The Intersection of Belief and Temptation

Something or not, so. Well, good evening, everyone. Greetings in Jesus' name. It's a pleasure to be here with you and worship with you together. Always impresses me how that when you get to different bodies of believers, that you can quickly sense the one Lord, the one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is above all and through all and in us all, even if it's not your same group of people that you fellowship with on an everyday Sunday morning.

You may turn to Hebrews 11. I'll be reading from there eventually. I always like to give the audience a place to turn a while. That way you feel a little more grounded. At least I always like to have a scripture reference to get started.

I'll be reading there eventually, not ready at the moment. When Uncle John contacted me several months ago and asked if I'd come and share a message this evening, I asked a few questions. And one of them was this: What do you have in mind?

Is there something specific that you're looking forward to you'd like me to speak on? As I recall, he said something like this: "We'd like to hear what you're thinking. We want to know what's been inspiring you. That's the specific thing we'd like you to share."

I don't know if I said this to him, but I know I thought it, that that's a little risky because you don't know what I've been thinking. And sometimes I get a little outside the box. I don't think this is one of those, though. I think that you will enjoy this, although I did specifically I knew immediately when he said, "We want to know what you've been thinking about." There was something. There was definitely something that has been going through my mind. I don't even know quite what started me thinking down this line. I know it was probably just life in general, Christian life and cogitations about life, reflecting, metacognition, I think they sometimes call it when you analyze the things you're going through.

I do know that it was somewhere back in February, I think, when my son Jefferson, who was 19 at the time, and I were traveling back from California. We had bought a used Penske truck out there, and we had taken a dad and son trip and was having a good time. As we were driving back somewhere through the Midwest, I remember asking a question to Jefferson, and it was on this same subject here tonight, and we had a good discussion.

But I'll just leave that hang a bit, leave you a little bit curious. But to jump-start the subject and to get us thinking together, please allow me to read a letter I received from a widow.

Dear beloved friend, I hope this message finds you in peace and good health. I know this may come as a surprise to you, but please forgive my intrusion into your privacy. My name is Mrs. Elizabeth M. K., citizen of South Africa, a widow suffering from a long-term illness. My late husband was a wealthy contractor who deposited a substantial sum of money, 18.5 million US dollars, in a secure account before his passing.

Due to my present medical condition, as confirmed by my doctors, I do not have much time left on this earth. It's my earnest desire to ensure that these funds are used for the work of God and to help the poor, the widows, and the less fortunate. After much prayer, I was led to contact you, as I believe you are a trustworthy and God-fearing person who will honor this request. I seek your assistance in transferring these funds to your account so that you may distribute them accordingly and also retain 25% for your personal support and efforts. I have already made arrangements with my bank, and all legal documents are in place for a smooth transaction.

Kindly respond urgently with your full name, address, Social Security number, and direct deposit banking account number so that I may instruct my bank to proceed with you as the beneficiary. Please treat this matter with utmost confidentiality and urgency. May God bless you richly as you consider this opportunity to be a vessel of His work. Yours faithfully, Mrs. Elizabeth M. K.

I have a question for you.

After listening to that letter which I had received—and this is a serious question—and it gets right to the point at which I would like to speak tonight.

The question is, if you had received a letter like that—and this one came to me—but if you got one like that, is there anyone here that would have been inclined to help this widow with the request that she brought?

Would have given your bank account number, your Social Security? Is there anyone here that was so inclined to help this poor widow? Or not a poor widow, but a widow who needed help with a project that she had. Am I missing someone? I'm not seeing any hands.

What if the widow repeated her request? Now, obviously, there was an opportunity here, and maybe you got one. You didn't respond right away. What if she sent it again? And again, maybe once a week you got one like this, a repeat.

The question that I have for you is, why not? I actually understand why, but I want you to think—I want us together to think why. Why wouldn't you respond to this? This could be called a temptation. It's an opportunity out there for you to make a response. Why would you not respond? Everybody seemed to have those knowing looks on your faces. You've got these kind of things before, right?

Why would you not respond to this opportunity? Can somebody just tell me why you wouldn't?

