Take the Lead on Temptation

Pat Steeves · Tidal Church Moncton · August 18, 2024 · Kingdom Citizens series

Pat Steeves looks at the final line of the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6:13, with James 1 and 4. He explains how temptation works and invites us to move the line, submit our desires to God, and take the lead on temptation.

More from Pat Steeves · The Kingdom Citizens series

Topics: Faith, Prayer, Discipleship

Transcript

[0:00] Well, good morning. How we doing? Welcome to the second last week in this series that we're calling Kingdom Citizens. And we don't want to talk about why it's coming to an end, but I know that some of us, we enjoy fall, right? But listen, I don't know if you were here last week, but if you weren't, incredible message by Sarah Street that she shared with us. And yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Because here's why this matters, okay? Because if you're anything like me, we talk to God about our problems and say, "God, help me." Right? And then we come in and we hear messages like the one that Sarah delivered, okay?

[0:47] Which is so helpful in handling conflict and relationships and how we do that according to the Word of God, things that work and are powerful, okay? But then we leave from those messages and sometimes we don't apply it to it, right? Scripture talks about being a doer of the word and not just a hearer only. And so I want to challenge you that if you're asking God in terms of relationships conflict, go back and listen to that message. I often think of like as a father of four kids, my kids are getting older and I can tell when they're maturing by, when I ask them to do something, if they actually do it, right?

[1:33] And so, again, in terms of us being as Christians, we can't just be hearers of the word only. We need to be what doers. All right? And so here we go into the second last week of the Kingdom Citizens series. And I was tasked with Matthew chapter 6, which is the Lord's Prayer. How many of you guys have ever prayed the Lord's Prayer? Heard it. Maybe at a wedding. All right, so here's what I'm going to ask you to do. I want you to read it with me. All right? I wanna make sure you guys are awake, you guys are awake, you guys got some energy? Okay? We're gonna put this up on the screen. For many of you, you've memorized it, but we're gonna read it all together. Are you ready? Let's read: Our Father who art in heaven, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth.

[2:31] Give us and lead us not, but deliver us from the evil one. Give yourselves a big round of applause. Well done, well done. Well, here's what we're gonna do, because Jeremy MacDonald, our teaching pastor, he shared on this back in 2020 in October on this entire passage. And so I don't wanna repeat that, he knocked it outta the park. Go back and watch it. But here's what I want us to do today. I want us to highlight the last verse, verse 13. Verse 13, which is on temptation: lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

[3:21] All right? And I want us to first understand this, that God is not leading us into temptation, right? That's not what He's saying. He's not implying that through this prayer that He leads us into temptation. But the prayer is that we would have protection, that He would lead and guide us because He knows we're going to be tempted. Now, temptation doesn't escape us. All right? We all know what it's like to be tempted. I know that, you know, for Pastor David Way here on the front row, he's got some years, he's got some experience, he's got some wisdom behind him. And I've heard him say that he knows what it's like to face temptation, right?

[4:06] I know that my daughter's sitting up here somewhere. She's 11 years old. And I promise you, before the end of the day, she's gonna be tempted to say something not nice to her brothers. Okay? I know that for me, I'm gonna be tempted by the end of the day in some form or some fashion. It does not escape any one of us. But here's some of the things that I want us to talk about and cover today in terms of this topic. Is it a sin to be tempted? Where does temptation come from? How can I resist temptation? But I want us to land here today on this point of taking the lead, when it comes to temptation, instead of temptation leading us.

[5:00] I believe as followers of Jesus, we can take an important role and an important lead when it comes to temptation. I wanna ask you guys this question, filter today's message through this question. What is your biggest temptation? That thing that maybe you pray to God with on a regular basis, or the thing that you feel guilt, shame about, and you're just like, "Man, I wish I could overcome this morning." I wanna encourage you to listen through this message through the lens of what is your biggest temptation? Now I know for some, okay, it could be overeating, okay?

[5:46] For others, maybe it's a sugar addiction. I know for me, I've struggled with stress eating. Okay? And maybe for others, it's online shopping, okay? But you know what, there are different temptations that we all face, okay? And it hits us in different ways and different places of our life, but we all have temptation. But the difference is I want us to be able to switch that from temptation leading our decisions to us taking the lead. And so let's talk about what is the definition of temptation? What is the definition of temptation? And there's a lot of different things you can look up and research, but I want us to kind of build off this premise today, okay?

