Deadly Temptations (Part 1)

Thanks for tuning in to No Compromise Radio with pastor and author, Dr. Mike Abendroth. Today on No Compromise Radio, we'll be hearing Pastor Mike open the Word of God in a recent message he preached at Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts.

Now, let's join Pastor Mike in progress as he preaches through the scriptures, verse by verse, with No Compromise.

The World’s Siren Song and Deadly Temptations

The world has an agenda and it is trying to get you to believe its agenda. Remember the Greek mythology with the siren songs? The sirens on shore beckoning the men and ships just come closer. Oh, they were so beautiful.

It sounded so good. But when the men would get close to shore, shipwreck. The Argonauts made it past the sirens because Orpheus played a song to drown out the siren songs and the lullaby from these femme fatales.

The Argonauts made it through for that. Odysseus sailed by with his men. He made it according to legend because they tied him to the mast and then all the men put wax in their ears so they wouldn't buy in to this compelling lullaby of death.

The world, she is selling her wares. But the end is tragic. It sounds so soothing. It sounds so sensuous. It sounds so good. Temptation everywhere. Do we buy the world's goods or do we ignore them? This morning we're going to look at some deadly temptations.

For the second time I think in 16 years I'm going to do a flip. Not the sanctuary flip but, why do we ever call it the flip by the way? Flip Wilson, who knows what the flip was. We flipped the sanctuary around.

Sunday night, tonight at 6 I'm going to preach Matthew chapter 8 talking about the healing of Peter's mother-in-law. But this morning I'm going to preach what I was going to preach tonight. And so if you can't stand it because you're not in the exposition of Matthew chapter 8 and the credentials of our powerful king, I'll see you tonight at 6 .30.

Bring a dessert. The world knows how to sell. The world knows how to advertise. Energized by Satan, the four P's with product, place, price and promotion. Too often Christians are gullible and buy in to what the world is selling.

I don't want you to do that. It's not a sin to be tempted but it's a sin to be tempted and then to fall. So this morning let me give you a series of deadly temptations I want you to be guarded against so that you don't buy what the world is certainly selling.

I've probably got about 20, we're going to get through about 8 or so, maybe 9, it just depends. Deadly temptations that I want you to run from. Number one, you will be tempted to exalt yourself instead of Jesus Christ.

You are going to be tempted to exalt yourself instead of Jesus Christ. Not just from the world but even from yourself. Turn your Bibles please to Acts chapter 12 as we look at self-exaltation and what God thinks about such narcissism.

We have a new vocabulary for our self-fascination. I looked up words in the dictionary, self-centered, self-seeking, self-love, self-important, self-satisfaction, self-esteem, self-will, self-help, self-conscious, self-assured, self-realization, self-reliance, self-expression, self-righteous.

We are tempted to make much of ourselves and little of Christ and it needs to be the other way around. True or false, God is a jealous God. True or false, God's name is jealous. God is the one deserving the glory and so we want to make sure we don't try to rob God and steal from God what is rightfully His.

Whitney Houston, I think, when she was alive and sang the song, The Greatest Love of All, I think she was promoting the siren song of self-exaltation. A lyric from the song says, learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all.

Peter McWilliams, author of Love 101, has a subtitle to the book, To Love Oneself is the Beginning of a Lifelong Romance. I laughed the first time I said it and I'll laugh again. Who else is more qualified to love you than you?

Who else knows what you want precisely when you want it and is always around to supply it? Melody Beatty, author of Codependent No More, has a chapter entitled Have a Love Affair with Yourself. To show you how far we've come, William Carey, the English Baptist missionary sent to India, has this on his tombstone.

William Carey, born August 17th, 1761, died June 1834, a wretched, poor, and helpless worm, on thy kind arms I fall. Let's look at Acts chapter 12 and we will learn with this first temptation that self-praise is always a bad idea and the Bible regularly punctuates the judgment due to self-praise.

But after all, my child is an honor student and you slap that back on your bumper sticker. I'm not saying I want God to judge with Acts 12 judgment for the people that do that, but everywhere we go my point is they're self-boasting.

Now to pick us up in the book of Acts, James has been killed, Peter was next, and now God rescues. Acts 12 20. Now Herod, this is Herod Agrippa I, he grew up in Rome and he was best buddies with Caligula.

