35 The Lord's Prayer: What 'Lead Us Not Into Temptation' Means (Matthew 6:13)

Krisan Marotta: Thank you for downloading Wednesday in the Word, the podcast that explains what the Bible means and how we know. I'm Krisan Marotta. This is the 35th talk in my series on the Gospel of Matthew and our last talk on the Lord's Prayer. Today we're gonna study Matthew 6, verse 13. Lecture notes for today's talk are on the link below the podcast. You can also find them by going to wednesdayintheword.com slash Matthew 3.5. On that website, Wednesdayintheword.com, you can find all previous episodes in this series as well as many other series. Thank you so much for joining me. We're going to finish our study on the Lord's Prayer from the Gospel of Matthew today. As always, let me review the context for you. This prayer falls in the third major section of the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus began this section in Matthew 6 1 by saying, Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. And he then gave three parallel examples of what he meant by practicing your righteousness before other people, and he used three traditional Jewish religious practices, giving to the poor, praying, and fasting. In each example he describes how the hypocrites perform these practices, and then he says, Truly I say to you, they have received their reward in full. These practices are supposed to be about their relationship with God, but in fact their goal is not anything from God, it is the approval and accolades of their peers. They are not hoping for God to be gracious to them in the future, they are hoping that other people will be gracious to them now. And Jesus says, that's what they're looking for, that's what they get. His second example is prayer, and in that example, he breaks away to talk more about prayer and give us the Lord's Prayer. He sets up the Lord's prayer by warning about two very common perversions of prayer. One is using prayer as a tool to gain the worldly approval of others rather than seeking the approval of God. That's what the hypocrites were doing. The other is using prayer as a tool to manipulate God into giving you worldly gain in this life, and that's what the Gentile pagans were doing. Jesus criticizes the way the hypocrites and the Gentiles view prayer, and then he gives us a counterexample, a prayer that embodies the right way of thinking about prayer and also captures his main teaching. And I have argued that the Lord's prayer is a prayer for one thing and one thing only, and that is thy kingdom come. This is a prayer for God to establish his kingdom on the earth. Each petition is a request for God to act. The first three focus on God bringing his holiness to the entire world and all of creation. So the first three are all praying for the kingdom of God to come, for God to bring the day when no one will dismiss or curse or reject him anymore, and instead everyone will recognize that he is God and He is holy. It's a request for God to establish His promised kingdom through the Messiah ruling over all the earth, and for God to bring the day when evil is vanquished and this world finally reflects God's commitment to holiness, righteousness, and justice. That's the request of this prayer. Please bring that. May we see the day when your name is vindicated as holy, when your kingdom is established through the Messiah, and when your will is truly implemented over all the earth. The second three requests focus on God bringing holiness to believers. So instead of the entire world, we're now talking about us as individuals. So that's give us this day our daily bread, and we looked extensively at that. I argued that that is metaphorical. Give us the bread of life that will sustain our souls. Forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors, forgive us our sins and make us the kind of people who will forgive others, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Last week we looked at the petition to forgive our sins as we have forgiven others, and we talked about why those two ideas are connected and how important they are in the teaching of Jesus. Today we're going to look at the last petition in Matthew six thirteen, but let me read the whole section for you. It's starting in verse nine. Pray then like this, 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. For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. So we want to look at that last petition. Do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one. Now to understand the point Jesus is making here, we need to talk about two questions. The first question we have to answer is what exactly does it mean for God not to lead us into trial or temptation? What's he talking about? And the second question concerns the second half of the verse. What are we being rescued from? Is this evil in the abstract or is this the evil one? We'll take them in order. What would it mean for God to lead us into temptation? And why are we asking him not to do that? So obviously, we need to understand this word translated temptation. And we've talked about this word back when we looked at the temptations of Jesus in chapter four. This word and its related verb come up in some important passages in the New Testament, in James, in Peter, for example. This is the noun form of the verb perazzo, which we looked at in chapter four. The noun form perosmas can be translated several different ways. The basic meaning is to test. If you want to find out what something is made of, you test it. The goal of the test is to see how the person or the thing being tested responds. If you're testing a person with the hope that he fails the test, then this word is typically translated tempt. If you're testing a person with the hope that he passes or succeeds in the test, then this word is usually translated try or test. In the context of the temptations of Jesus back in chapter four, we saw both of those possible meanings because in that situation two different beings had two different purposes for the test. The devil, the evil one, hoped that Jesus would fail, but God intended