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Sin makes us sick over and over, yet we keep charging right back to the buffet—unlike food poisoning, which at least teaches us to stay away from the contaminated food. That’s the human struggle Jesus faces head-on when He teaches us to pray “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil” in Matthew 6:13.
The following study questions are AI generated and may contain errors.
This transcript has been automatically generated and may contain errors.
As I mentioned when we began tonight, we’ve had this progressing scene over the course of Lent. We started out, it was still looking kind of more like we were coming out of that celebration at Christmas. We did an Epiphany series. We thought about the Wise Men, and we had mostly beautiful evergreens but decked up here still as we went into the winter. We had our winter forest over there, and gradually it’s been getting more barren looking. So we’ve had just the twigs up here for the last few weeks, and those twigs remind us of the brokenness of life, the deadness that we often encounter.
We have these little tags that have been hanging up here that have those areas that we placed before the Lord on Ash Wednesday—the places where we’re still struggling, still places where we’re waiting to see how God’s going to work, those sorts of things. We have that all up there. And then we have the palm branches. We have palm branches, and isn’t it interesting? I was thinking about this this week, if you think about Palm Sunday—and I think most of you here probably have come from traditions that celebrate Palm Sunday—but if you’re not, then if you’re just picking up, usually Palm Sunday is a very joyful, celebratory day because why? Because we come before the God who entered triumphantly into Jerusalem.
For a moment the people looked at Him and said, there’s our King. We know it didn’t last. Like I mentioned, these branches, the brokenness, the pain, the sin, the misunderstanding of what God’s doing, all that stuff was still underneath there. They put those beautiful palm branches up, but did they really understand?
When we look at the Lord’s Prayer and we’ve been going through it and we think about the different petitions, the different parts of it that Jesus leads us through, we come to the last one, the one about temptation, the one about evil. As we laid out this series, it comes here on Palm Sunday. It seems sort of like, well, that’s a letdown. I thought we were going to talk about joy and people celebrating.
But the more I wrestled with it, the more I thought, I’m really glad that we’re coming to this on Palm Sunday because we’re going to get into that more. But as we think about it, the challenge for those people and the challenge for us is that we often don’t really understand the ways in which we’re sick. Sometimes we do, and sometimes we don’t in life, right?
So for example, those of you that have been around me for a while know if I’m around a menu of food, whether it’s a restaurant or if we were to have a potluck here and there are different items out, let’s say we have a barbecue and everyone brings different meats, right? And a lot of people get really excited when there’s different kinds of barbecued pork. And you would notice if you did that, that if there were hot dogs or burgers or chicken or whatever, I would go for that instead. Not because I don’t like pork. I actually do really like pork, and I’m not trying to hearken back to the law, the dietary laws that I don’t believe that we as Christians are under, but you notice I’d avoid it.
The reason is I’ve had some unfortunate encounters with pork over the years. And maybe some, has anyone else here ever had pork that was not cooked properly and you had to revisit it in the time thereafter? Yes. Pork food poisoning is one of the worst experiences I believe you can have in life. It is a miserable experience, and it feels like it goes on for at least two eternities. I mean, it goes on and on and on. And you get into it and you just think, please, just make it stop.
So you’ll notice I usually avoid pork, unless I’m really certain of how well it’s been cooked. If it’s charred and it just looks like you just took a fiery inferno and blasted it, okay, maybe I’ll try it. I know it’s not the ideal way to enjoy it, but it’s much more ideal than the other, right? So when you’re in the midst of that, all you want is something that will make it stop. Get rid of the nausea, get rid of all the unpleasant memories that are very tangible about what you’ve just consumed.
But notice what I’ve been describing there. My preference would be just to avoid that to begin with. I don’t care if you could tell me, well, I can end it after three hours. I don’t want three hours of that. I don’t want one hour of that, right? I don’t want that at all. I would just much rather prevent it. However, if I’m in the midst of it, I certainly want anything you can suggest that might relieve some of the nausea and make it a little bit better.
In this petition, as we look at the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus is helping us to realize first that we’re sick and also those areas where we just go racing into sickness. Because the funny thing with sin, unlike food poisoning, we usually know where we got the food poisoning, and as we reflect on that, we may be inclined to avoid the things that previously gave us food poisoning. There are a few things I’ve gotten food poisoning on over life, and even though I know that if prepared correctly, they’d be fine, I just don’t crave them. I’d just rather avoid them because I remember when.
With sin, it’s funny. Sin makes us sick over and over, and yet we go charging right back into it again. We say, well, hey, load up my plate, give me some more. We get sick again. We wonder what’s going on. So Jesus is helping us to understand that we’re sick, but then He’s also helping us to recognize what we need to do to prevent sickness.
