Lead Us Not Into Temptation
Pastor Mathew Magera – 2/19/17 – Sermon 209
St. Thomas Lutheran Church, Trufant, MI
To God be the Glory!
Grace and peace to you from
God our Father, from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
We are at war. Our very
freedom is at stake. We know loved ones who have perished in this war and as a
result of this war. We fear the very worst for ourselves. We dread to imagine
being on the front lines. We are the soldiers in this war and at the same time
we are also the treasure. We carry the weapons, but we ourselves are also the
weapons, and we are also the targets. This is the war between God and sin. Sin
aims to bring us to the grave to rot. God aims to bring us into new life. And
as in a war while the battles may be small, they can have a significant impact.
A frustrated driver parked
in a red zone downtown and tucked this note under his windshield: "I've
circled this block for twenty minutes. I'm late for an appointment. If I don't
park here, I'll lose my job. Signed, Forgive us our trespasses." He made
it to his appointment but when he came back he found a parking ticket and this
note: "I've circled this block for twenty years and if I don't give you
this ticket, I'll lose my job. Signed, Lead us not into temptation!"
We are tempted in so many
small ways but they add up. Quickly. None
of us have ever escaped temptation. And so we pray in our Lord's Prayer,
"Lead us not into temptation." To be honest, this is the part of the
prayer I have had the most questions about. If we are asking God to lead us not
into temptation, does that mean that without our asking God would tempt us? The
answer depends on how we define temptation. We might feel tempted to steal
someone's wallet full of money. Yet, at the same time we might also feel
tempted to pay for someone's meal at a restaurant. For us temptation can be
directed toward good just as easily as it could be directed toward evil. In
that understanding, yes, perhaps God does tempt us, when it comes to doing good
works. In fact, God's Law and our civil laws tempt us to do good works all the
time. The speed limit signs on the road tempt us to obey them. Crosswalks tempt
us to cross the street at the safest places. Still, when we read the words of
the Lord's Prayer, we equate temptation with evil, which is the type of
temptation we are talking about.
The main reason this
petition exists is because it is a perfect end to everything else that we have
just prayed for. Everything that we have prayed at this point is done. It has
been accomplished in our praying for it. We
stand before God completely forgiven, our daily bread has been given. And
so, as we, all so briefly, stand in righteousness before God, we pray that we
would not relapse and yield to those trials and temptations that fill our lives
each and every day. We have quit sin cold turkey and our prayer here is that we
would not relapse back into the condition from which we have come. We are
praying that we would not sin anymore. But, the ugly truth is that we do sin.
We do. Again and again we sin. Does that mean that God is not answering our
prayer? What becomes of this prayer to lead us not into temptation? What is
going on in temptation and what does God do about it? How is God's grace
realized?
THREE SOURCES
OF TEMPTATION
The source for temptation is not God. In fact, we can narrow down the source of
temptation to three main characters, ourselves, the world and the devil. Yes, we are our own source of temptation.
We carry the sinful gene that has been passed down from Adam and Eve. We tempt
ourselves daily with laziness, gluttony, drunkenness, deception and more. We
tempt ourselves daily to defraud our neighbor, to overcharge them. We are
grasped by the evil lusts within us that are powered by society, example and
what we hear and see other people do. There is a bumper sticker that sums it up
for us. It reads, "Lead me not into temptation. I can find it
myself." We are our own worst enemy, it seems as temptation can easily
come from our own evil desire. The devil isn't even needed in these cases. He
started the fire with Adam and Eve. Now, sin engulfs us with no help needed
like a twig at the edge of the roaring fire pit.
The world also tempts us. Martin Luther expresses in the Large Catechism the
extent of the temptation of the world. He says, "in short, there is
nothing but hatred and envy, enmity, violence and wrong, unfaithfulness, vengeance,
cursing, raillery, slander, pride and haughtiness, with superfluous finery,
honor, fame, and power, where no one is willing to be the least, but every one
desires to sit at the head and to be seen before all." (LC, Lead us not,
vs 103). I like how he prefaces that with the words "in short." I
can't imagine what he would say if he had just let himself go on that one. But,
it's true. The world tempts us with money. You need it. The more you have, the
better. The world tempts us with power. In order to get ahead in the world, you
need power. The world tempts us with property. You must own everything you can
afford and everything that you can't. The world tempts us with position. You
must have the highest position in the company and you must fight to the death
to reach it. These are the messages that are tempting us each day. Like
ourselves as a source of temptation, the world needs no intervention from the
devil as the power of the natural sinner has easily taken control.
Now, the devil doesn't just
sit by and watch us tempt ourselves. He
still does his nasty destructive work right alongside us as we slowly destroy
ourselves. Satan comes into our conscience and into our very souls. His
goal is to "induce us to despise and disregard both the Word and the works
of God, to tear us away from faith, hope and love, and bring us into misbelief,
false security." (LC, Lead us not, vs. 104). His goal is to take the rug
from under us. While we are dancing in the world with temptation on all sides, every
time our feet are in the air, Satan is pulling that foundation from under us
because as long as that foundation is there, he can never fully turn us from
God. He wants to remove the foundation and expose the trap door beneath us. He
wants us in despair, to deny the very existence of God. Satan tempts us to give
up hope on the very God who brought us into this world and who promises to
deliver us from death itself. He does it with simple whispers. His whispers in
our ear lead us away. His whispers lead us into sin. And his whispers have
unquestionable power. His whispers have led others to terrible things. Do you
realize that Satan who whispers in our ear is the same one who whispered into
the ears of Hitler and of the orchestrators of 9/11? The same foul smelling
breath upon which carried the words of evil and destruction to those who have
done so many evil works in the world has moved on and now that same stench and
those very words are shaking the bones of our inner ears. Yes, we and the world
around us have the ability to destroy our lives but the devil has the greater
ability to destroy our very faith and from there it literally goes to hell.
UNDERSTANDING
TEMPTATION
When we pray these words
"lead us not into temptation" we are praying that we would not
relapse back into these very sins that come from ourselves, the world and from
the devil. But, as we have all questioned at least once before, if we continue
to fall back into temptation, is God not answering the prayer? In order to see
that God is in fact answering our prayer we must discover what it means to be
in temptation. When we pray lead us not
into temptation we are praying that God would give us power and strength to
resist the temptation. We are not praying that the temptation would be
taken away or removed altogether. Now, our first question to that would
obviously be, why not? Why can't God take that temptation away from us? It
would be so much easier to not fall into temptation if the temptation wasn't
there in the first place. Indeed it would and I have no answer to that question
other than to say that God gives us everything we need and if God says he will
give us the power and strength to resist the temptation we have to believe that
this is enough. It's like our daily bread. We are given enough but we want much
more. We can't escape temptations. We will endure trials and be engulfed within
them but our prayer, the answer that Jesus affirms that we will receive, is
that God will give to us the power and strength to resist those temptations. We
have a responsibility.
With that said, we then
realize there is a difference between feeling temptation and consenting or
yielding to temptation. Usually we identify the feeling of temptation as what
should be avoided. Being tempted is not the same as falling into temptation,
however. Yet, as Luther says, "such feeling, as long as it is against our
will and we would rather be rid of it, can harm no one." (LC, Lead us not,
vs. 107). Temptation might be seen as
having two stages, the prompt, or the actual feeling of temptation, and then
the consent, or engaging in the act you have been tempted to do, or being in
temptation. You're not coming out on your own at this point anymore. You've
signed yourself into sin and it's not in erasable ink.
By this point, it seems that
temptation is unbeatable. If God isn't going to remove temptation from us, we
already know we are powerless to use whatever power or strength God is giving
us to resist it. Yet, what we might reject as something worthless to our cause
is in actuality that which gives life. The good news is never something that we
would want because it calls on us to live in a way contrary to our human
nature. In this good news, God is saying
that he is giving to us the power to resist temptation but he is also giving us
the responsibility to use that power. We are expecting a miracle from God
but the miracle is really the power that God has given us to use. We just don't
want to use it. We don't want to use it because it hurts. If one of you is
tempted into alcoholism, the power to resist is there but actually working to
resist having a drink is the hardest battle to fight. If one of you is tempted
into sexual sin, the power to resist is there but actually working to resist is
the hardest battle fight. If one of you is tempted to hurt someone or hurl
insults at someone you don't like, the power to resist is there but actually
working to resist is the hardest battle to fight. It seems as if the temptation
becomes stronger when we fight against it. It's friction, yes. But, you have
been given the strength to overcome. You have that power. Jesus promised it.
God delivers it. You can resist
temptation. God didn’t have to do it. God could have left us to rot in our
sin but He chose not to. Instead, He chose to rescue us and provide for us a
way when we would have had no way otherwise.
* * *
So, I leave you with these
two thoughts. First, no human
circumstance is so good that Satan cannot corrupt it. No part of your life
is out of reach of temptation. Every area of your life is a target. Your body,
your pocketbook, your family, your personality, your faith. Nothing is so far
removed that Satan can't reach it. However,
the second thought is that no human circumstance is so evil that God cannot
work good into it for those who love him and are called according to his
purpose. God doesn't promise that we won't be tempted but when God gives us the
power and strength to resist any temptation, you ought to believe that He will
be good to His Word. And God is good to his word all thanks to Jesus's death on
the cross who takes away our sin when we do fall into temptation. Why is the power to resist “enough” to lead
us not into temptation? If we are to ask that then we might as well as why
death has the power to give life, why Jesus' death on the cross has the power
to give us sinners an eternal life in relationship with God. If we certainly
believe that Jesus' death gives us life, something that seems so backwards as
the loss of life bringing upon us the gift of life itself, then we can rest
easy knowing that the power to resist temptation is also enough. So, we don't
go forward in life knowing that God will pick us up after we have willingly
fallen into temptation but we go forward in life knowing that God has given us
exactly what we need to fight temptation and that God in Jesus has overcome and
had the necessary victory over sin and death that he may thus deliver us from
evil. Therefore, we can boldly pray that which has the life-giving power of
the Gospel. Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. To God be the
glory, now and always. Amen.