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.
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This coming week is a big week for
a lot of people in this country, particularly in this section of the
country. On Thursday, college football
season kicks off. I’m sure most of the
country will be tuned in to watch Presbyterian college play Wake Forest
University. Millions of people have been
waiting with bated breath for this day to arrive. Frankly, many religious leaders, myself
included, are somewhat concerned with the level of passion that football
invokes, especially when compared to the passion that religion invokes. That’s another sermon for another day, but
football has become a quasi-religion in this country.
Now, ask any casual fan of a
football team who the starting quarterback for their favorite team is, and they’ll
probably be able to tell you his name.
If you want to see how well they really know the team, though, ask them
who the starting offensive linemen are.
Some die-hard fans will know, but most folks won’t be able to name the
five men responsible for keeping the quarterback on his feet. The quarterback can’t do his job well without
the offensive line, but it’s not the offensive line that gets all the glory.
Now, as hard as this may be for you
to believe, I’ve never played football.
I know I may have the rugged stature of a football player, but I was
always able to beat back the nagging of coaches. That, and my high school didn’t have a
football team. And my mom told me I wasn’t
allowed to play football. And I’d be terrible
at it.
But I have to imagine that some of
the players on the team resent the attention the quarterback gets. He gets a rather large share of the glory and
the blame, and most of the spotlight is cast upon him, far more than the
linemen get.
Today, we’re talking about
temptation. We’re talking about the
prayer Jesus teaches us for God to keep us out of temptation and to deliver us
from evil. We’re trying to determine
what we can learn from this last section of the Lord’s Prayer.
But first, we need to talk about
what temptation is, and I want to borrow this image from the world of
football. See, when we’re tempted, we’re
always tempted to be selfish. Nobody’s
ever tempted to be too selfless. I’ve
yet to have someone walk into my office and say that they’re struggling with
the urge to give too much away. As far
as I know, they don’t have a group that meets to help people who have
overwhelming desires to serve too many people.
Temptation leads us in the opposite direction from selflessness—it tempts
us to be selfish.
Just look at the first sin, the one
committed by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. What did the serpent promise? That eating the fruit of the tree would make
them like God. They wanted to be more
than they were. They wanted things that
weren’t rightly theirs. They wanted to
claim for themselves rights that belonged to God. They were tempted to be selfish.
Fast forward to the temptation of
Jesus in the wilderness. What were the
temptations of the devil? They were to
provide for himself, to secure himself, to gain power for himself. The devil was trying to get Jesus to be
selfish and use his powers and his privilege for his own good, rather than the
good of others. The devil was trying to
focus Jesus’ vision upon himself.
Friends, the temptations you and I
face are no different. When you look at
the 7 deadly sins, they’re all selfish.
Lust, gluttony, greed, laziness, wrath, envy and pride are all selfish
sins. They’re all sins that build up or
serve the self, rather than serving another.
It’s about what I can get for me.
So when we talk about temptation,
we talk about how the devil is tempting us to look inward first, at the expense
or neglect of others. The devil is
trying to get us to seek our own wants and needs regardless of how it affects
others. The devil is trying to isolate
us. When we value our needs more than
the needs of our relationships, our relationships struggle. When we value our success more than the
success of our companies, the companies suffer.
Whenever we focus exclusively on ourselves rather than the community, we
are giving in to temptation.
I’d like to take a moment and life
up two Biblical examples of individuals giving in to selfish temptation in two
completely different ways.
The first is King David. If you’ve studied Biblical history, you may
know that King David was labeled as a man after God’s own heart. He was passionately in love with God, and his
reign was supposed to point to God in all he did.
But King David gave in to
temptation.
Israel was off at war, and David
had stayed home. This was mistake #1. Next, David goes up on the roof of his palace
late in the afternoon. Now, to us this
doesn’t seem so dangerous. But we don’t
live in ancient Israel, where the only hot water heater was the giant ball of
fire in the sky. So the women would fill
up their bathtubs, which were on the roof, in the morning and let the sun heat
the water up all day. Then, in the late
afternoon, when the water was warm, they would go bathe. Everyone knew this. David knew this, too.
In other words, if you wanted to
watch women bathe, the palace roof, which would have been taller than other
buildings, would have been a great place to be.
If, however, you’re a married man, it’s not such a great idea,
particularly if you discover that the woman you just watched bathe is married
to someone else, especially when that someone else is off fighting in the war
for you. But David gave in to
temptation. However, had David never
even gone up on the roof, he wouldn’t have been faced with temptation. He wouldn’t have had to resist temptation,
because he wouldn’t have been in a place to be tempted.
So lesson #1 here is that a good
way to resist temptation is to not put ourselves in places to be tempted. The devil tends to personalize our
temptation, so we’re each tempted by something different, but this is pretty
clear. If you’re tempted to gluttony,
Golden Corral isn’t a good place for you to go and eat. If you’re tempted to envy, you probably shouldn’t
watch the television shows about rich and famous people. We could go on and on, but it’s wise for us
to not put ourselves in places to be tempted to act wrongly.
There’s also another form of
temptation, and that’s the temptation toward inaction.
Jesus illustrates this well in the
parable of the Good Samaritan. In it, a
man is robbed and beaten and left lying on the side of the road. Before the Samaritan shows up to help, two
men, a priest and a Levite, show up, survey the scene, and pass by the beaten
and hurting man without helping. The
temptation here is to value their own comfort and cleanliness over the needs of
other, which might interfere with their lives.
They’re busy folks, and they give in to the temptation to believe that
their needs and their business is the most important thing in the world, far
more important than the needs of another, which might encroach upon their
comfort.
Frankly, we don’t talk about this
much, but I think it’s a big thing that the Christian church is struggling
with.
We like being comfortable. We like our routines and our habits and our
communities and our friends, and we don’t value intrusion or the needs of
others, particularly when these others are different than we. So we are tempted to ignore the world outside
our door and get on with our own business, hoping that someone else will take
care of those needs. We are tempted to
inaction, and this, too, is wrong.
So these are two ways temptation
works.
What does it mean to pray for God
not to bring us into temptation?
Again, we go back to
selfishness. If temptation always tries
to make us opt for selfishness, what we need is to be reminded of the needs of
others. And this happens best in
community.
I believe that our prayer for God
not to bring us into temptation is a prayer for God to surround us with the
type of people who will help us see temptation for what it is and give us the
strength to resist it. I believe God
gives us individual strength and can help us resist, but we are always stronger
together. If you’ve ever watched the
Discovery channel for more than 10 minutes, you’ve watched how lions hunt. They try and pick off one member of the herd,
because they know they can’t confront the entire herd. It’s always fascinating to watch a predator
retreat in the face of a herd determined to run him or her off.
1 Peter tells us the Devil is like
a roaring lion, and in order for us to resist him best, we need strong
community. We don’t resist temptation
well on our own, so we need God to work in the hearts and minds of people
working together to help us move past temptation and to act rightly. In 1 Corinthians 10, Paul tells the church in
Corinth that God will not let you be tested beyond your strength. But the ‘you’ in plural. God intends for the strength of the entire
community to help them resist temptation.
God intends for all of them to work together, to lean on one another,
and in so doing we help one another stay faithful.
When you’re facing temptation, how
much stronger are you when another person can remind you of the importance of
faithfulness? If you’re tempted to do a
business deal that cuts a corner or two, how much better can you resist when
another can prop you up and remind you of your integrity? If you’re tempted to have one more drink, how
much stronger are you when another person can remind you of the road that it
leads down? On and on it goes—we are
stronger together.
The entirety of the Lord’s Prayer
is a call for community. Our Father,
Jesus prays. Give us our daily
bread. Forgive us our sins. Do not bring us into the time of trial. Rescue us.
All of this is a lesson that we act together, as one body, with Christ
as our head.
For together, we move forward. Together, we are stronger, because God uses
each of us to remind one another of the final truth—that God wins. God delivers us from evil. God saves us.
We cannot do this on our own, but God has done it for us, and when temptation
tries to tear our eyes away from that truth and get us to focus on ourselves,
we band together and remind one another that Jesus Christ is the victor and we
will share with him in his eternal glory.
Throughout our lives, we remind each other of this eternal and important
truth, and God works through us all to proclaim this message to the world—that Christ
delivers us from sin into glory, from death into life, and that love is
stronger than death.
Let us pray
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