[6:38] That temptation. Temptation is anything that promises satisfaction at the cost of obedience. I wanna say that again. Temptation, okay? It's something. Temptation is anything that promises satisfaction at the cost of obedience. Now, I gotta tell you, for those of you that know me, one of my favorite things ever is ice cream. Okay? I love ice cream. Does anybody enjoy? Little bit? Whatever. Okay? My favorite place to go is Goji's. I dunno if you've ever had the frozen yogurt, there it is. Absolutely this side of heaven.

[7:24] The best thing, okay, here's a pro tip you need to know: every December 1st, they serve up $1 ice cream cones at Goji's for the whole month of December, okay? And when they started doing this, I'm like, "This is absolutely incredible." I can take my whole family for $6, okay? A night out. And so, last year, the year before, we decided, you know what, we're gonna make a deal, okay? Don't judge me, okay? No judgment first, okay? But I'm like, let's see, because this is like my favorite all time thing. Let's make sure that we get an ice cream each day for the entire month, right? And it's like, we kind of had this challenge and I'm like, "Oh, this is gonna be, you know, super easy."

[8:13] But it was interesting to note that like as the month went on, this thing that was my favorite, that promised satisfaction, the best thing ever, I began to like think about, oh, do I really need to get another ice cream today? I don't know if I can do that. I noticed that, like, when I would sit in my vehicle and put my seatbelt on, like, it just seemed like I was just a little bit bigger, you know, towards the end of the month. This thing that promised satisfaction didn't give me what I thought it would. How many, I can relate. You've bought something where you're like, this is going to satisfy me, right? And then you get home and you're like, this doesn't look as good as I thought it was.

[8:59] That's the way temptation works, is it promises satisfaction upfront, okay? But the cost is disobedience to God. Temptation is temporary. And I like to say this, that sin stimulates, it's fun, okay? Sin stimulates, it's fun, but only God can truly satisfy. So when we think about temptation, you're gonna have that urge of temptation's gonna sell you on, this is gonna satisfy you. And when that thought crosses your mind, I want you to remind yourself that true satisfaction can only come through God.

[9:46] It can only come through the principles of the Word of God in how to live our life. So that is the definition of temptation. So we're gonna build off this today. Who's ever heard the devil made me do it? Who's ever heard that the devil made me do it? And of course we have. And so, where does temptation come from? Does it come from the devil? Does it come from God? Does it come from ourselves? I want us to look this morning at James 1:13. James 1:13 says this, and remember, when you're being tempted, do not say God is tempting me.

[10:31] God is never tempted to do wrong and He never tempts anyone else. It's beyond God's ability to tempt us. There is only good found in God. Now I will say this, God does test us. God does test us. Just like a teacher would test a student, just like a coach would test an athlete so that it pulls them up and makes them better, right? How many of you guys have gone through some difficult times, even as difficult? They are. You can recognize and say, you know what? I'm better for it. I'm stronger for it. And so God will test us, but the enemy tempts us. The enemy tempts us to pull us down, alright?

[11:18] Cause us to fall. Where does temptation come from? Let's continue to read here in James. 1:14 is so clear, it tells us right here, it says, temptation comes from where our desires, temptation comes from our desires, which entice us, right? Just like that ice cream, just like that hamburger, just like that sale on Amazon, right? It entices us and we can spend a whole lot of time here. And it says, it drags us away. We probably have experienced that in some point in our life where temptation tends to entice us and it drags us away from the things we know we need to do.

[12:08] It drags us away from the people that we know we should be spending time with. These desires give to sinful actions. And when sin is allowed to grow, it gives birth to death. It's not good. Not even the devil can make us do it. It's our evil desires. So let's understand a little bit about the process of temptation. Where does it start? Temptation starts with first a thought, right? It's like, hmm, what am I gonna have for lunch today? Right? Feeling a little hungry. How much is left in this message? Right? The thought enters our mind. We're talking about the process of temptation.

[12:55] I would encourage you to take notes. Take a picture of this. This is so helpful. You're gonna resonate with this. Secondly, it goes from a thought to our imagination, right? You can think about that hamburger. You can smell it, right? It's like so real in your imagination, and you're like, I hope he's done soon because I've got to eat, right? The commercial comes up, our imagination is drumming up how good this thing is going to be. It's going to satisfy you. It's going to bring you comfort, right? And then we go from a thought to imagination, to justification. Oh, this is fun, right? We begin to justify it.

