Lead Us Not Into Temptation

In our series of studies in “The Family Prayer,” we come to Matthew 6:12, the first phrase: “Lead us not into temptation.”

This is a prayer of constant movement. In the first section of it, which has to do with God, it moves from the inner shrine of worship, “Our Father, which art in heaven,” to the outer sphere of service: “Thy will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven.” And in the second part, which has to do with ourselves, it moves from the outer place of material necessity, “Give us this day our daily bread,” right down to the inner realm of spiritual conflict: “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

But notice that this whole prayer moves in still another direction, from the throne of God to the very depths of human experience, and then back again in victory and praise to the throne. “Our Father, which art in heaven”—and what higher calling can there be than to know that we are the sons of God, redeemed by the blood of Christ. Therefore we worship in reverence, on our knees in humility before God—“Hallowed be Thy name.” “Thy kingdom come”—we are the subjects of the King, ready to serve Him: “They will be done”—and we find ourselves even as slaves, waiting to obey His orders. “Give us this day our daily bread”—and here we take our place as beggars and paupers at His feet.

We are going down, down the ladder. Now we admit our dependence upon our God for every necessity. Then, as sinners: “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors,” we discover in ourselves deep conviction and great need. “Lead us not into temptation,” takes us further down still, until we touch the very depths; for here we are not only sinners, but desperately afraid that we should be ever more sinful than we are at this moment.

Having come down from the heights to the depths, we begin to rise again: “Deliver us from evil.” Here we are in the fight as warriors in the spiritual battle, soldiers in the warfare against the world, the flesh, and the devil. “Deliver us from evil, for Thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever.” Now we are victors in the fight: we are discovering the secret of drawing on the resources of the King. And at the end of it all: “Amen and amen,” the fight is ended, the battle done, the sword laid aside. We have ascended into the presence of our God forever.

That is the Lord’s prayer. We begin at the throne, and we go down to the depths, but we rise again to the throne of God to meet our Lord face to face.

All that, of course, is but a picture of our growth in Christian experience. In the early days of Christian living we begin to cry. “Our Father,” as we enter into this new relationship through faith in Jesus Christ our Lord, born again by His Spirit. We are privileged to call God “Our Father.”

Then we begin to worship Him, seeking to do His service and to be used by Him, and we are concerned about the doing of His will. We quickly begin to discover how dependent we are upon Him for every detail of our lives, and then we begin to understand what sin really is. Many people are saved without any real deep conviction of sin, but no one is ever a pupil in the school of holiness without discovering how sinful he is. The child of God who began so happily to say, “Our Father,” as he goes on in Christian experience finds still the flesh within him, and the Spirit wars against the flesh, and the flesh against the Spirit, and the child of God begins to discover the tremendous warfare that he has entered into.

But now we would seek to analyze this realm of inner conflict. We have prayed, “Forgive us our debts”—that concerns the past. But now we pray, “Lead us not into temptation,” and that concerns the future. Of course, it is very closely related to the past, for the experience of God’s forgiving mercy to the Christian has always a threefold effect on his life.

First, it makes him realize his own weakness. For the fact that we have sinned takes away all confidence in our own strength. Again, the forgiveness makes the child of God long for holiness. No Christian who claims to be washed in the blood of the Lamb can be anything but a hypocrite unless the outcome of that experience is to make holiness the most intense desire of his heart.

Many Christian people are afraid of the word, “holiness.” They are afraid of extremes; they are afraid of fanaticism. I would to God that we were more afraid of sin! When a man experiences the forgiving grace of God, he hungers and thirsts after a pure and a godly life. He begins to hate the things that he used to love, to loathe the thing to which once he was wedded. He begins searching fort he secret of walking with God in victory.

Again, the experience of God’s forgiving mercy makes us realize how powerful sin is, that even the deep experience of forgiveness has not rooted out of our lives the tendency to sin. In Dr. J.C. Macaulay’s book on the Lord’s Prayer, “After This Manner,” there is this choice phrase: “The loathing which we have of sin in the holy moment of pardon strangely weakens when we find ourselves in the old atmosphere, with the old temptation wearing its most alluring garb. Our high resolve does not come to our rescue fast enough when the temptation hits us like a thunderbolt.”

