Joel Snider's Sermons from FBC Rome

July 15, 2007

Overcoming Temptation

1 Corinthians 10: 12-13

It’s Sunday morning. I guess we are all church people here. Most of us, 95-plus percent are here because we either want to find God or because we want to get closer to God or we think that following Christ is a good thing. There might be a few of us who got leveraged in by somebody making us feel guilty, but most of us are probably here because we want to be. If that’s the case, then we know that temptation is a bad thing. Temptation is bad, but when life is good and there is not much temptation around, have you ever noticed that when you look at temptation from afar or temptation that someone else has succumbed to that’s not really temptation for you, it’s hard to see temptation having much power. You hear about someone doing something utterly foolish, and you think, “I would never be tempted to do that.”

From a distance, temptation looks rather weak and anemic. When life is good and there is nothing standing in front of us trying to lure us to make us compromise our character and when there is no snare of the flesh just waiting for us to fall in, nothing that would try to get us to violate our conscience, it’s just hard to remember how temptation has much power. It is a little bit like when you are well it’s hard to remember what it felt like when you were sick. Do you know that feeling? You are well, and you think, “I just feel so great. I was sick a couple of months ago. I don’t even remember what that feels like.” That’s the way it is when life is going good and there is no temptation around, you are thinking, “I am in control. Me and Jesus we have got this thing and I am going to live a good life.”

Then when temptation comes, it is like it is a magnetic pull. It is like one of these B science fiction movies where the person starts moving toward something and nobody can stop them from going. It’s like you can’t help yourself. We recognize just how weak and how helpless we are. In the evangelical tradition when we talk about temptation, we usually think about hard drink, the opposite sex, and fast living, but you know there are some other temptations that are very, very difficult to resist as well.

The temptations of pride, the temptation not to think that you or I am entitled to something, just because of how special we are or how long we have been working at something or how much money we have made or how people look up to us or to something we have been elected to. It is really hard to resist the temptation of pride and not think that we are entitled, that people ought to get out of the way when I come in here.

This temptation of pride can also demonstrate itself in self-absorption. People are just so totally absorbed in themselves that all they ever do is talk about themselves, their job, their car, their vacation, and their grandchildren. “The next time we get together we are just going to have to talk about you.” They have made a commitment to themselves, “Now next time, I am not going to talk about myself.” But you go back and sit down, and they just start again. The temptation to only be thinking about your life or how everything in life affects you to the point of ignoring other people. That’s a temptation and it may not be a temptation about hard drink, but it is a temptation that can take us away from people and get in the way of our relationship with people and get in the way of our relationship with Christ.

Greed. What happens when greed jumps up in your life and you cheat a friend?

Vengeance. Vengeance where we forget that we have been in church talking about grace, and we go out and plot about how we are going to get somebody. When life is good, temptation seems like a kitten. When life is good and temptation is bothering other people but not bothering me, it’s like temptation is just a kitten. Just kick that little thing out of the way and say, “No.” But when it comes for us and it rears its head, shows the fangs, and sticks out its claws, we do things that are either utterly silly or totally destructive. It’s not simply that resolve melts or will power crumbles, we throw it away. “Forget this; I’m yielding to temptation.” We are out the door.

This is a little bit of the situation that Paul is dealing with when he writes his Letter to the Corinthians. He is writing about the ancient children of Israel. If you go back and pick up at the beginning of the chapter and he is talking about all the advantages that they had. They got to walk with Moses; they were there at the mountain; they saw miracles and water came out of the rock. Most of us would say, “Now, if I ever saw a miracle, that would be everything I would ever need to just always believe and never doubt.” They saw all kinds of miracles. They have seen all these miracles and they are the very ones who disobey, who build the golden calf, the very ones who fall away. Paul says to the Christians at Corinth, “Take heed lest you fall cause just when you are certain that temptation is not going to be an issue for you, it comes along and takes a hold of you. It comes along, and take heed lest you fall because it might just happen to you.”

