Life’s Most Subtle Temptation

1 Sam 24:1-7

If you were in my Wed class a couple of months ago, you learned that the number one fantasy for men is…Revenge. It’s a temptation that we have to fight with all of our might.

When things went bad at my last ministry, I plotted all kinds of ways to get back at the men who hurt me. I dreamed of exposing them, I planned ways to humiliate them, I thought about ways to show how right I was and how wrong they were. It wasn’t one of my best spiritual moments. Luckily for me, God worked on my heart, and I fought off those temptations.

How do we handle this temptation? How can we keep it in check? Hopefully today’s lessons will help us sort those questions out.

PRAYER

I. Hard Facts about Revenge

A. Othello

1. In the play “Othello” Shakespeare vividly paints what happens when we let the temptation for revenge rule us. Iago is a young officer who hates his general. When the general promotes another officer instead of him, Iago begins a deadly web of lies to bring how Othello. Iago plants a seed of distrust in Othello about his wife having an affair with the officers who was promoted over him. By the time the play ends. Othello has strangled his innocent wife, murdered another man and badly wounds another. When he finds out it was all lies, he takes his own life.

2. A hunger for power and revenge ended in all this misery.

3. Not realistic? Have you picked up a paper or watched the news lately.

4. Revenge caused a young Argos boy to become an orphan.

5. Revenge caused a boy in Finland to kill eight people in his school for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

6. Revenge has kept feuds going in the Middle East for generations.

7. Revenge has destroyed families, ripped apart innocent lives, and brought unbelievable pain to people.

B. We soften the word with better phrases

1. Revenge sounds bad, so we come up with phrases that justify our revenge.

2. We call it seeking our rights, or justified retaliation, or any other number of phrases to make us look okay in seeking our revenge.

C. Our revenge should be left to God

1. Listen to Deut 32:35-36

2. We aren’t the ones to seek out revenge, vengeance needs to be left in God hands.

3. It’s one of hardest lessons we can learn… and one of the most important.

II. David and Saul

A. Context

1. David is now on the run from Saul. He has been driven from the palace, driven from his family and people, and driven from his friend.

2. Saul is using all his resources to hunt David down and kill him.

3. God intervenes by sending Israel’s enemies against them and Saul has to send most of his army to fight them off.

4. David finds a good hiding place, but Saul is determined to get him. After the raid his takes 3000 of his best men to find David and deal with him.

5. Saul has to use the restroom, so he finds a cave and goes in a little ways to have some privacy. What he doesn’t know is that this cave is filled with David and his men.

6. Can you imagine the surprise to David to see Saul walk right into his cave with no army, no bodyguard, just by himself?

7. Can you imagine the emotions going through him as he watches the man how has made his life miserable, sitting there in a most vulnerable position without a clue who is in the cave with him?

B. David’s Dilemma

1. David’s men begin to encourage him to end it all now.

2. God had delivered Saul into David’s hands, why else would he be here?

3. David doesn’t completely give in to his desire for revenge, but he does sneak up and cut part of Saul’s tunic off to let him know how close to death he was. That should put a good scare into him!

4. But almost as quickly has he does it, his conscience kicks in and he realizes this isn’t the right course.

5. He lets Saul pass unharmed.

6. Imagine all the sin and pain we could stop if our souls were that closely focused on God’s will instead of our desires.

III. Tough Principles to Practice

A. Charles Swindoll in his book on David, gives these principles that we need to put into practice

1. Since man is depraved, expect to be mistreated

a) Sin is here to stay until Jesus returns.

b) It corrupts man from the moment he understand choosing wrong from right.

c) It’s going to happen; someone will hurt you.

2. Since mistreatment by others is inevitable, we can anticipate our feelings of revenge.

a) This is where Christians really need to be connected to God for strength.

b) We know well will be hurt, so we need to prepare ourselves emotionally not to act on the feelings of revenge that will come into our lives.

c) We need to make sure we don’t give in to our emotions.

3. Since the temptation towards revenge is predictable, refuse to fight in the flesh.

a) Once you know those feeling are going to arise, you also need to remember to whom you belong.

b) Don’t act on the feelings, but turn them over to God.

c) Don’t fall to the temptation for revenge.

d) It human to desire revenge.

e) God never called us to vengeance; He called us to forgiveness.

B. Subtle temptation

1. Revenge is so insidious, because it feels so right.

2. We want to justify our reasons for hurting the one who hurt us.

a) Maybe your employer treated you wrongly.

b) Maybe your spouse cut you deeply as only those who know our most vulnerable spots can.