“And do not bring us into [do not cause us to come into] temptation, but deliver us from the evil one [from evil]. [For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.]”
Matthew 6:13
Holy Bible: Holman Christian Standard Version. 2009. Nashville: Holman Bible Publishers.
We come to the final addition. Of the additive pleas, this one seems the most desperate in its appeal to God’s all-seeing vantage of trial, tribulation and temptation. In The Lord and His Prayer, N. T. Wright dubs this verse Jesus’ gift of “the urgent petition”. This request is imperative to the Jesus-follower. “Father God, please do not! Lead me far from the heat of testing! I do not believe I can bear it!” In Jesus’ model prayer there is audible doubt in the speaker’s own strength and endurance. The Jesus-follower should never take for granted their own ability to withstand evil.
The speaker is specifically asking that God the Father not take them by the hand and walk them into a situation in which their best is tested by the evil’s worst. The Jesus-follower begs that they not be ushered into the presence of evil. As we follow God, He directs our course. We put our will into His hands. It is God’s desire expressed in Jesus’ model prayer that we should constantly ask Him not to walk us through the valley of evil. God himself will never tempt us, but we are led away to evil by our own desires (Jms. 1:13-18). When we find ourselves alone in evil, we must humbly search our hearts for sin and wickedness. God did not leave us alone in evil. We walked there ourselves.
“And I say to you, anyone who acknowledges Me before men, the Son of Man will also acknowledge him before the angels of God, but whoever denies Me before men will be denied before the angels of God. Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but the one who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven. Whenever they bring you before synagogues and rulers and authorities, don’t worry about how you should defend yourselves or what you should say. For the Holy Spirit will teach you at the very hour what must be said.“
Luke 12:8-12
Holy Bible: Holman Christian Standard Version. 2009. Nashville: Holman Bible Publishers.
Though it may be our lot to walk through the valley of the shadow of death, we do not have to fear. God is surely with us. It is sure that if we pray Jesus’ model prayer and we still encounter hardship that God has specifically allowed this test and it was put before us that we should overcome it by His powerful Holy Spirit. If we are without sin through relationship with God the Father, and we find ourselves the victim before evil, we know with certainty that God has allowed us this pain for His glory. Having heard our prayers, He has specifically given us enough grace in His Spirit to pass through this trial. God does not tempt. God hears our prayers. We do experience trials. He is faithful to deliver us for His glory.
“The word ‘temptation’ here means ‘testing’ or ‘tribulation’. The great tribulation, the brithpangs of the new age, the moment of horror and deep darkness, is coming swiftly towards him. And in his own moment of agony he fears, with good reason, that the whirlpool of evil which is to engulf him will suck down his close followers as well. Jesus knows that he must go, solo and unaided, into the whirlpool, so that it may exhaust its force on him and let the rest of the world go free. And his followers must therefore pray: Let us not be brought into the Testing, into the great Tribulation; Deliver us from Evil.“
(Wright, p. 50)
Wright, N. T. The Lord and His Prayer. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2014.
The Greek word “peirasmos”, translated “temptation”, can be thought of as both a trial in an athletic sense and an allurement in a sensual way. The temptation that we ask not to be walked by the hand towards is a challenge of our best nature. Our human pride desires to take on challenges of various kinds. The hubris of mankind naturally draws us to do many foolish stunts that fail miserably. God makes a point to elevate the humble and to humble the proud (Lk. 1:51-52). It is God’s will that those who rely on their own might may be brought low by their own foolishness and self-reliance. The Jesus-follower should pray to God for a situation in which contentment is encouraged and thankfulness is easily practiced.
Why do middle-age men ride Razor scooters downhill in the sight of their grandchildren? They desire to prove their ability and to test their strength. This is for personal assurance as much as it is to impress the younger generation. They want to see if they still have “it”. The truth is we never had “it” in the first place. The “it” we thought we possessed was but a grace from God to be stewarded for a certain time. We can only use our best for God while he grants it to us. Our strength is never our own. As this comes to us an addition to the prayer for daily bread, we must reflect again on the petition in Proverbs 30:8. We pray for that which we need so as not to become greedy and desirous for that which we need not.