for Jesus to succeed. Now in some passages, the distinction between tempt or test is crucial. For example, Scripture tells us that God perazzoed Abraham when he asked him to sacrifice Isaac. It's crucial whether we understand that as tempt or test. Scripture tells us God perazzoed Israel in the wilderness, and Scripture tells us that God perazzos us. Then we read in the book of James in 113 that God does not perazzo anyone. Well, clearly this distinction between test and tempt is crucial in those passages. James has a different nuance in mind, and translators rightly translate this word tempt. God does not tempt anyone, but he does test people. God never seeks our failure, he never pushes us towards sin. That's the context in James. So we find in Scripture that God does not perazzo us in some contexts, and yet God does perazzo us in some contexts. And the distinction is God tests us, but he does not tempt us. And this same word can be used for both those nuances. The distinction in nuance becomes important when we're talking about the motives of the one doing the testing, the perazzoing. Satan tempts us, he confronts us with a difficult choice, and he wants us to fail. He hopes that we will fall into sin. So he entices us, he tempts us to do the wrong thing. God, on the other hand, tests us. God puts us in situations where he wants us to succeed. He puts us in situations where our faith is tested and shown through the test to be genuine, strong, saving faith. God proves the genuineness of our faith through the test. Now many, many scholars make this distinction that God tests us but he does not tempt us. That is, God tests his people and that he puts them in situations where they must choose to obey him or not, and their willingness to continue to trust and follow him is displayed. So God tested Abraham when he asked him to sacrifice Isaac. God tested Israel by surrounding them with pagan nations and foreign gods. God tested David by giving him the opportunity to kill Saul and seize the throne. These are external situations which God puts in our lives that stretch, test, and reveal the genuineness of our faith. But the inner desire, the inner pull we feel towards sin in the midst of that testing is the pull of our own hearts, of our own sinful natures. We are not innocent beings entrapped by a sin we otherwise might not ever think about committing. We are all sinful people who left to ourselves naturally gravitate to sin. When we flee or resist sin, it is a gift from God. So God places us in situations that strengthen and stretch our faith, that is testing us, but he never seeks to destroy us, to induce sin or to break our faith. So the question we have to ask in this context, in this prayer, what are we talking about? Is Jesus talking about testing or is he talking about temptation? Or is that distinction even important? Maybe this passage is like the temptations of Jesus in the wilderness, and the distinction is not crucial because there are two testers involved. Well, let's look at some of the possibilities. This could be a simple sort of request. Do not lead us into situations that tempt us. We know that there are situations in life that tempt us to do wrong and tempt us to abandon the faith altogether. And we might be praying that God would not lead us into situations like that. If that's the request, then this distinction between testing and tempting becomes less significant because as we've seen, the same event can both test us and tempt us. In the same event, Satan tempted Jesus to sin, but God tested Jesus' faith. And the same can be true of us in various situations. God can be testing our faith while Satan is tempting us to abandon our faith. The idea then in this view would be that we're asking God to avoid situations like that. We don't want to face them, we don't want to go through them, we want to avoid all the situations where we are tempted to fail and maybe even abandon the faith. Well, that is one possible interpretation. But that option doesn't make sense to me. I have a hard time believing that this is in fact what Jesus means. Because so many other passages of Scripture teach us that God does in fact lead us into situations that test our faith. We see it happen over and over again in the lives of Old Testament believers. James, Peter, and Paul all talk about this testing of our faith as a purposeful part of God's plan for our salvation. So it's difficult for me to imagine that Jesus would include in this prayer something that says in effect, that plan you've got for my life, where you grow and stretch my faith, don't do it. If that's what Jesus means, it's a prayer like the one Jesus prayed in the garden when he said, Father, let this cup pass from me. He knows it's not going to happen. It may be a sincere request that God would not do this thing, but Jesus knew in advance the answer was going to be no. Situations that test our faith often tempt us to turn away from God. Can Jesus really be telling us to pray that God would never allow our faith to be tested, that He never put us in difficult circumstances in a fallen world? In one way, we can understand why we might want to pray this prayer, because testing our faith is hard and it's often painful. Most of us would like to get out of it if we could. I can easily imagine praying something like don't ever take me through those painful trials that test my faith. Can I please just have an easier path? The problem is I know in advance the answer is going to be no. The Bible emphasizes the fact that God does in fact test our faith. He tested the faith of Israel in the wilderness, he tested the patriarchs, he tested the kings and the prophets, he tested Jesus in the wilderness, and he tests all his people. Testing our faith is just part of the plan. The idea that God will test our faith is central to Jesus' own teaching. Just to take one example, consider the parable of the sower and the seed in Matthew thirteen. The sower sows seed in his field. The seed falls on different types of soil. There's hard ground by the road, there's the rocky ground, the thorny