Sermon Video: The Nature of Temptation - James 1:13-18

From the very beginning, man has sought to assign blame to somebody else.  This isn't a tactic that we need to be taught, children figure it out on their own.  The problem is, when blame truly does reside with us, foisting it off elsewhere doesn't make things better.  Temptation is just such an item.  People try to blame society, argue about nature vs. nurture, even go with, "the devil made me do it", all in a vain attempt to shift the blame for our moral failings elsewhere.  Unfortunately for us, temptation comes from within us.  External factors matter, as does parenting and a whole host of related positive and negative factors that affect a person's ability to resist temptation, but the origin of temptation is always from within.  James makes it clear that the villain that is dragging us away toward sin is our own evil desires.  The reason that Jesus successfully resisted temptation, from the devil himself, was his complete lack of wickedness in his heart.  God is all-sufficient, in himself, and thus beyond temptation, we on the other hand, act all the time out of our real or perceived lack, thus our temptation to do evil.  Correctly diagnosing the cause of temptation is an important step, it gives us hope that we can have victory over our temptation, by the power of the Holy Spirit, for we don't have to change the world to remove external temptations, we need only let God repair our damages hearts to remove them internally.

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