Pathway to Victory

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Hey, podcast listeners, thanks for streaming today's podcast from Pathway to Victory.

Pathway to Victory is a nonprofit ministry featuring the Bible teaching of Dr. Robert Jeffress. Our mission is to pierce the darkness with the light of God's word through the most effective media available, like this podcast.

To support Pathway to Victory, go to ptv.org/donate or follow the link in our show notes.

Now here's today's podcast from Pathway to Victory.

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Hi, this is Robert Jeffress, and I'm glad to study God's Word with you every day. This Bible teaching program.

On today's edition of Pathway to Victory, I would encourage you to read these verses, memorize them, and recite them every day because they expose Satan's plan to take you out.

And if you really believe the Bible, you have to believe he has a plan to take you out to destroy everything of value to you.

Speaker 1

Welcome to Pathway to Victory with author and pastor, Dr. Robert Jeffress. You know, most people dismiss spiritual warfare as the stuff of Hollywood movies or superstition. But Scripture reveals we're facing an intelligent enemy who never sleeps, never rests, and never stops scheming.

Today on Pathway to Victory, Dr. Robert Jeffress reveals strategic assaults designed to destroy everything meaningful in your life. But first, let's take a minute to hear some important ministry updates.

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Thanks, David, and welcome again to Pathway to Victory. If you've been following along this month, you know we're embarking on a brand new journey together. My teaching series on spiritual warfare is called Spirit Wars, and already we've received wonderful feedback from our audience because this subject touches us all.

But first, I have something very special planned for the end of today's program that you absolutely cannot miss. We're launching a brand new segment called Ask Dr. Jeffress, where I personally answer the most pressing questions from our listeners. Today's question comes from Tariq in Toronto, and it's one of the most difficult yet important questions a person can ask: Is suicide an eternal death as well as physical? This is a life and death topic that affects countless families, and I'm going to give you a biblical, compassionate answer. You'll want to stay tuned through the very end of today's broadcast for this exclusive Ask Dr. Jeffress segment.

Well, moms, dads, grandparents, and anyone who loves children know that adults aren't the only ones attacked by the enemy. For that reason, I've written a brand new book for the children in your life. It's called Suit Up: The Armor of God for Kids. You won't find this new book anywhere other than right here. So let me send you my children's book when you give a generous gift to support the ministry of Pathway to Victory. It'll arrive at your home along with a book I've written for adults called Angels and Demons.

We'll have more details about my books and other resources later in the program. But right now, let's get started with today's message titled The Temptation Equation Revisited.

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In Ephesians 6:11, Paul wrote, "Put on the full armor of God that you may be able to withstand the schemes of the devil." That word "schemes," *methodeia*, in Greek refers to a plan for catching prey. It's what the predator does to catch his prey. And the Bible says Satan has a scheme. He has, if you will, a blueprint for your destruction, for destroying everything that is important to you. Last time, we began looking at what I call Satan's blueprint for your destruction. As we talk about Satan's plan to deceive you into disobeying God, I want you to turn to a familiar passage in James, chapter one. We're going to look at what I call the temptation equation.

Look at verse 13 of James 1: "Let no one say, when he is tempted, 'I'm being tempted by God,' for God cannot be tempted by evil, and he himself does not tempt anyone." But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Now, let's look at this temptation equation and explain each of the elements. I want you to write this down. See if you can remember it from last time. What's the temptation equation? Corrupt desires plus the right bait plus the wrong choice equals sin. And sin equals death.

Now, let's take those individually. Corrupt desires: each one, verse 14, is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust. Sin begins with corrupt desires. A corrupt desire is a desire that we try to meet in a wrong way, in a way that is contrary to the will of God. By the way, we've got our great, great, great, great, great grandparents, Adam and Eve, to thank for that. Their corruption, their sin, ensured that we are born into this world with a virus. It's called sin. We've been born into this world with a defective operating system. For you computer geeks, that means every time God tells us to do something, our natural response is to say no. And every time God tells us not to do something, our natural inclination is to do it.

So, sin starts with corrupt desires, but secondly, it takes the right bait when Satan succeeds in deceiving us into believing that God is trying to rob us of something good. Satan knows just the right time to dangle the bait in front of us. Now, that's represented by the word "enticed." James 1:14 says, "each person is carried away and enticed." That word, "enticed," is a fishing term. It means to hook with a piece of bait.

I've told you before about my failed fishing attempt. When I was in a previous church, we had this crusty old deacon named Bob. I was convinced I was going to have a relationship with him, even though other pastors had not succeeded in doing it. Bob was a fisherman, and he decided to invite me to come out on a Saturday morning at 6 a.m. to fish in Lake Wichita. Now, those of you who know me know there is not anything I'm interested in doing at 6 a.m. on a Saturday morning. There is nothing. In fact, I'm afraid if the rapture happens to be at 6 a.m. on a Saturday, I'm gonna miss it. Y'all put in a good word for me.

