Safeguards to Holiness by Pastor Damian Kyle

Good evening. With your right hand, let's turn to James chapter 1, and then with your left hand, let's turn to Genesis chapter 39, as we'll read our texts for tonight. James chapter 1, Genesis chapter 39, James 1, beginning in verse 12.

Genesis chapter 39, verse 7.

Let's pray together. Lord you have a plan for tonight, and we ask that you would accomplish your plan here. Good, perfect, acceptable as it is, and we ask it in Jesus' name, amen. Tonight I'm going to be speaking on this subject about how to properly handle temptation, and surely it is a subject that is of interest to all of us. Someone has said concerning the relationship of the believer to trials that we are always in one of three relationships with trials, that is we're either in one or we're coming out of one or we're going into one. And if that can be said of trials, it can certainly be said concerning temptation. Each of us has dealt with temptation today. Each of us will deal with temptation for the remainder of this night, and then again tomorrow we'll be dealing with temptation. The issue is not if we're going to be tempted, but rather will we handle it properly when it comes. James writes to us and he tells us in that first chapter, verse 13, that temptation to sin is not sin. It's only temptation to sin at that particular point. So many Christians they beat themselves up over the fact that they've been tempted. Sometimes that can happen in the ministry, can it? If I were any kind of a Christian or if I was any kind of a minister, you know, those things wouldn't tempt me or there wouldn't be a desire as it relates to those kinds of things. And yet we notice in verse 13 that word when. He said, but let no one say when he is tempted. So God warns us, we notice that word when. He warns us that we're going to be tempted to sin, but that sin can be handled in such a way, or temptation can be handled in such a way, that it need not lead to sin. You notice in verses 14 and 15 he tells us that temptation becomes sin when temptation unites with my desire, when it unites with my will. When temptation unites with my desire or unites with my will, the word that's used there in verse 15 is that there's a conception that occurs. You notice that conceived that's there. We know from human reproduction that conception occurs when the seed from the man and the egg from the woman unite. And the word conceived there in verse 15 it means to take together or to receive together. Conception occurs upon the uniting of two things. And in the same way temptation becomes sin when it is able to unite with my will. Let's say this is the temptation, my right fist, and here is my will, my left hand. When that temptation comes up against my will and my will resists the temptation, then the temptation remains just that, a temptation. It's been properly handled. But when that temptation comes and it hits my will and my will embraces it, it aligns with it, it joins with it, at that moment in time now we have conception, the uniting of two things. And now it goes from being a temptation now to becoming sin. And the battle is always won or lost in the realm of the will, the realm of the heart. It's always won or lost there long before it's ever played out physically in our lives. And so that's why the psalmist writes, or the writer of Proverbs, Solomon, he wrote and he said, the backslider in heart will be filled with his own ways. That backsliding always begins in the heart. As it relates to properly dealing with temptation, God has done something wonderful in the scriptures. He's given us, you know, the systematic theology as it relates to that. But he's also clothed the doctrine in wonderful flesh and blood in that 39th chapter of Genesis in the person of Joseph with the temptation as it related to Potiphar's wife. And so we turn there now and that'll have our attention for the remainder of our session. The background concerning the chapter is that there's two characters there in the circumstance. And the first person that's in the circumstance is Joseph himself. We know from the passage that he's a young man. It's guessed or estimated that he's probably between 17 and 20 years old. He's very attractive, we're told at the end of verse 6. That tells us this guy was just good-looking. He's a total package. I mean, sometimes I guess you got to choose between the muscles and the cute face, or the cute face and no muscles. This guy had the whole thing. He was good-looking and just a handsome guy all the way around. We're also told earlier in chapters 37, chapter 37, that he was a man to whom God had given great dreams. And he was a man for whom God had great plans beyond what he could ever dream or imagine. The second person that's in the whole scene here is a woman we know only as Potiphar's wife. And she doubtless was a very attractive woman. How do we know that? Well, powerful men tend to marry attractive women. They can look like a basset hound themselves. They land, you know. When I was in high school, I couldn't get a date to save my life. And that was a time when Henry Kissinger was dating anyone on the face of the planet that he wanted to. He looked like a hush puppy