11. Lead Us Not Into Temptation
Isn’t this a rather strange thing to ask of God? Why we would have to pray that God wouldn’t lead us there. Would He do that if we didn’t pray? And if we believe that it is part of God’s plans and purposes for us to test us and refine us and mold us, isn’t temptation a necessary part of that process? And didn’t James tell us to rejoice, to count it all joy when we fall into temptations,[1] knowing that these trials or temptations can make our faith complete, lacking in nothing?[2] Why would we pray not to be lead there, if this was a necessary and important part of the process of doing something so valuable as building our faith?
Something wouldn’t really tempt me if I didn’t really want it in the first place. You cannot tempt me with alcohol, because I have no interest in alcohol. Sex is probably the biggest temptation for men. I know many of us can feel and believe that we might be above that temptation, but they just probably haven’t faced the right temptation. So we have to want something for it to be a temptation, but isn’t the wanting of it often considered to be a sin too? If that were the case, then we have sinned before we even got tempted.
But first, let’s make a distinction here which is not always so evident in the Biblical text. I am not so sure the Biblical writers were thinking like we do today.
Today we think of temptation as primarily an enticing to do something that is wrong. Of course, there wouldn’t be an enticing, if it wasn’t something that we really would like to do anyway. So while we may resist the temptation and not do that evil thing, the fact that it was tempting shows that we really would have wanted to do that thing, were it not for the prohibition not to.
So the mere fact that we didn’t act on our desires wouldn’t relieve a lot of us from a sense of guilt, because the desire was or still is there. And for many people that is still sin. Like that passage where Jesus said that if you look at a woman lustfully, you have already committed adultery in your heart.[3] So either men have to constantly worry about committing sexual sins or Jesus was talking about something else entirely. But that’s for another book.
But the basic idea of the word has to do with a test. And what is a test? It is an attempt to find out where you are at, what do you know, how good are you? You take an exam in school to see how much you know, and then you are graded on it. You run 100 yards or 100 meters, and the coach times you to see how fast you can run.
Then there are moral exams. You don’t know how moral you are as a person, until you are tested. What would you do if nobody would find out about it? If you had access to a lot of money that nobody is counting and wouldn’t know if any of it was missing and no one would know if you took any of it, would you take some of it?
Don’t be so sure until you are in that situation. And maybe not today. But what if you have been out of work for six months, and you are falling behind in your bills. You haven’t been there? Well, then don’t say what you think you will do in these hypothetical situations. It is good to have that line drawn where you know you don’t want to cross. You certainly want to have that before you enter into situations where you could be tempted to cross them. But what you would do today and what you would do when your life comes apart in other areas are or can be two very different things.
You say that you would never have sex with another woman besides your wife. So, let’s say your wife has been sick for a while, and you haven’t been together for a long time. You are out of town on business, and you won’t be home for a week. You meet someone who makes your head spin and your heart race. And she wants to spend time with you. And you have time to spend. But I digress.
So the two ideas blend together. We need to be tested, not that God needs to find out just where we are spiritually, but we need to know.
There was a man living a long time ago named Job. He was a righteous man who worshipped and served God. Satan posed the question to God whether Job only served God because God protected him from all kinds of evil and blessed him.
It is easy to do what is right when everything is going well for you. But when you feel miserable and your life is miserable, will you still care? Will you still love and worship and serve a God who could have protected you and blessed you but didn’t?
God told Satan to do with him what he will, but just to spare his life. Job passed the test, though he voiced some serious questions about God and life. Was any of this new or surprising information to God? I don’t think so. Satan apparently didn’t know how Job would respond to this kind of hardship. Job probably could have told him as much if he would simply have asked him.
I think Job would have just said that you should do what is right, because it is right, and not because there is some external reward in doing so. And you should love and serve God for the same reason. I am not so sure that all of us would have been able to answer that question so easily.
We know we should be honest, but we just can’t make it on what we make. We may not have the daring or will to rob a bank, but is that only because the risk of getting caught is so much greater?
We know we should be faithful to our wives, but deep down we are not satisfied. While we may not overtly attempt to find fulfillment elsewhere, that would jeopardize our marriage, our heart may transgress and dwell on other relationships.
We know we should be loving to all, but in our hearts we can carry resentment and anger and bitterness for years and no one would ever know.
We know that we should be generous, but no one knows what you do with your money and it’s none of their business. And you just try not to think too much about it.
So why does Jesus tell us to pray that God would not lead us into temptation? On the one hand, it appears that we might gain some invaluable information about ourselves. Do we really want and need to know the depths of our, I don’t want to say, depravity. That sounds too harsh and judgmental. Too much like the Puritans.
Let’s just say that it can be a very humbling experience. Quite depressing actually! We have this need to be loved, or at least liked by others. But when we see all that is in our hearts, we realize that there is much not to like.
I have looked at my life, my past, my failures, and I can feel like I have never done anything right. That is not totally true. I know that. But the weight of all my failures and my hurts can push all that aside, and all I can see is how much my life has been very different from what I would have hoped. To put it gently.
Do we need this much self-knowledge? I think most of us have enough already. I think most of us would rather not think much more about it. I think most of us would not fare too favorably in temptation. Either kind.
So this is not something that we would want for ourselves. It is when our minds are focussed on ourselves that we are more apt to do the kinds of things that we will regret later. When our minds are on God and the tasks at hand, we find ourselves far away from those things that can so easily entangle us.
When we are asking God not to lead us into temptation, we are asking Him to keep us from those situations that can break us down and bring us to do those things we shouldn’t do. This request is closely linked with the next one, where we pray to be delivered from evil.
Evil is the more general concept, the more inclusive term. Temptation would be a subset of that, one of many possible evils. It is singled out here, because it directly addresses how we are affected by evil.
I think this whole topic of temptation is confusing for most people. I believe a good part of that confusion is caused by our not seeing the whole picture.
We looked earlier at the story of Job. Satan appeared before God and made some accusations to Him about Job. God gave Satan permission to cause harm to Job and his family. Later in the Old Testament a similar situation happens in the life of Joshua the high priest.[4] It says that Satan was standing before God to be or as an adversary to Joshua. In fact, that is what the name Satan means, an adversary.
There is also a passage in the book of Revelation, the last book in the Bible, where Satan is described as “the accuser of our brethren (brothers), who accuses them before God day and night..”[5] Because Revelation is usually interpreted today as being of events that are still future to us, it is understood that Satan is there today, even now, standing before God, making accusations to God about us and asking God to bring trials and all manner of adversity into our lives in order to test us.
There is one big problem here. This is no longer true. I don’t hear anybody else talking about it, so sometimes I feel a bit strange saying it. But Satan is no longer standing before God accusing us like he did in the Old Testament.
The book of Romans is the closest thing to a theological textbook in the Bible, where the author, the apostle Paul, explains what this Christian life is all about in a logical and in-depth treatment. In chapter 8, which is like the climax of the book, where Paul puts all this together as to what it all really means in practical terms, he almost shouts: “What shall we say to these things? If God be for us, who (is/can be) against us?”
He then asks: “Who shall bring a charge against God’s elect?’ Now that is the very thing that Satan had been doing all through the Old Testament, standing before God and accusing God’s people of all manner of bad things. He says that God is the One who justifies. “Who is the one who condemns?”
I don’t think he was waiting for his readers to shout in unison: “SATAN!” No, he was saying in essence: “No one.” Where Satan was standing at the right hand of God accusing Joshua, Jesus is now standing at the right hand of God interceding for us. Many people picture both Satan and Jesus making their cases before God, sometimes agreeing with Satan and allowing him to wreak some form of havoc in our lives, maybe a life-threatening illness or some catastrophe that depletes our savings or destroys our possessions. Sometimes God will side with Jesus.
