cannot have pleasure in leading people to sin. He doesn't do that.

But he will use this Pairanzo to correct He did one of the disciples one time when he was here on earth. He by rods of him. Yeah Telling him what is it you do believe and he had to admit that that was wrong Yet to correct that our To correct information, right? Think a different way. So he's trying to see, and that was Philip, right? Right. And the whole point is he wanted him not to believe something that was an error. Yeah. Yeah. He was trying to bring out the error and not get him to sin. Right. Exactly. Even though Philip's mindset, he didn't comprehend that Jesus can take care of these, feeding these 5,000 people easily.

But the kakon, just you ask the question, what does it really mean? It means that you have pleasure in doing something and you have pleasure in leading others to do something. Oh, okay. And that doesn't come out right there in this little chart, the pleasure aspect. But it's in there. I'll take your word for that. But we see that, so we see by the structure that God is without temptation, evilly. And that's a word. It doesn't look like a word, but that is a word. It's a little adjective there. Since it's impossible for him to do this, he doesn't have it. It's not in his character.

I was thinking it's like when you make a call and you get that recording and it says, reached a number that has been disconnected or is no longer in error. Service. Service. Service. You feel you've reached this number in error, you know, dial again.

It's kind of the same thing. It's just God can't respond. This is one thing God cannot do. One of the things is grammatically here. Yeah. It might be helpful to see it. Kakon is genitive. And genitive can be taken two ways it being the source of the object in either way Evil is not attractive to him as a source Okay, and and nor is it what he looks at as something desirable And it's neither his object nor is it his source? Yeah That does not enter into his character at all Wow, that's yeah, that's great, isn't it? Andrew, I love the way you put it.

You say that God can't do it versus He won't do it. If He won't do it, He won't do it because of His righteousness. But I like that He can't do it because it's just impossible because He doesn't have the ability to do it. Even if He can't want it, He just can't do it.

And it gives me comfort just to hear that. Right. And I was thinking about this this week. Well, what if, you know, Israel tempted him in the desert and he responded by the earth swallowed up what thousand, 6,000 people. So it wasn't, didn't he fall into, but, and I really had to think about that because he would, he would punish Israel right in the desert. But then I was thinking, well, no, because what that was filtered through his the justice right if They were sinning and he was judging the sin. It was being filtered through his righteous judgment and What does the word righteous mean? Plus our Right right wise right wise. Yeah, right. I just I It means the absolute correctness of something. The absolute perfection. So he was acting, so somehow in the desert he was acting out of that character. Yeah.

His punishment of Israel was always a righteous punishment. He didn't punish them to get back at him because he was upset with them. He was upset with them, but he was upset because they violated his righteous standard, not because he had some other motive. And then I thought about it too.

Look at all the times when they sinned a lot and then he would bless them. He would respond with blessing and manna and things like that. His long suffering is another aspect of his character, which is just amazing. And he still The Lord is still long-suffering, right? He's still waiting for people to come to Him. But the one thing is He cannot violate being absolutely correct. Right. Yeah, right, right. Good, good. Yeah, I like that.

He'd cease to be God if He would do that. He would no longer be God. That's right. So in this chart it said the literal translation is He himself is tempting no one. That's the last part of this verse 13. Remember now, it's of evil. He's not tempting anyone to evil. Right, right. Yeah, and he himself does not tempt. He's testing us, but he's not tempting us to evil. Oh yeah, right. And tempting has a bad connotation. It does. If you just switch out trial, they're used, right? A lot of times. I always think of tempting as the bad kind, but yeah. Yeah.

And you can switch those out and it's kind of, it's, this is very, uh, there's a lot of, uh, there's a, there's a couple of words and there's a lot of facets to these. The translations between different translations. You know, it makes it hard, because you have trials and temptations translated one way sometimes, testing, and then the reverse. And so you've got to look at the original words to keep yourself on track. Yeah. Yeah, great.

So many have tried to get God and the Lord Jesus Christ to sin, but they have failed. So on to verse 14, but each one is tempted when he's carried away and enticed by his own lust. So in contrast with God doing the tempting or the solicitation to sin, which he can't do, in contrast to that, that's the but, it is really each one and his own That is doing that. His own lust and lust is epithumia. Each one or his own is internally sourced. That adjective is an adjective and it's a personal thing, right? I'm trying to think of the other word I'm trying to think of. It's, well, I'll go and I'll look at that later. In other words, I thought of this, I think, yesterday here.

