Sermon
Sermon Outline
ME
There is something strange about temptation.
I’ve never been tempted to eat a bowl of gravel.
I don’t need tremendous spiritual discipline when I walk past landscaping rocks. I don’t have to quote Scripture. I don’t have to call an accountability partner.
Why?
Because eating rocks isn’t an option for me.
Something becomes a temptation when an alternative that I know I shouldn’t choose begins to look like an option.
That’s what makes temptation dangerous. I can know something is wrong.
I can know where it leads.
I can know what God says about it.
AND still find myself considering it.
That’s why the final request Jesus teaches us to pray is important: “And don’t let us yield to temptation.”
In all reality, the Lord's Prayer ends with a very important admission: “I don’t trust myself enough to navigate this life without my Father.”
Transition
All of us deal with this. And we never grow out of it.
WE
For the past 4 weeks, we have been walking with Jesus through the Lord’s prayer. This week we get to what is known as the sixth petition: the prayer to have victory over temptation.
Our main thought from the Lord's prayer for this study is to realize that Jesus acknowledges our needs and guides us in how to find their fulfillment.
- The need for a father.
- The need for a life with purpose in His kingdom.
- The need for His will.
- The need for daily bread.
- The need to both receive and release forgiveness.
Today we arrive at what I believe is the part of the prayer we keep most secret.
It’s the thing that if we had to admit, we might be embarrassed by.
And so, because of shame, out of an effort to avoid the pain of confronting it, we hide it.
The reality is that by hiding it, we empower it.
We allow it to dwell within us.
By not dealing with our temptations, they live to surface again.
Let’s read the whole prayer before we get into today’s sermon:
“And he said unto them, When ye pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth. 3 Give us day by day our daily bread. 4 And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil.” (Luke 11:2-4 KJV)
Today, we allow the text to ask us a very difficult question: How am I tempted and how might my heavenly Father help me not fall for them?
Let’s pray.
GOD
This part of the prayer really has two movements. But it also has one obvious question to ask:
Why ask God not to lead us into temptation if God would never tempt us?
The word of God emphatically says in James: “And remember, when you are being tempted, do not say, ‘God is tempting me.’ God is never tempted to do wrong, and he never tempts anyone else.” (James 1:13 NLT)
The fact is God isn’t the tempter. We do that all on our own.
The prayer isn’t, “God, please don’t try to make me sin today.”
It’s a prayer of dependence: “Father, as I walk through a world filled with testing and temptation, guide me so that I do not fall.”
The choice is always ours, and we don’t naturally like to accept accountability for that. God said concerning this: “Today I have given you the choice between life and death, between blessings and curses. Now I call on heaven and earth to witness the choice you make. Oh, that you would choose life, so that you and your descendants might live!” (Deuteronomy 30:19 NLT)
The truth is God has set before us the call to righteousness. We, as humanity, just find ways to twist it.
Transition
So then, how might this prayer give us victory over temptation?
Lead Us
“And lead us not into temptation”
Every day we live holds surprises we cannot know.
We don’t know every conversation.
We don’t know every opportunity.
We don’t know every decision.
We do, however, know we don’t want anything to pull us away from God.
So we ask for God’s leadership.
I believe leadership is experienced in three movements:
- A leader must know where you are.
- A leader must know where you are going.
- A leader must know how to get there.
The reason we ask God to lead us around, or through temptation is because, in the grand scheme of things, we don’t actually know any of these things better than God.
We don’t know if our life has 30 minutes or 30 years left.
We don’t know where we are going, even if we have a plan.
We don’t know better than God how to get there.
To this end, we trust God, and by Jesus’ example, we connect with Him through prayer so that when we are tempted, we can realize: “The temptations in your life are no different from what others experience. And God is faithful. He will not allow the temptation to be more than you can stand. When you are tempted, He will show you a way out so that you can endure.” (1 Corinthians 10:13 NLT)
You want to know why that word “endurance” is there? Because it’s hard!!
Transition
Not only do we pray for God to lead us, we pray for Him to…
Deliver Us
“…but deliver us from evil.”
The mistake we make—I know that I have made—is thinking deliverance is something we only need the day or moment we prayed the sinner's prayer.
In all reality, we need deliverance as a part of daily discipleship because there are, in fact, situations you will not escape without God’s help.
Everyone needs help sometimes.
A few months ago, back when it was raining, Lake Springfield was in flood stage. A girl got swept over the dam and somehow survived the fall, clinging to life on a concrete pillar in the spillway.