commercial, you know. But a powerful man, a powerful man. The other reason we know that she was probably very attractive is that if she looked like Ma Kettle, there's no temptation. So, the story ends. So she tries to seduce Joseph and she makes herself available to him. She says, I want you. I make myself available to you. Now you stop and you think about the power of that temptation to a 17-year-old boy who is very far from home. Some of us have to remember back to 17, the strength of those temptations. That's about as strong as a temptation can get, isn't it? In fact, we're told, and I always wonder about people who study these things, but they do study these things. We're told that ages 17 through 20 is a time when the male sexual desire is at its greatest. And, you know, you can sit there and think, wait a second, what? Is this a sermon on human sexuality? I don't know if I want to know all of this. What's the point of it? There is a point. The point is, is that Joseph is going to stand in the area of his greatest temptation, and in doing so, he's going to give all of us instruction on how to stand in the greatest area of our temptation, even if it's different from his. So what did Joseph do to properly handle temptation? There's seven things in the passage. What safeguards did he set up for his holiness? The first safeguard that we notice is the importance of not living near the cliff edge of sin. Verse 10, Joseph didn't put himself needlessly near temptation. In fact, we're told he purposely avoided it. And that is very, very important. Because everything's going great, he's minding his own business, and then, bam, right out of the blue, she comes and grabs a hold of his garment, and in one second, that temptation came into his life with that kind of power. And if he had been living near the edge spiritually, then the force of that temptation could have very easily taken him over the edge of the cliff. And so often in the body of Christ, especially when there's been a long period of time where there hasn't been a strong temptation, there's that tendency to drift towards the edge of the cliff as it relates to our weak area. And every one of us has a weak area. It also happens after we've been in the ministry for a few years. We start thinking we're hot stuff, and God's blessing, and all of this, and we can convince ourselves that now we've reached a level of spirituality, and we don't need to be as careful about these things as we once were. Then after a few years, we turn around, and we find ourselves living closer to the edge of temptation than we have since we began our Christian walk. Then what happens? That gust, that wind of temptation comes down upon us, and if we're living right there on that edge, there's no barrier, there's no safe margin there for error or anything. That wind comes down. If we're living on that edge, nothing to hold on to, and we go over the edge of the temptation. And the people who stand through those times of temptation are those who walk like Joseph. That is, they set themselves far away from the edge of temptation. They'll still be hit with it. They'll be hit with it as hard as anyone else is hit with it, but they won't be near that edge. And that gust can come, that temptation can come, and it can come so hard sometimes in our life that it buckles you. And I mean, you just go, whoo, that scared me. That too close, Lord. Whoa, you said, you know, nothing that I wouldn't be able to handle, and what happened right there? I mean, it can come and scare the living daylights right out of you. No doubt experienced it in our lives. And so it comes with a Joseph, and it buckles him for a moment, but he's far away from the edge, so he does all right. And Satan is so good at lulling us to sleep, and then all of the sudden blasting loose on us when he spots us near the edge of the cliff. How often? I've seen through the years. There's that quick burst of spiritual warfare or temptation, and it hits you. And there are times where it hits you, and you know it's just you. But then there are times where it hits, and you have the sense, this is way bigger than me, this is way bigger than this church, and this is way bigger than this city. The blast comes out. Temptation hits the whole body. Those are the times. And the whole country all at once. But the person who's living right on the edge of the world, that wind comes and they go right over the edge. And sometimes when that blast hits you, and you can almost write it down in your journal, woo-hoo! And then what happens? Two, three, four months, five months, six months, year and a half if you live in Modesto. Travel's slow there. But what happens though? You begin to hear that so and so fell, and so and so fell, and so and so fell. You say, when did it happen? When did it happen? And they name the very time that it hit you. And then you realize that what happened was they had just built their lives too close to the edge. And they just had been lulled into that whole thing. They needed to be far away from the edge because Satan doesn't honor any of these little lines. He doesn't play the little games as Pastor Chuck said. He's a destroyer. That's all he knows how to do. That's all