"Prayer & His Leadership" Matthew 6:13a Sunday Morning Worship Service

We've been teaching through the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapter 6.

Matthew 6 · chapter mention

This morning we will look at uh the first half of verse 13.

The scripture says, back in Matthew 6, verse 9, pray then like this.

Matthew 6:9

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors.

Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

I hope you have enjoyed our last several months going through what is called the Lord's Prayer.

This whole prayer is a response here in the Sermon on the Mount to Jesus instructing everybody what the kingdom of God is like.

He gives a very similar prayer in Luke's gospel, which was a response to a question.

Lord, teach us how to pray.

How should we pray?

And he gives this prayer as the answer to that question.

So certainly it's in the Bible to teach believers how to make our appeals known before God.

It teaches believers how we're supposed to pray.

It is both introductory here.

This is for a massive crowd of disciples out in the plains somewhere, but it's also more of a top shelf.

It's here for more mature people as well, as a response to the disciples who wanted to know how they were supposed to pray.

And so I hope this prayer has impacted your own prayer life as we've been going through it for the past several months.

This prayer has two things that can be said about it right away, very easily.

This is a very simple prayer, and it also is a very profound prayer.

Every little phrase in this prayer just has a lovely simplicity to it, doesn't it?

Don't lead us into temptation, God.

Forgive us of our sins.

Your kingdom come.

I mean, every one of these phrases is magnificently simple.

And yet also every one of these phrases simultaneously is packed with theological implications and cross-references and inferences and interconnectivity of Scripture.

Both things are going on in this prayer.

And this is such a window into our Lord's intellect and into God Himself that He is approachable by the most brand new baby believer, and yet the most mature saint who's been walking with Jesus for 90 years has a level of complexity in her prayer life and intricacies to it that's available to everybody.

Yummy, you're always growing in your prayers, and yet your prayer should always be simple.

And so I hope that our takeaway so far from the Sermon on the Mount and this prayer in particular has been, I think a lot of us should pray more simply.

We can make our prayers just simply known to God.

Remember, this is a prayer for people that are asking, Lord, teach me how to pray.

You can pray like this.

There is no magic formula to prayer.

Um, there's no magic formula to prayer.

Uh how many times I'm thinking of through uh my own Christian ministry where I've encouraged people to pray about something and have been told, but I don't know how to pray, or why don't you pray for me?

You know how to pray.

You're a pastor, that means God must listen to you, kind of kind of logic.

But listen, this prayer is in the Bible to teach you.

There's no formula to prayer.

You can simply let your requests be known to God.

Now there's a pattern here for you to follow, and this pattern is given to us by our Lord.

You can conform your prayers to this pattern.

You're not just repeating these words back to God, but you can take these words and conform your own prayers to this pattern, but it's very simple to do so.

It's just a request that you make your prayers simply known to God.

There's no articulate science to this.

You don't have to persuade God, you don't have to overwhelm him.

You can simply let your requests be known to him.

At the same time, there is a level of complexity to the Lord's Prayer, too, isn't there?

How everything is connected to each other, how every phrase has so many cross-references and theological connections to it.

And so I hope it also encourages you, as you're appropriating these words in your own prayer life, to likewise engage your mind and think about how your prayer requests connect to other parts of Scripture, other narratives of scripture.

How did people in other places of the Bible pray in a similar fashion to how you're instructed to pray?

There's so much richness that's available to you in your prayer life.

And so it may sound contradictory, but that's the nature of God, who is transcendent and above us and also eminent and near us.

You know, that's the God we we have.

He's created the universe, and yet he knows your name and knows you.

So it shouldn't surprise you that when he teaches you to pray, those tensions are both resident there.

Pray simply, but recognize the complexity that's available to you in prayer.

And there's no better example of that tension in the Lord's Prayer than the verse we have this morning.

That's why I wanted to give that intro for this passage here.

Lead us not into temptation.

You think, what a simple prayer that is.

Lord, please don't take me to places where I'll be tempted.

And yet there is all this complexity here as well.

Let's walk ourselves through this petition here in verse 13.

Lead us not into temptation.

We'll begin here with the presupposition.

There's a massive presupposition in verse 13.

Lord, lead us not into temptation.

There's a massive presupposition here that you might be, I know for me, I can be too closely focused on just every word in verse 13.

I might miss the forest for the trees here.

So that to remind you, the big picture of presupposition here is that the person who's praying this is being led by the Lord.

That's how the Lord's prayer is functioning here.

This whole prayer is a response to people asking Jesus, how should I pray?