I have never seen anyone giving us any clue as to what we can expect here from God, except for the case where Satan might say someone is not worthy of going to heaven and Jesus needs to remind him and God that He paid the penalty for that person’s sin. Can you imagine this going on thousands and thousands of times a day for the last two millennia?
No, I think Paul is stating quite clearly here that Satan no longer has this free and easy access to God. Is there any other passage that might corroborate this? In John, chapter 12, Jesus was speaking about His coming death, and in verse 31, He says: “Now is the judgement of this world. Now the ruler of this world shall be cast out.” Cast out of where?
The only place I can think of that makes any sense is heaven. That is to say, he no longer has the kind of access to God that he had in the Old Testament. What happened to Job can no longer happen to us. That is to say, Satan no longer goes before God trying to get permission to bring evil against us. No, now he tries to do that on his own. Peter says that “our adversary the devil as a roaring lion walks about seeking someone to devour.”[6]
Does that sound scary? I think I liked it better the old way. No, this way is actually better. It defines the alternatives more clearly. Like when Jesus cast out a demon and the Pharisees charged that Jesus cast out the demon by the prince of demons. And Jesus said: ”Wrong.” A house divided against itself cannot stand. Satan wouldn’t have demons possess a person and then cast them out.
In the Old Testament, you had that ambiguity. You have the Lord sitting on His throne and all the host of heaven gathered before Him, and one of the spirits offers to be a deceiving spirit to go and entice Ahab to go meet his doom in battle.[7] It says that an evil spirit from the Lord terrorized Saul.[8] “If evil occurs in a city, has not the Lord done it?”[9] And then there are the seemingly countless times that God brought plagues on the Israelites. I know these were all judgments on them, which God is perfectly within His rights to do, but doesn’t all this bother you in some way?
Consider even the passage where God told Abraham to go to the land of Moriah
I know some will think that I am confusing two different uses of the word, test and tempt; and that God indeed still tests people today the same way that He did in the Old Testament.
No, I don’t believe that is true. But don’t give up hope here. There are still plenty of trials, tribulations, and troubles to satisfy the heartiest of believers.
But something has indeed changed. We saw in the case of Job and Joshua, but particularly Job’s, that Satan was able to bring all manner of evil on people with God’s consent. And Paul essentially said that Satan is no longer there.
That passage in Revelation would seem to indicate that this is still going on. But why was there no mention earlier in the book, where John had these visions of heaven, of Satan being there. Some will say that these are visions of the future. But was John’s initial visit also in the future?
What has happened today is that, when adverse and difficult situations arise in our lives today, nobody seems to know what is going on. Is this from God? Of course, we say. But what happens then is that we never know what to expect? We get good and bad thrown at us, and we never know from one day to the next what God is going to do.
But that is not the case now. There is no more ambiguity about what is from God and what is from our enemy. Jesus tells us to pray that God would not lead us into temptation, or testing, but deliver us from evil. He wouldn’t tell us to pray this if it wasn’t God’s will to do so.
This very same adversary that appeared before God to accuse us is still intent on our downfall. That is why Paul told us to take up the armor of God and to withstand in the evil day.[11] And why Peter told us to be sober and vigilant.[12]
But this should not be matters of worry for us. Jesus told us what to do. Pray everyday and believe for God’s protection and deliverance. You have His word on it.
[1] The same Greek word is used in the original text for temptations and trials. If they are not meant to be the same thing, that is our own theological interpretation rather than something that the text itself would tell us.
[2] James 1:2-4
[3] Matthew 5:28
[4] Zechariah 3
[5] Revelation 12:10
[6] I Peter 5:8
[7] I Kings 22:19-23
[8] I Samuel 16:14
[10] James 1:13
[11] Ephesians 6:10-18
[12] I Peter 5:8,9
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