And Lead Us Not Into Temptation, But Deliver Us From Evil

Here is my message from Sunday. The texts were James 1:12-16  and Matthew 6:5-13:

After I came out with my call to the ministry, I began to be asked to do ministerial things, like filling in for the pastor when they were on vacation, which was fine and I enjoyed doing it. But, after one such Sunday, as I got in my car and started driving home I had this nagging feeling like I had forgotten something, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. I mean I had delivered the message and we had taken the offering, so I had covered the biggest thing. I was pretty sure we had sung all the songs, and I have skipped over a song before, but the whole week I just couldn’t get rid of that feeling that something had been missed. And then the next Sunday the minister was back and in his message, which I couldn’t tell you at all what it was about, but he said something about the Lord’s Prayer, and he then said “which we pray every single week in worship,” and then it hit me, that’s what I had forgotten. When I did the prayer the week before I forgot to lead the Lord’s Prayer. 

But you know what? No one said a thing to me about it. No one asked, “Did you forget something?” or even just be blunt and say, “Hey, you forgot the Lord’s Prayer.” Perhaps they didn’t notice, although that seems unlikely, because as I said when we started this series, the Lord’s Prayer is a constant in worship. And not just for us, but for all Christians. You could go to any Christian church anywhere in the world, no matter what language they might be speaking, no matter what their worship service or style may be, they are going to be saying the Lord’s Prayer, because it’s part of who we are and what we do. And yet of all those Christians praying this prayer, probably the part that is most confusing or concerning, or perhaps both, is the petition that we look at today which is, “and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil…” or from “the evil one,” which we’ll talk about the difference in a little while.