We're reading from James chapter number 1, verse 13 through to verse number 18. Let no one say when he is tempted, "I am being tempted by God," for God cannot be tempted with evil, and He Himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire, when it has conceived, gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is fully grown, brings forth death. Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. Of His own will He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures. Lord, we ask now that You would send Your Holy Spirit to open the eyes of our understanding, to produce in us conviction, love, worship, thankfulness, gratitude to the God who loved us and gave Himself for us. Cause us to hear and understand Your word, and empower me by the Spirit, I ask, in Jesus' name. Amen. Last time we looked at the book of James, we answered the question, "Am I being tempted by God?" That's the question of verse number 13 when James is correcting people who say, "Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God.'" The answer is an emphatic no. And James supports this answer with four solid reasons. God is holy. He says to us in verse 13, "God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempts He any man." God is good. "Every good gift and perfect gift comes from above." God is sovereign and unchanging. He is the one that creates the stars and the lights. He is the Father of, He is the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation. He doesn't change. He's the same as Jesus is yesterday, today, and forever. And also, we see in verse 18 that God is the Father of life. When God exercises His will towards a sinner in regeneration, He gives them life. Death is not the product of God. It is the result of sin. So when a person makes contact with the living God, there's life in their soul. It is the life of God in the soul of man. And despite the close relationship between trials and temptations, that may be sometimes cause us to think that God's tempting us, James reminds us that this is impossible because of who God is and what He does. And we should not fall into the temptation of charging God foolishly when hard times come our way from His hand that present us with unique temptations in our lives. God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempts He any man. And so next, we're considering this morning, then where does our temptations come from? What is the source of our temptations? And this is answered in verse number 14 and verse number 15. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire, when it has conceived, gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown, brings forth death. Do we really believe that? That we are all tempted when we are drawn away of our own desire and enticed? I think we all believe that somewhat theoretically, but I don't think we feel it to be true in our lives. We feel that we sin automatically, as though we had no control over what we just did, uncontrollably. We feel as though we sin because of demonic forces primarily that are attacking us, or because of our relationship to other people. That's probably the number one reason that we ascribe to, "Oh, if that person didn't make me angry." You know? And I don't know if we understand completely what James is referring to here and feel the weight of a text like this. And I'm praying that we will understand that today as we look at this text. Perhaps some of us think that if we lived on a remote island somewhere, we would never sin and never be tempted. Yeah? Some of us probably think that. We probably feel that way, at least, anyway. We feel like all of our sin is a direct cause of the people around us and the circumstances and all these things. And if I just got out of this place, I would never have a problem. Right? Well, James tells us, no, that island will probably be the most corrupt island on the earth. James does two things here to challenge our excuses that bypass, you know, gives excuses to all the reasons why we sin and why we are tempted. And he calls it out. He calls out the source in very James-like fashion, pulls no punches, straight for the jugular. James says, "Every person is tempted when he's drawn away of his own desire." That's it. Full stop. He calls it out. He brings it to, to, to light. Each person's own desires. Now, James knows that the devil is a true source of temptation, and James knows that evil people do tempt us, and James knows that there are these other sources that play into our temptation. But James wants us to strike deeper, right to the reality and heart of the situation where we will most find our help. James is telling us here that the only reason why the world appeals to you and the only reason why the devil has power over you is because of you. Because of your flesh. There's something in you that corresponds to the the appetites that the devil puts before you and the things that the world places in front of you. And James is like, that's where we really got to get to here. Because the devil's going to be around until Jesus returns and throws him into the bottomless pit, and the world will be the world until Jesus comes and restores all things. But the Christian's called to be holy in an unholy world, and God has given us the power and grace to be so, despite the devil and despite the world. And so James calls it out. We must be careful that we not make a source, the source. And