Straight talk about a crooked subject, the straight talker is James, the half brother of our Lord Jesus Christ. Who didn’t believe in his older brother in those early days. His miracles had never convinced him, His death had not convinced him. But somewhere between Easter and Pentecost there was a personal meeting set up which Paul describes for us in First Corinthians chapter 15. In which the risen Lord met with his brother James and there the convincing took place. So that this man now writes the first letter of the New testament. Before any of the Gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke or John were written, the Book of James was written. 

     The straight talker is James and the crooked subject is temptation, in the life of the child of God. As we said the last time we were together the word temptation is translated exactly the same in both sections of chapter one of the King James and that is unfortunate. Because in verses 2 through 12 [as in verses 13 through 18] we are not talking about the same thing we are talking about in verses 13 through 18. In 2 through 12 we are talking about testing in trials. In verses 13 through 18 we are talking about the allurement to do evil. The temptation which is now in view is one which all of us are familiar with. In fact one of the most disturbing discoveries a new Christian makes is that being a child of God does not remove him or her from the arena of temptation. When the shouting and the singing and the hand shaking and the tears have all past, when we get back to that day to day living. All of the sudden there is the specter of an old temptation or thought that we thought we had left behind. And it is standing there grinning at us once again. It may be sensual, it may be the temptation to ambition, it may be the temptation to greed, it may be the temptation to anger, or to liquor, or to a lot of things. But there it is. We thought we had left it behind and it’s with us. Martin Luther battled this in his early days. You remember his story, he finally removed himself to a monastery. There he assumed the worst kind of clothing, he slept on a cold flagstone floor. He starved himself, he flogged himself, to try to remove himself from the arena of temptation. Then finally he said in his memoirs, ‘I removed myself from the world, but I could not remove the world from myself.’ So what do we do? Shall we give up, and say it’s of no use? That’s what a lot of James readers had done quite obviously, from what he says right here. They had said ‘what’s the use’ it is part and parcel of us, it’s the way we were born we can’t do anything about it. It’s really God’s fault, so therefore let’s just give up. Or do we blame the devil? Flip Wilson has made a mint about that one, ‘the devil made me do it.’ And if we do what do we do with chapter 4 and verse 7 which says, “. . Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” 

     Do we blame God which is what the people were doing according to our passage? Or do we just yield to it? Oscar Wilde that man of letters of the previous century said, and I quote now, ‘I can resist anything except temptation.’ The only way to get rid of it said Oscar Wilde, was to yield to it. And there is a lot of people that would buy that as well. What do we do with it? 

     For the answer to that question we come back to James. Here is a man who was very real, very practical, very life related in both his answers and his instructions. I say again this Book is not a comfortable book for a lot of children of God. They don’t like it after they’ve looked at it for a while. Because it comes awfully close to home. James is almost a blunderbuss, he moves through life, knocking over one thing after another, just straight ahead. He’s like Bubba Smith who was in the defensive back field for the Baltimore Colts for so many years. And they asked him how he did so well. He said what I do is I just tackle the whole backfield and keep throwing guys away until I find 
the one that’s got the ball. 

     That is what James does with these subjects, he just moves straight ahead. One thing after another, like a bowling ball and the pins. And one thing after another falls, and now he gets to this whole issue, that of temptation. 

      Two preliminary statements before we look at what he actually has to say. First of all temptation is normal. Just as trials were normal. Did you notice what he said in verse 13 look at it again, “Let no man say when he is tempted, . . ” He does not say ‘Let no man say if he is tempted.’ because it comes to every one of us. It has been said so many times, that two things are certain, death and taxes. And taxes seem even a little more certain than death in this day and age. But to that you can add a third, temptation is also inevitable, in this life. So it is to be expected, but what is it. Well Funk and Wagnals gives us a definition. I quote, “The attempt to persuade a person to do something evil, or unwise, by promising pleasure, or gain” end of the quote. In other words it’s an allurement, it’s a seduction, it’s a persuasion. And every one of us face that at some time in our life. So everybody is tempted. 

     Secondly, God is never the source of that temptation. James lays that to rest right at the very beginning, “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:” Now remember we are not looking at trials, the Lord may allow trials. But we are looking at the solicitation to do evil. God is not a subscriber to the theory that the end justifies the means. Or that you can do evil that good may come, that’s satanic. And God is not involved in an entrapment of His own people. God is not sitting in heaven saying, ‘Put that in front of him! Let’s see what happens when I let him have that kind of an allurement! Ah-ha, told ya, I knew he’d fall. There that just goes to prove that your faith really wasn’t so good to begin with was it, after all! NO! that is never God. Why not? James answers it, because God cannot be tempted by evil and neither tempteth he any man. 

     Now having laid down those two preliminary thoughts: Number one that temptation is normal for everybody, and two that it’s source is never in God. Then let’s proceed from there beginning at verse 14 and see the process of this persuasion.. By the way this is the only detailed description in all of the Bible as to how temptation works. There are other passages in which you can give illustrations and examples, but only here and here alone is a clinical outline of temptation. HOW IT WORKS, WHAT IT DOES, HOW IT PROCEEDS, WHAT IS THE RESULTS and the warning flag goes up. Watch it friend here is how it all is. 