In other words, James is saying, just like the old teenage slasher movie, a call is coming from inside the house, if you understand that record. We didn't watch those. It's always about a babysitter, a home alone with the kids. There's a murderer on the call. It keeps calling in. And so the police trace the call and the police say, the call is coming from inside the house. And then she has to fight off the murder. So that's what's in nature, right? It's inside our own house. Yeah, that's true.

That word for carried away when he's carried away is ek helko. And that's ek out of or away from. Helko is to draw or to drag off and this passive voice there carried away. You're drawn away, you're dragged off by your own lust. It's your own lust that's luring this person away from abiding or from fellowship with God or living and walking by the new man. Enticed is dilatso. That's to bait or catch by bait. And that's our fishing metaphor here. It's to allure or to beguile, passive voice again, carried away and enticed. This is the word for lure and fishing. Or as my dad said, it's a red wiggler.

So so so Andrew you are gonna do it your your dad's chart, aren't you? Yeah, I will Okay, I didn't want to miss that. That's the big that's the finish. Okay? So lust is epithumia, it's a desire craving a longing and that can be in a good sense or a bad sense and we've had the bad sense in mind here today and But like Paul earnestly craved to depart the earth and be with Christ, he said, epithumia, he used that word. And Jesus epithumied, he earnestly desired to eat his last Passover with his disciples. So that's the good sense, but here we're looking at the bad sense. And Andrew?

Yeah. How significant that is, our Lord at the Last Supper? epithania that yeah right ah man knowing the suffering that he was going to face for the joy set before him he endured the suffering isn't that something yeah good point yeah so verse 15 of james here in chapter 1 says then when lust is conceived it gives birth to sin and sin when his run its course brings forth death. And we'll just look at the words again, and then I'll get to the big finish, the chart. Yeah, I like the chart.

When left is conceived, that conceived word is sulambano. It's used of Elizabeth conceiving and Mary conceiving in Luke. And it's also used when Christ was seized or arrested in the desert or in the garden of Gethsemane. The same can be used for the word arrest, which is strange, but there it is. But we have it as the former. It relates to the birthing, a baby being born like this. Stork brings a baby, which is sin. And then sin brings forth its wages, death, right? When we sin, it brings forth death, just as the verse says in verse 15. And Romans 6, 23, the wages of sin is death. That's how we know that. And brings forth That's still a maternity word or a birthing word. It's bring forth. From the womb is how it was used. So it continues that metaphor. I thought of Job. He uses that phrase from womb to tomb. And that's right here, right? Bring forth.

This lust conceives and brings forth sin. And that sin gives birth to sin from womb. And then it brings forth death. That's the tomb. So that's kind of neat how that says that in Job as well. And when sin has run its course, it says it brings forth death. Run its course is apoteleo. I recognize that to Leo, that means a completion of a thing, um, at bringing to an end and accomplishing or reaching its goal. So the goal, it comes to its goal and that's death. And then here's a trick question, but what does death bring about?

Separation from our Lord. Ah, good. Good boy. Jimmy's had. two cups of coffee this morning. This is a little abstract, but I was just thinking how when our Lord was in Gethsemane and He was praying to our Father and He was, you know, He was sweating blood.

And I think His greatest concern was being separated from the Father for the first time ever, for the only time. And He sweated blood from that. So think how bad death is from separation. And that's what we go through, maybe on a smaller scale, but it's terrible, isn't it? And that, yeah, that was the thing that was terrifying him. Wasn't that separation?

Um, the, the, just the thought of, cause on the earth, he was, he was always not connected or tuned in, or he was always in fellowship. He always had the father with him. He said, he kept saying continually, I always do what I see the father doing. So he was, he was in fellowship with his Heavenly father.

And so, so close with that union and that word, you know, Jesus is God. They're part of the same substance. They're the same substance. So for the first time, he was going to feel a separation from that substance, which is, and you know, Hebrews 1, 2 or 1, 3 uses that word substance.

It's really, Um, Andrew. Amazing. Yeah. Is that like when he was on the cross, he said, my father, why ask thou forsaken me? Yeah, right. He went there for us. So we don't have to. Right. So that we aren't eternally separate from which is how, um, unbelievers will end up. And that's not, I don't, yeah, if only the world could conceive the terribleness of that.