We see both of those in here. And as we come to God and we pray, keep me away from temptation, help me to avoid evil—those things that we’re going to look at in a moment in Matthew 6:13—as we pray those things, and especially as we use this as a model prayer that we can expand upon, what’s Jesus doing? He’s helping us to go from just recognizing it to really delving into, here’s the areas where my sickness is, God, and I want those things before you so that I can see more clearly how you’re working in my life.
Sometimes we race through this prayer and we say, well, you know, if there’s some temptations in my life, God, please take those away. If there’s some evil things I’m doing, please take those away. We’re not really recognizing I am desperately sick. And by not recognizing that, we’re also not preparing ourselves so that the next time we walk down the street and there’s the Sin Buffet there that we should maybe stay out of it, we say, oh, that place looks interesting. So we go for the checkup, and God’s going to offer some places where we need actual cures. We need to be cured from what we’re already sick with. But He’s also going to challenge us to be more aware so that we’re making a healthy choice going forward, that we’re not just getting sick again, because ultimately that’s not good for us. He doesn’t want that for us.
So as we look at this petition tonight, that’s how I would encourage us to be thinking about those two things: prevention and cure. Those are the two areas that I believe are covered here. And we’re going to get into some details, and you’re going to say, well, what about this? And I’m going to address a few of those because people like to ask a lot of questions about this petition and its two clauses, and, you know, is it referring to this?
And the thing that struck me as I was wrestling with this is that we’re going to come up with some possibilities on those things. But when you have food poisoning, or you have any kind of illness, is your main concern what bacteria is in my body right now, or how can I feel better? Well, one might be helpful for the other, but what you want is to feel better. And as we’re going to see, we can wrestle with these different parts of it, but let’s not get so bogged down there that we miss what we really need, which is to feel better.
We need to be cured, and we need to flee from the things that make us sick. And as we read this passage tonight, let’s come before God and ask that He would help us to see those places that we’re just entering into illness. Let’s pray.
Father, as we come before You, we pray that You would help us to see those places where we are sick, those places where we’re charging towards sickness. Would You help us to follow the better path that You’ve laid out for us, to charge towards You? Lord, we only do it with Your strength, Lord, and we ask that You would help us to understand how. We pray this in Jesus’ precious name, amen.
Matthew 6:13, first half of it: “And lead us not into temptation.” Now, depending on your translation, this may be translated temptation or test. And you might say, well, which one is it? And this is one of those questions I was just alluding to: What kind of bacteria is infecting me? What was in my pork that was undercooked? I don’t know. All I know is I’m sick.
And the funny thing is, while they’re different things, they’re very closely related things. Commentators have not come to a clear, conclusive determination on this because you can make a pretty good argument in different ways for whether it’s temptation or testing.
Now, why would we say it might be testing? For example, if we turn to James 1:13, listen to what James writes: “Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God.’ For God cannot be tempted with evil, and He Himself tempts no one.” So we say, well, if God tempts no one, why would I come to God and say, God, help me not, help, don’t lead me into temptation? The argument totally doesn’t do it. So it must not be that.
On the other hand, if we look throughout Scripture, if we go back to James, for example, James says that we should count it pure joy when we’re tested. We see that in other places in Matthew as well, as Jesus speaks that testing can be used as a thing for rejoicing as God works in our lives. And so we might say, well, if it’s going to bring me joy, why would I pray to God, don’t give this to me? Do you ever pray, God, don’t let me be joyful? Take away the things that give me joy? I don’t think so. If you do, I’d say you really don’t need to pray that. God doesn’t mind you being joyful.
So what’s being referred to here? Well, I do believe that it has more of the bent of temptation. And in fact, as we think about this, as we look at Jesus’ ministry, He’s just been out in the wilderness being tempted by the devil not that long before in the layout of the Gospel of Matthew. And so as we look at the terminology and so on, it would be natural to go to temptation. I think that makes a great deal of sense.
But as I mentioned, the two are related because when God tests us, when He does test us, He often tests us by taking those places where temptation comes into our lives and using those to mature us, to grow us. It’s a bad circumstance that we face. It’s not a good thing. It’s a sinful thing that people are doing. And the question is, how am I going to respond to this? Am I going to respond in a godly fashion? That’s the testing part.
And so if you think about it, the two are actually different layers of a very related thing, oftentimes. Now there are some cases where it’s clear testing. For example, when God calls Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, and He doesn’t intend to actually have Abraham sacrifice Isaac, but Abraham doesn’t know that—that’s a clear test, right? There’s no sinful activity going on here. God isn’t taking… Satan hasn’t called Abraham to sacrifice Isaac and God’s watching, but God is testing. And what does it mean by testing? It means that God is strengthening Abraham.
