Sermon Tone Analysis

Scripture Introduction

The Delayed Gratification Experiment: There is more at stake than you realize.

Researchers and psychologist wanted to test and see if a child who could not delay gratification as a child would have the same problems as an adult and vice verse.

It was called the Marshmallow test and it has been conducted for a ver long time.

Here is a sample of what it looks like.

The Video link for the video is here: https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-Lkry-SF01&hsimp=yhs-SF01&hspart=Lkry&p=the+delayed+gratification+experiment#id=1&vid=9d3c5f70d94b21b864033a6ba5970c54&action=click

Research did find that children who could not delay gratification also struggled as adults to delay gratification and children who could delay gratification also became adults who could do the same.

What these researches confirmed is that there is always more at stake when it comes to temptation.

Interestingly, researchers will tell you that children who had the greatest chance at resisting the temptation to eat, had highest ability to delay gratification were those children who had the most confidence in the person who promised them that they would get two marshmallows instead of one when they came back.

There was a direct correlation between their ability to withstand temptation and their confidence.

When it comes to temptation there is more at stake than what any of us think and when it comes to temptation your ability to withstand temptation has everything to do with your confidence in God’s Word.

These two things fly off our radar when it comes to temptation: what is at stake and confidence in God’s Word.

We must realize there is more at stake in the temptation we are facing whatever that thing is: finances, food, sexual purity.

There is more at stake than what is right in front of you.

We must realize there is a direct correlation between that temptation and our confidence in God’s Word.

I know some of you may not buy it that there is a correlation between “my food thing” and my confidence in God’s Word or my internet thing and my confidence in God’s word.

I think often times it is because we don’t factor this in that we don’t really get victory in a certain area of our lives, we leave a wide open door for Satan to lead us into temptation.

And we can’t seem to get set free.

I am going to say over the next two weeks that the best way to understand what is really at risk in temptation and the best way to build up your confidence in the word of God is by being in a circle not a row.

Participating in a chavurah (small group).

I am not saying it is the only solution but is should be part of the solution.

You need other people to help you avoid the risks because they have already taken the risk and failed and they care deeply about it not happening to you.

There are other people who have not taken the risk but faced it and overcame and they equally care about you not risking and loosing on temptation.

You also need to be around people who have gotten further down the road than you, maybe some aren’t further but more zealous than you and they can help you build up your confidence in God’s Word in the midst of temptation and give you a strategy to overcome temptation.

For some of you, you are thinking to yourself, “I don’t really want to share my struggles and temptations with people I really know well much less people I barely know at all.”

I understand it is not easy to let your guard down, to let people into your life but I can tell you on the testimony of countless people from our chavurot that when you do, when you get into an environment where you are know others and are known by others it is easier than you can possibly imaging to recruit people in to help you when you need it the most.

Over the next two weeks I am going to say it several different times that not only is there a direct correlation between every temptation and your confidence in God’s Word but also there is a correlation between your confidence in God’s word and the community of people you surround yourself with.

If you want to overcome temptation, participating in a chavurah should be part of the solution.

For some of you, this is going to be a big breakthrough moment for you because you are always looking around wondering why certain people are so “good” at overcoming temptation and they just don’t seemed to get pulled down by temptations.

Let me tell you these people aren’t “good” what makes the difference is that they have learned there is a direct correlation between the temptation in front of them and their confidence in God’s word.

In ever temptation you face, there is always a direct correlation between your temptation and your confidence in God’Word.

Ha-Foke-Ba

Who will Test Your Confidence in God’s Word?

There is this great Jewish commentary on the Torah, written in Ladino in the 1700s, called Yalkut Me’am Lo’ez and in this Jewish commentary it says of this passage,

In our day that we live in it is unfortunate that Bereshit is treated as nothing more than a fable, a myth and relegated to the literary level of a Disney movie and all of the cast and characters treated as fictional entities with little to no real existence.

Just props in a play.

The Scriptures say other wise and even Jewish tradition.

The Great commentary on the Torah called Malkut Le’Am Lo’ez written in 1730, in Ladino by Rabby Yaakov Culli says this about , “Satan examined every creature, trying to decide how to disguise himself to seduce the woman.

When could not find any creature more intelligent than the serpent…he used its form as a disguise.”