That's probably all you need to know. Lots said about him from the historian Josephus which I'll quote in a moment. Now he was angry with the people of Tyre and Sidon, they were kind of an independent bunch there, and they came to him with one accord.

There's probably an issue with grain markets and the Phoenicians wanting to sell and buy and having persuaded Blastus, the king's chamberlain, they asked for peace because their country depended on the king's country for food.

And so economic dependency sends someone as a representative, let's talk a little bit about that. We need peace. Verse 21, on an appointed day, by the way this is the feast day in honor of Roman Emperor Claudius, Herod put on his royal robes, took his seat upon the throne, this is the throne in the amphitheater built by Herod the Great, his grandfather.

He sat on the throne and delivered an oration to them. Now it's interesting, Josephus, the Jewish writer who's not a professing Christian, tells about this story and it was all set up with THX, is that a movie thing, THX?

Dolby THX? Yeah. I just looked at Sam, Sam was shaking his head, yes. I owe you a dollar. The staging, the lights, the daybreak, the attire, it makes for a grand entrance, Josephus said. After the completion of the third year of his reign, Agrippa came to the city of Caesarea.

On the second day of the spectacles, clad in a garment woven completely of silver so that its texture was indeed wondrous, he entered the theater at daybreak. So the sun's coming up, it screams into the silver and it just is wondrously radiant, Josephus says.

It inspired fear and awe in those, Josephus said, who gazed intently upon it. And so what do the people do? Verse 22 of our text, and the people were shouting over and over and over, the voice of a God and not a man, the voice of a God and not a man.

God is talking to us, Josephus says, that they said, be propitious to us, Josephus adds. The voice of a God and not a man. Now when Cornelius meant Peter in Acts 10, he fell at his feet, Cornelius did and worshipped him, but Peter lifted him up saying, stand up, I too am a man.

But that's not what happens here with Herod. The voice of a God and not a man. Verse 23, there's only one to be glorified, there's one creator, one redeemer, one advocate. And immediately an angel of the Lord struck him down.

God on numerous occasions sending out angels to kill 185 ,000 Assyrians in 2 Kings 19. Why did he get killed? Because he did not give God the glory. He was giving himself the glory, it was all staged for his exaltation.

And he was eaten by worms and breathed his last. He didn't give God glory and so divine judgment through natural worms. When I was preaching first service I thought if I was going to teach a bunch of young kids a passage to talk about this, I'd teach this one right here because there would be no sleeping kids at this part right here with the worm eating.

The young kids are listening. What was going on here? Eaten by worms? You say, that's gross. Yeah, it's supposed to be. Josephus said he lived for five days and many commentators say he was eaten so much from the inside that you could smell him.

What's it smell like when an alive man is getting eaten from the inside by tapeworms? There's a book called Science in the Bible, Moody Press, and it says the phrase eaten of worms in Greek is skolakobratis.

The root word skolaks is the specific head structure of a tapeworm. Commonly found in sheep growing countries, they get into the dogs first, then through fecal matter they get to the humans. The disease is characterized, she says, by formation of cysts generally on the right lobe of the liver.

They may extend down into the abdomen cavity. The rupture of such a cyst may release as many as two million skolases. The developing worms inside the cysts begin to eat the patient. I'm great. I'm number one.

I'm the greatest. Look at me. Friends, God alone is great. And here there's a punctuation. When you get on that throne and the sun comes shining and you don't say everything I am and all that I have is because of the triune God of the universe, here God snuffs him out.

The same Herod that's snuffing out James that wanted to kill Peter, verse 24, cannot stop the sovereign steamroller word of God, verse 24, but the word of God increased and multiplied. God triumphs. God's words triumph.

Herod is dead. Herod should have been singing Psalm 115, not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give what? Glory. Turn with me, if you would, to 1 Corinthians chapter 1. We are boasting people and that's good.

You were born to boast. You were born to brag. You were born to say to other people, let me tell you about something great. Let me tell you about someone great. That's what you're supposed to do. Why do you think I was so good at doing bring and brag or show and tell in Omaha, Nebraska when I was 5 years old in kindergarten?

By the way, the school that I went to in Omaha, Nebraska on Fort Street is a brand new school. I left Laura Dodge in kindergarten and I moved to a new school appropriately entitled Master's Elementary School.

