Sermon for March 18th (Temptation)

The topic of today’s message is temptation.  The biblical passage I will be using today is from Isaiah chapter 50, “Who among you fears the Lord and obeys the words of his servant?  Let the one who walks in the dark, who has no light, trust in the name of the Lord and rely on their God.  But now, all you who light fires and provide yourselves with flaming torches, go, walk in the light of your fires and of the torches you have set ablaze.  This is what you shall receive from my hand: you will lie down in torment.” 

                On the screen, you will see a bunch of pictures.  As you watch them, one by one, what do you think of them?  Are they things that you want?  Things that you already have?  Stuff you want more of?  Are they temptations?  Maybe.  Or are they just desires.  Desires are not always temptations.  What is the difference? 

Temptations are something we want, but we aren’t supposed to have, if that makes any sense.   A desire is simply something we want and there is nothing wrong with wanting something.  We want to eat.  We want to sleep.  We want a babies.  Those are just desires.  I would argue that what makes a temptation different than a desire isn’t THAT we want it, but HOW we want to get it.

Psalm 37 says, “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.”  We can have desires, they are not bad; in fact, like any good Father, God wants to give His children what they want.  But when we stop trusting God to give us things and choose to get them ourselves, that’s when our desires become temptations.

On the TV show, The Biggest Loser, they often have temptation challenges.  Picture it, you’ve got all these obese people on the show who are presented with this huge buffet of the foods they love.  Maybe donuts are their obsession or pizza is their weakness.  Fried chicken, peanut butter cups and enchiladas.  Yummy.  And, usually, the challenge involves a prize of some sort like whoever eats the most calories gets to choose the trainer for both teams or gets a 2 pound advantage at the weigh in.  The show presents this as a food temptation, but the truth is that the food has very little to do with it.

I mean, by this point in the show, the contestants have been away from these foods and have lost a ton of weight and feel great and most of them really don’t want these foods any more.  The real temptation is the power to control the game.  During a temptation challenge, one or two contestants will stuff their face full of whatever and just about throw it up they are so disgusted by doing it—the food isn’t the temptation.  But they are so afraid of being voted off the ranch, that they will do anything to keep others from controlling their fate.  That desire to control is what makes the food the temptation in the end.

The passage from Isaiah explains that, in life, we have two choices: trust in God or trust in yourself.  When you walk through this dark world, you can trust in God to be your light and rely on Him.  Or, you can walk in the light of your own torches with fire you provide for yourself.  I believe that the biggest temptations don’t really have to do with the pictures I showed before; the temptation is to do whatever we want on our own terms.  To get what we want when we want it.  We don’t like to leave our fate in the hands of others or even in God’s hands.  When Adam and Eve were tempted in the garden of Eden, they weren’t tempted by a piece of fruit, they were tempted with the idea that they could be like God—the masters of their own destinies.  That is the temptation that we all face.

I have always struggled with being a workaholic.  And, at least for me, it isn’t a temptation to want to get more stuff by making more money.  It’s a temptation to try and control my life.  Why?  Because of fear.  I think things like:  If I don’t work hard enough at church, if I don’t spend enough time in the office, if I don’t go on enough visits, someone is going to be unhappy with me and then, eventually, I’ll lose my job.  My temptation is to try and control the situation and work so hard that nobody with ever think of criticizing me.  The Devil uses this fear to steal and destroy my life by stealing my trust in God.

The truth is that God is in control of my life just like he is in control of yours.  You can spend your entire life out there in the cornfields working, but you can’t control the weather.  You can be the most loyal employee at your workplace and still be layed off because the CEO took a bad risk.  If we choose to walk through life being guided by the light of our own torches, off the sweat of our own brow, we will lie down in torment God says—we will always be worried that we aren’t doing enough.  That’s the thing about being a workaholic.  The harder I work, the less I feel like I’ve done enough. 

The difference between a temptation and a desire is who you put your trust in: yourself or God.  God has made this world full of beautiful and wonderful things for us.  When you are always trying to get things on your own, on your own time, in your own way, these things can become the most tormenting temptations in your life, but God says, “Delight yourself in the Lord, keep His commandments, trust in His timing, and He will give you the desires of your heart.”  Amen.