How many times have you and I claimed God’s forgiveness, stamped our foot in resolve and determination, and said, “I’ll never lose that temper of mine again,” “I’ll never do that thing again; I loathe it.” But we have gone back to the old atmosphere and the old company, and the temptation has come with new and attractive garb. We have found ourselves bound, and our resolve lies shattered around us.

The prayer of a man yielded to the will of God is not for outward well-being, but for inward character. It is not for better circumstances, but for greater likeness to Christ. Every time he slips up he hates himself more and more that he has fallen again and grieved his Lord. He knows that his sin has broken his fellowship with his Saviour, and that is the thing that matters to him more than anything. He knows that he has ruined his testimony, that his friends that are unconverted look at him and say, “That’s your Christianity for you. I told you it would happen. You could never keep it up.”

He hides his face in shame and he weeps privately with anguish and remores. “Oh, God, is there no answer to this thing in my life that constantly gets me down?”

No wonder this prayer, “Lead us not into temptation,” finds a place every day in our hearts. How we dread to meet the enemy, for we know how weak we are, and unless the Lord matches the onslaughts of the devil by His omnipotent strength, we will go on wallowing in the mire.

“Yield not to temptation,
For yielding is sin;
Each victory will help you
Some other to win,” says the hymn, but, I’m sorry to say, I don’t believe it!

No victory over temptation makes us stronger than we were before. No triumph imparts natural strength to ourselves. If we think it does, we shall fail. It was that false supposition which caused Joshua’s armies to lose the battle of Ai after the victory of Jericho. They thought that Jericho had made them strong, and that Ai would be easy to overcome, but it was not true.

That fact is, my friend, that all through Christian life every experience of the conflict is given to us in order to teach us the lesson that “in me, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing.” The discovery of the man who battles his way through is that he realizes his own desperate weakness, his helplessness apart from the grace of God. He finds that the pathway which one avalanche of temptation has hollowed out in his life lies ready and waiting to receive the next attack. And unless the grace of God, in some omnipotent power, blocks the pathway of Satan, the child of God knows he will go down again.

What, then, are we to say about all this? Must these things continue? Oh, thank God, there is a negative answer, but you and I need to understand the tactics of the enemy of our souls. We need to realize the true character of the warfare in which we are engaged, and the great and tremendous issues that are at stake.

The Source

First of all, let us consider the source of temptation. “Lead us not into temptation.” The implication of that is that God tempts His child, that He leads us into such circumstances as are definitely calculated to trip us up and make us fall. Is that true? James 1:13 says it is not: “Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God, for God cannot be tempted of evil, neither tempteth He any man.”

But Genesis 22:1 says, “God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Take now thy son, Isaac, and offer him for a burnt-offering.” Yet again, in Matthew 4:1 we read, “Then was Jesus led of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.” What do you make of all that? Is it a hopeless contradiction? No, the truth is just this: temptation has two parts. First, there is the situation which may or may not lead to sin. Second, there is the desire within your life, the fifth columnist, if you like, who responds to it. Those two parts are operative in every temptation: the circumstances themselves which suddenly confront you, and which find that within you they have an ally, a Quisling, to whom they proffer certain conditions.

You see, there must be tinder as well as spark if you are going to kindle a flame. If fire falls on water or bare rock it won’t kindle anything. It is God who sends the fire, but it is you who lights the flame. He tempts only insofar as He creates circumstances which are either an occasion for falling or an opportunity to prove His power to keep you.

In that sense, temptation is merely testing. Listen to 1 Peter 1:5-7: “You, who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations: That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.”

God permits temptation in our lives to be the proving ground of the profession of our faith in Jesus Christ, to discipline our Christian character in teaching us to rely completely upon Him for power. God allowed Satan to sift Job, but first of all Satan had to ask God’s permission. No temptation, no testing, no trial, is allowed to touch the life of God’s child without God’s permission, and He permits it in order to test his faith. Satan attacks us to achieve our downfall. God never in malice will tempt any of His children, but always in mercy He will try them. I trust that this brief explanation will bring some comfort or light upon the warfare in which we may be engaged.

