Lead Us Not into Temptation - Luke 11:1-4

Martin Luther once was asked why he spent so much time praying, and his answer surprised some people.

He said, I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours of the day in prayer.

That sounds backwards to us, doesn't it?

Most of us think, I'm too busy to pray.

Luther thought, I'm too busy not to pray.

Well, the Lord's prayer teaches us exactly that.

It reminds us that the Christian life isn't lived by self-sufficiency, but by dependence upon our Heavenly Father.

And perhaps nowhere is that dependence seen more clearly than in the petition that we'll be studying this morning.

Lead us not into temptation.

If I were to ask you, what is the greatest danger that you think you're going to face this week?

I think most of us will think of things like financial stress or maybe sickness or perhaps family problems or family issues, marriage issues.

But Jesus points us in the prayer to somewhere else.

He's basically saying that one of the greatest dangers that anyone will face, and one of the greatest dangers that we actually often don't see coming is temptation.

This morning we come to the fifth and final petition in Luke's version of the Lord's Prayer.

Lead us not into temptation.

You might know that this prayer doesn't include, or this version doesn't include, but deliver us from evil or from the evil one, which is found in Matthew's version.

However, the message remains the same.

When we are not led into temptation, we are kept from falling into them.

And when we are kept from falling into them, we are delivered from evil or from the evil one.

So it's fitting that this petition comes right after the last petition.

Forgive us of our sins.

In many ways, these petitions work together because once we've been forgiven of our sins, we want to be kept from those sins that we've been forgiven of.

We don't want to keep returning back to those sins.

So we ask that God allow us to be led into those places that might make us fall back into those sins.

Our prayer should not only be, Father, forgive us of our sins, but also, as Brother Tim mentioned last week, keep us from sinning.

And we are often kept from sinning through not being overcome by temptation.

AWP puts it this way: when we pray, forgive us our sins, we are praying to be delivered from the guilt of sin.

When we pray, lead us not into temptation, we are praying to be delivered from the power of sin.

Now, temptation is something that both Christians and non-Christians are aware about and understand we all know what it is to be tempted by something.

But we also know, as Christians, that the Bible speaks of temptation in different ways.

When we think of temptation, we think of that which entices us to sin, but there are also temptations that come to us by way of trials.

In fact, the Greek word for temptation can sometimes be translated as trials.

In either case, we are asking for God to keep us from falling under the weight of those temptations and trials.

That when he does choose to test our faith, that the testing won't be so severe that we would fall or succumb to sin, that he would show us mercy and grace even in our testing.

Now, we must be clear about something.

God never tempts us to sin.

As James 1.13 says, let no one say when he is tempted, I am tempted by God.

For he himself tempts no one.

However, God does sovereignly reign over every event.

Clearest example that we have is found in Job.

Remember, Job was tempted to curse God and die.

He was tempted to sin.

By cursing God, he would have sinned.

But those temptations to sin came through the attacks of the devil.

Yet we are also told in Job chapter 1 that it was God who allowed Satan to attack them.

Job 1 · chapter mention

So even though God does not tempt us, he is sovereignly reigning and ruling over all things, and even those things that do tempt us.

So we pray that in his sovereignty, he might keep us from wandering into those places where we might succumb into temptation.

In other words, God never tempts us by enticing us to sin, but he does, in his wisdom and in his sovereignty, ordain and allow tests to expose us and to expose our faith and strengthen our faith and refine our faith.

And Satan will try to use those tests or temptations to destroy us and get us to fall into sin.

So this prayer is that God would keep us from those severe tests, from those tests that will overcome us, and that he would graciously sustain us whenever he does ordain that we be tested by them.

What I want to do this morning is I want to point out some ways that we are tested.

I want to point out three ways to help us better direct our prayers and give us some practical things to pray about as we pray for God to lead us not into temptation.

Because temptations come to us in various forms and in various ways.

And I want to point three or three out to you so we can be aware of it.

Number one, temptation comes to us from within.

They come from within.

Number two, they come from Satan, from the devil.

And number three, they come from the world.

Number one, they come from within.

Number two, they come from Satan, and number three, they come from the world.

Let's look at each of these.

Let's look at the temptations that come from within.

You know, when we think of temptations, we we typically think of something outside of ourselves that is luring us into sin.

Or to put it another way, we think that we fall into sin by being tempted by these external things that might come our way.

And as we will see in a moment, temptations do often come in those ways.

But the first way that temptations usually come is through the door of our own deceitful hearts.

Temptation will mainly come from our own thoughts and our own desires and our own passions.

Jeremiah 17, 9 tells us, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick.

Who can understand it?