So there's a presupposition of the person asking that question is submitting their life to the Lord.

They're saying, God, I want you to lead me.

You're leading, I'm following.

So this is a person who's saying, I'm submitting my life to what Jesus wants.

This prayer makes no sense to somebody who is still living for themselves.

This prayer wouldn't work as much as prayers work, but from somebody if it's prayed by somebody who has not surrendered their life to Christ.

How can you pray, Lord, lead me this way, if you are not following where the Lord is leading?

That doesn't make any sense.

So this prayer, the presupposition behind it, is that you're a person whose life is submitted to the Lordship of Christ.

He is our Lord, we are his slaves.

We go where he tells us to go, we do what he tells us to do, we love what he wants us to love, we think like he wants us to think, we serve him.

He doesn't serve us.

He's our heavenly father, we're his children.

He's the boss, we're the workers here.

There should be no ambiguity about the flow chart in this prayer.

We report to him, not the other way around.

So the idea by saying, Lord, lead us this way is you're confessing, I want to follow the Lord.

What he says, I want to do.

And again, big picture.

How he says to pray, I want to actually pray.

He tells me to take my thoughts captive for him, I want to take my thoughts captive.

I want to think like he wants me to think.

Scripture says the Lord gives his children the desires of their heart.

What that don't confuse that verse like a prosperity preacher and say, hey, if I desire it, the Lord's gonna give it to me, like materialistic.

I desire a Ferrari, boom.

No, the Lord gives you the desires of your heart, meaning if you're following Christ, the Lord is putting desires into your heart.

You're submitting your life to Christ, He's feeding you what you should love.

So, what this prayer is confessing is you're saying, Lord, I want to follow you.

I want to be led by you, I want to love what you want me to love, live like you want me to live.

You don't know what's around the next corner of your life, but the Lord does.

You don't know what's in the future.

You can't have everything figured out, but the Lord knows what's around the next corner, the Lord knows what's in your future, and so this prayer is prayed by somebody who says, I don't know what I'm going to face today, Lord.

You do, and so I want to follow you.

And you rely on God's word to tell you what is good, you rely on God's word to warn you away from what is bad, you rely on God's word to direct your life.

That's what this prayer is about.

Now, how does the Lord lead a person?

That's just a pretty simple question that should be provoked in your mind.

When you're saying, Lord, lead me not to temptation.

Well, okay, let me raise my hands.

How does the Lord lead a person in any situation?

And there's a couple answers to that.

First of all, he leads you providentially.

He opens doors and closed doors.

He he might give you an opportunity or he might take an opportunity away from you.

You don't know what's in your day.

So when you're praying this, you're saying, Lord, today lead me away from temptation.

The idea here is that the Lord is in control of what conversations you're gonna have that day, who you're gonna meet, whether your lunch meeting is canceled or whether it's on, whether the phone call gets thirty or it doesn't.

I mean, the Lord knows who you're gonna talk with that day.

The Lord is sovereign over all of those things.

For the Lord to lead you providentially, I mean, this is a massive theological statement.

You're saying the Lord is sovereign over all the details of your life, from who you talk to, to whether you get the promotion or not.

That's how the Lord's leading you.

He's giving you opportunities and encounters throughout the day that you don't even know about when you're praying this prayer.

But the Lord does, this is macro sovereignty.

Imagine if you're a soldier who prays this.

Your presupposition in that prayer is the Lord is in control of where you're going to be led, where you're going to be deployed next, where the next global war is going to be, whether or not you get the next promotion.

That's all in the Lord's hands.

This is massive global sovereignty stuff.

The Lord is sovereign over nations and that affects you.

The Lord also leads you through the desires of your heart, through what things you want that day.

So this is sovereignty at the individual level.

Do you want to go there for lunch or there for lunch?

Do you want to serve the Lord this way or that way?

The Lord is sovereign over those things.

That's how the Lord leads you.

And then, of course, through his word, which he gives you and his spirit, which he gives you to apply his word to your life, the Lord is leading you in all of those ways.

So this is a huge statement about the sovereignty of God.

That he's in charge of the big picture nations that rise and fall, and the individual you don't get bigger than that, and you don't get smaller than the individual affections in a Christian's heart.

The Lord is sovereign over all of those things.

The Lord could lead you to this meeting by, you know, the traffic light or the traffic.

Do you know God is sovereign over the stoplights in the traffic?

He is.

We question his sovereignty often in those circumstances.

But he's sovereign over even those basic mechanisms of life because that's in control of where you're going and who you're meeting.

