Lead us not into temptation

This morning we wrap up with our final sermon in our series going through the Lord's Prayer.

We've gone through a lot, we've covered a lot, you know, verse by verse in this prayer.

And my hope is that it has given you greater shape, greater understanding, greater clarity to prayer.

And again, just as a reminder, this prayer that Jesus gave the disciples, it's not it's it's a model, it's a framework for prayer.

It's not necessarily that you pray this verbatim and it's the only way you pray.

Uh, you can do that, but it's more of a model and framework for prayer.

So if you've got your Bibles, uh you can open it to Matthew 6 or follow along on the screen.

Matthew 6, starting in verse 9.

This then is how you should pray.

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

Give us today our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we have also forgiven our debtors, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.

Anybody ever go on a strict diet?

Right?

No more sugar, no more carbs, and then you find yourself at one in the morning, you know, standing in front of an open refrigerator in your underwear, eating cold leftover pasta out of a plastic tub with your bare hands, right?

You look like a raccoon that that just broke into a dumpster.

Right at 8 a.m., you are this amazing athlete.

You are focused, but by midnight, well, your willpower completely evaporated.

Now here's the truth.

Your willpower is garbage.

My willpower is garbage.

We love to pretend we're strong, mature, disciplined followers of Jesus.

But if you put the wrong thing in front of you at the wrong hour when you're tired or lonely or stressed out, well, you fold like a cheap lawn chair.

Amen?

I mean, I know I do that.

So stop lying to yourself about how strong you are.

Say, Jesus did not teach us to pray for willpower.

He taught us to pray for deliverance.

He said, lead us not into temptation.

Right?

Don't even let me in the kitchen at 1 a.m.

That's what Matthew 6.13 is all about.

The last thing that Jesus teaches us to pray says, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.

Church, here's the here's my entire sermon in three simple sentences.

The battle is real, the war is already won, so pray.

And we're gonna dive into that.

Now I know some of you with my refrigerator hook, maybe some of you are thinking, well, I you know, I don't really have a sugar or carbs problem.

Okay, I hear you.

Let me let me widen the net a little bit.

Some of you aren't drinking on weekdays anymore, and you've convinced yourself you've got a handle on it.

Some of you are looking at porn after everybody's asleep in bed.

In fact, you've deleted that app twice in the same month.

Some of you are sleeping with somebody you already know you're not gonna marry.

Some of you, some of you have been kind to everybody at the office all week long, but then cold and angry to everybody else in your house.

And then there's some of you, you're not fighting any of that this morning.

You're just tired.

You've been faithful a long time, and you're running on fumes.

Maybe some of you, maybe you've asked God, maybe more than once, to just let Him take you home.

So, church, I'm not saying, you know, I know, I know some of you are trying.

I'm not making fun of any of you for trying.

Understand, wanting to be free from whatever sin has got you captive, fighting to be free, it is the right thing to want.

I mean, some of you have been fighting for your lives in ways many of us can't even imagine.

The question isn't whether you've been trying, the question is why isn't it working?

So we're gonna look at this verse, one piece at a time.

We're gonna look at the first section, lead us not into temptation.

Now, that word temptation, it's it's actually it's actually a pretty challenging word to translate.

In the Greek, the word is parasmos.

And that word, in a sense, has has two sides to it.

On one side, it means a test or a trial.

On the other side, it means a pull towards sin.

It can be considered like a trap.

It's pulling you toward sin, right?

One side, test or trial, on the other side, a pull towards sin.

In fact, James uses this word in the book of James.

Chapter one, he says he says, to count it all joy when you fall into trials.

Right?

That's this word for the truth for the word trials, it's the same word, yet he's looking at it from a place of joy.

But then a few verses later, he uses the word again, and he says, he says that God tempts nobody.

Same word.

God tempts nobody.

It's the same word.

So the Bible uses this one word in two ways, which tells us something.

It means that the word by itself doesn't tell you what you're dealing with.

Let me let me help you think about it like this.

Think about two men with a knife.

Two men with a knife.

One of them is a surgeon.

He is cutting you open to save your life.

The other one is standing in the parking lot at midnight, and he is cutting you to end you.

Same blade, same cut, same blood on the floor.

And you can't tell which one it is by how much it hurts.

Right?

Because you have to know whose hand is on the knife.

Church, here's what I need you to hear this morning.

Life is full of tests.

Life is full of tests.

