Word of Salvation – Vol. 37 No. 05 – February 1992

 

Praying For Deliverance In Times Of Temptation

 

Sermon by Rev. M. P. Geluk on Lord’s Day 52

Reading: James 1:1-27, Lord’s Day 52 (Q&A 127)

 

Congregation, beloved in Christ,

Today we give our attention to the last request in the Lord’s Prayer.  There were six petitions altogether.  We have asked for God’s name to be made holy; for the coming of His kingdom; for the doing of His will; for daily bread; for forgiveness and a forgiving attitude; and now finally for deliverance in times of temptation.

When we pray in the manner Jesus taught us, then we will experience the peace that passes all understanding.  Praying the Lord’s Prayer from the heart and following it up with works of obedience, will give God’s children rich blessings indeed.

Because the Lord’s Prayer touches upon all aspects of life, we can find in it all we need.  The Christian who prays like this is rich in God and at peace with all that life may bring under God’s rule.

The present times do not worry him, for he knows His heavenly Father will provide the essentials.  He gives His children their daily bread.  The past does not bother him anymore either, for he has received forgiveness of his sins and his guilt has been taken away.

So what more do we want?  We can now give God the glory and say ‘amen’.  The Lord has forgiven and the Lord will provide.

But there is still something else.  Yes, the past no longer threatens and the present is not making us anxious, but still we hesitate a little.  And the reason for that is because we know we have to go on in life.  We have to face life again and we have to face ourselves in all kinds of on-going situations.

The Lord Himself knows so well what this meant.  He would spend time alone with His Father.  He would pray, feel comforted and reassured, receive strength and singlemindedness.  But then He would have to leave His place of prayer and go back to whatever faced Him out there in that world.  All the cares and the difficulties of life would be upon Him once more.  And the Lord knows that it is the same with us, and therefore He has added this petition: ‘Father, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’

The future always lies before us, the future with all its dangers and uncertainties.  After we have prayed for our physical and spiritual needs, and feel close to God, we have to get up from our prayer and face the music again.  From those intimate times with God in prayer, we have to return to the hustle and bustle of daily life.  The good times we have in worship services around the Word of God on Sundays are followed by times of temptation in the workplace on weekdays.  And we are so weak and we cannot trust ourselves.  The evil one is so clever and his power so strong.  And therefore the Lord Jesus says to us that we should also pray for deliverance in times of temptation.

If we then are willing to be taught by Jesus and pray for deliverance, then let us in the first place ask this question: where lies the temptation?  When we say ‘Father, lead us not into temptation,’ then it seems to imply that God could lead us into temptation but we pray to Him not to do it.  If, for example, you are paying for your groceries at the supermarket check-out and the girl mistakenly gives you ten dollars more in your change than you are entitled to, then you are all of a sudden facing temptation.  But let us assume that you remember in time that you are a Christian and, therefore, you want to be honest.  So you return the ten dollars to the girl who is surprised for she would have expected most people to pocket the money and say nothing.

Later, you are thinking about the whole thing again.  It occurs to you that since God rules over all things then it must have been He who allowed or caused that situation to happen.  Now earlier in the day you prayed, ‘Lead us not into temptation’ and now you can’t help thinking that God did the very thing you asked Him not to do.  In fact, you could have kept the ten dollars and thought, ‘since it was God who led me into that situation, I can’t be blamed for not having said anything.  Before I realised what was happening I was outside the shop with ten dollars more than I should have.’

But you’re not altogether at peace with that kind of reasoning for now in your mind it is God who did the tempting, which really means that you’re saying it was God who caused you to steal.

And you should be disturbed about having those thoughts because the Bible clearly says in James 1, ‘When tempted, no one should say, ‘God is tempting me.’ For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone.’ (vs.13).

We can’t say, therefore, that temptation comes from God.  No, it doesn’t start with Him for He is altogether pure and holy.

So in that supermarket incident we can say that the Lord, who brings all things to pass, allowed the check-out girl to make that mistake of giving you ten dollars too much.  But Satan was immediately on hand to influence you to take it and say nothing, and you as a result of that evil influence were tempted to keep the money.  You were not an innocent victim for you realised in a flash that an extra ten dollars would benefit you.  If the girl had given you ten dollars short you would have been just as quick to realise that too, and you would have spoken up at once.

But what about God ruling over all things, that’s also true, isn’t it?  Yes, indeed it is.  However, in that incident at the check-out there was not only God.  You were there too.  And so was Satan.

Our confusion in these situations is partly caused by our use of the word ‘tempting’ and ‘temptation.’  We tend to think that it is restricted to evil things only.  But in the biblical usage of that word it is possible for God to tempt us.  Never to sin, of course, but in order to test us to see if we remain faithful.