ground, and the good soil. When the seed grows in those different soils, it produces different results. When Jesus explains the parable, the sower planting the seeds is like Jesus proclaiming the gospel. Some people reject it outright. Some people have an initial interest, but when persecution comes they fall away. Others have an initial interest, but the worries of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke out their faith. And finally, some have a genuine belief in the gospel which survives all these conditions. This parable paints a classic picture of how our life circumstances test our faith. The way Jesus tells this parable, this is the way life always is. A genuine faith must survive the pressures that life will inevitably bring. Now this is not to deny that believers continue to wrestle with sin and that sometimes we fail. We will fail at times, but ultimately our faith survives and perseveres through whatever life throws at us, the pressures, the temptations, the testing. It doesn't sound like Jesus thinks this is an optional process. A genuine faith will survive the difficult trials of life. And this is confirmed by the rest of the New Testament. James urges us to rejoice when our faith is tested. Peter tells us that having our faith shown to be genuine through this process of testing is more valuable than gold. It would be strange for Jesus to tell us to pray that God not test us. When the Bible makes clear that this testing is going to happen, it's part of the plan. And God tells us this testing is for our good, it's for our benefit, and we should rejoice because this testing takes us someplace we really want to go. So I don't think this is the best option for understanding what Jesus is saying. I don't think he's saying, pray that God would never take you into situations where you're tested. I think Jesus is using this word temptation in a way that's different than we typically think of in English. Typically, when we think of the word temptation, we picture a situation that entices us to make the wrong choice. It's a situation that might seduce us into doing the wrong thing. And when we're faced the temptation, we're struggling with a choice. How are we going to respond? What are we going to do? We're tempted to do the wrong thing. We haven't done it yet, but we're considering it. When I'm facing temptation, the word temptation implies the choice is still before me, and that's typically what we think about. I'm tempted because I haven't yet made a choice. I haven't yet taken an action. But temptation can have a different connotation, and we have one English phrase that captures that. Sometimes we talk about falling into temptation. And in that phrase, we're leaning away from this idea of testing and leaning more in the direction of that which seduces us toward evil. When I fall into temptation, I'm not falling into a situation where I have to make a choice. My choice has been made. I have already given in to the temptation. To fall into temptation is to give in and make the wrong choice. Well, I would argue this Greek word can be used in the same way in the New Testament. It is used both in situations where the choice is still in front of us and it is used in situations where the choice has already been made, where we have fallen or succumbed to temptation. Let me give you one example. Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 3 5, for this reason, when I could bear it no longer, I sent to learn about your faith, for fear that somehow the tempter had tempted you, and our labor would be in vain. Well that's our same word. Paul is not afraid that they are facing a choice to abandon the faith. Of course they're going to face that choice. Life is going to confront them with that choice almost every day. Paul is afraid that they have faced that choice already and have walked away. His labor would be in vain if they had given in to the temptation to abandon their faith. So Paul fears that the tempter has tempted them and seduced them into falling away from the faith. He's afraid they have already made the wrong choice. Here's another example that's similar to our example in the Lord's Prayer. Jesus is talking to his disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane, and this is Matthew twenty six, verses forty and forty one. And he came to the disciples and found them sleeping, and he said to Peter, So could you not watch with me one hour? Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit is indeed willing, but the flesh is weak. So he's saying, Keep watching and praying that you may not enter into temptation, and that's our word again. In this context it's fairly clear that Jesus is not saying, Keep watch lest you enter into a situation where you're going to have to make a choice. Well, there's no way to avoid that. The choice is coming. Jesus is going to be arrested, they're going to face the terrible temptation to abandon him and run for their lives, and in fact they do. He's saying, Keep watch lest you make the wrong choice in this situation. Pray that you not enter into temptation. Pray that you don't fall into it. To enter into temptation is to actually do the evil thing that you're being tempted to do. Well, that option makes a lot more sense to me in the Lord's Prayer. I think he's saying, God, do not lead us into situations where we will fall to temptation. Do not lead us into situations that are too much for us. Do not lead us into a situation that tempts us to our destruction. I don't think we're praying to avoid having to face the choice. We're praying when we face the choice, make sure we persevere through it. We're praying to be rescued from our own sinful choices. I know that I am a sinful and weak person. I know that left to myself, my own selfish nature would rebel and run away from God. I know that on my own I will be enticed by all the joys and pleasures of this world. world and they might overwhelm me such that I abandon the faith. I'm praying, God, please don't let me do that. Rescue me from my own choices. Don't let me fall into temptation to my own doom. Don't