[13:42] It's like, oh man, I've had a busy morning. I've got a lot done. I can actually stop by the drive through of my favorite burger place. Pick something up and I can continue working and moving on to the next thing, right? We begin to justify our actions. Are you guys still with me? Yes. Right? So it starts with a thought. It moves to our imagination, how amazing. Justification, we begin to tell ourselves, you deserve it, Pastor David, right? And then it moves to choice. Then we move to choice and we're like, look at how many people are doing it. Everyone's there, what's the big deal? I'll order another one, right?

[14:28] And we begin to create that rhythm of justification. And then we know that, you know, we're to get our Mama Burger on Monday and the two Tuesday burger and the Wednesday Whopper burger, and it just kind of goes from there. How do I know this? Because I may have had an issue with that, but I'll maybe share in a in a few minutes of how we've got that under control. Alright? And so that is the process of how temptation works in our life. And as humorous, we can try to make that, remember we talked about what is that biggest temptation that you're facing with right now? Why don't you plug that temptation into that process, right?

[15:19] It starts as a thought. It moves to the imagination. We justify it. Oh, it's not gonna hurt. Oh, it's not that big of a deal, right? And then the next thing we know, we click. The next thing we know, we make a choice. The next thing we know, the shame, the guilt that comes into our life. The process of temptation works like that. So we need to recognize how it works. And then we want to talk about today is two things that we can do to lead temptation. Okay? Two things that we can do today to lead temptation. So here's where I want to illustrate. Does anybody here have maybe a roll of tape in their pocket?

[16:05] Anybody, like, handyman, electrician? Anybody have a roll of tape right here? Of course, Pastor David, he came prepared. Look at that. And it's pink. How many know real men can only wear pink? But I wanna illustrate this as we talk about temptation today and what can we do? What is, what can we do to gain the upper hand when it comes to temptation? So what I want us to do here is I want us to just make this line, I'm gonna make this line here to illustrate this point of how this works. So now, here's, so we have a line here. So on this side of the line, this represents this represents God's standard.

[16:54] This represents what is right, what is godly, okay? And then on this side, this represents sin, okay? This represents to do what we wanna do, you know, to go against God, disobedience, on this side. So what's on this side, right? Okay. And on this side is sin. Okay? Now, I don't know if you do this, but like for me, I always wanna know like, how, how close can I get to the line? Does anybody else relate to that? It's like, tell me, how far can I go? How close can I just get to this line? Okay? But here's what's interesting is we do that in terms of our desires and temptation, but we don't actually do that in other areas of our life.

[17:51] How many have ever been at like a train crossing that's going across the road or across the street, right? You've seen the train crossing and the train is going by. There's lights, right? There's sirens. I have never thought of, I'm gonna get out of my car and I'm gonna see how close I can get to the train rail, right? The line, right? You've never thought of that. So there's things in life that we create a different line where they have on the road where it's a safe place for your car or if you're bicycling or if you're walking, they they move the line back away.

[18:40] Are you guys with me? Yes. Okay. They move the line to where it's safe. And so to illustrate this in terms of temptation and to see what this actually plays out with in our life, over here is where, right here, is sin. Okay? So in terms of like, I want to go back into memory lane a little bit, but, uh, when I started to date my wife, okay, we had actually, I never really actually asked her out. This was before Facebook. We never actually like, made it official yet. But, I, we are married, we have four kids, all this stuff. But before we did, okay, we had a decision to make in terms of our relationship.

[19:29] And are we gonna do what God, oops, sorry, God, do what's right in terms of waiting for marriage before sex. Or are we gonna do what our desires want to do and we're gonna do what we wanna do over here, right? And so you can imagine, you know, a younger me, attractive, good looking, she couldn't keep her hands off of me, right? And so I immediately understood that we're gonna have to set some safe boundaries in place. We're not gonna try to see how close we can get to the line, but we're gonna back it up. And I can remember having a conversation and saying, you know what? Until we get married, we're not gonna kiss anymore, right?

[20:14] And we made that conscious decision. Maybe I did. But regardless, we made it together because why? We wanted to stay back away from the line. Somebody say, move the line, and this is how this works. It can work. Some of you that struggle with spending, okay? You see a sale come up, you know, on Amazon and you're like, that must be God telling me that I should buy it, right? We got some excitement over here for Amazon, alright? But to move the line might look like, you know what, I'm not gonna make a purchase until 24 hours after. It may mean you missed the deal, but you're moving the line away because you don't wanna be controlled by your desires.