God can look in Abraham’s heart. He knew what Abraham was going to do. He didn’t need to make Abraham go through this process to find that out. But Abraham knows after he’s done this that he’s willing to go as far as God requires him. And that God isn’t requiring him to do bad things, but Abraham says, I trust you, God, so much that whatever you call me to, I will do—even if it seems like it would be a bad thing because you know and I don’t.
So that’s the one extreme. More likely, more often what we see is testing in the midst of sin and temptation. For example, when we think of Joseph and his brothers: there’s a lot of testing going on. God is strengthening Jacob—excuse me, Joseph—through what Joseph’s brothers do that is evil. But the key thing is they do something evil, and there’s a lot of temptation there too where Joseph can respond in a likewise ungodly way. What’s he going to do? Well, he’s going to be strengthened by responding well today. He’s going to be strengthened by doing the godly thing, but there is just outright temptation there, and Satan is clearly working, the forces of evil are clearly working through his brothers as they trade him. That’s more likely what we see most of the time.
So when we pray this, what we’re really praying, it’s almost like in this uncomfortable tension in the middle. We want to have that clearer defined, here’s what the bacteria is. But what’s really important that we miss when we’re wrestling with that is that what we’re really coming to God and saying is that I know difficult things are going to come charging at me. Help me through them. Don’t let me fall to temptation.
And I think that’s the real sense here: don’t let me fall. And as we look at the New Testament, there are numerous times where a very similar wording is used and as that wording is used, the emphasis is leaning on God and His strength so that we don’t fall.
For example, 1 Corinthians chapter 10, Paul writes, “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful and He will not let you be tempted beyond your ability. But with the temptation, He will also provide the way of escape that you may be able to endure it.”
So what do we know about God? God does not cause temptation, but God does lead us out of temptation. God does not cause temptation, but He will rescue His people. He won’t leave us there to fail. And that’s what this prayer is getting at: God, don’t let me fail. Don’t let me fail when you’re testing me either, but don’t let me fail when you’re testing me, and don’t let me fail when the evil of the world is tempting me. Strengthen me.
And you see, we get wrapped up in the detail about testing, temptation, and what we’re missing is that what we’re really praying to God is, don’t let me fall. Don’t let me fail to do what’s glorifying to you.
Now if we’re praying that, what does that imply? Well, we shouldn’t intentionally enter into circumstances that are going to cause us to fall. We shouldn’t intentionally go where the temptation is. We shouldn’t go stand out of the sin café and wait to be ushered in by the hostess. We should actually be seeking instead the ways that we can do what we’re praying that God would help us to do. Not because we’re so strong and mighty on our own and that we need to do it all on our own, but rather because if this is our sincere prayer, we really want God to help us, we really want Him to enable us to do what’s righteous.
Then what we certainly don’t want to do is just say, God, please help me not to fall, but by the way, I’m going to go and see how close I can get to falling that you’re going to prevent me from falling. That’s not a good idea, right? And yet don’t we do that? And don’t we do it sometimes because we just pray the other petition, we pray that God would forgive us our debts. So what if we rack up a few more? You know, well, let’s just find out how I can do, so we get a little closer and a little closer and a little closer to temptation.
We’re all sin addicts. Now if you’re trying to recover from an addiction, let’s say you struggle with an addiction to alcohol, you’re struggling with that, is this the path forward to go and stand in the parking lot of the bar and say I’m not going to go in, I’m just going to stand here? Well, no, I don’t think anyone would say that was the way to do it, right? If you’re serious about recovery, what are you going to do? You’re going to stay away from those places that are going to try to draw you in.
I had a friend once. We went out to lunch and he was recovering from an addiction to alcohol and we walked into a place and it was supposed to be what we thought was just a nice little café. It turned out it was very much a bar. We walked in, he looked around, he said, I’m not supposed to be here. We walked out. That’s what we should do with sin and temptation.
Sometimes we don’t realize we’re walking really close to where we’re tempted, but as soon as we realize it, we should walk out the door. And that’s not an admission of failure. That’s not saying, oh, you know, sin has control over me, so I need to go back in there and show sin who’s boss. No, it’s saying, I love God so much, I respect what He’s doing, I respect what I’m asking Him to do so much that I’m not going to intentionally try to fail at it. That’s what we’re asking God to help us with here.
Lead us not into temptation, not because God actually does lead us into temptation, but rather because we desperately want God to do the opposite for us, to lead us out of temptation. The temptation we get ourselves into, the temptation that the evil one brings to us, wherever that temptation’s coming from, it doesn’t really matter. That temptation is there. It’s right there facing us. What we want is for God to help us to get out of it.
