Lord, Teach
Us to PraySermons on The Lord’s Prayer by Rev. Ken Behnken
7. PRAY WITH DECISIVENESS. Luke 11:23
"Look, you are well again"
"Temptation" = "testing"
– anything and everything
- situations, conditions, opportunities
– a training discipline
- for our own good and our neighbor’s good
The urgency of our prayer
– God’s power / our folly
– deadly addiction
Decisiveness required
– your hand and your eye
– nature abhors a vacuum
"Sin no more"
"Look, you are well again," said Jesus to the man whom he had healed at the Pool of Bethesda. "Sin no more or something worse may happen to you." Jesus has taught us to pray "Forgive us our trespasses," and through his redeeming work he has assured us that our prayer has already been answered. We are forgiven; we are healed; we are well again. Now in his instruction about prayer there follows a petition in which we seek God’s help to make our future different from our past – to God’s glory and to our true benefit. Jesus said we are to pray "Lead us not into temptation" – and we are to pray it with a decisiveness that eliminates our just returning to "business as usual" after having received again the assurance of the forgiveness of sins.
Temptation = Testing
The word "temptation" as used here in Jesus’ prayer refers to a proving, a trial, a test of authenticity. When we see it this way we readily understand that anything and everything in life can become a test of the authenticity of our Christian faith and discipleship. Any situation or condition or circumstance – good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant, easy or difficult – may include factors that force on us a decision as to where we stand in relation to the one who said, "Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me is scattering." The test may be a situation, like that which confronted young Joseph in Egypt when faced with the choice between the seductive charm of Potiphar’s wife and the gloom and misery of prison. It may be a condition, like Paul’s thorn in the flesh, which he felt hampered him in his work. It may be a circumstance of opportunity to serve, like that of the rich man in Jesus’ story who daily walked by poor, begging Lazarus at his gates without even noticing him. Anything and everything can put our authenticity as Christians to the test.
Temptation, or testing, is a fact of life. But the Bible says there is a beneficial side to this. James wrote, "Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, when you face trials, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Blessed is he who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him." Just as the body is strengthened by exercise, and the mind is developed by schooling, so the spirit is disciplined as faith is tested.
God’s purpose in such training and discipline is not so he can learn something about us, but so we can be confirmed in what we know about ourselves: that we must continually look to the Lord for help. Try to go it alone and by that very fact you will fail the test! But look to the Lord and you are looking to the One who himself passed the test, overcoming the Tempter also for our sake. In his sermon on this petition Helmut Thielicke says, "This is the positive element in the Christian life: We do not squabble with the demonic powers; we look to the Lord. He does all the rest. Mysteriously, everything that would overpower us is banished." The secret is this: God wants all of life to be lived with an eye to him, and when testings underscore for us our need to look to him and we thus are able to see his unfailing response to our need, his purpose in allowing the testings has been accomplished.
As Jesus teaches about prayer he uses the plural: "Lead us not into temptation." So there is also a communal purpose when God allows us to be tested. Peter wrote to Christians under persecution: "Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that your brothers throughout the world are undergoing the same kind of suffering." We take courage when we see that the struggles of brothers and sisters in the faith lead them to emerge stronger in faith and life. And when, by God’s grace, we ourselves are able to stand decisively with Jesus when put to the test, we may become examples of tried and true discipleship to our families and to our friends in the church.
The Urgency of Our Prayer
If temptation, or testing, is so omnipresent in our lives and is a purposeful part of God’s plan for us, why does Jesus instruct us to pray "Lead us not into temptation"? The prayer surely does not shift responsibility for temptation to God, as if we could say, "He made me do it." Rather, it is an appeal to the one we want decisively to be with, so we will never be judged as those who are against him. With this petition we are asking God to help us avoid putting ourselves into situations or circumstances that confront us with testings that might overwhelm us. And we want God, when tests do come, to lead us safely through them and to strengthen us through them. Thielicke wrote, "God never lets us down. He hears our petition, but something far more than mere hearing happens. He also walks beside us as we go through the fire of testing for, as Hebrews says, 'We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tested in every way, just as we are – yet was without sin.' He is not only the Lord who hears but also the Brother who bears the burdens with us."
If we don’t sense the urgency of this prayer because we think we have the problem of sin under control in our lives, there can be no better advice for us than that which Luther gave to people who felt no need to come to the Lord’s Supper: "Put your hand into your bosom and feel whether you still have flesh and blood, and by all means believe what the Scriptures say of it." Our sinful nature, which the Bible calls "the flesh", joins with the devil and the world to form an unholy trinity that threatens to make every test a disaster for us. Jesus teaches us to pray, "Lead us not into temptation," but our sinful natures are quite willing to flirt with temptation, dabble in wrongdoing, rationalize sin, make things the focus of life, turn away from opportunities that call for loving service – and thus erode our Christian faith and life. And we end up no longer decisively with Jesus.
Decisiveness Required
Part of the deadliness of temptation is its insidious nature. Let someone wind a couple of threads around you, binding your arms to your side, and you can flex your muscles and easily break the thin strands. But if thread after thread is added, the bondage grows until you are unable to break it. Similarly, repeated wrong behaviors become addictions that take control and are not easily overthrown. Continually disregarding opportunities to serve becomes habitual and hardens into a self-serving lifestyle.
Jesus was referring to the seriousness of temptation when he said, "If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. If your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better to enter heaven with one hand or one eye than to have both hands and eyes and be cast into the fires of hell." Jesus knew that it is not hand or eye but the sinful heart that is the real villain in the tragedy of sin – but he was emphasizing the lengths to which we should go to avoid circumstances and situations that breed temptations to sin.
On another occasion Jesus told about a man from whom a demon had been cast. But later the demon returned and found the man’s life clean, but empty – and he brought seven other demons with him to take up residence again. Jesus said, "The latter state of the man was worse than the first." The point is that also in the realm of the spirit nature abhors a vacuum. Negatives overcome must be replaced by positives – or the negatives will surely find their way back again. It is when we, under the Spirit’s guidance and power, occupy ourselves with good things, with God’s Word and with prayer and with service in the name of Jesus, that we effectively resist the devil’s temptations and say a decisive NO to the world’s distractions and to our own sinful desires.
"See, You Are Well Again"
Temptations are going to come. They are part of life. But the apostle assures us: "God will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear, but will provide a way out so that you can stand up under it." The way out, of course, is the forgiving love of Jesus and the renewing power of his Holy Spirit.
"See, you are well again," he says to us today. Our failures to pass the tests, our falling to temptations, are forgiven because he died and overcame for us. But when Jesus continues, "Sin no more or something worse may happen to you," we know we need to learn to pray with decisiveness, "Lead us not into temptation."
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