The Strength

But let me call your attention in the second place to the strength of temptation. It has no power at all apart from the personality of the devil. I do not know, of course, whether you believe in the personality of the devil. I do—I know him too well to doubt him. The more I love the Lord, the more I hate the enemy. He who knows the Saviour best, also will know Satan more perfectly. That is why, you see, this prayer is followed by “but deliver us from evil”—that is “from the evil one.”

Remember that temptation, in itself, is never sin. Jesus was tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin. It is not the man who yields to temptation who can speak of the power of it. It is the man who resists temptation who knows its strength. Someone says, “The temptation was terribly strong; it came and I went down so quickly!” That man knows nothing about temptation’s power. But another will come and say, “I am being attacked, I am fighting a battle. This thing in my heart is too strong for me, but by the grace of God I am standing.” That person is using the language of the Apostle Paul when he wrote to the church at Ephesus, “That you may be able to stand your ground in the evil day, and, having fought through to the end (or—and I love this translation—having been fought to a standstill) remain victor on the field” (Weymouth). Am I using language strange to you, or are you at present being “fought to a standstill?”

In Hebrews 12 I read, “Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin.” I dare not preach on that. Jesus knew that experience, but I do not. He sweated blood in Gethsemane as He resisted the devil. Are there some points in your life where you are not putting up, perhaps, the resistance that you ought? For I want to say to you that the power of the devil in the Christian’s life is only known by the man who, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, is determined to stand his ground.

If you begin to understand this language, you will begin to understand the meaning of this prayer, the one thing we have to dread more than anything else. I could paraphrase it this way, and I often do as I seek the Lord myself: “Lord, I am weak, I would avoid every temptation of the devil if I could. I don’t ask to be kept exempt from trial, because that would not be good for me. But, Lord, if today there is to be put in my path an inducement to sin, Lord Jesus, then lead me through. Take my hand, and keep me near to You, Lord Jesus. I don’t ask to be free from the furnace of testing, but, O God, I need desperately Your presence through the fire.”

“Every man,” said James, “is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.” That is the downward process. At the back of it there is one who is determined to destroy us. Lord Jesus Christ, today, “lead me not into temptation.”

The Saviour

Finally, I must say one word concerning the Saviour in temptation. Where does He come into all this? If God allows my life and your life to be tested almost beyond endurance, if He allows us to face situations where we are utterly fought to a standstill, it can only be because He is able to keep in any situation. Listen to Paul writing to the church at Corinth: “There hath no temptation take you but such as is common to man, but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that you are able, but will, with the temptation, also make a way of escape, that you may be able to bear it” (1 Corinthians 10:13).

Hear the words of Peter in 2 Peter 2:9: “The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly from temptation,” and to the words of the writer of Hebrews 2:18: “In that He Himself hath suffered, being tempted, He is able to succor those that are tempted.” Those words come like water to my thirsty heart and to my needy soul. What sweet music they are to the warrior in the fight to overcome temptation. Because of this assurance, James says, “Count it all joy when you fall into divers temptations.” Why? Because in them we prove the power of Christ. We know that they are sent for a purpose, and we cling to Him for deliverance, not from temptation, but from Satan.

I know that there is no situation through which He will ask you or me to go except that in it He is able to save completely. Does someone say to me that He doesn’t save you like that? “I don’t know anything about victory. He doesn’t give me power over temptation.”

But tell me, my friend, are you really honest when you pray that prayer? Excuse me for putting it so bluntly, but you don’t expect the Lord to answer that prayer, do you, if you date a fellow or girl who is ruining your life? If I pray, “Lord Jesus, lead me not into temptation,” that prayer is going to decide the company I keep, the books I read, the places I go, for I need never expect Jesus Christ my Saviour to keep me from temptation if I walk right into it.

When you pray, “Lead me not into temptation,” are you honest or are you a hypocrite? You can only answer that yourself. If you will come to Jesus Christ in humility and say to Him, “Lord I want to cut out of my life everything that dims my vision of Yourself, everything that makes prayer hard, everything that makes my Bible dull, everything that makes my worship unreal; Lord Jesus, I want him or her to go.” If I am prepared to say that, I can look up into His face and say, “Lord, lead me not into temptation.” Then He will take my hand, and He will see me through many deep waters, but they will never overflow me, and He will take me into many a furnace, but the flame will not touch me. Then one day He will present me faultless before the throne to share in His complete victory over Satan forever.