And when Adam disobeyed God and sin, what he did was he brought sin into all of mankind.

Meaning, we all have inherited his fallenness and his sinful nature.

We all know what it's like to inherit a trait from our parents or from our grandparents.

You know, sometimes we try to figure out where certain traits come from.

Or like, where did he get their height from?

His mom or his dad wasn't so tall, that that height must have come from someone else in the family.

Or we we might say, where did he or she get their good looks from?

Because their mom and dad isn't so never mind.

We know what it's like to inherit something or to get a trait from our ancestors.

That's what it's like to inherit Adam's fallen.

We can trace our sinful passions back and our sinful desires and natural unwillingness to live righteously back to Adam.

Now that doesn't mean we aren't responsible for our own sin.

We sin willfully, but it does give us an idea of what kind of nature that we have when we're born.

We have been born into Adam.

This is why Christians must be born again into Christ.

We must place our faith and follow the new Adam, which is Jesus Christ.

The Christian lives with this tension of knowing that we are walking in the newness of life, growing in confidence that we are new creatures in Christ, that we have died to sin and now live to righteousness, but also reminding ourselves that we still live with the remnants of our fallness.

That we have not yet been glorified.

So we still must wage war against our sinful nature.

Yes, it's been weakened.

Yes, as we walk in sanctification, it is being put to death day by day.

But we have to remember that our sinful and fallen nature still has a heartbeat.

And our old heart will always wage war against our new one.

This is why we must know what this old heart is capable of.

Matthew 15, 19 says this for out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual morality, theft, false witness, slander.

These are what defile a person.

So Jesus is saying, these things come from yourself, they come from the heart.

They spring from the heart.

You know, the Bible speaks of the devil as this enemy.

We often consider him as a great enemy because he is an enemy.

But every day we are facing an even greater enemy, which is our own sinful passions.

Remember, Satan is a created being.

Christians, you know, we're prone to blame the devil for every little thing.

That's the devil's fault.

The devil's attack.

The devil must be doing this, the devil must be at work.

Someone once asked, someone once said they saw the devil in the corner crying and they asked him, what's wrong?

And he said, The Christians are being needed to be again.

They keep blaming me for everything.

Now we're going to talk about the devil's tactics in a moment.

But the devil doesn't have to work overtime to get us to fall into sin.

You know, sometimes the best thing that he can do is just leave us alone.

Because we can often recognize the devil's attacks.

Those fierce attacks that come from the devil might make us run to Christ, and he doesn't want us to do that.

But the everyday subtleties of our fallen nature, the tempting and the luring that come from our own hearts, those things are the ones we overlook.

Those are the things that catch us slipping by supplies.

So if we know that this is the nature that we are at war with, if we know that the enemy is our own fallenness and our own wicked heart and our own sinful passions and desires, then what is our strategy for that?

What is our plan to protect ourselves from those things?

Well, Jesus is giving us one here this morning in the Lord's Prayer.

It is by praying, it is by coming and seeking God and asking him to lead us not into temptation, to not allow us to be led astray from those temptations that come not just from without, but that come from within.

I read from James 1.13 earlier, but look at the verses immediately after that.

James 1.14 says, but each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own, not someone else's, not the devil's, but his own desire.

Then desire, when it is conceived, gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown, brings forth death.

You know, whenever we see people whose lives are a wreck or whose lives are in shambles, we can say that is the result of sin.

Maybe, maybe not theirs, maybe they're victim of someone's sin, but whatever the case, we can trace hurt and destruction and broken marriages and all these things back to sin.

The drug addict, the alcoholic, the broken home, the broken marriage, the violent person, the thief.

That is what it looks like when sin is fully grown, when sin has become an adult, it looks like that.

But as James says, it didn't start out fully grown.

It started out by being lured and enticed by someone's sinful desires.

And that's where it should have stopped.

The temptation that we have to sin, that lure, must be cut off at the head.

If not, what it's gonna do is gonna give birth to sin.

And that sin doesn't stay a baby forever.

As the text says, it grows.

And once it's grown, it's gonna bring forth death.

Sin is out to kill your joy and your peace and to kill your marriage and your family and to kill every relationship that you have, to kill everything that you love and everything that you are.

Most importantly, it is out to kill your relationship with Jesus Christ.

So we pray, Father, lead me not into temptation to sin.

I know that my own thoughts and desires are going to try to lead me there and lead me away from you and to go to places where I don't want to go, but keep me from those places.

Let my desire for you be stronger than my desire to sin.

This prayer will lead us into other prayers.

When we pray, lead us not into temptation.

We are praying that we be led another way.

We don't want to go this way into temptation.

Lord, lead us a different way.

Help us to walk a different path.

So we pray prayers like, help me to walk in the spirit so that I will fulfill the lust of the flesh.

Help me to walk by faith and not by sight.

Help me to walk the narrow path that leads to life rather than that broad path that leads to destruction.

It will move us to pray that our thoughts are pure and that our hearts be righteous.

It'll move us to pray, Psalm 51, 10.

Create in me a clean heart, Over, and renew a right spirit within me.

We must be aware of the temptations that come from within me because that's what we are calling for.

That is where most of our temptations are going to come from.

They will come from our own sinful thoughts and our own sinful desires.

So we pray accordingly that we not fall under the weight of our own sinfulness, but that God would hold us fast, that Christ would be our deliverer, and the Spirit would be our guide.

Father, lead me not into the danger of temptations that come from my own heart.

Next, let's look at the temptations that come from Satan.

One thing that's clear in the Bible is that Satan is a temper.

Right?

Right at the very beginning, you open up the Bible and you see him there.

What is he doing?

He's tempting.

He's tempting Adam and Eve to disobey God.

And there he succeeded.

In the Gospels, he tempted Jesus to do the same, but there he failed.

And in other places of scripture, we see Satan doing the same thing.

He's entering or filling the hearts of the people to sin.

In 1 Chronicles 21:1, we are told that Satan incited David to sin and to number the people of Israel.

1 Chronicles 21:1

In Luke 22, 3, we read that Satan entered into Judas, got to betray Jesus.

In the book of Acts, when Ananias lied about the money that he received from his property, Peter asked, Why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit?

Yet in each of these cases, Satan is the one who's responsible for the sin.

King David was held responsible for numbering the people of his pride.

Judas is the one who's known to betray Jesus.

And Ananias and his wife were the ones who were struck down for lying to the Holy Spirit.

The devil may have tempted them, but they were responsible for their own sin.

This tells us two things.

Number one, Satan is a tempter, and we need to be aware of his tactics.

And number two, that when or if we are lured into temptation by into temptation by the devil, that God is going to hold us responsible.

The devil may be doing simply will not fly.

1 Peter 5.8.

Be sober-minded, be watchful.

Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.

Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world.

Back to the book of Jolphin.

You know, one thing that we learned in that story is that the devil needs permission to have his way with the child of God.

So the Christian's biggest challenge when it comes to Satan is not what he can do to us, but what he can tempt us to do to God, which is disobeying.

Because remember, the devil isn't sovereign, God is.

So whatever the devil does to us by way of attack, we know that God must have allowed it.

If God allowed it, then it must be for our own good.

It must be to grow our faith or to strengthen us or to persevere us.

When we think of Satan's attacks, we usually think of them coming in the form of disrupting our marriage or bringing division in the family or maybe attacking us physically or financially or mentally in some way.

And again, as we see in Job, God might give him permission to attack us in those ways and to try us in those ways.

But the devil's main form of attack is to lure us into believing him over God, to believe that his ways are better than God's ways.

And that these attacks are going to come to us day after day, night after night, in this way, by getting us to disbelieve or not believe God.

You know, one of the simplest ways to recognize Satan's temptations is when we are tempted to not believe God in his word.

When we begin to question God's goodness, when we begin to question his love for us, or when we begin to question whether his way is even right or not.

Because he doesn't, the devil doesn't usually need to tempt us with pride or with lust or with coveting.

He can just let us be for those things.

Because again, those things often spring from within our heart.

Ephesians 6 11 tells us, put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.

The schemes of the devil.

He's a scheme of it.

And his plans are more elaborate than putting an attractive man or woman in front of you.

His schemes are bigger than putting you in a situation where you can somehow steal some money and get away with it.

Now he might do that from time to time.

But the devil's a lot smarter than that.

He has a greater end.

He wants to lure, this is his end.

He wants to lure your heart away from God.

He wants you to believe that the Bible and God's word is alive.

And that Jesus isn't the good news that you thought he was.

So he's going to tempt you with things that seem more attractive to you than serving the Lord.

You say, how can you say that?

Because we see it in the Bible.

That was his plan from the beginning.

That was his plan for the two adults to get them to believe his lies over God's truth.

So back to the prayer.

When we pray, lead us not into temptation, we are praying that our hearts and minds be guarded from the lies of the devil.

That our trust in God's word would grow and that our faith in Christ would increase day by day.

Because these are the temptations that the devil is going to come at us with.

And we pray that our Heavenly Father would help us against those schemes.

Because let's face it, if we're honest, we know these temptations very well.

They will come to us in various forms.

They often come to us when we don't understand what God is doing.

They come to us when our traitors are not getting answered.

Or they come to us when we decide to serve the Lord and do ministry and do things for Him, and all of a sudden things everywhere start falling apart.

They come when we say, God, what are you doing?

What are you doing in my life?

I'm serving you.

I'm doing the right things.

I've been praying.

I've even been fasting.

And I try to live my life faithfully according to your word, but nothing in my life seems to be going right.

Nothing in my life seems to be working.

In fact, things seem to be getting worse.

And look, I'm not saying those times are easy.

Or that in those times there aren't real questions that you have for God at the moment.

But here's the danger.

When those questions start turning into doubt.

When the questions turn from God, what are you doing?

To God, are you even there?

Or God, do you even love me?

Or even worse, God, are you even real?

And this is where the devil is.

And this is where his temptations are.

And this is where he likes to play.

This is where his strongest temptations are going to come from.

Not little sins here or there.

Not temptations to give a glance here or there.

But to destroy your faith in God.

This is destructive unbelief that he's at.

Going back to if you Ephesians 6, or you read about the devil's schemes, notice what the full armor of God attends.

Little dinky passage, but let me read, starting in verse 12.

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in heavenly places.

Therefore, take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand 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, which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one.

Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God, praying in all times of the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication.

To that end, keep alert, with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints.

When we look at the armor of God, we see that most of it is used for defense.

Only one piece, the word of God, is used for offense.

And notice what these pieces symbolize.

They symbolize truth, the righteousness, the peace of the gospel, and faith and salvation.

That should tell us something about the devil's strategy, which is his strategy, which is to attack what we believe about God and what we believe about God's word.

Not loss, not sickness, not poverty, which many Christians will blame him for, but lies.

And temptations to fall into sin and uncertainty and doubt.

Anything that will try and shape our faith.

So we are to defend the devil's temptation and his lies with the truth of God's word.

We are to defend his lures into sin with the righteousness of Christ.

We are to defend his tunnel and chaos with the gospel of peace.

We are to defend his seeds of doubt with having faith in God's promises.

And when he messes with our minds and our thoughts and says that we're not loved by God, we are to put on the helmet of salvation which guards our thoughts and guards our minds and brings us back to remembering God's love and how much he's shown his love to us by sending his son, his only son, Jesus Christ to die for also.

And we ask the Father to lead us not into these temptations that might shake our faith.

We ask that our faith be strengthened and that it is not shaken or overthrown by the lies of the devil.

We'll love nothing more than to get us believing Him or God.

Next and lastly, temptations will come from the world.

Temptations will come from the world.

In many ways.

The temptations that come from the world are a combination of the temptations that spring from the first two that I mentioned, from within and from Satan.

We are tempted by the natural course of this world, which Satan is influencing.

Let me give you a definition, a working definition of what the world, but how we can define how scripture speaks of the world.

It is the fallen system of humanity, together with it with its values, its desires, its priorities, and its culture.

It's anything that stands in opposition to God and seeks to draw us away from Christ.

That's what we want.

In 1 John 2.16, we are told, For all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh, and the desires of the eyes, and the pride of life is not from the Father, it's from the world.

Thomas Watson says, The world is a flattering enemy.

It courts us, and it might deceive us.

This is why Scripture speaks of the world as that which opposes God.

It's what draws many men and women away from God.

The world will promise many of you happiness, but it will deliver misery.

It will promise peace, but it will deliver strife.

It will promise you riches, but it will deliver your soul into poverty.

1 Timothy 6, 9.

But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful, harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.

Beware of the world's temptations.

Because they're everywhere.

They're at our workplaces, they're on our social media fields.

They're in the music that we listen to.

They're in the shows and the movies we watch.

They can even come from friends and family.

In many ways, the world's temptations can be the most dangerous temptations.

Because they come to us in normal, everyday ways.

They come to us when we're minding our own business.

When we're trying not to get into any trouble.

Again, it's growing that food or watching that show or hanging out with a good friend.

The world will position itself as the normal way of life.

You're the odd one.

You, Christian, you're the one that is not living right.

You're the one that's not living normal.

The world will say I'm normal, and it will try and tempt us to adapt to it.

It will set our eyes on what it promises while taking our eyes off of Christ.

It will draw our hearts to things like status and influence and comfort.

It will put things like education and careers and youth sports over serving the Lord.

Not that any of those things are sinful or even harmful in themselves, but we must be careful to always be aware of the deceitfulness of the world.

Because when harmless things pull us away from God, they stop being harmless.

They start leading us into sin.

Romans 12, 2 tells us, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you might discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

So to pray, lead us not into temptation, is to ask the Father to not allow us to be enticed by the deceitfulness of this world, to allow us not to fall for its intoxicating aroma, to keep us from being blinded by the world's glamour and seduced by its allurance.

We don't ask them that he would take us out of the world, but we do ask that through his power we might overcome the world, just like his son did.

That we might be a light to the world rather than the world being a light to us.

You know, as Christians, we are supposed to be drawing the world to God.

But too many times the world is the one that is drawing Christians to it.

How do we change that?

Because that should be reversed.

Instead of Christians being drawn to the world, the world needs to be drawn to Christ.

Because here's the thing: the world cannot offer you what Christ can offer you.

The beauty of this world will pale in comparison to the beauty of Christ.

Everything that is in this world is but a cheap imitation of the goodness that is found in Christ Jesus.

So we pray.

Father, allow us to see that and allow our friends and our family members to see that.

Open our eyes, open their eyes to this truth, to see that nothing in this world compares to the world that is of Christ, to know that this world is but fleeting, when Christ is enduring, that this world is perishing, what Christ is living.

Father, help me to see that what Jesus offers me is infinitely more greater than anything that this world can offer me.

Lord, help me to see this world of what it truly is.

This world is nothing but wanting to pull my heart and tug my heart away from my dear Savior.

It is wanting me to trample on the blood of Christ.

It wants me to look away from the beauty of the cross.

And it wants to tempt me with fake allure and beauty.

To give my heart over to it for help me to see this.

Keep me from this.

And there's one other temptation that comes to the world that I must mention that we can't overlook.

It's the temptation to be drawn away from the Lord through the world of suffering.

We live in a fallen world.

We live in a world full of sickness, pain, loss, and heartbreak, and these things are normal in this world.

It's not that sin is working overtime in these ways.

These are the things that come from living in a sin-sick world.

These are the things that come from living in a volume world.

Things are not right here.

And every day when you get sick, when you get pain, and when you feel sorrow, and when you feel lost, that is to remind you that things are not right here.

That you long for a better place.

And we're going to go in this world, we're going to go through trials that come from simply living in this world.

And these sufferings and these trials are going to tempt our hearts to be drawn away from God.

They're going to tempt our hearts to even at times resent God and not trust God.

God, where are you in my suffering?

God, where are you in my loss?

These are some of the strongest temptations.

But here's the good news.

No temptation is overtaking 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 might be able to endure in.

There is no temptation that is stronger than the power of God.

You need not fear the temptations that come your way.

You need not fear any temptation that man might fall into because God has promised that He will always make provision to keep you from falling.

To be encouraged.

And to always be in guard from these temptations.

I'll mention them again.

Beware of the temptations that come from within.

Beware of the temptations that come from your own heart.

Beware of the places it will lead you.

Your most frequent temptations will come from your own thoughts and your own lusts, your own passions, and your own desires.

This is why you must die daily.

This is why you must put to sin to death.

You must put sin to death every day.

You must be aware and guard your hearts and minds with the truth of God's word.

Ask the Lord to lead you not into the temptations that come from within you.

Next, you must guard yourself from the temptations that come from the devil.

He is the great deceiver.

He is a liar from the beginning.

And he will tell you that everything and anything is better than following Christ.

He will try to get you to question God and His Word and His love for you.

Don't believe it.

The devil is never looking out for your messengers.

He's only looking to devour.

He's only looking to destroy.

Ask the Lord, lead you not into to lead you not into the temptations that come from the great deceit of the devil.

And thirdly, guard yourself from the temptations that come from the story.

They can be subtle and they can be deceived.

And they can come into us and honor this way.

They will come and they will pull our hearts and try to pull our affections away from the Lord.

Here's the remedy for that.

Grow your love for Christ.

Set your heart upon him.

Let Jesus be sweeter to you than sin in the world.

The more your heart desires Christ, the less it will desire the world.

Ask God to lead you not into the temptations that come from this world.

One final encouragement.

Whenever you think, Christian, it should powerless against these temptations.

These temptations that come from within you, the ones that come from the devil, the ones that come from the world.

Remember who is living in you.

Remember that Christ lives in you.

And He is the one who has already conquered.

Hebrews 4:15.

Hebrews 4:15

But we do not have a heart who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who is in every respect has been tempted as we are.

You can overcome because Christ is over there.

You are more than a conqueror because he is.

You can resist the devil because he did it.

You can triumph because he has.

When you pray, lead me not into temptation.

You are praying, Father, lead me the ways down the ways of your son Jesus Christ.

Lead me in his ways.

Let me walk in his path.

Not in my own.

Remember, when you pray this prayer, he's a good father.

And he's a father who loves to hear and listen to the prayers of his beloved children.

And then that's right.