August 19, 2025 • 26 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Temptation is everywhere in today's culture. No wonder Jesus taught
his disciples to pray against it when he gave them
the Lord's Prayer. Today, on turning Point, doctor David Jeremiah
takes a closer look at the dangers of temptation. You'll
learn exactly how you fall into it and more importantly,
how you can get out of it. Here's David to
(00:27):
share more from his message, Prayer and Protection Part one.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Well, one thing I know for sure about these broadcasts
during these particular days is that they're for everyone. Because
the Bible says there has no temptation taken you, but
such as is common demand. That means everybody has temptation,
and it's not sinful to be tempted. It's sinful to
yield to temptation. We're learning that as we walk through
(00:52):
these lessons. Actually there were two messages on temptation in
this series, but we have to carve these messages up
in half. So for radio there's four. There's lesson number
one part one in two and lesson number two Part
one and two, and these are all from this particular
section on temptation. Friends, if you have not already looked
(01:14):
into the possibility of going with us to New England
and Canada. I hope you will do that. We're leaving
on October fourth and coming back on the eleventh, and
we'll have guest artists Michael Sanchez and Urie Vega will
be on a beautiful haul in America ship, the America Zyderdam,
and we're going to have a great time together. I've
done this one before and it is one of my favorites.
(01:37):
I'm glad we get to do it again, and we
hope you can come and be with us once again.
The dates are October fourth through eleventh. Go to David
Jeremiah dot org for more information. Here is and Protection
Part one, the second half. How many of you know
that you learn more the night before it exam than
(01:57):
you've learned the whole semester. How many of you know that,
and you know that ultimately in the whole process of things,
that exams are important and they're good because they promote
and they motivate.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
You to learn right.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
But how many of you get up in the morning
and say, oh, God, lead me into an exam today.
How many of you pray that I don't know anybody
that prays that I used to walk in the class
praying no, not today, God, Oh not today.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
You all know that, don't you. Let me just ask
you this question.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
If exams are good and they promote learning, why wouldn't
you pray for them?
Speaker 3 (02:36):
Just ask me that you know why.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Because whenever you take an exam, there's two possibilities.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
You can either pass or you can fail.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
And the reason you don't pray for exams is because
you know the potential that you studied all the wrong stuff,
or you know the potential to walk into that exam
and not do well, so you're not excited. You know
that ultimately it helps you to be motivated to learn
and it helps you to grow your knowledge, but you
don't pray for it because you don't pray for it
on the basis of the weakness you sense in your
(03:05):
own heart to not necessari ledges.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
Do you understand the analogy? Why does God.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Say to us, you know, lead us not into temptation,
very simply because we're to pray that knowing that in
the midst of the trial we could be tempted, and
we just want to confess by that prayer, Lord, I'm
weak and I don't want to be put even in
the place where I could be tempted. That's a good
and positive prayer. It's an essence, the replaying of the
(03:32):
verse of Scripture that says, let him that thinketh he stand,
take heed lest he fall. Don't get cocky about your
spiritual life. Don't do as I've heard some TV preachers do,
stand up and challenge the devil and say, just bring
on whatever you want to bring on. Not me, friend,
not me. I'm praying every day, lead me not into temptation.
(03:54):
I've told some of you that God can never greatly
use a man until he's greatly crushed a man. And
I used to pray daily that I could be the
exception I used to be. But you know what, I
don't think there are any exceptions. And so what Jesus
is teaching us here is this, when we find ourselves
(04:14):
in prayer, we need to pray, Lord, I'm a weak
human being and I'm not strong, but in You I
can be strong. But Lord, just today, it's okay with
me if you don't put me in a way of temptation.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
It's all right with me. Now.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
If you don't like that prayer, you pray the opposite. Okay,
if you think this is a hard prayer, you can
pray the opposite if you want to, but I don't
advise it.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
Now.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Having said all of this, how do you know if
in the midst of that you're being tempted? I read
a statement that was in Leadership magazine and it says this,
The devil's easy to identify. He always shows up when
you're terribly tired and makes a very reasonable request, which
you know you shouldn't grant. That's a pretty good dossier
(04:59):
on the devil, and especially the tired part. How many
of you know that when you're tired, when you're worn down,
you're really susceptible to the things that he wants to
throw into your pathway, I went back through and I
want to do kind of a post mortem on temptation,
if I might. I want to give you six things
to watch out for in the midst of a trial.
In the midst of a temptation, how do you know
(05:19):
that this is a temptation to take you away from
God instead of to test the reality of who you are.
First of all, the first step of temptation is always
a deceit. The first step is often the least obvious
because of the very nature of what it is. We're
always given this false impression by the tempter that whatever
(05:43):
wrong we do really isn't all that serious. I have
played that over and over again with people of God
who've gotten in trouble. Well, I never thought.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
There was all that much to it, pastor not that
much to it.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Satan comes along and he massages your thinking process, and
he candy coats the whole situation, and he deceives you
into thinking that something, in a clear right moment, you
would know is wrong. But somehow he deceives you into
believing that it's well, maybe close to the line and
not all that bad.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
You know, deceit.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Well, once you get through the process of deceit, the
next thing that happens is you find yourself caught up
in delight, and Satan makes you.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
Think that this is pretty good. He gives you a
sense of fascination with it.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
You become delighted with the whole prospect of whatever the
temptation might be. He puts a sense of excitement in
your heart about it. Then, when you've gone from deceit
to delight, the third step is the step of desire
and this kind of gets a hold of your passion.
