I feel constrained that we should turn tonight
to verses 13 to 15 in the first
chapter of this very remarkable letter that was
penned by James, apparently the brother of our
Lord Jesus, according to the flesh.
Let me read then from chapter 1 verses
13 to 15.
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.
But every man is tempted when he is
drawn away of his own lust and enticed.
Then, when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth
sin.
And sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth
death.
The birth of death.
James seems to consider the possibility of certain
people, as they face their trials, coming to
the conclusion that God is tempting them to
sin.
That their trials and temptations have been arranged
not by a satanic nor a human hand,
but by God himself.
Now, God does test us, but God never
tempts his people.
That is, God tests us in order to
bring out our strength and the capacity that
grace has given us to live and to
overcome our temptations.
God never tempts us in order to seduce
us to evil.
Never.
The charge, says James, does not stick.
God does not do that.
As a matter of fact, he says God
himself cannot be tempted.
Neither can he tempt any of his creatures.
He never does.
It would be morally inconsistent with his being.
We humans have always been fond of blaming
other people, haven't we?
And the first sin took place in the
Garden of Eden.
Adam blamed Eve.
Eve blamed the serpent.
And so it's gone on throughout the whole
course of human history.
It's very, very rare to find a man
who squarely faces the facts and says, yes,
I did it and it's my own fault.
I'm reminded of Bobby Burns.
Some of you Scots people, I'm sure, know
Bobby Burns off my heart.
Bobby Burns blamed God for so much.
May I just give you a few words,
a few lines?
Says he addressing the Almighty, thou knowest thou
hast formed me with passions wild and strong
and listening to their witching voices often led
me wrong.
Do you see what Burns is saying?
He's saying that God made him the kind
of person he is.
Therefore, God is responsible for his sin.
No, says James, that doesn't stick.
God did not make you with your sin.
God made you without your sin.
God does not tempt a man and God
himself cannot be tempted.
All right then, if temptation does not come
from God, where does it come from?
Now to me it's very significant that James
does not hear even speak of Satan.
You read through this letter and you find
that James, like other New Testament writers, believed
in demons and he believed in the devil.
But it's very significant that at this point
he doesn't refer to demons, he doesn't refer
to the devil.
You know, he says where temptation comes from
and he answers it in the words of
my text.
Every man is tempted when he is drawn
away of his own desire or his own
lust and enticed.
Then, when lust or desire hath conceived, it
brings forth sin and sin when it is
finished brings forth death.
Now I want us to look at the
way James impresses this upon us, that ultimately
a man's temptation emerges from himself.
A man is tempted when he is drawn
away and he allows himself to be drawn
away by nothing other than his own basic
desires.
And this, as James in turn, leads not
only to sin but to death.
Now let's look at it then briefly together.
First of all, the desire which serves as
a route for temptation.
Each person is tempted when he is lured
and enticed of his own desire.
I'm deliberately using that word desire, though in
our reading this evening we read the word
lust and as I read the text from
the King James Version it says lust.
The older translations have it that way, they
speak of desire as lust, and they're quite
right of course in one sense.
Because you see, the desire of a fallen
man is essentially lustful.
When we use the same word of the
Lord Jesus Christ, the perfect man, it isn't
lust, it is simply desire.
And it is sometimes used of Jesus without
any immoral connotation.
Jesus said for example to the disciples, with
desire, have I desired to eat this Passover
with you before before I die.
It's the same word, it's the word we
translate or some people have translated here as
lust.
But that was no lust, that was simply
desire and there was nothing wrong to it.
But you see, what is simply desire in
us who are fallen, who have been infected
by Satan, our simple desires are lust in
the making.
James says all our temptations then emerge from
the simple desire of our fallen nature.
Now the desire from which temptation comes is
every man's own, says James.
I want you to notice how he stresses
this.
The Revised Standard Version translates it like this,
each person is tempted when he is lured
and enticed by his own desire.
Each man by his own desire, each by
his own.
Every man for himself.
You can't blame God, you can't even blame
Satan ultimately because you see, if there was
nothing in me to respond to Satan's temptation,
my temptation would not be temptation.
If there was nothing in my fallen nature
to respond to the enticements of the evil
one, it would not be temptation at all.
Each person is tempted when he's drawn away
by his very own desire.
