Sermon Series: Pray Like Jesus: The Lord’s Prayer
#5: “Lead Us Not Into Temptation but Deliver Us from Evil”
James 1:12-16 (NRSV); Matthew 6:13 (RSV)
By John Gill ~ March 26, 2023
In the comic strip, “Blondie,” Blondie and Dagwood are dining out at a restaurant. The waiter has brought the dessert cart for all to choose from. Dagwood looks at them one by one and says, “No thanks.” Blondie is impressed! With a smile, she thinks to herself, “Dagwood certainly knows how to handle temptation!” At that moment, the waiter holds up one more dessert and Dagwood, with a huge grin, says, “I’ll take the Napoleon!” Still smiling, Blondie adds, “Yes, he knows how to handle temptation - He YIELDS to it.”
When you and I think about temptation, that’s what we usually think of, isn’t it --- our weakness for sweets or something equally as trivial. But there’s got to be more to it than that! What does Jesus mean when He tells us to pray “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil?”
Today we are nearing the end of the Lord’s Prayer. We are taking it one phrase at a time. In fact, our message today is the final phrase of the prayer as it appears in scripture. Next Sunday we will conclude our series by looking at the phrase the Church has added as a doxology or outburst of praise: “For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever” - a phrase that is not actually found in the Bible.
As we attempt to understand this part of the Lord’s Prayer a little better, I think it is helpful if we break it up and look at it one phrase at a time.
First: “And lead us not into temptation.” As we have seen throughout our study of the Lord’s Prayer, many of the words we repeat Sunday after Sunday have much more meaning than we realize. This is also true of our verse this morning. What does this reference to “temptation” really mean?
This is actually a difficult phrase in the Lord’s Prayer because, on the surface, it would seem to imply that GOD is somehow responsible for our temptation. If we petition God NOT to lead us into temptation, then HE must be the one who leads people into temptation in the first place,…right?
Not necessarily. To our modern ears, the word “tempt” is always a bad word…. it always means, “to seduce into evil.” But in the Bible, while the Greek word translated “to tempt” CAN refer to what we usually think of as “temptation,” it is often better translated more positively, meaning “to test or to prove.”
In its Biblical usage, to tempt a person is NOT so much to try to seduce him or her into sin as to “test” his or her strength and loyalty and ability for service.
When we can look back at the Old Testament, we see that this is true. In the story in Genesis which tells of God’s demand that Abraham sacrifice his son, Isaac, it says this: “And it came to pass that God did TEMPT Abraham.”
Now, obviously, God was not “seducing” Abraham to do evil. Because, if you will recall, God intervened at the last minute to prevent the sacrifice of Isaac. No, that passage SHOULD better read, “And it came to pass that God did TEST Abraham.” God was testing the strength of Abraham’s faith, his loyalty, and his ability for service. And Abraham passed the test with flying colors!
In the New Testament, we find the story of Jesus’ “temptation” in the wilderness. Matthew tells us “Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be TEMPTED by the devil.” If we take the word “tempt” here in the sense of “to seduce into sin,” it appears to make the “Holy Spirit” an accomplice with the devil in compelling Jesus to sin!
After all, it DOES say that Jesus was “led up by the SPIRIT...to be TEMPTED.” But the Holy Spirit had no intention of seducing Jesus to sin. Again, we see that God intended Jesus’ wilderness experience to be a time of “testing,” ….proving Jesus’ strength, his loyalty, and his ability for service.
So you see, God DOESN’T “lead us into temptation.” But He MAY allow us to experience a time of TESTING…. a time of trial…. NOT designed to make us fail by exposing our weaknesses but instead, intended to make us succeed by proving the strength of our faith.
When the Union-Pacific Railroad was under construction, an elaborate trestle bridge was built over a certain large canyon in the West as a part of the plan to connect St. Louis and California. Before it was opened for commercial use, the construction engineer wanted to test its strength. He loaded a train with extra cars and equipment to double its normal payload. The train was driven out to the middle of the bridge, where it was to remain for an entire day. One worker complained, “Are you trying to break this bridge?” “No,” said the engineer. “I’m trying to prove that the bridge is UN-breakable.”
Every one of us has been “tested” in life - tests we have either passed or failed. All the trials and tribulations we have gone through have been intended to “purify the metal” of our souls. But because these trials are difficult….often painful to us, in The Lord’s Prayer we pray to God that we might be spared these times of trial and testing. One modern translation of the prayer expresses this phrase: “Save us from the time of trial.” Or as Pope Frances recently interpreted this part of the prayer: “Don’t let us fall into temptation.”
