In this sermon, the speaker discusses the importance of resisting temptation and standing against the attacks of the enemy. He uses the analogy of two missionaries finding a wallet with money in it to illustrate the difference between a righteous and unrighteous response to temptation. The speaker emphasizes the need for believers to identify their weak areas and find scriptural truths to combat those weaknesses. He also highlights the story of a young boy who resisted demonic forces and encourages believers to have childlike faith in standing against spiritual attacks. The sermon concludes by emphasizing the need for believers to rely on God's grace and armor to resist the unseen forces of evil.

I was trying to think of which verse to give you, because I'd always like to give you something positive. I think it's so important, because talking about the enemy is not always a pleasant thing, but it's important that we are not ignorant of his devices, as the scripture says. Does that say that? We're not ignorant of his devices, and yet if we are, then we're so much more vulnerable to defeat in our life. So I think the positive verse I'd like to share with you is in 1 Timothy 4, and it's verse 18. I'll read it in the King James, and then if you have an NIV, basically that's probably the closest to the Greek that you can have, is the NIV of this particular verse. It says, The Lord shall deliver me from every evil work in the King James, and will preserve me unto his heavenly kingdom, to him be glory for ever and ever. But actually, it's even more wonderful than that, it's more thrilling than that, and it's this. The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack. Isn't that tremendous? What a promise. The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack, and will bring me into his heavenly kingdom. What's been so thrilling about every one of the missionaries that we use as an illustration, someone's come up to me and said, Oh, I know them. And remember the girl I told you about that had the thoughts today, and she had gone to Moody and taken a course in spiritual warfare from Fred Dickinson, and just wasn't prepared for that kind of a battle, that she'd have that, you know, just doubting God's word, that would that be attack of the enemy. Well, someone came up here who's in the Africa Prayer Group and said, Oh, that's Rebecca DuBarry in Gabon. I said, Yes, that was Rebecca DuBarry in Gabon, Africa. Well, I'm going to tell you some more things about Rebecca, I think is so neat. Rebecca, after getting the victory on that, she went back to Africa. Now she's been in Africa, I don't know, eight to ten years. And as I mentioned, I was in Africa just after Easter, and Rebecca flew over to do the translation for all the West African French speaking countries for the leaders that were there at a spiritual warfare conference this last April. Well, when Rebecca came, she shared something with me, I want to share it with you. It's a neat testimony. But I want to share a second testimony I shared with our brother here. And that was Rebecca wrote me a letter after we got back, as I thanked her for coming over and doing the translation, because we were counseling. It's interesting to counsel in another language. I mean, I was counseling in English, she was translating it in French, and then these French Christian leaders would put it back and, but Rebecca would weep. And I'm wondering what's going on here, you know, come on, tell me what's happening as they were sharing their sad stories and all of this, the attacks they were under. But Rebecca found out that the that the in the first church that she worked in there in Gabon for the first three years, she and her partner were on loan to Christian Missionary Alliance. And in this church, one of the deaconesses was a practicing sorceress. And she would cook meals and take them over to Rebecca and her partner and was putting poison in the food. And for three years off and on, they ate poison meals and never knew it because the Lord rescued them from every evil attack. Eight years later, she found out the Lord had protected her. And that's something, you know, we get to heaven, the Lord's going to say, you're not as grateful as you ought to be. You don't know what trouble you caused me. But I'd like to share this. This was another thrilling thing. This had just happened that Easter and I was in Africa probably three days after this took place. This particular church is in a different place now in Gabon, Africa, but they only take in members at Christmas and Easter, which would be a baptism service followed by communion only twice a year. Well, at Christmas time, this lady showed up from another area, an older woman, and no one knew who she was. And she gave a testimony that she was a Christian. The pastor said, I just cannot baptize her. Although she gave testimony, he just had that feeling, you know, I call it gut level, that something wasn't right. And so he just wouldn't baptize her. Well, she showed up at Easter, gave the same testimony. Still, no one really knew her. They knew the area she was from, but didn't know her. And one of the deacons said, how can you not take someone in the church just because you don't feel good about it? That's not right, pastor. So he took this lady and he baptized her and he gave her communion and she became ill. She went next door to the pastor's home and fell on the kitchen floor. The pastor stood over this lady and said, you're holding something from me. Tell me what it is. She didn't say anything and died on the floor. They came from that area to get her body. And when they came, they said, you know who she is? And they said, no. They said, well, she was the most powerful sorceress of our area. And she said, I will taste of the Christian's power before I die. And God struck her dead. And talk about how would you like to preach the gospel in Africa after that in that area? We're having a communion service. Anybody like to clean up their life? Awesome, isn't it? We have a powerful God. And you know that, you know that in animistic people are very leery. About turning to a God that has no power when they've seen the power of their gods. Isn't that right? And they've got to see reality that he's able to protect. And he has more power than the one they fear. I'd like, how many of you know Missionary Tech Team? Anybody here know of Missionary Tech Team? There's some real educated people here. Missionary Tech Team is a mission of technical people that design, they're architects that design buildings for missions that don't have