What a man desires in his own soul,
in his own heart, for himself.
Ultimately then you can't blame anyone else.
And sin and death emerge, according to this
passage, from such a small beginning.
Desire.
Desire results in temptation when we allow ourselves,
in the words of the Apostle here, to
be lured and enticed by our desire.
Now these words are very striking, and those
of you who are concerned to get this
graphic picture, I believe that if you really
pay attention to this passage in your own
leisure, as well as tonight, as we are
together here, you will find that there is
much, much more to this passage than I
can possibly bring out.
The language is most graphic.
Where does sin, where does temptation come from,
temptation that leads to sin?
Simple desire, a man's very own desire.
But how does that lead to temptation and
to sin?
Well, says James in this way, when a
man is lured and enticed by his desire,
lured and enticed by his desire.
New Testament scholars tell us that there are
many pictures here, many pictures, as it were,
wrapped up in one.
This kind of metaphor can come from the
fishing world, or from the hunting world.
They tell us that if we take it
from the fishing world, it is something like
this.
Here is a fish in the water, moving
gradually in one evident direction.
But then the little fish sees something dangled
just off to the right or to the
left.
And however a fish thinks or makes decisions,
I don't know.
But it decides that the thing that is
dangled before it is something that it desires.
And so it moves off course and is
lured and enticed.
And it opens its mouth and it closes
it, only to find that within the bait
there was a hook and it is caught.
Now these two verbs that we have here,
have here, lured and enticed, involve all that.
It's a metaphor from the fishing world, so
too from the hunting.
But the picture is the same.
Here is a lion roaming in the forest.
There are those who want to catch it,
but they can't very well.
The lion is the master of his own
fate.
You don't easily get near.
Well what do they do?
They lure and entice it away.
Somehow or other they put something near at
hand, something that will attract the eye, something
that will appeal to the taste, to the
palate of a lion, or whatever the creature
may be.
And so he gallops out of his liberty
and he makes a grasp for this, suddenly
to find that the trap door is closed
behind him.
Lured and enticed.
One scholar tells us that the metaphors stress
even more than I have suggested, that they
all suggest a matter of, or an experience
of being pressurized, of being persuaded, of being
forced.
And one of the best scholars known to
me puts it like this.
There is almost a kind of pressure, or
drag, or draw, or enticement involved here, that
we would describe in terms of taking something
in tow.
Some of you have been for a holiday
recently, and you've had the car, and then
you've pitched something behind it, and you've hooked
it on, and you draw it behind you.
There is that kind of pressure that is
brought to bear here.
Desire entices us away, hooks us to itself,
and it takes us in train.
Do you know, my friends, whether we were
willing to acknowledge it or not, there are
many people that are simply hooked to sin
tonight, and cannot get loose.
Are you one of them?
The desire that is the root of temptation.
What is simple in our Lord Jesus Christ
and in the perfect man, but in us,
because we are fallen, and sinful, and have
a sinful tendency, it is something terrible.
It is something that takes us in tow.
Oh, there is nothing which is more tragic
than this, to see a well-dressed person,
well-educated and cultured, who can speak the
language of politics, and of science, and of
philosophy, and of the arts, and whatnot, but
he's a man or a woman on tow,
dragged along by the jaws.
Desire has made him a prisoner.
Are you one?
The desire that is the root of temptation.
The second thing I want you to notice
is the deed which marks the birth of
sin.
Then desire, when it has conceived, gives birth
to sin.
The language here is essentially the language of
childbirth, conception and birth, and James apparently chooses
these metaphors because they were familiar and they
were most forceful and telling.
Now we shall simply and briefly comment upon
two aspects of conception and birth as they
serve the purpose of the inspired writer here.
The first thing that James makes clear is
this.
Sin is conceived just as a child is
conceived.
Sin is conceived in the mind and the
heart just as a child is conceived in
the womb.
Desire, when it has conceived, gives birth to
sin.
James describes desire here as if desire were
a person.
He personalizes it, and he says desire is
an aggressive, fertile being, always on the move,
like a woman on the street looking for
a partner.
When the simple desire you see has become
a lust, it's always on the lookout for
a partner to sin with, because desire of
its own can never lead to sin.
Desire must have the partnership of the will,
and desire is on the go looking for
a will, looking for an individual who will,
will what the desire wants, so that together
they may form a union, and in consequence
of that union, sin may be conceived.
Now the moment desire receives the consent of
the will, that moment sin is conceived.
There is tremendously profound theology here.
Sin is conceived the moment the will agrees
to the desire.
Now the importance of that is this.
Jesus said, you see, on one occasion, he
said this, everyone who looks at a woman
lustfully has already committed adultery with her in
his heart.
Now please notice, every man who looks to
lust has already committed adultery in the heart.
Sin has been conceived in the heart.
It's not born yet, it's not come to
birth, it's not come to an action yet.
The person's not been able to do anything,
he's not been able to touch the woman,
but the sin has been conceived.
Sin is already conceived in the heart and
in the mind, and only awaits the opportunity
to express itself.
My good friends, I find this most challenging.
You see, there will be multitudes of men
and women on the day of judgment who
have never committed adultery in the act, but
who will be discovered to be adulterers in
the heart, who will never have murdered in
the act, but in whose souls the idea
was conceived, if only they had the opportunity
without being found out.
I have no doubt that there are multitudes
of men and women along this land tonight,
like every other land, who would commit all
the sins of the book if only they
were not to be found out, and we're
assured of it.
But God does not judge sin simply by
the act.
He sees the conception of the child in
the womb.
Sin conceived in the mind is sin in
embryo, and the fetus is there even before
birth.
It's a most challenging thought.
What's your mind like, my friend?
What do you think about?
Is there anyone that you'd put a knife
in, if you could?
Is there an object that you would lust
with, if you could?
Before God, sin is conceived when the will
consents to the desire.
Sin is conceived, then, even as a child
is conceived.
Sin conceived will sooner or later give birth
to the deed.
Desire, when it has conceived, brings forth sin.
It's only a matter of time now.
Conception has taken place.
Birth will follow.
So I turn from the desire, which is
the root of sin, and the deed, which
marks the birth of sin, to the death,
which marks the fruit of sin.
My text does not finish without saying this.
And sin, when it is full grown, brings
forth death.
Now, there is a most intimate relation between
sin and death, according to the Bible.
And it is so intimate, so real, so
imminent, that you simply cannot separate the one
from the other.
You cannot have sin without having death.
Sin carries death in its bosom from the
moment that sin is conceived.
You notice, according to this text of James,
according to this word of his, temptation is
conceived by desire enlisting the will.
Temptation and sin are thereby conceived.
There is no other conception of death.
But the moment sin comes forth, the moment
sin appears, death is already in the bosom
of sin, in the heart of sin.
There is no separate act of conception of
death.
Death is part and parcel of the sin
that comes forth.
Now, James's statement here is a corrective to
what has been a misunderstanding in many places
of a statement made by Paul.
There have been those from time to time
who have misunderstood what Paul said when he
said, the wages of sin is death.
Now, when you say that, the wages of
sin is death, it means different things to
different people.
And there are some people who have concluded
that because Paul puts it like that, they
conclude wrongly, of course, they've not read Paul
through and through.
But they do conclude, nevertheless, that what Paul
had in mind was this.
Well, all right, sin pays a wage.
That wage may be death, but you see,
wages can be negotiated.
So it doesn't necessarily mean that every sin
is to be punished by death.
The wage may be negotiated.
It may be greater, it may be less.
There are some sins that are not important,
others are very important.
All right, death may be the wage of
the big sin, the great sin, so called.
Now, apart from the fact that Scripture doesn't
classify sin like that, this particular word of
James's corrects that possible misunderstanding before it's emerged.
Death is already in the bosom of sin
when sin is born, and it only awaits
sin to grow up.
Sin, when it is grown up, sin, when
it is matured, when it comes to itself,
brings forth death.
Death lies, let me repeat, in the bosom
of sin before sin is born, when it
is conceived.
Death emerges as the child of sin when
sin is full grown.
Now, I guess all of us have been
at some time or other puzzled by this.
Death emerges as the fruit of sin when
sin is full grown.
What does that mean?
Now, this is not a Bible class, or
I would go around the various alternatives and
try to enumerate them and classify them, but
this is not meant to be that kind
of meeting tonight.