let me walk away. Now all of us tremble on the brink of abandoning the faith at times. We can be seduced by pleasure, we can be seduced by the fear that others will reject or hate us. We can be seduced by our need for security and desire for prosperity. We could be seduced by self righteousness and arrogance and pride. Sometimes it feels like genuine faith is a soap bubble in a storm. It will be a miracle if it survives. And I think this prayer is God lead my life in such a way that my faith is not destroyed by the temptations that are coming. Lead my life in such a way that I do not fall into temptation and so perish. Well now we come to the second question which is about the second half of the prayer but deliver us from evil there's a translation issue here about this word evil. It can be translated two different ways it can be translated as we usually see as evil that is evil as an abstract concept something like deliver us from the evil in our souls deliver us from evil things that would seduce us and so forth. But it can also be translated as the evil one that is Satan deliver us from Satan the tempter who seeks to destroy us. And we have to figure out which Jesus has in mind deliver us from evil or deliver us from the evil one. Now over the years I have gone back and forth on this option. At various points I've been more persuaded by one or the other. I know at times I've thought no this definitely has to be evil in the abstract and at other times I've thought no it must be the evil one. I may change my mind again in the future but right now I'm leaning toward translating this and understanding it as the evil one. Other biblical authors refer to Satan as the evil one and I can list those for you in the lecture notes. Jesus sometimes refers to Satan as the evil one in the story of the temptations in the wilderness Satan is called the tempter it makes sense in this context that he's speaking of Satan. Do not lead us into a temptation that would destroy our faith but deliver us from the tempter who is seeking to destroy our faith. There is a kind of poetic parallelism there that I think makes a lot of sense. Deliver us from situations where our faith might be destroyed and deliver us from the one who tempts us to abandon our faith. There's a tiny bit of linguistic evidence here. It's not very strong evidence, but it is evidence. It concerns this word from and deliver us from evil. Now to really oversimplify there are two words translated from in Greek one of them generally means out of and the other generally means away from which word we use with deliver seems to depend on whether we're talking about situations or people. So the biblical authors tend to use one preposition when they're talking about situations and they use the other preposition when they're talking about people. So we are delivered out of situations and we are delivered away from people we are delivered out of temptations we are delivered out of all evil we are delivered out of persecution but we are delivered away from evil men. We are delivered away from those who are disobedient we are delivered away from our enemies one of the words is associated with being delivered from situations and abstract ideas. The other preposition is associated with being delivered from people. So for what it's worth Matthew uses the away from meaning here that tends to go with people as its object that mildly suggests that we're asking to be delivered from someone personal and not an abstract concept. Now as I said that is not terribly strong evidence. Language is flexible and propositions are notoriously slippery and fluid and speakers have the freedom to break the so-called rules this is just one piece of evidence it is not a conclusive argument. Either option evil in the abstract or the evil one I think works in context. We just have to make our judgment call on which one Jesus is talking about assume that Jesus is speaking of the evil one, the tempter Satan here under this view Jesus is saying God do not lead our lives in such a way that we fall into temptation and so perish but rather deliver us from Satan the tempter who seeks our destruction now there have been times in church history where it was very common to talk about Satan and other times it was common basically to ignore him. Today it's not very common to talk about Satan but then that's probably because we don't like to talk about sin either and if you minimize and disregard the concept of sin you really don't want to bring up Satan. The other option would be something like deliver us from the evil in our hearts and I think you can make a good argument that that option makes a lot of sense in the context as well. The idea here would be guide us away from evil. We have placed our total trust in your leadership we would run headlong into the path of evil unless you intervene so guide us deliver us because you are our only hope of avoiding the path of evil. And as I said I think both options make sense I tend to go back and forth. I am very familiar with the sin in my heart I talk about it all the time I am less likely to talk about Satan tempting me. But Scripture speaks about the devil as seeking our downfall let me just give you a couple of examples this is Ephesians six eleven put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil first Peter five eight be sober minded, be watchful your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour and second Timothy two twenty four twenty six and the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome, but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness, God may perhaps grant them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and that they may come to their senses and escape from the snare of the devil after being captured by him to do his will. Well Paul seems to be saying that those who reject the truth of God's word are being held captive by the devil. They have fallen into his snare and they will only escape if God graciously grants them repentance. In general in Scripture Satan is portrayed as the ruler of this world Satan works to