The Truth About Temptation

[Slide 1] The Truth About Temp­ta­tion
Text: James 1:12–18

When I was com­plet­ing my doc­tor­al work, there were times when I wasn’t serv­ing as inter­im pas­tor, hold­ing Bible Con­fer­ences or revivals, or sup­ply preach­ing. On those Sun­days, I attend­ed a church near the sem­i­nary and par­tic­i­pat­ed in a Sun­day School class that was led by the pastor’s wife. The choir direc­tor was even gra­cious enough to let me sing with the choir on those Sun­days when I wasn’t off preach­ing.

So, imag­ine my hor­ror when I had been off preach­ing the week before and came to choir prac­tice on Wednes­day night to dis­cov­er that the church was adrift in scan­dal. Our pas­tor had engaged in an affair with anoth­er woman. I nev­er asked for the sor­did details of the affair. I was ter­ri­bly hurt because of the toll on both the church’s rep­u­ta­tion and the emo­tion­al and spir­i­tu­al well-being of his wife. Yes, he resigned in dis­grace. We didn’t even real­ly feel bet­ter when he died of a brain tumor less than six months after he resigned. I sup­pose some peo­ple excused his sin­ful behav­ior on that basis, but no one knows whether the ill­ness was a cause or effect. It was still sin and it was still harm­ful.

A lot of peo­ple asked me, “How could this hap­pen?” And I hadn’t real­ly thought of it before, but a cou­ple of real­i­ties hit me. First of all, if I was Satan and want­ed to neu­tral­ize the impact of a church, whom would I attack—a mem­ber who wasn’t attend­ing reg­u­lar­ly and not show­ing much com­mit­ment or a leader at the fore­front of a con­gre­ga­tion? I’m pret­ty sure that I would go after the promi­nent one, often the pas­tor. Even if I didn’t suc­ceed in get­ting him to do some­thing as dra­mat­ic as the pas­tor I just men­tioned, any com­pro­mise has poten­tial. So, as pas­tors, we have to stay on guard. Sec­ond, I real­ized that the very things which give us strength can become our weak­ness if we don’t con­stant­ly sub­mit them to God. Empa­thy is great unless it gets us emo­tion­al­ly involved so that we com­pro­mise. Con­fi­dence is great unless it makes us arro­gant and proud. Intel­lect is mar­velous unless we get knowl­edge con­fused with wis­dom.

And to keep our strengths from becom­ing weak­ness, God allows us to be “test­ed.”

[Slide 2] I don’t think any­one likes being test­ed, whether it involves a [Click] writ­ten exam­i­na­tion or a [Click] med­ical lab test. There is always a cer­tain amount of anx­i­ety and uncer­tain­ty when we are chal­lenged. You may won­der why I’m spend­ing time talk­ing about temp­ta­tion and test­ing. There are two rea­sons: [Click] 1) the root some­times trans­lat­ed “tempt” and some­times trans­lat­ed “test” or “tri­al” is used six (6) times in our pas­sage, even though once it is neg­a­tive and 2) I think most believ­ers have the wrong idea about the rela­tion­ship between tests and temp­ta­tions.

[Slide 3] The point is that we will be test­ed. And, as pas­tors and lead­ers, we are going to be test­ed far more than we would like to be. We will be crit­i­cized, sec­ond-guessed, gos­siped about, accused false­ly, mis­un­der­stood, and mis­rep­re­sent­ed. We will be starved out finan­cial­ly (not always, but some­times), frozen out emo­tion­al­ly (again, not always), and locked out of the deci­sion-mak­ing process (not always, but too often).

 12) Blessed is the one [lit. “man”] who stays firm with regard to temp­ta­tion, because they have been eval­u­at­ed and shall receive the prize-win­ning reward [lit. “wreath,” some­times “crown”] of life which He promised to the ones He loves [sac­ri­fi­cial­ly].

In Greek, the verb and noun that are used here are “pee-RAH-zoh” as a verb and “PEE-reh” as a noun.
As a verb, it can mean: [Click] to attempt, to seduce, to test, to try, and to tempt. As a noun, it can mean: [Click] an attempt, an enter­prise, a proof, a seduc­tion, a tri­al, or a temp­ta­tion. So, as you can see, some­times it’s pos­i­tive and some­times, it’s neg­a­tive.

