In October 1999 the Boston Globe ran the following article. “The tuna were running for the first time in 47 years only 30 miles off Cape Cod. And they were biting! Last fall all you needed to catch one was a sharp hook and some bait. And the rewards for doing so were substantial. Rumor had it that Japanese buyers were paying fifty thousand dollars for a nice bluefin!
That’s why many would-be fishermen ignored Coast Guard warnings and headed out to sea in small boats. But what these new fishermen didn’t realize was the problem is not catching a tuna – the problem comes after they’re caught.
On September 23rd, the Christie Anne, a 19 foot boat, capsized while doing battle with a tuna. That same day the 27 ft. boat Basic Instinct, suffered the same fate. These fishermen underestimated the power of the fish they were trying to catch. That is what temptation does to us. It takes us by surprise. It looks manageable on the surface. But only after we hook it do we discover its strength.
As we close this material on Jesus’ model prayer, Jesus too gives us a warning. It is a warning that no matter how big we think our boat is we will never be able to handle the fish temptation on our own. And once again we look at our key idea: We must avoid entertaining false ideas of praying that are ineffective and diligently cling to the kind of prayer that is a vital link between ourselves and God. If we fail to pray according to the model that Jesus gives us we will not overcome temptation nor be delivered from evil.
E. A refusal to accept the way of evil
This phrase, “Do not lead us into temptation but deliver us from evil” describes a refusal to accept the way of evil. Not only is it a plea for God to overcome sin in our lives but it also is a conscious desire on our part to put it off. I think that this prayer has two facets in its application.
i. A conscious putting off our evil ways.
The first facet in the application of the prayer, “Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil” is that it is a conscious putting off of our evil ways. “Do not lead us into temptation” is not a request that God doesn’t tempt us or that God somehow brings us to a place that would cause us to sin. God isn’t like a kidnapper who drags us off to some destination to which we don’t want to go. What Jesus means by this request is that as we pray, “Do not lead us into temptation” we must consciously be putting off our evil ways. In other words we are asking God not to allow us to follow our natural inclinations. There are two reasons that we know Jesus means this here.
a. temptation comes from our desires
The first reason that we know Jesus means that we are to consciously put off our evil ways in asking God not to allow us to follow our natural inclinations is that Scripture says temptation comes from our desires. In the first chapter of his letter James says,
“Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God’; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust.” Our natural wants and desires cause us to be drawn away to sin. What we are asking in this prayer is that the Father would lead us away from our natural propensity to sin. Our desires are so strong that there is no way that we can fight them on our own. And unless we are petitioning the Father in our struggle against sin we will fail every time.
Though greater is He who is in us than he who is in the world we must recognize that we have to ask God to intervene in our behalf or we are simply fighting on our own. That will become clearer in coming weeks as we look at other passages on prayer and the struggle in which we are engaged.
b. God gives us over to our desires (Psalm 106)
The second reason that we know Jesus means that we are to consciously put off our evil ways in asking God not to allow us to follow our natural inclinations is that God gives us over to our desires. This is clearly seen in the Scripture. Psalm 106 portrays the desert wanderings of the Israelites. And verse 13 describes their grumbling prayer request for meat. I suppose this verse might be described as the prayer request you don’t want answered. It reads like this. “They quickly forgot His works; they did not wait for His counsel, but craved (or desired) intensely in the wilderness and tempted God in the desert. So He gave them their request, but sent leanness unto their souls.”
They could have waited for God’s provision. They could have continued to praise God for His rescue of them through the Red Sea (this great provision of deliverance) and put off their grumbling. But they wanted meat more than they wanted God. They believed the only thing that mattered was their desire for meat. And so God granted them their request. God gave them their desires. But their souls lacked real satisfaction. They may have been able to fill their bellies but they had empty souls. Oh that God may not give us over to our natural inclinations. May He not lead us to the path of our own cravings. May God instead lead us into the paths of righteousness for His namesake. We may get all we want but there is a price to pay.
What happens is that these desires become idols in our lives. We want what we want more than we want God. We say things like, “If I can only have this I will be happy.” We set standards in our minds that put this desire behind our desire to know and please God. And in doing that this desire becomes the snare. Seeking for this desire to be fulfilled becomes our downfall. Because Satan, knowing that you have this desire above doing God’s will, will put the desire in front of you in such a way as to draw you to take the bait. And Satan puts the bait in such a form that you compromise your obedience to God’s Word and sin. And you have sinned because you have magnified your own desire above doing what you know to be in God’s Word. That is why the Scripture also says that whatever is not done in faith is sin.
In His temptation battle with Satan, Jesus, quoting Scripture, said, “Man shall not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.” Are you asking God to give you whatever you desire or are you asking Him not to lead you down that path. We must truly put off our evil ways. This is what, “Lead us not into temptation means.” Don’t pray for God not to lead you into temptation if you are not willing to turn away from those things that you know cause you to sin and keep you from seeking after God.
But here is the warning from Scripture. God said that He would give the Israelites their meat to eat. He said that He would give them so much meat that they would begin to loathe it. If you are not willing to turn away from your desires and draw near to God then He will give you over to them. And you will find yourself drawing yet further and further away from Him. You may find yourself not seeking God at all. And like the Israelites you will only find leanness in your soul. What you had thought would bring you satisfaction will only bring you loathing. The thing that you thought you needed will cause you to disdain the day you desired it. That person or thing that you wanted more than God will become your misery. I’ve seen it happen with people’s desire for things. Some Christians have experienced amazing financial headaches because they only wanted this one more thing. They thought that these things, instead of God, would bring them satisfaction. They become strapped financially and the time that they now desire to have to spend with God is used up trying to pay for their desire. And they have leanness of soul.
What we have to realize first and foremost of all is that God is truly the only One who can satisfy our desires. “Psalm 62 says, “My soul finds rest in God alone.” And Jesus said in Matthew 11, “Come unto me all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.” Why don’t we find rest for our soul? It is because we are still seeking our own desires. Instead of truly wanting what He wants we look for the easy way. But in doing so we fail to realize that going on our path is not the easy way. It is the hard way.
It comes down to this. Are we are going to believe God or not. If we truly believe that what God says in His Word is true then we will realize that His way is always best. It may not seem the best way from the world’s perspective. But God’s way is to confound the world by using the opposite of worldly wisdom. Love those that hate you. Give in order to receive. Humble yourself in order to be exalted. It is completely opposite the world’s way. And the reason God does this is so that when we obey God’s Word even contrary to the world’s reasoning and we triumph through it God gets the glory not us. And not only does God get the glory but it increases our faith. Too often we try to manipulate things to go our way in the world’s wisdom and it does not work out to the glory of God. And trying to do it on our own simply chips away at the faith we have.
If we are going to honestly pray, “lead us not into temptation” we’re going to have to ask ourselves some very important questions. “Am I truly seeking to desire what God desires?” “Do I really seek God over my natural inclinations? If we cannot answer these questions affirmatively then we may expect God to not answer our request. Don’t think that God is going to lead you out of temptation when you continue to desire what you know God does not want.
Therefore when we pray, “Do not lead us into temptation” we are asking God for the strength to not follow our desires for self-satisfaction but to draw near to God and seek His direction.
ii. A recognition of our need for God’s victory
Not only is this prayer, “Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil” a conscious putting off our evil ways but secondly, it is a recognition of our need for God’s victory. This phrase, “Deliver us from evil” is probably best rendered, “Deliver us from the evil one” because literally it reads, “Deliver us from “the” evil and it refers to Satan. Deliver us from the evil one.
Not only are we asking God to not let us be led into the path of our own desires but we are asking God to give us victory over the tempter himself. As I alluded to earlier, there is no way that we can defeat Satan and his demonic hosts on our own. Yet God can give us the power to overcome his tactics. We are called to resist him in the power that God gives. If we resist him on our own we are dead. James says in his letter to the churches that overcoming Satan requires that we submit to God. We must submit to God’s authority in our lives as we ask Him to deliver us from the evil one. If we are not willing to submit to His authority then He is not going to deliver us from sin.
So we see that asking the Father to deliver us from the evil one is a recognition of our need for God’s victory. But what makes asking this from God exciting is that He has already promised the victory over sin and trials to every believer who calls on Him. Romans 8:35-37 describes this victory. The apostle Paul is speaking about trials and hardships that come into the believer’s life. And with it he describes how God has caused us to triumph through His love toward us in Christ Jesus. It reads, “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Just as it is written, ‘For Your sake we are being put to death all day long; we were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.’ But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us.” The last part can also read, “We are abundant conquerors.”
God has promised us that regardless of what comes our way He will empower us to overcome in all these circumstances. How can we go through the difficulties and trials that Paul mentions and still have peace and joy in Christ? In calling out to Him we recognize that God supernaturally enables us to live for Him in the midst of difficulty. He equips us to live righteously in perilous times and He gives us the promise that we will never be separated from Him no matter what happens. This is the promise of victory in Christ. We have victory whenever we turn away from our path of evil and then recognize our need to call out to Him to have victory.
F. A realization of God’s ultimate authority
In the last part of this prayer Jesus says, “For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.” This is a realization of God’s ultimate authority. Finally, Jesus closes this prayer where it started, with praise. We must realize that not just our prayer life but our entire life must be captioned with praise. Worshipping God isn’t something we do when we begin to pray. It isn’t just something with which we finish our prayer. This isn’t what Jesus is saying by opening and closing this prayer by praise to the Father. Nor is praise what we do on Sunday morning but praise should be an expression of our entire life to God.
Paul in Romans 12 says that we should offer ourselves as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God which is your reasonable service (or literally) your reasonable act of worship. All of our day ought to be focused on the worship of God. How do we do this? First and foremost it is an attitude of the heart. Our praise to God comes from that which we are thinking. Are we setting God on the top of our thought’s priority list? When we go throughout our day, are we doing what we are doing as an act of worship to God? This is what being a living sacrifice is about. If God is worthy of our whole life then He is worth praising all day long. But does that mean we sit around all day doing nothing but singing praise choruses with our heads bowed low and our hands in the air? Of course not! It means that as we go throughout our day we are focusing on doing what God wants us to do and doing it in a way that is pleasing to Him. In other words, all of our life should be a reflection of praise to God.
If we are at work, it means consciously recognizing that Christ is right there with us and we ought to be working as if Christ was our boss. Think with me for a moment. Perhaps some of you, like me when I worked at FedEx, have times when your supervisors evaluate how you are doing your job. We used to have a manager ride with us in our vehicles occasionally and grade our performance. Now if you want to worship God with how you work then you have to ask yourself, how would I work if I knew my boss was watching all the time. Since the Scripture says that Christ is our boss then we are working while our boss is watching us.
Paul says in Colossians, “Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men.” Toward the end of my time when I was in the Navy it was time for me to get ready for my engineer exams. Now since I wasn’t going any further in the Navy these exams would not really benefit me in any way. Yet I knew that to slack off and wait until my time was done would not be a good example to others nor would it be what Christ would want me to do. And so I studied hard for these exams. I took time that would normally have been free time to study for them. And I took and passed them in the minimum time requirement allowed by the Navy. My Captain asked my Engineer, who was also a Christian, why I was working so diligently on these exams when I would be leaving the Navy shortly? And my Engineer was able to give him an answer from Scripture that I desired to glorify God in whatever I did even if it didn’t benefit me personally.
This is what it means to worship the Lord throughout our day. This is what it means to have praise as the entire expression of our lives. Because the people we know and work with and live next to don’t care how great we think the worship is in our church. That will not draw them to Christ. How you work, how you speak, how you act or react will cause them to seek Christ. And all of this has to do with our worship of God. Worship, ascribing worth to God, ought to be an integral part of our lives. That why Jesus said it had nothing to do with places of worship but with how we look at God in truth and in Spirit.
Are you worshipping God throughout your day? Have you given yourself as a living sacrifice which is your spiritual act of worship? Have you given your day over to Him to walk with Him and live out worship by how you do what you do? If we are not living this way then we are merely hypocrites who are big on form (i.e. Sunday morning worship) but shallow in content (namely our weekly living before Christ). Let us not neglect real worship. Real worship has nothing to do with having the latest, coolest worship CD. It has everything to do with pleasing Christ at work and at home. If you’re not living right then you’re not worshipping right.
Not let’s move to the text of what Jesus is saying. “Yours is the kingdom and the power and glory forever.” What is it that Jesus is saying about His Father in this statement? He is acknowledging the Father’s ultimate authority. We may pray for something that never takes place. But if it never takes place or is never answered in the way we hope we should understand that it is not because God did not have the power to answer it nor because God missed that particular request. But because He, in His ultimate wisdom and power and glory did not see it as something that should happen.
What it comes down to is this: When we have prayed for God’s will to be done. When we have submitted ourselves to Him for the expansion of His kingdom. When we have asked Him to meet our daily needs. When we have desired to be led by Him in paths of righteousness we come to the place where we must acknowledge His ultimate authority.
God is not a genie to whom we come and if we rub the lamp correctly we get our wishes. I hope what you have recognized throughout this time as we have been looking at this model prayer is that God is not here to do our bidding, but we are here to do His bidding and bring glory to Him. And prayer, this kind of authentic God honoring power receiving prayer is for the purpose of extending His kingdom throughout the entire world. And in doing so we bring the wonderful message of God’s greatness to every creature.
If we see prayer as a way to manipulate God we have completely missed the point. We might not say it in those terms but if our mind is set on answering prayer for the simple reason of making our life easier or keeping those we love safe we will be sorely disappointed.
I think that Jesus begins and ends this prayer with praise so that we can recognize that prayer is essentially about bringing glory to God; the glory that is due His name. Understand that when we pray and God intervenes on our behalf it is so that God’s character and name is seen as great and awesome. And He may bring us into very hard and difficult circumstances so that when He does answer and save us it may redound even more to His glory. And if we realize this we will want God to do whatever He wants in our lives so that we as well as everyone around us will say, “For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.” Or if we wanted to say it in layman’s terms, “God you are where it is at.”
In this sense, prayer is a PR device that God uses so that the watching world may be awed by God’s power. This is why Jesus said that if you have the faith of a mustard seed you could say to this mountain be cast into the sea and it would be done. God doesn’t let us go about moving big mountains so people will look at us and say “good job, what faith.” The point is that God wants to answer our prayer so that people will look at us and as we tell them they will say, “Wow, what a great God! How can I know this God?” That is what the Psalmist recounts when he says, “Declare His glory among the heathen, his wonders among all the peoples.”
Friends, all the power and greatness belong to God. We have had too small a view of what prayer is. Our prayers never get past maintenance items. We pray about our pains but never ask God to glorify Himself through them instead. We ask God to find us a better job instead of glorifying Him by having godly joy in the job we have now (perhaps it’s a job that no one has ever been joyful in – in which case it would be an even greater testimony to God’s power)
We think too small, we ask a god for small things because we see him as a genie with limited power instead of Him who has all power forever. We think we can progress no further in our Christian life because this sin really has us bound. We fail to see that God allows us to have these trials and these domineering sins in our lives so that when we overcome them only He gets the glory. Can we wake up to the fact of the true size of our God. For His is the kingdom (He rules everything), for His is the power, (He can do anything) and His is the glory (He is the greatest) Forever (Our God never changes). So let us recognize not just with our lips but with our heart and lives that God is as big as the Bible makes Him out to be. And let us believe Him and ask Him for that which will show to all those around us how great He is!