It produces a powerful response within you, a deep and
(06:50):
compelling desire. There's an arousal in the desire part of you.
It appears very pleasant, very reasonable, very much to your
advantage to pursue this thing. You've talked to yourself into it.
You've got this hunger for it, a desire for it.
Do you see what's happening. It starts with deceit, and
then it goes to delight, and then it goes to desire.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
And then there's always this little place right in.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
The middle of the process called deliberation, where you sort
of take it out of the package and you play
with it. You sort of put it in the screen
of your mind and you think about it. You allow
it to appeal to you, You listen, and then in
the process of deliberation, you reach out and you take it.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
And after deliberation, let me tell you what's next.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Defeat, Defeat, you proceed to act on the temptation. Let
me tell you, up through the fourth step, there is
no sin that is overt perhaps sin in the minds
and in the heart, but there's no overt sin. But
after step four you have now acted upon the temptation,
and you are defeated.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
And some of you.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Listening to me, you know, is I replay this whole system.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
It's just like you remember.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
You can think back through the things that have happened
in your life, and it's exactly the way it happens.
The reason I know it's the way it happens because
it's from the enemy. And he started this whole thing
back in the garden of Eden. He hadn't changed his
mind one bit. He hadn't even changed his strategy at all.
I'll show you in a minute. After defeat, you know
what's next. And I've caught people on the rebound in
(08:15):
this despair, despair. I wish, for my sake and for
all of our sake, that I had a video camera
that could replay all the tearful moments in my study,
as people have told me, the hurt and the pain
(08:36):
and the despair that resulted from their yielding to temptation.
In case you're not sure that's really what happens, I
want you to read Psalm thirty two and Psalm fifty one.
These are the entries in David's journal after his sin
with Bathsheba, and you won't have any trouble understanding his despair. Now,
(09:01):
that's the way Satan always works. Always he doesn't depart
from it. You can't show me a situation where he
uses any other strategy.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
That's his strategy. A watch.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Satan led Adam and Eve to believe that eating the
forbidden fruit would not really be that serious deceit. Then
he presented the picture to them of becoming God's knowing
good and evil delight. Then this had a tremendous appeal
(09:33):
to them and aroused their desire to become great and wise,
and it was pleasant and reasonable desire, and they actually
reached out and took it, took it right in in
a selfwilled exertion against God. This was a deliberate action
(09:54):
on their part, deliberation, and the result was that they
sensed immediately that they had been taken in. They were victimized,
They were naked and ashamed, embarrassed, and didn't want to
see God defeat. And the next thing we see them,
they're walking out of paradise with their heads down, knowing
(10:16):
all that they had given up despair. And I'm going
to tell you what, when you face temptation in the scriptures,
everywhere you see it appear on the pages of the
Word of God. If you dissect it, you will find
these six things. And I only tell you that because
if you're on that road and you've come to the
(10:37):
first intersection, and that first intersection has got de Seit
written on the signpost, you're not too far down the road.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
The sink hole isn't there yet.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
But you keep going, and about between four and five
blocks there's a sinkhole, and you're going to go in
it if you don't turn around and get started.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
Back in the other direction.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Well, you say, Pastor Jeremiah, the Lord says, lead us
not into the way where we could be tempted, because
we're weak. If we're in that way. These are the
things we should expect.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
What do we do?
Speaker 2 (11:07):
How do we keep ourselves from being victimized by temptation?
Oh that's a whole message in itself. And I've preached
on it and written on it, and talked about it,
taught it in classes. I don't know that there is
any time that I could a lot and that would
give you everything that the Bible says about it.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
I do know this, we all claim.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
First Corinthians ten thirteen there hath no temptation taken you,
but such as is common to man. But God is
faithful who will not suffer you to be tempted above
that you're able, but will with the temptation also make
a way to escape that you may be able to
bear it. That vers in itself is filled with wonderful truth.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
But I remember one.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Day of fighting through some of these thoughts and trying
to find a strategy.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
And let me tell you something.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
We ought to have a strategy for temptation. I hope
you do. If you don't have a strateg at you,
you're going to be a victim. You're not going to
be victorious. And I wrote down in the front of
my Bible five or six words that to me kind
of condense and crystallize the strategy that ought to be
in the heart of every believer. Knowing that temptation is there,
(12:15):
we're all going to face it.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
Here are those words.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Number One, fight fight, you say, I'm supposed to fight, absolutely,
you know why. If you don't fight, you'll be victimized.
You know. I'm so sorry to tell you that. A
lot of Christian people I know are pansies. Here's what
they say.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
Well, I don't know. I just I.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Couldn't do anything. It just just happened. What do you
mean to just happen? Well, just you know, pastor, I
just I don't know, man, it just just happened. Well,
nothing just happens, does it. Don't let it happen. The
Bible says fight, listen James four to seven. Resist the devil,
and he will.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Flee from you one Peter five, eight and nine.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary, the devil, walks
about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.
