“13 When tempted, no one should say, ‘God is tempting me.’ For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He tempt anyone; 14 but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. 15 Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.”
‘Why did you do that?’ That’s a common question in parenting. ‘Why did you take that truck he was playing with?’ ‘Why did you call your sister a boo-boo?’ ‘Why did you hit him on the head with Mr. Potato Head?’ ‘Why did you do that?’
Children give many answers to such questions and many of their answers are theological. A child who shifts the blame, ‘I hit her because she hit me first,’ is giving a theological answer; ‘I’m not guilty of sin because she sinned against me first.’ An older child who blames circumstances, ‘I didn’t mean what I said. I didn’t get enough sleep last night,’ is giving a theological answer; ‘I’m not responsible for what I said because of forces outside myself.’ Your child doesn’t want to admit that sin comes from within.
You don’t want to admit that sin comes from within. Yet, if you have a properly functioning conscience, you will regularly ask yourself the question, ‘why did I do that?’ After you tell a white lie you find yourself asking, ‘why did I do that?’ After you tell an off-color joke, you find yourself asking, ‘why did I do that?’ After you speak ill of someone, you find yourself asking, ‘why did I do that?’
You will give yourself an answer. You might excuse your sin. You might shift the blame for your sin. You might confess that you just sinned.
Now, you deal with yourself every day. You deal with people who are sinful, like yourself, every day. You will sin every day. You might be sinned against every day. To live with integrity before the face of God and to live at proper peace with others, you need to know where your sin comes from. Sin comes from the inside. Your salvation comes from the outside. That is the claim of this sermon: sin comes from the inside; your salvation comes from the outside.
We will study this in three points. First: trials and temptations. Second: your own evil desires. Third: deadly consequences. In verse 13, we will study the relationship between trials and temptations. In verse 14, we will look at our own evil desires. In verse 15, we will see the deadly consequences of our evil desires.
First: trials and temptations. James’ answer to the question, ‘why did you do that?’ is part of his teaching on trials. Trials can bring temptations to sin. The man with cancer is tempted to be impatient with his wife because of his pain and worry. The woman who has been dealing with infertility can be tempted towards bitterness towards God and friends who are having children. The young man with no friends can be tempted towards all sorts of trouble. Trials can bring temptations.
James has told us that God has a hand in these trials. He is in charge of history. Does that make God responsible for the temptations that come from trials? Can you hold God liable for your bitterness in infertility? Can you hold God liable for the trouble you got into in high school because He didn’t give you good friends?
Many people would say, ‘yes.’ They wouldn’t say it aloud, but they certainly think that God has wronged them. They rightly see God as all powerful. They rightly see their circumstances as painful. They wrongly deduce that their pain gives them a license to blame God. Job’s wife thought it did. “Why are you still holding on to your integrity? Curse God and die.” I’ve felt as if trials gave me a license to sin. I’ve felt as if I could blame God for my sin. Maybe you’ve done the same.
James has been teaching you that you rarely see life, yourself, or God clearly when you are in the valley of trials. He now tells you that your sin, bitterness, and rage in trials cannot be attributed to God even though God is in control of your trials. Verse 13, ‘When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.”’
You must recognize God’s hand in your trials. You must also recognize that you, and not God, are responsible for your responses. If God has brought you into financial calamity, He is not tempting you to steal. He is inviting you to ask for His wisdom. If God has allowed grave illness into your body, He is not tempting you to bitterness. He is maturing you more into the image of Christ and doing a dozen other works in your heart and life. Remember that God is control. Know that He has a purpose, but that purpose is never for you to sin.
Consider Jesus. He never said, ‘God is tempting me,’ in his trials. He never blamed the Father for not feeding him for forty days in the wilderness. He never blamed the Father for requiring the cross for the salvation of mankind. Satan tempted Jesus to blame the Father. Satan tempted Jesus to look at his trials and to see the Father’s hand against him. Jesus didn’t. He knew that God wasn’t tempting him.
In your trials, you will be tempted to condemn everyone else to justify yourself. You will be tempted to condemn God to justify yourself. This is, in part, because pain makes you self-focused. I recently read an article that said one of the best diagnoses for depression is an increase in the use of the words, “I,” and, “me.” In your pain, you will find it easy to think of yourself. In your trials, do you think so much of yourself that you condemn God for the sin you do? If so, you are no longer seeing God clearly and you are no longer seeing yourself clearly.
When thinking about temptation in trials, James didn’t start by thinking about himself. That’s how modern man reasons. He thinks of everything, even God, in terms of himself. ‘No one has any right to infringe upon my life and therefore God has nothing to do with trials.’ ‘I can’t believe in a God who would allow this suffering in my life and therefore God had nothing to do with my father’s death.’ ‘I don’t need to feel guilty for how I treated my child because I’ve got a lot going on. If God cared enough to hold me responsible for how I treated that kid, He should care enough to fix my problems.’ Modern man makes himself the center of the universe. He makes God an afterthought.
James started with God. When considering this question of question of temptation in trials, James started with God. Verse 14, “For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He tempt anyone.” He started with who God is like. “God cannot be tempted by evil.”
You live in a proud age. The age in which you live measures everything by the self. Each man measures everything by himself. If someone is greater than him, the other person must be cut down to size. God must certainly be cut down to size. James offers humility for our proud age. He begins by thinking about God.
Do you start with yourself? When you have a question, and we all have questions, do you consider it by considering yourself or God first? God has bent over backwards so that you can consider Him. He has told you about Himself in His word. He has revealed Himself in His Son. He has manifested Himself by His Spirit.
Start with God. You stand before Him. He doesn’t stand before you.
Once you consider God, you can recognize where sin comes from. Sin comes from within you. That’s our second point: our own evil desires.
You are responsible for your own sin. That boy who hit his brother on the head with Mr. Potato-head is responsible for what he did. That wife who was tired and cut her husband down is responsible for what she did. You are responsible for your own sin. That is perfectly logical, but you regularly deny it. So do I. We are self-swindlers.
We humans are strange creatures. You are obviously are responsible for your own sin and yet you regularly deny it. You do the same with death. The fact that you will die is incredibly clear and yet you regularly live as if you won’t. So do I.
The difference between the Christian woman and the unbelieving woman is not sin. Both women sin, although the Christian woman is slowly but surely being weaned off sin. The difference lies in the fact that the Christian woman will acknowledge that she has sinned before God. She will seek forgiveness from God for her sin.
Do you confess that you sin? Do you acknowledge that you are the one who has chosen sin? We Christians are very good at saying we are sinners in general. It is specifics that count. Do you know you are a sinner who is culpable for specific sins that you choose to do? James tells you that you are in verse 14, “each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed.”
James tells you that you sin because of evil desire. You don’t sin against your will. You sin in line with your will. You don’t sin against your desire. You sin in line with your desire. You sin because you want what sin offers. Maybe you want momentary pleasure. Pornography promises that momentary pleasure. It doesn’t tell you that this pleasure will bring corruption and sorrow with it. It just tells you about the pleasure. “Each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed.”
Why did you sin? You desired what sin offered and so you clicked. The story is as old as humanity itself. Eve was enticed by her evil desires. She desired what sin offered and so she took the fruit and ate it. “When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.”
Sin comes from the inside, not the outside. Modern man disagrees. He believes that what is wrong comes from the outside. He thinks he can eliminate crime and hatred by fixing circumstances. If only everyone had enough food, comfortable housing, safe relationships, psychological care, and all the rest we would see an end to crime, we would see an end to hatred, and we would finally live as we should live. He assumes that sin comes from outside. Now we should certainly care whether our fellow citizens have adequate food, housing, relationships, and all the rest, but we shouldn’t be so naïve as to believe that would fix our society. Adam and Eve had all of that and far more and they sinned. They had no circumstantial troubles and they sinned. They sinned because sin comes from within. “Each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed.”
If you want to better the world, you must better the man. That’s what the gospel offers. That is the Christian answer. To better the world, you must better the man. All will be made right when man is finally made right. How could it be otherwise? If anyone filled with evil desires entered the new creation, it would quickly become as sad as this creation. That’s why all who refuse to be made new are locked out of the new creation. That’s why there is a hell.
If you are a Christian, then you know that your heart, as it is today, contains seeds that would ruin God’s new creation. You know that you still need to be changed if you are going to enter the new creation without ruining it. You know that verse 14 still describes you, “each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed.” You know that even though you are being sanctified, you still need to be sanctified. You long to be made perfect. You long to never sin again.
If that longing is alien to you, if you have no desire to be sinless, I want you to consider that you are not being changed by grace. If you have no longing to put off your evil desires, I want you to consider that you aren’t a Christian. You might have been raised in the church. You might have some religious heritage that you can boast about just like Paul boasted about his when he was a Pharisee. Such cultural trappings are not faith. Faith changes a man. Faith in Christ will make you want to be more like Christ.
If you have faith in Christ, then you will want your evil desires put to death. You will know that sin is something that you choose because you want it and you will hate the fact that you want it. Do you hate sin? Do you hate the fact that you desire sin?
I hope so because sin has deadly consequences. That is our final point: deadly consequences.
Your evil desires have deadly consequences. We see the chain of consequences in verse 15, “after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.” Desire leads to sin. Sin leads to death.
Do you believe that evil desire leads to sin? Do you believe that sin leads to death?
death? This is where the follower of Christ and the lover of self separate most starkly. The lover of self, the man who lives for himself, might, at times, feel guilty for what he has done but he never acknowledges that his sin deserves death. Even if he recognizes that what he did was wrong, he thinks it is a minor matter.
When confronted with the truth that sin deserves death, this man will tell you about others who are so much worse than himself. He hates the thought of consequences upon him more than he hates his sin. He sees no reason why he, even in his sin, could not draw near to God if he wanted to. He sees no reason why God would not accept him. Yet he also makes it a point to avoid God. He is double-minded. He is adamant that he deserves nothing but appreciation from God and yet, on some level, he fears God’s wrath will fall upon him. He hates the idea that his sin deserves death in part because he knows that his sin will have consequences.
He also finds the idea that his sin deserves death to be intellectually repugnant. He finds the very ideas of wrath and hell to be intellectually repugnant. He says cannot believe these doctrines and therefore they must not be true. He starts with himself. He doesn’t start by listening to God.
The follower of Christ has learned to start by listening to God. He knows that the wages of sin is death not because he always feels it in every fiber of his being but because God has said that sin deserves death. He recognizes that he has no right to play the judge, meaning that he has no right to determine the penalty for sin. God does.
God is not responsible for your sin. Your circumstances are not responsible for your sin. Your parents are not responsible for your sin. You are responsible for your sin. Sin comes from inside you. Your guilt comes from within you. The sin that deserves death comes from within you.
Salvation comes from outside of you. You will never think away your guilt. You will never have enough realizations to make yourself right with God. You will never be good enough or do enough good because you are you and sin comes from within you. You don’t get clean water from a polluted fountain; “each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.” That is the story of you. That is the story of me.
The story of Jesus is salvation from the outside. He has suffered the consequences you have longed to avoid. What he asks is that you confess the truth. You confess who you are. You are what God says you are. You are a sinner who has every reason to expect death. You confess that Jesus is who he says he is. He is the friend of sinners who know they are sinners and want to stop sinning.
Is Jesus, the friend of sinners, your friend? Amen.