Dr. Ron Sumners
October 19, 2003
A pastor asked a little boy, “Do you pray every day?” “No, not every day,” answered the little boy, “some days I don’t want nothing.”
For many people, prayer becomes “the last straw” to be used only in the case of an emergency. Some have testified that the only time they ever prayed was in a foxhole in Europe, Korea or Viet Nam. Others have prayed only when the doctor has given no hope for a loved one. When disaster strikes, divorce proceedings have started, or when parents are having trouble with their children, they often turn to prayer as a last resort.
This section of the Lord’s Prayer teaches that prayer is not just an escape hatch. Our Lord teaches us to pray for God’s help even before we actually feel a need for His help. We pray that God will lead us away from temptation.
To modern ears, the word TEMPT, is almost always a bad word. It almost always means: to seek to seduce to evil. But in the bible, the verb perrazein is better translated by the word, test. In the New Testament usage, to tempt a person is not so much to seek to seduce to evil as it is to test his strength and loyalty and his ability for service. In the Old Testament, we read the story of how God tested the loyalty of Abraham by seeming to demand the sacrifice of his only son, Isaac. The story begins: “And it came to pass that God did tempt Abraham.” Obviously, the usage here cannot mean to seduce to evil. That is something that God would never do. It means a test of loyalty and obedience. When we read the story of the temptations of Jesus, it begins, “Then Jesus was led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil” (Matt. 3:1). If we take the word “tempt” in that passage to mean “to seek to seduce to sin,” then the Holy Spirit is a partner in an attempt to get Jesus to sin! Time and again in scripture we find that the word “tempt” actually means a time of testing.
There is some of this idea in this section of The Lord’s Prayer. But, I feel that here it is a petition to God to keep us from the temptation to do evil.
The Bible is never in any doubt that there is a power of evil in the world. The Bible is not a speculative book, and it does not discuss the origin of that power of evil, but it knows that it is there. We have associated this evil with Lucifer, the fallen angel. The story is recorded in the 14th chapter of Isaiah. This petition of the Lord’s Prayer should be translated, “Deliver us from the Evil One.” The Bible does not think of evil as an abstract principle or force, but as an active, personal power in opposition to God.
The Bible presents the source of love and goodness as personal; it is God. It also presents evil as personal; it is Satan. The word “Satan” means, adversary. Our lives are constantly under the attack of Satan. He is our enemy; our adversary. He finds our weaknesses and launches his offensive.
Sometimes the attack of temptation comes from outside us. There are people whose influence on us is negative. There are people in whose company we do things that we would not normally do. Young people, if you would like to see a picture of yourself, look at your companions; the people you run around with. There are friendships and associations that can do us harm. In a world full of temptations, a person should be very careful in their choice of friends. We should give the temptations that come from the outside as little chance as possible. This does not mean that we assume a “holier than thou” attitude toward those not in the church. Jesus associated with those that were considered socially unacceptable, but He never became one of them.
Unfortunately, most of us do not have that kind of spiritual strength. Instead of changing others to acceptance of Jesus Christ, they lead us into their way of behavior and away from Christ.
It is one of the tragic facts of life that temptations can come from those who love us; and of all the temptations, this is the hardest to fight against. It comes from people who love us and have no intention of harming us. The kind of thing that happens is this: a man may know that he ought to do a certain thing for the Lord, but if he did he would risk unpopularity. To accept this course of action may be to give up what the world thinks is important. Often, those who love us will try to turn us from the action that we know God wants, because they love us. They don’t want to see us unpopular or hurt. So, often those who love us the most hinder us from doing the things that we know we ought to do!
This happened to Jesus. “A man’s foes,” said Jesus “shall be they of his own household.” (Matt. 10:36) His family came and tried to take Him home because they thought He had lost His mind. (Mark 3:21) To them, he seemed to be throwing His life away. To them, He seemed to be making a fool of Himself, and they tried to stop Him because they loved Him. Sometimes, the bitterest temptations come to us from the voice of love.
I had a friend in Seminary named John. He felt God was calling him to go to the foreign mission field. He was an only child and his father was dead. When he shared his intentions with his mother, she laid a king-size load of guilt on him for abandoning her. She told him that he could serve God right where he was, and that if he loved her he would not leave. She won; he lost and the kingdom lost. John became a bitter man and dropped out of Seminary entirely within a year.
Temptation does not have to be a seduction into evil. Some of the most subtle temptations are those that come to us from those we love, that keep us from doing what God demands from our life. Some of you here today know that temptation more than any other, because you have fallen to it many times.
Another way that temptation can come to us is through a quirk in our human nature. We, in certain company, try to appear worse than we are. We don’t want to appear soft or pious or goody-goody or different! We would rather be thought on as a dare-devil or an adventurer. We want to seem just as worldly as the people we associate with. We seek the approval of our peers more than we do God. So, we get drunk with the client on the business trip or we share smutty stories and talk with foul mouths as we share cocktails with the girls at the bunko party. We alter our moral standards to fit the group we are a part of at the time. The clock tower at Samford University has four faces. We students named it the name of a university staff member who had that characteristic of being a moral chameleon. He had a different face for any group he was with.
Augustine confessed about his youth, “Among my equals I was ashamed of being less shameless than the others. When I heard them boast of their wickedness; I made myself worse than I was that I might not be reproached, and when in anything I had not sinned as the most abandoned ones, I would say that I had done what I had not done, that I might be accepted.” Many a person has begun an indulgence or introduced himself to a bad habit, because he did not wish to appear less experienced in worldliness than the company he was in.
Take a trip to the drug rehab center or the cancer ward, or the detoxification center and listen to story after story of a life of addiction and abuse to drugs, booze and cigarettes begun when one felt he had to be just as bold and worldly as the crowd.
One of the great defenses against temptation is the courage to be good and to say, “No,” to the crowd. Whom do you seek to please? Some of us were lucky. We made it through those times we chose the morals of the crowd rather than the eternal standards of Jesus Christ without destroying our life or our witness. Others were not so lucky; maybe some of you!
Temptation comes not only from the outside but also from the inside too. In every one of us there is some weak spot, and at that spot temptation launches its attack. The place of vulnerability differs in all of us. What is a terrible temptation to you may not be a temptation to me at all. In every person there is a weak spot which has the potential to ruin them. Somewhere in every person there is a flaw, some instinct or passion so strong that it may break us. We must realize this and be on guard because Satan will tempt us there.
Strangely enough, temptation comes sometimes from our strongest points. I’ve heard people say when they observed a fault or a sin in others, “I would never do that!”
History is full of stories of cities that were taken in battle just at the point where the defenders felt they were so strong that no guard was necessary. Nothing gives temptation a chance like overconfidence. I had a pastor friend tell me once that he would never be unfaithful to his wife; that he wasn’t ever tempted in that way. Less than a year later he was out of the ministry because of an affair with a woman in his church. Is he any guiltier of sin than any person who cheats on their spouse? No! But he was foolish to assume that he would never be tempted. We must be on guard where we think we are strong.
Temptation is real! The lure of Satan is powerful. So, we must develop our defenses against the wiles of the devil.
There is the simple defense of self-respect. A man may escape many things, but he cannot escape himself. He must live with memories, and if he has lost self-respect, life becomes intolerable. Once president Garfield was urged to take a profitable, but dishonest, course of action. He was told, “No one will ever know.” His answer was, “President Garfield will know and I have to live with him.” When we are tempted we need to remember that we have to live with ourselves.
There is the defense of tradition. We would not be here today if those before us had not resisted the temptations of Satan. We belong to a family, a community, a church. What we do affects those things to which we belong. When we succumb to temptation, we betray the traditions that have nurtured us all our lives. What if those people who met in the WMU building years ago had listened to Satan telling them that starting this new church was too hard. Why not go and hide comfortably in a large church where few people will know if you’re there or not? What if your parents had not resisted the temptation to stay at home Sundays instead of having you in church? What if all the saints of God through the years had not stood firm against the temptations of Satan, would we have a place of worship today? Will our children and grandchildren have a place to worship here? What tradition will we pass on to the next generation? You are making that tradition today as you are obedient to Christ and resist the temptations of the Adversary.
There is the defense of the presence of Jesus Christ. Jesus is not a hero-figure in a book or the movie screen. He is a living presence. Sometimes we ask, “What would you do if Christ were right here with you. How would you live if Jesus was a guest in your house?” The whole point of our faith is that He is! His presence is inescapable and we must make our lives fit for Him to see.
We have the strong defense of the presence of the Holy Spirit as we face temptation.
Temptation is real! Satan is real! God will deliver us from temptation if we let Him dwell in our heart.
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