It’s funny how often we actually complain to our temptations while we’re seeking the good. A friend I mentioned a moment ago, we were supposed to sit and talk about the Bible, and we both had a certain amount of time. So leaving that place that we walked out in and finding a different place to go took a little while. It took away time that we could have been reading the Bible together and talking about the Bible together.
And so he easily could have played out and said, well, you know, we have an hour, we have two hours, the Bible is so important and good, I’m going to walk in there even though I know it’s not going to play well to my weaknesses. I’m going to walk in there because we need to read the Bible and we’re going to waste time driving around trying to find someplace else. We’re just going to do it because I need to embrace the good.
I think he made the right decision, not because God’s Word isn’t important, but he realized that he was going to just put himself in a place to do what was dishonoring to God, what God’s Word clearly told him not to do by being there. He saw clearly that chasing after the good in that moment wasn’t going to get him there if he didn’t keep in mind exactly what the Holy Spirit was very much making clear to him in that moment.
And yet how often do we do that? We do that in those areas of life where we feel most justified, where we feel like we have everything down pat. And so if we have to cut a corner to get to what we know is clearly good, we’re going to do it. Maybe it’s at work. You know that you can do so much good for the company, but you’re not going to get the promotion unless your sales data is just up a little bit higher than it is. Would anyone really be hurt if you just nudge it up a little bit because you’re going to do so much good in the long run?
Sometimes we do it at church. You know, if I just lie a little bit about my church, I just do a few things that aren’t godly in my church, but it grows the church. The problem is half the time we don’t even have the real good in mind. And even when we do, we end up losing it in that pursuit because we’re synodics and we just go charging into the sin, and that’s what takes hold, not what we think is going to take hold.
It’s not temptation. God take me out of temptation. If we’re praying that sincerely, it should mean I don’t want to engage in temptation. I’m going to try certainly my best to do it. I’m too weak to avoid temptation, but I certainly don’t want to encourage myself to do it.
The people thought they knew the cure in Jesus’ time. They were oppressed by the Roman government. I hear people complain. Have you heard this? I’m sure none of us ever do that, but have you heard other people complain about our government? I mean, those people— we’re all agreeable, right? We don’t do that, but there are those people out there that complain about the government. Can you believe it? Yeah, I mean, our government makes a few mistakes every once in a while, right? Just a few.
We haven’t seen anything. Friends, if we lived under the Romans, we don’t even know what that’s like. We can’t even really fathom what that’s like. If you want to get a closer picture, go move to China and wear a Jesus t-shirt out for a while and see how that goes. Maybe that will give us a better idea. Or move to Iran and do that. I mean, it will not go well. I mean, that’s sort of what the Roman life is like.
Yes, the Romans had officially tolerated a certain level of Jewish practice. For example, like the Chinese government tolerates a certain amount of Christian practice—as long as it actually serves the government—but those who don’t want to make their Christianity about serving the government have to do it underground. The Romans would tolerate a certain level of Jewish practice, but they were clearly in control. And their purpose clearly was not to benefit the Israelites. They didn’t want the Jews to become super successful and powerful.
They wanted to make sure that this backwater region of the Roman Empire stayed in its place so that the Roman government could do what the Roman government did, which is keep control. Study history, you may have encountered the phrase Pax Romana, the peace of Rome. What that means is that Rome killed anyone that didn’t do what Rome wanted them to do. And by that, established a peace. People weren’t in rebellion because they knew that rebellion meant death. It wasn’t that it was good. People weren’t voting eagerly for the emperor. They just didn’t want to die.
I mean, we don’t have any idea when we talk about how annoying things are. I’m not saying there aren’t genuine things that we should critique in government, but we have no idea in comparison. That’s what they lived under. And I see this charismatic man who at least hints at being the Messiah. He hasn’t said it fully yet, but I see this charismatic man. He’s been teaching with authority, fulfilling prophecies, healing people, and he’s near Jerusalem. It’s Passover time, and they say, okay, we can see what the cure is. We just are going to hail this man. We’re going to wave our palms. We’re going to treat him like the king that we know that he is. And he is going to cure all those things that are broken because finally there’ll be a king who is actually for us.
Finally our guy will be in power. And you know what he’s going to do? He’s going to take all those things that annoy us, all those things those other people do that oppress us, and he’s going to get rid of all those things. And finally we’re going to be restored and we’re going to be able to do God’s mission that he’s given us.