go on either extremes of that, of course. But he also demonstrates how temptations work in a sort of step-by-step process, leaving us without excuse. So he kind of opens up what happens in our hearts when temptation happens. He does that in verse number 15. He explains, verse 14 and 15 explains how there's allurement and enticement and all the processes that happen that leads to our sinning and the way of temptation that leads to death. He helps us see this in slow motion, if I could call it. You know, when we sin, it's so easy for us to think it just happened automatically and we don't know what happened. You ever felt that way? It feels like you just forget all the steps that led you there. There were steps. James wants us to know that there were steps. So James does what the NRL, the the captain's do of the NRL teams. He he he calls the captain's challenge. You know the captain's challenge? The NRL player, one guy takes a pass and he bolts and he dodges and he bumps one guy here and there and he scores a try. You know the crowd goes wild, the guy goes wild. Woo! And all you hear is a whistle. The captain's challenge. Review the footage. The entire emotional experience, try, all these things happen. He says, "All right, get the footage out. Let's have a look at this thing slowly and incrementally and see what really happened." And by doing that, the ref can determine exactly what happened and the steps that led to what happened so that he can call it and say, "That was a foul pass. No try." And what James does for us here is that he helps us in all our emotional experience that surrounds temptation, that sort of blindsides us and even people around us sometimes, he he slows it all down to tell us what happens in your heart exactly when it, when you fail and fall into temptation. So what does James want us to see the motions of temptation and sin? I mean, think about it. Why does he want us to see all this? Why does he want us to see where the source is? Why does he want us to see the processes of sin? Well, well, obviously he wants us to overcome sin, but the first thing that he's trying to do here is to keep us from blaming someone else. You see, verse 14 begins with the word "but," and that contrasts what just happened before. What happened before was an accusation, verse 13. Someone saying, "I've been tempted by God." James is saying, "No one should be saying that." But this is what really happens. Contrast. It's not from God. The true source is your own heart, and what he's saying is, "Stop blame-shifting." Let no one say when he is tempted, "I've been tempted by God." Blame-shifting is a foul play that will keep you in sin. This is the problem of our parents. It's not a new thing. What I mean by that is Adam and Eve. You remember? Adam, Eve ate of the fruit, she gave it to Adam. You know, the serpent tempted Eve. And this, you know, you have this whole scene that, you know, is so sad, but it's it's it's so, it's humorous in a way because it reminds us of ourselves. You know, you kind of just looking in at this this situation and you're like, "Wow, how often do we do the same?" What happens in this case? Well, Adam goes, "Yeah, yeah, but the woman that You gave me, God, that's that's why I ate." Oh, wonderful. That's a double whammy right there. The woman, that's one, blame your wife, great. And then the woman that You gave me, blame God because He gave you the wife. That's great. Just classic man's excuse, right? Men have the double whammy. The women are a bit more honest, a bit more humble. You know, and then Eve, when when her turn comes around, she she says, "It was the serpent who deceived me, and I did eat." At least she said, "And I did eat." That's good. But once again, blame-shifting, you see that? Adam's blame-shifting, Eve's blame-shifting, or passing it down to the next person, as it were. But what's so interesting is that God doesn't deny the interplay of Satan, Adam, and Eve. Right? He acknowledges that, that there is a source of temptation that's there. There's no denying of that reality. But what God does is that He lays the responsibility on each so that they own it. So that they don't blame the other, but they own the responsibility. It's one thing to acknowledge that there were certain aspects that contributed to your fall, but it's another thing to own it and say, "I chose to fall." I sinned. And so this is what God does. God says, "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and eaten of the tree which I commanded you not, you shall not eat of it, cursed is the ground because of you." Adam gets his own rebuke and his own curse. Eve gets her own rebuke and her own curse. God says to her, "What is it that you have done?" And then she is also cursed. And the serpent gets his own rebuke because you have done this, gets pointed out, called out, and then he gets his curse also. And the truth of the matter is that the serpent, Adam, and Eve all experienced what Eve experienced when she looked at the tree, but with their own personal temptation. Listen to this. Verse 3, chapter 3 verse 6 of Genesis, it says this. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate and also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate. The entire process of the woman seeing, delighting, and desiring led her to her fall. And that same process happened to Adam and to Satan when they also did what was wrong. Not that they looked at the tree in the same way that that they did, but there would have been their own unique temptation. We're not told exactly what it is, but what I'm saying, this is a pattern for all temptation that follows. These are appeals to the lusts of the flesh that cause us to go after these things. What is so subtle about this, because Adam and Eve had not yet a sinful flesh, what makes this even more tricky is that the temptations themselves were not in and of themselves evil. Nothing wrong with looking at a tree, nothing wrong in delighting in God's creation, nothing wrong with eating, nothing wrong with these things. Interesting. Something wrong with disobeying God's law, isn't it? And so the package of temptation comes even in the situation where they had no innate sinful desire and corrupted fallen hearts just yet. Even with Satan's temptation appealing to their natural desires, Adam and Eve fell. Subtle is the ways of the devil. Very subtle. And so they blame-shifted. Blame-shifted all the way down. And this blame-shifting has continued throughout the history of the world. It's everywhere in the Bible. You see it in all different places. But one of the one most most one of the places that I see it most clearly is when Moses goes up to the mountain to receive the law of God and the children of Israel are waiting with Aaron down below. And they get a bit itchy and anxious. And Moses says to Aaron, you know, when he came down and noticed that they had built the golden calf and began to worship it, and he said, "These are your gods, O Israel." Moses said to Aaron, "What did this people do that you have brought such a great sin upon them?" And Aaron said, "Oh, let not the anger of my lord burn hot. You know the people that they are set on evil. For they said to me, 'Make us gods that gods who shall go before us.' As for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we don't know what has become of him." Listen to Aaron. "So I said to them, 'Let anyone who have gold, take it off.' So they gave it to me and I threw it into the fire and out came this calf." That's convenient. Well, you just throw gold in a fire and out comes an an idol? Is that how it works? Then the Lord sent a plague on the people because they made a calf, and listen to this, the one that Aaron made. That's God's commentary. You see, Aaron? Oh, I just took the gold of the people, they were frustrated. I mean, what's a leader meant to do when the people complain? Just give them what they want. Throw it in the fire and out came this calf. No, you made the calf, God said. You and the people made the calf. You're responsible for the calf. You're responsible for the idolatrous worship that led in the plague that followed in the judgment. Blame-shifting is still our problem. How much of our sin stories and apologies are said in the passive voice? Our apologies, our sin stories and failure, littered with the language of ignorance and passivity, as though just thing just swept us off our feet and, "Oh, I don't know. I got angry and then someone died," or, "I got angry and I just, you know, walked out of the house," or, "Oh, I just, you know, I was there and and and, you know, she came to me and she spoke to me and I, you know, I slept with her," or whatever it may be. It's like, and we we we we we wrap it up in in language that makes it appeal that, you know, we really had no choice. We're in a situation and nothing really could have been done about it. And we just sort of like, "Yeah, we tipped it over, but it wasn't really us." "It happened to us," is the way that we look at it. Not, "I did it." And the reality is that's somewhat true. It did happen to us. You were swept off your feet, but you were swept off your feet by your own desire. That's what James is telling us. He's not saying that this experience doesn't feel like it's, it does feel like it's out of your control. It does often feel that way. The emotional entanglement, the things that happen that lead to the sin, it it just it gets us when we're least ready for it, right? In many ways. But James is saying it's your own desire that tricked you. Don't blame that person and don't blame that situation. It's you. And so we blame-shift in various ways, but James helps us see that the blame-shifting is often a failure to distinguish between the catalyst and the source. The catalyst is the trigger. The source is where it really comes from. Don't blame the catalyst, don't blame the trigger for the corruptions of our own hearts, says James. This is like the carnivore and the herbivore. You know, meat-eating animals, the carnivores, they are not enticed by the vegan delights of the herbivore. You know, you put a veggie burger in front of a lion and it's going to stay there. The mold will get it before the cat does. I tell you, some of our brothers here probably be the same. They love their meat. You see, the the the reality of that is because there is this effective cause within the nature of a lion that keeps it from veggies and drives it to meat. It is rooted in the very nature of that animal, that it delights in the things that it delights in. And what James wants us to understand is that what accounts for our appetites and the pursuit is our own animal desires that are rooted in our nature. So that the problems of our temptations or with sin is not our circumstances which we find ourselves in, but the problem with our temptations is