“Many and diverse are the temptations which beset the Christian. Satan attacks him on every side, if haply he might cause him to fall. Sometimes the attack takes the form of a false sense of security, and sometimes of ungodly doubt. But the disciple is conscious of his weakness, and does not expose himself unnecessarily to temptation in order to test the strength of his faith. Christians ask God not to put their puny faith to the test, but to preserve them in the hour of temptation.“
(Bonhoeffer, p. 167)
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. The Cost of Discipleship. Simon & Schuster Press, 1995.
The Devil is never happier than to have us joust at some windmill for the self satisfaction of beating it. Satan laughs with glee when He can lead an unsuspecting Don Quixote on some self righteous quest for the sake of His own pride. In The Srewtape Letters, C. S. Lewis notes the demonic pleasure experienced by the Devil when “meetings, pamphlets, policies, movements, causes, and crusades, matter more to him [the Jesus-follower] than prayers and sacraments and charity.” It is a vile thing indeed when earthly allurements attract our energies and excitement to the atrophy of the kingdom work – of True Religion: providing for the vulnerable and our own personal holiness.
We must pray, as Bonhoeffer notes, for God to preserve us in temptation. This is the prayer for “deliverance” from evil. We ask not to be led into evil but, if we must endure it, we pray to be provided for through it. The Greek word “rhyomai”, which is translated as “deliver”, has the connotation of being “drawn to oneself”. We are asking God to pull us through evil in an embrace. Imagine yourself praying that God carry you through temptation and trial in the warmest and firmest bear hug you could imagine. Multiply that embrace exponentially, and we may be getting closer to the kindred nature between Father God and Jesus-follower that is seen in the model prayer.
“But godliness with contentment is a great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out. But if we have food and clothing we will be content with these. But those who want to be rich fall into temptation, a trap, and many foolish and harmful desires, which plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and by craving it, some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains.“
1 Timothy 6:6-10
Holy Bible: Holman Christian Standard Version. 2009. Nashville: Holman Bible Publishers.
The Jesus-follower must seek a godliness that produces a contented spirit. What a treasure! Paul, in his first letter to Timothy, reminds him that we came into the world naked and naked we will leave it. Daily bread and provision cultivate a content heart. Desire for wealth and excess stirs up all kinds of evil in the human heart. When our love is focused on temporary riches, our spiritual temperature rises and falls with our experience of worldly goods. We begin to have hungry cravings for indulgence and surplus. It is godly to be secure in daily provision. We can see the broken trial of lives in ruin before the throne of wealth and prosperity. The god of materialism wrecks the existence of all those who serve him.
What is our weapon against such indulgence? We must pray! Charles Spurgeon charges disciples of Jesus: “Christian, be much in solitary prayer, especially in times of trial”. When the kitchen gets hot, the Jesus-follower must hit their knees is prayer. When the flames of hell burn against home, marriage, work, faith and hope the Jesus-follower must pour on the water of prayer. When Satan reaches out with a hook to the jaw we must step in with the one two punch of penitent prayer. We must plea with God that He would deliver us safely through to the other side. He will surely rescue us if we are sure to pray. If He does not rescue us from trial to renewed life on earth the He is certain to rescue us from our trial to the glory of His presence in heaven.
“The mental pressure arising from our Lord’s struggle with temptation, so forced His frame to an unnatural excitement, that His pores sent forth great drops of blood which fell down to the ground. This proves how tremendous must have been the weight of sin when it was able to crush the Saviour so that He distilled great drops of blood! This demonstrates the mighty power of His love.“
(Spurgeon, Morning March 23)
Spurgeon, C. H. Morning and Evening: the Classic Daily Devotional. Barbour Publishing, 2018.
The prayer for the deliverance from evil brings to mind Jesus’ prayer in the garden of Gethsemane. On the mount of olives Jesus writhed under the threats of evil so intensely that His sweat became blood. In His model prayer, Jesus demands that we participate in the struggle over the brokenness of this world. We are to cry out to God that He would take us through darkness on the basis of Jesus’ complete obedience and endurance in the face of all evil. This was a hard fought obedience. This obedience was bought by bloody sweat and much sorrow.
Even in the garden, Christ asks His disciples to pray not only for Him but for themselves. If Jesus ever needed companionship it was at this moment. It is there in the garden that His closest friends fall asleep. In Matthew chapter twenty six, Jesus returns to his disciples to find them dreaming. He is swallowed up in sorrow. “Couldn’t you stay awake with me for one hour? Stay awake and pray so that you will not enter into temptation.” Much temptation can be prevented by prayer. We can keep a clear vision of kingdom living by praying for God’s leadership away from and through evil. We must stay alert and awake. We must be in a ready state of prayer to avoid the threats of the Devil.