It had nothing to do with Master's Seminary. And it was just built in our nature. You go to a Red Sox game. You go to a Lakers game. You go to a Celtics game. And people don't have to be taught how to cheer.

You ever see those guys, get your programs, get your programs. You look down here, how to root for your team. Number one, stand up. Number two, yell. Number three, drop your popcorn but just act like you don't care.

Go! People are born for this. Why? Because we realize we're finite and God's infinite. We realize that God is great and we're not and we're supposed to boast. Look at 1 Corinthians chapter 29. God chose all these things, the things that are not, that He might nullify the things that are.

He chose, He chose, He chose. What's the purpose? Verse 29 of 1 Corinthians, that no man should boast before God. You don't boast before God of self. I'm boasting in riches. I'm boasting in brains. I'm boasting in brawn.

No, we're supposed to boast in the Lord and who He is and how great He is. He who boasts, let him boast in the Lord. You could just hear the words of Jeremiah run through your mind. Let not a wise man, let not a mighty man, let not a wealthy man.

No flesh should boast before. No flesh, no flesh in His presence. Why? Verse 30, but by His doing you are in Christ Jesus. Literally, of Him, out of God. He did it all. He is the efficient cause of our salvation.

How can we boast of ourselves? It is because of Him you are in Christ Jesus. Verse 31, so that just as it stands written. Imperative, present tense, keep on doing it. Here's a command to boast. Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord.

Like the Bible regularly teaches us let's not buy into this self-boasting because our boasting, although good, is in the wrong place and so the object of our boasting needs to be in the Lord and His goodness and His kindness.

John Newton who wrote Amazing Grace said, young Christians think themselves little. Growing Christians think themselves nothing. Full grown Christians think themselves less than nothing and then they praise the Lord.

Blaming Others Instead of Owning Sin and Running to Christ

Temptation number two, temptation number two. You'll be tempted to blame others for your sin which then makes you not embrace the second Adam. You'll be tempted to blame others in your environment instead of owning Adam's fall which is going to prevent you from running to the second Adam or the last Adam more technically.

Let's turn our Bibles to Mark chapter 7. You'll be tempted to blame other people. Blaming God's not new in history. It's not even new in Greek mythology. Homer wrote, Zeus now addressed the immortals.

What a lamentable thing it is that men should blame the gods and regard us as the source of their troubles when it is their own wickedness that brings them sufferings worse than any which destiny allots them.

We want to own our sin. We want to confess our sins, agree with God about our sins, 1 John chapter 1 because then we run to the one who's faithful and just to forgive our sins. If we say, you know what, I'm not going to own this sin, then we never get to the cross.

We never get to Christ who's our suffering servant who died on behalf of these things. Maladies don't need to be forgiven. Syndromes don't need to be forgiven but I need to be forgiven because I'm a sinner therefore I run to the Savior.

So you're short circuiting yourself if you say, I'm going to blame everybody else. But if you say, I blame me, then you run to the God who loves sinners and sent his son to rescue them. Mark chapter 7, you know the passage.

And he said to them, Mark 7, 18, then you are also without understanding. Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from the outside cannot defile him? Since it enters not his heart but his stomach and is expelled, thus he declared all foods clean.

And he said, what comes out of a person is what defiles him for within, out of the heart of man come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness.

All these things, all these evil things come from within and they defile a person. Friends, Proverbs 19 is correct. A man's own folly ruins him. And when you don't think you're sick do you go to the doctor?

I guess there's only one time you do that when you have your wellness visit, right? You have your checkup. But when you're sick you know you need to go to a doctor. Matthew 9, Jesus said, those who are well have no need of a physician but those who are sick.

When we sin the best thing that we can do is to just say, I own it and therefore I run to the Savior. I hope you do this in your life. I hope you do this in your family. I've never, this is going to go against what you think.

I just taught in number one but I'll say it anyway. I don't know anybody who's a better self-rationalizer than me. If I get confronted by someone or if Kim says to me, you know what, honey, that wasn't kind or that wasn't this, that or the other and I didn't measure up to biblical standards and you ought to rethink that or however she says it, she says it very nicely.

I'm like, there should be a bumper sticker for me. Not my child is an honor student but I can rationalize like no other. You put me on the defense stand and I can just justify myself, vindicate myself.

