in Dallas, Texas, January 23rd.
Soloist, Mr. Frank Boggs.
Message, Dr. Alan Redpath.
Temptation and How to Overcome.
Well, Mr. Wagner is making the trick, the
nightly trick, over to the piano.
Let me say how I have appreciated this
week being here with you and with your
pastor, working with your musicians, but I want
to thank you especially for letting me come
because I've gotten a bigger blessing, far bigger
blessing, than I've had any part in this
week as I've heard the gospel preached by
his service.
And as I thought about what I'd like
to sing tonight, I think these words express
what I'd like to say.
I am amazed that God would ever save
me, so full of sin, so covered o
'er with shame.
Make me to walk with him who is
above me, cleansed by the power of his
redeeming name.
I am amazed that God would ever save
me, not but the cross could take away
my sin, through faith in Christ's eternal life
he gave me.
Now he abides forevermore
within.
I am amazed that God would grant salvation
to such as I and all who heed
his word.
Eternal life to every land and nation, this
is the blessed promise we have heard.
I am amazed that not but
the cross could take away my sin, through
faith in Christ's eternal life he gave me.
Now he abides forevermore.
I was speaking a little while ago at
a large Brethren Hall in Dublin, in Ireland.
It's a very big hall, and it was
once a Church of Ireland church, and was
taken over by the Brethren.
It has a pulpit, and the pulpit is
a way, way up and out.
You feel very isolated when you speak.
And that evening, there was a large congregation,
and it wasn't that they'd come to hear
me, they'd come to hear a man called
Sandy MacPherson, who was a well-known organist
in Britain, played the organ.
And I preached, and after I preached, a
fellow came up to me, he did right
away down the front there, and he said,
well, he said, I've sat right under your
nose, and I've enjoyed every bit of it.
Well, I thought he was being a bit
personal, but I know what he meant.
I want to say that I've enjoyed every
bit of it here, your hospitality and your
friendship, we all have.
And it's been a sheer delight to share
with these dear Brethren in the ministry.
And if the Lord permits, it'd be wonderful
to see you all again, if not here,
certainly in heaven.
Well, now I'm going to ask you, if
you would please rise to your feet, that
we might pray together.
Dear Lord, we thank Thee for Thine enabling
through the days of this week, for all
the tasks of the week in which so
many people have taken part, and we thank
Thee for the gracious outpouring of Thy Holy
Spirit, and we thank Thee that there are
many in this church tonight who will never
be the same again, and we would give
Thee all the praise.
Thou hast done it all.
And, dear Lord, we would lovingly commend to
Thee this fellowship.
We would pray for the pastor and his
wife.
We thank Thee for their leadership over so
many years.
We thank Thee for their vision, and pray
that Thou wilt ever give them a double
portion of Thy Spirit, that Thou would enable
them to minister in the power of the
Spirit of God in this place.
And, dear Lord, we pray for this country.
We pray for the president.
We pray for the many problems that face
this nation, this great nation at this time.
Especially do we ask for Thy restraining hand
upon affairs in Vietnam.
We think of those who are separated from
loved ones, even in this church, that Thou
wilt guard between them, and Thou wilt graciously
protect them.
And, if it can please Thee, wilt Thou
grant peace in our time, dear Lord?
Now, Father, we pray that Thou wilt shut
us in with Thyself, and may we see
far beyond the messenger to the master, and
grant tonight that truth, in all its simplicity,
may be made clear in our hearts by
Thy Spirit.
We ask it for Jesus' sake.
Amen.
I would like you to turn, please, to
Romans chapter 8, the eighth chapter of Romans,
reading from verse 1 through verse 13, and
you will help me greatly by reading it
to me.
I take it that you have all access
to a New Testament or a Bible, and
that you can share with your neighbor.
Romans 8, verse 1 through verse 13.
Are you ready?
Then go.
Thank you.
I want to talk to you this evening,
on the last day of this convention, about
tomorrow, about something that you will meet tomorrow,
and the next day, and the day after,
and every day until you go to be
with the Lord.
I expect that many of you have guessed
what it is.
