Oh, I hate that. Well, it's good to see you. One,
two, three, four, five, we got six in. A septet to sing this
morning. That'd be good. Let's try one
that we all know real well. Hymn number 256. It is well with
my soul now. 256. When peace like a river attendeth
my way, When sorrows like sea billows roll, Whatever, my Lord,
Thou hast taught me to say, It is well, it is well with my soul. It is well with my soul. It is well, it is well with my
soul. Though Satan should buffet, though
trials should come, Let this blessed assurance control That
Christ hath regarded my helpless estate. and hath shed his own
blood for my soul. It is well with my soul. It is well, it is well with my
soul. My sin, O the bliss of this glorious
thought, My sin not in part, but the whole, Is nailed to the
cross, and I bear it no more, Praise the Lord, praise the Lord,
O my soul. It is well with my soul. It is well, it is well with my
soul. And Lord, haste the day when
my face shall be sight, The clouds be rolled back as a scroll, The
trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend, Even so,
it is well with my soul. It is well with my soul. It is well, it is well with my
soul. If you have your Bibles, turn
with me please to James, the Apostle of James to the Church.
Chapter 1, I'm going to read three verses of Scripture. The
title of my message this morning is, My Sin, My Sin. James chapter 1 and verse 13. Let no man say when he is tempted,
I am tempted of God. For God cannot be tempted with
evil, neither tempteth he any man. But every man is tempted
when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed. Then, when
lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin, and sin, when it is
finished, bringeth forth death. Let us pray. And our Father,
we are thankful for your word. For it is a lamp unto our feet
and a light unto our path, the entrance of which gives understanding
to the simple. We are thankful that your word
teaches us of the glories of the accomplished death of Jesus
Christ, which satisfied your law, which fully satisfied justice
and made it possible for you to be just and justify them that
believe on Jesus Christ. We thank You for Your Word in
that it is full of admonitions, warnings, and teachings that
cause us to know the weakness and the frailty of our own frame
and the greatness and the wonder of Your mercy and grace toward
us. We pray for those who are sick, especially those of our
own congregation, Brother Wayne, Pray you'd be with him. Sister
Ethel, Sister Peggy Lambert, ask Lord your help for them.
Pray for our congregation as we go through this time of being
isolated that you would bless us to look to Christ in all things
and trust him implicitly. And help us this hour as we gather
here that you would cause us in our hearts to worship you
in spirit and truth and learn what these verses mean, we pray
in Christ's name, Amen. Now in these verses, James begins
to explain what many might misunderstand about the concept of temptations,
the concept of sin and sin's source. The temptations that
he's about to address are not the same temptations that he
has previously addressed in the first 12 verses of this chapter.
Those temptations are trials sent from the generous hand of
our loving Lord and are designed to bring us to joy and peace
and comfort in Jesus Christ. James here is making a very important
distinction. The temptations that he teaches
us about in verses 13 through 15 are from another source altogether. The word is basically the same,
but the source and therefore the end result are diametrically
opposed to one another. If the source of the temptation
is from God, it is by grace and is a trial designed to prove
the believer's faith and bring him to the feet of Jesus Christ.
If the temptation comes from within, then it is from sin and
from self, and its result is to bring down and destroy and
kill The writer is setting things in their proper order so that
no one, especially the believer, can blame any outside source
for the evil that is in his own bosom. If you are tempted to
sin, Rest assured and know of a surety God did not tempt you
to do so and neither did anything either present in your life or
lacking in your life cause you to do so. The source is your
sin, your own lust. God does not and will not and
has never tempted man to sin. What the Apostle is teaching
is that God cannot be charged with your sin because He holds
out before you something that would hurt you or destroy you.