The Lord is in control of all of that.

And this prayer is supposing that.

It's presupposing that God is in control of where I'm going today through things that I don't even know about.

Now, a very common question I've been asked throughout our series in the Sermon on the Mount, and specifically our series in the Lord's Prayer, has been if God is sovereign over the things in this prayer, like if God is sovereign over food, you know, you're gonna eat rainfalls, God's sovereign over the rain that falls, you're gonna get food, why, if God's sovereign over that, why would you pray for it?

Or if God is sovereign over who gets saved, why would you pray for the Lord to save people, to forgive them of their sins?

Or if God is sovereign over what temptations all face, why would I pray for me not to face them?

You know, in other words, you can boil all those questions down to this one question.

If God is sovereign, why pray?

And my answer to that question has always been the same.

It's to flip it around.

If God were not sovereign, why would you pray?

If God wasn't in control of those things, why would you pray to him about those things?

If the Lord wasn't in control of who got saved, why would you pray to God to save a certain person if it's not something he does?

If the Lord's not in control of where you're being led, why would you pray to God about where you're being led?

It would be like asking the trash man to make sure he delivers your mail on time.

It's not what he does.

That's not his department.

If the Lord's not sovereign, you should figure out who is in control of those things and pray to that person instead.

Prayer is presupposing that God is sovereignly in charge of all things.

God is the one who controls the weather, and God is the one who controls your life.

God is the one who answers prayers.

How that all fits together is a mystery in his own divine economy.

It's not a mystery to him, but it's a mystery to us as we look at his own divine thinking.

God has it all figured out though.

That's why we pray to him.

So this prayer makes sense if you recognize the sovereignty of God, and it makes sense if you're submissive to the sovereignty of God.

It makes sense if you say, Lord, I want to follow you.

I think of those kids in DC that are in the daycares in DC and they're being led down the street on the rope.

You've seen those kids, I can tell by the laughter.

And, you know, they're being led to the park, okay?

They're all daycare kids and being led on the rope to the park.

And it would be weird if you came up and grabbed onto the rope.

Like you'd probably go to jail, I think, is what would happen.

Or if you ask the leader, hey, where are you guys going?

Can I follow?

Don't say that.

Also jail.

Here's a basic question for you on your life.

As you're looking at the Lord, teaching you to pray, ask yourself, am I holding the rope?

This is a rope you can grab onto.

Am I following the Lord?

Where he's leading me around this corner or that corner, that's only a rubric that makes sense to use if you're holding on to Jesus.

If you've given your life to Christ.

But if you're here this morning and you've never given your life to Christ, you've never surrendered your life, you've never said, God, I give up being in charge of my life and I'm surrendering my life to you.

I want to love what you love and think how you think and do what you would have me to do.

This prayer doesn't make sense if you've never had that experience, if you've never given your life to the Lord.

And so it'd be no more fitting time for you to give your life to the Lord and say, Lord, I want you to lead me than studying the Lord's Prayer where you're praying for Him to lead you not into temptation.

So, big picture, presupposition, God leads me.

And if that's not true for you, you should surrender your life to the Lord and make it true for you.

Second, is the petition.

Given that presupposition that the Lord leads and we follow, the petition here is that God would protect you from temptation.

That God would protect you from temptation.

You're saying, Lord, don't lead me to where I'm going to be tempted.

Instead, deliver me from evil or from the evil one.

We'll look at that more next week.

God, I don't want to be tempted.

I do want to be delivered.

The petition here is that you would be protected by God from sin.

This is the bottom line of this petition.

God, protect me from sin.

So you're starting to see how all the Lord's prayer fits together.

These aren't, it's not shotgun approach here to request.

There's a sequence to this.

God is heavy exalted up in heaven.

That's where he is sovereign over the universe.

Our Father is in heaven, reigning over the universe.

He is hollowed.

You want him to be treated on earth as he is in heaven.

You want people on earth to treat him as holy because he is.

That's going to result in his kingdom being established on the earth.

That's verse 10.

His will being done, his revealed will in the word of God, producing obedience in people's life on earth that matches like it is in heaven.

Part of our experience on earth, our daily need is food.

We need to eat that every single day.

In the same way we eat every day, we need our sins forgiven every day.

We need food every day.

We eat daily, we sin daily.

So we're constantly asking the Lord to forgive us of our sins.

Of course, they're forgiven once for all at the death and resurrection of Christ, as we put our faith into that.

And yet we do sin all the time, and so we're always going back to the Lord, as it says here, to have our sins and our debts forgiven.

As our debts are forgiven, our sins are forgiven.

You're now praying also daily here to avoid accumulating new sins.

So the record of debts is canceled.

Now I'm walking in faith.

Now, today I don't want to do more sins.

Now we know that we're in a fallen body and in a fallen world, and we carry about this body of death with us the rest of our life.

We will sin every day the rest of our life.

We know that.

And yet, nevertheless, it is our heart's desire to avoid sin as much as possible.

Just because you're going to sin doesn't mean you want to sin.

Instead, you want to avoid sin.

You want to fight sin.

And this is what this prayer is saying: Lord, help me avoid sin.

God, keep me away from it.

This is the believer's war.

And it's described all over the Bible as a war.

We are fighting not flesh and blood, not flesh and blood, but principalities and power.

This is the believer's armor in Ephesians at the end of the book of Ephesians.

You have the breastplate of righteousness, the sword and the helmet and the shoes for battle and all of the weapons to fight, this weapons that God gives you.

Because your sanctification is a war.

At your conversion, you are freed from the penalty of sin, and now you are fighting against the power of sin the rest of your life.

Now you know you have victory over the power of sin.

Sin no longer has dominion over you.

You were a slave to sin.

You've been freed from that.

You've been redeemed by Christ, set free from the power of sin, and yet its power is haunting you and biting at your heels.

Its presence is all around you.

And so you're praying, God, help me fight sin.

That's what's behind this.

You're taking your thoughts captive.

Notice the military language.

I want my thoughts held captive by Christ, not by sin.

I want my affections to be a servant of Christ, not of sin.

Again, you know that you will be around sin the rest of your life, but you're asking in this prayer that God would providentially lead you away from places where you are likely to sin.

God, I don't want to go there.

Lead me somewhere different.

Now you recognize it's not a sin to be tempted, first of all.

It's not a sin to be tempted in the sense that you're praying here.

Uh Abraham was tested by going up on Mount Moriah to offer his son Isaac.

That was a testing for him.

It wasn't because Abraham sinned, he was subjected to that.

It's not like he sinned, so God punished him with this test or this temptation.

Not at all.

This was God's plan to teach Abraham the gospel and to reveal uh the genuineness of Abraham's faith.

No, we go through trials, we go through temptations, we go through testing that are disconnected from sin.

Job didn't sin, and his sin produces him taking his family away, going through that whole trial, that whole temptation to be angry with God.

That didn't, that wasn't given to him because of his sin.

It was given to him because of things behind the curtain, so to speak, that Job knew nothing about.

So being tempted in that sense is not sin.

Jesus was tempted.

And by the way, it was the Holy Spirit, Luke 4 says, that drove him into the wilderness to be tempted.

God drove Jesus to the place where he would be tempted.

That doesn't mean Jesus liked being tempted, of course.

He prayed, God, let this cup pass from me.

If you're a holy person, you don't want temptation.

If you're a holy person, you don't want that.

Because you love God and you love holiness.

You don't want to be in a situation where you sin.

That's why this prayer is here.

You're saying, God, I don't want to be tempted.

It's not a sin to be tempted, but you don't want to be tempted because you love holiness and you hate sin.

If you're desiring holiness, you don't want to be put in a situation where sin will be tempting to you, even if you don't give in to it.

Even if you're confident in your self-control to saying no to sin, nevertheless, there's a temptation of it there.

You want to avoid that because you love holiness.

So just the temptation of sin is something you say, I'd rather avoid that.

I think of a friend I had in seminary who had a kind of, I don't know, it was a blood or nervous disorder, uh, where when he went, when the weather got, you know, down in the forties or so, his blood didn't circulate well, and it just caused severe pain in his hands and his ears and his feet, and it was kind of a very weird thing.

And he was just very painful for him.

And towards the end of seminary, he said he felt called to go to this uh country as a missionary that is cold all the time.

And I remember talking to him, he'd be like, uh brother, are you sure about that?

I mean, it's not a sin to go to that country, but if you know the likely outcome is going to be intense physical suffering, are you sure the Lord's calling you there?

Or maybe he's calling you to like, I don't know, Los Angeles.

He went there, he came back six months later and is now in Los Angeles.

It's not a sin to be in one place or the other.

The point is, though, if you're recognizing this is going to be difficult for my sanctification, maybe don't go there.

If you're afraid of flying, I have an idea.

Don't fly.

Problem solved.

If you have a love for money, don't gamble.

Don't play the lottery.

You think that feeds or deprives?

I mean, just make basic decisions in life to avoid temptation.

To avoid temptation.

You're praying, God, don't lead me in temptation.

You're praying God providentially close the doors to things that would tempt me.

Now you're also praying that the Lord would help you grow spiritually so some things would stop tempting you.

Because that's the other way you fight temptation.

One way you fight temptation is avoiding it.

The other way you fight temptation is by growing up a little bit and aging out of certain temptations, so to speak.

I mean, I think of like a high school kid might be tempted to steal a candy bar from 7-Eleven.

But hopefully, by the time you've got a job, that's not a temptation anymore.

You're like, hey, I'm getting a paycheck.

I don't need to steal the candy bar.

And then hopefully you get to a point in your life where you're like, actually, I don't even like the candy bars anymore.

You've grown up a little bit.

That temptation is put behind you.

Again, stealing a candy bar is sin, but being tempted to steal isn't necessarily sin.

But it might be a sign of immaturity.

And so you want to grow up and get beyond that in life.

And there's so many temptations in life like that that you kind of want to age out of, spiritually speaking.

Paul says this to the Corinthians.

He says, When I was a child, I talked like a child and thought like a child, acted and reasoned like a child.

Now I'm a man, now I've reached maturity, I've put the childish ways behind me.

When it comes to spiritual things, that is such a powerful principle.

You kind of want to age out of some of these temptations, spiritually speaking.

You want to grow in godliness.

Now, how does one grow up spiritually?

Well, God doesn't keep that a secret from us, He gives us the means of grace.

Prayer, which we're seeing right here, Bible reading are the two big time means of grace.

Listening to sermons, Christian fellowship, worship, singing, studying the Bible, praying.

These are all the means of grace God has given us to help us grow spiritually.

So when you're saying lead me out of temptation, you're asking God providentially keep me away from places where I'll be tempted.

Also, help me grow up.

Help me listen to sermons better.

Help me read the Bible more.

Help me pray more effectively.

Help me grow up so I'm not tempted anymore.

God gives you those resources.

It would be very strange to pray the Lord's Prayer and not avail yourself of the resources that cause spiritual growth.

I have a plant in my office.

You can maybe see it from the window when you're walking to the parking lot.

And when I go out of town for a week or two, I have to ask somebody to water my plants.

If I don't, the plant will die.

Now, how weird would it be for me to go out of town and not ask anybody to water my plant, but then pray fervently.

Lord, help my plant live.

Please help my plant live.

Yeah, there's something called water.

You could water it and it would live.

So many times Christians are like that.

Close our ears to sermons, close our hearts to the word of God.

We don't avail ourselves of Christian fellowship.

And then we're like, Lord, keep me away from temptation, please.

God gave you resources to grow up.

Avail yourself of the means of grace.

Now, one more point on the petition here.

God protect me.

Do you know that sometimes the Lord will say no to this prayer?

Sometimes it is God's will for you to be tested.

It is God's will for you to be put in a situation which will be difficult and could provoke sin in your life.

That's sometimes God's will.

Maybe it'll be like the Apostle Paul.

Remember that there was the demonically inspired false teacher that was sent into Paul's church and was causing division in Paul's church.

And Paul prayed to the Lord, remove this guy, remove him from me.

Three times Paul prayed.

And three times the Lord said, No, I'm not taking him anywhere because I want you to learn that my grace is sufficient for you.

So this is clearly a temptation for Paul.

And he's praying for God to get rid of it.

And three times God says, No, I actually want you to grow in godliness through dealing with it.

Not how Paul would have prayed, obviously.

Or my mind goes to the conversation of Jesus and Peter, where Jesus tells Peter, hey Peter, Satan asked if he could sift you.

And you can imagine Peter going, What did you say?

No, right?

No, no.

Bind him! Didn't we have the lesson about binding the strong man?

Bind him! And Jesus said, It's gonna happen.

Yeah, green light to the devil to sift you.

What sometimes the Lord allows his children to be sifted.

It's for our good and for God's glory.

I think Hezekiah in the Old Testament, 2 Kings 20, he was tested with his health, and he was tested with his wealth.

The Lord took his health from him and the Lord gave him wealth.

Both of them were testing.

Both of them produced temptations to sin.

And by the way, him losing his health was a test he responded responded to.

He passed that with flying colors.

But he failed the wealth test incredibly, didn't he?

His health is taken away from him.

He cries out to God and begs, and God answers his prayer.

And God gives him wealth, and he doesn't cry out to God, and he boasts in his wealth, and the Lord brings judgment.

Sometimes you may pray, Lord, keep me away from temptation, and the Lord does not answer that prayer the way you want it answered.

Now Jesus is telling you to pray this because this is just the confession of someone who just doesn't want to be tempted.

It's the confession of someone who doesn't want to sin, which is a very good thing to pray for.

Just know the Lord doesn't always answer it the way you would desire.

So, first presupposition, God is leading people.

Second, is your petition, God lead me away from sin.

Third, the theologian in me wants to make a distinction.

A distinction.

God does test people.

There is a difference between temptation and testing.

And this is a very difficult distinction to make, but it's an important one that the Bible does make.

Now it becomes a difficult distinction because God does test people and he does not tempt people, but it is the same Greek word.

And so you can't, it'd be so easy if there were different Greek words.

And you could say, yeah, here where it says God's doing this, that's this word, and where it says God doesn't do this, that's that word.

No, it's the same word, and the Bible says God would never do this word, and then God also does this word.

And so you think, is this a contradiction?

And we have developed two different English words to capture it: testing and tempting.

God does not tempt people, but he does test people.

Well, what's the difference then?

If it's the same Greek word, what's the difference between testing and temptation?

And I think it's so important for you to understand the difference.

First of all, the most obvious one, God does test, he doesn't tempt.

Okay, that's circular reasoning.

Okay, there's more differences.

Testing refines you and conforms you to the image of God.

Tempting compromises you and distorts the image of God.

Testing shows your conformity to God's nature.

Tempting corrodes or defiles the nature of God in you.

Trials cause you to grow spiritually, temptations can cause you to sin.

Trials refine you, temptations erode your faith.

Trials produce maturity, temptation reveals immaturity.

Trials are brought by the Lord as a means of spiritual growth and produce life.

Temptation is brought by your own desires as a means to sin and produces death.

Trials are brought by the Lord to peel back your secret desires and your comforts and your idols so you can crush them and grind them up and spread their ashes.

That's what trials do.

That's what testing does.

But temptations are brought by your own lusts to produce spiritual death in your life.

Testing and trials are similar to each other.

But temptations lead to sin.

So the easiest way to say is look at the end of the story.

Does the encounter cause you to sin or cause you to resist sin?

If it causes you to resist sin, that is a test.

And if it causes you to sin, that's a temptation.

One is from God and one is from your own sin.

So the same event might be happening in front of you.

You don't know if it's a test or a temptation until you go through it.

Hezekiah's health is taken away from him.

Is that a test or is that a temptation?

You don't know.

Until he cries out to the Lord and responds in faith.

Okay, that was a test to show the genuineness of his faith.

But then Hezekiah's given wealth and given riches.

Is that a test or a temptation?

Well, it produces self-confidence and him boasting in the flesh and not praying and turning to the Lord.

That's a temptation.

It's not from God.

You have to see the end to know.

And it's important for you to see the distinction because of James 1, verse 13.

James 1:13

Let no one say when he's tempted, I'm being tempted by God.

For God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one.

The point here is that sin is against God's nature.

God is perfectly holy, and so God can't tempt anybody because God himself is holy.

You have to know a little bit about what temptation is to appreciate this verse.

Temptation is when your own heart desires something that you're not supposed to have that produces temptation.

That's impossible for God.

Everything God desires is according to his own nature.

God can't desire something outside of his nature because he's God.

He's pure light, pure action, pure life, pure love.

Everything God wants is in accordance with his nature.

So of course he can't be tempted.

If God wanted something, it wouldn't be a temptation.

It's not just that if he wanted something, it would be a good thing, although that's true.

If he wanted something, he would have it.

The idea of unrequited desire doesn't make sense to God because he's all powerful.

So of course God can't be tempted.

And because God can't be tempted, James's point is, he would never tempt anybody else.

Sin is against his nature.

He would never cause you to do something.

It would be against his nature.

Sin is not in the nature of God.

It was not made by God, it did not come to exist through God or by his agency.

Sin came into the world through the devil and through Adam and Eve and through mankind, not through the Lord.

And the Lord's sovereign over it, of course.

But the devil brought it, and Adam committed it.

Leviticus 19, verse 2.

Leviticus 19:2

Be holy, for I am holy.

God cannot be tempted because he's holy.

People are tempted because they're not holy.

God cannot be tempted because he is holy.

God cannot be tempted to sin, and he would never tempt anybody else either.

But testing is different.

Testing is something that comes into your life by the Lord to reveal the genuineness of your faith.

Abraham was tested by God, not because God wanted Isaac dead, but rather to instruct Abraham about the nature of the gospel, which Abraham understood.

That's a test.

It revealed the genuineness of Abraham's faith.

Something I learned about tests, by the way, as a former school teacher, the best thing about tests as a school teacher is that teachers know the answer.

They have the answer key.

They can look it up.

They know the answer.

A test is not given for the teacher's benefit, generally speaking, but to reveal to the student what he or she knows.

The same is true in the Bible.

God knows Abraham's faith is genuine.

Who do you think gave Abraham the faith?

The test isn't there so God can figure out if Abraham really loves him.

The test is there so Abraham can figure out if he really loves God.

That's the way testing works.

That's why both James and Peter say that testing refines your faith and proves your faith as more precious than gold.

You're tested by the love of money and you resist the love of money because you love Jesus more than money.

That proves your faith is more valuable than money.

That's for you.

God knows that.

It's for you.

That's why God would never tempt you to sin.

He would never put you in a situation where you would then sin because that would undercut the value of your faith.

Let me say it this way: God never approves of evil, and he never wants you to sin.

Sinning is never the right answer to any situation.

In the moment of temptation, God provides a way of escape so you can honor him.

And people always will ask, What about hiding the Jews under the table?

Cory Tunboom, have you read her story?

Hid the Jews, the guards ask other Jews under the table.

Listen, God never wants you to lie.

You will never providentially, God providentially would never, you can manufacture a situation that never happens to come up with, oh, maybe outside of God's providence I might have to sin.

That's silly.

God would never put you in a situation where sinning is the right answer.

He'll never make you so hungry that you would be, stealing is the right thing to do, stealing will never be the right thing to do.

He'd never put you in a situation where lying is the right thing to do.

Lying is never the right thing to do.

And I returned the query to question back to you.

Have you read the book?

Because in the book, that's a big part of the conflict between her and her sister.

Is her sister believed that, and the Lord ends up vindicating her sister who would not lie.

Lying is never the right answer.

The Bible teaches this in 1 Corinthians chapter 10.

1 Corinthians 10 · chapter mention

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 provide a way of escape so that you can endure it.

The way of escape is never sin.

The temptation is to sin, and God provides the escape from sin.

Sin is the burning building.

The way of escape is out of the fire.

The way of escape is not a door that goes back into the fire.

Like, oh, what do I choose?

To be in the burning building or to go into that room of the burning building?

No, God never puts you in that situation ethically.

In every situation, it's always a choice between sin and escaping from sin.

The way of escape is from sin, not to another room of sin.

Practical examples of this.

Someone might say, I'm in an unhappy marriage.

You don't know how difficult my marriage is.

And so an unbiblical divorce must be the right answer.

After all, God would want me to be happy.

I can't be happy in this situation.

Therefore, this unbiblical divorce would be the right way out.

That's never the right answer.

It's never right to pursue an unbiblical divorce to get away from a difficult situation.

Sinning is never the right way out.

Stealing is never the right way to provide for your family.

Lying is never the right way to protect people.

That's what's behind this.

Every situation you're in, there's a way to escape.

That does not involve sin.

Fourthly, this leads to our confession.

Presupposition, God is leading.

The petition, God can protect us.

The distinction, there's a difference between testing and trials.

I mean testing and temptation.

And then fourthly, confession.

Presupposition, petition, distinction, confession, that you need God to deliver you.

Notice the confession that's wrapped up in this prayer that if you were left on your own, you would not want to be godly.

If you were left on your own, you would give in to temptation.

If God just saved you and said, hey, good luck out there, see at the rapture, you'd be in trouble.

You need help.

Behind this prayer is the confession that you are a sinner.

You know you've been freed from the penalty of sin.

You know you've been freed from the power of sin, but the presence of sin is chomping at you and you don't know how to fight it the best way.

You need the Lord Jesus to help you fight sin.

That's this confession.

And that's because of James 1, verse 14.

James 1:14

Right after James says nobody can blame temptation on God.

James 1, 14 says, Each person is tempted when he's lured and enticed by his own desire.

Notice that James leaves the war analogy behind and replaces it with a fishing analogy.

Lured and enticed.

These guys were fishermen.

And you see the fish sees the lure and wants it.

And you wonder what a fish thinks.

Does he know there's the hook in there?

I was fishing with a friend at Lake Anna and he caught a carp or whatever's in that nuclear reactive lake there.

And that that fish had two other hooks in his mouth.

He had a total of three hooks in his mouth.

I mean, come on, fish.

I know you have a fish brain, but the third time?

That's how we are with sin, though.

We think this time it'll satisfy.

This time the desire in my heart is luring me away.

So kind of unpack this a little bit.

You have a desire in your heart for satisfaction or comfort or strength or joy or happiness that's outside of Christ.

God has given you the desire for comfort and joy and strength and happiness and identity and all that, and it's to be fulfilled inside of Christ.

But our desires are hungry.

Our desires are ravenous.

And if we're not feeding them Christ, our desires go elsewhere.

And so a husband might think of I get this kind of promotion at work and have this kind of authority at work, and then I'll have a strong sense of my identity and I'll be confident in who I am.

That's pursuing that outside of Christ.

That's a temptation.

Or you think of if I make this much money, then my kids can be happy and have the kind of life they can deserve, and I can have the kind of house my family deserves, and then there'll be happiness in our life, and you always think the next raise will bring that to you.

That's outside of Christ.

Then of course it doesn't work, and you know that you might get the raise, and the house doesn't work, and you get your family is biting each other inside the house, and your identity is in the house that's never quite big enough, not in Christ.

The money doesn't give it that, the power doesn't give you that, the house doesn't give you that.

You think if my marriage was better, then I would have an easier time loving Jesus because I'd be happy at home and you know we I'd have my identity fixed in my family and my marriage, it will never be good enough for you, ever.

That's feeding those desires outside of Christ.

So instead, find those desires fulfilled inside of Christ.

And when you say, Oh, despite all these hard circumstances, I'm satisfied in Christ, that is a test and it reveals the genuineness of your faith.

But you are tempted when you're like, oh, look at that shiny thing over there, look at that raise or that promotion or that power or that family life.

I want that.

And you leave Christ there and you go that way for it.

You're turning your back on Christ to find fulfillment over there.

You and then after that, you can't say the Lord made me do it.

No, you did it when you followed a desire your heart made.

You did it when you walked away from God.

He didn't make you do it.

He said, Don't go that way, go this way.

And you said, forget you, I'm going that way.

Why did God make me do that?

This is why when you're tempted, what James says here, it's so important to look at your own your own affections.

What are you really after?

What's the hard issue?

What's the desire that's at work?

You know, the person who is not satisfied with their job, I can almost guarantee you it's not their job title or their rank that's the hard issue.

It's their sense of identity.

Or the person that's materialistic or does not satisfy on their house or their life or their possessions, it's not a budgeting problem.

Like you could go to a financial peace class and learn how to budget better, and that could be helpful at some superficial level, but it's a contentment problem.

Or the person who's not happy in their marriage, you might ask yourself, peel back and get to the heart issue.

What do I expect from a marriage?

What do I expect in this life?

What does Jesus in that sense owe me in this life?

You always want to ask the heart questions.

What's really going on in my temptation?

Because on the screen, James tells you, when you're tempted, it's something in your heart you're after.

What is it?

And it's bad, by the way, because it produces death.

It's not a good thing in your heart, James says.

Because the end is death.

What are you after?

What are you after?

And you gotta deny yourself.

You're praying the Lord to lead you away from temptation, you gotta deny yourself.

Thomas Watson, the Puritan, has this great line.

He says, The stronger the Christian is, the stronger his self-denial is.

A mature Christian is able to say no to things that tempt him.

To find a satisfaction in Christ.

Heart issues are always the key.

You want to diagnose yourself.

Don't self-diagnose yourself on WebMD.

That's bad.

Do self-diagnose your temptations by looking at your heart and saying, what is motivating me?

What do I feel like the Lord wants me to have?

What do I feel like I'm looking for somewhere else?

The bottom line All holiness belongs to God.

All temptation comes from your heart.

Sin belongs to you and holiness to God.

But God has laid a rope out in front of you.

You can grab onto the rope and say, Lord, lead me away from temptation.

Lead me away from places where I'll be tempted to sin.

Lead me away from finding my satisfaction in this world, and help me find my satisfaction in Christ alone.

God, we're grateful that you have provided our righteousness.

You alone are righteous, and you've called us to find our contentment and our life in you.

Of course, we know there are difficult circumstances.

There's health trials that people go through, marriage trials people go through, financial trials, trials with family that people go through.

I pray that they would be received as tests to reveal the genuineness of faith as people hold on to you at all costs.

I give you thanks for the glories of Christ, as in his name we pray.

Amen.

And now, for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, DC area, I would love to see you at Emanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to TMS.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.