Matthew 6:9-12
“Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Over the season of Lent, we have been looking at the Lord's Prayer and the meaning of each petition. We began with the beginning, all the way back in Ash Wednesday, looking at the address, Our Father who art in heaven.
We talked about how we know that God is our father, because he sent his son Jesus Christ to die for us, who tells us to call him father and promises that he listens whenever we pray.
Next, we looked at hallowed be thy name. We discussed how honoring God's name means, knowing what he teaches, and then doing it. Right seems to make sense that Kingdom Come was about how God's kingdom comes to be among us, by the means of grace and the power of the Holy Spirit spirit.
Thy will be done has a lot to do actually, with what we'll be talking about tonight.
How God protects us from the spiritual forces that wants to turn us away from Christ, and not allow his kingdom to come among us.
Next, we talked about Give us this day, our daily bread.
And we remembered that God gives us what we need, whether we pray or not.
But prayer is a way of reminding ourselves, that we rely on him. And all good things come from him.
Forgive us our trespasses was about asking whether we wanted to live in a kingdom where sins are forgiven, or punished.
And we decided that it's much better if we forgive others, so that our sins can be forgiven. If we live in a kingdom where all sins are forgiven, it's way better than meeting out punishment for every single one.
And tonight, we're almost at the end to lead us not into temptation. Tonight, we're celebrating a lot of stories in Jesus's life. Readings could have chosen from any one of a number of different events. We began with our gospel reading, looking at the beginning of the evening story, going to find a place where Jesus and his disciples could eat the Passover. And what Jesus does is he gives us a roadmap for how to plan your next vacation, I find a guy carrying some water to go and stay there. Perhaps Only Jesus could come up with a plan like that. But he gathers with his disciples and gives them a new covenant, helping them to remember the old covenant that Israel promised they would do and failed.
And none of the bloods of their sin offerings and peace offerings could take away their sin. At the meal, Jesus predicts one will betray him. Judas hustles off to go find the guards. And the disciples go out to the garden of Gethsemane where they face a time of temptation. Jesus goes off to pray and instead of watching and praying with him, they fall asleep twice And when he wakes them up, the torches are coming for him to be arrested. And Judas greets him with a kiss, before turning him over, to be arrested and put on trial before he is crucified on Friday.
Lead us not into temptation. There was some temptation that night. When we talk about our temptation, I can only think of one thing, the candy drawer in Kathleen's office. It's always there. Every time I walk past it. And most days, I can say no. For the first hour or two. Sometimes we talk about temptation like that, where temptation is just a, it's a willpower problem. I really, really wanted to I could just say no, no candy for me.
Or like training for a marathon, which I'm getting ready to do again. When I know I have to wake up early, my alarm goes off at 5am. I've got stuff I need to do. I wake up and I go, I don't want to run. Do I smack the alarm to go back to sleep? Temptation is about willpower.
That is not the kind of temptation that we are praying about. Not the kind of temptation, the disciples and even Jesus faced in the Garden of Gethsemane. Temptation for the Christian is an attack by the spiritual forces of this world to turn us away from Christ.
Luther says this, God tempts no one. We pray in this petition that God would guard and keep us so that the devil, the world and our own sinful nature may not deceive us or mislead us into false belief, despair and other great shame and vice. Although we are attacked by these things, we pray that we may finally overcome them and win the victory. The devil, the world and our sinful nature. These are the same things that prevented want to prevent God's Will from being done among us.
The devil in the world and our sinful nature, spiritual forces that attack us and want to take us from Christ. The devil, First Peter Five, Verse eight, tells us, the sober minded, be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Luther describes the devil's temptation, as the temptation to turn us away from the freedom of the gospel. To deny the grace that Christ gives us or deny that we need it. It's a spiritual temptation that plays on our own human instincts. Because we say to ourselves, I'm kind of a good person. Or we try to talk ourselves into it, where we say I'm really a good person to ourselves.
the world who there talks about the world that throws all sorts of shocking and horrible things, and it tries to offend us or make us angry or, or even just anxious about the state of things. You and I were a little overwhelmed by the amount of information we get right. We've got little things in our pocket that bring all the sadness of the world right to our eyeballs every day, nonstop. And it means we get anxious about a lot tempted the world.
How many of you have spent more than a few seconds worrying about Ukraine in the last couple of years? or about a bridge in Baltimore? about climate change? the crime rate in San Francisco? and what our president or future president might say, either one of them?
Have you spent more than a few minutes worried about these things, you know exactly what it means to be attacked by temptation. As these things don't matter.
They will not change your life one bit.
But the world wants us to be pulled away.
fear and worry about these things.
And if that weren't enough, the devil the world we have ourselves.
We tempt ourselves. Isn't that great?
St. Paul says,
I do not understand my own actions.
I do not do what I want. But the very thing I hate.
For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh, I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.
For I do not do the good, I want it. but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.
identify with that.
Some days as a Christian, we cling to grace.
We cling to the promises of Christ. We wake up in the morning, we feel strong, and then we open our eyes and get out of bed and
not as much.
Who can defend us from this temptation.
You can protect us from the devil in the world. And our sinful nature
is only the Savior who made a new covenant with us
by His body and His blood.
A savior who gives us bread to eat and wine to drink, and decided not to sprinkle a whole bunch of blood on the congregation every Sunday.
St. Paul continues to say, Who will deliver me this from this body of death. Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
It's Jesus, who defends us from this temptation.
Not by making us better or perfect, but keeping us safe in his perfection, because Jesus himself defeated temptation for you.
And when I say that, you're probably thinking of the story of Jesus out in the wilderness. Right? Jesus fasting 40 days when the devil comes up to him, and tries to tempt him, even with the Word of God and Jesus cast him aside. Yes, that's a moment of temptation. Satan trying to derail this, this mission of Christ before it even starts.
But I really think the great temptation of for Christ is in the garden.
Right before everything's about to get started.
Or at the trial,
when they smack him and they say, Are you a king,
he could have called the angels down,
could have broken free, he could have done whatever he wanted.
And they insulted Him on the cross. And they say, Here, the King come on down from there.
He caught up.
But he didn't.
He defeated temptation.
He lived perfectly
and sacrificed himself for you. So that when you eat his body and drink his blood, that victory becomes yours. The defeat over temptation is yours. And when you are in Christ in this New Covenant given to you
commutation doesn't have to worry you anymore.
Sure, we still struggle.
Sure, we're still attacked.
But the devil attacks us by trying to deceive us or mislead us. Because he knows he has no power. He can't grab us or take us or kidnap us or throw us and drag us off. He's got to try to trick us
because Jesus has here
he has claimed it as his own
his name
amen
Transcribed by https://otter.ai