- Malkut Le’Am Lo’ez, p. 259 (Bereshith 8).

The majority of all jewish commentators and sages believed this was real history and a real fallen angelic being named “ha-satan” the accuser.

Before our sages said this the Scriptures already told us a great many facts about this Serpent.

I want us to just looks at some of these facts in a very cursory, overview way because I don’t want there to be any doubt in your mind about the reality of this event and the entity we are discussing.

“This angel [i.e., Satan] examined every creature, trying to disguise himself to seduce the women.

When could not find any creature more intelligent than the serpent…he used its form as a disguise.”

- Yalkut Me’am Lo’ez translated by Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, p. 259.

I know a lot of times people think that Judaism has not idea of Satan in the Garden but that is very untrue.

It really was not until after the enlightenment that some branches of Judaism began to follow Christianity in interpreting Genesis as a myth, a story, a fable, a fiction but not a true account of history.

Bereshit is not fable nor fancy nor fiction.

It is not Disney, it is real history, with real characters talking about real events.

The Facts on Satan’s Presence in the Garden.

The Lord identifies Satan’s creation and presence in the Garden ().

The Lord identifies Satan’s fall from heaven to the Garden (; ) .

Satan’s fall is confirmed by Yeshua as a real historical event ().

Satan is specifically identified as the Serpent in the Garden by Yeshua and the Apostles (; , ).

Satan’s self-designated mandate is to make you doubt and disobey God’s word ().

Illustration:

No more than fifteen years ago, you could talk about Satan in a congregation and most people would agree there was an evil being called Satan that was the epitome and source of much evil.

Today, the Barna group reports that almost 70% of self-professing followers of Yeshua do not believe that Satan really exists.

Why is that?

Religion in general has followed secular psychiatry and said human evil is just the by-product of either bad social systems or psychological conditions.

So, if you are a serial killer it is because you are the product of bad parenting or poverty or something else like this.

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Columbia professor Andrew Delbanco, in his book, The Death of Satan: How Americans Have Lost the Sense of Evil he quotes from Thomas Harris’s novel The Silence of the Lambs, where the monstrous killer Hannibal Lecter is talking to Officer Starling.

He’s describing the bad things he’s done, and she looks at him and says,

“What happened to you that you could do this?

Who did something to you that you could be so bad?”

And he looks at her and says:

“Nothing happened to me, Officer Starling.

I happened.

You can’t reduce me to a set of influences.

You’ve given up good and evil for behaviorism, Officer Starling.

You’ve got everybody in moral dignity pants—nothing is ever anybody’s fault.

Look at me, Officer Starling.

Can you stand to say I’m evil?”

In Delbanco’s book The Death of Satan: How Americans Have Lost the Sense of Evil he quotes from Thomas Harris’s novel The Silence of the Lambs, where the monstrous killer Hannibal Lecter is talking to Officer Starling.

He’s describing the bad things he’s done, and she looks at him and says, “What happened to you that you could do this?

Who did something to you that you could be so bad?”

And he looks at her and says:

“Nothing happened to me, Officer Starling.

I happened.

You can’t reduce me to a set of influences.

You’ve given up good and evil for behaviorism, Officer Starling.

You’ve got everybody in moral dignity pants—nothing is ever anybody’s fault.

Look at me, Officer Starling.

Can you stand to say I’m evil?”

Delbanco goes on to say that these words are the epitome of modern horror—our generation’s growing awareness that we cannot answer the monster’s question.

He says, if you get rid of the idea of sin, Satan, and cosmic evil, then every bad deed has solely psychological or sociological roots.

And that trivializes the suffering of the victims and the magnitude of what’s happened.

Hannibal Lecter knows Officer Starling is the result of modern secular thinking, and so he knows he’s got her.

He asks a question her worldview doesn’t have the resources to answer.

He says in effect:

“You have to tell all the families of those poor people that I beheaded and ate that my mother didn’t love me.

You can’t hold me responsible.

You can’t even hold her responsible.”

He has the modern world right where he wants it.

Satan has the modern world right where he wants it.

Do you think he is upset that you don’t believe in him?

He laughs because your denial of him is a denial of God word and that leaves us stripped of confidence in God’s word and full of confidence in man’s scientific, sociological and psychological thinking.

At that point, Satan has the upper hand.