I want to speak to you about temptation.
Temptation.
There is never a work of the Holy
Spirit without there being a counter-attack of
the enemy.
Never does the Spirit of God move in
to bless, but the devil is looking on
around the corner, and watching his opportunity to
come in and trip us all up.
I once used to pray, at one time
in my life, that the Lord Jesus would
not lead me into any situation in which
the devil wasn't interested.
I have stopped praying that now, because that
prayer has been answered, as far as I'm
concerned.
Satan is always interested, it seems, and always
on our trail.
The one enemy of the devil is the
Spirit of God.
It's not you personally he's concerned about, it's
Christ in you.
It's the Holy Ghost, the great executive of
the Godhead on earth.
The one who is appointed by the Father
to carry out his eternal purposes, and those
purposes are carried out through redeemed men and
women who are indwelled and filled by the
Spirit of God.
Therefore, such a man is obviously a first
-class target for the devil, and we're going
to have to watch him, and very carefully
anticipate his tactics, and be quite sure that
we know how to overcome him when he
comes upon us.
Therefore, let me begin by saying that this
word, temptation, has two different meanings.
It means, in the first place, to test
without any solicitation to sin.
An example of that was given us this
morning by Nature's Omnipotent.
In Genesis 22, verse 1, the Lord God
did test.
The word should be test, Abraham.
His faith was tested by his obedience, testing
without any solicitation, without any enticement to evil.
You get many examples of it in the
word.
Luke 8 13, for instance, recursively, the Lord
Jesus is explaining to his disciples the meaning
of the parable of the sower, and he
speaks of seeds that fell upon rocky ground,
and these are they which endure for a
while, but in the time of temptation, in
the time of testing, they fall away.
Now, it was temptation of that kind to
which James refers in his first chapter of
his epistle, when he says, rejoice when you
fall into divers temptations.
Now, divers temptations are not temptations that you
meet under sea level.
Divers temptations are various temptations, manifold temptations.
Now, says James, when you go on tumbling
into them day after day, and they're bound
to come your way, come your way, rejoice!
Because those temptations, those testings, are not sent
to tip you up.
They're sent to prove your weakness, and to
drive you to Lord's testing.
That's what they're for, and they come from
God.
Constant reminders of our own personal weakness, infinite
weakness, to enable us to draw fresh upon
his strength and upon his power.
James does not say rejoice if you fall
into them, but when you fall into them.
It's certain.
So, when they come your way, these testings,
the word is rejoice.
Now, I'm not going to anticipate what there
might be.
A thousand and one things might come your
path.
For instance, though, I will just mention one
possibility.
Have you ever thought what an impoverishment it
would be to our lives if every source
of irritation was removed from us?
Do you meet people every day who nearly
drive you around the bend?
People you can't stand.
You possibly work next to one.
You meet them every day.
That's your lot.
There they are, and you don't like them.
And those people, really, well, they make you
so impatient and so irritable.
The pastor thinks sometimes that there are some
deacons and elders a bit like that, but
they probably think that the pastor is a
bit like that.
But that's the sort of thing I mean.
We get on each other's nerves.
We ought to learn the lesson from an
oyster.
Extraordinary creatures.
You know, when a source of irritation gets,
metaphorically speaking, under the skin of an oyster,
or beneath its shell, do you know what
it does?
It directs the most precious part of its
being to that source of irritation, and covers
it, and turns the source of irritation into
a pearl.
That's what the Lord Jesus meant when he
spoke about the pearl of great price, which
he bought with his own precious blood.
Have you ever tried that treatment?
Next time, next time you meet the person
who irritates and annoys you, practice love.
The first fruit of the Holy Spirit, the
indwelling life of Christ, love.
You're not expected to like everybody, but you
can love them.
I always keep on my prayer list the
name of somebody I don't like, and it
makes a tremendous difference, because I learn to
love them as I pray for them.
Well now, that term of temptation or testing
comes from the Lord, and all intended to
drive us back upon our true center, the
Lord Jesus Christ.
But this word temptation also means to be
tempted with a view to falling into sin,
and that temptation comes from the devil.
