Luke 11.4
A sermon preached at Geraldton Anglican Cathedral 18 July 2021
It is easy to become bored with saying the Lord’s Prayer. This is mainly due to not understanding it, so we are working on it with a view to seeing more clearly what Jesus was on about when he told his disciple to pray these words. The Sunday before last we looked at how the prayer begins: when you pray, know you are praying to your true Father; address him that way. Ask that his kingdom come, so the whole world would know how wonderful he is—that “the earth should be filled with the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea.”
I thought I only had this one opportunity to deal with the rest of the prayer, and I thought it would work better if we dealt with the last part first. But that little request turned into a big one.
Lead us not into temptation.
“Lead us not into temptation!” What does it mean, and why is it so important to pray it?
What it means is that we are under attack. Why are we under attack? Because God’s kingdom is under attack. Jesus established his kingdom but it is not welcome in this world.
From 1943 to 1944 there were mind-boggling preparations in England preparing armies for the invasion of Axis-controlled Europe. Hitler knew something was coming, but where was the best kept secret of the war. On 6 June 1944 an attack was made on several beaches in Normandy to establish a bridgehead. Once that was achieved the allies could move reinforcements in and out and take the whole of Europe. Hitler threw everything he had against that little enclave. When this failed, the war was as good as lost—but it wasn’t over. Fighting would go on for another year, and many more would die, before Berlin fell and the Axis power finally collapsed.
So, let’s get a few things clear. God’s kingdom is what he rules over. By rights that should include the world and all its people. Adam was appointed to be the human king who would rule the world as God’s representative. And you know what happened. He wanted to do things his own way—rule the world, but without God. He rebelled, and we all follow in his footsteps. So, who rules the world now? Humans!—God didn’t take that away from them. But do they really? Rebellion wasn’t their idea. The Devil was there and tempted them: “Did God really say you would die if you eat this fruit? It’s a lie; you won’t. God just doesn’t want you to be wise like him.” Adam was led into temptation and fell for it. So, if Adam and Eve were duped into following the Devil’s suggestions, and we follow suite, who rules the world now? Jesus called Satan “the ruler of this world.” (John 14) John says “We know that the whole world is in the power of the evil one.” (1 John 5)
God spent many years preparing the world for his return. Then he came in the person of his Son. Jesus came into a world that did not know God and established God’s kingdom. But not entirely. The world already had a ruler. Still, a bridgehead was established, and it is no surprise that Satan threw everything he had against it. It no surprise that Jesus ended on a cross. When that attack failed—one man had run the Devil’s gauntlet and never rebelled against his God—one man had lived his whole life without surrendering it to Evil—the bridgehead was firmly established. He rose from death and the kingdom of God had come in power. But much of the world lies in darkness, and Satan has not given up. His reign has been a reign of death. Jesus said of him, “He was a murderer from the beginning.” He cares for nothing but the destruction of the human race as God’s kings and queens in the world. When we talk about spiritual warfare, we are not using a metaphor. It is real. Behind all the conflicts and cruelty and epidemics and wars there is an evil invisible power at work. The struggle is about the human race and whether it will reach its destiny to rule the universe for God. The struggle is about us. Those of you who are into conspiracy theories, forget about the Illuminati or the Jews. This is where the real struggle for world domination is going on, and it is not about armies or the next election. Jesus is gathering men and women and children into his kingdom, and the powers of hell are opposed to it. He said he had come into a strong man’s house; he is stronger, and is plundering the Devil’s possessions. Those possessions are human lives—people held captive by the Devil.
This may sound fanciful; you may not think you belong to the Devil, but until you surrender to Jesus and come into his kingdom, you surely are. Jesus never saw any human as his enemy; we were the ones he had come to save. The Jewish authorities who condemned him, the Roman governor who ordered his execution, the soldiers who carried it out, these were not his enemies. No, his enemy was the Evil Power who controlled and manipulated them to do his will. And Jesus defeated him. Another day I will tell you how it was that giving himself over to death actually destroyed much of Satan’s power, and established the kingdom of God. That was how it was. The Satanic kingdom began to crumble, Jesus walked out of his tomb into Life, and from that time forward men, women and children are receiving forgiveness of their sins and a welcome into the kingdom of the future.
But the conflict is not over, and now it is about you and me. “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against evil spiritual powers …” That is what Paul said, and he goes on to tell us to put on the armour of God so that we might be able to stand in the evil day. (Ephesians 6) The evil day is the time when temptation comes for us, the temptation to give up on God and give Jesus away.
