Prayers’ Prayer, Part 2

Turn to the Gospel of Luke once
again in chapter 11. Luke chapter 11. I’ve also placed
the passage there with place for notes if you prefer. We find ourselves, for me, at
a rare spot. Part two. Generally, as you know,
in a passage like this, Generally try to preach it as a unit. I
will try to give just the briefest recap to catch us up. If you
weren’t here, catch you up to where the rest of us are. And by way of recap, provide
just a reminder to those who were here. We come to the passage that is
called and referred to most often as the Lord’s Prayer. And we
challenged that last week, and I think over the centuries, though
it’s been known as the Lord’s Prayer for the last 25 or so
years, there has been a tendency to refer to this little prayer
as the disciples prayer. It was the disciples that needed
it. The Lord provided it for them,
for their instruction. And in that sense, it’s been
known as the disciples prayer. I suggested last week, perhaps
an improvement of sorts to that understanding, because there
are some people that might think by disciples that we might limit
that prayer or the purpose of it to the twelve apostles. And toward that end, I suggested
that we call this the prayer’s prayer or even better still,
the would be prayer’s prayer. This is the outline, the model
that any prayer, any would be prayer can use to have an effective,
efficient prayer life, a time of communion with Almighty God. We saw last week that this passage
occurs again. It actually occurred earlier
in Jesus’ ministry. And Jesus gave this prayer, but
not in identical words. The words weren’t given identically
as recorded in the Gospel of Matthew, which points to the
fact that this was never intended to be what some use it as, almost
a mantra that is repeated over and over again to somehow appease
God. I don’t think that that’s wrong
necessarily if someone in the quietness of their own heart
prays this prayer. That’s not a sin. It just wasn’t
Jesus’ intent to make this a rote prayer, something that was mechanically
and slavishly repeated. In fact, in the context, as we
pointed out last week in Matthew’s gospel, The context there says,
do not use meaningless repetitions. Jesus had just given that admonition
not to use those kind of meaningless repetitions. And as I shared
from my own personal background, once you begin to say this 20
and 30 times in a row, it does begin to take on a meaningless capacity. If you will, I want
to jump back into the text itself. Read along with me, if you would,
beginning in Luke 11, verse 1. It happened that while Jesus
was praying in a certain place, after he had finished, one of
his disciples said to him, Lord, teach us to pray, just as John
also taught his disciples. And he said to them, when you
pray, say, Father, Hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread
and forgive us our sins. For we ourselves also forgive
everyone who is indebted to us and lead us not into temptation. We don’t know who the disciple
was that posed this question to Christ. We do know that he
was observing Christ in prayer and that prompted him to come
to Christ and to ask him how. He asked him for essentially
an instruction on prayer. What we have seen of Christ in
the Gospel of Luke with regards to prayer has been almost shocking
to us. We’ve said it before that if
there was anyone that didn’t need a deep time in prayer, perhaps
it was the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. He’d already spent eternity
with the Father and yet couldn’t seem enough time with the Lord. And in that sense, it’s a rebuke
to us that if Jesus desired that communion with the Father, how
much more should we go back to? Keep your finger in Luke 11.