God tests for our good, Satan tests for
our downfall, God tests us to prove us,
Satan tempts us to destroy.
And James, again, you can look sometime at
that first chapter.
It's a masterly chapter on the subject, says,
let no man when he is tempted say
that he is tempted of God.
Of course, that's what we all do say.
That's what Adam said, the woman whom thou
gavest me.
Lord, it's your fault.
We all say that.
Lord, why did this happen to me?
Why should I have to face it?
But, said James, the true source of temptation,
the true nature of it, is when a
man is drawn away by his own lust,
and lust, when it can conceive, bring forth
sin, and sin bring forth death.
That kind of temptation is external enticement, internal
desire.
It reaches us through eye gates and through
ear gates, mainly.
The external fascination is presented to our mind,
and our desire goes after it, is towards
it.
Now, at that moment, there is no sin.
It is not sin to be tempted.
Jesus was tempted.
And when that enticement is placed before us,
and our mind hooks onto it, there is
no sin.
That is only the evidence of the inbred
nature which we possess, which can do nothing
but sin.
An outside enticement finds combustible material inside all
too ready to follow it, and the moment
when internal desire breaks through all the barriers
and lays hold of enticement, that is sin.
Have you ever heard people still to each
other speaking to each other, and one will
say to the other, you know, the other
day that thought passed through my mind?
Fine, that's the thing, pass it through.
Now, at that moment of temptation, and I
don't think I'm speaking theoretical language, I don't
think I'm talking theology, I'm talking experience, and
I'm absolutely sure that you all know what
I'm talking about.
For you all know the intrusion of a
fascinating object, and the inner desire that goes
out towards it, and you say to yourself,
how do I overcome it?
Like the apostle Paul at one time, you
say, to will is present with me, but
how to perform that which is good, I
find not.
And, I am perfectly certain today that the
vast majority of Christian people are not requiring
to be soaked in more theology, and understand
more doctrine, but they desperately need to know
more of the how.
Now, at that moment of temptation, it is
tremendously important to remember that no matter how
severe the attack may be, and no matter
how sudden the onslaught, and no matter what
hour of day or night defeat need not
happen, there is provision for victory in every
crisis, every emergency, every moment, through the Lord
Jesus Christ, who was tempted in all points
like as we are, yet without sin, by
his presence in us, by the Holy Ghost.
Now, it is this provision that I want
to consider with you tonight.
It causes us, as this subject, to meet
on common ground.
There is no temptation that can ever take
you, but is common to man.
1 Corinthians 10 30.
So, I lovingly pried open the door of
your heart, not so much your mind, your
heart, and talked to you heart to heart,
man to man, man to woman, about the
how of the strategic moment of Christian experience.
So many of us are inclined to be
censorious when a Christian fails.
We haven't understood that our weak spot may
not be somebody else's weak spot, and our
strong point may not be somebody else's strong
point.
And everybody here, facing me, including myself, Satan
knows exactly the weak point in our armor.
He knows where to launch the attack.
He doesn't need to change his strategy.
He's a past master in the arts.
He's been at it for years.
He knows, true and true, where your weak
point is, where he can get you down,
time and time again, with the same besetting
sin.
And I want to say to you that
this convention cannot possibly lead you into some
quick experience of victory, some shortcut to the
way out, which can only point you to
the word of God and to principles.
And I want, quite briefly, I hope, to
enumerate four of those principles of victory tonight.
The first, the Holy Spirit imparts a new
nature to the child of God.
2 Peter 1.4 We are partakers of
the divine nature.
Colossians 1 and verse 27.
To whom God would make known what is
the riches of the glory of this mystery
among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you,
the hope of glory.
Partakers of the new nature.
Christ in you.
The hope of glory.
And we receive that new nature at the
moment of our new birth.
It is then that the Holy Spirit comes
to take up his permanent abode in your
heart and mind.
1 Corinthians 12.13 We have all been
baptized by one sin into one body.
Now, listen carefully.
The Holy Spirit comes to be our second
nature, and it is absolutely impossible for him
to sin.