he knows how to do. He never has a good day because of you. And he wants to destroy us so bad. And so these little lines, these little things, he's not into it, doesn't honor it, never honors that kind of thing. Joe brought up this afternoon Billy Graham and the Modesto Covenant or the Modesto Manifesto that was there. Part of that manifesto from my understanding was that just for the integrity of the ministry is that they wouldn't travel alone. They'd travel with someone and never be in the hotel rooms alone so that they would have that accountability and that false accusation that couldn't be brought against them. Legalism? No, it's wisdom to stay away from the edge. There's another pastor that I know to whom God has given great dreams in his heart. And he will not enter into a hotel room alone until the TV's been removed. Legalism? Not for him. It's planning his life far away from that edge. He knows what the edge is for him. It's like Joseph keeping away from the edge. It's just minding the admonition that Paul gave to Timothy and he said, oh Timothy, guard what was committed to your trust. Guard it. Treat it as precious. Treat it as something to be valued above everything in the world. Guard it with whatever is necessary to guard it. And that's all he's doing. That's all they're doing. The second safeguard that we notice is that Joseph said no to the temptation. Verse 10, he refused the temptation when it came his way. Verse 8, beginning of verse 8. That may seem like a silly thing to look at it and say he said no. But I'll tell you something, that does something inside of me. I need to hear that I can say no to temptation. I don't need any more people providing me with excuses. I can provide enough of those for myself. I like people who come and say, you know, this is who I am. This is who we are in Christ Jesus. We have the ability to say no by the Holy Spirit and I like that. It does something good in me. If you ever want to experientially understand it, wake up in the morning, go to the mirror and just start saying no. No. No, no, and pretty soon you're, no! You know, you're pumped in there to tell you, no! It just feels good. I'm telling that guy no! We're settling the issue right now, here this morning. I'm telling him no and it just feels good. If you had the room next to us at the conference and you heard all that going on in our room, my wife and I weren't arguing. I was telling myself no to start the day there. So what do we do? Do we start a Just Say No campaign as it relates to temptation and sin? Just Say No. Remember the Just Say No program related to drugs? How effective that was. You can hardly find any drugs, can you? In the United States. No. That's no good because if you don't do it, it's no good because you can only say no over a protracted period of time when you're saying no for good reason. And that's the third thing that we look at. He didn't just say no, but he said no for good reason. And the third safeguard we notice is that we learn from Joseph is that he said no, verses eight and nine, because he considered the consequences ahead of time. In verse eight, he was in effect saying, this wouldn't be right to do to your husband. And he realizes how far reaching his sin would be, that it wouldn't just affect him and Potiphar's wife, but it would affect her husband and it would affect beyond that. And you know what that tells me? It tells me that he had thought through the consequences of doing this ahead of time. And one of the most important safeguards that we can have in our life is to think through, thoroughly think through, the consequences of sin ahead of time. It's so critical to count the cost, to think about graphically how far-reaching my sin can and will be, and then to ask myself, is it worth it? I've known so many men, and now it's increasingly women. You've come a long way, baby. They leave the wife. They leave the family. And then they come to me, they haven't been gone for one week, and they give their right arm to have their wife and their family back. And it's too late sometimes. And what does that tell me? It tells me that they did not think the consequences through ahead of time. And so it is in the ministry. Had Joseph considered the consequences of what he would be throwing away if he did sin, how it would affect others, would it be worth it? And you never get the sense in reading of Joseph in this passage. There is never the sense that he is deciding on the spot what he's going to do. Any man that is in Joseph's place, and at that moment he's starting to figure out what he's going to do in that place, he is in big, big trouble. That's something that needs to be thought through ahead of time. And Jesus knew it. Jesus knew that that's an issue that had to be settled daily, every morning, because He taught us as His disciples to pray to Him every day and do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Deliver us from the evil one. Why? Because He knows we're going to be tempted every single day, and He wants us to begin the day with a fresh sensitivity to the spiritual warfare that we're going into, so that when it occurs, we will not be surprised, but we will have settled the issue of what we're