architects for a dollar an hour. And they go all over the world and design these buildings and how to build them and how to plan them. And even try to get you some of these hard hats for Christ and all that to put your buildings up for free. Well, this is the, I know a lot of you can't see it, but this is the president of the mission, Bernie Wiley. His wife and his two children. And I just want to share this. We have a little bit of time because it won't take the whole time for the rest of the pride issue. But I'd just like to share this with you as just an insight. I was asked to speak to all of the home mission, whatever they call it. You know, A&M, whatever that is, American Home Mission, whatever. And they're a part of this. And so there's a lot of missionaries there and the subject was spiritual warfare. And I shared and the children were in the meeting. And so I shared what had happened at our mission. It was just before that, you know, you like to share something up to date. And I was filled with child evangelism. And our granddaughter, our daughter had brought our grandchildren to visit us from the East Coast. And I hadn't hardly seen the baby. And I was so involved in missionary freshers and like everything's missionary fresher in that or a missionary candidate school or something. But I was a missionary fresher. And so I decided after teaching warfare, I'd get in the car, drive quick to our house, see the grandchild, drive back before I taught again and then be ready to counsel our missionaries. Well, on the way back, I turned on the radio station in St. Louis, which is CBS, and I heard a demon talking. I can't believe this. I mean, I've heard demons speak so much that when I heard it on the radio, I knew that was a demon speaking. And I'm going, I can't believe this. What's this demon doing talking on CBS? And here what they had done, they had a fellow who had come to St. Louis who was teaching you how to channel spirits. And I didn't realize what was going on at the time. And he was on the program. He had called up his spirit and they were interviewing his spirit that was from someone in England that was 100 years old. But once you've heard demonic speaking, once you've heard it, you'll always recognize it. I mean, you just you recognize it and you just know it. And so I listened to this. And at the end of the program, this is what frightened me. This is what this demon said over CBS. Are you lonely? Do you find yourself with no friends? There are a lot of spirits out here that are just waiting. And if you will right now invite us to come in, we will never leave you. We will never forsake you. We'll be your friend. We will talk with you. It was the best invitation. Billy Graham doesn't do one that good. And I kept praying, Lord, don't let an old person hear this. Don't let a lonely person hear this. I mean, it sounded so reasonable. You know, it just sounded like, oh, and it sounded so nice. That sounded like such a nice spirit giving this invitation. Well, anyway, I shared that. And when I shared that, this little guy right here, a voice said to him in the meeting. If you ask me and I'll come in. Now, I didn't know what happened because he turned to his dad and said something. And his dad took him off in the dark. We always took our kids out in the dark, tuned him up and brought him back. So I figured he was getting tuned up out there somewhere. They never came back. So Bernie's into warfare. I mean, he was a missionary in Alaska with the Indians. And you can't work with animistic people and understand there's a real battle going on. So we understood it. So he talked with his son and he asked me the next day, he said, would you talk to my son? And I'm going, what do I say to Caleb? Good name, but I didn't know what to say to him. Do you ever not know what to say? You know, would you say something and go, yeah, I'd love to. Now, what do I say? So I spoke in the morning and they had a motor home and they said, would you just talk to Caleb about this thing? Because, you know, he heard these spirits saying, just open yourself up, Caleb, I'll come in. And of course, he didn't want to do that. So we came to the motor home and as we're going up the steps, he turned around and he said, you know, Mr. Logan, I have big problems. I said, yeah. He said, are you good at this? I said, I'm learning. So we went in and we sat down and I said, Lord, I don't know what to say. I mean, I don't know how to approach this. And I said, Caleb. And he was he was serious. He had a Bible and a notebook and a pencil. And he was seven and a half years of age. He was taking notes. And a verse came to me, which is 1 John 5, 18B. I said, you know, Caleb, this verse just comes to me, 1 John 5, 18B, it says, I am in Christ and the wicked one touches me not. He said, you know, that's a good one. I said, yeah, it really is. You got to write it down. So he wrote that verse down. And then from then on, the Lord just gave me something. And maybe we'll help you with. I don't know why I'm led to say it tonight. I just feel led to tell you this story and possibly you work with a child and can help them. Because the one thing you don't want is children to fear the enemy. They don't need to fear the enemy. He's defeated. And I said, I said, Caleb, let me tell you a story. I said, let's say that. Oh, no, I did this before I told the story. I said, Caleb, have you ever been to the zoo? He said, yes. I said, have you ever been to the snake house? He said, yes. I said, you went in a snake house. So, yeah, I said, you really went into a snake house. And I'm really pulling him out. Yeah. This is why I said, Caleb, there's poisonous snakes in there. He said, yeah, Mr. Logan, but there's glass. And then what he said, Jesus is the glass, isn't he? I said, yes, Caleb, Jesus is the glass. He's between me and the snakes. I said, Caleb, let's say that we stayed in that zoo until it was dark and we're walking out of the zoo, you and I in the dark and the lion roars. Would you be afraid? He said, yeah, I think I would. And I said, what if I reminded you he was behind bars? He said, then I wouldn't be afraid. And then he said this to me, he said, have you ever seen a demon? And I said, only peripheral one time that many of the people we deal with see them. They appear in the rooms and things like this, but I have never really seen when I just saw something in our headquarters, our headquarters was a Catholic training center. And I saw, I thought one of our missionaries walking across the hallway in a bathrobe. Then it dawned on me there was nobody down