When is the last time you found yourself feeling very vulnerable?
In fact, the temptation was so strong that you just think I can’t handle this.
And uh you found yourself very, very puzzled.
Maybe because of why you a temp or you found yourself thinking this is the same old temptation I’ve faced over and over and over again.
Or you might say, well, this was so alluring, so enticing, so inviting, how can I possibly resist this?
That’s the devil’s line. That’s the way he talks. So I would ask you this question.
When’s the last time you found yourself facing something that you really had to struggle with?
Turning away from turning away from or saying no to you felt great pressure.
You want to walk away. You debated about whether you could or not or should or not.
Oh, you know, you should. But whether you would or not, and maybe finally you walked away.
But maybe finally you thought, well, God understands and have I ever heard this?
God understands and you yield it whatever that temptation was. So we can think all kind of things.
But the truth is this, if you’re alive, you’re gonna get tempted.
And we are living in the day when it’s everywhere, whether you hear it on the radio or the television or see it on the television or signs or insults, whatever it might be.
We’re living in a sensual age and temptation is everywhere and people respond in several different ways.
They just yield or they fight against it and survive or they fight against it and still yield and then they have an excuse that they’ve used with God before.
And now Lord, you know, I this is not fair.
Everybody doesn’t feel what I feel on and on and on. We go.
The truth is that was the beginning of sin in the world with temptation. That of a need.
It hadn’t changed. I mean, when Satan got through telling Eve how fantastic it was gonna be to have a bite of this fruit.
This, it’s the same story. It’s just different elements involved.
And so uh when you find yourself in that position, what, what do you think?
Do, do you stop to think? Where is this coming from? Is this in my heart?
Where is this coming from? I can tell you it is a satanic attack.
The devil knows exactly when you and I are the weakest.
He knows at what point and he knows exactly what it takes to get our attention and to make us think.
I just gotta have that, gotta have one of those. Forget the price. I’m I’m gonna have one of those.
Satan has a whole line of excuses to persuade us of what we deserve and nobody’s perfect and God loves us and he’ll forgive us and on and on and on.
He goes to set us up to position ourselves to miss out on God’s best blessings in our life.
So I want to talk about facing a satanic attack and if you’ll turn to Ephesians for a moment, and the first three chapters of Ephesians are three of the most beautiful encouraging chapters in the Bible because it talks about a believer’s wealth.
What we have as a result of knowing Christ is our savior.
And then beginning in the fourth chapter and the fifth, uh here is our walk.
This is the way we should walk following the Lord Jesus Christ.
Then we come to the last chapter and uh we see there’s a battlefield and that is a battlefield with Satan.
God is so good to us.
He walks with us and yet there are times when we are tempted and tried.
And so I want us to look if you will at the 10th verse.
And as he concludes this, this epistle, listen to what he says, finally, be strong in the Lord and then the strength of his might.
He didn’t say be strong in yourself.
He said be strong in the Lord in the strength of his might, put on the full armor of God so that you’ll be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil.
For our struggle. It is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness.
In the heavenly places, all of us are gonna face temptation.
Now, when you think about it, I would just ask you this question.
Think about what is the strongest temptation you face in your life today?
I don’t mean just this particular day but in your daily life today, what’s the strongest temptation?
Why do you think it’s, why do you think the devil has used that attempt you to turn you away from God?
You walk in a different path to ignore God’s warnings, to ignore His blessings, his awesome blessings in your life.
But somehow you find yourself being tempted and getting in a position where the blessings God want to give you.
He can no longer give you. Paul says with to stand firm against the schemes of the devil.
He certainly has schemes. So the first thing I wanna do is to define what is a satanic attack?
A satanic attack is a deliberate will fall assault by Satan upon an individual with the purpose of doing them harm either in their spirit soul or body or all three.
Look at that a deliberate willful assault by Satan upon an individual with a purpose of doing them harm either in their spirit soul or body or all three.
And when is that any time anywhere, Satan knows exactly when you and I are the weakest.
He knows exactly what it takes to trip us up.
He may know who is the best to trip us up or what it is.
We are all lured by. What does it take to trip us up?