going to do in that situation before we encounter it. So there we are, someplace in the morning, at 10 o'clock in the morning, and all of a sudden the temptation's walking down the corridor your way. You can look at it and say, Good morning. I've been expecting you. In fact, I've been preparing for you. No! And I've settled the issue of what I'm going to do in the face of temptation in the day before I've come into contact with the temptation. And isn't it amazing how often we can be in the midst of temptation for days and even weeks before we pray that simple prayer to Jesus for help in that. Just a simple prayer that's saying to God, Lord, keep us from the places of needless temptation. Let the opportunity to sin not coincide with the desire to sin. And I'll tell you, He answers that prayer. He really, really does. The fourth safeguard that we notice is in verse 9. We notice that Joseph considered this to be great wickedness. And you notice those two words, great wickedness. That's how he saw sin. And that's something that just exploded out of his heart. He didn't say, What would really sound good in the 39th chapter of Genesis? What will make me look really good all through history in God's Word? No, when that temptation come, the idea that this sin was a great wickedness, it exploded right out of it, jumped out of it. And I noticed the strength of the word, and I love the strength of the word, wickedness. When's the last time in any secular environment or presentation, electronic or otherwise, you heard the word wickedness? You don't hear it anymore. I don't hear it anymore. Why? Because it would mean a confession that there actually is something called wickedness. That there is something called right, and there is something called wrong. And wickedness going on all around us, as was shared this afternoon, and yet the word has evaporated off of the scene. A while back, I was in a public setting. There was a television on, and the news came on, and it was a newscaster from Australia giving the news when that guy went berserk and just began to shoot all kinds of people down there a little over a year ago, or between a year and two years ago. And the newscaster came on, and he said this. He said, A great evil has visited our land. I stopped dead in my tracks because it made me realize how long it had been since I had heard the word evil on television in that setting, or in any setting. But just because the world has ceased to accept and to use the word, we need to keep using it. And he was appalled at it. It's critical to view sin as great wickedness, and this was a critical part of what protected Joseph in the temptation. And I need to put away from my life everything that would cause me to stop seeing what God calls wickedness as being wickedness. Otherwise, I'm going to find myself living near the edge of that cliff of sin. Anything that wears down my resistance, anything that redefines these things, anything that lowers my standard, anything that does that, I've got to remove it away from my life. The world's taken a hard turn as it relates to wickedness. Let's say, here we are. We began so many years ago in your ministry, and here is wickedness, evil in the world. And you've got a six-inch distance between you and it as you started, so to speak. You say, well, I'm going to keep that distance from wickedness the rest of my ministry. The problem is that wickedness has taken a hard right, and if we don't deal with that, if we just stay six inches apart, and the way it's going, we're going to find ourselves doing things we would have never dreamed of doing when we began. When it moves the way that it's moving, it means, and I'm going in the Lord this direction, that distance has to be growing in our lives. And it needs to because it's a protection for our lives, and it's a protection for God's plans that are great for each of our lives. The sixth safeguard that we notice is that there's going to be times in our lives when the temptation is going to be so great that we're going to need to physically run from that place. There is a line in each of our lives that when that line is crossed, the Spirit is no longer having any input and all the flesh has taken over, and all there is is for that temptation to run into sin, the bitter tears, the confession, and asking for forgiveness afterwards. We all have that line in our lives. And so here is this line that Joseph had, and before he got to it, he read from it. I remember when I was a new Christian, there was a series that Firefighters for Christ put out, and the series was done by Bob Vernon, and he talked about temptation there, and he talked about four quarters in a Coke machine. He said, you know, you go up to that Coke machine, and it says a Coke for a dollar. You got your four quarters, and you put that first quarter in, and you still have control over that Coke machine. You can get that quarter back, or you can continue to put quarters in. You still have control. Put that second quarter in, you still have control. You put that third quarter in, you still have control. You put that fourth quarter in, and to save your life, you cannot stop that Coke from coming down that chute. And I have to set my life up