that hallway. And so I thought, well, maybe I was in a brown bathrobe down to the floor. So it's one of the monks that they probably buried under the building, wondering at that end. I don't know. But there was nobody there. And I, and he said, well, last night in the mortar home, they had a couch and then a table in the floor where you'd go out the door. And he said, my brother and I take turns. One of us sleeps on the couch, one of us sleeps on the floor. And then they had these drop in glass, square glass, you know, those glass things with the light bulbs behind them in a mortar home. Just that three or four of them that you would have light. And I said, well, why did you want to know? He said, well, last night, Mr. Logan, when I was laying on the floor, I looked up and that square light started glowing. And everybody was asleep. And he said, I saw a face. And he described the face to me, had a hood and he had a beard, but he described the eyes. Now, they don't have a television and these are homeschool kids. And there's no way that boy could describe the eyes unless he had seen one. And I knew what he was talking about, because as I tell you, and as we counsel people, we always look at their eyes, always are watching the eyes. And he described these eyes as they look down at him. And I said, what did you do? He said, well, I didn't want to wake up my dad and bother him. And I said, well, what did you do? And he said, well, I did what my dad said. I said, in the name and the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ, get out of here. I said, what happened? He said, well, it went. You know, he's one of my best pair partners. This old guy's been praying for me for three years. And I hear from his dad every now and then again. And the other day, his dad called and I said, hey, can I talk to Caleb? He said, love to. I said, Caleb. Oh, and then I then I said this, this is this is anything I almost forgot the best part. I said, Caleb, God must have something very wonderful for you to do. He said, why? I said, well, boy, Satan's attacking you. He said, what do you suppose it is? I said, well, I'm not sure. He said, well, I know when I'm 15. I said, well, at 15, you can be a CEF summer missionary and that may help. So we we walked up and here we talk about demons and all this stuff. This kid runs up to his dad with all these missions around. He said, Dad, guess what? God's got something wonderful for me to do. So I talked to him. This is three years later. And he said, I think I know what it is. I said, you know what? He said, what God wants me to do now? He's 12. You know, he's not quite 12, 11, I guess. And I said, what is that? He said, well, I got a pretty good voice. I think he wants to be a singer. But, you know, even children under attack don't have to be afraid. In fact, we find children are often much more believing and trusting and standing than adults will in this whole thing. Well, let's turn. I want to get into our study this evening. And that was a little boy resisted demonic forces and they left. And we're talking tonight about resisting. We want to get into this whole thing of resisting. Now, some of you maybe were not here this morning. And what we did today is we looked at what the sin that Satan committed that caused him to be thrown out of heaven, which was, in essence, the sin of pride. Then we looked through all the Proverbs and saw all the consequences of pride, that pride comes before a fall. Pride is always first and then destruction. And all these really terrible promises of the tragedies that will come into the life of a man or a woman that allows pride to come into their life. Just it's awesome. Just if you weren't here, just get a concordance and look at every verse that pride is mentioned in Proverbs and you'll see this. But the one thing that we weren't able to finish this morning is the dynamics of how does this work? I mean, we know it's true because God's word said so. But how are the dynamics? Why is it that if I allow pride to come into my life, I will be destroyed? I will fall. I want you to turn to the book of James, chapter four. You know, it's interesting. James was probably the half-brother of the Lord Jesus Christ, wasn't he? In all probability in our study, I'll let the theologians do all the theologing stuff, but they seem to be pretty much agreed that this James is the half-brother of Christ. Now, when you and I have somebody, you know, we like to drop names. You know, I had lunch with Billy yesterday. Graham, that is. And, you know, George was there. Bush, you know. And that gives me credibility, right? You know, I had lunch in Washington and Bush was there eating lunch somewhere, I think. But in the book of James, it shows you the humility of this man, because if you want to have a little punch and credibility, you send a five page note to this guy telling him how wonderful you are, that he can read to all your missionaries in case you missed it. I was telling him, we were just at a meeting where Bill Guthrie was doing the same thing over this really godly old man, and he got up to speak, and he said, I feel much like a stack of pancakes, well syruped. He doesn't start out, James, the half-brother of Jesus, you better listen to what I'm reading. Isn't that interesting? He just says, James, what does he call himself? A servant. Isn't that neat? So we know that this book, when he talks about humility, that obviously the author of this book had some. Now let's look at James 4. And you know what's interesting, isn't it, that probably, as far as we know, James is the first book written in the New Testament, and it's on warfare. Isn't that amazing? The very first written book, if you go chronologically, written, I was told that, maybe if I'm wrong and some of you know that, tell me, but I heard it was possibly the first book written, that they had, that was circulated, was the book of James. And it says in verse 6, But he giveth more grace, and that's in chapter 4. My wife says, be sure and get them both together. And I either give you the verse, or a chapter. But I think, what are you guys paying? What do you want for nothing? It's amazing how picky these freeloaders are. It's in the Bible. But he giveth more grace. Wherefore he sayeth, God resist the proud, but he gives grace to the humble. I want to ask you a question. What does God give? What does he give? Boy, you guys all flunked. Read your Bible. What does he give? More grace. That's the only kind of grace God gives. He gives more grace. That's sufficient. That's significant. More grace. Underline that. You