keep this world in darkness and we as believers are under his attack. He tempts us he lies to us he seeks to blind us to the truth he seeks our destruction and one way to describe our salvation is to say we have been rescued from the dominion of Satan. We have been rescued from the kingdom of darkness and into the kingdom of light I think scripture teaches that Satan is a personal being who seeks our spiritual destruction and Jesus could be urging us to pray that God will rescue from his lies and his temptations. However I am sympathetic with those who are reluctant to bring Satan into a discussion like this and critics would say rightly that the idea of Satan is often misused and there are two common misconceptions about Satan that we want to avoid and I want to be clear that I am not suggesting either of them. The first misconception is that some people think it is our job to gain power over Satan. Why would the Bible even mention Satan, they ask and they answer because we are taught about Satan so that we can learn the techniques to do battle against him and destroy him. Somehow we're supposed to challenge him by name and declare our victory over him through the power of Jesus. At its worst this kind of teaching tells us that every problem in life can be solved or eliminated if we bind Satan's power over us. Every single bad thing in my life comes from Satan they say therefore every bad thing can be eliminated if I just learn how to handle Satan properly. Now again that's taking this teaching to its extreme not everybody does that. To my knowledge that idea is not taught anywhere in Scripture I don't see a single bit of evidence in the Bible that we are to battle and bind Satan in that way. I think the verses that people use to support this idea are taken out of context. Typically people point to Ephesians six verses ten through thirteen which I'll read for you finally be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his mind. Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil for we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day and having done all to stand firm. Now I would agree that our battle is a spiritual one. The battle is over whether or not we will persevere in the faith and we do have an adversary in this battle and that adversary is the devil but how exactly do we engage in this battle? Are we encouraged to call out Satan by name and bind him? Are we urged to practice some kind of exorcism here? No, Paul tells us the weapons of this battle are truth, righteousness, the gospel, faith, the hope of salvation and the word of God. In other words, we battle Satan by turning to God and believing the truth of the gospel the Bible does tell us that Satan is our adversary and our enemy but not so we can practice some kind of magical spell over him we're told about our adversary so we can recognize how much we need the power of God to be on our side. I think James puts this very simply this is James chapter four seven and eight submit yourselves therefore to God resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. James's advice is turn toward God turn away from the devil turn toward God that's what you need to do to God the second misconception about Satan is to attribute too much responsibility to him we can use Satan in a way that deflects our own responsibility. Now we're all familiar with the phrase oh the devil made me do it and we laugh at that because it's so obviously a way to deny our own responsibility and our own sinfulness. The Bible is clear I think that there is a tempter out there but it is also clear that we are personally responsible for our own choices and we cannot push that responsibility off on someone else even the devil. So to refocus then we're praying that God will lead us in such a way that our faith is not destroyed by the temptations that will come into our lives and that we will not succumb to the lies of the tempter. Satan has a role to play in that but we are tempted in the first place because we're sinners now there's one more question we have to talk about before we leave this prayer and that is depending on your tradition you may end the prayer by saying for yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever amen If you're using the New American Standard Bible you'll see that phrase is in brackets and if you're using the English Standard version which I've been reading that phrase doesn't appear at all What's going on there? Well you're probably aware that at the time of Jesus they did not have smartphones or copy machines or printing presses. If you wanted a copy of Matthew's gospel somebody had to sit down with quill and ink and parchment and make a copy The fact is that people make mistakes when they copy things by hand. Now we have thousands of handwritten copies of the New Testament letters. Sometimes those copies don't agree with each other but I would remind you the vast majority of the disagreements are minor and they make no difference to meaning they are things like Jesus Christ or Christ Jesus. They make no difference in the text. Our scriptures are remarkably reliable and complete and we can have great confidence that we have the text the way it was originally written. Now that said there are a few places where we have questions and this is one of them. Some of the copies have that last phrase and some don't and there is an entire field of scholarship that analyzes and compares these copies and they have theories of how you trace back errors and where they might have been introduced. So they have studied and they've come up with ways to tell which copy is more reliable. According to one school of thought it is absolutely clear that these words do not belong in the text. According to their theory of textual criticism these words were not in the original text Jesus did not say it Matthew did not write it down rather some overzealous monk added it at a later date during the copy process. When we have textual variants like this scholars rate how confident they are that their choice is right. If they're absolutely certain they will rate it an A. If