In verse 12, it seems neg­a­tive because one has to stay firm to get the prize. But even being neg­a­tive, there is a poten­tial win. Like the test­ing I dis­cussed in those ear­li­er slides, there can be a pos­i­tive result. In fact, God wants us to suc­ceed. God wants that pos­i­tive result.

As a for­mer pro­fes­sor, I can tell you that there is a pos­i­tive pur­pose to the quizzes and tests I gave. I want­ed the stu­dents to see what they didn’t know so that they could improve. Med­ical tests are to show us where we might be in dan­ger of health prob­lems so that we can fix them with med­ica­tion or lifestyle changes. As a pro­fes­sor, I nev­er designed a test to try to make my stu­dents fail. In fact, the only time I ever threw out a test grade was when the whole class did so poor­ly that I real­ized I per­son­al­ly had failed. Sim­i­lar­ly, God doesn’t test us to try to make us fail. God does, how­ev­er, some­times allow the oppo­si­tion to try to make us fail.

[Slide 4] Where do I get that? Straight from the Book of Job. [Click] God allows the Satan to throw prob­lems into Job’s life. God allows this, but God sets bound­aries. First, the Satan can’t touch Job’s phys­i­cal per­son, and then, the Satan can’t kill him. Why can’t Satan kill him? He can’t do that because the pur­pose of the test, Job’s new aware­ness of God after repen­tance could not have hap­pened. God wants us to come out of every dark peri­od of our lives with a fresh aware­ness of God’s awe­some prov­i­dence in a sim­i­lar way.

God does test direct­ly some­times. Gen­e­sis tells us that God [Click] “test­ed” Abra­ham in Gen­e­sis 22. But it wasn’t because God expect­ed Abra­ham to fail; it was because God want­ed to demon­strate to Abra­ham that his faith was real. Abra­ham lived in a world where pagan believ­ers wouldn’t hes­i­tate to sac­ri­fice their sons. They would sac­ri­fice them to make build­ings spe­cial or to guar­an­tee the strength of a wall. Abra­ham must have won­dered if his faith was as strong as that of those pagans. So, God devised a test to show him. So, when God says that He now knows that Abra­ham is faith­ful, God is real­ly assur­ing Abra­ham that he has passed the test. He is as faith­ful to his God as those pagan neigh­bors were to their false gods.

[Slide 5] The verse uses an inter­est­ing word for stay­ing firm or endur­ing in the Greek. It comes from a com­bi­na­tion of a pre­fix and a verb. The ver­bal root is the famil­iar one that is often trans­lat­ed “abide” in the King James Ver­sion and “remain” in a lot of mod­ern trans­la­tions. The pre­fix is “hypo” from which we usu­al­ly get the mean­ing of “under.” So, [Click] “hypo­der­mic” refers to “UNDER THE SKIN” or “der­mis.” In a sim­i­lar way, the Greek word for actor, [Click] “hyp­ocrite,” real­ly means “UNDER THE PRETENSE.” So, the verb in the first verse of our text rep­re­sents stay­ing or remain­ing UNDER some­thing.

What could that pos­si­bly mean? In this case it means not ris­ing to the desire, the sense of inad­e­qua­cy, the sense of uneasi­ness, all fac­tors that cause us to want to give in to temp­ta­tion. We stay under con­trol and under God’s author­i­ty.  Some­times, not being alone with some­one to whom you feel an attrac­tion. Some­times, it means not touch­ing the church’s finances. Some­times, it means not respond­ing to a cer­tain com­ment, even when you have a delight insult with which to counter.

Remem­ber how, when you were first learn­ing to dri­ve, you had to learn not to over­com­pen­sate with the steer­ing wheel—especially when you were on an icy road? To stay under con­trol, you had to learn to respect the pow­er of the car and trust its respon­sive­ness to gen­tle care­ful moves. If you’re con­stant­ly over­re­act­ing, you’re bound to have a wreck.

