Lead us into triumph, not temptation
Dorothy Gale from Kansas meets a talking scarecrow a moment after realizing the path she is on—a yellow brick road—forks.
“Which way should I go?” is a question not just for the blue and white gingham-wearing girl. It’s a question we all ask sometimes.
Yellow brick road or not, the metaphor of a journey is helpful to Christians, especially when we, like Dorothy, have choices.
In lectionary scripture this past Sunday, the first Sunday of Lent, Jesus spends forty days and forty nights with the devil. In this time, the Son of God is led into temptation. But these verses ultimately take us in the other direction. Jesus defines for all of us what it means to be led into triumph.
In Harford, we are spending the six weeks of Lent with the metaphor of a journey. While most of the forty days and forty nights Jesus and Satin spend together is not revealed in the text, they do travel together in this time.
What happens between them doesn’t end with this passage. More comes through later in scripture. When speaking with his disciples (and, in turn, all of us) on how to pray, Jesus shares not just a goal but a way of life. This makes way for a journey—our journey. In what becomes known as the Lord’s Prayer, the Son of God says, “and lead us not into temptation.”
A connection between the time Jesus is with the devil and this phrase in the Lord’s Prayer can be made. Like Jesus, we can choose triumph over temptation.
How? Use scripture.
What is significant to remember is the Son of God uses scripture to battle Satan’s temptations. The newly commissioned Lamb of God does not rely on some elaborate spiritual power inaccessible to us. Instead, Jesus fights his battles with Satan as a Spirit-filled, Word-of-God-filled, guy-on-the-ground, hungry warrior intent not with immediate self-glorification, but selfless glorification.
To do this, the prophecy-fulfilling Teacher and Preacher draws doesn’t draw on divine resources unavailable to us. He uses what we have, the Word of God.
The Lord’s Prayer appears in two gospels, Matthew 6:9-13 and Luke 11:2-4. In this prayer, Jesus models for us how to be a disciple. When the prayer asks God to lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil, the prayer makes two life points clear: one, we get tempted! We sin! And two, only God’s power and our faith in Him can bring us out of evil.
This getting out of—or away from—evil is not something we do solo. We have a Savior who does just that—He saves! Jesus moves us out of places of darkness and despair by way of an abundant and amazing grace we can never earn but always receive.
The Lord’s Prayer is copied in the Didachē 8:2, which is a very early Christian document written around 65 – 80 A.D. Though the Didachē is not Scripture, this milestone and mantra resource contains insight into the early church’s practices and beliefs. A 1912 translation of the Didachē by Kirsopp Lake invites Christians to recite this prayer three times a day.
As we journey further into Lent this year, let’s be led into triumph, not temptation. We can be led into God’s promises of abundant goodness, not the grit of our everyday sinful lives.
I preached this past Sunday that the very human Jesus was tempted to show us that we are tempted, too. Yet when we follow Jesus by doing what He did when faced with temptations—those not so good choices on the road of life that Dorothy will tell us contain forks—we can move on as He did. Through scripture and prayer, we will be guided by our good God.
And that is triumph.
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