He cannot sin, and given freedom of action,
he will bear in you nothing but good
fruit.
I wonder if you've been a little puzzled
by a verse in the first epistle of
John.
Will you look at it a moment?
1 John chapter 3 and verse 9.
1 John 3 9 which says this.
Whosoever is born of God does not commit
sin, for his seed remaineth in him, and
he cannot sin because he is born of
God.
Now, I've heard many expositions of this text
which have left me unsatisfied.
I've heard people say, well, of course we
do sin, and it really means that whosoever
is born of God does not continue in
the practice of sin habitually.
In other words, that lets us off.
That means that as we go on, we'll
get less likely to sin as the years
go by.
We won't, because we are indwelt by an
old nature which can do nothing but sin.
But we have a second nature which cannot
possibly sin, and 1 John 3 9, I
suggest to you, simply means this.
Whosoever is born of God does not commit
sin for his seed.
The very seed, the very life of the
Spirit of God remaineth in him, and he
cannot sin because he is born of God.
And the new nature, born into you, bestowed
upon you by a sovereign Lord, cannot possibly
sin.
Now, it is the seed of God, the
Spirit of God which cannot sin, which becomes
the means of victory in the life of
a Christian.
And that leads me to the second statement
I want to make, which is implied by
what has been said already.
It is this.
The old nature continues to exist in the
regenerate heart, and the Christian will keep right
to the end of his life the old
nature which is called the flesh.
Romans 8, which we read together a portion
of it, is the great victory chapter of
the Bible, and it underlines the conflict which
goes on in every Christian's life between the
flesh and the Spirit.
Did you know that in those verses there
are no less than twelve references to the
flesh, and twelve references to the Spirit?
The life of the spiritual Christian is a
life of ceaseless warfare, of ceaseless conflict.
But, it can be a life of ceaseless
ignorance.
The flesh, the Spirit.
The flesh is not simply what we think
is bad about ourselves.
It is not simply our physical body.
It is our whole being, our self.
It is all that we are by nature
apart from the Lord Jesus, and Paul has
made a great discovery about the flesh when
he says in Romans 7 and verse 18,
I know that in me that is in
my flesh there dwelleth no good thing.
That's not the language of a carnal Christian,
that's the language of a mature man who's
made a discovery.
It's one thing to say, in my flesh
dwelleth no good thing.
It's another thing to say, I know.
God has revealed this to him, but by
experience, I know that in my flesh dwelleth
no good thing.
The new man in Christ, the new man
is Christ, in us by the Holy Spirit,
and the old man is self without the
Lord Jesus.
The one, absolutely holy.
The other, absolutely sinful.
The flesh is sold to sin.
I am carnal, sold unto sin, and that
condition is incurable.
It is unchanged in the life of a
Christian.
Romans 8, 7, the carnal mind is enmity
against God.
It is not subject to the law of
God.
Neither, indeed, can be.
The flesh will never be refined, will never
be improved, will never be made Christian or
Christianized.
It will offer always unyielding opposition to the
life of the Holy Spirit.
It cannot be improved, it cannot be sanctified.
Therefore, God can only do one thing with
it, and that is free it.
How he does that, I will show you
in a minute.
But, listen, it is terribly possible for a
Christian to live after the flesh.
Romans 8, 5, they desire after the flesh
to mind the things of the flesh.
Verse 12, Therefore, brethren, we are debtors not
to the flesh to live after the flesh.
Verse 13, for if you live after the
flesh, ye shall die.
Now, this can have disastrous consequences, and I
want to say to you that I don't
mind what may be your profession of faith,
what may be your statement of doctrine which
you assign, if you knowingly and willingly to
continue to live, or often and generally, mastered
by the old nature, you shall die.
The old nature continues to exist in the
unregenerate heart.
So, then, the Holy Spirit within us, the
new nature, has power to overcome the flesh.
Romans 8, 2, the law of the Spirit
of life in Christ Jesus has set me
free from the law of sin and death.
The basis of that victory was laid at
Calvary, and the Holy Spirit has only come
into your heart in order to make real
in your experience what Christ did for you
on the cross.