Jesus knows that, which is why he gives us this prayer.

Every hard thing in your life can become a battleground with two people working it.

God testing you in it, and the devil tempting you in it.

God testing you in it, and the devil tempting you in it.

You see, God wants something out of that test.

He wants you to grow in your character, he wants you to trust him, he is building you up.

But now the devil, he wants something out of that same test.

He's trying to get you back at that refrigerator at one in the morning.

He's trying to get you to that bottle.

He's trying to get you to pick up that phone in the middle of the night.

He is trying to take a hard week and use it to get you to stop believing God is good to you.

What he's doing is he's trying to tear you down.

God is trying to build you up, the devil is trying to tear you down.

And let me let me back this up so that you you're convinced and know that what I'm saying is true.

Four chapters earlier, Matthew 4, verse 1.

Matthew 4:1

Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.

Did you guys catch that?

The Spirit led him, the devil tempted him.

There are two hands on it.

One's proving the Son of God, the other one is trying to destroy him.

And listen, church, that same battle plays out again and again in the Christian life.

And here's what that actually means for you.

That means your enemy, your enemy is what that hard season, what hard season you might be going through, is trying to turn you into.

In other words, the great question that you should be asking isn't, will I get through this?

The better question is, who will I be when I come out on the other side?

See, because that that hard week that you're going through, that that hard test that you're going through in your life, it can turn you bitter or dishonest or hopeless, or send you looking for relief somewhere that God told you not to go.

Or that same week can make you patient, honest, gentle, kind, faithful, loving towards other people.

Look at the words Jesus gives us.

He says, lead us not into temptation.

In fact, here's the picture of what you're actually asking for.

In Jewish history, they actually had a kind of a clearer, plainer version of this.

The picture was this Father, don't let temptation get its hands on me.

Don't let temptation get its hands on me.

Like it's got fingers and it's gonna grab you.

Church, understand, this isn't a prayer to skip the test.

Jesus never promised you an easy life.

It's a prayer not to be carried away by it.

Now, I told you there were two people working it.

God and the devil.

Kind of lied to you.

There's actually three.

Because there's you.

See, church, every single one of us gets dragged off by our own desire.

Our own.

Not the devil's desire, not the world's desire, your desire.

And I know what some of us do with this.

We we we like, you know, some of us we like to blame it all on the devil.

The devil got me this week.

The devil's been after me this week.

Church, the devil can't make you open that app up at midnight.

He can't make you do that.

The devil can't make you eat the ice cream.

The devil can't pour the drink and make you drink it.

The devil does not control you.

He's not inside you.

What he does is he exploits what's already in you.

He takes your desires, your weaknesses, your patterns, and he turns the burners up.

But, church, understand this: the desire was yours.

That's why temptation is so hard.

Somewhere in us, sin is offering something that we want.

And that's why the fight is real.

I mean, think about Peter.

Many of you may probably know the story.

Jesus tells Peter, before this night is over, you're going to deny three times that you even know me.

And Peter basically responds with, whoa, not a chance, not me.

I mean, everybody else might fall away, but me?

No, no, no, I won't.

I'm ready to go to prison with you.

I'm ready to die with you.

And Peter meant it.

I mean, he really believed there was no circumstance strong enough to make him deny Jesus.

And you know how the story goes.

A few hours later, Jesus has been arrested.

Peter's standing outside by a fire, and a servant girl looks at him and says, You were with Jesus too, weren't you?

Peter looks at her and says, Whoa, no, no, no, I don't know what you're talking about.

We're not talking about a soldier with a sword asking him this.

We're talking about a servant girl with a question.

And Peter folds.

See, Peter's greatest weakness was a thing he thought was his greatest strength.

He thought he was strong enough.

Look, he didn't need to be stronger.

He needed to know that he wasn't.

That's why Jesus teaches you to pray that the battle is real.

Maybe some of you have had this one sentence in your head, maybe your whole life, you know, try harder, be better, do better.

But church, remember how Jesus taught us to start this prayer.

He's told us to start off with our Father.

You are his child.

You're not crying out to some God who's standing at some distant place waiting to see whether or not you're strong enough.

You are talking to your Father.

A Father who loves you the way he loves Jesus.

A Father who already knows exactly how weak you are.

And he knows that the tests are coming.

So stop telling yourself, try harder, do better.

In fact, let me give you a better sentence.

Father, don't let it get its hands on me.

Father, don't let it take me.

Don't let this test of life take me into sin.

That's the first part of this verse.

Lead us not into temptation.

But now let's look at the second half of the verse.

But deliver us from the evil one.

Now, church, I've told you already that the devil wants to use this test to pull you away from God.

And now Jesus is telling us to pray about him directly.

So, let me tell you who you're actually dealing with here.

The Bible calls him a lot of things.

Satan, the devil, the adversary, the slanderer, the accuser, the tempter, the thief, a murderer, the father of lies.

Church, this is not a hobby.

This is a job description.

And I know some of you, you some of you don't think about the devil much at all, and you you underestimate him.

Honestly, I do that.

I underestimate his work in this world.

I mean, some of you might still be picturing a cartoon character: red suit, little horns, pointytail, pitchfork.

Maybe he's standing on some hot sauce, I don't know.

But nobody's scared of that guy.

And that works really good for him.

But then some of you got the opposite problem.

Some of you think he's behind everything.

Every difficult thing is a spiritual demonic attack against you.

Every sickness, every closed door, every flat tire in the church parking lot, and you've made him more powerful than he is.

In fact, church, let's let's play a little game for a minute.

What's the opposite of up?

Down.

What's the opposite of tall?

Short, opposite of big, small, opposite of hot, cold, easy, right?

Alright, what's the opposite of God?

There isn't one.

There isn't one.

Yeah, the devil wanted to be God, he's not God.

And for no takers, write this one down.

God knows everything.

The devil does not.

Scripture says about God that you alone know the hearts of all.

Understand, that belongs to God.

Church, the devil cannot read your mind.

But now hear me.

Here's why you better take him seriously.

Listen, he can't touch God.

He tried that and lost.

So he comes after God's people instead.

Jesus said in John 10 that the thief comes to steal and to kill and to destroy.

He can't get to the Father, so he goes after the Father's kids.

But I know some of you are thinking, well, wait a minute, if he can't make you do anything, if he can't get inside my mind, then what's he actually doing?

Look, the devil has seen the patterns of humanity longer than you and I have been alive.

He exploits the patterns of weakness.

He doesn't need to be all-knowing to know that human beings are vulnerable when we're tired or angry or lonely or anxious or afraid.

He knows the patterns.

Let's say your thing is pills.

Right?

You got a bottle of pills in the console of your truck.

Sunday night you told yourself you were done with these and you meant it.

You were dead serious.

But now it's Friday.

It's been a long week.

You're sitting in the driveway and you haven't gone into the house yet.

See, church, the devil didn't need to read your mind in that driveway.

Didn't have to.

Temptation knows how to exploit a pattern.

And remember, the desire is yours.

He didn't put the desire in you.

You already had that.

And you start thinking about that console.

And let me be real with you, the temptation is real.

Right?

Let me put it this way.

Actually, let me give you a qualifier first.

Because I need you to understand something.

Being tempted is not the same thing as being taken into sin.

You guys hearing me?

You guys tracking with that?

Being tempted is not the same as being taken into sin.

Jesus Himself was tempted, yet without sin.

But you and I, we're not Jesus.

Temptation finds something in us, a desire, a craving, something in our fallen nature or in our fallen heart that says, I want this.

Something that we shouldn't necessarily want.

And church, that desire itself is part of the sin in us.

But I don't want you to confuse him.

I don't want you to confuse temptation with surrender.

At the same time, don't make peace with the sinful desire either.

Don't entertain it.

Don't cherish it.

Don't welcome it in.

Don't obey it.

Look, the bottle is still closed.

But see, this is where Saiyan shows you something.

This is where Saiyan he's clever.

He kind of does this, he shows you the bait, but he hides the hook.

And the bait is real.

Right?

That that pill works.

It's gonna take it's gonna take the edge off.

And he she he shows you that.

He shows you that, yeah, it's gonna make you feel better.

So so just go ahead, just one time.

You know what he doesn't show you?

He doesn't show you Saturday morning when it's worn off and you're worse than before.

He doesn't show you next Friday when when one pill won't cut it.

He doesn't show you next year when when now you need two or three or four just to get through the day.

He showed you one night.

He never showed you the rest of your life.

And then after that, he's still not finished with you.

Now he starts talking to you.

See, you did it again.

You're never gonna beat this.

You stand up in church on Sunday morning and you sing those songs and you pray those prayers, and then you come home and you do this, you do this sin.

Oh gosh, don't bother praying about it.

I mean, God heard this from you a hundred times.

Don't even bother.

Church, that's the accuser.

That's the evil one.

That's who Jesus told you to pray about, to pray against.

You see, in temptation, the devil makes the sin look small.

But after you sin, oh, he makes it look enormous.

And he makes the Savior look small.

See, church, it's never about the pills.

It's never just about the sin struggle.

What he wants is he wants you to stop praying to God.

And God is telling you don't fall for the lies.

Don't fall for the lies of the devil.

Now, some of you might have this.

This feeling going on right now.

Maybe, maybe this thing in your chest, maybe a tightening.

If you feel that, if you feel this ache, don't just don't just don't just put the battery in the drawer.

Right?

You know how a smoke alarm works?

Right?

When it when it goes off at four in the morning, you know, it starts screaming, and your first thought is make it stop.

Just make it stop.

So you get up there, you pull the battery out, and you throw it in the drawer and you go back to bed.

Don't do that.

You see, the alarm isn't the problem.

The alarm is telling you there's smoke somewhere in the house.

That's what's happening in you, in some of you right now.

Maybe your stomach is turning.

Maybe your heart rate is increasing.

Maybe there's this ache inside you.

Maybe, maybe it's the Holy Spirit convicting you.

Right?

That's a voice telling you that something is wrong.

But you got you gotta be able to know the difference between the voices.

See, if one of them says you're disgusting, stay out of there.

Don't don't you go near God after what you did.

That's one voice.

There's another voice that says, This is burning you down, it is crushing you.

Get out of there.

The one that's telling you to get out of there, that's God.

See, the voice, one of the voices is going to be the Holy Spirit, and he's gonna drive you to God.

But the other voice, the false voice, is gonna try and drive you away from him.

That's how you know what you which voice you're dealing with.

The voice telling you to come back to God, that's the Holy Spirit.

If he's telling you, no, you can't go to God after what you did, that's the accuser.

That's the evil one.

And church, look, I know some of you, I know some of you aren't dealing with temptation anymore.

You're way past that.

And some of you feel handcuffed.

You feel like you're in a prison of your own sin.

And you feel like there's there's no way out, and the weight of it is crushing you.

If that's you, then this prayer is for you.

Deliver us.

In other words, father, rescue me.

Because church, the devil already lost.

The war is already won.

So you don't need to pretend you're fine.

You know, like like Ross from Friends.

Any Friends fans in here?

Anyone ever seen Friends?

Right?

If you haven't, let me give you some context.

The lot, you know, Ross, love of his life, named Rachel.

They dated, they broke up.

Then he finds out that Rachel is dating his friend Joey, and they look at Ross and like, Ross, are you okay?

And he's like, I'm fine, really, I'm fine.

I don't know why it's coming out all squeaky like this.

I'm fine.

You follow?

Churches, we've gotten really good at that.

Every Sunday morning, how you doing?

I'm fine, I'm good.

Even when you're not.

Let me say something to you as your pastor.

We are not going to be that church.

If you're not fine, tell someone.

Tell someone in your Bible study group.

Tell someone you're close with here at church.

Hey, come and tell me.

Let me know, Pastor, there's this thing that has got a hold on me.

And understand something, you're not gonna get a lecture from me or from any of the other leaders in our church.

No, what you're gonna get, we're gonna sit with you.

We're gonna talk with you, we're gonna pray with you, we're gonna walk you out of it together.

That's the kind of church we're gonna be.

Which now brings me to the words deliver us.

If you've been part of a church for any length of time, you you probably heard those words, deliver, deliver, deliverance, deliver us.

Church, this isn't some nice churchy word.

It's a rescue word.

It means to snatch out, to drag clear.

It's what you yell when you're in the water drowning and you can't get out on your own.

And Jesus, he puts that word in the prayer.

In a prayer, he told you to pray every day.

Not on your worst day, every day.

I want to highlight a psalm that kind of in my mind highlights the way God rescues.

I'm not gonna put it on the screen.

I want you to just hear the words.

I want you to pay attention to these words.

It comes from Psalm 107.

Some sat in darkness, prisoners suffering in iron chains, because they rebelled against God's commands and despised the plans of the Most High.

Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble, and he saved them.

He brought them out of darkness and broke away their chains.

Did you guys catch that?

Did you guys catch where they were?

Right?

They were these people, they rebelled against God, they despised what he said, they put themselves in that prison cell.

But then they turned back to God, they cried out to him, and the Lord saved them.

He rescued them.

He brought them out of darkness and broke away the chains.

Some of you may be in that place right now.

Some of you may have rebelled against God.

Some of you may have despised his words and come against him.

He is calling you to turn back to him.

He is calling you to cry out to him and have confidence that when you do, he will rescue you.

He will break those chains.

See that word deliver, rescue.

Paul, the apostle Paul, picks up that same word in Colossians.

Same word with one difference.

He puts it in the past tense.

He says, For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of his son, who he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

If you are in Christ Jesus, he has rescued you.

Past tense.

Right?

You're in that driveway praying, rescue me.

And Paul says something decisive has already happened.

You don't belong to the kingdom of darkness anymore.

You belong to the kingdom of his son.

You belong to the kingdom of light.

He came and he got you and he transferred you into the kingdom of his son.

And Hebrews 2 tells us he took on, Jesus took on flesh and blood, the same flesh you and I have got, so that by his death he could break the power of the devil and set people free who spent their lives, their whole lives, scared.

Their whole lives.

Some of you have been scared for years.

Turn back to the Lord.

Turn back to God.

Now, church taking on flesh and blood wasn't the end of what Jesus did.

That's just how he got here.

How far did Jesus go?

Go with me to the garden on Thursday night.

Jesus walks up to his friends.

He tells them, watch and pray.

Watch and pray so you don't walk into temptation.

And then he says, The Son of Man is delivered into the hands of sinners.

Into the hands.

I told you earlier, the prayer, Father, don't let it get its hands on me.

Jesus, he went the other way.

He heard them coming.

He didn't run.

He walked toward the torches.

He walked towards the swords.

He held out his wrists and let them tie him up.

They put their hands on him, their creator.

They beat him with their hands.

They drove nails through his hands.

He let them get their hands on him.

Why?

So that the hands of the evil one could never have you.

Church, the battle is still real.

You're gonna feel it on a Friday night, but the war is already won.

Sin does not get the final word.

Satan does not get the final word.

Hell does not get the final word.

Jesus does.

And I know for some of you, you quit praying about whatever whatever thing you're struggling with, whatever it is, your thing, whatever it is, you quit praying about it a long time ago.

I want you to remember Peter, the one who denied Jesus, the man who thought he was strong and found out he wasn't.

Before Peter ever failed, before he failed, Jesus had already said to him, Satan has asked to sift you like wheat.

But I I've prayed for you that your faith may not fail.

See, before Peter ever failed, Jesus was praying for him.

Church, even if your prayers have gone quiet, his didn't.

Jesus is praying for you right now.

He never stopped.

And look, I know some of you in here, you aren't fighting anything this morning.

You're just tired.

Well, he's praying for you too.

He is praying for you too.

Now here's something that's been sitting in this prayer the whole time.

I've said it multiple weeks as we've gone through this series.

There's no I in it.

Lead us.

Deliver us.

Jesus never taught you to pray this by yourself.

Whatever's got you this morning, the person sitting maybe three seats down.

Fighting something too.

You just can't see it.

Church, you and I, we were never meant to do this alone.

So here's what we're gonna do before we leave.

I want you to turn to somebody.

Your husband, your wife, the person next to you.

And if you came here by yourself this morning, find someone.

Go to someone.

Do not be alone.

Do not sit here alone.

Not this morning.

We're gonna pray for one another.

We're gonna pray together.

Now I'm not saying you gotta tell the person what sin struggle you're going through.

You don't have to tell them what it is, you don't have to explain anything.

Just pray for each other.

Just pray for each other.

And I'm gonna make it really simple for you.

I mean, I'm gonna give you two sentences to use to pray.

Father, whatever they're going through, Father, don't let it take them.

But if it has, Father, rescue them.

Rescue them.

So I want you to turn to somebody right now.

And if you're by yourself, find somebody.

Spend some time praying for one another.

Look if you've been fighting alone, maybe for a long time, I want you to know that you are not alone anymore.

You have a community behind you.

We're in this together.

We are in this fight together.

The battle is real, but church, we know that the war is already won.

So, God, yours is the kingdom, not the one that's got a hold of me, not the one that's got a hold of your people.

We know that yours is the kingdom.

Yours is the power.

And yours is the glory forever.

Amen.