Kayla’s going to pass out some palm branches for you. These aren’t just any palm branches. Thanks for passing those out, Kayla. These are gold palm branches. Now why do we have gold palm branches? Well, I was thinking about as the people are waving their palm branches, right? They’re waving these branches because you wave them in honor of this incoming king or dignitary. They’re waving and celebrating the coming in of Jesus. They’re waving that because they think he’s going to make everything right.
So as they’re waving their normal branches, what they’re really thinking about is, we might say, gold. They’re thinking about how their lives are going to be enriched, how their lives are going to be better, that everything in this world will be made to fit what they want—thinking of, in other words, a normal politician’s promises. Jesus is going to come in and we’re going to have gold, right? Now Kayla has now given you a gold palm branch. I don’t see anyone racing out of here. You have a gold palm branch. Why are you still sitting here? Why aren’t you going and trading this in, going down to the jewelry exchange or whatever and saying, look, I have all this gold here? Why isn’t anyone doing that?
Because you just like it so much, you want to treasure it forever, right? What? It’d be rude. It’d be rude, yeah. If you think that’s going to work, go ahead. What you do, do quickly. The reason you’re not, as well as has gold coloration to it, you know as well as I do, it’s fake, exactly. Kayla has it. See, she passed them out and she studied them as she was holding them, and she realizes this is a fake gold palm branch. This is not going to enrich me. Not going to get me out of town for a weekend in Florida where I can encounter all the alligators and crocodiles.
It’s not going to do that. Why? Because it’s just gold-colored fabric. See, as Jesus was coming into that city and they were waving those palm branches, they were imagining how something massively valuable was coming into their lives, like a gold palm branch. As they were imagining that value coming into their lives, they were right. Jesus was coming there with something far more valuable than gold, but they didn’t realize it.
They were latching onto this. They were grabbing that gold palm branch, running down to the exchange and saying, hey, give me whatever I can get for this, because that’s all they thought that they wanted. It set their eyes on some earthly political goals. We can live under a government that’s better than Rome, one that’s for us. That’s what we want.
What do they quickly realize? Hey, this isn’t a gold palm branch. This isn’t going to buy anything for me. Who is that Jesus, anyway? So what do we see? The crowd turns against him over the course of that week. They hear his teaching. He’s teaching at the temple, and they say, wait a second. This is not the man who’s going to bring gold into our lives. Talking about heavenly kingdom. He’s talking about things that don’t change whether Caesar is our emperor or not in this life.
He’s not removing the oppressive taxation that Rome likes to place upon us. Let’s see if we can find a different Messiah. You know, it hasn’t changed a bit. We are constantly searching for messiahs that are going to cure our earthly ills. Earthly politicians that will promise to cure our earthly ills. We find that leader who says, here, I will actually give you a gold palm branch. What happens? We go and we try to find out the value of it, and it’s worth $0.50. You have this gold palm branch, and $10 will buy you a meal at McDonald’s.
Why did I give you a gold palm branch? That was the mistake of those people, but it really is the mistake that we make over and over again. We make it at work. We make it at school. We make it with our politicians. We make it with our churches. We make it with everything that we do. We constantly are seeking out after the things that seem to say, here’s a gold palm branch.
We fall, in other words, into temptation. As much as we pray that prayer, we go right back and seek the things that our heart is greedy for, the things that our heart desires will make us happy on this earth. We don’t even realize how much we’re imbibing, because as we’re doing that, it’s feeding our addiction. It feels like it’s exactly what we need in this moment. Don’t go retire on that palm branch, and don’t retire on the gold palm branches we’re offered today. And that’s why you have a gold palm branch.
Take that with you today. Put that someplace you see it over this week, and maybe beyond. And it reminds you, for one, of what Jesus did. He did come and was hailed by those palm branches on Palm Sunday, but also the people didn’t understand what they really were. They thought they were chasing after something else, and that is exactly what we do.
We’re willing for God to actually pry into our hearts and say, hey, that’s bad. Don’t hold on to that. Here’s the other thing: While there’s a time where we can choose those things, and in fact, there’s a time where oftentimes every single day we make choices, and we’re either going to move ourselves closer to temptation or further from temptation, there’s also going to be times where temptation just comes screaming at us.
Evil comes charging at us out of nowhere, out of our control. It just comes like a locomotive towards us, and that’s exactly what was going to happen to those who actually followed Jesus, who said, I don’t want to chase after the gold. I want to chase after the king whom we’ve been hailing, because I understand that he has something better.
Notice what Jesus says to his disciples in the garden on the night that he was betrayed. He says, “Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.” I read a fascinating commentary on that passage this week because a lot of times we read that passage, we know that we hear it every Monday and Thursday, and what we think is that Jesus is saying, pray that someone brings you an espresso because you’re going to fall asleep. Don’t do it.
