The Baited Hook

Thank you for reading this sermon from Christ Fellowship. I hope and pray that this sermon will be a blessing of grace and truth to you. With that said, let me encourage you not to use this sermon as a replacement for your local church. Christ Jesus did not establish his Church simply for us to consume content. Instead, He calls us to be part of a real, covenant family.

Imagine a college football coach walking away from his time right before a playoff run. Would he have done that if he knew the team would be playing as well as they did? I guess we’ll never know, but it makes for a great lesson in faithfulness.

The letter of James starts by encouraging Christians to stay faithful. Remain steadfast. Finish well. Last week, we talked about the kind of faith that requires. Faith in God is relational trust. It’s not grit or optimism. It’s confidence that God loves me and that He can be trusted.

As a Christian, if I experience something difficult in my life, I know that God intends it to make me a better version of myself. The goal isn’t to make me happy, but to make me whole. And so, I don’t need to hedge my bets. I don’t need a backup plan. I need to trust Him.

But what happens when I don’t? What’s the opposite of trusting God? Most would say the opposite of trusting God is doubting Him. And James has already mentioned that as a problem. But there’s something worse than doubting God… it’s blaming Him.

[13] Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one.

Bad theology causes real problems. This problem happens in our mind. We say to ourselves, “If God is sovereign, then this temptation must be from him.”

This is basically a version of the problem of evil. If God is good and He’s in control, then why would He allow me to be temped? Isn’t He the one tempting me?

No. James is denying this. He’s denying it on the basis that there are some things God cannot do. God cannot be tempted with evil, and therefore, He can’t tempt you with it either. It’s not in His nature.

God can’t do something that is against His own nature. It would be evil of God to tempt someone else to evil, so God can’t do that.

But God can and does test us. And the reason this seems confusing or complicated to us is that the same event can be both a test and a temptation because of our nature, not Gods.

[14] But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.

When a test becomes a temptation, it is our sinful human nature that makes it that way.

The word “desire” in the Bible is kind of an interesting word. In most cases, it is the Greek word “epithumia” and it comes from the same root word as fire. It’s conveying the idea of craving or longing for something, and that longing always has an object. It’s not just a general hunger, but a specific craving.

And usually, when the Bible uses this word, it’s talking about sinful desires. But not always. Sometimes the same word is used to describe a good or healthy desire.

Jesus uses this word in Luke 22 to describe his feelings about wanting to eat the Passover with His disciples. So, it’s not a bad word. Instead, it becomes a sinful desire when the object of that desire becomes so important to us that we are blinded to reality.

James intentionally uses hunting or fishing imagery to explain this. He says that temptation happens when we are “lured and enticed” by our own desire. What seems good to us is hiding a hook.

The Bible has always used this kind of language to explain sin. Even in Genesis 3, Adam and Eve desired the fruit from the tree because it was a delight to their eyes.

Listen to how Proverbs 9 describes the dangers of temptation:

13 The woman Folly is loud;
she is seductive and knows nothing.

14 She sits at the door of her house;
she takes a seat on the highest places of the town,

15 calling to those who pass by,
who are going straight on their way,

16 “Whoever is simple, let him turn in here!”
And to him who lacks sense she says,

17 “Stolen water is sweet,
and bread eaten in secret is pleasant.”

18 But he does not know that the dead are there,
that her guests are in the depths of Sheol.

It’s the same message. Temptation works because it looks good, but it always hides a hook – or as Proverbs says, it is a banquet in the grave. James continues by explaining the process:

[15] Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.

James makes the whole thing sound biological and inevitable, like a baby in the womb.

Once that desire has conceived… once it has been taken hold of you, it will have consequences. There may be a gestational period, but the damage has been done.

This should remind us of the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus says that if you have looked lustfully on a woman, then you’ve already committed adultery with her in your heart.

Is it wrong to notice the beauty of a woman? Of course not! But men, we all know the difference between noticing and desiring.

You start to want what you can’t have. Sin is conceived. It will give birth. And it leads to death.

[16] Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers.

Do not be deceived… Here’s a useful thought experiment. How would you know if you are currently deceived? If you’re deceived, then you wouldn’t know it, would you?

The safest option when it comes to sin is to assume you are. I think James is giving us all a healthy dose of conspiracy. Assume you’re being deceived and start looking for the perpetrator.

And what’s the best way to do that? You need to be able to spot the counterfeits.

This is one of my absolute favorite illustrations, because it’s so simple and clear. How does the United States Secret Service train agents to look for counterfeit money? They don’t spend most of their time studying fake money. They become masters of handling real money.

They study paper texture and stiffness, ink texture, portrait detail, security threads, watermarks… they handle real money for days. They become experts in the real thing. Why? Because you don’t need to know every fake… you just need to know the real thing so well that the fake can’t hide.

When an agent handles counterfeit money, they can tell something is wrong immediately, even before they consciously know why.

And this is exactly the sort of approach James encourages.

[17] Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.

God, your Creator, is in the business of giving us good gifts – things we should desire. He is not in the business of giving us impossible traps. He’s not trying to deceive us or trick us.

He is unchangeably good and beautifully predictable in His goodness. And if we were convinced of that and growing in our desire for the gifts of God, then there wouldn’t be room in our hearts for the counterfeits. And we would be able to spot them.

Because what James implies here is a contrast between God’s good gifts and the things we desire in our sin. Those things, the counterfeits, are subject to change.

Here’s the truth about sin. It always makes us one-sided promises. It takes something from us and offers us temporary benefits that are always “subject to change.” Indulging in our sinful desires is like signing a contract without reading the fine print.

But James tells us that God never does this to us. In fact, he calls God the “Father of Lights”. He’s more predictable than the rising of the sun in the morning or the moon at night. And then he says this:

[18] Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.

This verse is meant to be God’s answer to the deadly progression of verse 15. Desire conceives and gives birth to sin. Sin, when fully grown brings death.

This verse is also biological and inevitable language. God’s desire brings forth new life from His Word. And we are the primary evidence that God is doing this. He is re-creating the world by His will, by His means, and for His creatures!

Sinful desires predictably lead to death, but God’s gifts predictably lead to life.

So, let me ask you: where are you currently blaming God instead of trusting Him? … Not out loud, but in your heart.

“If God hadn’t put me in this situation…”
“If God really cared…”
“If God understood how hard this is…”

But what if God isn’t the problem? What if you’re deceived? What if there’s some desire in your life right not that you are justifying instead of crucifying?

You’ve convinced yourself that you need it and you’ll never be happy unless you get it. But there’s a hook under that bait.

Sin never looks like death at first. It looks like relief. It looks like happiness. It looks like something you deserve.

But desire, once it conceives, gives birth to sin. And sin, when it grows up, always brings death. And the scariest part? It feels reasonable the whole way down.

So how we you fight deception? Not by staring harder at our sin, but by leaving no room for it. By learning to desire the good gifts of the Father.

God isn’t baiting us. He’s calling us home. “Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth…” Do you hear the Gospel in that?

I didn’t desire God first. I didn’t choose life first. I didn’t overcome sin first. God did.

And He proved it in the death of Jesus, who bore the consequences of our sinful desires on the cross, so that God’s unchanging character would have the final word.

And this is the good news: I’m not fighting temptation to earn any of that from the Father.
I’m fighting temptation because I already have it.

That’s how sin dies in our hearts. If you get to the know the Giver of good gifts, then the counterfeits will become far less desirable.

The bride eyes not her garment,
but her dear bridegroom’s face;
I will not gaze at glory,
but on my King of grace;
not at the crown He giveth,
but on His piercéd hands;
the Lamb is all the glory
of Emmanuel’s land.