That is completely inconsistent with His holy and gracious character
in relation to His Beloved, to His Elect, to His Chosen, to
His Sheep, to His Church, to His Bride. Now this teaches us
several things about the nature of our sinful heart. The main
thing that is taught by the verse itself is that since the subject
is addressed here to the church, for this is a general epistle
to the church, it is to those who are spiritual and have spiritual
understanding. This is not a general or generic
word is it is to the church because we know according to the word
of God the natural man receiveth not the things of the spirit
they are foolishness to them and neither can he know them
nor discern them because they are spiritually discerned so
what this is to it's to you and me this is talking to you and
me this is talking to you and me and if therefore it is being
addressed to us there must be this problem within us for God
to address it. So it must be a problem also
within us and our willingness to blame our sin on something
outside ourself or someone outside ourselves. And sadly for the
believer, the target of our blame is often, sad to say, it's God. He's talking to believers here.
Let no man say when he is tempted, I'm tempted of God. So why would
he even say that? Why would he teach us that if
that wasn't a difficulty within us? This is proven by these words,
let no man say, declaring that this is evidently what we say.
When we are tempted from our own lust, we evidently do a guilt
transfer, a blame shift. Scripture is replete with such
examples. One example is the golden calf.
When God confronted, when Moses confronted Aaron about the golden
calf, he said, well, we threw some bracelets and earrings in
this fire and out popped this calf. Like it was magic. We didn't have anything to do
with it. We just threw it in there and it came out, this golden
calf. The blame for his evil was placed
on magic or something outside his control. In 1 Samuel 15,
Saul was told, the king Saul was told to kill everybody and
everything when he captured that city. Saul didn't. He didn't kill the king and he
kept all the sheep. And when the Lord confronted
him about it, he said, well I did it because we're going to use
them for sacrifices. And when the Lord said, I do
not accept your repentance and the kingdom is going to be taken
from you, he said, you know I did it because I was afraid of the
people. I did it because I feared the people." What was he blaming?
Not himself for disobeying God. He said he was blameless because
he was afraid. The text makes it clear that
we are to be aware of these empty pretenses that come. They reveal
nothing but reveal the violence of our own nature. However, beyond
the bent to blaming circumstances outside our control, the text
is specific. Our general response to the disclosure
of our sin, when we get caught, is to find a way to blame God
in the cleansing of the leper. It would be far better for us
to follow that example. The leper was stripped naked
down to his absolute clothe, and he was told to wear a napkin
over his upper lip. and to cry unclean, unclean everywhere
he went. It'd be better if we did that. All was to be naked and bare
but the upper lip. This was covered to signify that
the leper was to make no excuses for his sin, for his disease. To the Jew, covering the lip
was a sign of shameful conviction. By the act, he was virtually
pointing his finger at himself and saying, sin is my problem. I'm the one that sinned. I'm
the one that sinned. Therefore I must cry, unclean,
unclean." Our text reveals that this is not our normal response,
but ought to be. Sin lies at our door. We ought
to point our finger at ourselves, but generally speaking, and this
is written to believers, remember, generally speaking, we are quick
to point our finger at something else as the cause of our sin. and there is nothing else but
our own vile and wicked heart. How or in what manner do we blame
God for our inward lust? One way to blame God is by blaming
providence, the state of affairs in the world, times and tides
and people around us. For the believer to do this is
this in order to relieve his guilt is to say that God is ordering
the universe in a manner that would cause him to sin. That's
what Adam and Eve said in the Garden of Eden when they were
caught. Adam said, that woman you gave me, she's the one who
made me sin. And Eve said, that serpent you
made, he's the one who made me sin. But they blamed God. The
woman you gave me, the serpent you made they said to the Lord
God these were their alibis the outward occasions and people
that the Lord puts in our path listen very carefully child of
God they are for our good and will ultimately prove so but
some foul thing in us reacts sinfully to them and to the circumstances
around us God is not to be blamed it is our sin there is beauty
and pleasure in the world This is a wonderful world. I love
this old planet, don't you? I love living in the mountains.
