Well do please take your Bibles in hand and turn with me to the gospel according to Matthew, chapter 6; page 811 in the church Bibles. And we are continuing today our ongoing study of the teaching of Jesus in the gospels on the subject of prayer. For the last several weeks, we have been working our way, line by line, through the Lord’s Prayer, which begins in Matthew 6 verse 9. And we’ve come today to the sixth petition, the sixth request of the Lord’s Prayer – “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” Today we are going to focus on the first half of the sixth petition and then next Lord’s Day, or the next time we are together, we will consider the second half.
You will remember the fourth petition prays for daily bread. It’s a prayer for provision. The fifth petition prays for forgiveness. It’s a prayer for pardon. This is a prayer for God to keep us from temptation. It’s a prayer for protection. And here again, let’s notice the logic and the order of Jesus’ prayer. Having asked for forgiveness, only then does He teach us to move on to pray about the danger of temptation. Isn’t that interesting? Think about that order for a moment. If it were us, I suspect, we would likely start with temptation and then turn to those occasions when we have given into temptation and fallen into sin, and only then begin to ask for forgiveness. But that is not the order of the Lord’s Prayer. Do you see that? It’s not the order because Jesus knows the human heart very well. He knows that we are sinners already and that is why we sin and why we fall into temptation as easily and as readily as we do. And so He starts with the presupposition, not that we somehow become guilty given the right set of circumstances, but that we are already guilty – guilty in Adam with the guilt of his first transgression, and guilty by the constant accumulation every day of our own willful transgressions. We start out as debtors who need their debts to be forgiven, and then in this sinful condition, weak and broken as we are, subject to many temptations, we flee to Him asking for His protection.
And putting the matter like that, with the sober recognition of our sin and guilt and need for pardon first, before calling us to pray against the temptations by which we are constantly assailed, putting the matter that way underscores for us how urgent and necessary the sixth petition of the Lord’s Prayer really is. We do not come to the subject of temptation, you see, in a position of strength and security and confidence in our own ability to be good and to do good, to stand firm and to fight off the evil one. No, we come as sinners, already devoid of all hope save in God’s sovereign mercy. We come to the sixth petition aware that in countless ways already we have in fact given way to temptation. Haven’t we? We’ve crumbled at the slightest pressure; caved in at the merest enticement. The sixth petition, you see, is a vital prayer. It’s vital for all of us who have any sense of their weakened, fragile hearts. If you find yourself saying of your own heart, “Lord, I am prone to wander; prone to leave the God I love,” this is a prayer you badly need to pray.
The Lord Jesus certainly saw the urgency of this prayer. You remember the occasion in the Garden of Gethsemane when He took His disciples with Him prior to His great ordeal of suffering at the cross. And before He withdrew to be alone to pray, He exhorted them – to do what? “Watch and pray lest you fall into temptation.” Twice over He said it. “Watch and pray lest you fall into temptation.” Prayer, Jesus wanted them to see, is their best defense when temptation comes. “Such as walk in, infectious places carry antidotes about them,” wrote the Puritan, Thomas Watson, “prayer is the best antidote against temptation. Temptation may bruise our heel, but by prayer, we wound the serpent’s head. When Satan assaults us furiously, let us pray fervently.” That’s the lesson of the sixth petition.
And we are going to ask three questions of it together this morning as we examine its message. We are going to ask, “Who?” “What?” and “How?” – “Who?” “What?” and “How?” First – “Who? Who does the tempting? Who is the tempter?” Secondly – “What? What does Jesus mean by temptation? What are we really asking for in this sixth petition?” And then finally – “How? How can we triumph over temptation when it comes?” Okay, so “Who?” “What?” and “How?” The tempter, the temptation, and the triumph. Before we dig into all of that, let’s turn to prayer and then we’ll read the passage and consider its teaching. Let us pray.
Lord Jesus, You spoke these words, You taught them to us. Now we ask You please to send us Your Spirit that they might be more than truths we know in our heads but that they might travel those twelve inches from our heads to our hearts and begin to change our lives and reshape the way we think about ourselves and about You and about the world; that we would cling to You anew because of the way You work by the Gospel through this portion of Your Word. And so we pray this in Your name, amen.
Matthew chapter 6 at the ninth verse. This is the Word of God:
“Pray then like this:
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 also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”
Amen, and we praise God that He has spoken in His holy, inerrant Word.
