When things start to age and become old, eventually certain things are going to break. You might have bought a bicycle ten years ago, but eventually something on that bicycle will break: the tires might begin to leak air, the chain might need to be adjusted, maybe you will need new brake cables because they just don’t work properly anymore.
Or maybe you have something as simple as a chain. A chain consists of several links all put together but the truth is that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. When the chain was brand new all of the links should be just about equal in strength, but after much use certain links may become worn down thin in certain places, and if just one of those links breaks the entire chain will be broken.
Now think of a larger building when it needs to be torn down. A demolition crew will go in and set detonation charges in very specific places of the building, and those charges when detonated will bring the entire building crumbling to the ground.
Similarly, when the devil tries to tempt someone and try to get them to fall to sin, he will attack that person where they are the weakest, the most likely to succumb to that temptation and sin, and “temptation” is the desire to do something, especially something wrong or unwise.
Many of us can relate to this when we were children: when someone hits you, what is the response that we quite often feel? The desire to retaliate, and hit them back. That feeling is us being tempted by the devil. The desire to do something that is wrong and we shouldn’t do. That is what the devil does, is try to cause someone to sin.
The devil will try to attack you where you are the weakest, and he tried to tempt the Lord Jesus in Matthew 4.
Matthew 4:1-4 “Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.
And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred.
And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.
But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.”
Even though Jesus had been without food for 40 days, he did not fall to temptation. The devil also proceeded to tempt Jesus a couple other ways, but look at what he started with. The area where he thought Jesus would be the weakest, but Jesus resisted the devil, and overcame.
And that is what James wrote in James 4:7,
“Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you.”
On our own without Christ we are weak, and vulnerable to temptations and sin. That is why we pray in the Lord’s prayer, lead us not into temptation. We are asking the Lord to make us strong, and to help deliver us from those things which are tempting to us. When we resist the devil, we are overcoming the traps and snares that he has laid out to try to trip us, to make us fall and we can know that we can overcome those temptations, because God will not let us be tempted above that we are able to handle.
1 Corinthians 10:13 “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 ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.”
But just like a muscle on your body, when you exercise it, what happens? It becomes stronger. When you first start your muscles might only be able to curl a 20 pound dumbbell a few times before tiring out, but as you continue working it, consistantly lifting those weights, the stronger your muscles will become.
When we are tempted, our faith is being tried, and we have that opportunity to make it even stonger by overcoming temptations, whatever form they may take.
James 1:2-4 “My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into diverse temptations;
Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience.
But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.”
Through Jesus, we can overcome sin. Just as Jesus overcame the devil in the wilderness, we can do the same thing. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. We can do all things through Christ which strengthens us! Don’t fall to sin!
In Christ,
Andrew
Teufer Lake King James Bible Church 