But Bob decided he was going to invite me out fishing. So I got up and went out and got in his little boat on Lake Wichita. He no sooner had put his line in the water than there was a jiggle on it. He pulled it and got a whopper of a fish, left it dangling in the boat, put his fish line back in, and there was another one and another one and another one. I sat on the other end of the boat with my line in the water, not a tug on it, not one movement on it whatsoever. I said, "Bob, why are you catching so many fish and I'm not catching any?" He said, "Well, preacher, there are two secrets to catching fish. Number one, if you're going to catch a fish, you have to smell like a fish." He said, "That's why before I go fishing, I don't shower, I don't shave, I don't put on deodorant." He really didn't have to tell me that; I was close enough to him to pick up on that. But if you want to catch a fish, you got to smell like a fish.

Secondly, you've got to use the right bait. Not all fish are attracted to the same bait. You've got to know what bait to use. Ladies and gentlemen, Satan is a master fisherman. He knows exactly the bait to use to catch you, to hook you. It's no coincidence that during a rocky period in your marriage, you may crave sexual fulfillment. And just out of nowhere comes a willing partner. That's Satan dangling the person in front of you. Or a missed promotion at work may cause you to crave another job opportunity that is outside God's will for your life. He's hit you with just the right thing to dangle in front of you. Or an unforeseen emergency may have depleted your money, and Satan dangles the possibility of an illegal or dishonest business scheme. Like any good fisherman, Satan knows what bait to dangle in front of you.

And by the way, he knows exactly the right time to dangle it. You're not hungry all the time. There are certain times you're hungriest. And there are certain times—listen to this—there are certain times you are most vulnerable to Satan's temptations. I want you to write this down. There are four times that you are most vulnerable to Satan's temptation. I got this from another pastor. He said, first of all, when you have experienced great success. Did you know after a high point in your life, you're vulnerable to temptation? Why is that? Every mountain climber knows the most dangerous part of an expedition is not the ascent to the summit; it's afterwards.

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Descent from the summit.

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Why? Because the mountain climber is less careful after reaching his goal. He's tired. He doesn't pay attention to what's in front of him and he's most likely to stumble. The Apostle Paul said the same thing is true in our spiritual life. In First Corinthians 10, verse 12, he says, "Let him who thinks he stands take heed, lest he fall."

Secondly, we're most vulnerable to temptation when we're tired. Vince Lombardi, the famous football coach, said, "Fatigue makes cowards of us all." It not only makes cowards of us, it makes victims of some of us. Remember the story of Elijah? He had battled the prophets, 850 of them, on Mount Carmel, the false prophets of Baal. But he was emotionally exhausted, spiritually fatigued. After that, all it took was one disgruntled female named Queen Jezebel to cause him to run. And he ran and he ran and he ran for 90 miles. Then he was so tired, he just crawled under a juniper tree and said, "God, take my life." What was wrong with Elijah? He was emotionally and spiritually fatigued. Remember, Satan loves to come and tempt you when you are tired.

Thirdly, we're vulnerable when we are alone. When we're alone, maybe we're experiencing loneliness because of an unwanted divorce. Maybe it's because of a friend or a loved one who has passed away. The loneliness we feel sometimes is just a result of geographical distance, being out of town, being alone. And it's at those moments that Satan comes and whispers into our ear, "You're all alone."

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Nobody will know if you do this certain thing.

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That's how the enemy works. And finally, we're most vulnerable to temptation.

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When we're waiting on God to answer a prayer request.

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It's that period of time between when we've poured out our heart to God, ask him to intervene in our life, and yet he hasn't answered. That's when Satan comes and says, you.

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Can'T depend upon God.

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He's abandoned you. He's forgotten about you. Maybe he doesn't even exist. By the way, that's what happened to Abraham. Remember, God promised Abraham and Sarah a child who would be the child born to receive the covenant. They waited for 25 years. And when no answer had come, Abraham and Sarah took the matter into their own hands. Abraham had relations with Hagar, their slave. They produced a son named Ishmael. And the rest, as they say, is history.

4,000 years after that one bad decision, every conflict we see in the Middle East today is a reverberation of that bad decision that produced Ishmael instead of Isaac. That's what is going on right now in the Middle East.

By the way, do you realize all four of these situations were present when Jesus was tempted in the wilderness by Satan? He had had a great success—his baptism. The clouds parted, and God shouted out, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."

Pleased, he was fatigued. Secondly, 40 days in the wilderness without food made him vulnerable to Satan. Not only that, he was alone; there was nobody there. And he was waiting on God finally to begin his ministry. It was in that time that the enemy, the adversary, slithered up to him and said, "Why not do this?"