Therefore, will you allow me simply, dogmatically, to
say what I think it means?
For there are very many alternatives to an
understanding of this.
I want to read to you, in order
to explain what I think it means, I
want to read to you from Genesis chapter
15 and verse 16.
It's an Old Testament story.
God is entering into covenant with Abraham, and
in the course of that, God says to
Abraham as follows, know of a surety, he
says, that your descendants will be sojourners in
a land that is not theirs, and there
will be slaves there, and they will be
oppressed there four hundred years.
Now, this was before Egypt.
This was when Abraham was yet childless.
They will be there, says God, telling him
beforehand what was going to happen for four
hundred years.
But I will bring judgment on the nation
which they serve, and afterward they will come
out with great possession.
Now, this is the most relevant part.
And they shall come back here in the
fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites
is not yet full.
The iniquity of the Amorites is not yet
full.
Now, please, can I summarize it?
God said to Abraham, I have a land
of promise to my people.
At the moment, the people living in that
land are the Amorites.
Now, the Amorites are sinners, and they're already
under my condemnation, because they're sinners, every one
of them, the whole nation.
That says, God, nevertheless, even though they're all
sinners, and they're guilty, and they don't deserve
the gift of life, nor its continuance, I'm
not going to exterminate them yet.
Mark it, says God, I'm going to give
them four hundred years to prove themselves.
Oh, God is gracious.
I'm going to give them four hundred years
to prove themselves.
The iniquity of the Amorites is not yet
so full that I must exterminate them.
And so, says God, you will go down
to Egypt, and you'll have a holiday in
Egypt for four hundred years, and I'll teach
you something in Egypt too, of course.
It'll not be a waste time for you
in Egypt, but you go to Egypt for
four hundred years.
In the meantime, we'll see what the Amorites
do.
And for four hundred years, God will hold
the hand of judgment upon the Amorites, until
ultimately, the iniquity of the Amorites was full.
What happened then?
Joshua goes in, and there is the slaughter
of the Canaanites.
We read of it in the book of
Joshua.
Now, I've heard many people criticizing Joshua, criticizing
the Almighty God, for the way some people
are slaughtered, belonging to the Amorites.
Wait a moment.
I want you to bear in mind the
fact that for four hundred years, God gave
them special mercy, and was long-suffering that
they should prove whether they will or whether
they will not serve Him and obey Him.
That's the context.
The iniquity of the Amorites is not yet
full.
Now, says God, sin, lust.
When lust is conceived, it brings forth sin.
Sin when it is finished.
Sin when it is full.
Sin when it has been given every opportunity
of expressing itself, or when the sinner has
been given every opportunity of repenting and of
turning aside and of turning back to God
in penitence and in faith.
Sin, when it insists upon becoming more and
more and greater and greater, ultimately brings forth
death.
You know, if this old book, the Bible,
is true, then things are very serious.
What does James mean by death here?
If we were to discuss this doctrine of
death, which is the consequence of sin against
the whole of the New Testament or of
the Bible, we would have to say much
more about it.
We would have to refer, of course, to
the fact that when sin brings forth death,
then the first thing that happens is there
is a sense of alienation in our spirit.
We're separated from God and we don't want
God.
That's death spiritually.
We come under the sentence of God's wrath.
That's another aspect of it.
And then, of course, sin deserves and receives
death in the ultimate sense of final, irretrievable,
irreversible separation from God.
All that is involved in death.
But I suggest to you that James has
something different in mind here.
Another aspect of death which he is stressing
very particularly.
He may have the others in the back
of his mind but I suggest to you
that it's another one that he's thinking of
here.
Sometimes we speak of a point of no
return.
A point of no return.
You see it in some sports when a
diver has begun his plunge or her plunge.
There's no return.
In other sports, well, you can retrieve the
situation a little but not if you're diving.
And there are other sports too.
But in life there is a point beyond
which, once we pass it, we simply can't
put the mechanism in reverse.
We have to go forward.
You know, when sin brings forth death, it
is always at that point where a sinner
simply cannot go back.
He cannot repent.
He cannot change his mind.
He cannot change his heart.
He cannot change his course.
He cannot change his master.
There is only one way to go.
It is on under the impulse of desire
become temptation become sin and it is wrapped
around me and I'm hooked up to it
and I cannot turn left right or any
other way.
I've just got to go on.
You know life is serious because there are
men and women in this condition tonight.
They can't turn left or right.
They can only go on in the way
of sin.
You know this is the kind of thing
that happens, is it not?
In the formation of a habit.
Something is suggested to us or we don't
like it.
It's not right, the conscience says.
And we argue around it a little and
we say, oh my, the folk that told
me that that was wrong, they're a little
bit old-fashioned and square, they're not with
it.
And the book that teaches that such and
such a thing is wrong, it's as old
-fashioned as the hill.
It may be all right under certain circumstances,
under my circumstances.
And so the suggestion put to one arouses
the desire within one.
And the desire works upon the will, lures
it, entices it.
And the will says, well all right, this
once, it'll be all right.
Only this one.
And sin is committed.
You know what happens, don't you?
The next time the same temptation comes, it's
not quite as difficult to repeat.
The initial doubt as to whether it was
right or wrong, that initial tug of war
is not quite as strong now.
I can rationalize the situation now, and of
course wasn't it pleasing?
I had a little bit of pleasure, I
had a little kick.
And so it's not as difficult to do
it the second time.
The third time it's still less difficult, until
at last I can do it without a
blush.
As a matter of fact, as life goes
on, it becomes a mode of thinking, and
I can do it as easily as I
breathe.
An act has become a habit, and the
thing has become part and parcel of my
life, and I cannot now undo it.
Men and women, this is what this monster
sin does.
I know of only one who can deal
with it effectively.
Politics can't, science can't, philosophy can't, logic can't.
Art cannot.
You may pose and glimpse at the most
glorious masterpieces of art, but they cannot deal
with sin in your soul, or the slavery
of your spirit and of your passion.
But I tell you one who can.
Said the angel, thou shall call his name
Jesus, for he shall save his people from
their sin.
He died that we may be forgiven for
the things that are past.
He lives that we may be saved from
the power of and the dominion of sin
in the present.
And he lives to come again, to conquer
all aspects of sin in us, and finish
in his people the work that he has
begun here upon earth.
I commend to you the Lord Jesus.
Are there things for which you've never been
forgiven?
Are there links in the chain in your
life that have never been broken?
When you sing that hymn, does it mock
you?
He breaks the power of cancelled sin.
He sets the prisoner free.
Is there a mockery to you?
He is able to serve to the uttermost.
Why?
Because he ever lived to make intercession for
us, to plead for us.
When we turn from our sin and come
to him in our need, he pleads the
merits of his blood on our behalf, and
God forgives.
And in the struggle with temptation as Christian
men and women, we turn to him and
cry an SOS.
He makes grace abound toward us, that we
always may have all sufficiency in all things
and abound unto every good work.
That's the New Testament language.
Very well, then.
In the face of what desire may be
and may do, of the temptation that it
arouses, of the sin that it conceives, and
of the death to which it ultimately leads,
I ask you, if you have never done
so before, put your arms around the Lord
Jesus Christ by faith.
Claim him as your own.
Name him as your Savior.
Acknowledge him as such.
And if you have already done that, and
perhaps have been unaware of all that he's
able to do for you, make sure that
you discover afresh in these days of terrible
temptation, when everything in the whole world around
us seems to arouse the desires of men
to sin in one way or another.
May the Lord Jesus, in all his glory
and his grace, become not only more glorious
to our view, but more precious to us
in experience.
Trust him tonight.
Make this the night when you turn to
him and become unhooked from one mode of
life and of living, to become by faith
hooked onto him.
Let us pray.
Oh heavenly Father, we thank thee that it
is possible for us to gather like this,
and that we can dare look into the
awful tragedy of human life, seeing desire becoming
lust, and lust leading to temptation, and temptation
to sin, and sin to death, that we
can look at it and examine it, because
we know of one who breaks the spell
and the fetter and makes men free.
Oh our Lord, grant that every man and
woman, every fellow and girl gathered with us
here tonight, may be among God's free men.
Oh that we may taste the liberty wherewith
Christ makes men free, and thus living.
May we be to the praise and glory
of your name, and a testimony to the
message of the gospel, even forevermore.
Amen.
We conclude by singing a great hymn of
praise number two hundred and