We know that part, but did you read the next verse?
Resist him? Steadfast in the faith fight. Ephesian six eleven says,
put on the whole armor of God that you may
be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.
(13:25):
God expects a little bit of effort on our part
against the evil of our day. That means that you
and I can't just be passive Christians. I don't have
time to tell you all the ways to resist the devil,
but you can certainly think of a few yourself. Second
word in my list follow after you put down the
(13:48):
word fight, then think about this. This is kind of
the opposite side of it. James Forth seven and eight says,
submit to God, Draw near to God, and He will
draw near to you.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
One Peter two twenty one.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
Says for this, you were called Christ left you an
example to follow his steps. How are we supposed to
be victorious over temptation in this sick world.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
At which we live.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
You've got to fight against the enemy, and you've got
to make up your mind you're.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
Going to stay as close to God as you can.
You've got to follow him.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
The Bible says, draw near to God, and he'll draw
near to you. Are you taking any steps toward God?
Most people I know want to keep a safe distance.
You know, I like God, I like knowing Him, as
long as they don't have to get too close. Well,
the further the distance between you and the Lord, the
greatest potential for you to fail in the hour of temptation.
(14:36):
Draw near to God and he'll draw near to you.
How do you draw near to God through the spiritual
disciplines of reading and praying and fasting and journaling and
worshiping and all of the things. You know, those aren't
merits and themselves, but they're the avenues upon which grace, walks,
draw near to God.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
Follow thirdly, flee.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
And then I just want to to read these verses
to you, because it says here that there is a
real sense in which it's important for you to fight
some things. But there's two things you shouldn't try to
fight you should run from. This is not cowardly, this
is godly. God tells us in his word there's two
things we should never try to deal with in a
frontal exchange, but we should always run from them.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
Do you know what they are?
Speaker 2 (15:20):
Watch this one Corinthians ten fourteen. Therefore, my beloved, flee
from idolatry. Don't ever get close to idolatry. Don't do
anything that puts something else or someone else in God's place.
Run from it, and then saygo. In Timothy two twenty two,
flee youthful lusts two things you can't deal with in
(15:41):
a frontal attack, immorality and idolatry. And the Bible says
in those situations you should always run, get out, get away.
I tell kids, the best equipment for victory over temptation
is the best pair of adeda's money can buy.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
Go get yourself some shoes, and get out. Young people,
let me tell you something.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
You may think, well, you know, it's all right to
kind of play with temptation in the whole area of
sexual things.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
No, it's not. You can't do that. You'll never win.
You will never win.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
That's why Jesus tells us in his word to flee it,
to get away from it, to put it away from us.
Set up checkpoints to keep you from the process. If
you don't, you will be victimized. I was talking to
a young man from another part of the country who
came to see me, and he was telling me the
story of his failure. And this man is a good man,
(16:32):
but he's messed up his life and messed up his family.
And he came to see me because I was far
enough away nobody would know. And we talked and I
said to him, boy, I tell you, with all the
stuff you've grown up with and with all your knowledge,
how did you let yourself get into the situation?
Speaker 3 (16:47):
Why did you do it? He said, you know, Pastor, I.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
Knew it was wrong, and I always thought that I
could stop whenever I wanted to. But he said, there
was a place where we were driving in the car,
and all the time we were driving, I knew in
my heart that what we were doing was absolutely wrong,
in a violation against God, and I couldn't stop. We
could not stop, We could not stop. The pull of
(17:14):
sexual temptation and idolatry is so strong that on these
two occasions only God said to us, run, flee, get away.
And parents, if you see your kids getting involved in
something that looks like it's going in the wrong direction,
you better put on the brakes quickly. You better stop
and say no, don't play with that, don't start down
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that road, because it spells disaster. Fight and follow and flee.
I remember Joseph, wonderful Joseph, Joseph who, when caught in
the clutch of a predatory woman who wanted to take
away his purity, ran out of the house and left
his coat in her hands because he knew it was
(17:59):
better off without his coat than without his character. Joseph
gives us an example, doesn't he? And then finally, this
is the last one, feed, fight, follow, flee and feed.
Did you know that the Bible actually says this Psalm one, nineteen,
verse eleven. Your word have I hidden in my heart?
(18:19):
What's the rest of a class that I may not
sin against? Thee, wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his
way by taking heed there too, according to Thy word.
When Jesus was tempted in the wilderness, even the Son
of God, the divine Son of God, tempted by the enemy,
(18:40):
could not and did not withstand temptation. Apart from the
word of God, every temptation was met with It is written,
It is written, it is written. I don't understand why
God's people feel like they have any right to succeed
in the life of holiness and purity when they spend
no time in the Word of God at all. You
(19:00):
can't do it. There is no way to ever succeed.
I'm mystified when I realize that the struggle for godliness
and righteousness is intensified in our culture today. And yet
we see, if I understand the statistics across the country,
people go into church less and less, and people say, well,
you know what, Pastor Jeremiah, I can't come to church
on Sunday night.
Speaker 3 (19:20):
I mean, that's the only night we have at home
with our family. We work so hard during the week,
and so we just.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
Need Sunday night to sort of stay home and get
things together. You know, I'm not going to argue if
that's what you think God wants you to do. But
I want to ask you this question, is what you're
doing on Sunday night, wherever you are, if you're not
under the teaching of the Word of God. Is that
helping to feed you so that you can be more
successful as a believer, so that you can go on
with God. But I want to challenge you that if
(19:48):
you're not feeding yourself and not taking advantage of every
feeding you can get, you're in jeopardy. I've learned a
lot on my own, and people have sent me stuff
from everywhere about the immune system. Some of it's good
and some of it's strange. But I tell you what
I learned, what I know, and it's got a wonderful
application of what we've talked about today. We have been
(20:10):
given by God a system in our physical bodies that
was prepared to ward off disease. It fights against the
things that come out of the atmosphere that can destroy us.
When a person gets a cancer or some other disease,
(20:31):
if you trace it back to the root, it's because
the immune system has become defective in some way, so
that the natural way of fighting off the disease is
not allowed to work, and therefore the disease begins to
take over. And when you go to school on how
to deal with disease after you've had it, or to
(20:53):
try to deal with it in a preventative way, in
all the literature that you read, they will continually talk
about building the immune system. Did you know that God
has given to every believer in immune system?
Speaker 3 (21:05):
He really has.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
He's given us a system through his word and through
our salvation that makes it possible for us to live healthy, righteous,
godly lives. But you know what complicates the immune system
in a human being? And I have been so convicted
by this junk food, improper diet, sometimes an atmosphere where
(21:32):
pollutants can get into your system and violate the immunity program.
That God has all of those things, and I was
just thinking about it. All those same things are what
keep God's people from being strong and healthy spiritually. He's
given us the system that will keep us strong. But
we don't feed ourselves right, and we think our immune
(21:53):
system is going to be okay if we just fill
it full of junk food. We allow all of the
pollutants of the world's system to filter through us and
just little by a little tear down the immune system
until there's nothing left to fight off the things of
the world.
Speaker 3 (22:09):
So what do you do.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
You become conscious of your diet, You become conscious of exercise,
you become conscious of atmosphere, You become conscious of all
kinds of things that can make a difference. And you
know what, this is a very interesting concept. And I
read this whole book on this one little thought that
the way this disease happens in people is through what
they call free radicals. Now that's not a political thing.
(22:32):
That's something that happens inside of you. You know what
a free radical is. It's a cell. It's a cell
within your body that doesn't function according to the pattern.
It just all of a sudden one day it just
goes wamo, and it just flies out of the pattern,
and it goes and it joins itself to another cell,
and it starts to develop what we call a tumor
(22:53):
because it's gotten out of the pattern. And they've done
enough research on this now to know that there are
certain things that cause free radicals. For instance, oxidization does that.
And so to beat that, you got to take vitamin
E you got to take beta carotene.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
This is not a health food lesson. I just want
to tell you what I've been learning.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
You eat vitamin E, take all kinds of vitamin E pills,
and you take beta carotene, and you put that together
with vitamin C, and those three vitamins help you when
it comes to free radicals, so that they don't.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
You know what temptation is like a free radical isn't
It is out of nowhere. What happened it just out
of nowhere.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
I was going along and everything was just the way
it was supposed to be, and then man, a free
radical got me.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
I want to tell you something.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
The best way I know to keep that from happening
is get the right vitamins in.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
Your spiritual system. And if you do that, you can
be a healthy Christian. Amen.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
You know, temptation is inevitable, but yielding to temptation is
not inevitable. It is the result of being careless and
not being faithful in what we need to do to
build ourselves up so that the temptation has no place
to grab hold of us. And we're learning that as
we study the Lord's Prayer Tomorrow we'll go into the
(24:13):
second half of this whole discussion. This is part two
of the first lesson, and tomorrow will be part one
of the second lesson. We've never had four lessons like this,
and it's kind of hard to describe them, so I
don't want you to get lost. We're still talking about temptation,
and I hope you'll be with us for the duration
of this discussion. Hey, there's a study guide for this series,
(24:36):
and there's a set of CDs that you can get
that we'll recapture everything we've been talking about. Go to
David Jeremiah dot org. That's our website. There you can
find out about it. Whatever you do, be sure and
join us tomorrow right here on.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
This good station.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
The message you've just heard came to you from Shadow
Mountain Community Church, Senior pastor, doctor David Jeremiah. Has the
Lord been moving in your.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
Life through this ministry?
Speaker 1 (25:05):
Tell us how at Turning Point Pobox thirty eight thirty eight,
San Diego, California, nine two one sixty three. Visit our
website at Davidjeremiah dot org, Slash Radio, or call eight
hundred nine four seven nineteen ninety three ask for your
copy of David's new book for strengthening your prayer life.