they're just taking a guess they might rate it a D. Now among scholars with this theory of textual criticism they rate this an A. They are highly confident this phrase does not belong in the text. And these scholars are in the majority the majority of scholars who study this kind of thing agree that this phrase was added later. But there is another school of thought there is a different theory of textual criticism and for them it is equally clear that these words do belong in the text at the end of the Lord's Prayer. So you see the problem it depends on which theory of textual criticism you embrace which way you're going to land and I simply do not know enough about this topic to have an opinion. A long time ago I took some classes on textual criticism and those two competing theories were explained to me I can remember seeing the strengths and the weaknesses of both viewpoints but I really do not know enough to even hazard a guess between them. All I can tell you is the majority of scholars think the words were added later but there is another school of thought that says no they belong. Well let's suppose that they do belong at the end of the prayer how would they fit in? What would it mean for them to be there? Jesus is using language of kingship and sovereignty. The word kingdom is probably better understood here as dominion and the prayer ends by saying yours is the dominion, the power and the glory forever Well that language is clearly influenced by the language of the Old Testament. For example, when Daniel praises King Nebuchadnezzar as a mighty king of a great nation he says in Daniel two thirty seven You, O king are the king of kings, to whom the God of heaven has given the kingdom, the power, the strength and the glory There are four words there in Daniel and three of them show up in our phrase. Even more significantly David applies very similar language to God this is first Chronicles twenty nine verses ten and eleven. So David blessed the Lord in the sight of all the assembly and David said Blessed are you, O Lord God of Israel our Father forever and ever yours, O Lord is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty indeed everything that is in the heavens and the earth yours is the dominion, O Lord, and you exalt yourself as head over all that's the same idea there's similar language there yours is the dominion, yours is the power, yours is the glory These words have to do with being king, either being king over an earthly nation, as we saw in Daniel, or being king over all creation as God is. So if these words do indeed belong in the prayer they would be a kind of fitting end. We would end the prayer by acknowledging that God is sovereign over all. He is the only one to turn to He is the only one who can save us from our sin and establish holiness and righteousness over all the earth. He alone has the power to determine how our lives will go and how all of creation will go. He alone has the glory that comes from bringing his holiness and righteousness to all creation. Now let me end with two observations about this prayer The first one I've been repeating throughout this series and that is all the petitions point to bring about your kingdom, make us holy, establish your righteousness on the earth and establish your righteousness in our lives and in our hearts give us the bread of life forgive us from our sins it all adds up to a prayer for the holiness of God. We are asking God to rescue us from everything that draws us away from him and we need him to rescue us. Without God's intervention we gladly and willingly fall to the lies and the deception of the tempter and we're easy marks. If God does not deliver us from our own sin then we are not going to make it the thing we most need in this life is to be rescued from sin. We need to be rescued from this fallen broken world. We need God to give us holiness we need God to forgive us and we need him to ensure that our faith perseveres each petition calls on God to bring about holiness the first three focus on God bringing his holiness over the entire world through the reign of his Messiah and the second focus on God giving his holiness to believers that means my second observation that if we pray this prayer from the heart it is an act of submission to God. We're acknowledging truths that are not really easy to acknowledge we're admitting that what we most need cannot be found in this age. We need God to enter this world and establish his kingdom. That is where true life and holiness and freedom and security will be found. That is what we should long for and so we call on him to bring it about we acknowledge that we are sinners deeply in need of his mercy. We acknowledge that we are weak the temptations of this world easily overwhelm us. This life will destroy us if God does not rescue us. If our faith is to grow and stand firm he is the one who will make it stand and even our faith is a gift from God one last comment when talking about prayer we often ask the question does prayer work? Will I get what I pray for? Why bother praying will I get it? Well the interesting thing about this prayer is that that question is irrelevant. God has already promised to do the very thing we're asking him to do in this prayer. God has promised to bring about his kingdom. God has promised to save us and forgive us through the blood of Jesus Christ. God has promised to grant those with saving faith eternal life in his kingdom. It will happen. We can have utter confidence that what we pray for in this prayer will come about. You can hear all episodes in this series on my website Wednesdayintheword.com there is no charge, no spam and no advertisement. If you've been blessed by this podcast please subscribe and leave a written positive rating review wherever you listen. But most importantly tell a friend what you learned and where you learned it. Thank you to Reggie Coats for the use of his beautiful song Tenacious you can listen to more music from Reggie at heartfeltmusic.org Thank you for joining me today I'm Krisan Marotta and I'll see you next week at Wednesday in the Word