“We are thus to become people in whose lives the joy and pain of the whole world meet together once more, so that God’s new world may at length come to birth. This will mean different things for each of us, as we each grapple with our own testing and temptation. But, as we do so, we are caught up into something bigger than ourselves. We are part of that great movement whereby the hopes and fears of all the years are brought together and addressed by the living God. And, as we hear that gentle and powerful address to our own hopes and fears, we are called to become, in our turn, the means whereby that same address goes out to the wider world.“
(Wright, p. 55)
Wright, N. T. The Lord and His Prayer. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2014.
The function of this prayer is also intercessory on behalf of others. We can pray for our brothers and sisters in Jesus. We bring the lives of all other Jesus-followers before God and ask “lead US not into temptation and deliver US from evil.” This is a collective prayer from beginning to end. The individual Jesus-follower has a role in dealing with the anxiety of the church through corporate prayer for deliverance. In the hope of Jesus’ defeat of death and in the confidence of His bodily resurrection, the prayer for deliverance is sure when it is anchored on God’s power displayed in Jesus.
This witness of heartfelt reliance on God for deliverance is a witness to the world. The kingdom of God is so real when the outside world sees men and women pray for God’s guidance past and through evil by His supernatural arm of deliverance. We tap into the strength of Someone greater than ourselves, and that is completely counter to everything the world stands for. When we reject the allurements of evil and hold fast to the guiding hand of God the world takes notice. As Tom Wright points out, we display the efficacy of God’s power when we rely on Him for our salvation in the face of trials and temptation. Through a consistent personal commitment to pray in this way, we will see the world transformed in the likeness of the kingdom of God for His glory alone.
“Discipleship means allegiance to the suffering Christ, and it is therefore not at all surprising that Christians should be called upon to suffer. In fact it is a joy and a token of his grace. The acts of the early Christian martyrs are full of evidence which shows how Christ transfigures for his own the hour of their mortal agony by granting them the unspeakable assurance of his presence. In the hour of the cruelest torture they bear for his sake, they are made partakers in the perfect joy and bliss of fellowship with him. To bear the cross proves to be the only way of triumphing over suffering. This is true for all who follow Christ, because it was true for him“
(Bonhoeffer, p. 91)
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. The Cost of Discipleship. Simon & Schuster Press, 1995.
As James tells us in his Biblical writings, we can take joy when we experience various trials in the knowledge of Jesus’ victory over all forms of pain and danger. Enduring trials in the hope if Jesus will produce a character of endurance that will define our lives (Jms. 1:2-4). This creates within a person a sense of wholeness and completeness which comes from God. This will develop into maturity and security by the measure of endurance which the individual practices. Endurance breeds maturity when wholly incorporated into the fabric of lifestyle and spirit. A key mark of this maturity is a life permeated with the prayer for deliverance by God.
Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer knew well the cost of following Jesus. He is remembered as a martyr for the Christian faith. He may be most remembered for his jarring claim: “When Christ calls a man He bids him come and die.” This comes as a complete slug to the jaw to a whole interpretation of the Christian message that claims earthly health, wealth and prosperity for the followers of Jesus. Bonhoeffer preached against the message of cheap grace. He knew that grace was a costly commodity. It cost Jesus everything. Bonhoeffer knew that the Good News was meant to cost the Jesus-follower everything.
In his foreword to Bonhoeffer’s commentary on following Christ, The Cost of Discipleship, George Bell, the late Bishop of Chichester England, wrote that the German pastor “was a martyr many times before he died.” Through Jesus’ model prayer we can become participants in his blood-sweating prayer so that we are not led into anything we are unable to handle. It is the will of God that we should pray in harmony with His personal character. God desires that we hold fast to Him through every trial that He allows us to face, in the knowledge that He will preserve us in Himself as we hold to His embrace. As Oswald Chambers acknowledges in My Utmost for His Highest, we must “trust Him absolutely” and we must “pray on the basis of His redemption.”
“Remember, God is as Great as He is Good!“
Noah R. Hunt
POIEMA: Created for Truth 