Every single believer is faced with temptation.
And if you think about today, our whole society is geared to attempting us for something.
You turn on the radio, you hear it. We ought to buy this.
You watch the television, you ought to buy this. I see this. I have that.
I have him, I have her and you can look anywhere.
You want to look, there is the temptation to have oftentimes what we do not need what we should not have.
And the result of temptation is division and destruction.
And so if I should ask you what’s Satan’s objective in, in tempting you, you’re a fine Christian person.
You love God. What’s his objective? First of all, to draw us away from God to himself.
Satan wants to draw us away from God.
So He knows exactly what it takes to get our mind off of God off of spiritual things, onto, onto material things or onto sensual things.
He knows exactly what it takes. What does it take?
What’s his objective to draw us away from God and to himself and to threaten God’s purpose in our life.
Other words, if the devil can change God’s purpose in your life, he’s got you where he wants you.
Because remember this, God has a will for your life. He has a plan for your life.
He’s got the best. And so Satan is not gonna say, well, I want to destroy you.
No, he just wants to move your attention from God.
Spiritual things to earthly things, material things, sensual things and then to deny God the worship and glory do to Him.
That is the devil isn’t one you worshiping God.
So listen, he’s given us a whole plate full of stuff to get our attention away from God because that’s his purpose.
And then to destroy us, Satan’s ultimate goal or temptation is destruction, destroy our relationship to God, destroy our interest in Him, destroy our faith in Him, destroy our desire to pray, destroy our sense of eternal security, destroy, destroy, destroy, destroy, destroy, that’s his goal.
And yet we know that.
And isn’t it interesting that in spite of what we know, how many sermons have you heard in your life?
You can’t even count them. And I certainly hope you’re gonna hear a lot more.
But the issue is what are you gonna do about the truth that you hear?
Satan knows about the truth that you’re listening to and here’s what he does.
He shows up to distract you from hearing the truth.
So you’ll keep moving in a direction that will take you away from God.
All of us face some kind of temptation in life. I didn’t say every single day.
But listen, everybody has something that they can be tempted by.
It may be something that you keep having victory over time after time after time or you may feel defeated, time after time.
But Satan’s goal is to get you away from God.
So he’ll tell you why you don’t have time to read the Bible.
He’ll say, first of all, you, you’ve got, you’ve got to be somewhere at a certain time.
Secondly, he says, you don’t need to read. You don’t even, you don’t even understand it.
You don’t understand why, why, why read something? What, what about in Leviticus?
And for second, what, what, why do you wanna read the Bible?
Anything he can do to get your mind off of spiritual things is what he’ll do.
And he wants to divide relationships, entertain, to divide families, anything to bring divorce, any kind of sexual sin, anything that will take your mind off God, that is, you ought to buy, this ought to buy that don’t ask you about it.
You worked hard. You worked 60,000 week. You’ve been working all these years, you deserve it.
So think about it.
You’re trying to reach your goals in life and he’s working against you.
You’re trying to live up to your life. He’s working against you. You’re trying to save your money.
He’s telling you all about this. Satan is your enemy.
Now, his strategy can be found in three words, just three words.
I mean, as complex as we may think the devil is, strategy is three words.
The first one is this his first step is to deceive us. That is to lie to us.
If you believe a lie, you’ve taken the first step to an absolute defeat and side up with the devil.
And oftentimes when people want to sin against God, they’ll take the truth of God and try to twist it all around and watch this.
I can, I can, I can hear this many times but you don’t know about my situation.
Well, God knows about your situation. You, you, you don’t know how long I’ve suffered.
Well, God knows how long you’ve suffered. Well, you know, you don’t know how long I’ve been in need.
You can come up with all kinds of excuses. Remember this?
God’s heard them all and they didn’t come from God. They came from the devil.
But the issue is this, God has the best life for every single one of us and the devil has his best to do what to deceive us and to divide us.
You think about how many churches get divided over somebody disagreeing with this.
That and the other nations are divided, churches, divided families, divided, friends, divided, divided, divided, divided, separate, separate, separate because then you’ve got chaos.
No love criticism. They say things they would say one day they wouldn’t say the next.
