Tuesday, March 5, 2024

"Don't Be Deceived"! The Way of Death and The Road to Life.

James 1:12-18

12 Blessed is the one who perseveres under trial because, having stood the test, that person will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love him. 13 When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; 14 but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed. 15Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death. 16 Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers and sisters. 17 Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. 18 He chose to give us birth through the word of truth that we might be a kind of first fruits of all he created.
Have you ever been tempted to sin? You know, that choice where your conscience is telling you that you shouldn’t but your mind or your emotions are going there anyway. You see, many times we ‘numb’ our conscience to the point that we ‘know the right thing to do, but don’t do it’ – see Romans 7 for this. So, how does this happen? How do we find ourselves ‘in’ sin? Well, for most of us it doesn’t just happen in the instant that you are first tempted, it has been a progress of thoughts and emotions that you seem to have been ‘fighting with’ for a while. Take a look at the verse, “but each person is tempted when they are dragged away by their own evil desire and enticed.” Now that is pretty vivid isn’t it? We are fighting with our conscience about something that we know, or at least have a feeling that we shouldn’t be doing, saying, thinking, etc. But we are letting that ‘evil desire’ drag us down the road toward sin- we are being enticed! Notice that this ‘dragging’ and ‘enticing’ aren’t sin; this is ‘temptation’. This temptation doesn’t become sin until it is ‘conceived’.
Take a look at the next verse, “Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin;” So, this ‘temptation’ that you have been ‘fighting’ doesn’t become ‘sin’ until it is conceived; until you begin to experience the sin either physically, emotionally or mentally. Physically you engage in the desire that you have been thinking about or mentally and emotionally you begin to experience pleasure from the thought or feelings that the desire is giving you and instead of wanting it gone you begin to roll it over in your mind and ‘play’ with this evil desire: sin has been conceived! The problem with sin, however, is that it isn’t satisfied with just being conceived but just like a new born child is born to grow into adulthood, this ‘new born’ sin left unchecked will also continue to grow until it is full grown. See the last part of the verse, “and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.” And that is the problem: if we don’t stop sin in its tracks, either at the temptation when it is the easiest or after its conception which is much harder, we are heading for disaster. Death is the ultimate end for full grown sin, and it can be a sad physical death from the sin and its consequences, or it can be the spiritual death of the person and their conscience. Neither of these results are what the ‘desire’ promises in the beginning: it is a well disguised evil that is trying to kill you!

So, what’s the answer? How do we keep ourselves from being dragged away and enticed into sin? As the warning in the passage says, “Don’t be deceived”. God doesn’t change and he has given us our conscience to lead us away from being dragged down the road to sin. What are those “good and perfect” gifts that God has given to you? God has uniquely created you and he is fully aware of your God given desires, so, if these desires are becoming ‘evil’ and starting to drag you away, you need to be on your knees, into his word and talking to someone who is a true believer about what is going on with you. Remember, desires once turned ‘evil’ want to drag you away, to get you alone or with others who have already gone down the road of evil themselves. Don’t be deceived!  Look, God doesn’t change “like shifting shadows”, so your conscience won’t tell you something is ok when it is shown to be wrong in “the word of truth” or leave you alone when others who are true believers are warning you and speaking against the ‘temptation’. If we are making excuses or rationalizing that something may be ok for us even though it’s not for others, we are starting to conceive. If you don’t want to talk about your ‘fight’ with someone who is a true believer because you know they won’t condone it, you’re already being ‘dragged away’. Don’t be deceived! Get into the word, pray, talk to others who are true believers, listen to your conscience, and then run to God. I’m not saying that it is going to be easy; however, if you do this you will be able to “persevere” when the temptations come and instead of being dragged down a road toward death you will be on the road that leads to the “crown of life”.

Take a look at the following video where Tony Evans speaks about the 'armor' we need to have on every day to get away from the enemies deception:



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