Progression of Temptation

And anytime that I’ve kind of, I’ve drawn cold to the Lord, I always kind of look back here. This is something that, it’s kind of like my go-to passage. Somebody’s like, you have a favorite chapter, verse number, I’ll just say Psalm 1. And so we’re gonna read through it and then we’re going to do a little study out of it. So we’ll start in verse one. Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly nor standeth in the way of sinners nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful.

But his delight is in the law of the Lord and in his law doth he meditate day and night. And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water that bring a fourth fruit in his season. His leaf also shall not wither and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. The ungodly are not so but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away. Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.

For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous but the way of the ungodly shall perish. So the biggest thing that always has stuck out to me is the progression of the man. Because he starts and the blessing goes towards a man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly nor standeth in the way of the sinners nor siteth in the seat of the scornful. I’ve always kind of looked at this verse and kind of looked on the inside and be like am I walking in the counsel of the ungodly?

Am I standing in the way of the sinners? Am I going along with them? Am I in their presence too much? Because that can obviously be a stumbling block. Obviously you do fellowship, you have coworkers, things like that, but you really don’t want to be best buddies with a guy that’s lost. He’s gonna be pointing down the wrong path because you also have the flesh and we’ll talk about that later.

So the progression is he walketh, standeth, and siteth. So we’re gonna look at this progression in a couple different passages and let’s jump to Genesis 13, 12. Genesis chapter 13.

This is probably a classic example. So this is when Abraham and Lot, they’re splitting up the land and Lot chose, in verse 11 it says, and Lot chose him all the plain of Jordan and Lot journeyed east and they separated themselves and the one from the other. And Abram dwelt in the land of Canaan and Lot dwelt in the cities of the plain and pitched his tent towards Sodom.

So in my mind I think he pitched his tent towards Sodom. He skips like. Pitched his tent towards Sodom. In my mind I think he’s open to the idea. Obviously Sodom and Gomorrah did not turn evil overnight so he clearly, I would almost say he had an appetite for it slightly maybe he was in denial because he was with Abram. Abram trusted the Lord. He traveled with him.

And then we jump to, so he starts there. Then we go to Genesis chapter 19, verse one. And it says, and there came two angels, two Sodom at even and Lot sat in the gate of Sodom and Lot seeing them rose up to meet them and he bowed himself to the ground towards, bowed his face towards the ground. This is really interesting because back in that day sitting in the gate was a big deal.

That’s where all the elders sat, sort of the legal business was done. When it came to, it was Ruth and Boaz. When they traded the shoes they were in the gate of the city.

And even in Proverbs 31, 23, when it talks about the virtuous woman, it talks about her husband is known in the gates where he sitteth among the elders of the land. So what’s interesting is Lot pitched his tent towards Sodom and then somehow or another he not only ended up in Sodom, he ended up in the gate of Sodom. Which honestly reminds me, I think a lot of times our politicians, I’m like that guy cannot be born again.

He cannot be born again. Yet we see Lot here. It’s just the Lord saved him but he’s still sitting in the gate of Sodom and Sodom was absolutely filthy. So I just find that pretty interesting. So it means that Sodom, for Lot, he just wasn’t living in Sodom. He’d become pretty much an elder in Sodom, which is really disappointing.

This is what Psalm 11 is warning us about. He pitched his tent towards Sodom. He probably walked among the Sodomites. But then he was sitting in the gate. So it’s the whole walketh, standeth, sitteth progression that the Lord warns us about and blesses the people that do the opposite.

And then another note about Lot. In 2 Peter 2, 7 and 8, it talks about, Lot vexed with the filthy conversation of the wicked. For that righteous man dwelling among them and seeing and hearing vexed his righteous soul from day to day in their unlawful deeds. He was in Sodom, he was in the gate. Yet every single day his soul is vexed. And I’m sure every single one of us knows what that’s like.

You know, we might not be in the right place. We’re going along with the wrong people and we’re vexed in our soul, which obviously should be a telling factor like where do I stand with the Lord?