“Temptation”—peirasmos—the word can mean temptation, or testing, or trial, or ordeal—is not about the piddling temptations we all face every day over whether to have another helping of dessert, or to imagine we are better than someone else, or to lie on our tax return, or sleep with the girl at work—not here in Jesus’ prayer. These things are not unrelated, but they are not the big test that Jesus had in mind. In the Garden of Gethsemane when he told his disciples to pray that they not enter into peirasmos—temptation—he wanted to spare them the trial he himself was about to go through: would he hold to his mission and die, or would he run away, and save his skin. The disciples didn’t pray. They couldn’t stay awake. Temptation arrived. Would they stand by him and own up to being his disciples? Would they take up their cross and follow him? Or would they run, and deny him like Peter did? They didn’t pray, and they were led into temptation, and they fell.
This kind of testing doesn’t come every day. Jesus wishes for us that it shouldn’t come at all. He tells us to pray, “Do not lead us into temptation!” But sometimes it does come. Jesus prayed that if there was any way he could be spared … but it had to be, and he was led into temptation, and he did not fail.
There are situations Jesus does not want us to face, and he urges us to pray that God keep them away. But we know that come they sometimes do, and when they do our prayer is that we may “stand, and having done all to stand.” When we pray, “Lead us not into temptation!” there should also be the unspoken prayer, “But if it does, Lord help be to stand.”
Simon Peter faced peirasmos when he was asked whether he was one of Jesus’ disciples; he backed down. Abraham faced temptation when he was called on to kill his only son; God strengthened him and he did not fail the test. Job’s wife urged him to curse God and take his own life; he hung in there. As did Polycarp when they pleaded with him to sacrifice to the emperor and save his life: “Eighty years have I known him,” he said, and he has done me no harm; shall I deny him now.” In the time of Mary Tudor, Thomas Cranmer and over five hundred others—some of them children—were offered the chance to renounce their new faith and not be burnt at the stake. They would not deny their Lord. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in spite of his plumb job in the German Intelligence, joined the conspiracy to kill Hitler, knowing it would probably cost his life, and it did. As he said in his book, The Cost of Discipleship, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” Those Rwandan Christians who refused the order to kill their Tutsi neighbours faced peirasmos and came through. They themselves were then hacked to death, but they live and will enjoy eternity in new bodies in a new earth under a renewed sky. Those Christians on the beach in Libya whose choice was to become Muslims and live, or remain Christians and die, did not deny their Lord and will also rise.
Jesus prayer reminds us that we are caught up in a great conflict. For most of us, for most of our days, life is gentle; we can concern ourselves with the little things of life, but never forget that we have an enemy who wishes to destroy us! Our day may come, and we need to put on the armour of God now, if we wish to stand when the attack comes. Without prayer we are lost before we start.
These are strange things. They may be new to some of you. You may think it proves what you have heard about Christians being loopy. There is a certain comfort in believing the material world is all there is, and that Science is there to deal with all our problems, even if it does leave us dying without hope, in a dying universe. At least we can get on with sleeping around without worrying about God, until we can’t get it up again—not even with pills, or piling up as much stuff as possible, until our health breaks down—and what do we have then? If we follow Jesus, we must think seriously about evil, and whether there may be more to it than poor education.
Romeo Dallaire, the Canadian who commanded the United Nations forces in Rwanda at the time of the 1994 genocide, was witness to a systematic planned attempt to wipe out the Tutsi minority. Nearly a million people—mostly Tutsis but also Hutus who refused to join the rampage—were slaughtered in a one hundred-day killing spree. Dellaire found his hands tied, as none of the great powers would get involved. In the years following he suffered mental health issues and tried to take his own life, but went on to become a senator in the Canadian parliament, and is still active in seeking to prevent children being used as soldiers.
Ten years on—in 2004— a movie was made of the genocide. Dellaire was taken back to Rwanda to face his demons and live through it all again. He recalls a meeting with leaders of the genocide. He said he had never been a religious man, but when he looked into the eyes of the men he had to shake hands with, who had organized the slaughter of hundreds of thousands, he saw an evil which he did not understand. He began to believe that evil was a real power. The movie is called Shake Hands with the Devil. You may have had similar thoughts if you have been following the unfolding situation in South Africa.
Temptation, testing, trial, ordeal—peirasmos—is as real as it is painful. Whenever you pray the Lord’s Prayer you are asking God to keep you away from it. Jesus wants to spare us. From many examples in the Bible and throughout Christian history we know that from time to time it still does happen despite our prayers. When it happens, know that God has allowed it—for an important purpose for the good of his kingdom, which is our good. The important thing then is to accept it and endure it. In going through this sort of trial and continuing to trust God, we walk over the Devil, and Christ’s kingdom goes forward.