That's it. That's it. That's sad. Oh, first this old chart here as a summary. So just what is sin and that's missing the mark. And I like this. There's the target, his essence or God's glory and Jesus Christ hits it with a bullseye. And then we in Christ, Also hit it in faith because we're in Christ, but this rather stern looking woman off to the right side, she's missed the mark as you can see. And that missing the mark is not even missing. It's kind of turning around like a boomerang and boomerang back. That's how bad the mark is missed, that target.

So that's the sin that we're talking about today in these verses. Or it's like that, you think of that white balloon, that Chinese balloon, that AIM-7 missile that hit it right on the mark there in the news. Okay, so, well, I guess the chart is at the end, Roger, so you'll have to wait for that.

Is everyone there? Yeah. Okay. Is the class? Just give us a chance here to... Andrew, are you reminding me of all my problems? Oh, yeah, right. Do I have a feed to the class? Yeah. We don't. Oh, there it is. Roger's working on it. Give me a chance. Oh, he is. Okay. Trying to find one that I'm not in my old nature. Right. Yeah. That's the complete same chat log. Wow. So we see them. So you went from the left. Can you go back a chart? Oh yeah. Yeah. Send chart. Oh, I see what you did. Did you see that? Start from there. Okay. Yeah.

Just the chart. That's just a good visual. Sin is missing the mark. Did I lose you again? Wow. I'm just going to get everything back. All right. Oh, great. Okay. Okay. So missing the mark. And, uh, but in Christ we always hit that mark, don't we? Right. Um, Sin is missing the mark.

And then the sin catalog are these. So I'm sure if you've committed any of the sins in the first column, someone might want to call 911 and we might want to hold you because some of those are capital offenses, right? I counted these up, and I've used this before, but there's about 130 sins on this old slide from 1995. And that's all the types of sin. Hey, I didn't finish reading them all.

Yeah, it's just everything you can think about is a hurry up Carolyn And I was gonna I was gonna have you guys played too and So that Whenever you see a sin that you've committed that's the B and then the second sin that you have committed that's the I and then The third sin is the end. So whoever gets the bingo and yells out bingo first, you know, wins.

But here's the, um, in the last, the fourth column over on the right there, you see those desires that those lusts and that's interesting, uh, popularity, lust or influence, lust, reputation, lust, prestige, lust, acceptance, lust, or approbation, success, power, riches, wisdom, And those are all that epithumia, those desires over there. Well, you really spent a lot of time on me. Yeah, I don't know how, that's my dad, I don't know how he came up with all these. There's actually a story, we probably have time to maybe share another time, how this list got created. Oh, okay. Harry Schaffer helped him. Let's go, we're getting in. Yeah, let's hear it. Oh, and somehow, Roger, I don't know.

Oh, no. I missed. Yeah, I missed it on there. Where is it? And it dropped off. Yeah, we were going to look at that. It somehow dropped off. It was the first one. So I'll put that in the presentation. OK, all right. Well, why don't you describe it briefly? Yeah, it's just and people can look at that. It's briefly.

It's just the verses. especially James 1, 14 and 15 in an illustration form. And it's very helpful. It just takes the words and it puts it into an illustration. That's very simple and easy to look at, you know, how sin, how lust comes and conceives and gives birth and then it brings forth death.

So I'll put that in the presentation that just got knocked out. I didn't see that. So I'll do that for the presentation. Okay. Andrew? Yeah. Is this like how many of these we've done today or what? Oh, I don't know. The day is early, you know. It's just, so Roger, next week you're going to have to tell us how that list came to be? Yeah, it's not a long story. We had a time. Harry Schaeffer was in our class. That's about 20 years ago or whatever.

And so Hal said, Harry, why don't you go through scripture and find a list of all the sins? Just look through it. So Harry created this list. And then your dad put it on a flimsy, on two or three flimsies. Oh, OK. It was Harry Schaeffer. OK. I believe Harry Schaeffer was the person that that put it together, and then your dad put it on a chart like this. Because Harry Schaeffer also took all the commands in the New Testament, right? Right. He did that, too. This huge list of, hey, if you want commands, here's all the commands. So yeah, he was a cataloger. Excellent stuff, though.

I'm glad because you can look at this and you can say, wow, that's a complete list. Anyway, so we'll close. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for this time that we have to study your word and in this country, in this country where we're free to, and we just pray for our leaders in Washington and for guidance for them so we can continue to do this on a on a basis and gather together in freedom. And we thank you for these things in Jesus name. Amen.