That’s even more true when fly­ing an air­plane. When I first flew flight sim­u­la­tors, I would make rad­i­cal moves and, inevitably end up stalling out the plane. By the time I actu­al­ly got to fly in some twin cock­pit prop-dri­ven planes with expe­ri­enced pilots, I knew not to do any­thing radical—even when I was dog­fight­ing in Marchetti’s at Air Com­bat USA or fly­ing in a Mar­che­t­ti with a stunt pilot over Half Moon Bay. Some­times, we don’t let the temp­ta­tion under our skin by tak­ing some time, tak­ing some time to pray, tak­ing some time to med­i­tate, and wait­ing for God to give us a direc­tion. When we hur­ry, we are apt to make the wrong choice. When we hur­ry, we don’t even take the time to con­sult the Bible and that’s ask­ing for trou­ble.

[Slide 6] Stay­ing under or remain­ing under regard­ing tests or temp­ta­tion is like that. We learn to relax in and depend upon God—like Jesus did. Look at what Hebrews 4:15 says in the New Eng­lish Bible. 15) For ours is not a high priest unable to sym­pa­thize with our weak­ness­es, but one who, because of his like­ness to us, has been test­ed every way, only with­out sin.

I’ve always had trou­ble with that verse. How could Jesus, whol­ly God and whol­ly human actu­al­ly be tempt­ed like some­one who is just human? The easy answer is that He was under author­i­ty and under con­trol. He was stay­ing under author­i­ty of the scrip­ture, refus­ing to turn stones into bread by refer­ring to the need to feed on the word of God. He refused to throw Him­self from a dan­ger­ous height by respond­ing to Satan’s twist­ing of scrip­ture with His own knowl­edge of scrip­ture. He wasn’t tempt­ed to wor­ship the dev­il because He knew what the Father and Spir­it want­ed.

You see, there is a [Click] dif­fer­ence between being URGED from the out­side and being ENTICED from the inside. The ENTICEMENT comes with our human desires are cor­rupt­ed by the will to sin. In this case SIN is essen­tial­ly seek­ing our sat­is­fac­tion from that which doesn’t come from God’s good and per­fect gifts we read about ear­li­er in the ser­vice. But Jesus’ uni­ty with Father and Spir­it kept Him from being ENTICED.

Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor Ian A. McFar­land used the fol­low­ing illus­tra­tion. He says that there are many sins which he doesn’t DESIRE to com­mit that he would nev­er com­mit. He doesn’t want to mur­der any­one or sex­u­al­ly abuse chil­dren. Even if some­one urged him to mur­der some­one or sex­u­al­ly abuse a child, he wouldn’t do it. BUT, he was “tempt­ed” because he was URGED to do so. In the wilder­ness, Satan URGED Jesus to do some­thing He didn’t DESIRE to do. [Click] In that sense, He was tech­ni­cal­ly “tempt­ed,” but His rela­tion­ship as a mem­ber of the Trin­i­ty meant that He didn’t DESIRE. And in so doing (or more accu­rate­ly not doing), He shows us what our rela­tion­ship can be in get­ting so close to God that we want what God wants. That’s stay­ing under.

[Slide 7] But, since we aren’t whol­ly God, but mere­ly human, we find our­selves con­stant­ly will­ing OUR desires in place of what God wants. Temp­ta­tion to a human being is a lot like one of those [Click] arti­fi­cial flies that fish­er­men use to entice pike and trout to [Click]  lunge toward the sur­face, take in their mouths, and be caught. [Click] These flies have the illu­sion of life, but they can mean death to the fish. Let’s look at it from the fish’s point of view. They look alive. They look like nour­ish­ment. They look like they would sat­is­fy. They look like they offer nutri­tion. Instead, they offer no nutri­tion, no beau­ty, and no sat­is­fac­tion.

We think we need to tell that lie to make our­selves big­ger, but it’s dead­ly. We think we need that extra dish of ice cream, that drink over the line, that extra plate of food, that sex­u­al encounter, that grade from pur­chas­ing a paper or cheat­ing on a test, that job we get with a mis­lead­ing resume, that vio­lent revenge, or that sat­is­fac­tion from sab­o­tage, but any and all of those are dead­ly. As James K. A. Smith wrote in his very impres­sive You Are What You Love, sin means: “…tun­ing your heart toward the songs of Baby­lon not the songs of Zion (Ps. 137). …automat­ing a kind of ori­en­ta­tion to the world that seeps into your uncon­scious way of being.” (p. 37)