Go back to Luke chapter three. Luke chapter three. I want to
just review Jesus prayer life with you. Jesus prayer life,
and then, you know, no wonder one of the apostles, maybe a
number of them were curious and one only got the courage up to
ask Christ about his prayer life. Luke chapter three, verse 21,
it says, Now, when all the people were baptized, Jesus was also
baptized. And while he was praying, Heaven
opened and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form, like
a dove. Here is Christ in the midst of
all these people communing with his heavenly Father. Turn to
chapter 5. Chapter 5 of Luke’s Gospel. And
in verse 16, we see it again. Just simply there, inserted there
by the author, Luke, And it says in verse 16, Jesus Himself would
often slip away to the wilderness and pray. This time of communing
with His Father was important to Christ. It was His very lifeblood. Turn to chapter 6. Chapter 6
of Luke’s Gospel. And we see it again in verse
12. In verse 12, Jesus is preparing
to choose the 12 apostles. And it says, it was at this time
that he went off to the mountain to pray and he spent the whole
night in prayer to God. Now, if Christ desired that kind
of communion, that kind of intensity and frequency, shouldn’t we? And yet I would shudder to take
a poll of hands. How many of us have ever spent
a night, an entire night in prayer to God? Turn to chapter 9 of
Luke’s Gospel. In chapter 9 of Luke’s Gospel,
we see Jesus at prayer again. Look at verse 18. where it says,
and it happened that while He was praying alone, the disciples
were with Him and He questioned them. You get this image. There
are almost a series of interruptions of Christ’s prayer. Christ at
prayer, He was praying so much that the only way the disciples
could get a word in edgewise was to interrupt. While He was
praying alone. Look down further in that chapter
at verse 28. Some eight days after these sayings,
he took along Peter and John and James and went up on the
mountain to pray. He purposed to go up on the mountain
to commune with his heavenly Father. This was a man like no
other, like no other that the apostles had ever seen. They
had seen the religious elite at work. They knew their own
hearts. But they had never seen a man
like this. They had never seen a man commune with the Father
like this man. No wonder one of the disciples
turns to Christ and says, Lord, teach us to pray. And you know
what? That presupposes two things that
I didn’t even point out last week. Number one, it presupposes
our need to pray. This disciple knew in his heart
that we should pray. Otherwise, he might have come
to Christ and said, and this is what so often happens in the
ministry, right? You get a few people that pray
and people will give them prayer requests. You know what this
disciple could have done? What maybe was his temptation
to do is to write down all of his prayer requests and deliver
them to Jesus. You pray. That’s not what he did. He said,
teach us to pray. He knew in his heart the obligation
to commune with the Father. He knew that we should be people
of prayer, that we too should cultivate that same kind of relationship
that Christ had with his Father. So it presupposes a need to pray,
but it also presupposes an innate inability. We don’t know how. We did mention this last week.
We touched upon it briefly that sometimes we just fall on our
knees and we don’t know what to say. We’re stuck. We know that the Holy Spirit
intercedes for us in those times. We know that he goes before us. But the bottom line is we struggle,
we struggle in prayer and your heart knows it. There are times
when we come before the Lord, times of stress, times of difficulty. We don’t even know what to say.
But day in and day out, even in those calmer days, even when
things aren’t stressful, when things aren’t coming apart at
the seams. We just don’t know how to pray. And that’s where
the disciple found himself. And I thank God for his honesty
to come before the Lord and to admit that we don’t know how
to pray. Teach us to pray. And Christ taught him and he
taught him by giving him this pattern, this type, this form. And he begins and he says, when
you pray, say father. We touched upon that last week,
we spent some or rather no little time on it. The point being that
not everyone is privileged to call out to the eternal deity
and to address him as father, not everyone. There’s no doubt
we looked at the data. We looked at the Old Testament
data that there was this type of relationship with Israel,
that they had this relationship with God as unto a father. But the intimacy wasn’t there.
But the intimacy is here for those who profess Christ. Listen
to the testimony of the rest of the Scriptures. I meditated
on a few of these verses this week. John 1 12. John 1 12 says
as many as received him to them, he gave the right to become children
of God. We have a child father relationship
with Almighty God. And Christ says, call out to
him as father. Speak of that intimacy of the
friendship that you have with the eternal deity now. Paul said
it as well. Paul said it a multiplicity of
times. In Romans, he said it in chapter
eight, all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are
the sons of God. What a beautiful image. For you have not received the
spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received
the spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, Abba, Father,
Daddy. That’s who God is to us, the
Almighty God, the King of the universe. He’s our Father. And
Jesus says we’re to cry out to him as such. This must have been
an eye-opening experience for the Apostle Paul, who must have
viewed God in his pre-converted state as this austere, heavy-handed
law God. That’s who God was to Paul. But
after he comes to Christ, he can’t speak of God in any more
glowing terms than this. Abba, Father. Galatians 3.26.