And, at the cross, He not only took
away our sins, but He took with Him
and nailed to the tree this old self
and crucified it.
By His obedience and by His holy life,
He triumphed over the flesh.
The root of all sin, the root principle
of all evil, He conquered it.
But, that crucifixion is only carried out in
your life by the constant working of the
Holy Spirit in answer to your ascent.
It is, therefore, by the Spirit of God
that the flesh is kept in subjection.
And, if we are not on our guard
every moment of every day, that old nature
which is so living in us will seek
to gain the upper hand, and, left to
ourselves for one minute, we shall fail.
But, as the yield to the control of
the Spirit of God, He deals with it
and keeps it in the place of death.
I have in my hand here a pen.
Its weight and its nature are unaltered by
the fact that I have put it into
my hand.
It's still exactly the same pen.
If I release my hand, the law of
gravity will come into operation, and it will
fall in my grace.
But, as long as I hold on to
that pen, the law of life in my
hand overcomes the law of gravity, and the
pen is held up.
And, therefore, I can use it, and it
becomes useful to me when I yield to
the Lord Jesus Christ.
My old nature remains unchanged.
Sin has the same hold upon it, and,
if left to myself, sin would insistently attack.
But, the power of the Spirit of God
comes in and takes possession, and He ensures
that that old life is kept continually in
the place of death.
But, the working of the Spirit depends entirely
upon the submission of my will to the
Lord Jesus.
I want to use an illustration that I
coined from Dr. Alan Fleet of Columbia Bible
College, one of the of the great saints
of this country and generation, one of the
great giants of our day.
He said to him, there was a judge
who had before him a prisoner, and the
prisoner was on trial for murder.
The evidence was heard, and the jury found
him guilty.
Having heard the verdict, what does the judge
do?
Does he shoot him?
No.
If he did that, he'd be guilty of
murder.
The judge does only one thing.
He passes sentence of death, and then hands
the prisoner over to the executioner to carry
out the sentence.
When temptation attacks me and you, what do
we do?
We are responsible before God for one thing,
saying, Lord, I have died to that, and
I pass the sentence of death upon it,
and I hand the temptation over to the
Holy Spirit, and He carries out the execution.
Everything depends at that vital moment, maybe at
the split second, maybe I have no time
to pray, maybe I can only cry, Jesus.
Maybe the onslaught is like a flood, and
it's impossible for me even to get on
my knees, but I lift my heart to
Him, and in so doing, I'm saying to
Him, Lord, I have died to that impact,
and I hand it over to you, and
the Holy Spirit in me carries out the
sentence of death.
That's how he works, and that is the
progressive experience.
Some people would tell us that the old
self-life ceases to exist in every group
of sin that it acted upon us.
There would be no Roman faith in my
Bible if that was true.
Our life has got to grow constantly in
the factor of the fullness of the Lord
Jesus Christ, and up to the very end
there will be battle and victory, and there's
no victory without a battle.
But, a battle is not a battle with
temptation, it's not a battle with sin, it's
the fight of faith.
So, they hold all my resources in the
moment of attack that are available for me
in Christ.
For my great revered, what wonderful creatures they
are, when they set off for my great,
they wait.
They wait for one thing, a contrary wind,
and when the wind is contrary, they soar.
My friends, when everything's against you, and the
battle's going hard, it's a wonderful thing to
prove that in the Lord Jesus, in all
these things, I am more than possible through
him to love me.
So, that leads me to my last proposition.
To recapitulate, we have received as our regeneration
a new nature which cannot be.
We shall carry till our dying day an
old nature which can do nothing but this.
The Holy Spirit within us has power to
overcome the flesh.
Importantly, what is our part in the victory?
What part do we have to take?
Well, firstly, the surrender of our will into
the hands of God.
Romans 6 30.
Heal your members unto God as instruments unto
righteousness.
I believe in that situation with which you
are faced, and with which I am faced,
that God can set me free.
For that purpose, the Holy Spirit has come
to live in my heart.
As long as I cease to resist him,
he fills me and delivers me.
But, listen, the moment I cease submitting at
that moment, he ceases working.
The moment I withdraw my surrender, the moment
I cease to yield, at that very moment
the Holy Ghost ceases to work.
I wonder if that's the reason why you
do this.
And that part in the operation of the
Spirit of God is not only brought about
by my rebellion, but also, much more frequently,
by my inherent desire to fight the battle
in my own strength.
There's something about it that always wants to
go back to the old principles to stop
hustling and to begin crying.
And God intervenes to sanctify, to deliver only
when we place ourselves in his hands.
That he alone may get the work.
Tell me, my friend, does the Spirit of
God lead operations in your life?
Is he out of business?
Is he not really working in power?
Why?
You knew him once.
You knew him as your Lord and Master.
Why did he stop working?
Why did you stop yielding?
Did you stop hustling?
Did you stop fighting the battle?
I wonder.
Oh, but you say I haven't enough strength
of will to maintain a constant surrender to
the Lord Jesus.
My friend, to make your will strong isn't
your business, it's his.
It is God who worketh in you to
will and to do his good works diligently.
And the second thing, the first thing is
the constant surrender of your will.
Constant.
The second thing is faith.
The reckoning of faith.
Romans 6 11.
Just as you receive Christ for forgiveness by
faith, so you receive Christ for victory by
faith.
By faith, you took forgiveness.
By faith, you take victory.
Not by tears, not by prayers, not by
striving, not by struggle, all ends in failure.
Turn your eyes upon him.
Peter, you remember, when he walked on the
water, he said, Lord, if it be thou
bid me come.
And he didn't suddenly become lighter than the
water.
He was no different, but he believed God.
And as long as he did that, and
kept his eyes upon Christ, he triumphed.
But getting his eyes on the wave, and
feeling the strength of the wind, down he
began to go.
Jesus called us out of our boats of
sin to walk with him.
And, when we come to him, we won't
be any different.
But, if you keep your eyes, and gaze,
and countenance on Christ, you've conquered.
Now, this is what I want to say
to you in conclusion.
This requires a definite act of faith and
commitment, a starting point in the life of
victory from which you never turn back.
You accepted pardon for past sins by faith.
Have you ever yielded yourself to the control
of the Spirit of God, and received deliverance
from sins by faith?
That's the only foundation on which to live.
You made the one transaction.
You could say with absolute assurance, your sins
are forgiven.
But, has there been a moment in your
life when you received from the Lord, by
faith, deliverance, victory, power, and you started living
on the principle, no more trying, no more
struggle, no more effort, by faith, in Christ.
And, what is the result of such a
life?
Well, you see, the result is the fruit
of the spirit.
Galatians 5.22, and you can describe those
nine words as character.
Character, the character of Jesus, reproduced in you
by their fruit, ye shall know them.
And, my dear friends, the deliverance of the
Holy Spirit must, must inevitably result in the
practice of a holy life.
Which principle is marked in you?
Which life is in control, as you'll listen
to me as we finish this service tonight,
as you face the battle of the following
day, the threat of the Spirit?
Are you willing, really, really, to die out
to everything but the will of God?
Have you paid in the power of the
Spirit of God to set you free?
Would you take that step of faith and
deliverance, just as you took it for forgiveness,
will you take it tonight for deliverance, and
say in the face, in the midst of
all the battle, Thank you, Lord.
In that situation, I turn this over to
you.
We've just paused for a moment for my
prayer.
In my heart, I speak to some Christian
who has been trying, and struggling, and striving,
and yet hasn't somehow stepped into the life
of victory and overcoming power.
Think of it as you haven't taken the
step of faith.
You haven't prayed for victory in Christ.
Would you do it tonight?
Dare to put your hands upon the promises,
dare to look up into the face of
the risen Lord, and say, Lord, in that
situation, in that that you know is the
battleground of my heart, tonight I tend it
to Christ by the Infernal Spirit.
Lord Jesus, we do trust thee to make
truth live in our hearts by the power
of thy Spirit, and send us from this
place to be more than confident.