Satan is a divider. He’s a deceiver. He is a destroyer.
That’s his purpose to destroy our testimony, to destroy our life physically, to destroy our finances, destroy our marriage, destroy our families, destroy, destroy and destroy.
So deceive, divide, destroy. That’s all he needs received. Divide, destroy.
The next time you feel tempted, ask yourself the question is Satan deceiving me.
am I feel am I being divided from what I be doing?
And am I headed to a destruction?
If a if a child of God, if you are a believer will stop when you are tempted and ask yourself those questions?
Am I being deceived? Number one question is my mind being divided and I headed towards some destruction.
Ask yourself the question.
So we need to be alert and watchful and as a child of God, none of us can boast of being so strong that we’ll never be tempted when somebody says, well, I may be tempted about some things but not that Satan just puts a check by that one.
None of us, not any of us can say I will never be tempted by this that ever we think we aren’t, we, we would almost swear we wouldn’t be and we can give you a lot of reasons we wouldn’t be.
But the devil wants a sense of self confidence.
That’s based on mush, no foundation, but based on mushy attitudes about what you will or will not do.
And when I think of this great passage of scripture in um first Corinthians 10 13, listen to what Paul says.
Everybody ought to know this one. No temptation, listen to that.
No temptation has taken you or tempted you to try you. But such is, is common to man.
This is common to man.
And that being case God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted more than you’re able to bear.
But we with the temptation also make a way of escape that you can bear it.
We have a promise from God. I do not have to do that. I may want to do it.
I may want it more than anything else, but I don’t have to.
If I don’t have to, then I’ll make the choice either. I will. I will not.
And when I think about the condition our nation is in and the things that tempt people and the people who are being destroyed, being destroyed, self-destruction as a result of healing, the temptation deceive, divide, destroy.
So whether it’s a nation, whether it’s a church, whether it’s a family, Satan is busy.
So when you feel tempted, what do you do? Do you watch this carefully?
Is your first response, a sudden desire to find a real good sounding excuse or when you attempt it, did you know it’s you say this is of the devil.
This is not who I am, it doesn’t belong in my life. I choose to, I choose to reject this.
We have a choice. Now, a person who’s unbeliever, they don’t have a kind of choice.
I’ll tell you why because they have a fallen nature.
And so when Satan comes on with a very, very strong overpowering event in their life or presentation of something they want, they already have three strikes against them.
It’s the way they’ve been living. So it’s sort of easy to slip into what you’ve been doing.
When you’re a child of God and you trust in Him as your savior, you began on a platform of strength.
You have the Holy Spirit within you to first of all identify what you’re facing as a sin that it doesn’t fit your life.
It isn’t of God and it’s destructive. It, it, it cannot bring you anything that’s good.
You have the Holy Spirit, the person who’s not a believer doesn’t have that.
And the word of God is our greatest defense against the devil because we don’t have to choose sin.
We have the Holy Spirit living within us. He promises that you have the Holy Spirit. What does He do?
He makes you aware of the temptation.
He reminds you maybe with some scripture or something He’s already done in your life that God will give you victory.
He reminds you, you do not, you do not have to yield to this. It is a choice.
You make and we can blame it on other people.
Or my mother, my father, my sister, my brother, my friend, my friends this that now that’s not the issue.
If you want, if you want to keep living in sin, all you have to do is close this book and don’t open it up and just you can open it up once a week.
It’s not gonna keep you from sinning. God has given us watch this.
He’s given us his written word and he’s given us the Holy Spirit to live inside of us in order to interpret that word for us to remind us that the wages of sin is death.
And so we all have to face temptations only, you know how you handle them.
Somebody says, well, you know, I think God understands that it is not our excuse for or our explanation for living in sin because God wants the best for us and, and the Christian experience does not mean that you’ll never sin against God.
All of us at some point at times in our life, do things or say things or see things or whatever it might be.
We know a lot of God, what do you do?
In other words, you just give up and say, well, see, I’ve tried to live a Christian life.
I can’t so forget it. No, the apostle Paul never claimed perfection.
