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"Giving In to Temptation" Genesis 3:1-11

Holiness for All the Saints #6

by Clancy Nixon

February 17, 2007

Church of the Holy Spirit

Ashburn, Virginia

www.HolySpiritAnglican.org

The title of my talk today is "Giving in to Temptation." Temptation is so alluring:

Why not just give in? You've heard some of the reasons people give in, haven't you?

Here are some of the reasons that I've heard that people give in. I've heard it said,

"Alcoholism runs in my family. I come by it honestly." Then there is this: "I've always

looked at porn, it's too late to stop now." We can even spiritualize it: "I prayed about my

eating problem, but still I couldn't stop." Holiness can be so hard, and temptation is just

so... so tempting. Today we'll look at why you should avoid temptation, and how you

can thwart temptation, and so avoid sinful behaviors.

(Several of the ideas in this sermon are taken from Bruce Wilkinson's book on

holiness called Set Apart, which I gratefully acknowledge. © Multnomah, 2005)

We're in a sermon series called "Holiness for All the Saints." Last week, we

looked at the importance of cleansing ourselves from the stain of sin, and I gave you an

assignment to spend one hour to go through the Ten Steps to Deep Cleansing. If you

didn't get that last week, I've included it again in your bulletin this week. I really hope

you'll include that in your Lenten discipline. Working through these steps helped me to

clarify some things I need to do to look more like Jesus. After you are forgiven for the sin

in your past, you turn to strategies for arresting future sin in your life, and that's what we

are doing today as we look at temptation.

Every fall into sin is always preceded by a temptation. What is the meaning of the

word "temptation?" Webster says that a temptation is something that induces, entices, or

allures you toward immoral behavior. A temptation is an incentive; it's a motivation to

an evil end.

Point # 1: If you see the truth about a temptation, you can avoid the sin. In

Genesis chapter 3, the serpent tempted Adam and Eve to disobey God's command not to

eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The first humans gave in to

temptation. Please turn that up page 3 of your blue pew Bible. Notice the temptations,

that is, the incentives, which the serpent offered Eve. Look at Genesis 3:1 "Did God

really say that you must not eat of that tree?" This is Satan's first strategy to tempt you

and me: He casts doubt on the word of God! Satan asks us, "Are you sure you

understood what God said?" The tempter's strategy is to undermine our confidence in

the plain meaning of God's word! It's a subtle appeal: on the surface, it appears to be an

appeal to humility, to our inability to know things with perfect clarity. You could say

that the serpent was a pre-modern post-modernist, seeing how he deconstructs the word

of God and undermines both our epistemology - our theory of knowledge - and the

authority of God's word. It poses as humility, but it leads to pride, to thinking we know

better than God, that we are in a position to judge what God has said. Eve does not fall

for this first temptation, verse 3, repeating back what God in fact said. Then the serpent

says to her, verse 4, "You will not surely die." The serpent goes deeper in the same

strategy of casting doubt on what God has said, this time by directly contradicting God's

word. The serpent says, Not only won't you die, verse 5, but "your eyes will be opened,

and you will be like God." Here's the incentive, the benefit to Eve. Why not give in?

[pause] Why not give in? Because giving in means believing a lie. The serpent has

minimized the real dangers and maximized the imagined benefits. (Wilkinson, p. 101)

This lie happens in every temptation minimizing the real dangers and maximizing the

imagined benefits. Of course, Adam and Eve did die. God did not put them to death right

away. Instead, the humans He had originally created with immortal bodies, now he made

them mortal. Giving in to sin results in consequences that are often worse than we think.

Every temptation has lies embedded deeply within it. One big lie in this story is

that by eating the forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve will become like God. The truth was,

they were already more like God than any other creature! They were created in God's

image, they were as yet sinless, and they ruled creation under God, Genesis 1:26. By

eating the forbidden fruit, they became far more unlike God than they were before -

knowing mortality, experiencing sin and shame, expelled form the Garden, living under

curses. Our sin makes us look less like God, less like Jesus, not more.

The serpent's other big lie was that it was good for them to gain knowledge of

evil, like Satan himself has. Temptation incites our lust to know and to experience what

is sinful, all the while promising us that this pursuit will somehow lead to good. I've

heard people rationalize that their time spent studying what is evil, whether it be Al

Qaida, or the porn industry, or crime shows on TV, will in some way help them, or help

society, to overcome evil. 99% of the time, that is a lie. Unless it is your job or calling to

prosecute evil or fight injustice, then studying sin and evil can be thought of as a form of

pornography. While pornography usually is thought of in narrowly sexual terms (the

Greek word pornea meaning sexual immorality) I understand the word more broadly.