that that which is presented to us, which is evil and ungodly and wrong, it finds in us an answering chord to the very desire that is before us. And James says, "Own it." Just own it. Know who you are. Believe what the Bible says about your very nature. And then he goes on to tell us how temptation works. And he does this by in verse 14 showing us the motions of temptation, verse 13 and 14. He's saying we're tempted by our own desires, but then he goes on to say in verse 14, "Each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived, gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown, brings forth death." And what he does is he shows us the motions of sinful desire. He shows us how this temptation plays out. And he presents temptation to us as a seductress, a seductress woman. There's an image here of that that is comes through in the wisdom literature that was read to us during the Bible reading. And it's this staged progression into from the street into her house, into her bed, and then you're into death. And what James does is that he helps us see that temptation is like a stairwell of death. And as soon as we make contact with the forbidden, whether it be through our eyes, whether it be through our ears or our mind, there is immediately, metaphorically, open to us a stairwell. If I could say two paths: the way of wisdom, the way of Christ, and the way of the woman called folly. A stairwell, two ways, the narrow way or the broad way, a way that steps down into death or a way that goes on into life. And the first step on that stairwell, James says, is this idea of allurement. So it says here in verse number 14, "When he is lured." And enticed. And allurement is our own desire that draws us out of the place of safety. That's the idea of what it means to be to be lured. It's it's it's what I could describe to you that you would know in your own hearts, we all have experiences like this. It's the first magnetic pull to the forbidden. That's the first magnetic pull. You know the feeling. All of a sudden there's something you don't notice, and now you notice it. That right there is the initial part of allurement. It's when the heart entertains the initial wanderings of the mind. And then step two is enticement. That's when allurement takes hold on your desires more fully. That is, if I could say, your heart is now captured. You noticed something that was forbidden. Now you're looking at something that's forbidden and considering and even being drawn towards it more fully. That magnetic pull is intensifying. That's what it means to be enticed. Enticed in the heart, enticed in the mind. Step three, conception. That literally means to take hold of, to take hold of the forbidden. "When desire," he says in the text here, he says here, "when desire when it has conceived." So this is your desire laying hold of the forbidden. It's the interaction between the two. That's how conception happens. But it's when your desire meets with the forbidden, and you lay hold of it and you seize it, he says, James says, the word of God says to us, that's when sin is birthed. When desire has conceived, it brings forth sin. It's conception that produces a child and the child is sin. There is life now, or if I could, it's actually really death, it's the child of death in your womb. Because you have fulfilled the desire of sin in your life. And then the last step, when sin is fully grown, verse 15, brings forth death. And that's the idea of a child again. Conception, child fully grown. And what he simply, what he simply is trying to show us is that this child of sin that is conceived by desire produces death in our lives. Death, let me say, death to everything good in your life, everything good. Whether it's common grace, whether it's supernatural grace, it destroys holy passions, it destroys right views of God and of the world and of relationships and of people. It is a stairwell of death that leads all the way to hell's depths itself. And it is a poison that robs men and women of their zeal, of their passions, of their obedience, and it ruins our very souls. The entire process can be likened like fishing. You put a a a worm on a hook and you throw it into the ocean and that worm and that hook and the sinker drops right in. As soon as it goes plonk in the water, and there's a fish in the reef or something, that's the first step. "Oh, wonder what happened over there." And then they're like, "Oh, yeah," drawn out. That's the first step, drawn out of its place of safety. Drawn to, that's the second step. Third step, conceived, takes hold of the worm with its hook. And the next thing that you find is you're pulling up a fish out of the water and it's dead, dinner. The roaring lion Satan is doing that with souls day after day, and he's capitalizing on our own desire. The world is capitalizing on our own desire. And it is consuming and destroying our spiritual vitality. And what James encourages us here in application in verse number 16 is says, "Don't be deceived, my beloved brothers." And what he wants us to see by showing us where sin really comes from and showing us the processes of sin, he wants us to realize and recognize that that there is deception all around temptation and the way to overcome it is to not be led astray, to not be deceived, to not give your heart, to not give your mind to all the lies that surround the very thing that you go after. And the first