The Tempter – Who does the tempting?
The sixth petition of the Lord’s Prayer is both vital – it is urgent, necessary, indispensable – since every Christian is subject to countless temptations every day, we need to pray this prayer, and at the same time it’s unsettling; it is perplexing. “Lead us not into temptation,” we pray. I wonder, do you see the difficulty? It seems to imply the possibility that God does sometimes lead us exactly there, into temptation, and so we pray He would not do what we fear He might sometimes do. Is that what we are praying in the sixth petition? Does God tempt people to sin?
This is the first thing I want us to think about together for a moment. It is the “Who?” question. Who does the tempting? “Lead us not into temptation.” Who is the tempter? And the New Testament is actually very clear on the question. Listen to James 1:13. “Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God.’ For God cannot be tempted with evil and He Himself tempts no one.” That’s pretty definitive, isn’t it? God tempts no one. So what does it mean then to pray, “Lead us not into temptation”? I think it helps at this point to remember the second half of the sixth petition to which we will return to look at it in more detail, God willing, next time. The whole prayer says, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.” That little word, “but,” connects these two parts of the prayer. Doesn’t it? The first part of the prayer acknowledges God’s sovereignty. He leads us, He governs, He rules, He is in charge. But the second half of the prayer acknowledges that the devil is real and he is the tempter who assails us.
And when you see that, I think there’s some real encouragement for us in our own daily struggles with temptation. The sixth petition not only cries to God for deliverance from temptation, but by implication it also confesses that God is sovereign over temptation. And the best illustration I know of, of this point, comes in Matthew’s preface to his account of Jesus’ temptations in Matthew chapter 4 when He faced down the temptations of the devil in the wilderness of the Jordan. Matthew 4:1 says, “Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil.” “Jesus was led by the Spirit” – so far, so good. If that’s all the Lord’s Prayer taught us to pray there would be no difficulty, would there? “Father, lead us.” Wonderful. Amen! I hope you pray like that. “Lead me by Your Spirit like Jesus was led by Your Spirit.” But then Matthew says, “Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness,” and notice this language carefully – led for what purpose? Led to what end? Where was He led? Into what circumstance? “He was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted.” The Spirit led Jesus into temptation.
Now who was in charge? Who was sovereign in that moment? Who directed Him and led Him and governed His steps? It was God the Father, by His Spirit, directing the steps of His Son. God was sovereign, but did God do the tempting? No. “He was led into the wilderness by the Spirit to be tempted by the devil.” The devil is the one who tempted him. Now apply that to our own case. Does God sometimes lead us into temptation? In light of Matthew 4:1, I think we have to conclude that yes, God does sometimes lead us to temptation. But does God Himself ever tempt us? Again, Matthew 4:1 leads us to see that no, as James puts it, “He Himself never tempts anyone.” Sometimes God ordains and permits our exposure to temptations for His holy purposes and for our eventual and eternal good.
So for example, sometimes in our pride we think that we are standing firm. We have forgotten the exhortation of the apostle Paul, “If anyone thinks he stands firm, let him beware lest he fall.” And in our pride, in our presumption, we begin to take His grace for granted. And so God allows temptation to come to humble us and to remind us how badly we need Him. Or perhaps He intends to use us at some point later on to minister to others who are beset by these same temptations and so He allows us to go through them for a season before granting us some measure of victory over them. So that when the time comes, “with the comfort with which we ourselves have been comforted, we might be able to comfort others also.” There are a whole host of reasons that God might lead us into temptation. But we should never desire temptation, should we? We should pray the prayer Jesus gave us. “Keep us from it, if at all possible. Preserve us. We are weak and prone to crumble at the slightest provocation, and so lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.”
The Temptation – What does Jesus mean by temptation?
And that brings us neatly to the next question. First, “Who? Who is the tempter?” Not God, but the devil. The devil is the tempter but God, praise God, He remains sovereign even over the temptations of the evil one. But then secondly, “What? What does Jesus mean by temptation exactly? And what are we asking for, really, when we pray that He might not lead us into temptation?” Some people have pointed out that the Greek word for “temptation” there could also mean “test” or “trial.” “Lead us not into a time of testing,” or “a time of trial.” And that’s an attractive interpretation, mainly because it appears to absolve God altogether of ever leading His people into temptation. But there are several problems with it. First, we know that God does sometimes lead us into temptation. As we saw, He led Jesus into temptation. Secondly, the Bible positively teaches us elsewhere to pray for God to test us. Psalm 26:2, for example, David prays, “Prove me, O Lord, and try me, and test my heart and my mind.” Why would the Scriptures teach us to invite testing in one place only to have Jesus to teach us to ask God not to test us in another place? It doesn’t make any sense. And then thirdly, reading the sixth petition narrowly as a request to be led away from trials and tests, only makes sense without the second half of the sixth petition. “Deliver us from the evil one.” If He’s talking only about tests and trials, what do you do with the second half of the prayer which has a definite ethical and moral overtone? The particular trial in view is the trial of temptation, the trial that tempts us to sin.
And yet having said all of that, there is an important way that we should hold at least some element of both interpretations together. We can pray both, can’t we? “Lead us not into temptation,” and “Lead us not into a time of trial,” because hasn’t this been your experience – very often they come together, times of testing and trial, very often become moments of great temptation where we struggle to remain faithful. Take chronic illness as an example. Perhaps it’s been designed by God in our unique circumstances to humble us, to drive us to Him, to make us look to the Lord with new urgency, to depend upon Him for His grace. And yet in our particular case, in that moment, it has also become an opportunity for Satan to tempt us to unbelief and resentment and a sly, creeping anger at the Lord who afflicts us in His providence.
Or think about misunderstandings in our relationships. They can be very trying indeed, can’t they? And yet sometimes God allows us to experience them in order to call us to renewed measures of sacrificial love, to strengthen the muscle of patience as we learn to bear with one another and to serve one another. And yet how often have those relational misunderstandings in your marriage, say, or with a business partner, how often have they become occasions instead for conflict and hurt feelings and simmering resentments?
So Darrell Johnson suggests one of the ways we are being taught to pray here is to say something like this – “Father, You know we cannot stand up under very much pressure. As You lead us to the test, all of life is a test. As You seek to prove and improve our faith, do not let the test become a temptation, a seduction to sin, but deliver us from the subtle wiles of the deceiver against whom we are no match. Father, rescue us from the evil one.” Isn’t that a helpful way to pray? Do you pray like that? Do you?
We are to pray for deliverance from temptation, which often uses our trials as an occasion to assail us and to tempt us, but we are also to pray for preservation in temptation. And so we need to pray as well, “Father, I am buffeted and assailed by temptation to anger or to lust or to unbelief or to pride or to greed. Deliver me from them all. Help me to find a way out, a change of scene, a different group of friends, a better environment to live in or to work in. But Lord, if I cannot yet escape from the temptations in my context, give me grace to bear up under them. Change my heart, Lord, that longs to give in. Strengthen my resolve to live in obedience. Teach me to love only what You love and keep me walking in faithfulness, despite many enticements to stray from the path. Preserve me by Your grace and help me to walk the line.” Pray not only that God would rescue us from temptation, but also preserve us in temptation. That’s what we’re asking for when we pray the sixth petition.
The Triumph – How shall we triumph over temptation when it comes?
“Who?” The tempter is the devil, though sometimes in the sovereign purposes of God, He allows and even leads us into times of temptation. “What?” The temptation involves both testings and temptations, and so we need to pray for deliverance from them and preservation in them. Well then thirdly, “How shall we triumph over temptation when it comes?” That’s also one of the things that we are praying for here – that the Lord would give us victory over temptation. So how shall we triumph when temptation comes? And here again I want to point you back to the experience of our Lord. You will remember the words of Hebrews 4:15. “We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with us in our weaknesses, but was tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin.” Jesus was tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin. We see Him tempted by the devil in the wilderness at the beginning of His ministry. And we see the same temptations to turn aside from His mission throughout the course of His earthly life and ministry. We hear the echoes of the evil one in the taunts of the Pharisees in the unbelief and confusion of the disciples when Peter, remember Peter rebuking Jesus when Jesus had predicted His sufferings and death. And Jesus turned to him and said, “Get behind me, Satan!” because He heard in the voice of Peter the temptations of the evil one. And even in that moment when his sufferings were at their most acute in the agonies of the cross, even there the temptation to depart from the ordained path set before Him was hurled at Him by those who stood around – “He saved others. Himself He cannot save! He is the King of Israel? Let Him come down from the cross and we will believe in Him! Save Yourself if You are the Son of God!” That was the temptation. He was a constant object of Satanic temptation. Temptation never left Him. It was an unceasing assailant. “He was tempted in every respect as we are, yet without sin.”
Uses of Christ’s Temptations: Comfort
And understanding His temptations can help us in ours, in at least four ways. To use the old Puritan language, there are “four uses” of Christ’s temptations that can help us when we face temptation. The first use is for comfort. The first use of Christ’s temptation when we face temptation is for comfort. Isn’t there great comfort in knowing that when we are tempted, Jesus was tempted before us. Remember Hebrews 4:15. He is a high priest who can “sympathize with us in our weaknesses.” Because He was tempted in every way as we are, He is able to sympathize. He gets it. Maybe you can’t talk about this with anyone else, but He gets it. He understands because He has plumbed the depths of temptation Himself.
Now let’s pause for a second. Just to be clear, when Hebrews says He was tempted “in every respect as we are,” it does not mean that Jesus was tempted with every specific temptation that we do or might ever possibly endure. Jesus is able to sympathize with us not because, as a first century Jew in ancient, Roman occupied Palestine, He has somehow gone instance by instance through every conceivable temptation that we late, modern Americans living in Jackson, Mississippi might ever have to face today. That would be absurd. No, Jesus is able to sympathize with us because His temptations were so much deeper, so much more extensive, so much more tormenting to His sinless soul than ours ever could be so that there is no temptation we can face that His does not surpass. Now think of this – the great difference between our temptations and Jesus’ is that our hearts can give into temptation. We have a way out under the pressure of temptation. The pressure ceases when we concede, when we cave in. But Jesus could not sin, could not yield, could not give in. And so the unrelenting pressure, the appalling offense that every enticement to sin must have been for His holy, harmless and undefiled heart, never stopped building. It never stopped building. There is no temptation you or I will ever face that can climb to the tidal wave of temptation that crashed down upon Him every single day. Our temptations are like a drop of water. His temptations are like the ocean. Our temptations are like ripples that disrupt the surface of a pond. His temptations are like a tsunami that sweeps everything before it, and yet before it He stood firm.
And that means that while we can never comprehend the severity or the extent of His temptations, He can comprehend ours. We cannot sympathize with His temptations, fathom any really of what it must have meant for Him, but He can always sympathize with ours. And so Thomas Watson says, “Jesus Christ sympathizes with us. He is so sensible, so aware of our temptations as if He Himself lay under them and did feel them in His own soul. As in music when one string is touched all the rest sound, so when we suffer, Christ’s heart sounds. We cannot be tempted but He is touched.” Isn’t that beautiful? “We cannot be tempted but He is touched.” He sympathizes with us. He fathoms it. There is no depth of temptation into which you can descend where He cannot meet you there with sympathy and kindness and grace.
And because He can, His sympathy informs His present ministry on our behalf. He is a high priest, Hebrews 4:15 says, who ever lives to make intercession for us with all the understanding that He has of the trials before us. On another occasion, when Jesus predicted the betrayal of Simon Peter, He told him, “Simon, Simon, Satan has desired to sift you like wheat, demanded to sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail.” “I have prayed for you.” That’s the thing that makes all the difference – the intercession of Jesus. He prays for you still – a sympathetic High Priest. Even when Satan assails you, He understands and He pleads your cause. The temptations of Jesus; the first use of them is for our comfort.
Uses of Christ’s Temptations: Direction
The second is for our direction. Think about when He was tempted in the wilderness. He had been fasting and praying, forty days, and Satan came and says, “Turn these stones into bread.” What a temptation! His body groaning for some physical sustenance – forty days without being sustained. And Jesus’ reply – you remember? “It is written: ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God,’” quoting Deuteronomy 8:3. Then Satan took Him up to the pinnacle of the temple and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and says, “All these I will give you if you will but bow down.” No, he said – excuse me, that was the third temptation. The second from the pinnacle of the temple, “Cast yourself down and, ‘It is written’” – Satan twisting Scripture, throwing it in His face – “It is written: ‘The Lord will command His angels concerning you; and on their hands they will bear You up lest Your foot should strike a stone.’ If you are the Son of God, prove it!” And Jesus replied a second time, “As it is written: ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test’” – Deuteronomy 6:16. And then the third temptation – he showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and says, “All these I will give You if You will just bow down and worship me.” “‘Be gone Satan!’ Jesus replied, ‘For it is written: ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and Him only shall you serve.’’” – Deuteronomy 6:13.
How does Jesus deal with temptation? He fought the temptations of the evil one and triumphed by the Word of the Lord. Store up the Scriptures in your mind. They are the sword of the Spirit. You cannot hope to win your conquest and combat with the evil one unless you are equipped with the Word of God. Do what Paul urges the Philippians to do in Philippians 4:8 – “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is anything excellent, if there is anything worthy of praise, think on these things.” Fill your mind with the best truth. Fill your mind with Scripture. They point you on every page to the One who is true and honorable and just and pure and lovely and commendable and excellent and worthy of praise. They point you to Jesus! Preach the truth to yourself. Proclaim what is true in the face of the devil’s lies. Remind yourself that every temptation offers you much, it promises you the world. “This will make you happy. This will relieve the pressure. This will make you feel better. You deserve this. This is your reward.” And then as you indulge you learn that though it may taste sweet, it is bitter and empty and hollow. It’s been a lie all along. It promises much and delivers nothing. What your heart really needs, what it really needs, you can only find in the Word of Life.
Uses of Christ’s Temptations: Pardon
So the first use is for comfort. The second is for direction. You cannot fight temptation unless you wield the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. The third use of Christ’s temptations is for pardon. Why did He go through the temptations through which He passed? Not just to give us an example, but to secure our pardon. How often, truth be told, we find that we need to pray not the sixth petition but the fifth because we haven’t been praying the sixth. “Forgive us our debts.” We have not been seeking to be delivered nor to stand our ground in the face of and be strengthened in our combat with temptation. And so we’ve crumbled and given in and fallen beneath its weight.
But brothers and sisters, let’s not forget, shall we, when we do, there is pardon, there is pardon for every time that temptation wins in a particular battle because Jesus, Jesus was never once defeated by temptation. Not once. It never left Him alone in all His days and not once did He concede; not once did He give in. He was always, always the obedient Son. And as the obedient Son, His obedience was not only for His own sake but for yours and for mine. He was the second Adam, facing down the serpent, not this time in the garden of an unfallen Eden, but now in the wilderness of Jordan in a broken and fallen world. He is the true representative of Israel. Israel in the wilderness for forty years – here is Jesus in the Jordan wilderness forty days, quoting, did you notice, from Deuteronomy three times over, from the context of Israel’s failure to obey as they faced temptation in the Sinai wilderness, quoting that very Scripture back to the tempter. But where Adam did not obey and Israel could not obey, where you and I cannot obey, our Savior, the Lord Jesus, has perfectly obeyed, overwritten the record of our failure with His triumph, that hidden beneath His righteousness we might be pardoned and accepted. That means – listen carefully – you can never fall so far, never sink so low, that His obedience and blood cannot secure your pardon.
Uses of Christ’s Temptations: Power
The first use is for comfort, the second for direction, third for pardon, finally and we’re done with this, the fourth use of Christ’s temptations as we face temptation is for power. It’s for power. “When Christ overcame Satan’s temptations” – again, this is a quote from Thomas Watson’s amazing little book on the Lord’s Prayer which is still in print; I’d commend it to you. “When Christ overcame Satan’s temptations it was not only to give us an example of courage but an assurance of conquest. We have overcome Satan already in our covenant head and we shall at last, perfectly, overcome.” Genesis 3:16 was the promise to Adam and Eve that one day the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent. And He came at last, the seed of the woman, the Son of Eve, the Lord Jesus Christ. At the cross, He crushed the serpent’s head, though he bruised His heel. And because He has, because He has triumphed over the tempter, the serpent, the devil – listen to these words of the apostle Paul from Romans 16:20. This is God’s promise to you as you face temptation. “The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet,” not because you are strong, but because Christ has already triumphed, and because He has, so will you. So will you. God will see to it that temptation will not write your story.
“Lead us not into temptation.” That’s what we’re praying for, isn’t it, in the end? Victory – the victory of Christ over the evil one. He has already triumphed over him, but we need that victory to extend to the battlefield of our hearts. And so we pray with expectation and hope, urgently yes, but not in fear, knowing the victory is secure, “Abba, Father, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.” Let us pray together.