If you wanted to watch this episode early, exclusive content and more, check out our Patreon. Our Patreon is the best place for you guys to support us. Keep us producing the podcast, keep producing the evangelism videos, sending us out on the street, and in return, you get exclusive content that will only be available on Patreon, early access to all podcasts, evangelism videos, our inner circle group chat, and more. So if you want to support us, go to patreon.com slash Bryce Crawford today. Join the Patreon, support the mission, get early access to podcast videos, exclusive content, and more. What's going on, guys? Welcome back to another episode of the Bryce Carver Podcast. I'm Bryce. And today, by the title of the episode, you can tell we are talking about overcoming temptation. How do we overcome temptation? This is something that we cannot avoid in this life. And I made an episode on this back at the beginning in the earlier stages of the podcast, and I wanted to remake it again. So if you have your Bibles, we're going to open up to Luke chapter 17. But before we get into it, I want to preface this by something. Oftentimes, people think that when you have been tempted by something, that's when you have failed God. That could not be further from the truth. Temptation is completely separate than sin. and I'm not saying this in a sinlessness manner. You gotta hear what I'm saying. Every time sin is talked about in the Bible, it is talked about as an if. If you sin, know that there's an advocate to the Father named Jesus Christ who's praying on your behalf, who was the sacrifice for your sins. If you sin, that means it's up in the air. That means it's a possibility. That means it's not a guarantee. You see what I'm saying? And through the strength of the Spirit of God, we can overcome temptation, and that's what we're gonna read here in Luke chapter 17. It's a beautiful thing. You know, God is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins if we have sinned. And we need to confess. That's if we've sinned. And you know what the beautiful thing is? And we're going to get into it later. I'll save it for later. Let's read Luke chapter 17 on what Jesus says about temptation. And he said to his disciples, temptations to sin are sure to come, but woe to the one through who they come. It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and were casted to the sea that he should cause one of these little ones to sin. Let me just stop right there. Jesus just said the wildest thing about sin. He said, temptation's unavoidable, but woe to the one that tempts someone. And then he says, if you tempt someone, if you're the reason that someone was tempted and falls into sin, It would be better for you to tie weight around your neck and jump in the ocean and off yourself than it would be to cause someone to sin. That statement is mind-blowing to me. And Jesus is not telling people at all whatsoever to off themselves. That's not what he's saying. What is Jesus showing us? He is showing the weight and gravity of sin. You know, sin is oftentimes a snowball effect. Whenever you see someone that falls from grace really big, you know, Like if a leader cheats on his wife multiple times with a secretary or someone has this deep, crazy drug addiction on meth, fentanyl, heroin, things like that. You know they don't just randomly one day think I'm going to go cheat on my wife a million times. No, no, no. It starts by looking at a woman lustfully. It starts by simply smoking weed. It starts small and it snowball effects. and when we suppress sin habits in our life, then it creates this massive weight on our shoulders and we stack up on this ladder of sin and hiding it and I can't let anyone know about it and then we fall hard off the ladder. And that's what Satan wants to do. This is what Satan's gonna do. Hey go do that thing Hey you see that joint Go smoke that joint one more time Oh that girl you just hooked up with last night that I made you feel guilty about You should go hook up with her again Oh, that alcohol, you should go numb the pain. And then after he entices you and convinces you and then you do it, he goes, why'd you do it? You look like an idiot. You knew that wasn't going to satisfy you. How in the world would you ever do such a thing? How could you ever possibly imagine yourself saying, why would you do that? You look like an idiot. The one, the devil, the tempter himself will convince you to fall into temptation after you bite into it. He says, why did you do it? You see, Satan, Satan appears like a roaring lion. This is what the scriptures say. The scriptures say Satan is like a roaring lion, but in reality, he's like a kitty cat in the corner with a megaphone trying to amplify your problems, trying to amplify temptation to seem better than it actually is. Satan is a freaking pile of poop. That's what he is. He's a loser. He's got no new tricks. And so temptation is unavoidable. You know what you and I as a believer should be? You and I should not be surprised when we're tempted with things. You know what? In fact, you should not be surprised when Satan tempts you with something so enticing. It's crazy. Like, we get shocked when we are being tempted by sin, but it's unavoidable. Jesus said this. He's like, look, guys, you will never be able to avoid this thing. You