can't put enough underlines under that. More grace. That's the only kind he has. Now the key is, what is it? What is this thing called grace? I won't trap you on this one, but I love to do it to our missionary candidates. They all went to Bible school. They all got the answer. The unmerited favor of God. I said, that's really interesting. What about his mercy? Yeah, that's kind of his unmerited favor of God. What about his love? Well, that's unmerited too. That doesn't help me much, does it? What is it? I need it to get saved. I can't get saved without it. I need it for warfare. I will not have victory without it. What in the world is it? And I need more of it. And there's always more of it. No matter how much I draw from it, there's always what? More. But what is it? And I'd like to give you a working definition that I think would be so helpful. It puts shoes on it. What is grace? And I think you can find a working definition of grace in the book of Philippians. Just about my favorite verse. And it's in Philippians chapter 2. Well, let's look at chapter 1. Chapter 1, verse 6 says, "...being confident of this very thing, he which hath begun a good work..." Where? On you? In you. "...will perform it unto the day of Jesus Christ." So what do we know? God is working in all of us that know him as personal Savior. What is he doing in me? Philippians chapter 2 says what he's doing. He's doing two things in me, and he's doing two things in you. Philippians 2.13, it says, "...for it is God that worketh..." Where? In you. In the King James, it says, "...both to will and to do of his good pleasure." That's a tremendous verse. The first thing there is to will. You could put the desire. God is working in me, and God puts within me a desire. And then he gives me the to do, which is the empowering to do that which will please him. Isn't that beautiful? And that is grace. Grace is the desire and the power to live a godly life. The empowering of God to live a godly life. And so tomorrow. I don't have to be afraid of tomorrow. Unless I was going up in one of your little airplanes. I'm glad no one's offered me a ride. I don't like them. I was flying one, the guy opened the door, and I go, what are you doing, jump out? We'll let an air go through. And I'm going, whew. No, thank you. But even if I had to go in one of your planes, what I know is as I'm sitting there turning white, knuckles, there's more grace. But I'd rather have it on the ground. Someone said something years ago that just helped me so much in my early Christian life. And that was the statement. God will not allow anything to come into your life, which will ruin, pardon me, God will not allow anything to come into your life, and this is important, which is beyond your control, which will ruin or hinder God's purpose for your life. That's why he says in everything what? Give thanks. And I started reading the life of great Christians, and I was amazed at the men who said those same statements. You ever read John Payton's Thirty Years with the Cannibal? I read it to my son when he was four years old. You know what he said every night as you read a chapter of that to him? He would say, you know, John Payton would be running, the cannibals would be after him, you know, screaming and hollering, and he'd come to a, they took a tomahawk, and they're throwing it, and his foot would catch in a log, and he'd fall flat, and the tomahawk would go thud over his head, and then Richard would go to bed, and he'd look up at me, three and a half years old, and said, oh, Dad, isn't God wonderful? You know, John Payton one day was out weeding the corn or carrots, and a cannibal had a musket on him, and he kept going down the row weeding, and the cannibal kept following him, and someone said, how could you do that? And he said, you know, if my life is over, it's over, and if it's not, I better weed the garden. See, God would not allow this guy to shoot him until it was all over with, and if it wasn't all over, he had things to do. That's all this grace thing. That's what we're talking about here, that there is more grace. I don't know what I'm going to face next week. In fact, you can pray for me. Next week, we have a fellow that's been in almost every mental hospital in America that's coming for help, and those are hard cases. They're usually so drugged up and so difficult to deal with. I'd rather stay here and work with these terrible missionaries than work with... I'd go back and work with this guy from the mental hospital. But I know what? That God has, next week, more grace. See, I know that. Sometimes we wonder, don't we ever been there where you wondered? You say, God, I thought you said that, and I feel I'm all out of it, but it's there. But look at this. God gives more grace. When I usually preach this in a church, this is my message, the title of my message. Why are there so many losers on the winning team? Right? I mean, here God has got more power, and why are we living such defeated lives? We need to ask that question, don't we? Why are there so many defeated Christians when we've got all the power that we could possibly draw from to live victorious in every single choice that we make? Now, I'm not saying that we live victoriously all the time. I could tell you I do because my wife's not here. But there's a key here in the verse. But God gives more grace. Wherefore he saith, what is it? God what? Resists who? The proud. There's a wonderful verse. If God be for you. What's the rest of it? Think of this. If God is resisting you, does it make any difference who's for you? And when I see that word resisting, I just see this big arm coming out of heaven shoving. Just shoving away. When Satan allowed pride in his life, God shoved him out of heaven. When I allow pride in my life, don't worry about me God, I can do it. You run heaven, I'll run you. He says, fine, I'll take my power off your life. And what will happen? I will fall. That's why we fall. That's why if we allow pride in our life, it's all over spiritually for us. It's just a matter of time until we fall. Pride precedes a fall. But he gives grace to who? The humble. What's a humble man? It's one that says, Lord, without your empowering, I can't do it. If you would get into our kind of ministry, you'll become a very humble person very quickly. There are times I walk up and down the hall saying, God, I don't know what to do. There's a person in my office that's being tormented and I don't know what to do. I've tried what I know. We're always looking for better methods, right? Better methods? And God's looking for