This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

This is day five together, our last day of our look through the first part of
Matthew chapter 6, looking through the Lord's Prayer this week, looking through
how you and I can strengthen our relationship with God and the way that we talk
to God. As we come to this last day of Jesus teaching us how to grow on our
relationship with God through the Lord's Prayer, here's what He has to teach us
in verse 13. Verse 13 says, "And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us
from the evil one.

" Now what we looked at yesterday and what we looked at today, there's an old
preacher joke about this one. It's a story of a police officer who says he came
across a car that was parked in a loading zone, goes up to give him a ticket,
and he finds this note on it, big note on it, and it says this, "I've circled
this block ten times. My boss will fire me if I'm late for this meeting, so
please don't give me a ticket.

" And then they add it on just to be spiritual, "Forgive us our sins. " Well the
person who left the car comes back later and he finds a ticket, but the ticket
has this written on the back, "I've circled this block for ten years, and my
boss would fire me if I didn't give you a ticket. Lead us not into temptation.

" So we need both, "Forgive us our sins, but also lead us not into temptation. "
And there's something in that phrase, even as you read it, "Lead us not into
temptation. " Deliver us that recognizes from the very beginning that facing
temptation, facing evil, are not something you do alone as a follower of Christ.

No, there's something you do in relationship with God, and there's something you
do in relationship with other believers. Lead us not. Deliver us from the evil
one.

From the very beginning, just stop this onward Christian soldiers, it's just me
against Satan all by myself, I'm going to go out and win the battle. You will
not win the battle. We are meant to fight this battle with the strength of God,
God's spirit, and with the strength of other believers in our lives.

So how does this work? Let's break this down, these two parts. Lead us not into
temptation and deliver us from the evil one.

How are you led not into temptation? How do you not go that direction? We're all
going to face temptation in our lives.

Jesus was tempted and he's perfect, so we're all going to face temptation. But
Jesus said pray that you won't be led into temptation. Don't get so close to it
that you figure out, "Okay, I'm just getting as close as I can.

Oh, I'm going to draw back now. " No, Jesus says get as far away as you can from
it. So how does that happen in our lives?

How do we begin to live that kind of life? Well, as you look through the
teaching of the New Testament, you get some ideas about what to do to be led not
into temptation, and this is just a very brief look at it today, but I believe
it's going to help you today. There's going to be a temptation that instead of
being led into it, you're going to be led not into it because you hear what
God's Word has to say here.

How are you led not into temptation? Here are four things that you can do.
Number one, you say yes to God's gifts.

The best way to learn to say no to temptation is to say yes to God. If you're
doing what God wants you to do, you don't have time to say yes to the
temptation. There's a very interesting verse.

Paul's talking to them about their time as a married couple where they agree
we're going to, for prayer and fasting, we're going to not have sex for a
certain amount of time. And he says, okay, if you want to do that, you can, but
1 Corinthians 7. 5, he says, but then come together again so that Satan will not
tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

The Bible is such a practical, genuine book. And if you don't understand that,
you might think Paul's going to applaud their abstinence from sex as some show
of spirituality. Yeah, the most you can do that.

That's great. Not the case, Paul says. Instead, he says, don't be stupid.

Say yes to God's gift of sex and marriage. If you say no to God's gift, you're
going to leave a gap in your life that leaves you wide open to temptation. So it
may not be about sex and marriage, but something else in your life.

What's one place you could begin to say yes to God, bringing a real freedom from
tempting situations in your life? Yes to integrity, yes to spending time with
God, yes to being in the right place rather than in the wrong place. Say yes to
him.

That's how you're led not into temptation. Jesus teaches us a second thing, and
that is watch and pray. Matthew 6.

41 in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus said, watch and pray so that you will not
fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak. How are you
led not into temptation?

By just being honest about who you are. The fact that you can easily sin. The
spirit is willing, but your body is weak.

We're going to do dumb things and make wrong decisions and expecting that, well,
I've been a Christian 40 years now. I would never do that. That would never
happen in my life.

That's a pride that will often lead you into temptation. So Jesus said, watch
and pray. Keep alert and keep on talking to God.

If you stop spending time with God, you open yourself up to falling to
temptation. You might think, well, I spent a lot of time with God in my life.
Temptation comes daily, so you have to spend time with God on a daily basis so
you can be alert, so you can watch and pray.

Third thing you do to be led not into temptation is you put down roots. Luke 8.
13, Jesus says, he's talking about people in God's Word and some people who fall
away from God's Word.

And he says, some people fall away because, here's what he said, they have no
root. They believe for a little while, but in time of temptation, they fall
away. So how do you put down roots in your life?

Well, the Bible is pretty clear that you put down roots through God's Word. When
you put down roots into the truth of God's Word, you are strengthening yourself
against temptation. As we saw, as we studied through the temptation of Jesus,
the truth of the matter is Jesus himself taught us to face temptation by the
power of God's Word.

So you put down roots. You watch and pray. You say yes to God's gift.

And then a fourth thing you do is you remember your purpose. You remember why
God put you on this planet. First Timothy 6.