Well, let’s say that honesty won the day.  You overcame the temptation to steal, you resisted Satan, and later on you thanked God for delivering you from the evil one.

As to why the sovereign Lord allowed you to be tested in the first place, His Word in James, also has something to say.  It says, ‘Consider it pure joy my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance (vs.2,3).  And it goes on to explain that as you are being made to persevere, through these various trials God gives, then you are going to grow in maturity and completeness as a Christian (vs.4).

God testing you, therefore, is a good thing, for in times of temptation you are thrown back on to God and you need His help to get you through.  Your faith benefits from that and it enables you to overcome even tougher temptations.

But we know, of course, that in ourselves we are not so strong and Satan is very persistent and extremely clever and there are hundreds of tempting situations where we could easily come to grief, and therefore we may pray, ‘Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’  And we’ll have to just leave it to God as to when and where He wants to test our faith, for He alone knows when we will benefit from it and when it is too much for us and are not able to endure it.

But as far as we ourselves are concerned, we need to pray often that the Lord be pleased to deliver us from the evil one.  We can all be tempted and our own evil desire is able to drag us away and entice us to sin.  To quote James once more, “Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death.’ (1:15).

God’s Word here in James 1 is very true to our own life situations.  We are not able to rely on our own strengths or virtues.  And we forget far too often that Satan is around all the time, seeking to bring us to spiritual ruin.

If only we could be a bit stronger and more on our guard.  But we can sometimes be so flighty, at other times so thoughtless, or even so unsuspecting.  If only we could hold on to Jesus’ words a bit more, ‘Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation.’ (Matt.26:41).

It’s so true what Jesus said in the garden of Gethsemane, where He faced deep temptation, “The Spirit is willing but the body is weak.’ (Matt.26:14).  It doesn’t take much for us to give in to ourselves.  The easiest person to convince is our self.  When it a question of us wanting to be deceived then no one can do it as well as we ourselves.

Therefore, when we ask where the temptation comes from, we have to answer that temptation is always present, anytime and anyplace.  There is no place and no time when we are immune to temptation.  Older people face temptation as do younger people.  Adults face one kind and children another.  We can be tempted when we are sick, but also when we are healthy.  The rich face temptations but so do the poor.  Employers are tempted in some ways and employed in other ways.  The government faces temptations unique to it and society a different kind.  Married folk have their temptations and the single people have different temptations.  There are temptations in the church and temptations outside the church.  We face temptations when we pray and we face temptations when we don’t pray.  Evil is close at hand when we speak but evil is also near when we don’t speak.

And all these various kinds of temptations are not there because life itself is evil.  No, God has made all thing good.  The problem lies with us and us alone.  It all depends on how we use or misuse God’s good gifts.

The tongue, for example, is a marvellous piece of equipment.  But sadly enough, we can use it to swear and curse, slander and speak evil.  The hand is like the tongue, wonderful examples of God’s creative power, but we can steal and murder with it.  Money is good but we can make it into a god.  The most beautiful things therefore, can always be made to do something terrible and ugly.  There is a tempting serpent in every paradise.  Things in themselves are not evil; it is our own nature that is evil.

Very often, when we think about temptations, we tend to think mostly of sexual temptations.  And, to be sure, there are plenty of them, some of them very crude, but others very refined.  We know that Jesus once said, ‘If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her.’ (John 8:7).  And because Jesus’ words are also directed to us, we all know that there is no one who has not faced some kind of sexual temptation and not sinned one way or another.

But sexual temptations are not the only temptations and they are not even the most difficult and dangerous.  The sexual variety may be very frequent and this society’s obsession with sex is largely to blame, but we ought not to be fooled into thinking that they are always the worst.

Much more subtle are those temptations that are of a spiritual type.  And because these are subtle and very hard to detect from the outside, they are, therefore, doubly dangerous.  Think of vanity or conceit.  How often do we not rate ourselves higher than others?  There are thousand and one ways of doing this.  Or we may love to take things easy and let someone else do the work.  And what about self-pity or the many ways in which we are pleased with ourselves?

These are all areas of temptation where we have to be very much aware that the difference between good and evil is not a wide strip but a very thin line.  What may be a moral virtue one moment can be turned into an immoral act the next moment.  It only takes a different thought to turn purity into impurity, a split second to cross the line from a normal desire into lust.

And who of us have not practised the subtle art of making a vice look like a virtue?  What we have done is giving in happily to the temptation to sin but making it look as though we are disgusted by the evil, whilst secretly enjoying it.  Just think about it, we say we are on a good thing when we regularly read God’s Word, pray and go to church, but in truth we may experience these things as a bit of a drag.

We defend our stubbornness by calling it steadfastness, our stinginess is said to be careful saving, our prying into other people’s lives as caring for them.

Yes, who is honest enough to admit that very often one’s sensitivity to others has become plain sentimentality?  We can shed tears in the face of adversity because we have drifted into feeling sorry for ourselves

And the temptation to turn the spotlight on ourselves, to love oneself more than others, to pamper ourselves instead of serving God, does not require a great big jump but just a very small step.  As in a game of chess, we only have to shift a few pieces slightly and it has succeeded in putting God and neighbour out of the centre and ourselves in it.  The evil in us knows exactly where to strike and when.  And Satan knows also what our strong and weak points are.

If praying for deliverance in times of temptation means first of all knowing that temptation is not from God but lies within ourselves, let us briefly in the second place see the need for Christians to be on their guard.

You cannot expect on your journey through life not to be tempted.  It will happen all the time.  But what road should we be on so that these temptations can be met with the best resistance available to us?  Jesus has taught us this sixth petition but where is the best place to pray so that God’s power and strength can come to our aid unhindered?

The answer in Lord’s Day 52, the first section, makes the confession that ‘by our ourselves we are too weak to hold our own even for a moment.’  So we don’t want to be on a road where we are all alone.  Neither should we be entering a road where, as answer (2) has it, ‘our sworn enemies, the devil, the world, and even our own flesh- never stop attacking us.’  We should be travelling on a road where, as the catechism says, the Lord can so ‘uphold us and make us strong with the strength of His Holy Spirit, so that we may not go down to defeat in this spiritual struggle, but may firmly resist our enemies until we finally win the complete victory.’

Where, then, is that road?  Well, Jesus said, ‘Enter through the narrow gate.  For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it, but small is the gate and narrow is the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.’ (Matt.7:13,14).

Broad is the road when they tell you: use your money, use your time, use your tongue use your body just as you like.  Just live your life the way you want to.  If you happen to insult God, destroy your neighbour, or if you do not measure up to the rule of righteousness and love – then don’t worry about it.  Do as you please.  That is the broad way.

There is also the narrow road.  It is a sure way, a reliable way.  It is a way on which you can enjoy beautiful and wonderful times.  It’s a good way to travel with a righteous purpose and a joyful heart.

But it is a narrow road.  One small step to the right, or to the left, and you sink deep in the bog of sin.  It is the way of the Lord.  On that way there is fellowship with Him.  It is the best road to be on when you want to be on your guard against all kinds of temptations.  Oh, yes, they can reach you on that road.  But on that road the Lord goes before you, He is next to you, and He is at the rear.  When you look to Him and pray then you will not be tempted to do evil.  Following Him you will live a life that honours Him, and is a blessing to you.

So you need to be on your guard as you follow Christ on the narrow road that leads to life, but you need also to pray.  What do you think is more difficult, to take your chances with a temptation or to pray, ‘lead us not into temptation’?  You think it’s easier to pray than to risk a temptation?

Well, it is more difficult to pray!  Why would that be?  Because, if we sincerely pray, ‘lead us not into temptation’ then we will not be tempted.  To come to the Father knowing your weaknesses and sincerely asking not to be tempted into a sin, then you are fully determined not to let it overcome you, not even to be near it, if you can help it.  Not to have that determination not to be really wanting to overcome that temptation, is to pray insincerely.  It is hypocrisy.

The evil one has as much power over us as we give him.  So, do not give him, a foothold.  Don’t let him enter inside that complex little world of human desires and longings.  Be aware of the enemy within.  Be aware of the betrayer in your own heart.

You know how it sometimes is.  We don’t want to be really bad people.  We don’t want the evil one to have full control over us.  But we don’t want to be really good people either.  It would make life too dull, we think.  We are really a square circle.  We are attracted to the forbidden pleasure that goes with sin.  We don’t mind a small dose of badness, but sin must not take over completely.  We want the lust in sin but not its bondage.  We hate fights and arguments but we want to stay on top.  We want peace but we are not willing to sacrifice for it.

The real difficulty, therefore, is not to give in when tempted, but to be able to pray uprightly and sincerely, ‘Our Father, lead us not into temptation.’

That is, our great difficulty is to leave sin alone with all our heart.  The most difficult thing to do is to radically resist all forms of evil.

And yet that is what has to be done if we are to experience freedom from sin and answers to prayer.  We must be consistent in our obedience and listen afresh to the Scriptures.  We must be prepared to have more than a mere middle-of-the road Christianity.  When we deny ourselves the pleasures of sin then we will experience more of Christ.

How can we become like that?  How can we get there?  Be praying this prayer, ‘Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.’

Not to pray it, or to pray it insincerely, is to be overcome by all the usual temptations that we have to face every day again.

AMEN