[20:59] You don't wanna be controlled by temptation. Maybe it's giving a friend a password and you can't purchase anything until they allow you. There's different things that you can do to move the line. Maybe for some of us, it's our cell phone, right? And it's like we're just always on this line of too much and we wanna just back it up and say, you know what? I'm gonna set restrictions or maybe I'm gonna remove an app. And for each one of us, it could be different. Maybe for you. There's just so much temptation in terms of a phone that you're like, you know what? I'm gonna remove to a flip phone, right? You can move the line. Somebody say, move the line. When it comes to temptation, you know, Jesus talks about "lead us not in temptation, but deliver us."

[21:51] And I believe that we have a responsibility in that. That's our responsibility, is to move the line. Have you ever heard somebody say this, "I just can't resist," or "I just couldn't resist. It was too big of a sale. He's just too cute. She's just gorgeous. I just couldn't resist." I think that for many times in her life, that does happen. So how do we resist temptation? How do we actually resist temptation when it comes into our life? And I want us to look at James 4:7.

[22:36] James 4:7 says this, "Submit yourselves to God, resist the devil, and he will flee." Can you guys just repeat this after me? Say, submit, submit, submit. It's not a word that we use a lot, but the word submit, the root word sub, actually means to come under. Submit to God, resist the devil, and he will flee. And we talked a lot about our own desires. We talked about that in James, that we have our own desires, and that's what actually leads to sin.

[23:24] And so I wanna challenge you, I wanna challenge me today, what would it look like to submit our desires to God? You see, we live in a society that wants to elevate ourselves above God, right? I deserve it, right? We wanna elevate our own desires and say things like, well, if God didn't want me to have this desire, He wouldn't have given it to me. But James is saying, I want you to submit your desires to Him. I want you to resist the devil.

[24:11] We also say things like, that's just the way it is. It's the new norm. And I wanna challenge us today as Christians, as believers, to push back on that. And if we truly wanna take the lead when it comes to temptation, we need to submit first to God. And you might sound like, oh, this message is too restrictive. But I want you to know that it's actually very freeing when you begin to move the line in different areas of your life. When you begin to submit yourself to God, your desires, it's actually very freeing. And you experience a life that you can only experience as you walk through, with God, through this.

[25:02] You see, we have the choice today. We have the choice today that we can rely on our own desires. We can rely on, you know, maybe what's, you know, a bottle to help medicate us, get us through the day, through the week. We can rely on something that we smoke because it's just medication. It helps us cope. It helps us calm. We can rely on food. Let's be honest. It brings us comfort. We can rely on so many things. We can take a legitimate sexual need and meet it in an illegitimate way.

[25:48] But the only one that brings us true satisfaction today is Jesus. And so I wanna invite you to stand with us this morning, but I want us to just think through this again. When the thought comes to you, when temptation comes to you and it sells you on satisfaction, this is going to satisfy you. I want you to quickly remember, there is nothing, there is nobody that can satisfy you but God. I wanna remind you today that we have a role. We can move the line in terms of temptation and move to a safe place.

[26:36] But in that is enough, we can move the line. But we all get weak. We all get distracted, we all get stressed in. And I truly believe that that's not enough in our own strength. And I've moved the line in some areas of my life and it's amazing. But we're all weak. And that's why we need to learn to submit our desires to God. And here's what it looks like as I close, it starts like this, saying, God, I need You. God, I'm powerless in my own strength. God, I need some help. That's one place to start. And so I'm gonna challenge you. We're just gonna sing one last song here.

[27:21] But I want you to think through what is that biggest temptation? What is that biggest thing that you're trying to satisfy? What can you do to move the line? What can you do to submit to God? And the last thing that I want to encourage us all to do is to create a practice in the morning. Say, God, I submit my life to You. I submit my desires, submit my eyes, my ears, my hands. God, I am Yours today. And just by making that conscious decision daily, I'm gonna submit to You, God. I believe. I believe the result is we can resist temptation and the enemy will flee.

[28:11] I do. I do believe that's how we ourselves can take the lead on temptation instead of our temptation leading us. Can we pray this morning? God, we thank You for the Word of God, that it's life to us. God. It is. It's literally it. It guides and steers our thoughts, the intents of the heart. It's so powerful. And I just wanna encourage us as a church today that the enemy wants to take us out. He wants to steal, kill, destroy our dreams, our plans, our lives.

[28:58] But God, You wanna bring us life. And so as followers of Jesus, allow us to recognize that thought, the imagination, the justification, the process of choice. And we take the lead on temptation. We begin to take back the lead on temptation. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Would you sing with us? Would just allow God to speak to your heart through the lens of that temptation.