Lead Us Not Into Temptation
Preached by Benjamin Vrbicek
May 24, 2020
Scripture Reading
Matthew 6:1-13
1 “Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven.
2 “Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 3 But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
5 “And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 6 But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
7 “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 9 Pray then like this:
“Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
10 Your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us this day our daily bread,
12 and forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
13 And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
This morning we finish our sixth and final sermon through the Lord’s Prayer. For my part, I would say that while ordinary life in the lockdown of Covid-19 has gone slowly, I’ve felt our series through the Lord’s Prayer has gone quickly. And yet next weekend we’ll press forward, and I will lead us back into our study in the book of Acts. We’ll pick up where we left off in February at the beginning of Acts 8.
Before we dive into the sermon, here are a few quick updates. First, we had some technical difficulties last week adding the video from our outreach partners, Kaleb and Stacey, who serve in Honduras. This week we’ll have it at the end of our video.
Second, this weekend is an exciting weekend, not simply because it is Memorial Day. I’m excited because this weekend, David and Jaime McHale moved to Harrisburg from New Hampshire. David is our new associate pastor of connections. David has a week or so to get settled, and then he begins work on June 1, which excites me greatly.
Finally, please be praying for our church as we develop plans about reopening. Our leadership team, which we call our pastor-elder team, has prayerfully created a plan to reopen. We are meeting next Wednesday night to finalize it. We hope to email it out on Thursday afternoon.
Introduction
As we turn to the passage, we have before us v. 13, the final line in the prayer Jesus taught us to pray. I’ll read it again.
13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
As we pray this line, as with the two previous lines about daily bread and forgiveness, we are confronted with our dependence. The Lord’s Prayer teaches us many things, but especially that we are more sinful and more fragile than we realize. I wonder if there has been a time when you were surprised by your own weakness. Is there a time your confidence was shaken, perhaps a time you realized, not that “we’ve got this,” but rather “we do not have this”?
Over years of competing in athletics, this feeling has often hit me. It still does. A few weeks ago, I went on a run with two of our pastor-elders. We are going to run up the Blue Mountain Ridge, which I knew would be difficult from doing it before, but when one particular elder took off at the bottom, I thought, this is going to be a painful 25 minutes. I won’t say who it was, but thankfully for my sake, he started harder than he was able to finish.
I remember in college, when I was as fit as I’ve ever been, I went for a mountain bike ride with some people I met at a local bike shop. Now, I had track and field fitness, which I arrogantly thought would carry over immediately to cycling. It did not carry over. As we rolled from our cars to the trailhead, one rider saw a pile of gravel up to our thighs. Without any effort, he bunny hopped the pile while turning his bike diagonally in the air. As I saw that I thought, This might be a long ride. It was. They had to wait for me, the Division 1 athlete, ever six minutes to catch up, so I didn’t get lost in the woods. No one was happy about it, myself included. But that serving of humble pie, was a gift. And as we pray the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus wants us to receive this same gift—and so much more.
I want to look at this verse asking two main clusters of questions. The first cluster of questions are related to questions that we are likely asking when we come to this passage. Then I want to look at two questions that might not be as obvious, but are also the kinds of questions we should be asking.
1. What questions are we likely asking?
So first, what questions are we likely already asking about this passage. There are questions about the wording of “lead us not into temptation,” and there are questions about a part of the verse that many of you have memorized but apparently isn’t even in the text.
Lead us not into temptation?
We’ll start with the line about leading us not into temptation. There is a question about whether temptation is even the right word. In the Greek language the word for testing and tempting are the same. It’s only the context that brings out the sense of which is meant, whether testing or tempting.
But some find it strange that we could have to pray for God not to lead us into temptation. In the beloved Psalm 23, we read about the good shepherd leading his sheep by still waters and in paths of righteousness (v. 3). Isn’t that the God we know, the one who leads us to peaceful places? In fact, look at this verse from 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. (James 1:13)
This verse says at the core of God’s character is his inability to tempt people with evil—it’s not what he does because that’s not who he is. So why pray that God would not do something we know he’ll never do?
Perhaps you saw in the news last summer that the Pope had changed the wording of the Lord’s Prayer that is used in Roman Catholic church worship services. The change came from precisely this phrase. The Guardian reported the story this way:
Now Pope Francis has risked the wrath of traditionalists by approving a change to the wording of the Lord’s Prayer. Instead of saying “lead us not into temptation”, it will say “do not let us fall into temptation”.
“It is not a good translation because it speaks of a God who induces temptation,” he told Italian TV. “I am the one who falls. It’s not him pushing me into temptation to then see how I have fallen. A father doesn’t do that; a father helps you to get up immediately. It’s Satan who leads us into temptation – that’s his department.”[1]
What do you think about that? Is Pope Francis right? He seems to be saying something similar to James 1:13—that God doesn’t lead us into temptation?
One of my favorite pastors pointed out the upside-down nature of the Pope’s logic that drove the word change. The Pope couldn’t imagine a good father doing something, so he projected his view of what God would and wouldn’t do, and pressed that back on the Bible to the point of changing the wording. A better approach and the Christian approach, points out this pastor, is to take words of Scripture as they come to us and labor to understand what God is teaching us in the very words he wrote.[2]
I don’t think we need to change the words of the Lord’s Prayer to exonerate God. God will allow trials, even send trials into our lives, but he does it for our good. But just because God will do something for our good, doesn’t mean we should ask God to send trials. We are not more spiritual if we ask God to send trials. In fact, this verse—as well as others—suggest it’s right to pray, “Lord if you are willing, take this trial or temptation from me,” which sounds a lot like what Jesus prayed in the Garden before the cross when he asked that, if possible that the cross be removed, yet nevertheless that his Father’s will would be done.
Every biblical prayer that we could ever pray is a prayer that we believe God is pleased to answer. “Lord, save my friend from his sinful ways . . . Lord, please allow governmental rulers to govern with wisdom . . . Lord, raise up laborers to share your good news with others . . . Lord, give us our daily bread . . . Lord, hallow be your name . . . Lord, do you will on earth as it’s done in heaven.” All of these are prayers we know God loves to answer. So why pray? Should we change all of those passages too?
I said a few weeks ago that better than daily bread is a relationship with the baker. In praying for protection, God grows our relationship with him. It’s true that he will not do his children ultimate harm, but that doesn’t mean we should never ask for his help and protection when we feel as fragile as we really are. God wants you and I to know him, to be in relationship with him. That’s why we can pray this prayer as it is written.
Doxology
Second, you might be asking about the lines from the Lord’s Prayer that you have memorized, but we haven’t read once during our series. Here, I’ll be more brief. We have not said, “For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever. Amen.” Why not?
Well, the best evidence suggests that this was a late addition to the Bible. In other words, it’s not original to what Matthew wrote. That’s why the version of the Bible that we preach from moves the line to a footnote and says, “some manuscripts add [the line].” But those manuscripts that do add the line apparently came later. Earlier copies do not have it. Likely, it was added to church liturgy, meaning part of regular church services, and then got included in the passage that way. But even though it’s likely not part of what Matthew wrote, it’s certainly not wrong to pray that line; it’s a biblical prayer. Interestingly, there is a line in one of David’s prayers in the Old Testament that sounds very similar (1 Chronicles 29:11).
2. What questions might we forget to ask, but should be asking?
So those are a few answers to questions you might have been asking. Let me end by highlighting two questions you might not have been asking, but we should.
What kind of people are we? Sinful and fragile.
The first question we should be asking is, “In light of this verse, what kind of people are we?” The answer is we are sinful and fragile. I’ll explain.
I’m not tempted to eat tree bark or grass. That’s not a big struggle for me. There are some in my family who would say that I also don’t struggle with eating too many sweets either. They would probably say I have no problem at all eating too many sweets. I love candy. I had several handfuls as I wrote this sermon. An employee at Hersey told me the company missed most of the Easter candy sales, but the lockdown, overall, hasn’t been that bad because of people like me tempted to eat more candy while at home.
What do I mean by this? We learn something about ourselves by what tempts us. And when Jesus teaches us to pray to our heavenly Father that he would lead us not into temptation, we should learn that we are the type of people who can be tempted, the type of people who love sin the way I love candy. We are tempted to sin because we are sinners. In the same way, we need to pray for protection because we are fragile. Like my story about riding my bike with people much better than me, I learned I’m not as good as I think I am. Praying this prayer and thinking about our humanity should cause us to realize we are more sinful and more fragile than we think. But that’s not often how we view ourselves.
Our family has been watching a series on Netflix called Lost in Space. One of the lead characters is so bright and so smart and always knows just the right thing to do at every moment. She’s a brilliant scientist. But at several key moments in the series her flaw is that she overestimates human goodness—her own goodness and that of others. If you put science in an equation, you get science out, and that she doesn’t figure human nature into the equation almost kills her and others.
If you watched the movie Interstellar a few years ago, another space movie, you saw something similar. The best and brightest of the human race—who it seems was intentionally named Dr. Mann—actually nearly destroys the human race through his selfish actions. We often put astronauts on a pedestal. What could celebrate America’s glory more, what could better typify the pinnacle of human perfection, than putting a man on the moon before the end of the decade?
You might not be an astronaut. To my knowledge we don’t any at our church. But my guess is you overshoot your own moral goodness and strength. I see it when we ask you to send us prayer requests. Some of you might not ever share a prayer request because you’re shy or you don’t trust the leadership, but I suspect these are not the only reason. You don’t ask because you don’t think you need. Many of us rarely pray, “Lord, lead us not into temptation and deliver us from evil,” because we don’t think we can be tempted or need deliverance.
But we can and we do.
Earlier, I read from James 1. Let me read that verse again and also read the verse that comes after it.
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. 14 But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. (James 1:13–14).
Praying the Lord’s Prayer reminds us that we have desires that can lead us astray. We are reminded that evil is not just out there in the Evil One or out there in those with less education or another race or ethnicity or in those with less money or more money or those who work for the government. The evil is in here. What tempts us, teaches us about who we are. That many of us would primarily view evil as mainly out there but not in here, only further demonstrates our evil. This leads to the last question we should be asking.
What type of God do we have? A great and strong one.
Given all that we’ve learned in the Lord’s Prayer, what type of God do we have?
We have a great God. You see, I mean this last question not so much as a question but as a statement of wonder and awe. We have a heavenly Father. He’s in heaven, the throne room of the universe. His name is hallowed, and his kingdom is coming. And he loves you. He meets our physical needs—daily bread. He meets our spiritual needs—forgiveness with him and with other people. He meets our moral needs—leading us not into temptation and delivering us from evil.
What a heavenly Father! And we can add, what a Savior! Jesus was led into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan for forty days. We read about it in Matthew 4. And he never wavered, even in the very situations where you and I would have withered. Our failures in temptation show us our need for a savior, and his victories over temptation show us we have a savior.
Church, what type of God do we have? A great and strong and kind and gracious God.
[1] Harriet Sherwood, “Led not into temptation: pope approves change to Lord’s Prayer,” The Guardian, June 6, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/06/led-not-into-temptation-pope-approves-change-to-lords-prayer.
[2] John Piper, “Reading the Bible Upside Down: Why the Pope Changed the Lord’s Prayer,” Desiring God, June 12, 2019, https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/reading-the-bible-upside-down.