9, Paul says, people who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap. God
might make you rich. He might not make you rich.

He has different plans for different ones of us, and we live in different
places. But being rich or not rich, that is not the purpose of your life. You
don't want to get rich.

You want to serve God. You want to serve others. You want to fulfill your
purpose.

And when your life goals get out of whack, what you want is the riches, what you
want is the fame, what you want is the world stuff. When your life goals get out
of whack, it's like building a freeway for temptation. They'll come rushing in.

One of the keys to being led not into temptation is being led by the Spirit and
to God's purposes in your life. That's how you live it out. As I said, in all of
this, you don't face this alone.

You're facing it with God's Word. You're facing it with God's Spirit. You're
facing it with God's people.

When it comes to temptation, all of this that we've looked at, it's taking trust
in God to do this. You have to trust God and trust his Word. You have to trust
God and trust his purpose in your life.

Many people who start to fall to temptation, even people who have been believers
for many years, they fall because they begin to see temptation as a test of
their willpower. You're always going to lose that battle. But God sees
temptation as a test of our faith.

So instead of being led as close as we can to the temptation, only by our
willpower to say no, Jesus says, "Instead, why don't you pray, 'Lead me not into
temptation. Get me as far away as I can from it by following you first. Lead us
not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

'" There is evil in this world. So what do you do? What do you do when life
throws its very worst at you?

When you come face to face with evil in your family, in your job, in your
personal life, in your health, it's what somebody else does to you, what do you
do? Truth is there are four ways we can respond to an evil world. We can be
delighted, deluded, defeated, or delivered.

Some people actually are delighted by an evil world. There's a number of people,
they think evil is something to delight in because being evil makes them feel
like they have some kind of power over other people, and power is something that
people delight in. You can be delighted by evil, or you can be deluded by evil.

Some delude themselves by saying, "Oh, it'll never happen to me. They live in
this bubble where there is no evil in this world, but they're just fooling
themselves. It's just a matter of happenstance, of circumstance that it hasn't
happened to you yet.

It's not, "I trust God better than anybody else. " Look at the evil that
happened to Jesus. Look at the evil that happened to the Apostle Paul.

You think you're a better Christian than them, better Christian than Jesus? I
don't think so. So we can be deluded by our fortunate circumstances into
thinking, "It'll never happen to me.

" Or we can be defeated. And that's where a lot of people, that's where a lot of
people who are followers of Jesus are. They don't delight in evil.

They're not fooled by evil anymore, but they live defeated lives. Past hurts,
future threats, that makes most of the big decisions for them. Discouraged,
defeated, you sort of start to cower in a corner and hope that the evil in this
world stays out of your neighborhood just long enough for Jesus to come again,
just long enough for you to get to heaven.

But that's not what God intends for our lives. He intends for us to overcome
evil with good. So the fourth way to respond is we can be delivered.

Deliver us from evil. Set us free from evil. Set us free from the fear that
grips our heart, from the pain that colors our past.

To be delivered is to be taken from one place to another. Because you're
delivering mail, you're delivering pizza, you're taking it from one place to
another. Jesus delivers people.

He delivers our hearts and lives to a new place. He wants to take you from the
place of fear to a place of security, from a place of discouragement to a place
of hope. Deliver us from evil, even while we're living in this evil world.

Now sometimes we live in evil because of the evil that surrounds us. Sometimes
we face evil because of the evil that's within us. We bring it upon ourselves.

But whatever it comes from, Jesus says I'm willing to rescue you. You don't have
to live a defeated life. You can live a delivered life.

So if you feel imprisoned by bad experiences, bad thoughts, the evil that's in
this world, you can be set free. You can be set free into the genuine freedom
that only Christ can bring. Now in this prayer that we've looked at the last few
days this week, we've been talking together about our relationship with God.

So let me just remind you, go through what we've talked about in growing our
relationship with God through this prayer. Jesus has taught us how to grow up as
God's child. Our Father, hallowed be your name.

Jesus has taught us how to clear up our confusion. Your kingdom come. Your will
be done.

He's taught us how to give up our worries. Give us today our daily bread. He's
taught us how to free up our heart.

Forgive us. How to heal up our relationships as we have forgiven our debtors.
He's taught us how to clean up our act, lead us not into temptation, and he's
taught us how to beat up the devil, deliver us from evil.

That's the kind of empowering relationship that God wants you to have with him.
That's the power of a relationship with God. Let's talk to him together.

Our Father, we're imperfect human beings. We struggle. But the truth of the
matter is, as followers of Jesus, you sent your Spirit into our lives.

And Jesus, as he teaches us to pray, teaches us to pray not a defeated prayer,
but a prayer of freedom and a victory. And I pray that based on us living out
this prayer on a daily basis, that you bring new freedom, new victory, new
security into our lives on a daily basis. Grow us day by day by day in our
relationship with you.

Deepen and strengthen our relationship with you, we pray, Father. In Jesus' name
I pray, amen. Be sure to be back next week, the second half of Matthew chapter
6, and Jesus here teaches us how to manage our finances and our possessions.