We can’t tune our hearts as Smith sug­gests if we don’t take time to pray and med­i­tate. We can’t ori­ent our­selves to God’s plan if we’re con­stant­ly focused on the world’s agen­da, the world’s needs, the world’s con­cerns instead of hav­ing ded­i­cat­ed time to study the Word of God. As pas­tors, we are tempt­ed to get so caught up in church admin­is­tra­tion, hos­pi­tal vis­i­ta­tion, coun­sel­ing, and var­i­ous activ­i­ties so that the temp­ta­tion is to pull a ser­mon out of the file or off the hard dri­ve and present stale bread instead of fresh nutri­tion. If we’re not study­ing afresh, how can we expect to be fresh. Part of this ser­mon comes from an old out­line, but it is fresh for you.

[Slide 8] In con­trast to those fake flies on the last side, the dis­sat­is­fy­ing result of try­ing to sat­is­fy what we think we want, God offers the reward, the prize, the cel­e­bra­tion of life. God wants us to suc­ceed. The Greek noun used here is the one used with lau­rel wreaths placed on the heads of [Click] tri­umphant ath­letes and some­times, [Click] con­querors. It is a recog­ni­tion of accomplishment—whether on  the field of games or bat­tle. The crown of life is a recog­ni­tion of accom­plish­ment for believ­ers, too. It rec­og­nizes that we’re on a field of bat­tle with temp­ta­tion, but it is also a recog­ni­tion that God wants us to suc­ceed and God wants us to be able to cel­e­brate our tri­umphs over temp­ta­tion.

This word could also refer to the [Click] gold­en crown of roy­al­ty as in Psalm 21:3. After all, if we are becom­ing relat­ed to the King of Kings through God’s sal­va­tion, we have a promise of being roy­al­ty, too. The same word can also refer to a gar­land worn in wed­ding cer­e­monies and fes­ti­vals. It is a sym­bol of hon­or and rejoic­ing. [Click] I know that pret­ty well because when I was teach­ing and preach­ing in India, it seemed like every time I turned around, they were putting a gar­land on me. It was exhil­a­rat­ing. I felt very sig­nif­i­cant. And that’s how God wants us to feel when we over­come temp­ta­tion.

How can I be sure of that? We’ll see in the next phrase and the next verse. God wants to give this crown of life, this cel­e­bra­tion of life, this tri­umph of accom­plish­ment, this gar­land of hon­or and cel­e­bra­tion to those who have expe­ri­enced and are will­ing to expe­ri­ence God’s love. It is avail­able for every­one, but it doesn’t hap­pen for every­one. As with almost every­thing else I share from this pul­pit, it’s about rela­tion­ship. So, let’s move on:

[Slide 9] 13) Don’t let any­one being tempt­ed say, “Because I’m being tempt­ed by God,” because God is not tempt­ed by evil nor does God tempt any­one.”

There are two impor­tant con­cepts here and I’ll start with the sec­ond. There are a lot of peo­ple who have prob­lem with the state­ment here that God doesn’t tempt. Skep­tics want to cry, “Foul!” here because some trans­la­tions say that [Click] God “tempt­ed” Abra­ham to sac­ri­fice Isaac. As you may have guessed from my ear­li­er state­ment, that is unfor­tu­nate word­ing. The verb used in here can be either the word for tempt­ing in such a way that some­one is being set up to fail OR it can mean pro­vid­ing a test or oppor­tu­ni­ty. And although the Sep­tu­agint, the Greek trans­la­tion from the Hebrew uses the same very we have here, the Hebrew verb in Gen­e­sis 22 actu­al­ly means “test­ing.” The pur­pose of “test­ing” is to enable some­one to see what they don’t know and get bet­ter or to see what they do know so that they can build on it.

God didn’t set Abra­ham up to fail because God inter­rupt­ed the test when Abra­ham was suc­ceed­ing in show­ing that his devo­tion was as real as those around him. The verse here in James is not say­ing that God won’t test us; it’s say­ing that God doesn’t set us up to fail. God’s tests aren’t spir­i­tu­al entrap­ment. They are designed to make us stronger, bet­ter, more com­plete. But that doesn’t mean that God doesn’t ALLOW temp­ta­tion as well.