It’s one thing, it’s a good thing because I think it tells you you’re born again. It’s a bad thing because you’re not right with God. So, and if you look at the result of Lot, Sodom was destroyed and his family was destroyed as well. And I’m not gonna get into that, but we all know that story. So now let’s jump to 2 Samuel, chapter 11.

And this is the story of David and Bathsheba. And it came to pass after the year was expired at the time when the kings go forth to battle. Note, when the kings go forth to battle, that David sent Joab and his servants with him and all Israel and they destroyed the children of Ammon and besieged Rabba and the Jews. And David carried still at Jerusalem. And it came to pass in an even tide that David arose off his bed and walketh upon the roof of the king’s house.

And from the roof he saw a woman washing herself. And the woman was very beautiful to look upon. And David sent and acquired after the woman. And one said, is this, is not this Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah, and the Hittite? And David sent messengers and took her. And when she came in unto him and he lay with her, for she was purified from her uncleanness and she returned unto her house.

So if you notice, one second. The main point I’m about to get to is, in my opinion, I think it’s a fact, but idleness is one of the primary killers of Christians in this day and age. And I mean, I think that plays into when God describes the church of Laodicea as lukewarm. Neither hot, neither cold.

So we don’t know if David knew that when he walked out on that roof, if he would see Bathsheba bathing. But we do know something else, it’s just a fact of human nature. Sin like this doesn’t just occur overnight. So in my mind, I think, stay back from the battle. He knew somebody, probably Bathsheba. He’s seen her bathing before. Now he sees her bathing again, stays back, gives himself the opportunity to sin because he was idle.

Because if you notice in verse one, it talks about after the years expired, at the time when the kings go forth to battle, that David sent Joab. So according to the context, David was supposed to be going to battle, but he did not go into battle. He just laid back and was idle.

And then James 1, 13 through 15, let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God, for God cannot be tempted with evil. Neither tempted he any man. But every man is tempted when he is drawn away from his own lust and enticed. And when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin, and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death. So the progression here is lust, conceived, sin, death.

I’m obviously doing a progression study here. So lust is conceived before the sin is ever committed. Obviously it is committed in the heart, but we’re talking about the physical nature of it. So we’re gonna stop and focus on idleness for a minute, and we’re gonna look at David as an example. So first, David was out of his place. As we mentioned earlier, he was supposed to be going forth into battle, but he didn’t.

Second, he was unoccupied. He was wandering the roof, just walking around. Third, temptation met him in his idleness, not in his work. The principle applies to every believer. When we are out of place, out of the place God has called us to, I mean, that could just be as simple as a job. I mean, it does not mean that, you know, we’re huddled in our prayer closet.

It just means like, we could be, you know, God might have called us to do a job that day, or God gave us an opportunity to help someone out that day, and we decided just to stay home all by ourselves, you know, in the dark, per se.

But if that happens, without a doubt, temptation will find us, and honestly, we can’t blame that on the devil. We have to, that’s, let’s blame it on ourself. And everything nowadays, most people they talk about, especially in this day and age of modern Christianity, they talk about, oh, watch out for the enemy, the enemy this, the enemy that.

The primary enemy we have in this life is our flesh. And obviously, I’m speaking from personal experience, and everyone, another side point, everyone wants to be different. Everyone wants to be different from the next person, especially this generation that I’m a part of. But yet, deep down inside of us, we’re really no different from the next person. We might have started in a different position in life, but there’s no temptation that the Lord has not faced that we face.

Therefore, there’s really no temptation that you or I have not faced. You’ve faced the same temptation that I do. We might struggle more in different areas than the other person, but we’re not all that different. And that’s where pride comes in and things like that.

So, let me read, let’s jump to Matthew 26, Matthew chapter 26. Now, let’s go to verse 40. So, the disciples were in the garden, this is before Jesus was taken to be crucified.

And Jesus, when he cometh unto the disciples, findeth them asleep, and saith unto Peter, what could you not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray that ye enter not into temptation.

For the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. I’m not entirely sure if I’m interpreting this correctly, but this is what I’m gathering from this. Even though we might, internally as Christians, we wanna do something good, the flesh will automatically offset it. If the flesh gets in our way, what we wanna do, whether it be soul winning or really anything, the flesh will get in the way.

And a lot of times we allow that through idleness, through allowing for that temptation to occur. Because if we fall to sin, we don’t wanna do that good thing, we’re toast. And so, I thought that was a good verse to go along with that.

So, obviously, most of the time the flesh get in the way, not Satan. A lot of people wanna blame Satan, so obviously we’re born into this flesh. It’s the flesh that we have to do it on a daily basis. So, let’s look at a quick counterpoint. So, let’s jump to Genesis chapter 39. We’re gonna jump to Joseph. Sorry about Joseph.

And the verse, we’ll start in verse 10. So, Joseph’s master’s wife, Potiphar’s wife, kept making basically attempts at him, and he kept refusing. So, we’ll start in verse 10. And it came to pass as she spake to Joseph day by day. So, this is a constant temptation. Just put yourself in the place, like replace something with Potiphar’s wife. You know, anything that you deal with in your life.

And he harkened not unto her to lie by her or be with her. And it came to pass about this time that Joseph went into the house to do his business, and there was none of the men of the house there within. Okay, perfect time to be idle. Joseph could’ve gone there like, I’m gonna hang out, I know Potiphar’s wife’s coming by, you know. But here we go, verse 12.

And she caught him by his garment like the flesh, lie with me, and he left his garment in her hand and fled and got him out. As you can see, Joseph was not idle. I just warn against everyone’s desire to be idle.

We all love to do nothing. It is nice to do nothing sometimes. But he was not idle, yet temptation still found him. Which does not mean that if you go to work or school or whatever, that temptation will not find you. That’s just part of the solution. You still have another side to it.

But you can see here, the result here is different than David had with Bathsheba. And obviously this is not saying being busy will keep you from temptation, but idleness is one of the primary causes for us to fall into temptation.

In this case, Joseph needed to flee Potiphar’s wife. And let’s read, before I say anything on that, let’s read, I’ll read 2 Timothy 2 22. Flee also youthful lust, but follow righteousness, faith, charity, peace within that call on the Lord out of a pure heart.

So me and my personality, I’m a problem solver. So if I’m faced with temptation, I wanna fix it. I don’t wanna run away like a chicken, but I wanna fix it. And that does not work. That, and I’m sure everyone else here was like, yeah, I can get out of this. It’s fine, it’s just a little thing. No, but God tells us to flee. If you’re a chicken, you’re a chicken.

God tells you to be a chicken, you need to run. But at the same time, it doesn’t tell us just to flee. It tells us to follow after righteousness, faith, charity, peace. It’s not just telling us to run away, it’s telling us to run away to something.

So God does not expect us to flee and then stop. If we flee and stop, that temptation is gonna find us. Unless we fill that void, it’s still going to find us. So in that case, it requires us to follow righteousness, faith, charity, and peace.

So let’s jump back to Psalm 1. Psalm chapter 1. I remember my dad taught, I think it was, I don’t know how long ago it was. It was like one of the first sermons I heard on idleness because I don’t think I’ve ever heard anybody preach on idleness. It’s kind of weird. Everybody’s like run from the flesh, but nobody talks about idleness. I remember he preached one sermon on idleness and I was like, that’s what I need.

That’s my problem right there. And I love, I’m kind of a, I’m a very, I guess I’m a very techie person. I’m different techie from my dad. And so I’ve always liked video games growing up and obviously that has to like fade into existence. And so I’m like, I’m always enjoying learning new things on the computer, learning how to code. Now it’s like AI, I’m all into this AI stuff, how to make it work at work and stuff.

But that leaves a huge open window for temptation because nowadays we don’t have to necessarily deal with Potiphar’s wife. We have to deal with pornography. And it’s literally just everywhere. It’s not just like you go to a site and you find it. It’s everywhere. And so a lot of times when I read these verses, I’m not thinking, I’m not gonna go to such and such street and walk down that street.

Someone’s gonna grab me by the arm, trying to pull me to a room. No, it’s in my very pocket. And so if I go into a dark room, which my dad’s always warned me against, it’s like go into a dark room, room close, you’re idle. You may not necessarily want to sin. Your flesh wants to sin. You might want to do something good, but you’re idle. You’re in that room all alone.

And that’s where your flesh strikes. And God tells you to flee. If you don’t flee, you’re gonna fall. So now that we looked at what idleness produces, let’s look at what fills the void. And in verse two, but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law doth he meditate day and night.

So this is an obvious part of being a Christian. You should delight in the Lord and that should fill your void. I would say it’s not an easy thing to do. It’s not an easy thing. It’s not always an easy thing to sit there and delight in it, especially if you’re like in a bad mood. You wake up early in the morning. What have you want to do?

It’s not easy to be like, man, I really want to read my Bible. Now I’m like, I would rather be under the covers, sleeping until the very last minute to go to work or until my wife wakes me up.

But God does command us that we should delight in the law of the Lord and meditate in it day and night. And this does not mean we have to just sit in a corner, read our Bible. It’s not like, I remember I heard about this guy, it’s like he read through the Bible once a day or something ridiculous. That’s not what God’s talking about. God calls us to work.

We have things to do. We have a family to take care of, but we need to be thinking on the things of God. And this is why Psalm 1 has been very important to me because a lot of times when I didn’t have a lot of time to spend time with the Lord in the morning, I would just open up my phone and I’d read Psalm 1 and I would pray through it.

You know, I don’t, I don’t walk, I don’t want to walk in the counts of the ungodly or stand in the way of sinners nor sit in the seat of the scornful. And that’s how even with a very little time I had in the morning, that’s how I wanted to approach that day, especially for me, it’s at work. There’s a lot of things that happen at work, dumb drama, adults are just overgrown kids.

So, that’s just nice to say. So, you should delight in the law of the Lord and the void that we have with idleness should be filled with delighting in the law of the Lord. So, if we have that time to sit in our room doing nothing, we should be reading our Bible, if nothing else. If we don’t have anything to do, that’s what we should be doing.

Just something related to that, praying, seeking his word, because he will, you know, at that moment, you’re fleeing temptation, you’re running the other direction, you know, put all your devices in another room, you know, turn off your TV, whatever it is. I never really had a nice closet now that got married. I sometimes go in the closet and just turn off the light. It’s kind of nice.

I didn’t realize I turned into such an old guy, but anyways. So, we’re going to start finishing up in Joshua chapter one. Obviously, I don’t believe people are very different from each other, so this is something that is very personal to me. So, I believe this is what the Lord wanted me to talk on. So, I’m going to read verses one through nine.

Now, after the death of Moses, the servant of the Lord, it came to pass that the Lord spake unto Joshua, the son of Nun, Moses’ minister, saying, Moses, my servant is dead, now therefore arise, go over this Jordan, thou, and all this people unto the land which I give unto them, even to the children of Israel. Every place that the sole of your foot shall tread on, that I have given unto you, as I said unto Moses, from the wilderness and this Lebanon, even unto the great river, the river Euphrates, all the land of the Hittites, and unto the great sea, toward the going down of the sun, shall be your coast.

There shall not any man be able to stand before thee in all the days of thy life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with thee. I will not fail thee nor forsake thee. Be strong and of good courage, for unto this people shalt thou divide for an inheritance the land which I swear unto their fathers to give them. Only be thou strong and very courageous, that thou mayest observe to do according to all the law, which Moses, my servant, commanded thee.

