When You Are Facing Temptations Remember This

Matt 4:1-4 -Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And after He had fasted forty days and forty nights, He then became hungry.  And the tempter came and said to Him, "If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread." But He answered and said, "It is written, 'MAN SHALL NOT LIVE ON BREAD ALONE, BUT ON EVERY WORD THAT PROCEEDS OUT OF THE MOUTH OF GOD.'"   NASU 
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• Temptation Is NOT The Same As Sin 

In our text this morning Jesus was led into the wilderness for a specific reason and that was to be "tempted" by the devil. Jesus has been the only person never to have sinned in His lifetime, but He was tempted.
 
Therefore temptation and sin cannot be the same thing. When you are tempted don't succumb to the thinking well I have been tempted I might as well do it. No. Just because you have been tempted that doesn't mean you might as well participate in sinning that is known as faulty thinking.
 
Temptation is NOT the same as sinning. 

• How To Overcome Your Temptations 

Jesus was tempted, but He doesn't give into it. He instead shows us how to beat temptations. The way we defeat them is by knowing the Word of God. In the three recorded temptations in Matthew, Jesus fends them off by quoting scripture to the devil.
 
Do you want to defeat the temptations the devil throws at you? Then know the Word of God that pertains to your specific temptation.
 
Let me give you an example: suppose you have had a problem with " lying, anger, stealing, or profanity". The apostle Paul gives us a scripture for us to memorize when any of those four temptations come after you.
 
Ephesians 4:25-29 - Therefore, laying aside falsehood, SPEAK TRUTH EACH ONE of you WITH HIS NEIGHBOR, for we are members of one another. BE ANGRY, AND yet DO NOT SIN; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not give the devil an opportunity. He who steals must steal no longer; but rather he must labor, performing with his own hands what is good, so that he will have something to share with one who has need. Let no unwholesome word proceed from your mouth, but only such a word as is good for edification according to the need of the moment, so that it will give grace to those who hear.
 
We are told not to lie. Lay it aside or have nothing to do with lying and speak the truth.
 
Maybe you have had a problem with anger. Well, good news, being angry is not a sin, but what you do with that anger or what you allow the anger to do to you might lead you into sin. Be angry Paul says, but don't sin.
 
If you have had a problem with stealing as some did in Ephesus. Paul informs those who stole to "steal no longer".
How is your speech?
 
Is it filled with profanity, or maybe you are a gossip, a slanderer, or a backbiter? All of these are unwholesome ways your words can be used and they are not to proceed out of the mouth of a Christian. 

• Do You Want To Be Like Jesus? 

If you answered "Yes" to that question here is one way you can be like Him.
 
Know the Word of God and when you are tempted, you can defeat that temptation by applying the Word to that specific situation.
 
Think About This:
 
By yielding to temptation one may lose in a moment what it took a lifetime to acquire.

Stay Pumped,
 
Gary A. Serago

Minister of God's Word