in such a way that not only do I not have putting those four quarters into the machine, but that I can't even find the four quarters. I got to throw one in a field over here and put another one in someone's hubcap, and they just got to be thrown in all directions so that try as I might that I cannot find them and put them together for that to happen. Because sin and life dominating sin, it has a pattern always. Certain places, certain times, around certain individuals, and I've got to break that pattern so that I can't put all of it together and end up in that place. And sometimes the breaking of that pattern is going to mean running from that situation. Someone has said that the ruthlessness of sin requires ruthlessness with sin. And if Joseph found it necessary, as spiritual as he was, to run from temptation, then we can be sure that in each of our lives, it doesn't matter how spiritual we are, we're going to find ourselves in a situation where we're going to need to leave everything and run to get out of there. The seventh safeguard and the final one to bring out of Hebrews chapter 12, verse 1. If you turn there with me, we'll close with this. For the safeguarding of our lives, as it relates to holiness, it not only requires the proper handling of sin, but it requires the proper handling of weights in my life. And God wrote to the Hebrews concerning this, and He said, Therefore, we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and the sin that so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that's set before us. And here God is exhorting us to lay aside not only every sin, but every weight that so easily ensnares us. What are these weights? These weights are anything that would impede us as runners. They are those things that are liberties to us as Christians, but they slow us down in our Christian life. They get in the way of God's call upon my life. They're the things that we could build a biblical case for our liberty to engage in them, but they impede us as a runner. The Olympics were on this last summer, weren't they? You watch those sprinters in the track and field events, and of course we get a lot of coverage on that, don't we? That racing. So let's say we're watching the 100-meter dash, and they've got the 12 lanes all set, and 11 of the 12 runners are out there, the men getting down into their blocks, and they're shaking their legs, and you know, they shake their legs, those runners, and their legs are just jiggling all over the place, and it means you're either in really good shape or really bad shape. They're in really good shape, and so there they are. They're just jiggling and loosening up and getting down in there, and the guy that holds the world record is still in the locker room, and all the guys that are doing the commentary as it relates to the event and everything, they're wondering where he is and all waiting for him to appear out of the runway. And then imagine if he came out of the runway with a backpack and a suitcase, and then went to his particular block and began to settle in and get his, you know, situated into the blocks. What would the TV commentators do? They'd go crazy. They'd say, this guy is absolutely out of his mind. What in the world is he doing? Sure, he has liberty to do it, but who would do it? Because he may be the most talented, the greatest, the most gifted runner in the whole world, head and shoulders against everyone else in the race in every way, and yet those weights will assure that he finishes dead last. Those weights will doom him to mediocrity, and such is the case in the realm of the Spirit. We can do exactly the same thing spiritually, filling our lives with those things that will make it impossible for us to run and win the race that God has put before us. And like the runner, I need to lay aside anything that would hinder my spiritual growth and keep me from winning, and winning being defined as hearing, well done, thou good and faithful servant. But I think that every person just about that thinks that's a Christian thinks they're going to hear that automatically. But I would suppose that every single pastor just automatically assumes that we're going to hear that because we're a pastor. We don't know that. We don't know that. If we don't handle the sin and the weight properly. The Apostle Paul wrote, and he said, Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may obtain it. And everyone who competes for the prize is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a perishable crown, but we for an imperishable crown. The Apostle Paul could not have run like everyone else and finished his race, finished his course. Once there was a young man who was a track star, and he asked his coach, he said, Coach, can I smoke and run? And the coach said, Sure, you can smoke and run. You just can't smoke and win. It's one thing to run to run. It's another thing altogether to run to win. Well, how do we determine what is a weight in our life? The Apostle Paul was very simple for him. As he wrote to the Corinthians, a couple of simple tests that he put it to, he said, All things are lawful for me, but all things are not helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any. And so he asked, Not only is this lawful for me, but does this help me spiritually? And if it was a sin or a weight, he laid it aside for the sake of fulfilling God's call upon his life. He said to the Corinthians later in chapter 10, All things are lawful for me, but all things are not helpful. All things are lawful for me, but all things do not edify. And here he asks concerning even things that are not sin, Does this edify me? Does this help me spiritually? And you know the old saying related to that. He put it to the test. Is this a wing or a weight as it relates to your call upon my life, God? Another way that something is revealed to be a weight in my life is by the ministry of the Holy Spirit when he brings conviction in our lives about something that he wants to remove from our lives. When our coach, the Holy Spirit, comes along and he taps us on the shoulder and he says, That has to go for you to finish the race that I've set before you. Well, what about the race that I've set before you? And he really does that, doesn't he? He taps us on the shoulder and speaks about these things. And maybe God is speaking to you about laying aside some liberty that for his call upon your life is a weight. Go ahead and lay it aside. I know you could lay out a long detailed argument of your liberty, your right, your freedom, all from the Scriptures, all of those things, and yet there is within you just that deep continued conviction by the Holy Spirit that that must be cut away from my life. Listen to him. Obey him on these things. Sometimes we can say, Well, my life is very fruitful spiritually. And so you can wonder, Why would he tap me on the shoulder as it relates to these things? Why would he call me to a greater holiness? Jesus spoke in John 15 and he said,

And so maybe the Holy Spirit has been talking to you about an issue in your life that's a liberty, but he's telling you that he wants to cut that out of your life for greater fruitfulness. Go ahead and let him do it. We're not talking about some self-imposed, self-righteous thing, but where there has been that time where he has been speaking for some time, and as he's been speaking for some time, you've been just going, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know how we do. What will happen when you allow him to cut it away? I'll read it to you again.

On the other side of it is just greater fruitfulness. And there is the writer of Hebrews speaks of these weights. You notice that he said, lay aside every weight. That's an interesting word, that word every. You may be aware of the fact that when the runners ran in those days, they ran almost naked. And so anything could be considered a weight. What's the point that God's making? The point is, is that when God's speaking to our heart, there's nothing too small to be considered. Some of the greatest battles in the history of mankind have turned on the smallest things imaginable. And so many men and women and so many ministries move forward or don't move forward based upon how the little things are handled in our lives and in our ministries. And so there's nothing that's too small to be examined as a weight or as a wing as it relates to our lives. And so I would just ask, as it relates to these things as I close here, that we would allow that issue of every weight to also search our hearts. Again, not something self-imposed legalistically, but where the Holy Spirit has really been speaking to you and saying, for you, that must go or you'll never finish what I've got in front of you. And you want to finish what I've got in front of you. And so lay it aside. He's just pruning for greater fruitfulness. And so Joseph teaches us, let's stay away from the edge. Let's say no to sin. Let's consider the consequences ahead of time. Let's continue to consider sin great wickedness. Let's stay current in our relationship with God, and let's run and leave whatever is necessary behind to protect our integrity, and let's lay aside the weights when He tells us that they're no good for us and what He has planned for our lives individually. The Lord is for us. He loves us. Nothing can compare to what He has planned. Let it go. Nothing compares to what He has in mind. We believe it, Lord. We read of the great dreams that You gave Joseph, and You are going to fulfill every one of them. And Lord, only You know the dreams that have come from You that are inside of all of these men and all of these women that sit before You. And yet, we recognize the danger, the threats to those plans that lie between the giving of them and then the fulfilling of them, Lord. And so, help us tonight by Your Spirit, through Your Word, that there would be the response to this Word that You have had planned from before the foundations of the earth in each of our hearts. And we ask it in Jesus' name, amen. Let's thank our church for that, thank Jesus, thank His people. God, bless your people all. God, bless Metro-phoria. Black Lives Matter. Black Lives Matter Forvent superchurch. Thank you for coming. Let's just stand together. Thank you. Let's say, first of all, thank you, glad to get involved. Thank you, God. Thank you. And so, join fortitude. Thank you. God, bless you. God, bless your people.