I love listening to the stream running. I enjoyed yesterday
and even got it on tape when God sent hail down here, right
here in Big Cove and covered the ground like snow. I thought,
my goodness, I got that on tape. Sent it to Debbie. She was just
enthralled out there in hot San Francisco, hot L.A. I love this place, and this place
is wonderful. God has made this place for man's use, and it's
a beautiful and a wonderful thing. There are pleasures to be had.
Paul said, nothing is withheld from me. Nothing is unlawful
from me. Not all things are expedient,
not all things edify, but nothing's withheld from me. It's a beautiful
and a wonderful world to be enjoyed, to be enjoyed. The problem is, our sinful lust
turns it bad. And that's the case. The world
is not evil. It's just the world. It's just
things. Just things. And when I grew
up, everybody thought the devil was in a beer bottle. The devil
ain't in a beer bottle. There's beer in a beer bottle.
That's all that's in a beer bottle. And it can't sin because it ain't
got no soul, ain't no heart, and ain't alive. It's just beer.
But you can make it sinful. You can abuse it. Become a drunk. And that makes it a sinful thing.
But there's no problem with that. It's, you know, I go by the ABC
store, the whole counters are just full of booze. It's just
everywhere. Oh, that's a sinful place. No,
there's nothing going on in there. It's in here. It's what we have
to deal with. There's beauty and pleasure in
this world, but we turn it into sinful lust. John summed it up
over in 1 John chapter 2 when he said, all that's in the world
is the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and pride
of the life. It's all out there. It's us. The world don't lust. The world ain't flesh. The world
don't have pride. We have these things. We have
these things. In 1 Peter, or 2 Peter chapter
2, or chapter 1 rather, We read these words, and listen very
carefully how it's worded. Whereby are given unto exceeding
great precious promises, that by these we might be partakers
of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is
in the world through lust. How is the corruption in the
world? Through lust. Corruption ain't there, the lust
is there. Corruption is the world's cause,
but our lust makes it corrupt. The world is only the object,
the cause is lust. Another way we blame God is by
attributing insufficiency to His grace. We are actually able
to find ourselves in sin and somehow surmise that it was due
to the absence of grace. God didn't show me grace. If
God had shown me grace, I wouldn't have done that. No, that's not
the case. Your sin is your sin. It's your sin. Proverbs chapter
19. Verse 3 says, The foolishness
of man perverteth his way, and his heart fretteth against the
Lord. His heart fretteth against the
Lord. You remember when the Lord gave
out the talents in Matthew chapter 25? He gave ten to one and five
to another and one, and the ten used it. rightfully, and produced
ten more. The five used it and produced
five more, but the one hit it in the ground and kept it for
his master when he come back. When the master come back, he
says, where's my increase on what I gave you? He says, oh,
you're a sodom, you're an austere man, you're holy. You tell people
to do this and they do it, and you tell people to do that and
they do it, and nobody stops you. So I knew that you'd take
care of this and I'd put it in the ground. He was blaming the
master. He was blaming the Master for
His lack of obedience and duty. This is our sin. This is our
sin. But God is not to blame. His
grace is not to blame. His providence is not to blame.
Sin is our doing. Sadly, one of the most often-employed
ways of blaming God is to abuse the beautiful concept of His
sovereign predestination. We cannot ever really grasp the
truth of predestination. It's a wonder and an amazing
thing. Our human logic often just leads us into a dark place
when we try. The truth of predestination is
throughout the Word of God, and we gain great comfort in the
knowledge of it, knowing that these things that are transpiring,
they're not by accident, and they're always for our good and
for His glory. What we do know is that it is about what God
has done and is doing for His people by the work of the Lord
Jesus Christ. And what men usually attribute
to the sovereignty is a kind of excuse-making fatalism. Like the man in Romans chapter
9, when set forth that God was absolutely sovereign, having
the power of the potter over the clay to make one vessel an
honor and another a dishonor, he sees fit. Man said this. Paul said this is what man is
going to say. Thou shalt say, O man, well, if God is sovereign,
if He's in charge, and He does all things, and He makes one
vessel unto wrath and another unto mercy, how can He find fault
with me? That's what the man says, Romans
chapter 9 verse 19. Why does He yet find fault with
us? Who's resisted His will? The answer to that is, Nay, but,
O men, who art thou that replyest against God? Shall a thing form?