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Why not do this?

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You can't trust your heavenly Father. Bow down before me now. I mentioned to you that I got these four times. We are most vulnerable to sin.

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From a friend of mine, another pastor.

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I'm not going to say his name, but he was in the news in the last year for having fallen into.

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Temptation himself and having to give up his ministry because of sexual immorality. He knew all of this.

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He wrote about it, he preached about it, and yet he fell victim to the evil one.

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Satan has a plan for your destruction.

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We need to be aware of his methods. What is the strategy for disobedience? Corrupt desires, plus the right bait. But thirdly, the wrong choice, the wrong Choice. May I say this? Clearly, being tempted in and of itself.

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Is not a sin.

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Don't feel guilty for the wrong thing if you're being tempted right now. Temptation does not equate with sin. If temptation is sin, then Jesus was the biggest sinner of all time because he was tempted to a level nobody else has ever experienced. Remember Hebrews 4: "For we do not have a high priest who can't sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who was tested in all things as we are, and yet without sin." No, it's not the temptation that's a sin. It's the choice we make to sin. And that's why the third element in this temptation equation is a wrong choice.

Now listen to me. You and I have no control over our corrupt desires. We're not responsible for that. That goes to Adam and Eve. Secondly, we're not responsible for the bait that gets dangled in front of us. Now, there are some things we can do to run from the bait, but we can't control what Satan does. But we can, thirdly, control our choice. That's what produces sin. Unfortunately, many Christians follow what Oscar Wilde, that deviant playwright, did when he was tempted. He said, "I found the greatest way to get rid of temptation is to give in to it." Now, that's a perverse man. But a lot of Christians follow that plan. They think, "Well, I'm a sinful human being. I don't have any choice. I might as well just give in to this temptation."

No, you as a Christian are no longer a slave to sin. In fact, that's what Paul said in Romans 6:6-7: "Know this, that our old self was crucified with Christ in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we are no longer slaves to sin. For he who has died is freed from sin." And then he says in verse 4, "Knowing this, that we have been buried with Christ through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so too we might walk in newness of life."

Every time we baptize somebody, we're painting a picture. We're telling a truth that when we trust in Christ as our Savior, we die to our old way of living. We are freed from our old nature. Sin has no more power over your life than you choose to allow it to have. Instead, the same power that raised Jesus from the dead has raised us to a new kind of living, to a newness of life.

Listen to me. The great promise to Christians this morning is you do not have to be another casualty on the spiritual battlefield. You no longer have to be another notch on Satan's belt. You have a choice. James 4:7 says, "Resist the devil and he will flee from you."

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Will flee from you.

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Well, Pastor, that sounds good, but how do you resist the devil?

Well, in Ephesians 6, Paul gives us what he calls weapons. They're really strategies for resisting, for destroying Satan's plan to destroy your life.

And over the weeks that are to come, we're going to look very carefully at each one of these six strategies.

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That are your divine defense.

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There are some of you who are already Christians. Perhaps you have been overtaken by sin in your life. The good news is you don't have.

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To continue the direction you you're going.

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God's given you the power to turn.

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From that sin and to follow him.

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If you're a Christian today, are you willing to say, God, I'm going to quit fighting you. You're right, I'm wrong about this thing.

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You'Ve been speaking to me about.

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I'm going to follow you. But I realize some of you here or some of you watching are not yet Christians. God's not asking you to clean up your life in order to earn his salvation.

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God's asking you to receive his gift of forgiveness. When you become a Christian.

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God not only gives you a pardon from sin, he gives you new power over sin. He'll forgive you of everything you've already done, but he will give you the power, the Holy Spirit, to say no.

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To the evil one.

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And today, if you would like to receive God's gift of salvation, I encourage you to pray this prayer in your heart to God. As I prayed out loud, knowing that God is listening to you, would you pray this?

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Dear God, thank you for loving me.

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I know I have failed you in so many ways and I'm truly sorry for the sins in my life. But I believe what I've heard today that you love me so much you.

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Sent your son Jesus to die on the cross for me to take the.

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Punishment I deserve to take for my sins. And right now I'm trusting in what Jesus did for me. Not in my good works, but in what Jesus did for me, to save me from my sins.

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Thank you for forgiving me and help.

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Me to live the rest of my life for you.

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In Jesus name, Amen. It thrills me to know how God's spirit is working right now. He's bringing men and women into the family of God. And if you've made this life-changing decision to place your trust in Jesus Christ today, please write us a note. David will give our mailing address in just a moment.

