Spot the Voice of Temptation

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Puritan John Flavel identified six arguments that Satan uses to tempt us. together with six model responses. 1 Spot the voice of temptation in your life and identify how you should respond. You might like to ask two people to read it aloud as a dialogue.

Argument 1: The Pleasure of Sin

• Temptation: Look at my smiling face and listen to my charming voice. Here is pleasure to be enjoyed. Who can stay away from such delights?
• Response: The pleasures of sin are real but so are the pangs of conscience and the flames of hell. The pleasures of sin are real but pleasing God is much sweeter.

Argument 2: The Secrecy of Sin

• Temptation: This sin will never disgrace you in public because no one will ever find out.
• Response: Can I find somewhere God is not present for me to sin?

Argument 3: The Profit of Sin

• Temptation: If you just stretch your conscience a little, you'll gain so much. This is your opportunity.
• Response: What do I benefit if I gain the whole world but lose my own soul? I won't risk my soul for all I could have in this world.

Argument 4: The Smallness of Sin

• Temptation: It's only a little thing, a small matter, a trifle. Who else would worry about such a trivial thing?
• Response: Is the majesty of heaven a small matter too? IfI commit this sin, I will offend and wrong our great God. Is there any little hell to torment little sinners? Great wrath awaits those the world thinks are little sinners. The littler the sin, the less reason there is to commit it! Why should I be unfaithful toward God for such a trifle?

Argument 5: The Grace of God

Temptation: God will pass over this as a weakness. He won't make a big deal of it
• Response: Because God is good? Shall I take God's glorious mercy and make it a reason to sin? Shall I wrong him because he's good?

Argument 6: The Example of Others

• Temptation: Better people than you have sinned in this way. And plenty of people have been restored after committing this sin.
• Response: God didn't record the examples of good people sinning for me to copy but to warn me. Am I willing to feel what they felt for sin? I dare not follow their example in case God plunges me into the depths of horror that he cast them.

Notes

1. Adapted from John Flavel, "A Saint Indeed," in The Works of John Flavel, 6 vols. (Banner of Truth, 1968), 5:477-80. Also published as John Flavel, Keeping the Heart (Christian Heritage, 1999), 116- 21.

This article is adapted from "You Can Change: God's Transforming Power for Our Sinful Behavior and Negative Emotions" by Tim Chester

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