what? Better men. And I just walk up and down and say, God, I don't know what to do. Show me what to do. You said, if any lack wisdom, he's not my son. He's your son. That's your daughter in there. And I don't know what to do. It is so bad, I don't know what to do. Nothing seems to be working. I can't seem to get through to them. That's humbling, isn't it? It just doesn't work. And I thank God for that. And I can't tell you how often we get and pray and say, Lord, we don't know what to do. But we want to help them. But we don't know how to do it. And without your empowering, I can't do it. Lord, if you don't give me your strength for today, I'm not going to make it through the day. Lord, I need you. And the Lord meets you. And he will empower and give you the power that you need for those situations that you have to face. Verse 7, he says, Submit yourself, therefore, to God and resist the devil and he will flee from you. That's a tremendous expression of truth here. God gives grace to the humble. And then what do I need to do? The first thing in warfare, if I'm going to be successful in warfare, what must I do? Submit. And what's the word submit mean? Remember, S-U-B is what? Rank under. Submit to God. Am I willing to submit to God in every area of my life? Am I willing to get under God's authority? Do you know it's amazing that authority and power are together in Scripture? Getting under authority? Are you under God's authority? Or are you resisting him? If you're resisting God in an area of your life, you will not be able to resist the enemy. Right? You've got to know that. You can't be resisting God and resisting the enemy at the same time. You submit to God and you resist. Do you see that? It is so vital. It can turn the battle for you. And sometimes it is not easy to submit to God. Is it? It is not. Because God says, Logan, my ways are not your ways. And I say, I know it. I wish they were. I know it. And it's hard sometimes for me to get under God's authority. I never wanted to go to India. I mean, you know, sometimes you hear all these horror stories. I heard so many horror stories in India that I thought, I can't handle India. So I went to Africa instead. Now I realize, now I can go to India. But, you know, just the thoughts of going to India, I thought, oh, I can handle it. You know, all these beggars rolling in the dirt. And, you know, all the stuff I heard. No place to go to the bathroom. And you can't drink water. And on and on and on. And I get to Africa, and there's beggars rolling in the dirt. No place to go to the bathroom. And you can't drink the water. Oh, well. Dumb, you know, dumb me. But, you know, there's times it can really be a struggle. And we've had those struggles. I've wrestled with the Lord. Have you wrestled with the Lord? To get my will underneath it. To bring my will under what God wanted me to do. And I'm telling you, even at times it didn't look appealing, or it didn't look like the right thing I knew is what the Lord wanted. And to bring my will under, but I had to. Because if I don't, I'll be defeated. And resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Now, we asked a question this morning, and we need to ask the question tonight. Do you know there are Christians who have lived and died and have never once resisted the devil? And I'm not asking you to raise your hand. But have you ever resisted the devil? You know, there's missionaries that never have. Never have resisted the enemy. And yet we're told to do it. And here's the question. How can I resist the enemy if I don't know he's around? And how can I recognize when he's there? Isn't that right? I mean, I can't resist someone I don't know is there. And I don't run around resisting demons all the time. You know, if my book falls on the floor, I don't stand against it in the name of Jesus. You know, I like what Fred Dickinson said. Someone came to him, he's the head theologian at Moody, and says, Fred, I think you see demons behind every bush. He said, Brother, can you see the bushes? That's what I'm concerned about. But I do need to know when he's there. I'm told to resist him. And you start reading, you read the Colossians and Ephesians and you read about warfare, and obviously we're to be involved. How can I fight an enemy I can't see if I don't know he's there? And he usually doesn't knock and say, Logan, this is the devil, I want to wipe you out today. He doesn't operate like that. Let me share something. I'll use our director. In a good way. He paid me to use him positively. He's heard this before. Let's say he walks down the hall and his wallet falls out on the floor. And some of you kind of teary and you're late. And you happen to walk down that hall. One of you is walking down. We'll use a fellow, one of the younger missionaries. He's walking down the hall and there is this wallet with all this money sticking out of it. It must be the director's. And nobody's around. As he reached down to pick up the wallet, he gets this urge. I want to be here. Keep the money. Now, obviously, he's a wicked missionary. So the next night, he walks down the same hall and he drops his wallet again. He's even got more money in it. Another young missionary that's here for, what do you do these people for eight days? It's awful what you do these people for eight days. That's one of those eight-daysers. And he's walking down and he sees the wallet and he says, I better return it to him. So he's a good guy, right? This guy is very, very righteous. The other guy is unrighteous. We're going to do the same two guys. This righteous fellow is jogging down the road. The one that was going to get the wallet. He's jogging along and he sees a sack of magazines along the side of the road. Those are usually pornography. And the guy stops and he looks and he realizes it's pornography. And all of a sudden he realizes there's nobody around. This is the righteous one. There's nobody around. Maybe I'll look. Now the unrighteous guy is jogging the next night and this guy throws out more of his pornography. And he sees this sack and he goes, uh-oh, pornography. I better destroy this before anybody sees it. Those are important things. Because it will really help you to understand temptation. You know what we have a tendency to do? If we're the kind that goes after money, we look down our nose at the guys that look at pornography. Right? They're the bad ones. See, what I do isn't so bad. Do you know that every sin is justified in the heart of the one who commits it before they commit it? We justify why we do what we do. Turn to James chapter 