Turn not from it to the right hand or to the left, that thou mayest prosper whithersoever thou goest. This book of the law shall thou not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe and do according to all that is written therein. For then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success. Have I not commanded thee?

Be strong and of good courage, be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed, for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest. As you can see, if we meditate day and night in the Word, we’re going to be prosperous and have good success. That’s just not always true. But the big thing that stuck out to me here is, Moses has died. The man that Joshua had leaned on, followed and learned from, is gone.

Now Joshua is the one leading the children of Israel. At some point in our lives, we either leave the house, we lose someone that we’ve leaned on, for spiritual encouragement. Maybe it’s a pastor, parent, mentor, but one day they’re going to be gone on to be with the Lord. God tells Joshua to be strong and of good courage. This is one of the ways we can avoid idleness, is meditating on God’s Word day and night.

This stuck out to me because I think about when I was growing up. My dad was always like, I remember one particular task. He paid me, but it wasn’t great. We had a wall outside our house in Cambodia. We had scorpions coming out of it. Someone was like, you just need to cut it down. He was like, I’ll pay you like 50 bucks to cut it down.

It took me like a week. But that task outside of school kept me busy, kept me out of trouble. Obviously, as a parent with your kids, you’re always going to have your eye open, or you should always have your eye open and be like, what are they up to? Are they playing too many games? Are they doing this or doing that? I had a room alone with an iPad.

So growing up, I had a parent that did that. But when I left the house, obviously it didn’t really happen as much when I got older, and I still lived at the house. But especially as a kid, when I got older, it wasn’t like there anymore. I had to adult. We have to grow up, whether it be physically or spiritually. I just got married in November, and the responsibility that I have, that the Lord has placed on me for me and my family, and even for myself, in this sense, to not stay idle, now falls completely on me.

I can’t lean on another person every single day, be like, if I’m on my phone in my room, he’s going to walk in. So I can’t be on my phone in my room. That’s when we have to grow up, we have to step up, and we have to depend on the Lord, and we have to meditate on His Word day and night. Obviously, I feel like preaching more to young men, but that can be any temptation.

So nowadays, nobody’s going to keep me busy, nobody’s going to push me, except for my wife, on a daily basis. Now, same thing goes spiritually. You yourself, you have to pick up that Bible, you have to read it, and you have to stay consistent, and you have to avoid idleness.

Some people have to take extreme measures to do that. So God didn’t tell Joshua to wait on someone to lead him after Moses died. He told him to go. He told him to, where is that verse again?

This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate therein day and night. And we should use that same principle even now, especially now. There’s more temptation out there in any regards, vanity, lust, than there honestly has ever been. It’s so accessible.

So if we’re going to make this practical, which is good to do, we should all ask ourselves, when are we the most vulnerable? It could be when it gets late, it could be your days off work, your Saturdays, or your home alone, just for some reason or another. And it does not mean that just because you’re not idle, you’re not going to be tempted. You’re still going to be tempted.

You might be at work and somebody walks by and you’re like, that person is not dressed, and you have to look the other direction, but your flesh does not want to do that.

If we look at David, he fell in the evening on a rooftop with nothing to do, and he was out of place. Most of us already know, actually, no, sorry, all of us know in our hearts when we are the most at risk, every single one of us.

The problem is, we all know it, the problem is we don’t do anything about it. So an unoccupied life is an open door, and you need to flee lust, you need to flee sin, and then you need to fill that void with meditation on God’s Word, outside of being busy with work, things like that.

And then a good analogy is the phone, your phone, social media, is a modern version of David’s rooftop, because we all look at things on our phone. David goes out on his roof, he’s on his palace, he can see everything, I’m assuming, but he can see everything. He looks around, he sees some person shopping. Obviously, he saw Bathsheba, he saw probably soldiers walking the streets, so we swipe through reels, see soldiers walking the streets, see someone on the rooftop, you know, same thing.

So if we don’t fill our downtime with something, which should be God’s Word, there’s another thing that’s called the flesh that will gladly fill it for you. And that’s all I have.