Keith Battle - It's A Trap - Part 2

I started a series last week called «It’s a Trap.» We began the series by discussing the temptation that Jesus faced in Matthew Chapter 4, verses 1 through 11. If you’d like to review what we covered in part one, you can go to YouTube to watch it or view it on our website on demand. One of the things that stood out to me today as I reflected on it is that Jesus began to be tempted in verse 2 while he was in the wilderness. Everybody say «wilderness.» The devil tempted him there in the wilderness. Then, in verse 5, he took him to the pinnacle of the highest point of the temple and tempted Jesus there. In verse 8, he goes to an exceedingly high mountain and tempts Jesus again. So, he was tempted in the wilderness, at the top of the temple, and then on an exceedingly high mountain. It dawned on me that at every stage and level of life, we have to deal with temptation. It doesn’t matter whether you’re low, sad, and depressed in the wilderness; the devil’s coming. Even when we get promoted and are operating well—when we’re at church having a high time in the temple—he can come there too. You’d be surprised at how much happens in the temple. You can be on top of the mountain, experiencing success, promotion, and elevation, but the devil meets you there too. Temptation will encounter you at every level of life; you cannot outlive it or outgrow it. It is a part of the life experience. You have to fight it and resist temptation, and Jesus did. We saw from Sharon James a great three-point analogy: she says Jesus managed temptation this way: he first recognized the lie of Satan, then he rejected the lie, and finally, he replaced it with the truth. The reason Jesus did that is that he knew it wasn’t just a temptation but a trap. Somebody say, «It’s a trap.» This is the challenge we face now because our world is full of traps—there are traps everywhere. Lawyers use cross-examination to ask a series of questions with the goal of trapping someone; at the end of the day, they may not admit it, but it’s a setup for either the plaintiff or the defendant to get trapped. Yes, boxers watch the tendencies and movements of their opponents, looking for vulnerabilities to set them up so that they can walk into traps. Traps are everywhere. Reporters will conduct interviews and set up the person they’re interviewing with a question they weren’t planning to answer, putting them on the spot and forcing them to respond. No journalist or reporter is going to say this, but at the end of the day, it’s a trap. When somebody emails you, claiming to be me—this has happened periodically around here—and tells you, as me, that they need you to send them your debit card information because they’re at Lowe’s right now—once, it was Target—and this person said, «I need your debit card.» Then, people feign as if they’re me using my name and image on social media, creating pages and hitting you with direct messages, telling you they’ve received a direct word from God for you while asking you for money to support some cause. I hope you’re smart enough to know that some of y’all don’t realize that is not me; trust me, that’s not me. Traps are all over the place, but there is no greater trap setter than the devil; he is the king of traps. I don’t want to spend a lot of time talking about what we discussed last week; you can catch it online. I want to look at what James says about temptation, beginning in verse 12. One of the things that stands out is that he mentions there is a blessing from God when we endure temptation. God blesses those who endure temptation, and that afterward, they will receive a crown of life that God promised to those who love him, which lets me know that God is paying attention to temptation. Temptation is not something he ignores; it’s not a flippant activity, it’s not arbitrary, nor is it random. God is paying attention to how we respond to temptation, and he rewards us for enduring it. Enduring temptation means we resist it; we fight it, we don’t give in to it, and we don’t yield to it. We suffer through it. You can’t endure temptation without suffering; you have to suffer to endure it. The reason why you have to suffer to endure temptation is because you have to understand that temptation is an allure to comfort to survive a difficult time. So if I’m not going to accept the comfort, then I have to accept the suffering that comes with enduring the temptation. Here’s the deal: it’s better to suffer for doing right than to suffer for doing wrong, yielding to temptation and ending up trapped. It is God’s desire that we endure temptation. In verse 12, he says, «The person that he blesses…» First of all, he blesses us now and then in the future—there’s a reward in the form of a crown of life. Then he says, «But…» he speaks of testing and temptation. Notice the…