will constantly be tempted in this life. Now, when he addressed the sin, he says, if you sin. But when talking about temptation, it's unavoidable. Because this is what life is like. This is the difference between temptation and sin. When we walk in communion with God, our eyes are up here. Our eyes are to the sky, and it doesn't matter whatever is going on down here. It doesn't matter what's going on, the offense, the gossip, the temptation, whatever. Because when our eyes are here, it doesn't matter because I'm focused on Jesus now. When Satan tempts us with the fruit, our eyes now look forward, like I'm looking at you. and we look at the fruit and we have to make a conscious decision. Do I want to go back to the sex that I'm being tempted with? Do I want to go back to the porn? Do I want to go back to the weed? Do I want to go back to the substances? Do I want to go back to the people pleasing? Do I want to go back to the gossip? The gluttony? Or do I want to say, that has never satisfied me and it never will. I want to go back to Jesus. Now, if you take bite of the fruit, the temptation, your eyes now go here and you realize you're naked. This is exactly what happened to Adam and Eve in the garden. They took a bite, they looked down, they realized they're naked and they go to hide. And notice that the first thing God does when he hunts him down is in scold him. He goes, where are you? Where are you? Because if you bite into temptation and sin, the temptation then after falling into sin is to hide. When God is saying, actually run to me. There's a difference between godly sorrow and worldly sorrow. If someone happens, if you happen to fall into temptations, you have two rows. You can go down godly sorrow or worldly sorrow. Worldly sorrow is oftentimes the road that people take. And worldly sorrow is God is coming. He saw what I did. I got to run away from him. And when you run away from God, instead of going to him with your problems, what actually happens is the devil convinces you and you begin to convince yourself that if I already did it once, it's not going to hurt anymore if I do it again. And then you do it again and you do it again and you do it again. Whereas godly sorrow actually says God is coming. You saw what I did. I need to run to him because that's the only place I'm going to find freedom. That's the only place I'm going to find an antidote. That's the only place I'm going to find satisfaction. So when Jesus then, after he explains to you and I, whether you're a believer or not, you will be tempted with vices, particularly probably stuff that caters to you right Because Satan smart He not an idiot He smart I mean he is an idiot but he smart He studied you He been around for thousands of years prowling the earth trying to bring people down to hell with him. Of course he's going to know what tempts you. So Jesus is preparing you already. Don't be surprised when you get tempted with things that entice you. But then Jesus says, woe to the person who it comes through. It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck and were cast into the sea than he should cause when these little ones to sin. Two things just happened in this passage. Number one, Jesus gives a warning to you personally about tempting other people. But the second thing he says is look at the destruction of sin. Sin is far worse than someone offing themselves in the ocean. Sin brings far greater destruction than something as dangerous as tying weight to your neck and jumping in the middle of the ocean and drowning yourself. Jesus says sin is aggressive, it's destructive, it's nasty, it's disgusting. You don't want anything to do with it. You don't want to actually get near it. But Jesus gives a strict warning to you and me. Woe to you for wanting to fulfill your sinful desires and tempting and leading someone else in it. See, that's what we don't understand about the temptation and sin thing. He's like, yeah, temptation's unavoidable for yourself, but woe to you if you lead someone else into sin. Because that's what Satan's trying to do. All sin is selfish. All sin is self-sustaining. And if sin was really gonna satisfy you, then only sleeping around one time would have worked. If sin was going to satisfy you, then only one drink would have satisfied you. If sin was going to satisfy you, then only turning to the drugs one time would have worked, but it obviously doesn't. Why is that? Because it's temporary. It's just like Advil. It numbs the pain for a couple of hours, and then you come back and you feel worse than you did before you started. And all sin is selfish. Because when you're tempted to go have sex, what you're really doing is serving yourself and not serving that person under the covenant of marriage in the way God has designed it to be. And so not only are you serving your flesh, but you're leading another one of Jesus's little ones into sin. And he says, woe to you, for it would be better for you to tie a millstone around your neck and jump into the ocean and drown than lead one of my children into sin. That's what Jesus says. That's what Jesus thinks about you. That's why Jesus has defeated Satan. Woe to you, Satan. for being the reason and the source for temptation, the reason that sin has entered into the world. Woe to you for leading my little ones into sin. It's