(25:26):
Everything to God in Prayer, It's yours for a gift
of any amount. You can also stream more than twelve
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with our streaming service Turning Point Plus. For a monthly
gift of any amount, visit turningpointplus dot org for details.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
This is David Michael Jeremiah.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
Join us tomorrow as we continue the series Prayer The
Great Adventure on Turning Point with Doctor David Jeremiah
Temptation is everywhere in today's culture. No wonder Jesus taught
his disciples to pray against it when he gave them
the Lord's Prayer. Today, on turning Point, doctor David Jeremiah
takes a closer look at the dangers of temptation. You'll
learn exactly how you fall into it and more importantly,
how you can get out of it. Here's David to
(00:27):
share more from his message, Prayer and Protection Part one.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Well, one thing I know for sure about these broadcasts
during these particular days is that they're for everyone. Because
the Bible says there has no temptation taken you, but
such as is common demand. That means everybody has temptation,
and it's not sinful to be tempted. It's sinful to
yield to temptation. We're learning that as we walk through
(00:52):
these lessons. Actually there were two messages on temptation in
this series, but we have to carve these messages up
in half. So for radio there's four. There's lesson number
one part one in two and lesson number two Part
one and two, and these are all from this particular
section on temptation. Friends, if you have not already looked
(01:14):
into the possibility of going with us to New England
and Canada. I hope you will do that. We're leaving
on October fourth and coming back on the eleventh, and
we'll have guest artists Michael Sanchez and Urie Vega will
be on a beautiful haul in America ship, the America Zyderdam,
and we're going to have a great time together. I've
done this one before and it is one of my favorites.
(01:37):
I'm glad we get to do it again, and we
hope you can come and be with us once again.
The dates are October fourth through eleventh. Go to David
Jeremiah dot org for more information. Here is and Protection
Part one, the second half. How many of you know
that you learn more the night before it exam than
(01:57):
you've learned the whole semester. How many of you know that,
and you know that ultimately in the whole process of things,
that exams are important and they're good because they promote
and they motivate.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
You to learn right.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
But how many of you get up in the morning
and say, oh, God, lead me into an exam today.
How many of you pray that I don't know anybody
that prays that I used to walk in the class
praying no, not today, God, Oh not today.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
You all know that, don't you. Let me just ask
you this question.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
If exams are good and they promote learning, why wouldn't
you pray for them?
Speaker 3 (02:36):
Just ask me that you know why.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
Because whenever you take an exam, there's two possibilities.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
You can either pass or you can fail.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
And the reason you don't pray for exams is because
you know the potential that you studied all the wrong stuff,
or you know the potential to walk into that exam
and not do well, so you're not excited. You know
that ultimately it helps you to be motivated to learn
and it helps you to grow your knowledge, but you
don't pray for it because you don't pray for it
on the basis of the weakness you sense in your
(03:05):
own heart to not necessari ledges.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
Do you understand the analogy? Why does God.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Say to us, you know, lead us not into temptation,
very simply because we're to pray that knowing that in
the midst of the trial we could be tempted, and
we just want to confess by that prayer, Lord, I'm
weak and I don't want to be put even in
the place where I could be tempted. That's a good
and positive prayer. It's an essence, the replaying of the
(03:32):
verse of Scripture that says, let him that thinketh he stand,
take heed lest he fall. Don't get cocky about your
spiritual life. Don't do as I've heard some TV preachers do,
stand up and challenge the devil and say, just bring
on whatever you want to bring on. Not me, friend,
not me. I'm praying every day, lead me not into temptation.
(03:54):
I've told some of you that God can never greatly
use a man until he's greatly crushed a man. And
I used to pray daily that I could be the
exception I used to be. But you know what, I
don't think there are any exceptions. And so what Jesus
is teaching us here is this, when we find ourselves
(04:14):
in prayer, we need to pray, Lord, I'm a weak
human being and I'm not strong, but in You I
can be strong. But Lord, just today, it's okay with
me if you don't put me in a way of temptation.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
It's all right with me. Now.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
If you don't like that prayer, you pray the opposite. Okay,
if you think this is a hard prayer, you can
pray the opposite if you want to, but I don't
advise it.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
Now.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Having said all of this, how do you know if
in the midst of that you're being tempted? I read
a statement that was in Leadership magazine and it says this,
The devil's easy to identify. He always shows up when
you're terribly tired and makes a very reasonable request, which
you know you shouldn't grant. That's a pretty good dossier
(04:59):
on the devil, and especially the tired part. How many
of you know that when you're tired, when you're worn down,
you're really susceptible to the things that he wants to
throw into your pathway, I went back through and I
want to do kind of a post mortem on temptation,
if I might. I want to give you six things
to watch out for in the midst of a trial.
In the midst of a temptation, how do you know
(05:19):
that this is a temptation to take you away from
God instead of to test the reality of who you are.
First of all, the first step of temptation is always
a deceit. The first step is often the least obvious
because of the very nature of what it is. We're
always given this false impression by the tempter that whatever
(05:43):
wrong we do really isn't all that serious. I have
played that over and over again with people of God
who've gotten in trouble. Well, I never thought.
Speaker 3 (05:50):
There was all that much to it, pastor not that
much to it.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Satan comes along and he massages your thinking process, and
he candy coats the whole situation, and he deceives you
into thinking that something, in a clear right moment, you
would know is wrong. But somehow he deceives you into
believing that it's well, maybe close to the line and
not all that bad.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
You know, deceit.
Speaker 2 (06:14):
Well, once you get through the process of deceit, the
next thing that happens is you find yourself caught up
in delight, and Satan makes you.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
Think that this is pretty good. He gives you a
sense of fascination with it.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
You become delighted with the whole prospect of whatever the
temptation might be. He puts a sense of excitement in
your heart about it. Then, when you've gone from deceit
to delight, the third step is the step of desire
and this kind of gets a hold of your passion.