And this commentator, I thought was so insightful, he said, you know, I don’t think one of Jesus’s last instructions to his disciples was really just keep your eyes open. Don’t fall asleep in this moment. It was much bigger than that. He was talking about spiritual sleep. He was talking about they were going to see soldiers coming. They’re going to see the force that could potentially be Rome. They knew what the Pax Romana was, and here’s someone now that clearly was on the wrong side of the law as far as, he hadn’t done anything wrong, of course, Jesus was innocent, but as far as the powers that be were concerned, he was, and they weren’t going to have temptation roaring at them.
What were they going to do? Well, we know what they did. They fell. They turned away. They ran. Peter denied him just days after Palm Sunday. What do you have of the people? The people that were waving the palm branches, thinking they were going to get all that gold and all that power? They’re saying, crucify him. We’re talking less than a week.
How quickly people can turn, how quickly we can turn. We can turn from the mountaintop experience. I am at church. I am praising God. This is great. To Monday morning, hmm, I wonder if my boss would notice if I just clocked—I didn’t clock out, but I just worked on some other things for a while.
How quickly we can move from one to the other. I don’t even realize it. So we need more than just a preventative course of vaccination or something. We need something more, and that’s a cure, because we are sick, and we keep falling into this sin, this illness of sin. That gives us the second half of Matthew 6:13, “but deliver us from evil.”
Now once again, there’s a debate. This is interesting about this petition more than the others, I’d say. There’s a serious debate, just like in the first part: are we doing temptation or testing? Is this evil or the evil one? Depending on which Bible translation you look at, it could be translated either way, because legitimately in Greek, it could be translated either way.
I like what someone said observing that. He said, resisting one is to resist the other. Doesn’t really matter if specifically here it’s evil or evil one. Maybe as I think about it, maybe even Jesus chose to phrase it the way He did, or a way that would lead to ambiguity in the years to come, because it really doesn’t matter.
Sometimes we say, well, is Satan here in this situation? Is he directly there staring at me going to tempt me? The other thing is, it doesn’t really matter if it’s Satan or not. If there’s evil right there in front of us, in front of me, in front of you, does it matter if it’s from Satan? Does it matter if it’s from another fallen human being? Does it matter if it’s from some demonic force that isn’t Satan? It doesn’t matter where it’s from. Does it matter if it’s just from the evil in my own heart tempting me? It doesn’t really matter.
And certainly as we come to God and we pray that he would help us to flee temptation and deliver us from evil, I don’t want to just be delivered from evil that’s directly from Satan. I want to be delivered from all evil. And certainly I do want God, if I am encountering the evil one in himself, if he is there in that situation, I definitely want to be rescued from that.
The disciples, they encounter evil. Is Satan staring at them? They don’t realize it. But as they’re in that garden and their feet start to feel like there’s one thing that they can do, and that’s speed out of there as fast as possible. Is Satan actually touching their feet saying, it’s time to go? I don’t know. We can’t know. Quite frankly, I don’t think they even needed Satan to do that. Satan could sit back and watch. You could have been sitting there eating popcorn. It didn’t really matter because you know what? When we are faced with a temptation like, here is the full force of Rome that wants to kill me, and here’s a nice path through the garden that no one will ever know I was with Jesus, we don’t need a whole lot of hope or rather a lot of help to go charging through that path and get out of there. We know.
They knew what happened to people Rome didn’t like. They weren’t shocked the next day when Jesus was crucified. This was not necessarily shocking at all. Rome killed people all the time. When Jesus tells them to pray this, “deliver us from evil,” it really doesn’t matter what kind of evil we’re encountering at the moment. The thing is, there’s going to be evil that we encounter at the times we least expect it, and the question is, in those times, what are we going to do? Are we going to embrace it, maybe without even realizing it?
Because the funny thing about the illness of sin is oftentimes in the moment it feels pretty good. Oftentimes in the moment, embracing evil feels like embracing success. Embracing things that we think are good for ourselves or for our family or for our loved ones. It feels like it’ll work.
If we pray this, it’s really more about our known weakness that we can’t stand up to evil, that we will fall to evil than it is about the particular source in that moment.
I was thinking about back in the days that I taught world religions class over at Lindenwood University and there were quite a few times, like any teacher, I think every teacher could probably testify to this: you are going to have times that students are going to cheat. And maybe, I’m not going to ask for a show of hands, maybe there have been times where you have cheated as a student in the past. And I would imagine all of us have at least felt the temptation at some point.