aggressive. Sin is dangerous. We don't want to mess with it. So when Jesus makes a statement, he's like, look, temptation is unavoidable. Don't be shocked. And the scriptures would say in Ephesians 6, the word of God is going to be your weapon. And if you guys listened to the last podcast episode, we did solo teaching. We talked about the importance of the word of God. It goes hand in hand with this right here. And there's a couple of things I want to end with. I used to be in a position where I thought, oh, if I get tempted with this certain thing, there's no way I will be able to say no to it. And you know what? Think about the sin struggle in your life that if Satan tempts you with it, there's no possible way you can say no to it. And you're absolutely right. In your own strength, you will never be able to say no to temptation. But the scriptures say, Paul writes to the church of Corinth who was wicked and sinful and doing a whole lot of junk He says Satan got no new tricks He been doing the same things for thousands of years and there's always a back door to sin. No temptation has overtaken you. That's not common to man. God is faithful and just, and he will not allow you to be tempted beyond your measure. What does that mean? First of all, Satan's been doing the same crap. He's not inventing new things, and this means, oftentimes, if you sin, The temptation is, I need to hide. No one's going to understand what I'm going through. No one's going to understand what I'm dealing with. And then when you hide, like I said earlier, you begin to convince yourself to do it again and do it again, and you come up with the excuses. Rather, he's saying, there's probably far more people that are struggling with this thing than you think. And so when you actually bring it to light, then you find fellowship with believers, grace through the strength of the Spirit of God, and with believers, and actually encouragement to get out of it. No temptation has overtaken you. That's not common to man. And then God is faithful and just. That's who he is. That's his character. He will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you can handle. So that actually is a lie that you can't say no to sin. That's false. You can, no matter how quote unquote strong you think the temptation is in your life. Through the strength of the Spirit of God, you have the ability to say no to it. Look at the rich young ruler in Luke 18, just a chapter later. Jesus told him to surrender his money because he loved money more than he loved God. And he got sad. And Jesus says, what seems impossible for man is possible with God. What seems impossible for you to surrender is possible if you just give it up to God. And the reason you keep falling to your sin and to your temptation and you keep struggling so much is because you keep trying to break free out of your own strength. You will never be able to do it. And you know what temptation really does? Temptation keeps us humble and relying on God. Temptation sobers us. It goes, man, thank you, Jesus, that you have saved us, God. I need you more now than ever because every time I lean on myself, I blow my whole life up. And to be completely honest, I don't want to be the kind of believer that only confesses when I've sinned. we need to be believers that confess when we're tempted. Because when we confess sin or we confess, hey, I feel tempted to do this thing. I feel like jacking up my whole life right now. When we confess, it makes Satan lose his power on us. The thing that Satan is trying to get a foothold in our life with, unrepentant sin brings a foothold of the devil in your life. When he's trying to get a foothold in your life, when you confess temptation, confess sin, you kill it. You say, that's not who I am. I'm new and clean and free and I'm a child of God. That's who I am. and I'm one of his little ones that is protected by the blood, that is protected by his word, that is protected by God. Don't get near me, Satan. Because temptation is not fun, but we like to flirt with it. And the last thing I want to say to you, stop blaming God for flirting with temptation. There's a lot of you out there that are probably blaming God right now because you think God is responsible for you falling into sin, when in reality, God has given you the tools, given you the strategy, and has actually told you, stop hanging out with that crowd, stop doing that thing, stop listening to that music, stop watching that certain TV show or those videos, yet you still do and you flirt with sin and you wonder why you can't escape it. So I wanna pray for us to close this out. And the simple prayer I wanna be is, God, thank you that you give us strength to overcome sin and God, will we continue to be humble and reliant on you? Jesus, we thank you for the cross, that you've defeated sin and death. You've defeated the very thing that creates a gap in us. And God, we ask right now, would you continue to give us strength to be humble and reliant on you? In a world of wickedness and sin and temptation, like your words as you said yourself, Jesus, that temptation is unavoidable. So God, would you help us through the strength of your spirit of God to say no to sin and say yes to you. Every decision, every breath, every second. We love you, Jesus. And it's in your name we pray, amen.