I missed who? Was he who spoke that? It's a scam. Okay. Brother Edsel says it's a scam. Do the rest of you agree? How do you know that it's a scam?

Okay. So in other words, you see through it, right? You've seen these kind of things before. You've heard about these kind of things before. Maybe the first person that got one of these would have been a little taken off guard.

In other words, Brother Edsel made a statement here, and he expected us that we would accept it, but he made a judgment. He said it's a scam. Obviously, he believes that it's a scam, or he wouldn't have said it.

And we believe it's a scam. That's why we all just kind of smile. You probably picked up on the first words, my dear beloved friend. Right away, you're like, "Oh, yes, one of these." They're so common that everybody—we just understand.

What I'm getting at—and maybe this is where my thoughts were going—is how much our belief impacts whether something like this even affects us or not.

I asked you a bit ago, "Why not? Was the offer not big enough?" I think it was 18 million, if I remember right, and you get to keep a quarter, so that's a little over 4 million. Was the offer not big enough? What if she would have offered 80 million and you get to keep a quarter? Well, no, that wouldn't make a difference.

What if she sent them off, or what if she allowed you to keep half of it instead of just a quarter? Would it make a difference? And the answer is no, because we don't believe it. And that factor alone right there just literally takes the power out of the attempt of the whatever, the conniver, the charlatan, the liar, the deceiver, whoever that's behind that trying to get you to respond.

The thing that got me thinking was how our belief is actually connected so strongly to what we do with temptations.

There might be someone out there who is naive and unacquainted with the ways of a scam artist that maybe does believe this. I had to believe—I had to assume—that there are some people that bite for this, or they wouldn't do it. So there must be some people somewhere, maybe one out of a million or somebody that actually falls for this. There must be.

What you believe makes all the difference in the world. This was the question, if I remember right. You can talk to Jefferson after church. Maybe he could tell you more exactly how I worded it. But as we were driving in from the west, this was the question that I remember as best of my memory that I placed to Jefferson. I said, "If a Christian were to fully and completely, 100%, without even a shadow of a doubt, believe God and His word, would such a person ever experience temptation to disobey God?" So we had a lengthy discussion, as you can imagine.

Or to put it another way, doesn't the very fact that we are tempted to choose to disobey God reveal that we do not fully believe God?

Doesn't it prove that all sin is connected at its root to unbelief?

Some of that seems weighty and perhaps heavy and maybe overstated. But when we stop and think about this scam that we all are familiar with, we get these things. And they don't affect us. We usually just delete them.

But if I would have printed that off, I wouldn't have been afraid to leave it laying around my house because it has no power over anybody that I know in my household. Because even though it's false and even though it's a lie and even though it has its own allure—it would have an allure if you believed it—it doesn't have power over us because we don't believe it.

I titled my message this evening, "The Intersection of Belief and Temptation." Intersection because every proposition forces us to choose which way we will go. When you come to an intersection, whether you want to or not, as long as you're traveling—and you could obviously stop at an intersection, I suppose—but life is a journey. You can't stop at the intersections. You're traveling. You're in motion. When you come to an intersection, you have to make a decision.

You can go left. You can go right. Depends what kind of intersection it is. I guess if it's a crossroads, you could go forward. But you need to go—you need to make a decision because you are here at this intersection.

Temptation because anytime we have an option of ways, we could make a wrong choice. We could. It's there. Maybe we wouldn't. Maybe we won't. Maybe in this situation, it's not even close. We have no inclination whatsoever to make a wrong choice.

But the option is there. And belief, because the way we go and the path we choose is fully a product of our beliefs. Now, that might be a little hard to believe, but it is. What we believe is connected to our actions.

I can't remember the speaker, but someone said once that we should not deceive people, and the easiest person to deceive is ourselves. Our beliefs sometimes have been affected by the evil ones so much that we don't even realize that our belief is wrong.

I would like to read from one of my favorite books. This is Chronicles of Man's Soul. It is a reworking of John Bunyan's classic Holy War. John Bunyan is most famous, of course, for Pilgrim's Progress. The same fellow wrote a bigger, more ponderous classic called Holy War, which in most people's evaluations is too ponderous and too deep that it doesn't make as easy reading as what Pilgrim's Progress does. So an author by the name of Ethel Barrett back in 1969, which I found was interesting—that's the year I was born—she took the Holy War, John Bunyan's work, and she reworked it into a book that I really, really appreciate, Chronicles of Man's Soul. Sometimes you'll find it—I'm not quite sure why—she seemed to have a difficulty settling on a title.

But it's under War for Man's Soul, I think, Chronicles of Man's Soul. It's about three different titles you might find this book under. But I very much encourage you to familiarize yourself with this book. I would like to read an excerpt out of this book that to me is just very powerful.

See if I can find this here.

Man's Soul, of course, as you can understand, is us. Man's Soul. And the story starts out where the characters are Diabolos, which is Satan. El Diablo would be the way they would say it in Spanish, but Diabolos is Satan.

And of course, God in this story is King Shaddai, or Jesus. I forget. Maybe that was Jesus. But either way, the God character is King Shaddai. But I'd like you just to read this story—this a little bit right at the beginning, Chapter One.

It's called Conspiracy Amidst the Brimstone. I'm not going to read the whole thing, but I want you to catch on here to how this relates to what I'm saying, what we're looking at, this intersection of belief and temptation.

Diabolos is speaking as we started here. "I must have Man's Soul at any cost," said Diabolos. "I will settle for nothing less." He was sitting on his haunches, pushing up little mounds of brimstone as he spoke. His warlord sat around him in a circle in one of the private conference caverns of the pit, eyeing the mounds of brimstone. Periodic spurts of fire erupted from crevices and lighted up their faces and sent their shadows shooting up the sides of the wall. "Man's Soul is Shaddai's treasure," interrupted Diabolos, beginning to flatten out his mounds of brimstone. "The one creation Shaddai set his heart upon cares the most about. What sweeter revenge could I possibly have than to take his most precious possession?

I must have it."

I'm jumping around here. I'm not going to read the entire chapter, but hopefully give you enough to wet your appetite that if you haven't read it before, that you will get it. It's a classic.

So Beelzebub was asking him. He says this, "What are your plans?" Diabolos sprang into action. "Apollion," he said, "hand me that stick, will you? Legion, draw up closer. And Electo, perhaps you better take notes. The rest of you watch and listen." He leaned forward, and with the stick Apollion handed him, began to make marks in the brimstone. "Now," he said, "this whole area is universe, situated here between these two poles, heaven and hell. And right here is Man's Soul, here, now.

As you know, Man's Soul is a town so fair, so commodious, so wonderful that, well, it has no equal under heaven. King Shaddai made it for his delight and for his glory. He gave it dominion over everything around it, and it enjoys privileges and powers beyond belief." "We know that. We know that," said Apollion. "How are you planning to take this town?" "This town has a wall, of course," Diabolos went on, "and five gates: the ear gate, the eye gate, the mouth gate, the nose gate, and the field gate." "How are you planning to take it?" said Beelzebub. "How are you planning to take it?" said Apollion.

Electo and the others remained silent. "It is impregnable," Diabolos admitted at last. "The walls are so made that they cannot be scaled or breached without the consent of those inside." "And the gates?" "The gates cannot be opened without the consent of those inside." They all finished it together.

There was a long silence. "We must muster all of our forces," suggested an underling timidly. "You are very stupid, my friend," Diabolos shot back. "All of our forces would not make a dent. No. My idea—" he paused for a second—"My idea is to make them want to let us in." "Want to let us in?" they all cried at once. "Who would want to let us in?" "We look pretty seamy, my lord," Apollion finished lamely. "Our one-time princely appearance is a thing of the past." "I know," said Diabolos. "I had thought of that. A scrubby lot, all of us. A scrubby lot indeed. One look at us and the whole town would be on red alert.