Now, don't forget what's coming up next. In just a few minutes, we're presenting an exclusive Ask Dr. Jeffress segment where I'll be answering a question about suicide from one of our listeners. If you or someone you know has ever struggled with thoughts of suicide, or if you've lost a loved one to suicide, you need to hear what I'm about to share. Stay right where you are for the Ask Dr. Jeffress segment.

But first, I want you to get in touch with Pathway to Victory to request my brand new book for the children in your life. Whether you're a grandparent, mom, dad, aunt, uncle, or perhaps a teacher, it's our role to instruct children on the ploys of the devil and how to put on God's armor of protection. My new book is called "Suit Up: The Armor of God for Kids." Each lesson is simple, engaging, and clear. There's even discussion questions included so that you can spark a conversation with your child.

Don't make the mistake of assuming our kids will be okay just like you. They need help in overcoming temptation. A copy of my book is yours today when you give a generous gift to support the ministry of Pathway to Victory. As a bonus, you'll also receive the brand new book I've written for adults called "Angels: Fact versus Fantasy."

In closing, let me urge you to be generous when you choose the size of your gift. Pathway to Victory has grown its impact in ways I never dreamed, but this success comes with responsibility as we endeavor to reach men and women and even children all around the world. Your gift is what gives flight to Pathway to Victory. You're the one who makes these daily visits possible. Thanks so much for responding today. Here's David with all the details.

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When you give a generous gift to support the ministry A Pathway to Victory, you're invited to request *Suit Up the Armor of God for Kids*. Plus, you'll also receive *Angels and Demons: Fact versus Fantasy*, that's another brand new resource especially for adults. Give a gift and request both books. When you call 866-999-2965 or go online, simply visit ptv.org.

Now, when your gift is $100 or more, you'll receive not only the two books, but also the Spirit Wars Teaching series on both audio and video discs. You'll get that along with a copy of the best-selling book by Dr. Jeffress called *The Divine Defense*. Again, call 866-999-2965 or go online to ptv.org. You could write to us if you'd like. Here's that address: P.O. Box 223609, Dallas, Texas, 75222. That's P.O. Box 223609, Dallas, Texas.

And now, it's time for a special edition of *Ask Dr. Jeffress*. Dr. Jeffress recently stopped by the studio to answer a pressing question from one of our listeners. Today's question comes from Tariq in Ontario. He asks, "Is suicide an eternal death as well as physical?"

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Many years ago, when I was a youth minister in the church I now serve in, First Baptist Church, Dallas, I had a friend who worked in our youth area. He was an older man and he was a deacon in the church. One day, he decided to end his life with a shotgun. I remember the funeral service vividly. I was sitting in the audience, wondering how our pastor at the time, Dr. W.A. Criswell, would handle the service of a man who had committed suicide. What would he say to the family? What would he say to the other members?

I'll never forget what he said. With the most compassionate tone he could possibly use, he addressed the wife, the widow, and their children. He said, "You know, in our bodies, we get sick. We don't condemn somebody for getting sick. We recognize that as a frailty of human existence. Just as we get sick in our physical bodies, sometimes we get sick in our minds. And we don't condemn people for getting sick in their minds." That is a beautiful way to view suicide.

I believe suicide is wrong. I don't think God ever wants us to get to the point that we despair and listen to the enemy who says, "You have no value. You're all alone. Your situation is hopeless." I think it's wrong to take a life that God has given you. But does that cause you to lose your salvation? Of course not. Romans 11:29 says, "The gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable." In John 10:28-29, Jesus said, "I give eternal life to them, and they shall never perish. No man shall snatch them out of my hands, those whom the Father has given me."

If you're someone who is struggling with regular thoughts about taking your life, get help. It could be a chemical imbalance that has led you to this point, or it may be some other cause. But if you're regularly thinking about suicide, get help immediately. And if you know somebody—a child, a teenager, a young adult—who's struggling with this issue, get them help. There is help. There is hope for a Christian.

Speaker 1

Thanks, Dr. Jeffress. I'm David J. Mullins.

Demons are mentioned throughout Scripture, yet many Christians either dismiss demons as ancient superstitions or obsess over them in unhealthy ways. Discover what the Bible teaches about the world of demons. That's Thursday on Pathway to Victory.

Pathway to Victory with Dr. Robert Jeffress comes from the pulpit of the First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas.

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Space is limited, so reserve your cabin today. Call 888-280-6747 or go to ptv.org. You made it to the end of today's podcast from Pathway to Victory, and we're so glad you're here. Pathway to Victory relies on the generosity of loyal listeners like you to make this podcast possible. One of the most impactful ways you can give is by becoming a Pathway Partner. Your monthly gift will empower Pathway to Victory to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ and help others become rooted more firmly in His Word. To become a Pathway Partner, go to ptv.org/donate or you can follow the link in our show notes.

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