1. And let's... verse 12. Blessed is the man that endureth temptation, for when he is tried he shall receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised them that loved him. You know, as I looked at that it seemed to me that the Lord is saying one of the signs that you love me is you endure temptations. And that doesn't seem like that, doesn't it? If you really love him you will endure temptations and God will honor you for that. And endure means go clear through it. Clear to the end. Victoriously. Drawing from not your grit and determination. Can you have victory in the flesh? Yes. You can have victory in the flesh. I know fellows who are alcoholics who've gone to AA and don't drink anymore. They were never Christians. I know fellows that go through... was it Ananon or whatever it is for drug addicts? They're not believers. They come out they're not using drugs anymore. They're walking quote-unquote in victory. Right? They're not doing drugs anymore. So it is possible for us to have victory with grit and determination. So if the enemy tempts the flesh and you have victory over it in the flesh guess who won? The flesh. Right? The flesh. Now let's look at this. That's not what the Lord is talking about here. He's talking about the man who is empowered by the Spirit of God and is resisting in that power is the one who's going to receive the crown of life. Let no man say when he is tempted I am tempted of God for God cannot be tempted with evil neither temptee any man. That's an important thing. How do I know if this is a temptation or a test? This is just a rule of thumb. Satan tempts us to draw us away from God. So if I would give in to those thoughts if I would do them I would find myself being pulled away from the Lord. God tests me that if I do those things it will draw me to Himself. Do you see that? But I can fail God's test, can't I? And the failing may draw me away. But the essence of what was happening was to draw me into a deeper closer walk with Him. You know when God tests us often after the test He reveals aspects of His character I would have never known if I hadn't gone through it. Ask Abraham. If Abraham had failed the test we would have never known Jehovah who? Jireh. We never would have known him, would we? But he went through that and God revealed an aspect of his character he never would have known. Haven't you had that happen to you? You saw a sufficiency of the Lord. You saw something about God. You saw God as the healer. And one time our little girl was dying and we didn't know what to do. And the one thing I was afraid to do was to give her to the Lord. Let me tell you something. Don't ever give anything to the Lord that He cannot take. And we got on our knees and the hardest thing I ever did is say Lord you can take our oldest little girl who was our only little girl at the time and going to Bible school. Here I am in Bible school. That's what happens you know. You're going to serve God and your kid gets sick and is going to die. Those thoughts came. You know where they came from. You smell it? Brimstone. All over it. But at that time I didn't recognize it. I didn't understand the enemy. I didn't realize that he was putting those thoughts. I was struggling with God. Here I was going to be a servant and He was going to take my daughter. See that's what you get. You might as well just go back. You know it's amazing I told you I was sharing at a table we deal with a lot of people who have terrible sexual addictions. I mean every kind of sexual addiction you can think of we've dealt with. But you know after a person has been delivered from demonic powers of sexual addiction the temptation will come. And the temptation is to the pleasure that the addiction brought in their life. But guess what they forget about? The bondage that they were under when they enjoyed that pleasure. When my son was 13 I told him Richard I want you to know something. Sin is pleasurable. And he said Oh Dad! I said Oh yes! Read Hebrews. Let's look at Hebrews here. The pleasures of sin. I wanted to realize that I was still in the real world. I understood sin was pleasurable. But there's a price tag. And men who have been delivered from and we have to struggle with these guys. They've been delivered from terrible bondage. But they remember the pleasure and the pull of going back and enjoying that pleasure. It's like the children of Israel. Do they remember the bondage of Israel? Or do they remember the leeks, onions and garlic? Let's go back to the leeks, onion and garlic. What's spaghetti without garlic? But every man Oh let's go. Let no man say when he's tempted I am tempted of God for God cannot be tempted of evil neither will God tempt any man. And you can believe that and you can know. But here it comes. Here is the key. This answers the question why is it that when I'm tempted I often do not recognize the voice of the tempter in the temptation. Do you know that we are never told to resist temptation? Do you know a verse that says resist temptation? It says resist who? The tempter. Because if I resist temptation what am I looking at? The very thing that wipes me out. It's like I decided I was going to lose weight when I came to eat with missionaries. You know. They don't get paid much. I'm going through the line today and Satan cooked desserts here last night. And there was I mean what could I do? There before my eyes was strawberry and it's all free. I get to eat free. Do you see my tray? All these poor starving missionaries are drooling as I'm eating all this stuff. And there was this strawberry pie with whipped cream on it. And I stood there looking at it resisting it. Didn't work. Yeah. Let's go to Dairy Queen and resist Sundays. Doesn't work. The focus is on the wrong thing. The focus is on the very thing that trips me up. God doesn't want me to focus on that because He knows if I keep looking long enough I'm in trouble. That's why He said resist the one behind it. Resist the tempter. Verse 14 is one of the key verses in all the Bible on resisting. So He says that every man every includes who? Everybody in this room doesn't it? There's not one of us in here that doesn't include in this verse. Every man is tempted in exactly the same way. All of us. We don't have the same temptations. One may be wallets with money. The other may be sacks of pornography along the road here but we're all tempted in the same way but not by the same thing. But every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed. Now what does that mean? This is it. It's a key. It could just turn your whole life if you get a hold