And that is just my strategy. They will not see us. We will be invisible, and they will not see our intentions either." "Our intentions will be invisible too," said Legion. "We'll cloak them in lies and deceit," said Apollion. "And flattery," said Beelzebub. "Yes," said Diabolos. "We will cajole them, delude them, pretend things that never will be, and promising things they never shall get. Lies, lies, lies. The only way to get Man's Soul to let us in. And so our intentions will be invisible, and we will be invisible. That is all except one of us," and I suggest—he looked around the circle of faces—"I suggest that I be that one." "By all means," they all cried at once, "for you are the genius at deceit, a master liar." "The master liar," Diabolos corrected. "I say this in all modesty.

There has never been my equal." He waited for someone to challenge him. No one did. "Well then," he said, "now that that's decided, the next question is my disguise. What shall it be?"

That portion of the Chronicles of Man's Soul has always impressed me. I think I read it back in school. Those of you that are educators, which I think most of you are, at least on this side of the house, a lot of you mothers, remember The Power of Education. I think this was a book that I picked up at school. It impacts for life.

How this connects to the widow's letter is that we face all of the time—not so much the big danger in our lives is not the scam letters we get—it's the scam letters the devil writes. He never has given up his strategy, and he never will. It's the only strategy he has. The devil actually is a little boring, if I may say it that way, because he uses the same tactics over and over and over. If we study history, if we look even at our own lives, we can see the repetition of his attacks.

And I suppose he keeps using the same things over and over because we, as humans, are so susceptible that we tend to fall for the same things over and over. We seem to not be able to get past believing the lies. They just, "Well, maybe this time it'll be true."

Belief. Jeremy Bentham was a philosopher back in the lived in the 1800s. He wrote a book or a little pamphlet called The Springs of Action, and loosely quoted, he says this way, "Every human action is driven by the pursuit of something we believe will bring pleasure or by the avoidance of something we believe will cause pain.

There are no exceptions." When I first read that, I thought, "Wow, there are no exceptions." That just kind of hits you like, "Wait, don't there have to be some exception somewhere?" But the key is the words believe. If he didn't have the words believe there, I think that it could be perhaps a wrong statement. But it's, "Every human action is driven by the pursuit of something we believe will bring us pleasure." It doesn't mean it will bring you pleasure. It doesn't mean it's a good thing. But you will pursue it if you believe it will bring you pleasure, even if the pleasure is a false promise by the evil one. And you will do—you will have—you'll be motivated to avoid pain, to making choices that you believe will avoid pain.

Why does the little child tell a lie whenever he broke a window? Why does he tell a lie? Because he thinks he believes somehow that it will avoid pain. Now, it won't in the long run. It maybe short-term will, but in the long run, it will not.

That's a discussion perhaps for another day. But I think that's just true. So here's the question I kind of—just a couple of things. One of the greatest observable facts in the Christian life is that the devil wants to get us all.

The second most observable fact probably is that he's getting too many of us.

And the third is that every tool of the evil one is a lie.

But a lie's only power is if we believe it.

A young lady once was talking to me about some—can't remember exactly where the conversation was going—but we were talking about lies and how the evil one works and that lies—you can tell—somebody can tell you all the lies in the world, and it doesn't hurt you as long as you don't believe them.

A lie only has power if you believe it. Somebody can come up to you and—like the widow's scam there—it doesn't—we laugh at it. We're not afraid of it. We don't even—we don't like them, but they don't—we aren't tempted because we do not believe them. They have no power.

The fourth observable thing is that Satan will get advantage of us if we remain ignorant of his devices.

2 Corinthians 2:11 gives this warning that we should be careful. Last, Satan should get an advantage of us, for we are not ignorant of his devices. It says we are not ignorant of his devices, assuming that we aren't, and we shouldn't be. However, if we do not take these things seriously, we might be. We're not supposed to be, obviously, but we might be.

Another question—this is one I think that helps us as we face these temptations—is to understand a little bit why the devil wants to get us all. We said the devil wants to get us all, and out of the book here, it was clear he starts off, "I must have Man's Soul." Why does the devil want us so bad? Did you ever give that consideration? Why does the devil really, really want us?