I know how to do these things very well. But if I just say, you know what, honey, you're right, I'm sinful. I've asked God to forgive me and I haven't hit his standard and do you think you could forgive me?

Then I move from a point in time to sending the beeline back to the gospel. Then I think, yes, the gospel is true and right and why do I have to rationalize myself and then I'm just going to stay neutral.

I'm not going to move anywhere towards the gospel. Listen to what Edwards said. There is no one lust in the heart of the devil that is not in the heart of man. No wonder we're called children of wrath and then God saves us.

Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy. And then you say, you know, I had Adam's sin imputed to my account but there's the last Adam that I should run to.

The free gift is not like the trespass, Paul said in Romans 5, for if many died through the one man's trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free grace by the grace of that one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for many.

Comparing Yourself to Others Instead of the Thrice Holy God

Number three, somewhat related to the first two but we're just working through this outline. You've got to have verse by verse, Acts of Jesus. We'll see you tonight, 6 o 'clock. You'll be tempted to compare yourself to others.

You'll be tempted to compare yourself to others instead of our thrice holy God. Turn to Luke 18 if you would please. Luke 18. You know this passage. I think you probably know most of the things I'm saying today but just like when Pradeep was reading, stirring people up by reminder.

It's not a good sermon if you learn something new. I'm glad if you learn something new but going back to the old truths, Luke 18. I love to study the preaching of Jesus, the teaching of Jesus. I don't know if you know this but God loves preaching.

Did you know that? I don't say that just because I'm a preacher but God loves preaching. He preaches in nature. Look at how powerful I am and look at how wise I am. He preaches through his son like this and he preaches through his word.

Who talks like this, Luke 18? I hope you regularly read the gospels just to be impressed with Jesus. That the fame of Christ might increase in your heart. You might appreciate him all the more. He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and when you do that then you compare and you treat others with contempt.

You know the passage, you know the parable. Two men went up into the temple to pray. One the Pharisee, religious man, the other a tax collector, the scallywag. The Pharisee standing by himself prayed thus.

He's talking to himself, talking to the tax collector more than anybody else. I thank you God that I'm not like other men, stortioners, unjust, adulterers, even like this tax collector over here. I fast twice a week.

I give tithes of all that I get. But the tax collector, see he's not comparing himself to the Pharisee. He doesn't even see the Pharisee. He's not even in his peripheral vision as it were spiritually.

He wouldn't even lift up his eyes to heaven. Why? He's contrite. He knows who God is. He beat his breast not with a Tarzan bravado but with contrition. God be propitious. Be merciful to me. Literally, the sinner.

I know what I deserve. I know who I am. I'm not comparing myself to the Pharisee. If there's ever been a sinner in all the world, I am he. And so Lord be merciful. I know you are merciful. Your loving kindness is everlasting.

Please be propitiated. Let your anger be removed. Who cares about the other person? His conscience was after him. Verse 14, I tell you this man went down to his house justified, declared righteous. Rather than the other, for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.

That's why it's so good beloved to study the word of God because then you realize who God is, who we are and then you never do what we have in our culture today. I talk about this a lot but I think it's true.

Why is Jerry Springer and his ilk, why are they so popular? Answer? Because praise the Lord at least somebody's a deviant and I'm normal. But before the Lord, we all fall short. Number four, this is big in our culture today and this is a huge one and so I'll talk about this maybe a little longer.

You'll be tempted to think sexual sin is normal and natural. You'll be tempted to think that sexual sin is normal and natural. We live in a world that the world says especially with the gay marriage issue happening before our very eyes coming like a roller coaster downhill as fast as possible with few breaks.

Well you know what, I guess you're born that way and if you're born that way then it's okay. This isn't an issue of behavior before God. If you're white or black, you're just born that way and so that has no moral implications.

After all, if you're hungry you eat. If you're hungry for sex, you indulge. Sex, a sin? No, I thought it was fun. Turn to Hebrews chapter 13 and let's find out what God says. It doesn't matter what the world goes on to sell.

They want to make sure everybody is quiet about it so they don't feel guilty with their God-given.

Conscience. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's Word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 8 .30 and 11 a .m. and Sunday evenings at 6 p .m. We're located on Route 110 in West Boylston, Massachusetts. You can check us out online at bbcchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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