Some heroic swift-water rescue firefighters got their boat and went to save her.
They got the girl, and it looked like the ordeal was over.
However, when they tried to leave, the swift waters were just too strong.
The boat lacked the power to escape the pull of the current.
The boat was a total loss, and instead of one girl needing saving, it became one girl and three firefighters.
Most of you assume you would never be the girl!
I would never try to kayak a lake that was in flood stage, and I would for sure never go near a dam in a kayak.
But many of you would, in a heartbeat, get the rescue boat.
However, the fact is even a rescuer at times needs a rescue.
Some of you here today haven’t saved anybody, and you haven’t saved yourself. You’ve just bought them a little more time until the boat gets overcome by the current.
Eventually, without God’s help, temptation, like wave after wave, will beat against the shores of our life. And without God’s help, exhaustion will get us all.
This past week, I noticed something about temptation and the need for deliverance that I had never seen before.
Look at Luke 22. Towards the end of the chapter, we find Jesus in a place called the Garden of Gethsemane, praying for another way than the cross.
It’s the famous line: “If there’s any other way, God… but not my will, Your will be done.”
He gets up from his prayer, goes to the disciples, and we read this: “At last, he stood up again and returned to the disciples, only to find them asleep, exhausted from grief. ‘Why are you sleeping?’ he asked them. ‘Get up and pray, so that you will not give in to temptation.’” (Luke 22:45-46 NLT)
Jesus tells them, “Pray so you don’t give in!”
Jesus didn’t tell them to increase their willpower.
He tells them to pray.
Temptation is not defeated by pretending we are stronger than we are.
It is defeated by dependence upon a Father who is stronger than what is tempting us!
YOU
All of us are human, and so all of us are susceptible to temptation for two big reasons.
We See The Cheese And Ignore The Trap.
A mouse doesn’t get caught in the trap because it wants to get caught. It gets caught because it wants the cheese.
The mouse sees what it wants without understanding what comes with it.
And temptation works the exact same way.
Temptation gets us to focus on the immediate reward while ignoring the eventual result.
James describes it this way: “Temptation comes from our own desires, which entice us and drag us away. These desires give birth to sinful actions. And when sin is allowed to grow, it gives birth to death. So, don’t be misled, my dear brothers and sisters.” (James 1:14-16 NLT)
Notice the progression: Desire. Enticement. Sin. Death.
James even finishes by saying, “Don’t be misled.”
In other words: Don’t let the cheese fool you about the trap.
Nobody chooses the trap. We choose the cheese.
I’ve yet to meet the person who decides to self-destruct in the midst of a good thing going.
Nobody says, “My happy marriage needs some misery.” They choose flirtation that feels good in the moment.
Nobody says, “This job that supports my family needs to end today.” They choose a shortcut that seems easier at the moment.
Nobody says, “I’d like bitterness to consume my heart.” They choose the satisfaction of holding onto the desire for an apology instead of forgiveness.
The trap isn’t attractive. The cheese is.
That’s why temptation is nothing to be messed with. It presents pleasure and hides the price.
And that’s why we pray, “Father, lead me.” I need Him to help me see beyond the cheese.
Transition
However, an equally dangerous temptation phenomenon also occurs.
What Was Once Unthinkable Becomes Normal.
Remember what we said at the start: Something becomes a temptation when it becomes an option.
So how does something we once considered completely off-limits become an option?
It gets normalized.
The Word of God warns us about this: “Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.” (Romans 12:2A NLT)
Realize there is always something trying to shape the way you think and what you consider normal.
The key is to not let the patterns around you shape the patterns within you.
Instead, let God change the way you think.
What is normalization?
It’s the slow process by which something that once shocked us becomes familiar enough that eventually we stop noticing it.
There are healthy versions of this. Maybe the thought of driving on curvy roads once scared you. You moved to Northwest Arkansas, and the Lord delivered you from that.
Opening God’s Word. Prayer. Going to church. All these things that once seemed difficult or confusing can become normal.
There are also very unhealthy versions of this. The key is to realize that every action we take is the gateway to the next—good or bad.
That’s why we pray, “Deliver us.”
Because there are many things that if not for the intervention of the Holy Spirit, we would be walking down a road of perpetually normalizing sin in our lives.
WE
Looking back over this prayer, I believe this is the perfect place to end it.
Because when we started, Jesus taught us to begin with, “Our Father.”
And now, He ends by teaching us to pray, “Lead and deliver us.”
In other words, we start by acknowledging that we have a Father, and we finish by acknowledging that we still need Him.