Anyone, you can't give—just tell me what you're thinking. He's jealous. He's jealous of. Of a relationship we can have with our maker. Okay. All right. He's jealous of a—it's not just us, in other words. Brother Harvey's saying it's not just us that he just is that kind of person that he hates us, but he is jealous because he sees our relationship with God. All right. I like that. There may be something else but very close to that. Anyone else? He wants worship. He wants worship. Okay.

Well, it said there that he wants to get back at God. He wants to get back at God. How did he say that here? He says that his Man's Soul is his greatest treasure. "What sweeter revenge could I possibly have than to take his most precious possession?"

When we believe that—when we believe out of scripture—and I don't have all of this—I have some scriptures, but I don't have—we're not going to turn to everything here tonight. But scripture talks about how much God loves us, talks about how he—the most famous scripture in the world, probably—"For God so loved the world, he gave his only begotten Son." To love someone so much that you're willing to give your son, your only son, talks about being the—we're the apple of his eye. If we can fully grasp how precious we are to God and the fact that God will not force us to love him, and the devil wants to win us mostly, I believe, because he knows that's the way to hurt God the most.

As fathers, it's difficult to know a little bit sometimes whether we should look at this from the father's perspective or whether we should look at it from the lover's perspective because the scripture uses both analogies. But I think we can think of both, whichever one fits for you the best. But father, think of a child, a daughter. Let's put it that way because the scripture refers to Christians as the bride of Christ. So let's put that in the feminine form. Fathers, do you imagine a daughter? And if you're a young man here tonight or a married person, think of your wife. And think of the tremendous diabolical—yes, that's the right term—of a person, an enemy that would hate you so bad that instead of just reaching out and touching and hurting the one that you love, whether it's that little girl or that young lady that you have a father heart of protecting, or whether it's the young man who's protecting his girlfriend, his bride, his wife, imagine if the enemy was of the nature that he wooed them away from your protection to where he would talk with that young lady, and he would convince her that her father didn't have her best interest in mind, and he would woo her away with empty promises and lies to the point that she chose to leave her father and go with the man who was going to abuse her and destroy her.

But she went with it willingly because she believed his words. Can you imagine, as a father, the tremendous gut-wrenching heartache that that would cause? And of course, we can think of the same thing.

The devil—this is what he does, and I think why he does it—it would be more efficient, maybe you could say, if he was just destroy straight out. But that's not his point. His point is maximum hurt to God.

Sorry for the little bit of a bunny trail there.

The scripture that we can use probably as much as anything to assure that we're not just imagining that effect that Satan wants is that when the story of Job is one of the greatest stories where we have a peek into the way Satan thinks, the way Satan acts, and the relationship maybe even between God and Satan, when it has to do with Man's Soul, remember what Satan said? He said, "Let me work on Job, and he will curse thee to thy face."

That would have been Satan's sweetest revenge if he could have got to Job to blame God. And he tried hard. That story, the way that was set up, and even the way the friends came in that we don't have—we could go into that. Sometime you want to study something. You read Job 4. When Eliphaz, who was the first friend, started talking to Job, notice what he says starting in verse 12, 12 to the end of the chapter. Eliphaz apparently had a vision, and I think it was the devil. He says, "The now a thing was secretly brought to me, and my ears received a little thereof in thoughts from the visions of the night when deep sleep voleth on man.

Fear came upon me in trembling, which made all my bones to shake. Then a spirit passed before my face. The hair of my flesh stood up. It stood still, but I could not discern the form thereof." And this voice was saying—and the voice is accusing God. The voice says, "Shall a mortal man be more just than God? Shall a man be more pure than his maker?" That part sounds somewhat okay, like the devil does. "Behold, he put no trust in his servants, and his angels he charged with folly." I believe that in the Job story there, that Satan had affected even the friends to come to Job with a moral dilemma that Job did not know how to answer.

You know what they said to him? They said, "Job, it's either you or God. That's wicked." And we know it's not God, Job. And they did know that. But what they didn't know is they were falsely accusing Job, and Job was the only one that knew that he was innocent.