You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. Galatians
4, 6, Because you are sons, God sent forth the Spirit of His
Son into our hearts, crying, Abba, Father. And that’s exactly
what Jesus intimates here. He says, when you come to the
Father to pray, when you come to God to pray, come to Him as
to your Father. Come to Him as one who is precious
and special and with whom you have an intimate, deep, heartfelt
relationship. That’s how we’re to approach
prayer. That’s the attitude, if you will, in which we approach
prayer. But I said to you last week, I suggested that what I
see here is five vital features. Five vital features on what I
would call a blueprint. Remember, I said this isn’t supposed
to be repeated in some slavish, mindless fashion. It’s a blueprint
for how we should pray. Christ left us a design, a drawing,
if you will. Five vital features on the blueprint
of prayer. First of all, our fervent cries
to the Father, our Father. First of all, is to be a yearning
for God’s glory. It is to be a yearning for God’s
glory. He says, hallowed be your name. And that word hallowed, we looked
at last week to be separated, to be completely set apart. To set apart, to sanctify God’s
name. Remember, we talked about that
as well, that God’s name signifies much more than just a title.
It signifies all that He is. It represents Him in His totality. His character, all of His plans,
His will, all of His attributes are all bound up in the name. It is the expression of His being
as He has revealed Himself to people. One pastor coming upon this element
of sanctifying God, setting apart, hallowing the Lord’s name. He
said, when we do so, we declare our hearty desire that God’s
character, attributes and perfections be more known and honored and
glorified by all of His intelligent creatures. Do you know what we
pray for when we pray for this? We pray that God Himself would
become known to our neighbors, to our friends, to the people
that we don’t even know in this town, to the people who themselves,
just like we, have their backs currently to the God of creation. We pray that they might have
their eyes open, that they might be enlightened, that they would
come to Christ. There was another element that
we considered last week. Our fervent cries to the Father
are not only to be a yearning for God’s glory, but an appealing
for God’s reign. I’ll never forget this. It was
my first year in California. And I was waiting for a bus. And along came the bus prior
to the one that I was facing. And I think it even had the Oakland
Raiders deal on it, or the L.A. Raiders at that time, which caught
my eye for various reasons. And there was a Nike ad right
next to it. And the Nike ad that I read shocked me. It utterly
shocked me. It said, irreverence justified. For a tennis shoe? To be irreverent
before God? We’re justified by a tennis shoe? When we pray, Your Kingdom Come,
we are praying that all irreverence would cease. That God’s sovereignty
would rule. That all would come to know that
God is the King of kings. That the Lord Jesus Christ is
almighty and sovereign and our Savior. That’s what we pray for
when we say, your kingdom come. We pray that it would touch every
individual. The kingdom of God we saw indicates
God’s rule or His kingship. We pray that God would have His
rightful place over all the world, over all people. There are a
number of elements that come into play when you consider God’s
kingdom. It is obviously His recognized,
His acknowledged sovereignty, His rule. But it goes beyond
that. It speaks of salvation and all
the spiritual and the material blessings that go with that.
We pray for that for people. Your kingdom come. Matthew clarifies
it even further when he says, Your will be done on earth as
it is in heaven. We want God to have His way. We want God to have His way in
our land. We want God to have His way in
our Supreme Court. We want God to have His way with
people. And that’s where it begins in people’s hearts. We want God
to have His way. We need to pray. We’re commanded
to pray. We’re expected to pray. And Jesus
lays out here the first two patterns for us. Pray that God’s name
would be magnified in your town. Pray that God’s name would be
magnified in your boss’s mind. Pray that God’s name would be
magnified throughout the whole earth. Pray that His reign would
begin. There was a third element. We
pick up here with a brief overlap. Because here, Jesus presented
another angle, not only praying for God’s reign in the world,
but also praying for man’s need. Jesus doesn’t cower from that.
From time to time, you get these people that think that it’s a
sin to pray for some petty little need, for some small thing, that
it’s some kind of a sin. Jesus is deeply interested in
those things because he starts with bread. How much more basic
can you than that bread? How many of us had bread only
for breakfast? Jesus says, give us each day
our daily bread. And what he does here is provide
us a pleading. He reminds us that we are to
plead for God’s provision. This past week, Due to what I
looked at here, I kept thinking about what the Puritans called
and referred to so often in their sermons as presumptuousness.
Just presuming upon God. And when, people, we don’t pray,
that’s what we do. When we don’t pray, when you
don’t ask God for your daily bread, you are presuming upon
God. When you don’t pray for safety,
You are presuming upon God. When you don’t pray for wisdom
in raising your children, you’re presuming upon God. When you
don’t pray and thank God for the work that He’s given to your
hands, for the job that you possess, you’re presuming upon God. And
I realized how much we do this. When He says, give us each day
our daily bread, He’s saying that this is to be a moment by
moment, day by day endeavor. Anything short of it is presumptuousness. And He’s talking about bread.
How much more do we presume upon God about every other arena of
our lives? What about our health? When was the last time we pleaded
with God for grace, the favor of good health? Thank God for
the jobs that we possess. Thank God for the children that
we possess, for the kindnesses, for the friends, for the fellowship.
Anything short of that, people, it’s presumptuousness. We are
expecting God to provide something for which we have not asked. When he says bread here, we talked
about this. It wasn’t talking about literal
bread or exclusively bread. It begins there, but it includes
everything else, everything that we need. Whatever is necessary
to sustain physical life, James
1.17 said it similarly. Every good thing and every perfect
gift is from above. coming down from the Father of
lights with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.”
And what Jesus says is that we’re to ask. We know from whom it
comes, but we’re to ask. Give. Oh God, Daddy, Father,
please give. Anything short of that is presumptuousness.
Anything short of that is assuming and demanding upon God something
that He has not promised us. There’s a fourth point. And this is where we would pick
up from last week. Jesus has given us a blueprint
for prayer. And our fervent cries to the
father should include not only a yearning for God’s glory in
an appealing for God’s reign and a pleading for God’s provision.
But fourthly, an entreaty Or an entreating, rather, for God’s
pardon. An entreating for God’s pardon.
When Jesus says in verse four, forgive us our sins. He says
what every person who has ever lived needs more desperately
even than bread. And that is forgiveness. The
Word of God says that every single one of us has sinned, and sinned
in high-handed fashion. Even after we’ve come to Christ,
you know in your own hearts you’ve sinned this week. In your words
and in your thoughts. I know in my own heart we’ve
sinned. We’ve blown it. And every day we need forgiveness. And you want to talk about presumptuousness.
If we don’t fall on our knees, our knees of confession, and
assume that we’ve sinned, and plead for forgiveness, how much
more presumptuous can we be than that? We’re horribly presumptuous
to think that God just has some automatic deal with us. That
when we sin, we’re forgiven. When we sin, we’re forgiven. How terribly presumptuous. forgiveness. And if you know,
if you’ve been part of our church, we have tried from almost the
very day that we started this church to make a time of confession,
the very core of our time of prayer together. As a last means
of purifying our worship from those who would come in and bring
in their sins from the week. And if they haven’t dealt with
it already, even after those first few hymns, we fall with
our heads bowed and we pray for forgiveness. We confess our sin. We don’t wonder whether we’ve
sinned. We just wonder how and how many. We assume that we have. And in doing so, we confess that
we’re sinful. We confess that we’re guilty.
We acknowledge that Christ’s blood was not for naught. That
we apply it freshly to the new sin that we lay at His feet.
Sins for which He’s already died, if you’re a Christian. We lay it at His feet and we
apply new grace to it. We pray for grace to be strengthened
to that new sin. And even if it’s a sin that we
constantly struggle with, we continue to apply God’s grace
to it. We go back seven times seventy.
And continue to plead. But note. The forgiveness that
we that we ask for. Is for our sins, plural, we can’t
even track them all. We begin to just pray, Father,
forgive us because we are sinners. And we can plead and meditate.
And there’s so many good tools for doing that. Go through the
fruit of the Spirit and see if all of those fruit are present
in your life all week long, every moment of the day. Go through
the deeds of the flesh and see how many of those tainted you
this week. And there are all kinds of tools that God’s Word
has given us like that. Sins, they multiply. They just seem to multiply, don’t
they, in our hearts? And what a great means God has
given us for dealing with it. Forgive us our sins. Coming afresh
to Christ, just like we first did on knees of repentance when
we first heard of Christ. We come all over again. And we
come and we plead and we thank God for the blood that was shed
on our behalf. We thank God for that perfect
sacrifice on the cross. And we apply that grace and that
blood to that sin all over again. Forgive us our sins. We repudiate
our sins in doing so. We confess it as for being what
it is. We confess it for its blackness.
We confess it that it sent our Savior to the cross. Our sin. One said it this way. This phrase,
forgive us our sins, recognizes that sinning puts people at odds
with God. Have we forgotten that? Do the
rules change just simply once we become Christians? That sin
somehow doesn’t damage our relationship with God if we live in it? No,
it does damage. It does drive a wedge between
us and God. Forgive us our sins recognizes
that sinning puts people at odds with God and that only He can
cancel out the offense and pardon it. In fact, in Matthew’s account, Matthew
uses different terminology. He says, forgive us our debts.
You see, what that does is it presents this sin as a debt. almost as it has the monetary
connotation to it. This monetary connotation that
we now have a ledger or a column in God’s ledger for which we
owe. We’re in the red. We’ve fallen behind. There’s
no other way that our debt can be paid than to come to God and
to plead for forgiveness. To plead for grace. But Luke goes on. And he says,
forgive us our sins. Jesus doesn’t say whether we’ve
sinned, he assumes that we’ve had and he assumes that we need
the forgiveness and he says, forgive us our sins, for we also
forgive. And here comes the difficult
part. We ourselves also forgive everyone
who is indebted to us, and therein lies the question. Do we? Because really, in order to pray
this prayer, forgive us our sins. There should be already at work
in our hearts a forgiving spirit for those who sinned against
us, and that much is axiomatic, too, isn’t it? Sinners sin, my
friend Tony Evans said one time. Sinners sin. That’s their job
description. People are going to offend us.
It’s a given. And what also ought to be a given
is that in equal fashion, we forgive them. Almost as fast
as they can confess it to us, we forgive them. And even if
they don’t come to us, we stand ready to forgive them. We stand
ready. We’re already 51% of the way, 100% in our own hearts.
We are ready to embrace them and move on as if nothing ever
happened. I love the way Paul said it in
Romans 12. If possible. Which means that
sometimes there are people that we offend. Sometimes there are
people that we are at odds with that we will never see again.
It’s not possible. That’s something that God in
His grace is going to have to work out some way, somehow, if
possible. Sometimes they perish. You can’t
fix that relationship anymore, but there are relationships that
are possible, if possible. So far as it depends on you,
which means that sometimes we’re going to be able to go just this
far. We can only go as far as we can go. And that’s it. And
if they won’t be reconciled to us, if they don’t want to pursue
peace with us, what more can we do? If possible, so far as it depends
on us, be at peace with all men. We are to have a forgiving spirit.
Otherwise, to come to God and to ask for forgiveness when we
stand with accounts due us from others, we stand with these grudges,
this bitterness from other people. We’re hypocrites. If we’re asking God for forgiveness,
And we’re not willing to extend it to someone who is pleading
for forgiveness from us. That is the ultimate of hypocrisy.
Some of you know me, you know where I’m going. Going to a passage
that I’ve called the $10 million sin. The $10 million sin. Some time ago, I got an envelope
in the mail, right? Says that I won $10 million.
Still waiting for the prize to be delivered. Still waiting to
see what $10,000,000 looks like. But let me tell you what $10,000,000
worth of sin looks like. There’s passage in Matthew 18. Flip over if you would. We have
time. I thought we had time. Flip over quickly. In Matthew
18, Peter asks a very telling question, a question every one
of us is asked. They’ve offended us before. We’ve
been through this before. They’ve apologized and now they’ve
gone back and done the exact same thing. How sorry can they
be? Verse 21, Peter came and said
to Him, Lord, how often? Isn’t there a point in time,
Lord, when you just say enough is enough? I’m not your friend
anymore. I’m not going to put up with
this anymore. You just keep coming back and apologizing for the
same thing time after time. Lord, how often shall my brother
sin against me? And I forgive him up to seven
times. Jesus said, I do not say to you up to 70 times, but up
to 70 times, seven infinitely, as many times as he keeps coming,
asking for forgiveness, be ready to forgive. And then Jesus tells
this incredible story. A parable. He said, for this
reason, in verse 23, the kingdom of heaven may be compared to
a certain king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves.
And when he had begun to settle them, there was brought to him
one who owed him ten thousand talents. Essentially, the equivalent of
ten million dollars in our day and age. But since he didn’t
have the means to repay, The Lord, His Lord commanded him
to be sold along with his wife and children and all that he
had and repayment to be made. Even that wouldn’t have repaid
the whole debt. The slave, therefore, falling down, prostrated himself
before him. He literally fell on his face
to beg for himself and his family. Saying, have patience with me
and I will repay everything, which is the most ridiculous
statement in Scripture, because there’s no way he ever could
have paid it. This is an image of our sin, people. This is us
going before the Lord of the universe, essentially trying
to say, forgive us and we’ll repay. Slave probably made $15 a year
equivalent, even with the sale of his precious wife and family,
it wouldn’t have done it. Verse 27, the Lord of that slave, it was
gut wrenching to him, literally. He felt compassion and he released
him and he forgave the debt. And you know what the amazing
part is? The king didn’t strike a deal. He didn’t set up a repayment
plan. He forgave the debt, all ten
million dollars of the debt. There’s a dark cloud on the horizon.
Look at verse 28. But. But that slave went out
and found one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii.
The equivalent of 16 cents, 16 penny debt compared to a 16 or
10 million dollar debt. And he says it says that he seized
him and began to choke him before he even speaks to him before
he even asks for the money. saying, pay back what you owe.
So his fellow slave fell down. And if these words sound familiar,
they should. They’re the exact words that
he used on his master. Have patience with me and I will
repay you. Shouldn’t that have echoed in
his ears? Shouldn’t that have jogged his
memory of the forgiveness that he had experienced? Shouldn’t those words echo in
our ears when someone says, forgive me? You know what? I blew it. Forgive me. Shouldn’t that echo
in our ears? Those times when we fell on our
knees and that blackness of sin that we were stained with? Lord,
forgive me. I want to skip down to the end.
They called the man back before the Master who rebuked him. And
it said that his Lord was moved with anger in verse thirty four,
handed him over to the torturers until he should repay all that
was owed him. That’s only part of the story, because in light
of that ten million dollar debt that was forgiven, forgiven us,
we are expected to forgive. We’re expected to have this forgiving
spirit to not harbor unforgiveness and and bitterness and. Wrath. And verse 35 says, So shall my
heavenly Father also do to you if each of you does not forgive
his brother from his heart. The commandment to forgive is
a biblical, a thoroughly biblical truth. We’re expected to reach out to
others and to be to be warm and to be forgiving of their petty
little sins against us because they’re nothing. They’re infinitesimal
compared to what we’ve done to a holy God. J.C. Ryle said the object of
this profession is to remind us that we must not expect our
prayers for forgiveness to be heard if we pray with malice
and spite in our hearts toward others. How can we do it? He says. To pray with such a
frame of mind is mere formality and hypocrisy. It’s even worse
than hypocrisy. Hypocrisy. It is as much as saying,
do not forgive me at all. Our prayers are nothing without
charity, we must not expect to be forgiven if we will not forgive. You know, we need to do sometime
is take the kettle off the fire. That’s how I look at Ephesians.
In 431, it says, let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor
and slander be put away from you. Take the cattle off the
fire. They’re human. They’re going to sin. Don’t be
surprised at it. Be willing to deal with it just
as God forgave you. And that’s exactly how Paul concludes. Be kind to one another, tender
hearted, forgiving each other just as God in Christ has forgiven
you. What a blessing we have in forgiveness.
We didn’t deserve it. Our repentance was feeble compared
to what some people come to us with. Come to us with this flowery
language and this repentance and this tears and, oh, how I’ve
offended you, my brother. Far better than what we bring
to God sometimes, isn’t it? feature of this blueprint, a
blueprint of prayer. Our fervent cries to the Father
should be a yearning for God’s glory and appealing for God’s
reign, a pleading for God’s provision, an entreating for God’s pardon,
and finally, a begging for God’s guidance. He says, lead us not into temptation, And that’s a difficult one. Because
we have other Scriptures that seem to say God can’t tempt us,
won’t tempt us. So one of these things has got
to go. Or does it? See, God doesn’t formally tempt
us. He allows us to be tempted. And
our own sin, our lust, our love of sin tempts us. You know what? Truth be told, we enjoy temptation,
don’t we? Because it’s a kind of way of
participating in sin without actually participating in it.
We flirt with it. We see how close we can get with
it without stepping over the line. But we remember seeing
a cat play with the dead mouse. That’s what we do. We toy with
it. We enjoy it a little bit. We
dally in temptation. God didn’t tempt us. He allowed
us in His good providence to be tempted for our own sake,
to purify us, to strengthen our character, to bring us along
in Christ-likeness and sanctification. But He didn’t produce the sin.
He didn’t throw down the challenge. The one who sincerely seeks forgiveness
of sin deeply desires, he longs to sin no more. Don’t we? You
can look back on those times where God has given you victory
by His grace over some element of sin. And it’s due to that
gut-wrenching, heartfelt hatred for that sin that finally brought
you to that point. That pleaded for grace to walk
away from it once and for all. To leave that sin. To walk in
newness of life. James says, let no one say when
he’s tempted, I’m being tempted by God, for God cannot be tempted
by evil and he himself does not tempt anyone. God isn’t doing
it. God will allow it. One of the
clearest definitions or explanations as to how that can be, I found
in the confession. 1689 says it this way, the most
right. Pardon me. The most wise, righteous
and gracious God. Oftentimes. This should get our attention.
This is a regular feature of our Christian life. The most
wise, righteous and gracious God oftentimes leaves for a season
his own children. What a shocking statement. But
that’s exactly what Jesus says where to pray doesn’t happen. The most wise, righteous and
gracious God oftentimes leaves for a season his own children
to manifold temptations and the corruption of their own hearts
to chastise them for former sins, to reveal to them the hidden
strength of corruption. Haven’t you done things and said
things and seen things and thought things that you said? Where in
the world did that come from? God wants you to know the sinfulness
of sin. The horrible nature of it. to
chastise them for their former sins, to reveal to them the hidden
strength of corruption, the deceitfulness of their hearts, so that they
may be humbled, and to raise them to a more close and constant
dependence for their support upon Himself. He does it to draw
us back to God the Father. And that’s exactly what Christ
says we should ask for. Lead us not into temptation.
Cry out for the grace. that those temptations not be
brought your way. You know what? This is exactly
what Christ prayed for his own apostles in the garden. And John
17, he said, I do not ask you to take them out of the world.
But to keep them from the evil one. That’s what we pray for. We don’t want to be given over
to the evil one. We don’t want the devil to have his way with
us. He knows our weaknesses better than we do, and God knows them
better than anyone. Lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one. We know that evil is in
us and around us and all about us at all times. We know the
devil lurks around as a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. That last little element of prayer
is a crucial one. Lead us not into temptation. Don’t let us go, Father. Don’t
let us go the way our heart is inclined to go. Let’s pray. Our gracious God, our heavenly
Father, we rejoice at this pattern of prayer. We rejoice in how
you have instructed us, even as you instructed your apostles. God, grant us the grace of learning
how to pray. as you’ve patterned out for us.
In Christ’s name, Amen. If you will, our closing hymn,
Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing, hymn number 457. Verses 1 and
3 only.