The only person who can claim that’s Jesus, but a true believer when you attempted, you turn to God.
Lord, here’s what I’m facing. I don’t want this in my life. I feel so.
Help me, Jesus, help me, help me, help me Jesus, whatever it takes you say, well, then suppose I yield anyway, you ask God to forgive you, to strengthen you, to make you aware of that in your life.
That that’s an area of weakness.
If I should ask you how many of, you know, at least one area of weakness in your life.
Don’t raise your hand. No, please. No.
But how many of, you know, at least one area of weakness in your life?
We all do.
Anybody who says they don’t, not telling the truth.
You know, when, for example, if it’s gossip, if it’s lust, if it’s uh, overeating, if it’s the way you spend your money or if it’s your lack of faithfulness, you know, one another, whatever it might be.
And besides that this God knows it.
In other words, you never have to come to him and say God, by the way, let me remind you of something.
No. He knows there is a weakness.
I think about how many families are destroyed by somebody falling in a temptation, whether it’s a teenager or whether it’s the parents think about people who go to jail because they, they feel the temptation of stealing, they could justify it.
Other people have it, they don’t have it. Therefore, they’ll just take what they want.
You can go right down the list of every sin in the Bible.
We could give an excuse for it, but it’s not acceptable to God.
And here’s what I want you to say. You do not have to.
Somebody says, but I just couldn’t help myself.
You have God who will help you through anything you face you say.
Well, suppose our sin did. What? Here’s what he says.
If we confess our sins, that is we agree with God about the nature of our sins.
If we confess our sins, he’s faithful and just to forgive me for my sins. Why?
Because Jesus Christ is my savior, I’ve yielded to him as the Lord of my life.
And this is a point of failure.
And I’m asking you God to forgive me, not on the basis that I deserve it, but on the basis that Jesus shed blood a tone for my sin.
And I have another chance. God wipes away our guilt.
Now you say, well, I’ve been to God about the same thing over and over and over again.
Well, God knows whether you really and sure they are committed to him or not.
And some said what this some sounds leave scars that you can erase.
Remember this statement, the scars of sin can last you a lifetime.
Only the blood of Jesus can atone for him. But you know what scar is still there.
And we have to thank God for his awesome power to enable us to overcome them.
So I’m simply saying to you, whatever the weakness is in your life, you need to bring it to God, will they help you through it?
Yes. So I would just ask you to consider in your own life.
What effect has temptation had on my life? Why have I reasoned that I could excuse myself?
Why have I told God over and over again that I’m different. I grew up in a bad situation.
I grew up with parents who didn’t teach me. I grew up with alcoholic parents.
I grew up with parents who had married three or four times. I did this, I did that.
I did the other. God understands. Listen carefully. God understands but God doesn’t excuse sin.
He’s willing to deal with it. He’s willing to forgive. He’s willing to give you the strength that you need.
But you have to first come clean with Him. Lord, here I am. And I’m weak in this area.
I desperately need you to do something for me and my life in this area in Jesus name.
Will he answer your prayer? Yes, he will. You. So, are we supposed to be perfect? No, no.
That’s why he says if we confess our sins agree with him about Him, he’s faithful and just to forgive us and they cleanse us from all unrighteousness and some sins, we probably have all confessed some things over and over and over again.
But we have the Holy Spirit living within us to enable us to be strong enough to say no.
And the more times you say no, the stronger you become, you always have God, enabling you, warning you and strengthening you to be obedient to God.
Amen. Father. We thank you for your love for us.
We thank you that in the midst of this dark generation which we are living that there is an awesome light that’s eternal.
It glows within our hearts that makes it possible for us to live Godly.
And the walk clearly plainly lovingly before you day by day.
I pray Lord this morning that somebody seated here who is going through some terrible temptation or maybe is trapped by it right now, that you’ll give them this grace God, the grace to remember, they can be freed and the grace to remember that you love them in spite of all of it.
And the grace to remember that your power is greater than the temptation they face, we love you, we praise you, we thank you.
We are trusting you daily to be our guide, her savior.
And Lord, the master of her life shows how to live above sand.
Lord in every way in Jesus name.
Amen.