They just assumed that he was wicked because God was punishing him. They didn't seem to understand Satan's workings. And so they placed before Job this awful dilemma where he knew—at least he thought he knew he couldn't think of anything he hadn't done wrong—and yet, obviously, if it's either him or God, it must be God that's unjust because that was the dilemma they tried to place him in.

Satan was trying to get Job to curse God to his face. Didn't work. Job didn't take the scam letter.

Tonight, I don't intend—didn't come here with the idea at all—that you need this somehow specially here. And I don't intend this to really be anything specific to where we're picking out individual temptations and working them over to figure them out. But I just simply—the scripture talks about David. I think it was in our Sunday school lesson this morning here. Someone mentioned that David encouraged himself in the Lord. That's what I want to do this evening. I would love for my own self—and I'm not there, I'll be honest with you—and I probably know one is there, but I would love if all of us could be so strong in our belief to God and so adamant in our belief against the devil that every time we face a temptation, we felt the same response that we do when we get one of those widow scam letters.

We just go, "Of course, I won't respond to that. That's ridiculous because everything that's on offer is a lie." I wish that we could believe to that level, to that depth, to that extent. Hebrews 11—you probably think I forgot—turn there and mention that I was going to read there. There is a verse in Hebrews 11 which is very foundational, and it's verse 6. "But without faith, it's impossible to please him." Why? "For," it says, which in the Bible means because—basically, it's going to explain, give the reason why—"for he that cometh to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him."

If we can get a hold of that verse right there and firmly believe it, then we won't be believing the devil's scam letters. The problem with us is sometimes we want to think that there's a little bit of truth in the temptation, and we go a little bit like Eve where the devil comes to us and says—he starts raising questions and making God look bad. "You're not going to really die, but the reason God doesn't want you to partake of this is because he knows something that he's not telling you. And the thing that he knows is that you'll be wise and you'll be like him. You'll know good and evil. And God doesn't want you to be like him.

So he's kind of holding you back from something." Well, God did know good and evil, and Eve didn't. All she knew was good. Praise the Lord. Wouldn't that have been wonderful if humans could have stayed there? So the devil didn't actually quite completely tell an untruth, and yet he did because he reflected against God. He said, "God's holding you back from something good, something that God really doesn't have your best in mind."

If we can believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him, God does not do anything against us. He is not trying to trick us. He's not trying to trap us. He's not trying to fool us. He's not trying to mislead us. Everything that God asks us to do is for our good.

It doesn't mean it's 100% the easiest thing to do at every moment of the day. There are times when we have to be thinking long-term. There are times we make choices which—but God has our best in mind. In that particular verse, I think it's also true that we believe—it doesn't say it there, but I think you can understand the flip side is we also must believe that the devil is and that he is a deceiver intent to pull us away from God. I meet some people sometimes that they're a little bit edgy about the devil.

They kind of don't like to think of our temptations as coming from the devil. It's our—and I'm not getting into the deep theology of all that. I realize the devil is not omnipresent the way God is, so he can't be everywhere, but his evil demons can be and all. And I don't want to get into the superstition. I don't think we should be inordinately afraid of the devil, neither inordinately in awe of him. But it's important to know that we have an enemy. It's important to know that he does hate God, and he wants us because it's the way of getting back at God. And he will write us endless scam letters, if you may allow me to continue that metaphor, that illustration there.

A Chinese military strategist, Sun Tzu—my Chinese isn't the best for maybe I think that's the way you say his name—wrote a book years ago called The Art of War. And in it, he said this way, "If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. But if you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained, you will also suffer defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle."

Know the enemy. He's a liar. His strategy is to deceive us to think that his lies are the truth and know ourselves, which is we excel and have a tendency to believe his lies, deceiving even ourselves.

So this evening, I do want to look at some of the lies, some of the methods in which the devil throws us off, gets us to respond, gets us to send his Social Security number and our bank account number. He gets us to respond to his entreaties.

I want to look at some of those methods. Of course, it will not be all conclusive, but there's just some. And I want each of you to be applying it to your life. I'm not going to name the areas that human weaknesses are. We know them. We know better our own weaknesses.

The Bible talks about besetting sins, where Hebrews 12:1 talks about the sins which dust so easily beset us. I think all of us probably know what that thing is in our life, or maybe there's more than one thing, but we know where our areas of weakness is.

The Bible tells us that there's no temptation taking you besuchers as common to man. So that means that whatever I'm facing is not the—I'm not the only one. In fact, there's probably many people. It doesn't mean that every person faces the same thing exactly. For illustration purposes, I have never faced a temptation to gamble.

I really don't think I've ever faced temptation to do drugs. But still, there are people out there that, depending on their situations in life, their exposures in life, and how they were raised, those things are real to them, very real. That might be their besetting sin. It's not mine. I have mine. You have yours. So I'm going to just leave it open-ended that way that I just want each of you to think about the area in life that you know that is your area of weakness.

You're not alone. Everybody is out there. But in somewhere or another, I want you also to challenge you to think about how it's related to a lie because it is so diverse, and yet it always comes back to that same thing where there's some sort of a deception that is causing you to feel inclined to answer that scam letter. There's some sort of deception there.

One of the first ones I have here is—oh, I did want to say this. In case there's anyone here—and I can't imagine this because I definitely know my areas of weakness—but if there's someone here that just you don't know what your areas of weakness are, you're not sure if you have any, just remember this: the Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, and he said, "I thank God." He said, "Thank you, Dean." He actually said, "Thank you. Thank you, God, that I'm not like other men are."

Well, he had a problem, didn't he? He had a problem just—and it was actually the same problem that a lot of other men have. He just couldn't see it. So I ask each of you if hopefully, there's no one here like that that's thinking, "Well, I don't know if I have any problems." But if you do feel that way, I ask you to maybe look a little closer and be a little more introspective and realize that even that alone itself could be a problem.

The public instead of far often said, "God be merciful to me, a sinner."

We do have a merciful God. Okay, here's one of the first ones that I entitled manipulative framing, misleading framing. How about this question? Should I choose what God commands me to do? You're facing a situation. Should I choose to do what God commands me to do, or should I do what's best for me?

Any of you young people see a problem with that?

Or how about this one? Should I choose happiness or holiness? Did you ever hear this said, "God is more concerned about your holiness than your happiness"? There is a little bit of—there is some truth in that. But it's also a little deceptive because let me tell me in the front row here, what's the problem with this way of thinking?

It's the same thing. All right. They're both the same thing. They're the same thing. God does want you—sometimes people say, "Well, but God wants"—I remember a lady years ago that was—she was leaving her husband, and we were talking with her, trying to help her understand the devastation of all that. "But God wants me to be happy."

Amen. God wants you to be happy. If you leave your husband, the devastation that will cause to your family and your children and your husband—and you know what? That's been what, Dawn, 30 years ago almost. She's not happy today, and she recognizes that she made a mistake. But she did it because she believed there was a difference between happiness and holiness. This question that I read here, "Should I choose what God commands me, or should I do what's best for me?" is actually—I actually pulled that out of a book by Randy Alcorn, which I—again, I'm recommending books here tonight. This one, of course, is focusing specifically on purity.

And although these temptations that we're talking about, these scam letters that we get, aren't always in that realm, but this book here is one of the absolute best books I've ever read on purity. It's called The Purity Principle. It's a cheap little book. Fathers, youth leaders, pastors—buy 20 of them and hand them out to everybody in your congregation. Buy 40 or 50 of them, whatever. They're not expensive. I bought one for each of my boys, and I think one of my sons was responsible for some of the youth in his church, and he bought them for all the youth there. But here's what I wanted to read. This is out of Randy's book here. Satan's greatest victories and our biggest defeats come when he gets us to ask, "Should I choose what God commands me, or should I do what's best for me?"

The very framing of the question shows how badly we're deceived. We will not consistently choose God's way until we come to understand that his way is always best for us.

So that's one of the big questions—one of the big ways in which the devil deceives us. He brings to us that false dichotomy, like we have to choose between these two when actually God says, "You can have both.

I want you to be holy." And the only reason I really want you to be holy is not just because I'm this arbitrary God that likes to set hurdles up here and just to see if you can jump over them and to be hard on you when you miss. But I want you to be holy because it's the best thing for you. It's the best thing for your wife. It's the best thing for your family. It's the best thing for your community. It's the best thing for your nation.

It's the way everybody will be happier.

Here's another one. Got to move on here. Here's another one. Some of these are lies that we absolutely must not believe, and a few of them are truths that we need to firmly commit to so we can counteract lies. The first number of these are untruths.

The Christians' rewards are in the land of the dead. Now, we don't probably say it that way in our minds, but I just worded it that way. But there's just a lot of times whenever we have this feeling—I know I did as a young person, and I can still have it now sometimes—is that I'm being a Christian because I don't want to go to hell, and I'm being a Christian because I don't want to go to—I want to go to heaven. That fear of punishment and lower reward—and those, of course, are all in the land of the dead.

They're all way down the road in the future. But it feels like that we're giving up an awful lot of happiness now. And we can understand why it feels that way because in Christian life, we do sacrifice sometimes. We have self-sacrifice. But that doesn't hurt us. That's the way sometimes even to the greatest blessings.

You return to Psalm 27:13. This is one of my favorite verses.

And because I think this explains why so many young people fail—and I say young people. It could explain why anybody fails. But I think specifically, it's why young people fail. And this is a little bit cumbersomely worded in the King James Version, but you can get it. It says, "I had fainted." Psalm 27:13, "I had fainted unless I had believed to seek." Hear those words in there? "I had fainted unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living."

See, life is long. And to a 15, 16, 18, 20-year-old, 25-year-old, if you believe that the only reason that Christian life is worth living is because you don't want to go to hell and you want to get to heaven, that's a long way off. And it's easy to faint because you don't see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Why don't you see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living? Because of your belief. There's something in your belief system that is keeping you from seeing the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. "I had fainted unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living."

We've got to see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

Where is that reference? It's not Psalm 27:13. It's not Psalm 27:13? It is Psalm 27:13. Oh, I have a copy of Joe.

I make mistakes sometimes, but I thought I had that one right. Psalm 27:13, I believe, is correct there. Here's another one that sometimes catches us. The devil gets at us with it, even though we know better. But if we could just keep it in our consciousness—and it's the idea that God is far away.

God is far away, and I'm by myself. The story of Joseph is so powerful. I'm sure all of you have appreciated the story of Joseph. Did you ever think about how down through the story of Joseph—let me back up a bit—one of the things we like the most is the way when Joseph faced extreme temptation, even though his brothers weren't there, his father wasn't there, his friends weren't there, his accountability group wasn't there, he said, "How can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?" He was aware of God's presence. When you read the story of Joseph, it stands out to me how it says down through—it says, "And the Lord was with Joseph." "And the Lord was with Joseph." "And the Lord was with Joseph."

Whoa. Sure, he was. But why Joseph was aware of the presence of the Lord? Do you think when Cain killed Abel, was the Lord not there? Of course, he was. Cain just wasn't aware of the Lord. The Lord was there. When David sinned with Bathsheba, was God not there? Was the Lord not with David? Well, David had forgotten. He maybe didn't believe as firmly as he should have that God was there. This is just a small tip, which I'll share.

Sometimes, if I'm tempted to—the presence of God is not as real as it should be, and I'm tempted to answer one of the devil's scam attacks.

There's a song. There's actually many songs you could sing. But one of them that I like is, "God Himself is Present." Just remind yourself. Sing that song. If it helps, look up toward God and say, "God, I know you're there. Thank you for being there. I acknowledge that you are here." That helps because the lie is that we're alone. No one will know.

Here's another one, "Ye shall not surely die." Of course, we recognize that would be in the lie that the devil brought to Eve. And he doesn't probably come to us with those exact words. But it's the idea that it won't affect me the way God said it will, or at least a little bit won't. "Ye shall not surely die."

Do you know that rat poison only works because the rats think it's food? Let that sink in a little bit. That's the only way it works. The rats don't just wake up someday and say, "Well, I guess I'll go eat some poison. Farmer put it out.