thing that we can learn from this is don't be deceived, my beloved brothers, about the source of temptations. And he does this very lovingly because it's calling them beloved brothers. He wants to save us from death. He wants to save us from destruction. This is not God saying, "Oh, you can't have what you want." This is God saying, "Do you really want that? You're going to die. You're going to die." Live, He's saying. "Here is life. Why choose death?" This is love. James is saying, "Don't be deceived, my beloved brothers. Wake up, see the reality, push pause, go through the slow motion replay, learn what's going on, know where your temptation comes from. It doesn't come from God, it doesn't come from your circumstances, it doesn't come from people in your life. It comes from you, from your own heart and own it. Believe it, know it." Stop blame-shifting, says James. It will only blind you more and more. "If I had only married a woman like this, I would be such a better husband." "Oh, if only, you know, my kids were like that person's children, how much peace would be in my household and in my own heart?" "Oh, if it wasn't for my upbringing, I would never be who I am today." Look, I'm going to tell you, your upbringing may be a source, a source of the reasons for why you battle with what you battle. But do not ever think or tell yourself that you are not responsible for the very sins that you commit because of your upbringing. And do not ever believe the lie that you're stuck because of your upbringing. And you cannot please God because of your upbringing. And you cannot live for God the way you should and worship God because of your parents. It's a satanic lie to keep you down in the depths of that stairwell that leads to destruction. James puts the onus on us because he knows with God's grace we can overcome the very place of temptation. "Oh, if my circumstances were different, things would have been different for me." Look, what we need to do is confess with Paul about who we really are. This is what the apostle Paul says about who we really are, which he himself, by the way, the mighty apostle, the holy man of God said about himself. Romans 7 verse 18. "For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right"—that's the holy nature that is in the believer. He says, "but not the ability to carry it out." And what he's saying is, "I sense this warfare in me." The Spirit, thank God for the Holy Spirit and the new nature that that that combats these desires that we once had, that had no new nature to fight against. Thank God for that. But what Paul understands is, "I've still got this thing called the flesh." And he's just as bad as he was prior to my meeting with Jesus. And so he understands that, "I know how this flesh works, I know how this flesh responds to temptation, I understand the processes, but I own the fact that it's my flesh." It's my sin. It's my flesh. And he understands the difficulty of that. And the first step in victory is to properly identify your enemy. There is, if you don't know who you're fighting against, the battle is already lost. That's why the blame-shifters will never see victory in their life over the sins that they struggle with. Never, absolutely never. Until you stop and realize the source of temptation and own it as your own, then you'll start to find that you can see things clearly. You won't be deceived anymore. You know, the whole automatic response will be lost, meaning that you'll start to see how your soul really works when it's in contact with the forbidden, because now you're no longer blaming everybody else. That's a lot of the times why we actually don't see the stages as we should see the stages. Because our eyes are set on everyone else but ourselves, and we're not looking closely enough about our own hearts or believing that our hearts are deceitful and desperately wicked. And then we must use the active voice. "I lied, I deceived, I chose anger, I sinned." Take Psalm 51 if you're really struggling to get a hold of yourself and recognize that, and take David's words of confession. It's all in the first person: "Me, I, I sinned, I transgressed, my guilt, my sin is ever before me." He didn't blame Bathsheba because she was up at the rooftop having a bath. He didn't blame the circumstances or God because it happened to be a war at that time. He didn't say, "Oh, why didn't you guys force me along to the battle?" He just owned it all. And he said, "It's me. I'm guilty. I'm done." And you know, this man who goes into the depths of of of of guilt and shame and confession and repentance, at the end of the Psalm rises with hope, knowing that he's been forgiven, claiming the blood, "Wash me and I shall be clean. Cleanse me and I will be whiter than snow." And he owns his sin, but as he owns it and goes through that dark tunnel, he comes out on the bright side as a man delivered. Free from the guilt and shame. Satan wants to keep us at the other end. The source of our temptation is ourselves. The first area in which we should not be deceived is to think that we are tempted by anyone else but ourselves, or drawn away by anyone else but ourselves. Don't be deceived also by the first motions of sin. You know when the passage says, "Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers." The word "deceived" literally means to be led astray. And when you have this step-by-step process laid before us, we know what James is trying to say to us. What he's trying to say to us is that stairwell has a first step. Don't be deceived by getting on the first step. Keep away from enticement and allurement. If you keep far away from allurement, you will never then be enticed. And if you keep away from enticement, you will never conceive sin. And if you keep away from conceiving sin, you will not experience death. And James says, "Just keep stepping off the first step." That's where you got to fight the battle. Don't fight it once you're down in the depths of sin. It's really hard to win from down there. When when when you've already sinned, by the way, it's even harder to get up. And it's okay. There's grace, there's mercy, but we're saying in warfare, the best way to fight is fight at the beginning. And what James wants us to realize is don't be deceived by this stairwell. Don't take the first step. Deal with your thoughts and they won't become actions. You know the saying? "Sow a thought and you reap an action. Sow an action and you reap a habit. Sow a habit and you reap a character. Sow a character and you reap a destiny." Some of us are battling with habits in our lives because we sowed thoughts. James is saying to us, "Fight the battle back at the thoughts, and you won't have actions. And if you fight your battles back at the actions, you won't have habits." And you'll keep yourself from death. And I think this is an important lesson for us to learn because we often are deceived so easily. And James is saying, "You just nip it right at the bud. As soon as it starts to spring, address sin at its first inclination. Stop playing with fire," says James. "Get away from it all." And if that looks like, if it looks like making decisions about the people that you hang around, then it looks like making decisions about the people you hang around. If that looks like putting your devices, like your computer in a public place so you don't get caught, or you don't get snared into pornography, then it means doing that. If it means being accountable to another brother, then it means that. Now ultimately, the reason why you fall is your own heart. Do not think that these things are the keys and the answers, but it is important to understand how our flesh works. And if we find ourselves falling often at that point, then we need to put some things in place to help us think twice before we step in that direction. Fight anger at frustration, not when you're raging. Fight lust at discontentment because that's where it begins. Right? Discontent with your partner, your wife, or your husband, that's where it begins. Fight control and manipulation at desire for power or even fear. Fight it at that place. Deal with sins at that point. Attack it early, lest it develops and grows and thrives and becomes this deadly mold in your body. And don't be deceived by sin's false promises. You know, there is a hook behind every every worm. James says, "Be not deceived, my beloved brothers," because he also wants us to see that you see this first allurement? It ends in death. Right? The allurement ends in death. So he's saying, "Here's the full picture, guys. This right here is your chance to run away." Don't be deceived by allurement. Death is never pretty, is it? Sin is never pretty. But the other side of sin, when it's in the form of allurement and temptation, looks really nice. Once you're in it, and you hate it, and you hate yourself because of it, you see what it really is. It's all death. So James says, "Here we go. I'm going to show you where the beginning is, and I want you to see the end. I want you to see the whole picture, guys, so that you fight it at that point." And he's telling us that sin has false promises. Desire is that seductress woman who allures believers into an adulterous union with the world. And what James tells us is that she's not in the streets. She's actually in our hearts. That's the problem. The problem is the seductress woman of Proverbs 5 and 7 and 9 is actually us. It's in our hearts. It's calling out to us, "Come, I've got all this ready for you." It's sin nature presenting itself in a way that that appeals to us, saying, "Come and eat and come and drink and you'll be satisfied. Oh, you know, stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is is is lovely and and satisfying." But he knows not that the dead are there. You see, this is the problem. It presents us something that's beautiful and wonderful and and appealing, and it and it deceives us and brings us on that staircase that leads to our destruction. And James says that understand that this woman is seductive and she's in your heart, as it were. And watch out for when she speaks to you. Fight against it. And lastly, by way of encouragement, we must understand that God is on our side. This is the whole point as well. Don't be deceived as if God is against you and the source of your temptations. He's trying to say God's with you, God's for you. God's trying to help you. He's trying to keep you from death and from destruction. So he says, "Don't be deceived. God is on your side." And there's a passage of scripture that really well communicates this. It's 1 Corinthians, everyone can turn there, 1 Corinthians chapter 10 verse 12 to 13. It it's important that you memorize this passage of scripture if you haven't yet. In fact, personally I found this passage of scripture to help me so much when I came back to the Lord some 15 years ago to fight against sin and temptation, because what felt automatic and what felt like I couldn't get any help and any control over, this verse helped me understand my relationship to God and my relationship to sin. And look what it says here in 1 Corinthians 10 verse 12 to 13. "Therefore, let anyone who thinks that he stands, take heed lest he fall. Here it is, no temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful. He will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but will with the temptation, He will also provide the way of escape that you may be able to endure it." The first point of encouragement in this text is that the things that you're going through are not unique to you. You are not alone in your temptation. Every one of us here experience the same temptations. All of us. There is no temptation that's taken you but is such as is common to man. You will always find a a someone else around you that's going through this. You know, the biggest thing the devil likes us to make us feel is you're alone, isolated in the corner, and no one else knows what you're going through. You know what? There's a lot more people that know that you're going through it, that have gone through and come out, that are going through and fighting and want to fight with you. But he divides and conquers by isolating us and attacking us, making us feel that our temptations are unique to us. But no, there is no temptation taken you but such as is common to man. That's your first piece of encouragement. The second piece of encouragement here is that "God is faithful." And His faithfulness is demonstrated in this way: "He will not let you be tempted beyond your ability." That is your second piece of encouragement. You know what feels like this uncontrollable force? God says, "It's not uncontrollable. I am with you to empower you. You who believe in Me, there is grace for every temptation to overcome." God is faithful. There is nothing that you go through that is too hard for you to honor God in the middle of. There's nothing difficult in that sense, nothing to the point where you cannot please Him or do the right thing. No matter the temptation, you might say, "Oh, it was so wisely crafted and this and that and the rest," and God's saying, "Hey, I'm so faithful that I guarantee that that temptation is not above your ability." Do you believe that? Because sometimes we don't believe that, right? We're just in this whole depressive state of, "I'm stuck and I can't get out and I never will get out and this is my life and I can't have power over it," and Satan's like, "That's where I want you and I got you." Take encouragement that that's not the case. God is so faithful. And also, His faithfulness is displayed in this way, is our third encouragement, "But with the temptation, He will always provide the way of escape that you may be able to endure it." There is always an exit door. Always. And the key is when you're being tempted to look for it. Do you understand? To look for it. Stop looking around you. Get your eyes off the sin and the temptation and the desires and look for that exit door. There's a fire in the building. Run, go, get to the exit door and be saved. And God is so faithful that He always places an exit door. So that you can never say it's too hard, and you can never say I couldn't escape, and you can never say that I'm just alone in this temptation. And God is so faithful that He gave you Jesus. So faithful that He gave His Son to die for every sin that you have committed and will commit until the day that He returns for you. He is so faithful that Jesus took all your sin upon the cross, bore it in His own body. All the guilt, all the shame, all the condemnation that should have fallen upon us have fell upon Him. And in love and in mercy, He took it in His own body so that we don't have to live under the guilt anymore of sin. And we don't have to live under the power of sin anymore, but we can live unto God as those that are free and no longer condemned and no longer living in shame and guilt and in despair because Jesus died and rose again for you. For you. So you don't have to be tempted anymore to the point of despair. So you know that there's a Savior that lives. "My great High Priest, whose name is Love. He ever lives and pleads for me." You know, when you're sinning, God's not looking at you saying, "You idiot." Jesus is praying for you, saying, "God, help him take the road of exit. Help him see the way of escape. Help him see My love. Help them see that the way of wisdom is much better." God is so merciful and so faithful that He didn't give us a Savior just to die for our sins, but also to sympathize with us in our temptations. I'll close with this verse. "For we do not have a High Priest who is unable to sympathize with us in our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin." And the encouragement, "Let us then, all of us, all of us who struggle with sin and temptation, let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need." Because Jesus walked the path of temptation before us, overcame temptation in the wilderness and in His life and even in His death, and triumphed as the victorious one. And He knows exactly what you're going through right now. And He sympathizes and He's by your side and He says, "Come, come to the throne of grace and I'll help you. I'll be there with you." Let us pray.