Do they not say to him that form it? Why hast thou made me thus?
Hast thou not the potter, the power over the clay, to make
a vessel under honour? What if God, willing to show
his wrath, and make his power known, endured with much longsuffering
the vessels fitted to destruction, to bring to glory those that
he hath prepared to glory? The man hears God is in control
of all things and then he concludes that since God is in control
that he should not find fault with man as he is. Man's at fault. Man's at fault. No one can resist
him indeed, but you are at fault for your sin and so am I. Sovereignty
is the character of God, the God who is good and always does
what is right. Our lust can tempt us to blame
God for our crookedness, to blame a problem we lustfully got ourselves
into on His sovereign control. We can do that. I've seen it
done. Maybe even done it in my own
life. But our sin is our shame. Our shame. For Scripture says
God cannot be tempted with evil. This is what our text says. He
is immutable and good and holy and is above the power of temptation. He cannot tempt men to evil.
Man is evil and will take the very gift of God and through
lust use it for his own satisfaction and then blame God for his sin.
God is never to blame for our sin. Neither is anything else
to blame for our sin. We must hang the cloth on our
upper lip. We must cry, unclean, unclean. Might be good to pause here.
and seek to answer a question that often arises when the subject
of sin is addressed, especially as it relates to God's use of
sinful men. For He does use sinful men. This is His world. Get that in
your head. This is His world and His universe
and you are owned by Him. You are His personal property. He has put every person And everything
in the hands of the media, according to the high priestly prayer of
the Lord, He put all things under the authority of Christ that
He might give eternal life to as many as God has given Him. People say, Is God the author
of sin? Therefore, if this is His Word,
and He made everything, Is He the author of sin? Can He be
charged with sin? The cross is perhaps the best
example of this, because it's clearly stated that in the Word
of God that sinful men and their devices were employed to hang
our Savior on the cross. They were employed by God to
do it. Of a truth, it says in Acts chapter
2 and verse 23 and 24, of a truth against thy holy child Jesus,
both Pontius Pilate and Herod and the Jews and the Gentiles
were gathered Together. It didn't say they gathered together,
it says they were gathered together. For to do whatsoever the Lord
had afore prepared to be done. Now God used these sinful men. God used these sinful men to
do His will and yet He was not responsible for sin. He can't be charged with sin.
You see, the cross was the purpose of God. The cross would take
place. There was no possibility that
it would not. Yet God did not nail His Son to the cross. Wicked
men, acting on their own vicious lust, did the evil deed, which
eventuated in what? The salvation of the elect. Think
of that. They went out there. They were
bloodthirsty. They. We. We. We. God did not make these men act
this way. He merely suffered them to be
themselves. He did not restrain their natural
bent, though He clearly could have. He could have stopped them
in their natural bent. Our Lord had done that previously
in John chapter 18, one chapter before. Men came to arrest the
Lord Jesus Christ. They came with torches, and with
banners, and with swords, and they were ready to arrest Jesus.
They were going to put God in jail. And our Lord said, Whom
do you seek? They said, we seek Jesus of Nazareth.
He said, ego I may, I am. And those words knocked them
flat on their back. They couldn't even get up off
the ground. And our Lord said, whom do you seek? Jesus of Nazareth. He said, okay,
stand up. You can have me, but you can't
have my disciples. that the Word of Scripture might
be fulfilled, that all that God has given me He would lose nothing.
This is what Christ said. But can He restrain you from
sin? You better hope He does. I hope He does every moment of
my life and every day of my life. I hope He restrains me from what's
inside me. And He does, thankfully, for
His people. What happened was He withheld
sovereign restraint and they merely followed the dictation
of their own lusts. He said, well let them be and they acted
like men would act. Unrestrained hate will always
act specifically against the demise or for the demise of the
one that is hated. To hate is to murder in the heart
and the only thing that keeps us from acting on our hate is
the sovereign restraint of God. Understand that. If God was to
lift His hand of restraint from you for a minute not one of your
enemies would survive. And that's just the truth. That's
just the truth. We would merely act upon the
nature that drives our very being. For God to control sinful humanity,
He can either restrain it from the actions that its lust seeks,
or simply suffer it to act, as sin must, if not restrained. You see, we were there on Golgotha.
We cleared our throats and spit in his face. We drew the cat-of-nine-tails
and scourged him. We pulled the hair out of his
beard. We sought to kill the Son of
God. We wanted his blood upon our heads. We mocked and scourged
him. If we think we would have acted
otherwise, we do not know what we are. and will spend our life
in ingratitude for the restraint from heaven that keeps us from
being what we would be. The truth is that the cross is
not the best example of God's employment of sinful men. It
is THE example. And if understood, we will clearly
grasp that God is not the author of sin. Not only so, we will
understand that we can perceive what sin is and can attest that
God, while suffering us to act, is not the cause of our vile
affections and actions. Another question that's been
asked many times over the years is why did God allow sin to exist
or enter the picture? People have asked me that. How
come God let sin enter the picture? There's a basic weakness in this
question, not necessarily in the asking, but in the presupposition
that sin is somehow outside the realm of God's purpose. Here's
the wonder of predestination. God cannot be charged with sin,
but sin falls completely within His purpose. Sin is part of the
plan, you see. Do you understand? Absolutely
not. But I bow because that's what
Scripture said. The cross is the plan, isn't
it? Always has been. Christ was the Lamb slain from
the foundation of the world according to Scripture. So before the world
was, before man was, before man ever sinned against God, there
was already a substitute who was slain in the purpose of God. How then can it be part of God's
plan and God not be the author of it? The answer is the decisive
exacting declaration here in our text, neither tempteth He
any man with evil. God doesn't tempt man with evil.
God often suffers evil to be acted upon but the end of it
will be for the good of His people. There are several scriptural
illustrations of that. God suffers men to be what they
are. Look over at Psalm 105 just for
a second. I'll just give you one example
of this. Psalm 105 verse 25. He said, He turned their heart,
speaking of Egypt. He turned their heart to hate
His people and to deal subtly with servants. He turned their
heart to hate His people. What a thing! He points to the
cross and the attending events and attitudes using the Egyptians
released from the restraints of Joseph's time to act in their
natural hatred and prejudice against the Jews. How did He
turn their heart? Joseph died. He took Joseph home. That's how
he turned to heart. Once Joseph was gone and a new
king came who naturally hated the Jews, then everything turned
against the Jews. There was deliverance, however,
in the blood, because centuries before, God had took Abraham
out on a dark night and said, your people are going into captivity
for 430 years, and then I'm going to deliver them by my great power.
That happened centuries before. Centuries before. Well, how did
God make it where Egypt hated Israel? He just let them be themselves. He took away that which was hindering
them. What was hindering them? This
man whom God had raised up named Joseph to save his people alive. This man who was second only
to Pharaoh. This man who fixed it so in the years of famine
Egypt had food to eat because he interpreted the dream the
right way. God restrained Pharaoh for all those years of Joseph's
life. And then, when he took out Joseph,
God just turned Egypt toward His people by looking at them.