Pornography can be understood as the sinful attention paid to other people's sins.

Intimate knowledge of sin and evil leads to more sin. As your imagination is flooded

with the sins of others, you are far more likely to sin yourself. Where before you were

unaware of various sins, now they become a possibility, and the frontier of possible sin is

expanded. Contrast that reality with the words of the Apostle Paul: "Whatever is true,

whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is lovely, whatever is noble and of

good report, think on these things." Philippians 4:8

Remember our two-pronged strategy to grow in holiness of behavior: first, we are

to leave sin through confession and repentance; and second, we are to pursue

righteousness through spiritual disciplines like prayer, Bible reading and service. If we

are going to look more like Christ this year than we did last year, then we are going to

have to begin to employ some better strategies for dealing with our temptations than we

have had before.

In my own life, when I feel myself tempted, my conscience usually sounds a kind

of alarm in my spirit. It's not a voice, and it's not a sound; it's an awareness with a

physical component. But if it had a sound, it would sound something like this: [siren

sound] I often know when I'm being tempted. Sometimes I'm blindsided, but most often,

I'm aware when I'm faced with temptation. Do you have a physical response in your

body when your conscience is put on high alert? How does that work for you?

When you feel yourself tempted, I urge you to stop for a moment and reflect on

this question: "What is the lie in this temptation?" There is always a lie in temptation.

Jesus said, "You shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free." (John 8:32) If

your sin is gluttony, the lie may be that "one more dish won't hurt." If it's porn, one of

the lies is that the woman in the image is yours alone. When you understand the lies, it's

easier to walk in the truth. The imagined benefits are whittled down to size, and the real

dangers resume their real stature.

An important text on temptation is from the letter of James, chapter 1, verses 14-

15. "...each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed.

Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives

birth to death."

James, the brother of Jesus, says that the only reason a temptation is tempting is

because of our own desires. When a teenager said, "I couldn't help myself the money

left on the counter was just too tempting," the source of his temptation was not unguarded

bills, but his own covetous heart. Every temptation preys on a God-given desire. It tries

to distort that desire in one of two ways: either by pushing that desire beyond its limits

into excess; or by pushing the desire to find fulfillment in areas that are off limits, such as

stealing other people's money to buy something you need. We are tempted to pervert and

twist something God meant for good.

Point #2: Flee lusts, and speak the truth to your desires. The first key to

quenching improper desire is to flee all external enticements. The apostle Paul says,

"Flee youthful lusts." So if magazine covers hook you, avoid that aisle in the grocery

store. If it's junk food, don't go down that aisle, either. Some stores now assault you with

display racks of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue right as you walk in! If that

happens, you might want to speak to the manager, or to just avoid that store. If it's the

internet, don't open your browser, or get filtering software. There was life before the

internet, and there is life without it now!

The second key to quenching improper desire is to confront your internal desires

by speaking the truth to yourself about them. If you don't permit yourself to think of any

supposed benefits from sinning, and instead you repeat to yourself the dangers of that sin,

you'll choose not to sin. When you're tempted, stop; reflect; remember the truth;

remember what God says about sin. We have an interior monologue that goes off form

time to time, where we debate and argue with ourselves about what to do. Some people

think of it as a dialogue, where you have an angel on one shoulder, and a demon on the

other. However it works for you, speak the truth to your mind, and your emotions will

eventually follow.

So, why not give in to temptation? Giving in to temptation makes things worse

and worse for you. You and I can become so inured to sin that it becomes a habit in our

lives. Habits make our character. We need to arrest the natural downward descent of our

characters. Like Barney Fife used to say, "You gotta nip it, Andy nip that thing in the

bud!" What, some of you young folks aren't familiar with the Andy Griffith Show? If

you don't nip your sin pattern in the bud, it can grow into a full flower of death. James

says that "Sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death." You can go pretty quickly

from occasional outbursts of anger, to a habitually irritated person who does not show the

love of Jesus in your character. When a believer continues to sin again and again, his

eyes become clouded. What he used to see easily, he is now blind to, and that blindness is

a terrible bondage. His conscience can become so seared, so scarred over, that the siren

no longer sounds in his mind.

Listen to the good news of 1 John 3:8 "For this purpose the Son of God was

manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil." If you know the Jesus as Lord

of your life, you have the right to be freed from every bondage to sin. That's your

inheritance; that is what God wants for you. I want to encourage you - It's never too late

to turn around, repent, come to your senses, and be released from the clutches of your

enemy. Go through the Steps to Deep Cleansing. Seek out a prayer minister here during

the communion time, and ask for help to get free from that bondage. Call me if you need

help. The truth will set you free. Amen?

Let's speak the great truths of our faith in the words of the Apostles Creed: