Thank you for your singing today. Thank you for worshiping the Lord. So many, so much great theology is given to us in those songs that we sing together, especially at Christmas time. And I'm glad we can sing them together. And I'm thankful for Cadence and the young people, for all those who took part last week in some of the parts of the service that we hadn't done before. We had a mixed choir, we had an orchestra, a mixed choir for the adults and for the children. And that was just a special blessing that we had. And I praise the Lord for that. And I think it made people in my house pretty eager to play along at times, even with the congregational singing. And it's a wonderful, wonderful thing to see the kids and the adults use their talents for the Lord. And I can't commend that kind of desire enough, how much we want to teach our young people and to lead by our example to serve the Lord. And for the older people, thank you for being an example to our younger people. It is a wonderful thing to be able to point to you and see an example of faith and an example of service for the Lord's sake. Let's take our Bibles and turn to Matthew chapter six together. Matthew chapter six, we are studying through the Lord's prayer. And today we come to the last of the six requests in the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples to pray. So we are at the end of a good long study. Next week we'll study the topic of Christmas together. But for today, we will study this sixth request in this prayer that Jesus taught us to pray. And no matter our past concerning this prayer, this is something that the Lord Jesus Christ taught his disciples and thereby teaches us. This is extremely useful for us. We should think of this as foremost in our thinking. not to say that our prayers should be reduced to this, but our prayers ought to include this. Certainly, they ought to be addressed to the one person that Jesus Christ teaches us to pray to, our Father in Heaven. We are not taught to pray to any other person or angel, not to the Virgin Mother, but to the Lord, to the God of Heaven. We pray to Him. That's how Jesus taught us to pray, and we want to agree with Him. We were taught to pray for things concerning God, for his name, for his kingdom, for his will, that we want him to be magnified. We want people to see God for who he really is. Not that he be manufactured, but the great God and the good God that he is that people would really know and see. We want his kingdom to come. We don't want him to rule and reign on earth as he does in heaven. We want his will to be done. We want it to be done here on earth as it is in heaven. We want what God says to be what we want. So our wills are bent to his will. And then we turn to our personal request. Jesus turns our attention to the personal request at the end of the prayer. We begin by praying for the most mundane of things, bread. We do so even on a daily basis showing that we depend on God for all the little things to get through any given day. We acknowledge that we're not like him. We need to be sustained. He does not need to be helped or served but we do. We need daily bread and he wants us to ask for that. And that encourages us that he cares about such little things as bread. and all those other aches and pains and problems, too. He cares about, let's just say, inflation and what that's doing. So we should ask about that. And then he turns and he gives us two requests that are spiritual in nature. And as we learned last week, it would be altogether terrible for us to simply be concerned for the mundane things of life as if our life consisted in what we ate and what we drank and what we put on. Jesus says in this Sermon on the Mount, that's how the people who don't know God think. That's how the Gentiles think. And they're all anxious about those sorts of things. And we think of the fact that the rich man fared sumptuously every day. Yet at the end of his life, he lifted his eyes up in hell and was in torment. And God said, remember Lazarus? He was the one who suffered through his days, but now he's comforted, and that forevermore. So we're reminded that we can't reduce our lives to simply the physical things. They are significant, but we must never, never reduce it to just that. We have the spiritual things that are so significant. So today we come to the sixth request, the second of the spiritual requests that Jesus teaches us to pray. Brothers and sisters in the Lord, let's look at Jesus' instruction that we be delivered from evil. Let's pray. Lord, help us as we carefully listen to what Jesus has said to us, by extension as he taught his disciples to pray. In this moment, we're just really glad that they asked the question that they wanted to learn from their master, the Lord Jesus Christ. And we're thankful that he condescended to teach them, even as John the Baptist taught his disciples to pray. So Lord, may this be a good instruction time for us as it was for them. And as we receive instruction, may we be doers of the word and not hearers only. And we ask for that in Jesus' name, amen. When I was young, everyone in the family wanted to sit in the front row of the family minivan. Everyone wanted to be able to sit in the captain's chair. Some of you just don't understand what that's like. But years ago, I'm talking in the 80s and 90s, the seats in the back of the van were rows, not individual seats with like nice headrests and such. It was an entire row that you sat on. And there you were, cramped with your brothers and sisters. There I was, cramped with my brothers and sisters. And I remember traveling down south, because our family, which was from Mackinac City, Michigan, at the tip of the mitt of Michigan, five hours just to get to the border down to Ohio, we would often travel from Michigan to our family's place, my grandmother's place, down in Florida. That was a long trip. a long trip down I-75. And I remember on one occasion being in the state of Ohio. And as we were going, for some reason, the front seat became available. And I remember getting in the front seat and being so happy I could finally sit up there, my own space, away from my brothers, away from my sister, I'm sure. And then I realized, the hot air is blowing. And this is the summer. And I turn to my dad and I say, dad, why do you have the hot air blowing? Well, what I didn't know at that age is, well, that was some kind of way to keep the engine cool at the moment because things were not good in our van. We had to keep it blowing hot air to try to keep us on the road. But I remember that time being towards Cincinnati off I-75, stranded. We ended up being at a rest area for four or five hours. That was in the day when you had to wait by the payphone. And dad had to get the number of the payphone and call from the garage and let us know how it would be fixed, when it would be fixed. Oh, those were the days. But that's why we prayed then, and that's why we pray now. Lord, help us as we go. Help us as we travel. I mean, we don't want to hit traffic. And we don't want to blow a tire or a radiator or anything else. We pray for help along the way. And here is the Lord Jesus Christ and this prayer, the Lord's prayer that he taught his disciples to pray. He gives instruction to his people for their spiritual journey. He teaches them to pray in verse 13 of Matthew 6, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Jesus taught us to pray for our spiritual progress. You see, we need protection if we're gonna make spiritual progress. And that's why Jesus taught us to pray. Lead us not in temptation, but deliver us from evil. You can see that this is a very short verse, but it's made up of two parts. but deliver us from evil. You see the first part of the verse is negative, lead us not, and the second part is positive. So we're gonna look at this in two points this morning. And we'll consider the negative point first, where it says lead us not into temptation. And as we read those words, it's actually our Bible knowledge that can make this passage more difficult than it ought to be. We know from Matthew chapter four, just a couple chapters previous, that Jesus was led by the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. And seeing, if we were reading this through, we would think, we just read about Jesus being led to the wilderness to be tempted, and now Jesus is telling his disciples to pray like this, lead us not into temptation. And it seems as if this prayer is that we would not experience what Jesus experienced. We wouldn't have to go through what he went through, but that's not the case. We all know that we all face temptation, just as Jesus faced temptation. In Hebrews chapter four, we're encouraged that Jesus faced what we faced so he can sympathize with us. So we know that we both experience temptation. We're also familiar with James 1, where it says quite plainly that God himself never tempts anyone. It says in James 1 verse 13, let no one say when he is tempted, I'm being tempted by God. For God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. So when we put James 1 and the Lord's Prayer in Matthew 6 side by side, it just is puzzling. Why would Jesus teach us to pray what God would not do? Let me say it again, because I said it wrong. Why would Jesus teach us to pray that God would not do something that God would never do? We should be absolutely sure that when we pray, lead us not in temptation, that is not a plea to God that he would refrain from tempting us. God would and will never ever do such a thing as to tempt us to do evil. You know, evil is what is opposed to him. So for him to tempt us to do evil is for him to essentially push us away from himself. He would never do such a thing. Another passage that comes to mind is Genesis chapter 22. This is the story of Abraham when he was called to sacrifice his only son Isaac. And it begins as it says in the King James, Genesis 22 1, it came to pass after these things that God did tempt Abraham. So we read that and we think to ourselves, it really does seem that God tempts us. But that is not the case as we reflect on our modern translations which read that God tested Abraham. And that's what happened there. So as we look at this verse, there's really a translation matter before us. This word for temptation, it can either mean the testing of faith or it can mean temptation to sin. We're trying to figure out which one it's talking about. The word doesn't have a single meaning, and that's the case for many, many words. Many words that we know and use have a wide range of meaning. That's normal. But here we have to figure it out. The question is, is Jesus teaching us to pray that God would not test us? It's almost like we're praying, Lord, don't test us like you tested Abraham. Is that what it means? Well, no, absolutely not. 1 Peter 1, verse 7, it says, the tested genuineness of your faith, that is more precious than gold. The testing of your faith is more precious than gold. James said, happy is the one who endures testing. Chapter 1, verse 12. So let's sum it up. Jesus is not teaching by this prayer that we would not experience temptation as he did. He is not teaching that God would refrain from tempting us to sin. He is not teaching us that God would refrain from testing our faith. So we have to set those things aside. What then is Jesus teaching? Well, something else. And we know a bit of what he's teaching by another place that he talked about prayer and temptation. You might see it as a cross reference in verse 13 in your Bibles. It's Matthew chapter 26, verse 41. And this is a good cross reference to write in the margin or to underline in your Bible, because it is helpful here. And this is in the garden where Jesus says to his disciples, watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. You see, it's one thing to be tempted. It is another thing to enter into temptation. It's another thing to entertain temptation. It's another thing to see where it will go, to be led astray. As James says in chapter one, each person is tempted when he is lured. and enticed by his own desires. You know, we use a lure when we go fishing. And our hope, which I personally have rarely experienced, is that the bait that we cast into the waters would lure, would draw away a big fish from his current path. That's our hope. And even so, temptation is bait. And when we sin, we take the bait. So what this prayer is teaching us, what Jesus is teaching us to pray, is that we would not be overcome by temptation. We wouldn't enter into it. We wouldn't entertain it, grab hold of it, take it for ourselves. We would not be overcome. We are pleading that God keep us from giving into temptation. And as we plead that, it's really an admission that we have. We're asking God that we avoid the danger of sin. And we need to think about why we would and should ask for that kind of escape. The first thing we should consider is the fact that we are not able to withstand temptation on our own. 1 Corinthians 10 verse 12 says, let anyone who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall. So those who would storm the gates of hell don't know themselves. They haven't taken to heart Jesus' words when he said to them, the flesh is weak. we would be spiritually oblivious to go toe-to-toe with the devil. I mean, think of Michael, the archangel, who Jude said he was disputing with the devil about the body of Moses. That angel, he did not himself dare to condemn the devil for slander. He had a huge respect for the devil and how powerful he was. So to pray, lead us not into temptation, is for us to admit that we're not able to withstand temptation on our own. As the Apostle Paul said, we must not rely upon ourselves to get through life. 2 Corinthians 1 verse 9. We can't act like that, as if we have the stuff and we don't need to worry. No, we do. We don't have the stuff. Furthermore, we're prone to wander. The psalmist said that we go astray from birth, speaking lies. And the apostle Paul leans into this point when he teaches that all people are condemned by God because of their sin. And so the hymn writer teaches us to acknowledge this, to be real about this, when he teaches us in his song, prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love. That's real. There's a realness about this request that Jesus teaches us to pray. Our case is not simply that we're wrestling far above our weight classification, that we're outmatched on our own. That's not the only issue, but it's also that we're prone to sin. So when we are praying, Lord, lead us not In that moment, we have a healthy fear of sin. It's like we're saying, God, don't let me be overcome as I have so many times before. Please, don't let it happen again, God. You see, this is a prayer for us to be sober. You remember how Peter said in chapter five, verse eight, be sober-minded, be watchful. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. We have to be sober, specifically sober-minded in our thinking. Say, how do we do that practically? Well, the easiest way for us to be sober-minded is to pray this prayer. Jesus gave it to us to pray. We should pray it. In this prayer, we confess our weakness to stand and our proneness to fall. So pray this prayer. Secondly, to be sober-minded, join a local church. Now you might say that's an application out of nowhere, but it's really not. Think about an alcoholic and his road to recovery. Perhaps that's your past, perhaps you have a loved one or know of someone who's on that path. What does it take for that kind of person to become sober? And many of us know, like we've really lived through it. We've seen it. We've seen how many people are greatly helped by groups like Alcoholics Anonymous or other communities that aid addicts. We've seen their care. And there is a great benefit in community. Now let's consider what God says in the book of Hebrews. This is Hebrews 3, verse 13, where God says, as long as it's called today, that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. We need to notice the elements of this verse very carefully. Notice first the danger of the deceitfulness of sin. You see, sin has a way of getting its hook in us before we even know it's happening. That's because sin is deceitful. So you have to be so vigilant because sin is so Secondly, notice the context of the solution. The solution is exhort one another. That means Jesus has graciously set up the local church as a sort of AA group for spiritual sobriety. The solution to the deceitfulness of sin, God says, involves a community, one another. Last, notice the time stamp of the solution. Exhort one another every day. That is some serious local church accountability, which every single believer in Christ ought to be experiencing every single day. Those who truly believe in the deceitfulness of sin will run to become a part of the local church because they know themselves to be weak and they believe in the deceitfulness of sin. If for no other reason, the reality of sin ought to drive every single believer to join a local church. Exhort one another every day, lest we be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. You see, Jesus is teaching in this prayer not to be overcome by temptation. He's teaching us to admit the danger of our sin and to distrust our own selves. We have to distrust, not trust in ourselves as if we'll just do it. We're just fine. We don't need anything. Oh, we need so much more than we realize. Not just between us and God, but between us and other people, community, faith. There's the first part of the prayer. Jesus taught us to pray that we not be overcome by temptation. And let me just close that point by saying this. Nowadays, it's not always popular to pray, God, keep me from, help me not to. Sometimes if you fixate too much on the wrong, you can become consumed in it. It is true. You can become consumed with it or you just can't get out of it because you're so consumed with it. That said, we have to take careful notice that Jesus used a knot in the prayer he taught us to pray. So it is commendable for us to pray that we would not do certain things. That's gospel-centered, Christ-centered living, to pray that we would not do certain things. And I encourage you. Pick out the top five sins that you battle with and bring them up to God and ask that you would not do those things. That would be very wise to do because we cannot stand on our own and we are so prone to sin. We need God to make spiritual progress. There's the first half of the verse. Now let's consider the second. But deliver us from evil. And you see as a footnote in the margin there, it says the evil one. So here's another one of those translation things. translation things in the King James, the NAS and the ESV, it says, deliver us from evil. If you have the CSB, NIV, NET, it says from the evil one. That's talking about the devil. So is it evil or is it the evil one? What are we talking about here? What was Jesus talking about? Let's just begin by saying evil and the evil one are on the same side. They're going along with each other, okay? So the answer isn't that far, either way, right? It shows us that whether it's specifically one or the other, they're both on the wrong side, okay? So as long as our interpretation is against that, we're gonna be good, especially given there are so many other passages in the scriptures that talk to us about the evils in the world that we hope to be rescued from. So in the second half, Jesus taught us to pray, For rescue from evil. Rescue from evil. You see, we want to be protected from evil. That would include evil in general. That is to say, we are opposed to the works of darkness. We don't want them. We don't want them to advance around here. We don't want them to become a part of our lives. We want to be rescued from all those sorts of things. Paul said in 2 Timothy 4, the Lord will rescue me from every evil deed and bring me safely into his heavenly kingdom. We want rescue and deliverance from all these evils around us, especially from any evil that creeps into our life. We do wanna be rescued. And one day when Jesus comes, we'll be completely rescued. And it won't be long. For me, not more than a few more decades. That's it. That's all I have to wait. We want to be protected from evil. We also want to be protected from evil people. We read about this, if you caught that, in Acts chapter 16 today. Great example. But I pulled one from 2 Thessalonians 3, where it says, finally, brothers, pray for us that the word of the Lord may speed ahead and be honored, as happened among you, that we may be delivered from wicked and evil men. For not all have faith. When you think about the life and ministry of the Apostle Paul, he was often opposed by evil people, many of which were Jews who did not like his Christ-centered, Christ-exalting gospel. So they ran him out of town. So our desire is that we be protected from such folks. That's not to say that God can't work in spite of those things, but we do want to be able to bring forth the gospel of Jesus Christ without that sort of opposition, to be able to wave the banner. We pray for that, to be protected from evil people, to let our light shine. Lastly, we want to be protected from the evil one, the devil I'm talking about. We want to be protected from evil in general, from evil people, and from the evil one. But how should we think about the devil? We've already done a whole sermon series on the devil. We've given him a lot of attention, and we've gone over what the Bible says about him. I'm not going to rehash that right now. But from that study, we all know this. The devil is not a joke. We believe in the devil, in that he really is. And according to the scriptures, from what we can tell, he is the most powerful created being in the universe, from what we understand. We pale in comparison. So when we think of that, we need to very, very carefully think about how is it that he might be a problem in our life? And I would encourage you with this thought, when we think about the devil, we should not think of someone who is coming at us with a club. That is not how he comes at us. He comes as he came in the Garden of Eden, as a serpent with lies. Jesus said about him, I remember he was talking to the Pharisees and he talked about the devil, you are of your father the devil. and your will is to do your father's desires. He, the devil, was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because he has no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies." See, there's his way of working. By twisting the truth, because he has none, he lies. And we see it come up in Matthew 5, verse 37. All you need to say is yes or no. Anything beyond this comes from the evil one. He prods us to twist what's true. Or Matthew 13, verse 19. When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in the heart. So when we think about the evil one, when we think about the devil, When we pray that we'd be protected from him, this is what we're praying for, that we would get God's help not to believe the lies of the devil. Because the devil twists theology in order to turn us against God. The devil is always anti-God. That's why he said to Eve, did God say? Oh, no. That's not how it'll be. He twists the truth. So when we need protection from that, it is protection from believing a lie that we would believe what God has said and not doubt what God has said. And there have been so many slain because all of a sudden they began to doubt what God said. And they began to believe a lie. That's how the devil operates. And he's good at it. So in this prayer, we're praying that we be protected from evil in general, from evil people, from the evil one. But why would we pray for that kind of protection? Here's the other side of it. We're praying to be delivered from evil. We're praying to be protected from evil because we want to make spiritual progress. Why be delivered from evil? Because we don't want to be sidelined by sin. Yes, we all sin. And Jesus reminds us that all who confess their sin, he's faithful and just to forgive them their sin and to cleanse them from all unrighteousness. We know that God is a forgiving God. Yet sin has consequences and often far more consequences than we realize at first or beyond. I mean, it doesn't take much more than a few moments of meditation on King David, and when he gave one eve to giving into lust, that he ruined so much. His own reputation, his own relation with his wife, someone else's marriage, he took that person's life. And those who were attending, who were encouraging not to do this, who reminded him, this is not your wife, this is someone else's wife. And then to think what happened to his kingdom, what happened to his family, how his family fell apart. You see, our sin has so many more consequences. So when we pray to be protected from this, we're praying that we're not going to be sidelined by all the terrible consequences of sin. Because we want to make progress in our walk with God. You see, sometimes you're traveling down the road. It might be I-75. It might be in Ohio near Cincinnati. And all of a sudden, that car you're trusting in, the family minivan, overheats. And you're on the side of the road for hours waiting for it to get fixed. You know, we don't want to live like that as Christians. We don't want to walk a spiritual path like that. We want to be not led in temptation. We want to be delivered from evil. Why? Because we want to make tracks. We want to make our way to the celestial city by God's grace, admitting that we're prone to wander. We can't stand. We need God's help. And that's how Jesus wraps up his teaching on prayer to his disciples. Lord, we ask that you would use that in our own lives, that we would be faithful to pray what you taught us to pray. You are Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, the judge of all the earth, the one whom we will stand before very soon. We will be with forever. You taught us to talk to you like this. So Father, we ask that you would help us to pray this. to understand what it means and to pray it from our heart. And Lord, we do pray and thank you for the many, many, many times you have kept us from evil, kept us from giving in. It has been hard so many times. We've given in so many times. But Lord, we pray again that we would be protected, that we would walk the way that you lead before us. We pray that for your glory, in Jesus' name, amen.