When such examiners exist in Scripture, weigh them in light
of the cross, and you'll understand that God is not the author of
sin, though sin is part of His purpose. It's part of His purpose. God is omniscient. He knows everything. God is all-powerful. He's omnipotent. So sin falls
within the purview of His sovereign control, and sin's existence
is according to His will. Providence employs sin, with
God enforcing men to do it, and this is the wonder of His majestic
deity. Our Lord said, ìThe wrath of
manî, Psalm 76.10, ìThe wrath of man shall praise God.î But
it says, and the rest, He will restrain. This is the God of
Scripture. Sin exists and is employed by
the foreknowledge and predestination. Sin is because God intended it
to be. He intended it to be. God both
foreknew and deliberately delivered Christ to wicked men. That's
what it said. By the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of
God was delivered unto wicked men to slay. God delivered Him. To who? To wicked men. For wicked
men to do what they would. And there was no sin in God's
act. But the sinfulness of men played a necessary part in the
great and good end that was accomplished by foreknowledge and deliberate
use of the sure actions of sinful men. How are we going to act?
We're going to act in sin if God doesn't restrain us. The outcome was never in question.
The purpose could not be frustrated and God did not force these men
to act according to their carnal nature. He just simply allowed
them to be themselves. That's all He had to do. Barnard,
you say you'll go to hell if you can. And that's just the
fact. for God to have Israel end up
in Egypt, even desire to be there, because Israel wanted to go to
Egypt because there's food down there, and eventually deliver
them according to the plan to use the sinful jealousy and envy
of Joseph's brethren to get it started. Joseph was given a coat
of many colors or many pieces, a beautiful jacket, and his brothers
were jealous of him, so they killed a beast and put the blood
on the coat and showed it to his daddy and said, Joseph's
dead, and they sold him to a caravan going to Egypt. That was evil.
That was evil. That was sinful. Their sinful
nature was employed because 430 years hence they would be delivered
from slavery. That's why it started. It started
there to end there. Their aim was holy evil. following
the dictates of their own heart. God's aim was holy good, and
employed their nature to providentially accomplish His will. He did not
make them act in what they did. He did not restrain them from
their natural being. And so Joseph, when the brothers
finally saw who he was, and that he was their benefactor, were
so afraid because of what they had done. They were so sorry
for what they had done. And Joseph said, that's alright.
You meant it for evil. God meant it for good, to save
many people alive. And that's how it worked. Simply
stated, sin serves God, as all else does. His attributes are
exalted by the presence of sin in the world. Think about it
now. Old John Bunyan told him one
time, Talking about Adam being innocent in the Garden of Eden,
Bunyan said, I don't know what Adam would have had if he hadn't
sinned. I don't know what life would be like. He said, I wouldn't
trade, however, anything that he might have had for the knowledge
of God's grace toward this wretched sinner. What do you know about
grace? Think about it. Think about it.
Could we speak of grace and not speak of sin? Could we? No. Grace is for sinners. Could we mention mercy and not
speak of sin? Could we talk about propitiation
or God being satisfied or justice or redemption or righteousness
or salvation without the presence of sin? It's impossible. It's impossible. There'd be no
basis for it. The beautiful portrait of providence
is more purely appreciated when the black lines of shadow and
darkness are applied. We must never blame God for suffering
sin to exist, because every believer is better for having had sin
remitted by Christ and being made sin for us. Pope Gregory
described the fall of Adam as Felix Coppa. Happy fall. Happy Fall because it revealed
the way that God is glorified in being just to justify sinners
by the perfect sacrifice of Jesus Christ the Lord. God is not the
author of sin. He tempts no man to sin. So every
man is tempted when he is drawn away according to our scripture
by his own lust and enticed. That is what it says in verse
14 of our text. Verse 14 and 15 are an explanation of the
process of being tempted to sin. We must remember that primarily
it is the rejection of Christ and His claim on you that is
the heart of sin. The temptations that come from
inside the natural heart always drive men further from Christ
and they are not of faith. Scripture declares all that is
not of faith is sin. When a man is tempted to sin,
to disregard Christ, God did not tempt him to do so. The onus
falls on man alone and the dictates of his sinful nature. Back in
our text, verse 14 shows us that this temptation is a process.
For it says, But every man is tempted when he is drawn away
of his own lust and enticed. Drawn away of his own lust and
enticed. Every man is tempted to sin.
This is an inclusive statement because it addresses every man's
carnal nature, our old man. This is addressed to the flesh,
the old man that resides in all human beings and especially is
recognized and perceived by the believer. Paul understood that.
He said, I know that in me dwelleth no good thing, but I also know
there's a principle in me that when I would do good, evil is
present with me. I want to do right and don't do it. I don't
want to do wrong. Sometimes I want to do wrong.
God don't allow me to do that. The spirit and the flesh are
contrary to one another. Scripture says in Galatians chapter
5 verse 16 and 17 they are always contrary to one another. So we
can't do what we would. Is that your life? You can't do
what you would? If you are a child of God it
is. You can't do what you would.
I want to be good. Well, I'll give it a shot, but
most of the time I'm not, because there's evil present with me.
I want to do something evil. God restrains me. I can't do
what I would, because the flesh and the spirit are always contrary
to one another. There's always this grappling
going on. In both these verses, Paul makes
it clear that the spirit and the flesh never operate in the
realm of the other. The Spirit never does anything
by the flesh. The flesh never does anything
by the Spirit. When a man is tempted to sin,
the source of that temptation is not spiritual. It does not
flow from the new man. It flows and comes from the old
man. This does not imply that we can ever be sure of the motive
that drives us, save that God did not tempt us. We know that.
The words of every man here in our text assures us that the
believer is not excluded or exempt from such temptation. This passage
is not about the other guy. It's not about the straw man
that religion builds. It's not about Joe Blow. It's
not about the drunk and the gutter. It's about me. About me. When every man is tempted. When he's drawn away of his own
lust and enticed. In other words, every man assures
us that we're involved. When we are tempted to sin, to
trust in ourselves, to mind the things of ourselves and not the
things of Christ, the source of that temptation is our own
hearts. We are to blame. The process which ends in death
is set before us with three words in verse 14. Temptation, lust,
and enticement. Each of these discounts any notion
that some outside thing is the cause of our problem. Lust, temptation,
and incitement. They become a problem to us because
of how we perceive them and ultimately use or abuse them. If it ends
up that we abuse them, they are not to blame. We do so because
we are tempted or we respond to these things with our hearts
set on our satisfaction rather than the glory of God. We are
tempted because our flesh responds to what is meant for good in
a sinful manner. That is why we are tempted. We
are tempted that way. Lust here means our carnal nature,
our flesh, rather than our spirit. This being the case, a revelation
of the fact that our eyes are not fixed on Christ, but on ourselves,
we see is the problem. Now it is not a problem for the
lost man, because he does not have but one nature. He does
not have but one thing going on in him. It is the child of
God that has the battle, because he has the spirit now. It is
the spirit and the flesh. The words drawn away come from
the concept of dragon, but here more it means it's a language
of hunting or fishing with the use of a lure, the intent to
trap or ensnare. It's also used in the sense of
the harlot's words found in Proverbs chapter 7. Oh, they were enticing. Come, my bed is fine. I have fine Egyptian linen. We'll
offer sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving, peace offerings.
These were her words and they were enticing, but they were
lies. But they hold out the promise
of pleasure and gratification for the flesh. The lure of the harlot is not
the source of temptation. We are not lured by them, we
are lured by our own lusts. That's what the Lord is saying.
We desire to fulfill the desires and lusts of our own heart. Note
well, if you are driven to a passionate state, so that you feel you must
have something, then two things are true. You are not considering
what you have, and you are not satisfied with what you do have.
Love is rest, you see. Love is peace. Love is ease. Lust is unrest, disease, and
turmoil. The blame for our temptation
and sin is wholly wrapped up in our own lust. Nothing else
can be blamed. God tempteth no man to evil.