Then he makes a statement that I think is probably the most misquoted verse in all of scripture. The way we usually hear it is, “God won’t put any more on you than you can stand.” Usually, it is spoken in a time of pain, grief or loss or multiple pain, grief or loss. We have all known people, perhaps you have experienced it in your own life, where things have happened one right after another and you think, “I just don’t know if I can stand any more.” And some well-meaning friend, or perhaps you have quoted it yourself, says “Well, God won’t put any more on you than you can stand.”

I want to say to you if that promise has given you strength and hope and gotten you through, I don’t want to take it away from you. But that’s really not what Paul says here. What Paul says here is that God’s love and God’s grace is greater than sin. If it is greater than sin, then it is greater than temptation. God will not allow us to be tempted beyond our ability to withstand temptation. When those things come to us and temptation has its claws out and its fangs bared and it is trying to sink its claws into us, the promise of God is that there is a way to overcome. If God’s grace and God’s love and God’s forgiveness is stronger than sin, then it is certainly stronger than temptation and God will provide the means for any of us whatever the temptation is—sin of the flesh, sin of the spirit, temptation to violate our conscience, temptation to violate a marriage vow, whatever it may be— the promise from God is, “No temptation need overtake you because God will provide.”

The sermon series for the remainder of the summer is about God’s “yes.” It’s about the promises that God truly makes to us despite some of the silly things that we often hear taught and proclaimed other places. What is it that God really wants to say “yes” to us? What are the promises that we can count on God to keep? What are the prayers that we can count on God to say “yes” to? This is one of them. God promises us that if we will trust him, that if we will turn in those moments of the greatest temptations that we can have the strength to resist, we can.

Have you ever had the experience where, in some temptation, you are just about ready to give somebody a good piece of your mind, when it comes to you, “I don’t have to do this. I could walk away from this.” Have you ever had that where you are about to write down the wrong numbers on the 1040 or whatever it is you are filling out for the federal government and you stop and you think, “I really shouldn’t do this. I don’t have to do this.” There is always that moment, I think, for Christians where somewhere the spirit of God breaks in and reminds us that we could walk away.

The phone rings; you’ve got Caller ID and you see it is a family member with whom you are not speaking. There, for that moment, it rings once, it rings twice, and in between ring two and ring three, you know you could pick up the phone and put an end to this thing by simply saying, “Hello.” But are you? We all know that in those moments when we are tempted to be unkind, when we are tempted to be cruel, when we are tempted to be immoral, when we are tempted to violate our conscience or act in a way that reflects so poorly on what it means to be a child of God, we all know that it was there if we had taken hold of it. The strength to resist. The promise that we don’t have to yield. God wants to give this to his children. God wants to say “yes” to this prayer.

Many times when we try to find out how do we get God to say “yes,” here is a simple thing. Pray the prayers that God wants to answer “yes” to. Deliver me from temptation. Provide the way out of this so that I don’t wind up hurting myself, ruining my good name, hurting someone else in the meantime and looking like a fool. “God, give me the strength to walk away from this temptation.” That is a prayer that God wants to say “yes” to, and the promise to provide that power is a promise that God wants to keep.

Have you ever thought about just how short the Lord’s Prayer is, how few things Jesus tells us to ask for? But one of them, “Lead us not into temptation,” surely it must be something that he wants us to learn how to pray or surely it is something that God wants to give to us. It’s part of God’s “yes.”

Whenever temptation comes, remember that no temptation comes to you that you are not able to withstand by the power of God. If you will take it, God will provide a way out for any temptation that comes your way.

I would like for us to close the sermon today—I often close by praying but I would like you to pray with me, to pray the Lord’s Prayer with me and remember what it means to ask, “Lead us not into temptation.”

Let us pray. “Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.”

Copyright 2007. P. Joel Snider. All rights reserved.

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