sermon notes from the Vineyard Church of Milan 12/09/2012
video available at www.sundaystreams.com/go/MilanVineyard/ondemand
Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
Here’s my thesis:
As human beings living in a broken world, we pray this prayer in response to the evil we see all around us. We pray that the Father would spare us from having to fight the big bad things we see coming our way, and we pray that he would somehow defeat them anyway. The shorthand version of the prayer goes like this: "Dad, get us out of this jam."
No one wanted World War II, did they? No one wanted to have to leave their country and go die on a beach in Normandy, or lose a limb on Iwo Jima.
And yet, at the same time, the war had to come, because there is something evil that must be stopped, that we must be delivered from. And it will not be stopped without bloodshed. God, please deliver us from the evil knocking at our door. If there hadn't been a war, if there hadn't been men and women who were not spared the great trial, but shed their blood, the forces of Nazism and Imperialism and Fascism would rule the world today.
This is the terrible reality that we pray this prayer out of. We want the terror around us to end. But we know that sometimes terrible things must come in order for the terror to end. So we pray, Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
As followers of Jesus, living in the light of his resurrection and empowered by his Holy Spirit, we pray this prayer as we learn how to pick up our crosses and follow him into the dark places he has called us to shine his light. We pray this prayer as we learn how to obediently trust the Father's goodness instead of surrendering to the Evil One's evil.
We'll spend this Sunday and next unpacking that as best we can.
Called my dad. "What are you preaching on?" he asked.
"Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil."
"Interesting," he said. "I've never really liked that part of the prayer. It's always troubled me."
"Oh yeah? The temptation part?"
"Yes, exactly," he said. "It's just hard to figure out what's going on with God leading us into temptations. When you pray it, it's like you're assuming that's something God might actually do - lead you into temptation. And so you're praying that he would stop? Just strange. Isn't that something God wouldn't be doing anyway? Never felt quite right about it."
It is strange, isn't it?
It's strange, primarily, because "temptation" might not be the best word to translate the word Matthew wrote down in his gospel when Jesus taught him and the other disciples to pray this prayer.
When we hear temptation, we tend to think of enticement to sin. Something tasty, fattening, beckoning, sexy, alluring, exciting but unauthorized, illicit, dangerous, destructive. Something that, if we embraced it instead of resisting it, it would destroy us.
Why would God ever intentionally lead us into that kind of enticement? Isn't that the job of the devil? And doesn't that go against God's character? Some kind of cosmic entrapment?
I've even heard people say, well, if God keeps putting this temptation in front of me, he must want me to do it, so it's up to him to keep those things out of my path if he wants me to stay away from them.
Jesus didn't give his followers this prayer in order to produce that kind of bad theology.
All that's a long way round to saying: what in the world is this prayer all about?
The Lord’s prayer is a prayer for all people, for all time, and because we are naturally self-centered (no knock on us, it’s just how human beings work), we limit this prayer’s power to the scope with which it first presents itself to us. But that would be a sad mistake. Because it was first a prayer for some specific people, for a specific time. And the past always has something important to say to us.
[ring around the rosie…]
The Lord’s prayer is first a prayer about a coming conflict, an onrushing war that's going to be brutal, and ugly, and messy, and painful, and filled with horror. Our Father in the heavens – just like a kid cries out for help from Dad. Hallowed be your name – the big bad wolf is making a name for himself, you’d better stop him! Your kingdom come, your will be done – you, God, I know and trust; you’d make things right, but this awful evil rule has got to come to an end. Give us this day our daily bread – in terrible times, it’s all about making it day by day, one day at time. Forgive us our sins, as we forgive – we are going to need each other, and we are all going to blow it in these trying times.
And then, this last line: Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
Let's start with redefining that word, temptation, in a way that opens up the prayer's deeper meaning. The word Matthew wrote down in Greek is peirasmon. It means testing, or trial, or tribulation. In this particular case, it's a reference Jesus is making to what's going to happen when he is crucified, although at the time he taught them to pray it, they had no way of knowing that.
Imagine that you knew something terribly difficult was going to happen soon. (I don’t mean that you have to watch that Nicholas Sparks movie, or Twilight, maybe, that you promised your wife you'd watch with her...) Like that you were going to die from an incurable illness. Or that your mother was going to forget everyone and everything she knows from Alzheimer's. Or your drug addict brother was going to be put in jail, and you were going to be responsible for picking up the pieces of his family's life. Or your company was going to have to file for bankruptcy, and you'd be looking for work. Or you have to start chemotherapy, or have open heart surgery.
Those are more like the peirasmons - the trials, the difficulties - that Jesus is talking about.
Moreso than having to see that piece of chocolate cake on the counter while you're training for a run, or the person cutting you off on the highway on your way to your anger management class, or even than seeing that bottle of whisky late at night while you're in your hotel room away on business. Not to dismiss them, because temptations can be a form of peirasmons, of trials or tribulations. Rather, to say that we'll have more power to respond to those smaller trials when we learn what Jesus is teaching us about how to respond to the capital T Tribulation.
Jesus prays it with us, as a fellow human being. Father, spare us from this great trial. It's too much for us. We weren't made for this sort of life. But, still, nevertheless, deliver us from the evil that is coming, that we see all around us.
He prays it also, though, as someone who is here among us to be the Father's answer to our prayer. The one who is not spared the great trial, so that we can be. The one who will endure the terrible stench of evil's hot breath, and shed his blood, so that we can be delivered.
And as we fix our eyes on him while we pray, Jesus teaches us how to pray this prayer not just as human beings, but as his followers, his imitators, his apprentices.
So let’s start with Jesus. What was this prayer about for him?
Don't lead us into the trial, but deliver us from the evil.
The great tribulation, the trial, the test Jesus is talking about ends up being the cross. Let me explain.
Jesus and his first disciples were Jewish, remember. And Israel had been enduring a long period of exile, currently under Roman oppression. Jesus knew from Israel's prophets, that before the world could be set right, a great difficulty was coming. A dark night before the morning star rises. Like a woman giving birth - terrible birth pangs had to come before the new creation was born. And Jesus knew from the scriptures that Israel was chosen by God to play a special role in the cataclysmic events that would precede God's work in renewing the world that had been corrupted and enslaved by evil. And it was clear from Jesus' announcement of good news (that the kingdom of God was near, here, encroaching, approaching) that the prophesied trial, conflict, showdown, furious tribulation was also imminent. Signs of heaven were bursting afresh and anew into the earth, but it wouldn't really start flooding in until all hell had broken loose.
Jesus sees this tribulation as being centered around him, a whirlpool of evil that threatened to engulf him. The first skirmishes started at his birth, and amplified as soon as he was baptized by his cousin John. Evil met him in the wilderness in personalized form as he wrestled with what it meant to be God's anointed one. Evil pursued him in mobs, kicked up a fuss through the demonized, hassled him through the critical attacks of the Jewish leadership. He even encountered it in his own followers resistance to him continuing his salvation agenda - "Get behind me, Satan!"
Jesus approaches evil soberly. He doesn't minimize it, he doesn't get all hyped up about it, nor does he run out gleefully to do battle with it. Because he knows the toll it's already taken on the human race, and he's not looking forward to the price it might exact when its fury is unleashed in full measure in the coming trial.
So listen with fresh ears to the first part of this prayer.
Father, lead us not into this great trial, the awful tribulation that will test us beyond measure.
Jesus knows that this gathering storm, the great eschatological, apocalyptic battle rushing towards them will be too much for them. It will destroy them if they get caught in its riptide. Lesser evils have brought down greater men, have they not?
So he wants them to ask the Father to spare them.
Father, lead us not into this great trial. We know it's the path marked out for your chosen people. But we won't survive if you lead us down it. Spare us, please. Have mercy, please!
When we see this coming conflict coming to a head, it's the last place we would want to be. Jesus knew it was the last place his disciples would want to be. He himself had a certain reluctance to be there. God, please spare us from that terrible trial.
Our Father...lead us not into the great trial, but deliver us from the evil.
And now the second part of the prayer makes sense, too.
Father, lead us not into this great trial. But, nevertheless, deliver us from the evil.
Not, but instead deliver us. Rather, but deliver us even though you spare us from the trial. Jesus wants his disciples, wants Israel, wants humanity to be spared the great Trial. At the same time, the great Trial is necessary if Evil is going to be defeated, undone, neutered of its destructive power. So he wants them to pray that somehow, someway, the Father would get them out of that jam, anyway. Spare us the awful tribulation. But still, nevertheless, somehow, someway, deliver us from the evil that is rushing forward to do battle with your coming kingdom.
There's a tension in this prayer, isn't there? It's a catch-22 prayer.
First time I had stitches as a kid, after they were removed from knee, which had been immobilized for a while so my knee could heal, the doctor said it was time to start using my knee so that it could regain its strength and flexibility. But when I tried to move it, the pain was excruciating. Father, lead me not into this terrible pain, because this hurts too much for me to bear. But what was I going to do? Not move it ever again? I didn't want that, either. Nevertheless Father, deliver me from my immobility.
Father, I don't want to go through labor, because I can't imagine how I'd ever deal with this pain. But Father, I don't want to stay pregnant forever, either, so somehow, someway get this baby out.
You find out your child has something abnormal about them, something that as a parent presents an ongoing, and unknowably difficult road ahead for all concerned. Nonetheless, you know the only way the evil of this condition will be defeated is through your faithful love towards your child in the midst of their condition, regardless of its cost to you. Father, lead us not into this great trial - it might be too much for us. But Father, don't let this evil win, deliver us from it, somehow, someway.
Father, this cancer is too much for me; spare me from the great trial I that I know has to happen for me to be set free from cancer, because I don't know if I can survive it without it getting the best of me. But, Father, nevertheless deliver me from it, somehow, someway give me victory over it.
Father, there is evil at work in my relationship with my wife; spare me from the great tribulation that I know has to happen for our relationship to be restored, because I don't know if I can survive it without it getting the best of me. But Father, nevertheless, deliver us from it, somehow, someway give us victory over it.
What happens with that tension? Jesus happens, is what happens. Salvation happens, is what happens.
As the darkest night in human history approached, in the garden of Gesthemene, Jesus told his students to pray this prayer again: "Keep watching and praying that you may not enter into the great trial; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." (Matthew 26:41)
There must have been tears in Jesus' eyes as he taught them to pray this. Because he was praying it too, the same night, the night Evil's hurricane hit earth's shores. "My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me." (Matthew 26:39) Father in the heavens, lead me not into this great trial. Let someone else face it other than me. Do you see? It's the same prayer.
We pray the same prayer, we and Jesus. Only the Father's answer was different for Jesus than it was for us. And Jesus wasn't oblivious to that reality.
"Yet not as I will, but as you will."
"My Father, if this cannot pass away unless I drink it, may your will be done."
The trial is coming. The cup will not be taken away from Israel, from Jesus' disciples, from the human race unless Jesus drinks it for us.
So Jesus entered the great Trial, the tribulation, the vortex of the conflict between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of darkness alone, because he alone was meant to be swallowed in it on the cross for the salvation of the world. Jesus would not be delivered from the Evil. But in his faithfulness to the Father, he achieved a victory over it that delivered us from it.
So, now, the Father can, once and for all, definitively answer the prayer of Jesus' disciples, "Lead us not into the great trial, but, nevertheless, deliver us from the evil." His answer to us is yes. I have a way. Yes.
But only because he first said no to Jesus. The no given to Jesus was the yes given to us.
That's why it says in first Corinthians 10:13 - No trial has overtaken you except what is common to us all. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tested beyond what you can bear. But when you do face tribulations, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.
Jesus is our way out. He is always the way, after all. Thank God. Jesus is always the answer to our prayers.
Practical Tip: (just one this week - next week is really all about how we flesh this prayer out in our daily lives in light of its full meaning)
1. Cheat on the test. We already know the Father's answer, so pray with the answer in mind. This week, try praying this way: Father, send your son to get us out of this jam. And then keep eyes peeled for Jesus and follow his lead. The Father's answer always starts with Jesus showing up...
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