of this truth. Satan only tempts you to do what you secretly would do anyway. Can you catch that truth? Satan will only tempt you to do what you would secretly do anyway. Otherwise it's no what? Temptation. Right? It is no temptation. It doesn't have any appeal to me. And all of us are vulnerable to temptation. Do you know that? Every one of us in here. And Satan knows your combination. So when I'm tempted it seems so normal that I don't recognize the one behind it. He's only asking me to do what I'm weak anyway. And that is so often I don't recognize the voice there because it's not off the wall. Usually I'll ask this to young men when I'm teaching young men. I'll say, any of you guys been downtown? Yeah. Anybody? Take a young missionary. You been downtown in Waxhaw? Yeah. I said, is there a downtown? Huh? I haven't been there. Charleston. There's a downtown in Charleston. Isn't there? Okay. And I said, you're standing on a corner and you get this thought, drop your pants. So what would you do? They said, nothing. I said, that's why Satan never tells you to drop your pants. There are guys that we deal with that drop their pants downtown. Because when he tells them to it's their problem. It's a temptation. That's why Satan is not going to tell you to do something that you wouldn't do. So a fellow that has no thought of thievery, when he finds a wallet, the first thing he wants to do is give it back to the individual. But a fellow that has a temporal value problem, the enemy is going to use that and say, boy, you ought to take that money. Nobody knows. I mean, you've been praying. Here's an answer to prayer. Right there on the floor. You read Hudson Taylor. You shook out a glove and money came out. Here's a wallet. Shake it out. See what comes out. If you could catch this truth, I can't tell you, it'll change your life. I talked to navigators and crusade kids. Their lives are changed when they see this. You know what we need to do? We need to get alone with the Lord and say, Lord, where are my weak areas? Where are they? Find out what they are. Then get a concordance and find scriptural truths that answer that weakness. Isn't that what we're supposed to use against the attacks? Isn't it better to use a sword that fits exactly than a sword that doesn't? Let me give you an illustration. Let's go. Who was tempted and resisted with Scripture? Who do we know? Anybody? We can go to Matthew 4 or Luke 4. It doesn't make any difference. Let's look there. And here we're told how to resist. How to resist the attacks of the enemy. Matthew 4 starts out very strangely. Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness for the purpose to be tempted. I want to tell you something that may encourage your hearts. To be tempted is not a sin. You better believe that. It will wipe you out if you don't believe that. Because we read tonight about a fellow called the accuser of the brethren and the sisteren, too. I don't want to leave you ladies out. And he comes along and he puts a thought in your mind. And then he says, no one else at jars thinks like that. And you're going, where? You're not fit. Missionaries don't think those kind of thoughts. And then he throws another thought and tells you that. You know, if you keep believing that, you know what's going to happen after a while? You're not going to go anywhere. You're going to be a statistic. You're going to be wiped out. What did Jesus do? In fact, look at Luke 4 because I want to show you something that's neat about temptation. In Luke 4. It's interesting. It says, Jesus being full of the Holy Spirit returned to Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness. And then he went through a bunch of temptation. And here we see he had a a filling of the Spirit in verse 1. He went through all of this temptation. And what was the result of it? He returned in verse 14 in what? The power of the Spirit. Isn't that neat? He was filled. He went through tremendous temptation. But he returned in what? Empowered by the very Spirit he was filled with. So a temptation time can literally be what? An empowering time. It can be an empowering experience for you and I. So we see that Satan spoke to the Lord Jesus. Did Jesus hear Satan speak to him? Are you sure? How do you know? By the answers. Now this really causes some pastors to ask me almost to leave their churches. I said if that's the case then Jesus had wrong thoughts. You going to ask me to leave? Think about it. Was he told to do the right thing or the wrong thing? Wrong thing. Did he hear it? Up here in his head. He heard it. So hearing a wrong thought up here does not make me what? A sinner. It's what I do with it. See to be tempted in order for me to be tempted it has to be registered consciously up here. Right? I could be standing right here talking to you and the thing that trips me up the most could be going on behind me and I'm safe. I don't see it. I have to deal with it. It didn't register. And we see what Jesus did and it's so neat here. We know that all Scripture is inspired isn't it? All Scripture is profitable. So when Jesus was tempted by the enemy Jesus said in the beginning God created the Heaven and Earth. Is that Scripture? Is it profitable? But it didn't deal with the problem did it? He used what? Specific Scripture for specific temptation. The second thing you need to know is that Jesus did not quote Scripture word perfectly. You find it. I don't care. You take a NIV New American King James and you find me the verse word perfect in the Old Testament. It's not there. Jesus used a rhema. One time I was dealing with a missionary who was under control of demonic spirits and I was green still in all of this. I'm sort of getting yellow now. That's getting sort of right. Moving towards red. But I was really green at the time. And as I was dealing with this I thought of this verse and I quoted it. I love quoting Scriptures at the enemy. Love it. And so I quoted this verse and the enemy spoke out of this missionary and said you quoted it wrong I don't have to go. Now I knew I quoted it wrong. And I'm going oh boy where is it? It's a big New Testament. So here I am going through the New Testament because I didn't stand my ground. Guess who just took over the counseling? One me. And he's going oh that Logan is so dumb. All I do is stand my ground and say wait a minute. All I need to do is quote the truth of God's word. That's what the sword of the spirit is in Ephesians. It's a rhema not logos. It's the truth of God's word. And when I come under attack I can counter attack with what? The truth of God's word. Now