It produces a powerful response within you, a deep and
(06:50):
compelling desire. There's an arousal in the desire part of you.
It appears very pleasant, very reasonable, very much to your
advantage to pursue this thing. You've talked to yourself into it.
You've got this hunger for it, a desire for it.
Do you see what's happening. It starts with deceit, and
then it goes to delight, and then it goes to desire.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
And then there's always this little place right in.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
The middle of the process called deliberation, where you sort
of take it out of the package and you play
with it. You sort of put it in the screen
of your mind and you think about it. You allow
it to appeal to you, You listen, and then in
the process of deliberation, you reach out and you take it.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
And after deliberation, let me tell you what's next.
Speaker 2 (07:30):
Defeat, Defeat, you proceed to act on the temptation. Let
me tell you, up through the fourth step, there is
no sin that is overt perhaps sin in the minds
and in the heart, but there's no overt sin. But
after step four you have now acted upon the temptation,
and you are defeated.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
And some of you.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Listening to me, you know, is I replay this whole system.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
It's just like you remember.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
You can think back through the things that have happened
in your life, and it's exactly the way it happens.
The reason I know it's the way it happens because
it's from the enemy. And he started this whole thing
back in the garden of Eden. He hadn't changed his
mind one bit. He hadn't even changed his strategy at all.
I'll show you in a minute. After defeat, you know
what's next. And I've caught people on the rebound in
(08:15):
this despair, despair. I wish, for my sake and for
all of our sake, that I had a video camera
that could replay all the tearful moments in my study,
as people have told me, the hurt and the pain
(08:36):
and the despair that resulted from their yielding to temptation.
In case you're not sure that's really what happens, I
want you to read Psalm thirty two and Psalm fifty one.
These are the entries in David's journal after his sin
with Bathsheba, and you won't have any trouble understanding his despair. Now,
(09:01):
that's the way Satan always works. Always he doesn't depart
from it. You can't show me a situation where he
uses any other strategy.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
That's his strategy. A watch.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Satan led Adam and Eve to believe that eating the
forbidden fruit would not really be that serious deceit. Then
he presented the picture to them of becoming God's knowing
good and evil delight. Then this had a tremendous appeal
(09:33):
to them and aroused their desire to become great and wise,
and it was pleasant and reasonable desire, and they actually
reached out and took it, took it right in in
a selfwilled exertion against God. This was a deliberate action
(09:54):
on their part, deliberation, and the result was that they
sensed immediately that they had been taken in. They were victimized,
They were naked and ashamed, embarrassed, and didn't want to
see God defeat. And the next thing we see them,
they're walking out of paradise with their heads down, knowing
(10:16):
all that they had given up despair. And I'm going
to tell you what, when you face temptation in the scriptures,
everywhere you see it appear on the pages of the
Word of God. If you dissect it, you will find
these six things. And I only tell you that because
if you're on that road and you've come to the
(10:37):
first intersection, and that first intersection has got de Seit
written on the signpost, you're not too far down the road.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
The sink hole isn't there yet.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
But you keep going, and about between four and five
blocks there's a sinkhole, and you're going to go in
it if you don't turn around and get started.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
Back in the other direction.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
Well, you say, Pastor Jeremiah, the Lord says, lead us
not into the way where we could be tempted, because
we're weak. If we're in that way. These are the
things we should expect.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
What do we do?
Speaker 2 (11:07):
How do we keep ourselves from being victimized by temptation?
Oh that's a whole message in itself. And I've preached
on it and written on it, and talked about it,
taught it in classes. I don't know that there is
any time that I could a lot and that would
give you everything that the Bible says about it.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
I do know this, we all claim.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
First Corinthians ten thirteen there hath no temptation taken you,
but such as is common to man. But God is
faithful who will not suffer you to be tempted above
that you're able, but will with the temptation also make
a way to escape that you may be able to
bear it. That vers in itself is filled with wonderful truth.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
But I remember one.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Day of fighting through some of these thoughts and trying
to find a strategy.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
And let me tell you something.
Speaker 2 (11:55):
We ought to have a strategy for temptation. I hope
you do. If you don't have a strateg at you,
you're going to be a victim. You're not going to
be victorious. And I wrote down in the front of
my Bible five or six words that to me kind
of condense and crystallize the strategy that ought to be
in the heart of every believer. Knowing that temptation is there,
(12:15):
we're all going to face it.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
Here are those words.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Number One, fight fight, you say, I'm supposed to fight, absolutely,
you know why. If you don't fight, you'll be victimized.
You know. I'm so sorry to tell you that. A
lot of Christian people I know are pansies. Here's what
they say.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
Well, I don't know. I just I.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Couldn't do anything. It just just happened. What do you
mean to just happen? Well, just you know, pastor, I
just I don't know, man, it just just happened. Well,
nothing just happens, does it. Don't let it happen. The
Bible says fight, listen James four to seven. Resist the devil,
and he will.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
Flee from you one Peter five, eight and nine.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary, the devil, walks
about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.
We know that part, but did you read the next verse?
Resist him? Steadfast in the faith fight. Ephesian six eleven says,
put on the whole armor of God that you may
be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.
(13:25):
God expects a little bit of effort on our part
against the evil of our day. That means that you
and I can't just be passive Christians. I don't have
time to tell you all the ways to resist the devil,
but you can certainly think of a few yourself. Second
word in my list follow after you put down the
(13:48):
word fight, then think about this. This is kind of
the opposite side of it. James Forth seven and eight says,
submit to God, Draw near to God, and He will
draw near to you.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
One Peter two twenty one.
Speaker 2 (13:59):
Says for this, you were called Christ left you an
example to follow his steps. How are we supposed to
be victorious over temptation in this sick world.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
At which we live.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
You've got to fight against the enemy, and you've got
to make up your mind you're.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
Going to stay as close to God as you can.
You've got to follow him.
Speaker 2 (14:15):
The Bible says, draw near to God, and he'll draw
near to you. Are you taking any steps toward God?
Most people I know want to keep a safe distance.
You know, I like God, I like knowing Him, as
long as they don't have to get too close. Well,
the further the distance between you and the Lord, the
greatest potential for you to fail in the hour of temptation.
(14:36):
Draw near to God and he'll draw near to you.
How do you draw near to God through the spiritual
disciplines of reading and praying and fasting and journaling and
worshiping and all of the things. You know, those aren't
merits and themselves, but they're the avenues upon which grace, walks,
draw near to God.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
Follow thirdly, flee.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
And then I just want to to read these verses
to you, because it says here that there is a
real sense in which it's important for you to fight
some things. But there's two things you shouldn't try to
fight you should run from. This is not cowardly, this
is godly. God tells us in his word there's two
things we should never try to deal with in a
frontal exchange, but we should always run from them.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
Do you know what they are?
Speaker 2 (15:20):
Watch this one Corinthians ten fourteen. Therefore, my beloved, flee
from idolatry. Don't ever get close to idolatry. Don't do
anything that puts something else or someone else in God's place.
Run from it, and then saygo. In Timothy two twenty two,
flee youthful lusts two things you can't deal with in
(15:41):
a frontal attack, immorality and idolatry. And the Bible says
in those situations you should always run, get out, get away.
I tell kids, the best equipment for victory over temptation
is the best pair of adeda's money can buy.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
Go get yourself some shoes, and get out. Young people,
let me tell you something.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
You may think, well, you know, it's all right to
kind of play with temptation in the whole area of
sexual things.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
No, it's not. You can't do that. You'll never win.
You will never win.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
That's why Jesus tells us in his word to flee it,
to get away from it, to put it away from us.
Set up checkpoints to keep you from the process. If
you don't, you will be victimized. I was talking to
a young man from another part of the country who
came to see me, and he was telling me the
story of his failure. And this man is a good man,
(16:32):
but he's messed up his life and messed up his family.
And he came to see me because I was far
enough away nobody would know. And we talked and I
said to him, boy, I tell you, with all the
stuff you've grown up with and with all your knowledge,
how did you let yourself get into the situation?
Speaker 3 (16:47):
Why did you do it? He said, you know, Pastor, I.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
Knew it was wrong, and I always thought that I
could stop whenever I wanted to. But he said, there
was a place where we were driving in the car,
and all the time we were driving, I knew in
my heart that what we were doing was absolutely wrong,
in a violation against God, and I couldn't stop. We
could not stop, We could not stop. The pull of
(17:14):
sexual temptation and idolatry is so strong that on these
two occasions only God said to us, run, flee, get away.
And parents, if you see your kids getting involved in
something that looks like it's going in the wrong direction,
you better put on the brakes quickly. You better stop
and say no, don't play with that, don't start down
(17:36):
that road, because it spells disaster. Fight and follow and flee.
I remember Joseph, wonderful Joseph, Joseph who, when caught in
the clutch of a predatory woman who wanted to take
away his purity, ran out of the house and left
his coat in her hands because he knew it was
(17:59):
better off without his coat than without his character. Joseph
gives us an example, doesn't he? And then finally, this
is the last one, feed, fight, follow, flee and feed.
Did you know that the Bible actually says this Psalm one, nineteen,
verse eleven. Your word have I hidden in my heart?
(18:19):
What's the rest of a class that I may not
sin against? Thee, wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his
way by taking heed there too, according to Thy word.
When Jesus was tempted in the wilderness, even the Son
of God, the divine Son of God, tempted by the enemy,
(18:40):
could not and did not withstand temptation. Apart from the
word of God, every temptation was met with It is written,
It is written, it is written. I don't understand why
God's people feel like they have any right to succeed
in the life of holiness and purity when they spend
no time in the Word of God at all. You
(19:00):
can't do it. There is no way to ever succeed.
I'm mystified when I realize that the struggle for godliness
and righteousness is intensified in our culture today. And yet
we see, if I understand the statistics across the country,
people go into church less and less, and people say, well,
you know what, Pastor Jeremiah, I can't come to church
on Sunday night.
