BACKGROUND:
David promised God that if He forgave him he would participate fully in His service. The requests in these verses are for things that result from forgiveness, and so they form indirect requests for forgiveness.
First, David said that if God forgave him, he would teach... sinners God’s ways (i.e., how He deals with penitent sinners). Naturally, to be able to teach this he himself must first experience forgiveness.
Second, David said if God forgave him, he would sing and praise God. Only when delivered from his bloodguiltiness could he join in praising God.
Third, David promised that if God forgave his sins he would sacrifice to God. He knew that God did not desire simply an animal sacrifice from him. He needed to find forgiveness before he could sacrifice a peace offering to God. The sacrifice he had to bring was a broken and contrite (crushed) heart—a humbled spirit fully penitent for sin. That is what God desires and will receive.
In the Old Testament, anyone who sinned as David did had to receive a word from a priest or prophet indicating he was forgiven. Only then could the penitent person again take part in worship and make a peace offering. In the New Testament the word of forgiveness is forever written in God’s Word—the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses from sin (1 John 1:7). Yet even in the New Testament a believer must have a spirit broken of all self-assertion; he must acknowledge his need before God to find spiritual renewal and cleansing (1 John 1:9).
SO WHAT? (what will I do with what i have read today?)
We continue today with the steps we all must take to protect ourselves from a moral and spiritual fall.
#4. The fourth thing you need to do is you need to pray for deliverance.
What I mean by that is just ask for God’s help. The Bible tells us that God is ready to help. He says we’re to pray “Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.” That is the prayer of deliverance. You ask God for help.
The Prayer of Deliverance is often just one word: help! It doesn’t have to be “Our gracious heavenly Father…” No. You can do when you come to the prayer of deliverance, you can do a microwave prayer, help! I’m walking through this. Keep my eyes straight. I’m going through this time. I don’t like this person. I have to deal with this person – that clerk who’s a jerk and I do not want to get impatient.
I do not want to get angry. I do not like the way my relative treats me and I’m going to see them today and “Oh, God! You’ve got to help me! I lose my Christianity when I’m around that person. And God I really need your help today because everything in me just wants to slug her!” Or him! Whatever. That relative out there that just irritates you no end. So you pray for deliverance.
Why can I expect God to help me when I pray the prayer of deliverance? Because God has promised it. Psalm 50:15 says, “Call upon me in your day of trouble. I will deliver you and you will honor me.” God says you don’t have to have a long conversation. You can just say “Help! Mayday! Mayday! SOS! God, I’m facing something now that will power is not enough to keep me being nice to this person or whatever. God, I need to pray the prayer of deliverance.”
Then number five, this is a real key on the six steps on the path of escape.
#5. I turn my attention elsewhere.
I change the direction of my thoughts. I refocus on something else. I shift my attention. If you’re watching something on TV that you don’t like, you don’t sit there and go, “I’m not going to listen…I’m not going to listen… I’m not going to listen… I am not going to listen…” No. You just flip the channel. That’s all you need to do. Temptation.
Here’s the secret to temptation: don’t fight it. Just refocus. Don’t resist, refocus. Whatever you have in your life that you resist you’re just nailing it harder into your life. Whatever you resist persists. “I’m not going to have another cigarette… I’m not going to take another drink…” Whatever you resist persists. The key is not… Did you know in the Bible not once are you told to resist temptation? We are told to resist the devil and that’s a whole different issue. That’s another sermon. But in temptation, the key to overcoming temptation is not push back. It’s just change my focus. All of a sudden I’m not interested in that any more. When I get a new focus, when I refocus, all of a sudden that which had my attention I forget about. It’s not that I’m resisting it; I just forget about it. That principle works in every single area of life.
Whatever gets your attention gets you. The battle for sin always starts in the mind. That’s why the Bible says this “Thinking about your commands will keep me from doing some foolish thing.” Why? Because if I’m thinking about your commands, if I’m thinking about truth, I’m not thinking about the dumb stuff I could be doing.
Have you ever looked over a cliff? Been up real high and looked over a cliff and felt like you were being drawn to jump off? Kind of like you were being pulled off? Not like a temptation but just felt like there was this force that was pulling you. It’s because whatever you focus on pulls you.
It’s true in every single area of life. Good or bad. You focus on good things in life, godly things in life, true things in life, it’s going to pull you that direction. If you focus on the stuff that’s at the movies and the stuff that’s in the magazines and the stuff that’s in all the Harlequin Romance novels, it’s going to pull you that direction. Whatever you focus on gets your attention. Whatever gets your attention is going to get you.