Also, what does it mean that God isn’t tempt­ed? It means that God doesn’t per­ceive any­thing as lack­ing. Our temp­ta­tions are usu­al­ly built on what is often called FOMO, Fear Of Miss­ing Out. Sex­u­al sin­ners fear that they are miss­ing out on love and con­fuse love with lust. Thieves, includ­ing dis­hon­est busi­ness peo­ple, fear that they are miss­ing out on prof­it. The sad thing is that they often become so para­noid about los­ing prof­it that even if they are suc­cess­ful, they’re afraid of los­ing it and afraid that every­one else has it in for them.

God isn’t tempt­ed because God doesn’t have any fear of miss­ing out. It means that God isn’t fooled into think­ing that it’s pos­si­ble to take a short cut to improve one’s posi­tion. God is already sat­is­fied, but wills to give Him­self to us in order to pull us to God’s own dimen­sion­al­i­ty of heav­en. God isn’t a “con­sumer,” if you will. Noth­ing looks bet­ter to God than it actu­al­ly is. Again, that’s why Jesus didn’t sin. He had unhin­dered com­mu­ni­ca­tion with Father and Spir­it. We don’t have that advan­tage. Being humans, we are con­stant­ly tempt­ed to find ways to improve our posi­tions. We often feel like we’re lack­ing some­thing. We’re con­stant­ly con­sum­ing in order to fill some­thing that we think we’re missing—ironically, we often try to fill that empti­ness at the very time God is attempt­ing to give it to us.

[Slide 10] Yet, that desire to fill up our lives as we THINK we want to do so is it’s very human. Lis­ten to the next verse, verse 14. 14) Every­one is tempt­ed by their own desires, being dragged along or enticed. It seems sig­nif­i­cant that it sug­gests that all of us are dis­tract­ed from being all that God wants us to be by temp­ta­tion, but that we don’t always expe­ri­ence it the same way. [Click] This car­toon from an old Chica­go Tri­bune illus­trates our great­est weak­ness. Try­ing to sat­is­fy our­selves in this way has dis­as­trous con­se­quences. Yet, even pas­tors are tempt­ed to hear the voice of their desires instead of God’s. How do we check our­selves? We must con­stant­ly cal­i­brate our thoughts with not just our favorite scrip­ture pas­sages, but with the whole Word of God. It’s com­pli­cat­ed and some­times, con­fus­ing, but when we take it as a whole, we can’t go wrong.

[Slide 11] The root of the first way the verse describes how we expe­ri­ence temp­ta­tion is to be dragged into it. It would be the verb for pulling a wag­on or char­i­ot in the ancient world. It sug­gests the idea of being pulled into temp­ta­tion and into sin by being dragged by an exter­nal force.

[Click] This reminds me of NASCAR rac­ing. Ever notice how those dri­vers some­times get as close as they can to one anoth­er? It’s because the car in front takes all the hit from the wind, so the car behind not only saves fuel and wear and tear on the engine, but there is also some suc­tion that pulls the rear car along. Then, when the time is right, the rear car tries to sling­shot past the lead car. But it’s that suc­tion I was try­ing to share about. How are we “dragged” into sin? It’s by run­ning with the wrong peo­ple and run­ning in the wrong circumstances—the wrong crowd and the wrong place. What is that wrong crowd? It’s the crowd that isn’t focused on God. What is that wrong place? It is any­place that dis­tracts us from God’s pres­ence and good­ness.

And what of that entice­ment? I used to believe the myth that [Click] cobras hyp­no­tize their prey—puffing out their hoods, rais­ing up to a high­er ver­ti­cal lev­el, sway­ing slight­ly with that hyp­not­ic motion. It appears that just do that to appear as a big­ger threat and to gauge the dis­tance to their prey before they spit ven­om at them. I kind of wish the myth were true because it would be a great illus­tra­tion of entic­ing sin. It looks big­ger than it is and it looks exot­ic and dan­ger­ous, but like the prey that some­times just stands there before the cobra spits, we just stay in its power—even though it’s dead­ly.

Entice­ment real­ly has to do with see­ing what we want to see—the pos­si­ble sat­is­fac­tion of sin with­out count­ing the cost, the con­se­quences of sin. No gam­bler thinks he or she is going to lose. No cou­ple engag­ing in pre­mar­i­tal or extra­mar­i­tal sex thinks preg­nan­cy is going to hap­pen to them. No drug addict thinks she or he is going to get addict­ed. No glut­ton thinks he or she is going to get fat or have health prob­lems. Every smok­er and every alco­holic thinks they can quit when they want to do so. No embez­zler thinks she or he is going to get caught. No one lies think­ing they’re going to be exposed. Like a cobra, the entice­ment looks majes­tic and exot­ic, but it’s dead­ly. In fact, that’s exact­ly what verse 15 says: 15) Once desires con­ceive, they birth sin. Then, sin reach­ing its full matu­ri­ty [or “full poten­tial”] brings about death.

Now, here’s where we get into a lit­tle bit of trou­ble. That idea of sin bring­ing death can be as prob­lem­at­ic for you and me as it was for Eve (and even­tu­al­ly Adam) in the gar­den. The ser­pent, let’s think of Satan as a King Cobra for a moment, goes into his hyp­not­ic rou­tine and says, “Sure­ly you won’t die.” He means you won’t die imme­di­ate­ly or com­plete­ly. He knows it means death, but he fig­ures to get all the mileage out of the temp­ta­tion that he can.

The death we get from sin is not JUST that all at once expe­ri­ence we each expect to have some­day. It’s because sin cuts us off from God’s bless­ing and the life and light flow­ing into us from God that we start to expe­ri­ence death instead of the life God intend­ed for us. We expe­ri­ence that help­less­ness, that defeat, that comes from feel­ing like life doesn’t mean any­thing, that we aren’t accom­plish­ing any­thing. And why aren’t we accom­plish­ing any­thing? We don’t know what God wants, much less what we want.

Focus­ing on our desires, giv­ing in to what’s con­ve­nient, avail­able, and sat­is­fy­ing in the short term—whether it’s com­pro­mis­ing on a prin­ci­ple so that we don’t make waves in the con­gre­ga­tion, whether it’s pro­cras­ti­nat­ing on ser­mon prepa­ra­tion so we can get take some extra time off, whether it’s skip­ping exer­cise because we just don’t feel good, whether it’s pro­cras­ti­nat­ing wor­ship or prayer to get that extra cou­ple of hours of sleep, or whether it is indulging our ego by try­ing to win an argu­ment that, think­ing back, wasn’t real­ly that impor­tant to begin with, these are cute lit­tle pup­py sins that trans­form into angry, homi­ci­dal pit bull sins. But, James isn’t telling us this just to keep us away from sin; James wants us to learn how to FOCUS on what’s impor­tant.

[Slide 12] 16) Don’t be mis­led, my lov­ing broth­ers [and sis­ters], 17) every good gift and every com­plete gift is from above, the ones com­ing down from the Father of light, con­cern­ing whom there is no vari­a­tion or shad­owy illu­sions [both are astro­nom­i­cal terms for decay­ing orbits and false shad­ows, respec­tive­ly]. 18) He chose to bring us about by means of [His] true word in order that each of us can be the prize har­vest [lit. “first fruits”] of His cre­ation.

God doesn’t just give us a cat­e­gor­i­cal “No” to keep us from doing things that would hurt us; God wants us to find out what’s real­ly valu­able in life. That lau­rel wreath, that crown of life, is intend­ed to be worn and cel­e­brat­ed now and for­ev­er. It’s not like my Indi­an gar­lands that fad­ed away so fast I couldn’t bring them home and show Wail­am. The now part is “pro­vi­sion­al.” It isn’t com­plete because God hasn’t giv­en us com­plete tri­umph over the neg­a­tives and dis­trac­tions of our lives. We need to put on that incor­rupt­ibil­i­ty Paul writes about in 1 Corinthi­ans 15 to do that. But God does give us real­ly nice “tastes” of tri­umph when we have those great pro­duc­tive days, when we get that belat­ed recog­ni­tion, when we feel good about our­selves and where we’re going, and when we learn to be thank­ful in every sit­u­a­tion. In faith, we need to grab hold of the fact that God wants what is best for us—not just in the sweet by and by (some­times spelled “Sweet Bye and Bye”), but also in those blessed times of walk­ing in His pres­ence.

God’s good gifts don’t have that down­side. God wants us to enjoy spir­i­tu­al gifts and bless­ings from the out­set. But we have to real­ize that every­thing worth­while, every­thing that doesn’t have a down­side to it, comes from above. It doesn’t come from us. It comes from God. But there’s MORE! This “from above” is the same word that Jesus used in John 3 when He told Nicode­mus that he must be born “from above,” “anew,” and “again.” The word implies not only some­thing from beyond one­self, but it also sug­gests that what we have isn’t good enough. We need the refresh­ing new­ness and we need a fresh start—anew and again.

[Slide 13] This asser­tion is fol­lowed by two impor­tant astro­nom­i­cal metaphors. When I trans­lat­ed in verse 17 that there is no vari­a­tion, I rec­og­nized that this is a word often asso­ci­at­ed with degrad­ing orbits or faulty astro­nom­i­cal sight­ings in the ancient world. Today, we know that even the earth’s orbit is pre­ces­sion­al and doesn’t stay exact­ly the same all the time. This isn’t the place for a lec­ture on Johannes Kepler’s obser­va­tions, but I just want to use this orbital ani­ma­tion to sug­gest that God isn’t so intractable that God is impas­sive. God is “on the move” in our behalf, but God has a “sta­ble” as opposed to unsta­ble pat­tern of move­ment. Some peo­ple take this verse as a proof text that God can­not be affect­ed by what we do and then, log­i­cal­ly fol­low through that prayer and ser­vice make no dif­fer­ence. To the con­trary, God gives us God’s good/mature/fulfilling gifts in order that we can become the prize fruits of God’s har­vest. He lets us share in God’s “blue rib­bon” prizes, to use our coun­ty fairs as an illus­tra­tion.

So, God is depend­able. God’s move­ment is so con­sis­tent that we can locate God when­ev­er we’ve lost focus. That’s why this phrase about God’s orbit not decay­ing is impor­tant. God’s con­sis­ten­cy is sig­nif­i­cant because of our chaot­ic incon­sis­ten­cy. And God doesn’t present any “false shad­ows.” Some­times, there is dark­ness that occludes clear sight­ings and mea­sure­ments in space. This isn’t as com­mon now with our radio tele­scopes and the like as it was in the ancient world, but there are still false shad­ows or, as in the case of the image on the screen—false col­ors. This is an image of Jupiter with false col­ors and the black spots are shad­ows of Jupiter’s moons (Ganymede, Io, and Cal­lis­to).

Just as when we are tru­ly seek­ing God, God doesn’t give false col­ors or false shad­ows. God won’t steer you wrong. When you see God, you see your­self more clear­ly and that allows you to adjust your behav­ior to bring glo­ry to God.

A lot of times, even those of us who know Christ find our­selves dis­tract­ed by oth­er con­cerns and options. We lose sight of being God’s prize har­vest because we think we might miss out on some­thing. We get dis­tract­ed by the sleight of hand or hip shift­ing of a clever temp­ta­tion. We lose focus on the cen­ter of gravity—our God. If we can keep our focus on God, the dis­trac­tions and the per­ceived sac­ri­fices will be revealed as the weak, light­weight, incon­se­quen­tial stuff they are. That’s the prize!

But we can’t get it with­out rela­tion­ship! We can’t get it with­out align­ing our aim where God’s aim is. We can’t do that with­out spend­ing time in prayer. We can’t do that with­out spend­ing time in God’s Word. We can’t do that with­out spend­ing time in wor­ship. And we can’t do that with­out invest­ing time in God’s ser­vice. The only way not to yield to temp­ta­tion is to yield to God’s will. It isn’t always easy, but that’s the way to find the best that God has for us.

[Slide 14] As pas­tors and teach­ers, we are some­times tempt­ed to take short-cuts with our own spir­i­tu­al growth. That leaves us wide open to temp­ta­tion. When I was attend­ing a Chris­t­ian col­lege, I had already sur­ren­dered to min­istry and want­ed to take Bible class­es. But these Bible class­es weren’t about strug­gling with the scrip­ture. They weren’t about under­stand­ing what God was say­ing to the peo­ple to whom He gave the mes­sage orig­i­nal­ly. They didn’t give a coher­ent view of how the mate­r­i­al in the Bible fit togeth­er. It was what I called a [Click] gro­cery list study of the Bible. We spent our time on Bible triv­ia.