Speaker 3 (19:20):
I mean, that's the only night we have at home
with our family. We work so hard during the week,
and so we just.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
Need Sunday night to sort of stay home and get
things together. You know, I'm not going to argue if
that's what you think God wants you to do. But
I want to ask you this question, is what you're
doing on Sunday night, wherever you are, if you're not
under the teaching of the Word of God. Is that
helping to feed you so that you can be more
successful as a believer, so that you can go on
with God. But I want to challenge you that if
(19:48):
you're not feeding yourself and not taking advantage of every
feeding you can get, you're in jeopardy. I've learned a
lot on my own, and people have sent me stuff
from everywhere about the immune system. Some of it's good
and some of it's strange. But I tell you what
I learned, what I know, and it's got a wonderful
application of what we've talked about today. We have been
(20:10):
given by God a system in our physical bodies that
was prepared to ward off disease. It fights against the
things that come out of the atmosphere that can destroy us.
When a person gets a cancer or some other disease,
(20:31):
if you trace it back to the root, it's because
the immune system has become defective in some way, so
that the natural way of fighting off the disease is
not allowed to work, and therefore the disease begins to
take over. And when you go to school on how
to deal with disease after you've had it, or to
(20:53):
try to deal with it in a preventative way, in
all the literature that you read, they will continually talk
about building the immune system. Did you know that God
has given to every believer in immune system?
Speaker 3 (21:05):
He really has.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
He's given us a system through his word and through
our salvation that makes it possible for us to live healthy, righteous,
godly lives. But you know what complicates the immune system
in a human being? And I have been so convicted
by this junk food, improper diet, sometimes an atmosphere where
(21:32):
pollutants can get into your system and violate the immunity program.
That God has all of those things, and I was
just thinking about it. All those same things are what
keep God's people from being strong and healthy spiritually. He's
given us the system that will keep us strong. But
we don't feed ourselves right, and we think our immune
(21:53):
system is going to be okay if we just fill
it full of junk food. We allow all of the
pollutants of the world's system to filter through us and
just little by a little tear down the immune system
until there's nothing left to fight off the things of
the world.
Speaker 3 (22:09):
So what do you do.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
You become conscious of your diet, You become conscious of exercise,
you become conscious of atmosphere, You become conscious of all
kinds of things that can make a difference. And you
know what, this is a very interesting concept. And I
read this whole book on this one little thought that
the way this disease happens in people is through what
they call free radicals. Now that's not a political thing.
(22:32):
That's something that happens inside of you. You know what
a free radical is. It's a cell. It's a cell
within your body that doesn't function according to the pattern.
It just all of a sudden one day it just
goes wamo, and it just flies out of the pattern,
and it goes and it joins itself to another cell,
and it starts to develop what we call a tumor
(22:53):
because it's gotten out of the pattern. And they've done
enough research on this now to know that there are
certain things that cause free radicals. For instance, oxidization does that.
And so to beat that, you got to take vitamin
E you got to take beta carotene.
Speaker 3 (23:08):
This is not a health food lesson. I just want
to tell you what I've been learning.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
You eat vitamin E, take all kinds of vitamin E pills,
and you take beta carotene, and you put that together
with vitamin C, and those three vitamins help you when
it comes to free radicals, so that they don't.
Speaker 3 (23:23):
You know what temptation is like a free radical isn't
It is out of nowhere. What happened it just out
of nowhere.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
I was going along and everything was just the way
it was supposed to be, and then man, a free
radical got me.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
I want to tell you something.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
The best way I know to keep that from happening
is get the right vitamins in.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
Your spiritual system. And if you do that, you can
be a healthy Christian. Amen.
Speaker 2 (23:53):
You know, temptation is inevitable, but yielding to temptation is
not inevitable. It is the result of being careless and
not being faithful in what we need to do to
build ourselves up so that the temptation has no place
to grab hold of us. And we're learning that as
we study the Lord's Prayer Tomorrow we'll go into the
(24:13):
second half of this whole discussion. This is part two
of the first lesson, and tomorrow will be part one
of the second lesson. We've never had four lessons like this,
and it's kind of hard to describe them, so I
don't want you to get lost. We're still talking about temptation,
and I hope you'll be with us for the duration
of this discussion. Hey, there's a study guide for this series,
(24:36):
and there's a set of CDs that you can get
that we'll recapture everything we've been talking about. Go to
David Jeremiah dot org. That's our website. There you can
find out about it. Whatever you do, be sure and
join us tomorrow right here on.
Speaker 3 (24:50):
This good station.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
The message you've just heard came to you from Shadow
Mountain Community Church, Senior pastor, doctor David Jeremiah. Has the
Lord been moving in your.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
Life through this ministry?
Speaker 1 (25:05):
Tell us how at Turning Point Pobox thirty eight thirty eight,
San Diego, California, nine two one sixty three. Visit our
website at Davidjeremiah dot org, Slash Radio, or call eight
hundred nine four seven nineteen ninety three ask for your
copy of David's new book for strengthening your prayer life.
(25:26):
Everything to God in Prayer, It's yours for a gift
of any amount. You can also stream more than twelve
hundred of doctor Jeremiah's messages on demand on any screen
with our streaming service Turning Point Plus. For a monthly
gift of any amount, visit turningpointplus dot org for details.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
This is David Michael Jeremiah.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
Join us tomorrow as we continue the series Prayer The
Great Adventure on Turning Point with Doctor David Jeremiah
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