I don’t know if you’ve realized this but the more you think about something the more it upsets you. And it gets worse and worse and worse and a stronger hold. And you repeat it and repeat it and reinforce it and reinforce it. The first time you think about it you think, “That really upset me.” And the more you think about it, “That really did upset me.” And the more you think about it, “Man, I am ticked off!” Then you’re ready to drop an atomic bomb on that person. By the time you’ve thought it over and over, it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger.
So whatever is tempting you, whether it’s sex or food or anything else. Whatever you focus on is going to pull you that direction. So the key is to just change your mind.
Temptation always follows a predictable pattern. Attention, arousal, action. Attention, arousal, action. That’s the way every single temptation works. Attention – your mind gets hooked. Arousal – your mind kicks in. Emotions. Action – you act on it. That’s what the book of James says, chapter 1.
So you don’t fight a temptation, you just turn your mind to something else.
Romans 12:21 says “Don’t let evil conquer you but conquer evil with good.” What is this? The principle of replacement. That’s what this is – the principle of replacement. Fill your mind with truth, good thoughts, good things and it pushes out all of the junk in your mind.
Learning this kind of stuff that I’m talking to you about, this pattern of thinking is not easy. But it is possible. You can learn how to do it.
#6. Get a group and a partner.
Friends, I’ve been helping people through temptation for over thirty years. And nothing works like this. That’s why I keep talking about you need to have an accountability partner, you need to have a spiritual partner, you need to have a spiritual friend, you need to be in a LIFE group.
The Bible says this – I love this in the Message paraphrase “Sheer muscle and will power don’t make anything happen. But every word I’ve spoken to you [Jesus] is a spirit word so it is life making. It’s life changing.”
Change has to come inside. Here’s my question to you as your pastor, somebody who loves you. How serious are you about breaking free? That thing that you keep going back to it, and keep going back to it. That habit, that pattern of thought, that pattern of I always get angry in that situation, I always get impatient in that situation, I always tend to build myself up in that situation, I always get … whatever. How seriously are you interested in changing and breaking free?
Because if you are let me be very blunt with you. You will never do it without support. You will never do it on your own. I don’t give you any hope of success in changing by yourself. Zero. Because God has wired us in a way that we need each other to grow. We need each other to break free of habits and hang ups and hurts. You need accountability in your life. The very thing that you want least is the very thing you need most. You need a friend who checks up on you and you need a group that supports you.
The Bible says this in Ecclesiastes 4 “Two are better than one because together if one falls down the other can help him up. But if somebody’s alone and he falls [into temptation] there’s no one there to help him up.” It just doesn’t work.
If there’s just one thing I could do as your pastor it would be to get you in a group and get you with a person that you could be totally honest with on the things that you think I don’t want to tell anybody about. Because you’re never going to break free until you share them. If we were more consistent in confessing our temptations to each other then we wouldn’t have to spend so much time confessing our sins to each other. I’d rather have you confessing temptations than having to confess sins, wouldn’t you?
Some of you - I can hear you right now you're thinking - “I’ve never been tempted…” Liar! Everybody’s tempted. It is a myth that says you’re going to get to a point in your spiritual life where you’re not tempted. No. In fact, let me tell you this, the more mature you become the more Satan is going to put you on his most wanted list. You’re going to get worse temptations as you grow. It doesn’t just go away. It gets worse.
God wired us to need each other. And when we do this, when you’re authentic and you start admitting your temptation to other people, it’s liberating. The moment you admit your temptation, you start moving to freedom. That’s second. Because if I can’t talk about it, it’s already out of control in my life. If you can’t talk about it, whatever you can’t talk about is out of control in your life. Otherwise you’re just in denial. It’s out of control. When you talk about a problem it helps you gain control.
Holding on to a hang up only intensifies it. It makes it worse. Wearing a mask makes you miserable. And pretending makes it worse. It’s liberating. It’s empowering. The moment you share with somebody in LIFE small group, you don’t even have to share with everybody in your group. Just get one person. Just say, will you be my partner? Here’s some stuff I want to change. Things I want to work on for good – positive habits – get in shape or whatever. Or here’s some negative things I want to stop doing – watching pornography or whatever. Remember I said everybody’s got different temptations. Nobody has a right to judge anybody else. We’re all shaped for different things - we're all tempted by different things.
Let me end with James 5 - “My dear friends, if you know people who’ve wandered off from God’s truth don’t write them off. Go after them. Get them back and you will have rescued precious lives.” Let me ask you: do you know somebody in your life who’s struggling right now who needs your help and you need to go after them? You say, “It’s none of my business!” It is your business if you love them. It’s your business to go after them and bring them back and help them out and be their partner and love them unconditionally and listen to their confession and encourage them and help them grow.
I love you guys. Stay faithful. Stay the course.
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