The temptation, that will bring you down this week may be launched suddenly, and take you by surprise. You never expected that particular temptation. You have never been affected by that particular temptation before. We all have our besetting weaknesses and sins. You may be inclined to irritability or bad temper. You are very familiar with these temptations, and you have to suppress those godless reactions in your family life, whenever they arise. You are used to that. But there will be some temptations that have never been tried out on you. The temptation comes like an arrow straight into you, and captures you before you realised it.
It may be that a big temptation comes to you this week, but you have been prepared for it by the evil one. It has been presented stage by stage. Lesser temptations came first and you have succumbed to them. Maybe you have been overindulgent in some way; you have given yourself too much leisure, too much television, wrong television. You have given way because it didn't seem that serious. You compromised with it, and it didn't alarm you or frighten you. You didn't realise this was just the first stage getting you used to buckling to desires. Then a more serious one came, and then a big temptation is launched, and down you go because you hadn’t stopped it in the early stages. People start with images of a lesser seriousness, so they think, and before long they are tempted by pornography. But actually, it wasn't a lesser sin after all; it was a first, second, third stage in a process to bring me down.
Temptation come because you are vulnerable, you are tired. You have had to work very hard. Well, that is not your fault. Or there has been sickness in the family; you had a great disappointment, maybe even the bereavement. So you are weakened, and you are a little depressed, or physically exhausted. Be sure, the demons of darkness, will launch a temptation at such a time. Watch out, especially because you are vulnerable.
Temptation may be disguised as a virtue. I have known people in time past who have been to help, in too familiar a way, a member of the opposite sex; this is being of help to that person. But what the devil had in mind was something else to bring you into a close connection, and to a compromised relationship. There may be a hidden temptation. There is such cunning in temptation.
Always watch out for temptation to pre-conversion sin. What were your main sins before you were saved? Now they have gone, because you are saved man, saved woman, but the devil has got it on his filing system. One day, out of the blue, he will bring that temptation back, and you may find yourself strangely open to it. We have got to watch; this is warfare.
It may be an unseen sin, a secret sin, something you would be desperately ashamed of, if other Christians knew about it. The fact that it is unseen sometimes gets it past a Christian’s guard. No one will know. But the devil will find a way of exposing it and bringing it out, and bring you to shame. and anyway, it is deeply offensive to the Lord. Even the people who staff number 10 Downing Street were foolish enough to think that their parties during lockdown would never be known to the general public. but it was soon out in the open. Sin will always be known somehow, at some time.
Perhaps it is a sin you have never dealt with. Somebody might be very testy and react angrily within the family, bite their children’s heads off for the smallest thing, snap at the smallest inconvenience, or injustice – bad reactions and so on: something you have never dealt with. It has become a habit. Everybody is used to you being like that. ‘Oh, he is a bit gruff sometimes. Oh, she is a bit short tempered sometimes.’ So you live with it. That will be an opening for the enemy, to exploit. We need to prime the heart. Read the Ten Commandments frequently; think about them. Think of the family of sins that each commandment covers. Think of the opposite positive virtues, which we are to stir up. Look sometimes at the great sin lists of the apostle Paul. ‘Take heed, lest he fall.’
We may not be proud like some of the Corinthians, but we may be established in the faith, and think to ourselves, I have found Christ 20 years ago, 30 years ago, or 40 years ago. I have a lot of spiritual experience and many wonderful answers to prayer. I will never encounter a great fall. I will never fall into serious sin. But this warning is not addressed to the weak, to the faltering; it is addressed to the confident and the assured, to those who are established in their own estimation.