Frankly, we should [Click] beware the like­li­hood of get­ting caught up in triv­ia instead of truth. It doesn’t mat­ter who Melchizedek is if we don’t plan to teach and prac­tice tithing. It doesn’t mat­ter who Euty­chus is if we don’t believe God still accom­plish­es mir­a­cles. It doesn’t mat­ter how many cities of refuge there were in the Old Tes­ta­ment if we don’t offer jus­tice in our soci­ety. It doesn’t mat­ter how many loaves and fish were in the boy’s lunch (I know you all know) if you don’t believe that God can mul­ti­ply your resources, whether it’s build­ings, bud­gets, bap­tisms, time, or tal­ents.

And I know that there are won­der­ful con­cor­dances and online resources. But we open our­selves up to prob­lems if we do what I call [Click] “sword drill” preach­ing. When I was young, we learned the books of the Bible by stand­ing in a line at atten­tion, draw­ing up Bibles up as though demon­strat­ing swords, and being giv­en a scrip­ture ref­er­ence like John 3:16. The leader would say “Charge” and the first per­son to find the verse would get a point. It served a pur­pose. We learned the books of the Bible and we learned a few vers­es. But we didn’t get a thor­ough knowl­edge of how those vers­es fit togeth­er in the Bible. Most dan­ger­ous­ly, we didn’t learn how the New Tes­ta­ment com­plet­ed cer­tain things in the Old Tes­ta­ment and set us free from cer­tain oblig­a­tions.

Some pas­tors throw so many dif­fer­ent Bible vers­es at their con­gre­ga­tions in an attempt to be thor­ough, or to show how smart they are, or to prove a point that may not actu­al­ly be there that the con­gre­ga­tion leaves with­out any clear-cut idea of what the pas­sage they were preach­ing on actu­al­ly meant. You are not help­ing your peo­ple grow if that’s your usu­al preach­ing style. That’s part of why I like to preach through entire books or sec­tions of books as part of my preach­ing pro­gram. And I try to preach the whole word of God, even books like Ezra and Habakkuk which don’t get much time in the pul­pit.

And if you heard yesterday’s mes­sage, you heard my father’s warn­ing that if God hasn’t spo­ken to you in the text, it’s high­ly unlike­ly God will speak to the con­gre­ga­tion. That’s very true of inter­net ser­mons. I know of a church in Okla­homa, a Bap­tist church, where the pas­tor lived off ser­mons he down­loaded off the inter­net. It turned out that dur­ing the time he was sav­ing time by down­load­ing off the inter­net, he was in a sex­u­al rela­tion­ship with anoth­er woman, a sex­u­al rela­tion­ship that end­ed up being exposed on Okla­homa City tele­vi­sion. I have to believe that part of his prob­lem was that he wasn’t expe­ri­enc­ing enough of God’s love to stave off temp­ta­tion. It wasn’t down­load­ing his ser­mons exact­ly that caused his prob­lem, but not lov­ing God’s Word suf­fi­cient­ly was a way of stray­ing away from God Him­self. Try not to get in the habit of [Click] preach­ing sec­ond-hand ser­mons.

In a sim­i­lar vein, beware of [Click] “expired,” or at least, “tired” resources. I’m not say­ing that you should only use the newest com­men­taries or only read the newest the­o­log­i­cal works. I do read and use new books, but I also read from the church fathers, the reform­ers, great expos­i­tors and exegetes of the past, and books rec­om­mend­ed by my professors—almost all of whom have passed on. By “expired” or “tired” resources, I mean those that you depend on all the time. Mar­tyn Lloyd-Jones is a great resource on Romans, but he isn’t right all the time and he won’t always con­nect with you and your church.

Per­son­al­ly, I even read from sources which are not of my denom­i­na­tion, not where I am on the lib­er­al-fun­da­men­tal­ist spec­trum, and not always in Eng­lish. I try to be open to new pos­si­bil­i­ties God might give me and wrong pos­si­bil­i­ties God might be mak­ing me aware of. But I couldn’t do that if I had a lim­it­ed library and stuck to the same books all the time. I hope you don’t find this con­clu­sion to be arro­gant, offen­sive and off-point, but I think it appro­pri­ate because it reflects sev­er­al ways that pas­tors are tempt­ed to quit grow­ing and expe­ri­ence God’s word afresh. May God give us such a love for His Word that we nev­er find our­selves tempt­ed to become com­pla­cent.