You sit down at an exam and you realize you studied the wrong thing and you see someone moving very confidently down the sheet next to you and there’s that temptation. Has anyone really suffered by me failing at this moment? I could copy a few of those answers and it would be okay. It seems like a solution to the problem, and it leads to the good. I feel like I have a clear calling from God.
Here’s the thing that may surprise you. It shouldn’t surprise you, but it may surprise you. I also TA’d over at the seminary when I was a seminary student. That part probably doesn’t surprise you, but the second part may. A lot of people have been surprised by this.
When I was doing that grading seminary students’ work, there were a lot, a lot of times where I graded and found plagiarism. A lot of times I graded and found people cheating. You say, well, but they’re seminary students. They’re supposed to be almost pastors. They should be doing better than that, right? But we’re sinful human beings.
It’s right back to the same thing. And here’s what I think played out in a lot of their heads: I have a clear calling from God. I’m going to go and preach God’s word. To preach God’s word, I have to graduate. Maybe likewise, they moved their whole family here. They have two kids and a wife and they’re trying to make it all work and they’re barely making it on the little jobs they can piece together while they’re in seminary. They can’t make it much longer with their savings. They think, if I fail this class right now, my family is going to suffer.
What’s it matter if I cheat on a couple of answers? There’s so much good to be had. That’s when evil comes charging in and says, hey, I hear you have a problem. Satan’s roadside assistance. I guess they’re faster than AAA. He says, I can tell you out of this situation, it’s really easy. And it seems like in that moment, there’s a solution there.
The people saw Jesus, thought, here’s our solution, but not in the sense that he had come and been teaching them and preaching to them, but in the way that they wanted, which was a way that was going to make Rome subservient to them, maybe. Or at least Rome would leave them alone. That they would be able to do the things they wanted to do.
And when Jesus didn’t seem to fit that bill, they said, well, let’s see who else we can find that will. We’re not going to mess with that guy anymore because he’s bad news. We’re going to suffer if we follow him.
Yeah, he’s talking about some heavenly kingdom, but we’re going to suffer in the meantime. Have you ever had that dialogue run in your head as you think about whether to do the right thing or the wrong thing in a moment? I don’t want to suffer right now. I can’t take any more suffering right now. I’ve got this corner; this time it’ll be okay.
That’s what all the people did. They thought about their families. They thought about their callings and careers. And they looked at Jesus, whom they just waved that palm branch before the other day, and they realized it wasn’t going to be made of gold. It wasn’t going to make them rich and powerful beyond their wildest dreams. It was probably going to get a lot of them killed.
And they said, wait a second. I have my family. I have my job. I have my farm. I don’t have time to die for Jesus. They turned away.
We may not do that literally. We may come to church still, but we turn away from Him every time that we take that easier route. We take it at work. We take it at school. We take it with politics. We take it with our neighborhood association. We take it with our neighbors.
We take the easier way that seems to minimize pain for ourselves or we justify it for others and cut some corners so that we can get to what we think is good. And our sin addiction is just like someone struggling with any kind of addiction. I’m going to feel so much better if I just this one time take another drink. I’ll just smoke one more cigarette.
But just do this. Just do that. It’ll make me feel a little better. And so we say, well, just a little sin here will make me feel so much better. We have to help each other.
And so as we pray this prayer, we already see part of the answer in the gathering that we find here as we pray it together, that God has given His church to help us. We’re a recovery group together.
Listen to what Paul says in Galatians 6:1. He says, “Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in the spirit of gentleness. Keep watch on yourself lest you too be tempted.”
We help other people. We’re going to have temptation come speeding towards us. Maybe it’s the same temptation, different temptation. We’re also going to find if we’re actually living as the body of Christ, there’s going to be a lot of times that there’s people struggling with temptation. The question is, am I going to use my strength, my time, my ability to help other people out of that?
Church is God’s restoring hands in this world. The church is here to actually be the answer to this prayer as the Holy Spirit works. He uses us. Certainly, the Holy Spirit can do it on His own, but so often the way that He works, He takes one of us and He puts us in someone’s life when they’re in that moment, trying to decide if they’re going to charge towards the gold or they’re going to charge towards what was behind those palms and actually follow the Savior.
And the question is, which one are we going to do?
In Ephesians 6, Paul writes, “Therefore take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all to stand firm. Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, and as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace.”
“In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one, and take the helmet of salvation, the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the Spirit with all prayer and supplication, to that end keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints, and also for me, that words may be given to me in opening my mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains, that I may declare boldly as I ought to speak.”
To pray this prayer, I think God’s also commissioning us, saying, okay, as those who understand that you need to be rescued from temptation, that you need a way out, as those who know that if evil comes knocking at the door, you’re going to fall to it without My help. I’m going to help you with that, but I’m also going to send you out to go and help others.
We pray this prayer together, and as we do and we hear our brothers and sisters in Christ praying this prayer and knowing if they’re praying it sincerely that they’re right there with us wanting to resist sin and temptation, what do we know? We need each other to get out of it.
I think it’s interesting that as Paul encourages them with the armor of God, what does he do? He asks them to pray for him. He doesn’t say I have this all figured out. He asks them to pray for boldness. I don’t think that Paul needs a prayer for boldness, right? You always think bold, but Paul as he writes this realizes that he needs that prayer just as much as they do. Pray for me.
All of us as we pray this prayer, we know that we need it and that those around us need it as well. We all need God’s strength.
A lot of times we think we know what we need to watch out for. If you’re of at least a certain age, you may think that one of the great dangers in life as you were growing up was quicksand. Anyone ever remember just being fascinated by quicksand as you were growing up?
You knew that someday, at some point in your life, there was going to be that time that you were just going about your business and the next thing you knew, you were up to your neck sinking down in deadly quicksand because it showed up in the movies, right? It was always there. You’re going to be like Gilligan on his island, and you’re going to be in trouble. What are you going to do as that sand just consumes you?
Apparently, in the 1960s, someone actually studied this. In the 1960s, 3% of all movies released had quicksand in them. A full 3% of every movie released had quicksand in it at any given point in the 1960s. Isn’t that… Well, I mean, clearly. I mean, quicksand is our enemy, right? Quicksand is what’s going to get us.
Anyone here almost died to quicksand? No? Well, I was reading about quicksand this week and I discovered something that I don’t mean to ruin this for you the next time you watch one of those movies, but did you know that just as a matter of physics, quicksand can’t drown you? Because you see, we’re more buoyant than the quicksand. And so if a person sinks into quicksand, we might get stuck in it, but the thing that we were sure was our enemy in life that was going to certainly bring a number of us to an uncertain end, probably when we went to Florida, that thing, that thing that was going to kill us can’t actually kill us.
We had the wrong idea of what was really coming, but sometimes we do actually know part of it. And here’s the thing. I mean, quicksand’s real. It really is out there. It just isn’t quite as common as we thought. But you know the solution, right? If you ever get in quicksand, there’s always going to be someone that just happens to be at the shore, right? Your friend who just happened to stop too soon and just happens to find a nice vine that’s almost like a rope that they can toss you and pull you out of the quicksand, right?
Do you know that won’t work? They also did a study on how much force it takes to pull someone out of quicksand when they’re stuck in it. It’ll probably only come up to your waist, but if you’re stuck in quicksand, trying to lift a person out of quicksand is like trying to lift a car because the suction that’s formed and the way it cements itself. But the solution is right there, even though it isn’t what we saw in the movies.
It isn’t that branch that you’re going to grab onto that just happens to be strong enough right over the quicksand. It’s not going to be that. It’s moving your feet. Because as you actually move in quicksand, it liquefies it. As it liquefies, it turns back into something that you can move out of. It’s right there, but because we have this picture of what the enemy is and because we have this picture of what it is that’s going to do us in, that as we’re in quicksand, we just panic. Oh, I’ve heard if I move, I’m going to keep sinking down until suddenly I drown in that quicksand, so I’m just going to stand here.
And in doing that, what are we doing? Well, we’re actually getting ourselves stuck there so that some wild animal might actually do us in. So if nothing else, you know how to survive quicksand now.
But isn’t that sin? Sometimes we spend a lot of time, we talk about sin, we read about sin in the Bible, we know about sin. Oh boy, I know now what to do. And then we get into actual sin and we’re reaching for the branch that can’t actually save us and trying to stay still because we’re afraid we’re going to drown.
So we pray this prayer, God’s saying to us, my Spirit’s in you. I want you to turn to me in that time. I want you to look to that great cloud of witnesses that really hails me and doesn’t just hail some misunderstanding of me. Because in that, you will find salvation. In that, you will find rescue.
We need a different cure, just like a different cure to quicksand. We need God’s strength to loosen the hold of sin. As we pray that prayer, may we run from temptation, may we run from other cures and run to Him. Because He’s faithful to hear that prayer.
Would you pray with me, please?
Father, please help us to run from the temptation, the sin that is ensnaring us. Help us not to get stuck in the quicksand of life, but to turn to you and to your rescue. As we do that, as we come to you and we confess our sin and we ask for your strength, we know that you are faithful to give it, that you tell us those times our feet just need to move to free us and your Spirit gives us the strength to do it.
Help us to trust in you and you alone, for you are the only cure. Not some charismatic leader, not some well-planned organization. It’s you and you alone. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
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