The third word spoken of that defines the process of temptation
is enticed. Again, this cannot be blamed
on any source but our own lust. The word means beguiled, whose
root word is guile or evil. Why are we beguiled? Because
we're full of guile. That's why we're beguiled. The
flesh believes there will be a great reward if the lusts are
followed. The flesh does what it does because
it believes it will get something pleasurable and beneficial from
the doing. Again, this is not a consideration of what we have,
but a polluted notion of what we might have. And it smacks
of dissatisfaction, of covetousness, which is idolatry. Looking to
Christ, you see. Oh, I wish we could do it all
the time. Don't you? when we get up in the morning,
when we're driving down the road, when we're doing what we do,
if we just look to Christ. But we don't. But when we do,
in those moments, in those blessed moments, those flashes that God
gives to His people of seeing, touching the hem of the garment
of Jesus Christ, in those moments, we have everything. And we have
need of nothing. We are complete When we look
away it means we're looking for something else. Something more. Something different. And it reeks
of disbelief. And saying what God says when
He says we have all things. Saying we don't have all things.
We want something else. This most certainly addresses
faith. There's no doubt about it. That's what Paul said to
Galatians. What you began in the spirit
is so soon removed. from it, wanting something else. And what they were wanting was
some kind of righteousness by the law. Back in our text in
verse 15 it says, Then when lust is conceived, it bringeth forth
sin, and when sin is finished, it bringeth forth death. This brings us from those things
from within that are the source of our temptation to how they
always end up. It speaks to act upon what our
own lust has conceived. Note the word hath. When sin,
when lust hath conceived, this speaks of a thing done or finished. The word conceived means seized
for oneself. When our inner being has laid
hold, grabbed our temptation, the result is to act in order
to have what we lust after. And when lust has grabbed and
seized what we want in our heart, then we take it in our hands
and fulfill the lust of the flesh. That's what we do. And that's
what we do. In Psalm 7. Psalm 7, verse 14, it says, Behold,
he travaileth with iniquity, And hath conceived mischief,
brought forth falsehood. Brought forth falsehood. See,
when sin is finished, it brings forth death. That's the language
here. That's the truth. You see, the end of sin is death.
The wages of sin is death. The gift of God is eternal life.
Adam's sin brought forth death to all men. For by one man sin
entered the world, and death by sin, because all sinned in
Adam, according to Romans 5 to 12. But this passage speaks of
another kind of death, not just that death that began with Adam,
both spiritual and physical. One Jewish writer said concerning
the incest of Lot's daughters, he said, the concupiscent soul
or lust stirs up the evil figment and imagines by it and it cleaves
to every evil imagination until it conceives a little and produces
in the heart of man the evil thought and cleaves to it and
as yet is in his heart and is not finished to do it until his
desire or lust stirs up the strength of the body first to cleave to
the evil figment and then sin is finished. In the end, the
cost of our lust kills something in us. We die a thousand times
in this life, in a thousand ways. Sin kills relationships, our
lusts, our desires. Sin kills trust, doesn't it? Sin kills our testimony. Sin
kills joy. Sin kills peace. The end of sin
is death. The term is purposely vague so
that we might strongly consider the consequence of our sin. And
we should do it in light of the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ.
If I were to stop here, we would be of all men most miserable. Our heart would be broken. We would have no hope. And Paul
said in Romans chapter 7 verse 24 through verse 8, chapter 8
and verse 2, he said this, O wretched man that I am, we can agree with
that, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank
God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then, with my mind,
I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of
sin. Therefore, there is therefore
now no condemnation to them that are in Jesus Christ, who walk
not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the
Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made us free from the law
of sin and death." Sin is ever in us. It's ours. We're to blame. Thank God. Jesus Christ, our
Lord, took that blame, that sin, that sorrow, that dejection.
was made to be sin for us, and you know sin. And the result
of that is that His children are made the righteousness of
God in Him. Forgiven. Of what? Sin. My sin. Father, bless us to understanding.
We pray in Christ's name. Amen. I don't know. But it's strange,
I know. It's some valuable revenue.