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.

James: Patience, Suffering and Temptation

Here is my sermon from Sunday.  The text was James 1:12-18 and 5:7-11:

When I met my wife Linda, she had a black lab, Vivian, and Vivi was really smart.  All you had to do was show her, or tell her, one time what you wanted her to do and normally she would pick it up right then.  That was a smart dog.  I’ve had some other smart dogs, but the dog we have now, Yogi, is not in that category.  And this isn’t just that he’s being ornery or stubborn, he’s just not that smart.  And to make it worse, he is part terrier and possibly some beagle, and so he likes to get his nose going and then just go.  So if given the chance, whether it’s the door being left open just a bit, or if he can find any way out of the backyard, he’s going to take the opportunity and take off and run as far and as fast as he can, until he’s picked up by the dog catcher and he ends up in doggy prison.

Now if Yogi was human, or perhaps if he was a little smarter, he might try and give some rationalization for what he was doing and why he ended up in trouble, because that’s what we try and do.  Perhaps he might try and blame the devil, with the proverbial “the devil made me do it” excuse.  No personal culpability.  Everyone else is responsible except for him, not even for giving in to the temptation.  Or he might even argue that the temptation was put there simply in order to try and bring him down because of who he is, and so not only is he not weak, it’s because he is so strong and so good that it even happened.  He is suffering unjustly.  Or he might even say, and we certainly hear this all the time, that it’s God who led him to this point, either to tempt him to see what he will do, or even worse in my opinion, is to say that God has led him to this, and not just led them to it, but actually pushed him through the door to run for all he is worth and to doggy prison, but that God will get him through it.  It’s that whole, “God doesn’t give us anything that we can’t handle” cliché.  But regardless of what excuse is used for temptation and suffering, they all take patience, and for me with Yogi it takes patience for me so that I don’t try and kill him.  But what James tells us today is that all of this is wrong, and the truth is we simply don’t understand what’s actually going on.