1. Grace, mercy, and
peace to you from God our Heavenly Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus
Christ. Amen. “The Lord’s Prayer: A Prayer for All Seasons.” That’s been our theme
all these Wednesdays in Lent. And we’ve suggested that as we pray this prayer
in each season of life, alongside each petition we insert some specifics—fears,
thoughts, thanks, people—that are important to us, special and specific needs
we have. The Sixth and Seventh Petitions make that task not too difficult: “And lead us not into temptation, but
deliver us from evil.” Not too difficult, I should say, to think of
specific needs to pray about. It’s quite easy to think of temptations that
assault us, evils from which we need to be delivered, because, frankly, while The
Lord’s Prayer Is for Our Seasons of Standing Up to Evil, that—standing up to
evil—is very difficult! Maybe especially in this season that calls on
Christians to stand up to evil.
2. And lead us not
into temptation. What does this mean? God tempts no one. We pray in this petition
that God would guard and keep us so that the devil, the world, and our sinful
nature may not deceive us or mislead us into false belief, despair, and other
great shame and vice. Although we are attacked by these things, we pray that we
may finally overcome them and win the victory.
3. Lord, I know you
don’t tempt me to sin, but the devil surely does, and so does the world in
which I live and of which I’m a part. So do my own sinful lusts and desires and
flesh. Lead me not into temptation, to do that which I know is not pleasing to
you, to say something that brings hurt or pain to someone else or that
blasphemes your name, even to think that which I know is wrong. Lead me not
into temptation, to indulge in any activity that draws me away from your will
or your way, anything that if I thought you were next to my side, I wouldn’t
even consider doing. Lead me not into temptation, of getting lazy with my
faith, stingy with my resources, greedy with my desires.
4. Lord, lead me not
into temptation. You know what I’m praying about! As you’re hearing my prayer,
I’m sure you’re looking back to the time when you were beginning your ministry.
You had just been baptized, and then there you were in the desert with the
devil harassing you. You didn’t succumb to any of Satan’s temptations, but it
was so brutal that afterward angels came to give you strength. You know what
I’m praying about, Lord!
5. These last two
petitions of the Lord’s Prayer fit together like a glove: “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” What does this mean? We
pray in this petition, in summary, that our Father in heaven would rescue us
from every evil of body and soul, possessions and reputation, and finally,
when our last hour comes, give us a blessed end, and graciously take us from
this valley of sorrow to himself in heaven.
6. “But deliver us from evil.” That’s what
the devil tempts us into: evil. That’s the world’s seduction: evil. And, our
own sinful flesh: evil. Even the word is harsh, something you don’t like to use
very often. I can say that something is “bad” or “ugly” but to call something
“evil”—that’s seriously reserved for anything that is repulsive to the Lord.
Doing harm to God’s people, like Pharaoh in Egypt; being a self-righteous,
judgmental hypocrite, like the Pharisees and chief priests; gross idolatry and
disgusting immorality, like the Israelites committed so many times, not to
mention grumbling—all of that is evil.
7. “But deliver us from evil,” we pray. Deliver
us from anything and anyone that is repulsive to the Lord. You’ll have to make
your own specific requests as you pray through this petition, for yours might
be different from mine. We’ll begin by asking God to deliver us from all the
disasters, temporal and eternal, that our own sins have earned for us—and that
he’ll prevent Satan from using these sins of ours to cause us to despair or
fall into false belief or other great shame and vice.
8. Then where to go?
I’ll not stand here and declare what is in the heart and mind of our great God,
but I suspect they include more than just the horrors of society: Racism and
the violence it spawns. War and genocide in the Middle East. Terrorism
spreading around the world and threatening to reach even across the safety of
our oceans. Mass murder of unborn infants, which reached our shores long ago.
The rich stealing from the poor. I would suspect that God’s list may not have
changed much from the biblical stories: self-righteous hypocrisy, idolatry in
any form, immorality so gross that Charlie Sheen looks like the proverbial
choir boy. Oh, and did I fail to mention “grumbling”?!
9. Deliver us from
all this evil, Lord! Yes, but if it seems that God’s deliverance is not to “take us from this valley of sorrow to
himself in heaven” just yet, it means that he intends to use us to be his deliverance
for someone else first. When we see evil, hear evil, that which we know is
repulsive to the Lord, that’s a season in our lives when
it’s powerfully important to stand up to evil.
10.
“And lead us not
into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” Once again this week, as has been
true throughout this Lenten series, it’s impossible not to note the link
between the Lord’s Prayer and the Passion of our Lord. Our Lord Jesus had in
mind his own suffering and death when he taught us to pray this beloved prayer.
And here’s the connection again. It’s all there—temptation and evil—in the
story of the Passion. It’s not difficult to recognize.
11.
The
crown of thorns, mockery, hatemongers, self-righteous hypocrisy, bloodletting, Jesus
getting spit in the face, murder—it’s all there, and it’s all evil. Betrayal
and denial by two men who had called the Lord “Master”—that’s evil. False
accusations, trumped-up charges, lies, cowardice, manipulation—evil to the core.
12.
When Jesus was earlier tempted in the desert, at the
end, Luke says that the devil left him “until
an opportune time” (Lk 4:13). There was no time more opportune than in the
Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus had prayed that, if possible, the cup of suffering
could be taken away, but only if it was the will of the Father. Do you not
believe that when the unruly soldiers showed up or Judas came forward with the
kiss, the devil was right alongside Jesus, urgently saying, “Do something, Jesus. Do something—something
to defend yourself, something to show these bullies who’s in control. Call down
your twelve legions of angels, and let them be angels of death! People will
fear you and hail you; throngs will bow before you and worship you as King, for
you will have done what they hoped for—declare freedom from Rome. Let the
others follow Peter’s impulse: let them draw their swords as well, and let them
be a vigilante group against the mob. Let them go after Judas with vengeance
and make him sorry for that kiss. Do something, Jesus. Do something.” What
a temptation that would have been to fight evil with evil!
13.
It
was the same story, same song, when Jesus was first nailed to the cross and “those who passed by derided him, wagging
their heads and saying, . . . ‘If you are the Son of God, come down from the
cross’ ” (Mt 27:39–40). Tempting him. “Do
something, Jesus. If you can, do something.” Jesus did .
. . though not at all what they were asking. It was his final season for standing up to
evil, and he won in a landslide! The prophet Isaiah says it much
better than I: “Surely he has borne our
griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God,
and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for
our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with
his wounds we are healed” (Is 53:4–5). “Transgressions”
and “iniquities”—that’s sin, and sin
is evil. Sin is repulsive to the Lord. Sinless Jesus took the world’s sin and
carried it to Calvary. At the end of the day, that Friday called “Good,” it was
the devil who was crushed, for Satan, it turns out, was no match for the will
of God.
14.
And
so the tempter, the one who seeks to mislead us into despair, has been
defeated. We who share in Christ by faith can stand up to him and announce that
we have won the victory. And the master of all evil has been shown to be
powerless before Christ, so that we who are the Lord’s servant can stand up to
the world’s evil and deliver others as we have been delivered. And Satan’s
claim on us, our sin, has been ruled out of order so that “when our last hour comes,” we will stand up, and Christ will “give us a blessed end, and graciously take
us from this valley of sorrow to himself in heaven.”
15.
Don’t
you suppose all of that was on our Lord’s mind and heart when, on that hillside
beside the shores of the lake called Galilee, Jesus said, “Pray like this: Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from
evil”? Then let us pray once
more—actually the first of many more times—this prayer the Lord taught us,
remembering as we do each of our own special needs: Our
Father who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be
done on earth as it is in heaven; give us this day our daily bread; and forgive
us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not
into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Thine is the kingdom and the
power and the glory forever and ever. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment