AVOIDING TEMPTATION: Do I want this for my life?
- Matthew 6:13.
- Now we come to the close of the Lord’s Prayer. Jesus has invited us to pray about a number of important subjects and now we have a final one about spiritual victory.
- What does v. 13 mean? I think a summary statement would be that we are praying, “Father, I don’t want sin to win in my life.” Or “Father, help me avoid sin.”
- The first request is “lead us not into temptation.” Keep temptation away from me, Father.
- The second is closely related: protect me from Satan.
- This speaks to a call for God to help us live lives that are close to Him and not overwhelmed by sin and evil.
- This raises a simple but important question: do I want this for my life?
- Now if we think of it in terms of the second one and feeling as though we are under demonic attack, with lots of bad things happening in our lives, the answer would be an obvious and simple yes. But, of course, that's not the typical way that this manifests.
- The typical battleground for these issues is an everyday desire (or lack of desire) to see sin decrease in my life and to have more of Christ in me. “Father, show me where my sin is so we can get it out!”
- Many of us have gotten pretty comfortable with much of the sin in our lives. We aren’t crying out for deliverance. We’ve accepted that this is the best we can do. As we discussed in an earlier sermon in this series, we settle into “sin management” and just try to control the consequences rather than excising the actual sin.
- The simple question (do I want this for my life?) can be answered by looking at how actively we are trying to get sin out of our lives. For many of us the answer is “not very actively.”
- This is us crying out to God: “I don't want to be near temptation and I want to be delivered from the Evil One.”
- This is a world of temptation and trial.
- It’s just the nature of our current world.
- The question that raises for us as Christians is “how am I going to deal with that?” Am I just going to continue to sin, believing that I’m not called to do any better or that I am incapable of doing any better?
- Am I going to fight the big stuff and accommodate the small stuff?
- Or am I going to actively pursue Christlikeness in all that I do?
- There is an interesting connection between the end of the Lord’s Prayer and the end of the Sermon on the Mount that it is a part of.
- At the end of the Sermon on the Mount there is a repeated call to actually follow the teaching of Christ. Look at Matthew 7:13-14, 16, 21, 24-27. Again and again, He concludes with a call to actually live out what Jesus has taught. It’s a call to live out the victory that Jesus is offering.
- There is a definite connection to the end of the Lord’s Prayer. Jesus is calling us to live out the victory that Jesus is offering.
- In many ways, this is the whole point of why Jesus came. He didn’t merely come to forgive us and leave us in our messed-up condition. He came to change us into creatures who can actually live lives that bring honor and glory to Him. He came to change us.
- All of this leads us to a question worth pondering: if given the tools to be more like Jesus, would I do it?
- This is a moment of honesty this morning. If a path opened for me to be like Jesus, would I eagerly walk it? Of course, this touches on issues like “how much do I like what Jesus stands for?” and “do I want moral and spiritual change in my life?” and “is religious belief something I say or something I do?”
- The original question is important because the reality this morning is this: we have been given the tools to be more like Jesus. It’s just a question of whether we avail ourselves of them or not.
- At a practical level, what do those tools look like? Let me talk about four of them.
HOW DOES GOD HELP US IN THIS?
- I should note as we begin that everything I’m about to share is only true for Christians. That's because this is what God is able to do in our lives when we invited Him in. If we stubbornly refuse His help in general, we are not in a position when temptation strikes to avail ourselves of the impressive resources that God has made available to us. The victory requires that we need the power of God into our lives.
1. He makes us into new creations capable of living for God.
- 2 Corinthians 5:17; Galatians 6:15; Ephesians 4:24; Colossians 3:10.
- Before we knew Christ we were dead in our transgressions. It was impossible for us to live for God.
- But after we receive Christ, God makes us into a new creation in Christ. That new being has the capacity of living for God.
- This means that we no longer have to despondently sit in our sinfulness. We have been changed and transformed. We have the opportunity to be like Christ.
- Understanding this opportunity is an important first step in overcoming sin in our lives.
- But a second step comes quickly on its heels: we have to choose to live this out. It’s not automatic. It requires that we want it and pursue it.
- This is where Paul instructs us to “put on the new man.”
- Like having a choice each day of two jackets to wear, we have the “old man” and the “new man” to choose from each day. Will I “put on” my old habits and sinfulness or will I “put on” my new life in Christ?
- Sadly, many choose to continue to live in their old habits. They leave their new life sitting unused.
- Another thing worth mentioning about living a victorious life: having the Holy Spirit within us is incredibly helpful in living out a spiritually victorious life.
- This is part of the re-creation that God has done in our lives. Part of the big plan of salvation is having the Holy Spirit within us to guide and direct as we walk with God each day. This is an incredibly valuable resource, but we need to avail ourselves of what He offers.
- This is a largely overlooked part of our walk with God. That explains the lack of power that we see in many Christian lives.
- A simple question to close this point: when you are tempted to sin, do you think, “This isn’t who I really am.”
2. He never allows us in a situation where we have to sin.
- 1 Corinthians 10:13.
- Many of us presume that failure is inevitable when it comes to our walk with God. We almost expect it.
- And so, when we are tempted, we just presume that we are probably going to fail. We’ve failed before so why should I be surprised if I do again?
- In fact, we often presume that we don’t have any choice but to fail because temptation seems so strong.
- That's not Biblically true, though. 1 Corinthians 10:13 tells us that we never have to give in to a sin. Never! God will always provide a way of escape.
- That's a wild and encouraging truth. And it’s one that should raise our expectations of what we’re capable of.
- How is this possible? It goes back to what we just talked about: we are new creations in Christ and we have the Holy Spirit within us. Those realities prime us for victory.
- God has given us all the resources that we need to live victorious lives.
- This doesn’t mean that we should go skating right up to the edge all the time, presuming that these resources we have will keep us from disaster. No, part of the deal here is wanting to stay away from sin in the first place. So part of the plan is that we are wise enough to avoid tempting situations.
- But when we do find ourselves in a challenging situation, we know God has provided a way out for us.
- Does this mean that we can become sinless in this life? In practical terms, because we still have our sinful nature as part of our physical bodies, we will trip up sometimes. But we need to raise the bar much higher than it is. We will not become sinless but we can sin less - a lot less. We can reach a place where we can go for days without knowingly sinning.
3. He limits what Satan can do.
- Job 1:12; Job 2:4-6.
- Job is such an interesting book. It examines what many consider the most pressing question: why do bad things happen to people who don’t seem to have done anything to deserve that?
- There are a number of profound truths that Job brings out but for our purposes here I’m just interested in a few verses at the beginning of the book. In the dramatic exchange between God and Satan, it shows Satan asking for permission to bring struggles into Job’s life. That's a telling truth: Satan does not have carte blanche in his persecution of God’s people.
- It makes us think of the phrase “hedge of protection.” That phrase originates from Job 1. In v. 10 Satan complains about a “hedge” that God has put around Job, protecting him from oppression. It’s from that reference we have the phrase “hedge of protection.” And it’s true: God can and does limit what Satan can do.
- In light of all this, we can ask God to protect us from temptation. It goes back to the Matthew passage that we started with this morning. We are praying in v. 13 for God to deliver us from the Evil One.
- There are times for heroic and difficult struggles like Job went through. There are also times, though, when God protects us from those situations. And there is nothing wrong with asking for God to do that for us. In fact, we are commanded to ask for that in the Lord’s Prayer.
4. Prayer lets us “call headquarters” for more help.
- 2 Corinthians 10:4-5; James 4:7; 1 John 5:4-5.
- John Piper has a famous quote that says that much of our problem with prayer is that we treat it as a domestic intercom to ask God to bring us things we want when it was intended to be a wartime walkie-talkie that we use to ask for battle support.
- This world is a spiritual battleground. There is a war going on between God and Satan. Souls hang in the balance.
- As Christians, we are to fight in this battle, this war. And we are invited to use prayer to get the help we need.
- Now, let’s relate this to the specific subject we are talking about in this sermon: overcoming temptation.
- We might ask God to give us wisdom on how to handle a certain situation.
- We might ask God for protection from temptation.
- We might ask God to open up insight for us from wise Christian friends on how to proceed.
- We might ask God to defeat someone who is bringing temptation into our lives.
- Whatever the specifics, prayer is our ability to call headquarters for support.
- We should ask ourselves: do we do this?
- It would first presume that we want to battle against temptation in our lives, which isn’t always true.
- Second, it would presume that we believe that God wants to help us win.
- Third, it would require us to ask and then look for the answer.
WHAT WE'RE ASKING FOR: The Lord’s Prayer is not just “change the world” or “change that circumstance,” but “change me.”
- Matthew 6:9-13.
- As we close, it’s important to place this verse in the larger context of the Sermon on the Mount. One way to put it is that we have asked God to change the world and to change the circumstances around us, but we are also asking God to change us.
- I want to be different. I want to overcome sin. I want to have victory. I want to see less sin in my life.
- Is that true for us? Do I want to be different? Do I want to be more like Christ? Am I eager for God to work in my heart?
- If not, maybe we should think twice before praying the Lord’s Prayer.