     Number one there is a lure, or a bait, that is outside of us and is implied in the text. Number two, there is a desire within us that responds to the lure outside of us. And number three, the enticement that brings the lure and the desire together, the go between. When the thought is conceived and there are the three steps in any temptation. 

     Now let’s look at them one at a time. First there is the lure or the bait, that’s implied in verse 14, “But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.” Two words, ‘enticed’, which is a fisherman's term in those days it literally meant to lure with a bait. Now we’ve got a lot of fishermen in this congregation and I am talking to men who know more about fishing than I will ever know. Fishing and I are not compatible concepts at all. But I grew up fishing on the east coast of Canada and I know a little bit about dangling a bait in front of a Cod fish or a Herring or a Mackerel or occasionally even a Skullfin which we threw back. What it simply says is you bait a hook and you lower it and you lure the fish with the bait. That’s what the word ‘enticed’ means. 

     But he uses another word, translated ‘drawn away’ and that is a hunters term now. That means that you go into the field and you lure the game out of it’s place of safety. It may be a partridge, or it may be a deer, it may be a rabbit but you lure it out of it’s place of safety so that you can get at it. And now James is beginning to give us the picture. There is always in this life that which is waiting for us which is to lure us like the baited hook. Which is going to draw us away, like that subterfuge which gets us out of the place of safety. The lure, or the bait. 

     Then there is the desire within us that responds to that lure. That’s also in verse 14, and that desire is translated ‘his own lust’. Or his own desire. You realize, of course, that though the devil is not omnipotent, omniscience, or omnipresent. He is still a fallen angel and he knows your place of weakness and he knows mine. And he knows where to get at us, and he knows how to arrange life, so he comes suddenly to a place where there is the bait, angling in front of us. He knows what bait to use. When we lived in New England we were talking to an old store keeper one day, he told me about a little boy fishing in one of those beautiful clear, bubbling New Hampshire streams that come down out of the white mountains. He was pulling out the Trout and the Bass in this particular stream and there was a city slicker, in that part of the world all the city slickers come from Boston. With his bright shirt and his waders clear up to his arm pits, he was standing there with the latest in reel, rod, line and all the lures out of his box. Casting and casting and casting, and nothing was happening and here is this kid standing down here in his overalls and his bare feet and he is throwing in his hickory rod with a string on the end of it and a hook on there, and he is pulling out one fish after another. Finally the slicker went down to the kid, and he said ‘How come? It’s obvious I know far more about fishing equipment than you do!’ And the kid said, ‘That’s true sir, but I know more about the fish than you do.’ And the enemy knows exactly where we are, he knows exactly where we are weak, and the lust responds to that what he dangles in front of us. 

     Then comes the enticement in verse 15, “Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: . . .” The bait is taken, the hook is set and now suddenly you and I are in trouble. It takes two elements, remember to combine to produce human life. Nine months later we’ve got a bouncing baby boy or baby girl. Now in the same way James describes for us, the lure and the lust and they combine they come together if, if, we allow it to happen. And when they do they produce the act of sin, and that doesn’t take nine months. In fact the New English bible, in this particular verse says, ‘And when it hath conceived it gives birth to sin.’ and that’s the picture. Do you want to see a classic example of it in the Word of God? Go back in the Old Testament to the story of David. Oh, how up to date that story is, in fact how up to date and relevant the whole Word of God is. Remember David, the excitement of the conquest was over. All those years of running from Saul, all those following years of leading his troops in battle and eventually taking his throne, in the city of Jerusalem was all behind him. Now the army was out under Joab mopping up what is left of the opposition, and the king was no longer needed as he was before and he’s bored. He’s in his mid-life crisis, he’s no longer needed! And he walks in the cool of the day, a bored man. And there was Bathsheba, she also was lonely. She was married to a man named Uriah, remember the story? Uriah was such a mocho military man that when David pulled his shabby trick and brought him home, so that he could take responsibility for the child that was to be born the guy slept on his own door step. She was a lonely frustrated woman, married to a dedicated soldier, who wouldn’t touch her while the troops were still in the field. And all of the sudden there were the two of them. Two lonely frustrated people, in one moment and the bait was dangled. And the desires responded. 

     David said ‘I want it’ Bathsheba said ‘I respond’! And the hook was set. You remember the rest of the story. The day can when she told him she was expecting. Now what does he do? Well his shabby trick, and when that didn’t work he had Uriah sent back and had him put in the front of the battle where he was killed! It was murder! Then he covered it all up, until at last God ran him down into a corner of the palace and Nathan shook his finger under his nose and said ‘thou art the man!’ And David got right with God! BUT! Ladies and Gentlemen, BUT, the baby died. His daughter was brutally assaulted and his son raised a rebellion and drove him from his throne. And the results of that action follow David like a wild beast to his GRAVE! Because God can forgive you for what you do, but that does not mean He releases you from the results. 
 

God Bless You