Even Jesus Himself in the Garden of Gethsemane on that night before he was crucified, petitioned His Father, saying something similar: “Let this cup pass from me.” The testing Jesus was to endure would be painful, for sure, and, if it could be avoided, Jesus hoped He would be spared this “testing.” That’s certainly an understandable request. But Jesus didn’t stop there in
his prayer. He concluded, “But, not my will, but Thine be done.” He vowed to be equal to the test.
In the same way, you and I pray in the Lord’s Prayer that OUR “cups” of suffering might pass from US… that we might escape OUR time of trial and testing. But, like Jesus, we also are to pray: “Not our will, but Thine be done.”
No, God does not lead us into temptation even though we may sometimes find ourselves “tested;” And how we respond to that test will prove or disprove the genuineness of our faith.
But if God is not the source of our temptation, then WHO is? That is revealed in the second phrase of this verse, “But deliver us from evil.”
Here is another example of a mistranslation of the original text. This passage literally should read, “Deliver us from the Evil One.” The source of our temptation is NOT God, but the “Evil One.”
Perhaps none of the beliefs of our Christian faith is more misunderstood than what we believe about “the Evil One.” This is partly caused by the fact that the Bible itself does NOT speak with a unison voice on the doctrine of evil.
The one aspect of this belief that DOES remain constant throughout the Bible is the insistence that “evil” is a reality. The Bible is not really interested in explaining evil, so much as recognizing that evil forces do exist and are at work in the world. And, in the Bible, as it was developed over many hundreds of years, this evil force has gradually become “personified” as an active personal power, in opposition to God.
In preparing this message, I studied William Barclay’s explanation of the development of the notion of Satan throughout Biblical history and found it very interesting. Let me share some of what he has to say with you:
In Hebrew, the word “Satan” simply means “adversary or opponent.” It was a word often associated with ordinary humans. A person’s adversary in life, or in battle, was his “satan.” (For instance, in the Old Testament book of First Samuel, the Philistines are afraid that David might turn against them and become their “satan.”)
From that, the word “satan” gradually came to mean, “one who pleads a case against someone.” At that point, the word came to refer, not only to earthly human matters, but also to heavenly matters.
The Jews had the idea that, in heaven there was an angel whose job it was to argue the case against human beings… sort of an angelic “prosecuting attorney,” and that role became the function of “Satan” (our adversary). If you’re familiar with the Book of Job, that is the understanding of the role of satan – with whom God makes a wager about the loyalty of Job.
What’s really interesting is that at this stage, “Satan” wasn’t really considered an evil power at all. In fact, he was part of God’s judicial system. He served a vital function in the heavenly court of justice.
But it is not a very big step from “stating a case” against human beings to “making-up a case” against them. That was the next step in the development of belief in a personal “Devil” which, of course, is the other name we use to talk about Satan.
“Devil” is not a Hebrew word at all. It is Greek…. a word which literally means, “slanderer.” So Satan becomes “the Devil,” the slanderer par excellence, the adversary of humanity, the power who is out to frustrate the purposes of God and ruin humanity…..and us.
However you want to think about Satan or the Devil, the fact is that evil is real and powerful, and we had better be on our guard! THAT is why Jesus would have us pray, “deliver us from evil.”
So The Lord’s Prayer tells us that times of testing will come, and that “evil” is the cause of those trials.
So, I guess the question we are left with is: How can we be ‘delivered from evil’? How CAN we protect ourselves from our “adversary? How can we live without fear of “the Evil One” and his relentless attacks on our souls? There is really only one way.
A young woman, in response to a question about how to deal with temptation, explained it this way: “When Satan comes knocking at the door of my heart, I send Jesus to answer the door. When the door opens and Satan sees Jesus, he says, ‘Oops, I’m sorry…. I must have the wrong house!’”
My friends, in essence, Jesus concludes his prayer with a challenging question we all must answer: “Who is at home in your heart this morning? When Satan comes calling (and he will), will you be able to send Jesus to answer the door?”
The only way to protect ourselves from the Evil One (to be “delivered from evil”) is to have Jesus take up residence in our hearts. Then the Evil One will leave you alone when temptation comes calling!
© 2023 by John B. Gill, III