if you can quote God's word perfectly I was saved through the navigators. I was learned verse four and a half. Do you know that? But now I'm getting older. So let's go back to the book of James and look at the rest of the instructions for resisting. If I resist the enemy and resisting is always an outward attack. It's always that the enemy is without and I'm resisting him outwardly. When someone was demonized as we think of the term of true demonization from the New Testament in that sense Jesus cast the spirits out of them. But if the enemy was outside he didn't cast them out. He what? He resisted them. So as we do battle with the enemy outside if we resist them with truth what will he do? He will go. Wouldn't it be neat if one resisting would do it? But even with Jesus they said he left for a while. And God sometimes marvelously when we go through a real battle like that will put a special protection around us for a while. Then he lifts it up so that we can wrestle again and learn to stand. And then he'll protect us and then he'll let us wrestle again. And after we go through a time of temptation what does he tell us to do? Usually what God tells us to do is opposite of what we would normally do. Do you know and this is gospel that it's not normal for a man to love his wife? That's why God commanded him to do it. Or natural. And it's not natural for a woman to submit to her husband. If it was God wouldn't have mentioned it. But he commanded it. It takes choices and it takes the empowering of God to do. And so whenever God tells us to do something usually it's not what we would just normally do. After we've been tempted what does he tell us to do? Draw close to him. Isn't that beautiful? And we think, oh man that was so terrible. My thoughts were so bad. I just kind of want to hide from God. Draw close to God after the temptation and what will he do? He'll draw close to you. It could be a very special time. Instead of it separating you from the Lord it can give you a very sweet time with him. And then he says cleanse ye hands ye sinners. You know what that speaks of to me? I got a little dirty in the battle. I got a little dirty and I need to ask for cleansing. What cleanses the dirt of sin off my hands? The blood of Christ. So cleanse your hands. And what's the second thing he tells me to deal with? Double mindedness. What's a double minded man? One who wants to walk with God and not deal with his secret desires. The very thing the enemy used to tempt him. The double mindedness. And we need to deal with it. Purify your hearts ye double minded. Be afflicted and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to heaviness. Now what's he ask me to do? Humble myself in the side of the Lord and he will reach down. And what will he do? Push your face in the dirt? He'll lift you up. Isn't that beautiful? He'll lift you up. Let me share one illustration in closing. Turn to Ephesians chapter 6, 10, 11 and 12. Finally my brethren be strong in the Lord and the power of his might. Put on the whole armor of God. We must deal with the armor and the significance of it and what it means and the applications you can make in your own life. Put on the whole armor of God that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers against the rulers of darkness of this world against spiritual weakness and high places. Wherefore take unto you the whole armor of God. There's something very significant here in the pronouns. It says put on the whole armor of God in verse 11 that ye may be able to stand. You look at verse 13 it says wherefore take unto you the whole armor of God. But verse 12 is very significant. Very seldom does the apostle Paul ever identify with the hearers. And he says for what? We wrestle. Or our. But why did he say that? Because Paul was putting on the armor. So he didn't have to say we need to put on the armor because he was putting on the armor. But he said you know why? Because we are wrestling including Paul against forces that we cannot see and we need God's grace and we need his armor his provision. Now let me share wrestling. You can check it out it's interesting. When we think of wrestling when I hear wrestling there is this blonde marvel you've seen them and they throw each other out of the ring and everybody is screaming and this is wonderful. But you go back to wrestling in Paul's day we are taking a wrong American concept to what was taking place. Usually in wrestling two slaves would wrestle in a final match and they would only wrestle one time in a very final, final, final match. And they would wrestle until one could no longer stand up. The winner would climb to his feet. He would take and put his foot on the neck of the loser. He would call for a sword and he would flick out the eyes of the loser who would walk in darkness the rest of his life as a reminder he lost the wrestling match. When you and I wrestle principalities and powers in this demonic realm and we lose how do we walk? In darkness. Jesus said if the light that's in thee be darkened. How great is that darkness? Have you been losing? I'd really encourage you to just to get along with the Lord and say, Lord, show me where I'm vulnerable. It can be worry. It can be poor me. It can be depression. You know, depression, and I understand depression. You know, I teach seminars on depression, but you know that depression can be an affront to the sovereignty of God. I don't like what you're doing. Do you ever hear a guy by the name of Jonah that had a good depression because he didn't like what God did? I don't know what your buttons are, but I know who does, and you can know what they are, and you can be prepared for him by finding specific scriptures that when he comes, as we get more involved in specific resisting, we can resist him and walk in the light, and we can run the race successfully, and there is a sin that so easily what? Besets us. We all have it. We all do. I still have mine. I wish I could get rid of it, but God has not seen fit to remove it, but he said, Jim, I'll give you something better. I'll give you more grace. Thank you, Father. Thank you so much for the victory that is ours in the total work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Father, may we get serious, very serious about our walk before you. May we allow your Holy Spirit to show us those areas in which we are weak, our vulnerable areas, and then, Father, may we find those verses that are so significant that we can do battle, and we can put the foot, our foot, on the neck of our enemy. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.