“Lead us not into trials which we have not the grace to bear.”
Luke 11 opens with Jesus praying, again. He was not alone, for as He rose from His knees, one of His disciples said to Him, “Master, teach us to pray…” They did not ask Him to teach them to preach, prophesy, or heal. They asked Him, “Teach us to pray.” Surely, even the way He prayed carried faith’s authority.
By the time this occasion took place, Jesus had lived thirty+ years in obscurity as to His true identity. Demons knew Him, however, and loudly proclaimed it. More than Joseph’s son, they knew Jesus to be the Christ: God’s Holy One, the Son of God. The Gospels relate how time after time He rebuked those foul spirits, told them to come out of the afflicted, and forbade them to speak.
The demons had a front-row seat in the Desert when after forty days and nights, Satan set temptation’s table. Jesus would not allow their master’s premature use of His true identity to thwart His Father’s plan of redemption. There was yet the Father’s table waiting for Him in the bowels of the earth before He emerged triumphant – wielding the keys of Death, hell, and the grave! His journey to the Cross was preparation for after...
He was already out in front of them, having “called the Twelve together conferring on them power and authority over all the demons and to cure diseases; and sent them out to proclaim the Kingdom of God and to cure the sick.” (Luke 9) Read chronologically, imagine being those disciples in all that was occurring in Jesus’ life. They were with Him, swept up in the overwhelming flow of this Life of the Ages who hadn’t yet gone to the Cross. How much more ought we, who believe and have received Him, be eager for the same Spirit to dwell in us as in Him?1
Instruction With Purpose
One chapter before our Matthew 6:9-13 passage of Jesus’ model of urgent supplications, He went up another hillside and taught with authority the Sermon on the Mount: the Law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.1,2
Between all Matthew related up to chapter 6 and Luke to chapter 11, the Twelve had by now heard Him speak and witnessed Him act from such an opposite spirit than that which governed their humanity, one thing left to them for hope of living out these blessed are’s of the Kingdom, was to ask Him to teach them to pray.
Their Teacher puzzled them; He was aware of their propensity to want what they wanted. Especially when they hit emotional overwhelm, stamina needed to follow Him, and reconciling His words with His ways. What they regarded as sacrifice, Jesus used to teach, empower, and strengthen them for putting to the proof.
There is no disciple who is superior to his teacher; but every one whose instruction is complete will be like his teacher. – Luke 6:40
There came a time in the lives of the Twelve when their once-feeble faith flourished by the power of the Spirit. Each one’s mustard seed of faith had grown under mountains of holy fertilizer due to Jesus’ Desert temptations. Ours grows no differently. Scripture avows it is one and the same Spirit working within us for redemptive living.
Two Meanings of Temptation
Before Jesus’ prayer teaching in Matthew 6, before the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5 – Matthew 4 and Luke 4 both recount the devil’s temptations of Jesus immediately following His baptism by John the Baptist.
To gain true appreciation for the trial Jesus went through, it is important to understand the Greek’s primary and secondary meaning to the word temptation – peirasmos. Peirasmos means putting to the proof; proof; trial; or a test to see one’s strength and quality.3 It is only in a secondary sense that it means an allurement to sin.
Jesus’ Desert trial had no less the Father’s involvement than it did the Spirit’s leading the Son into it. There is significance in the act of Jesus being “led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil,” in accordance with the Father’s aim of allowing the devil to test Jesus’ relationship with His Heavenly Father. Jesus’ Abba trusted His Son not to fail. It wasn’t the first time He’d orchestrated such; He had done similar long before when He asked Satan, “Have you considered My servant Job?”4 Ages before, the LORD trusted Job not to fail.*
For forty days and nights, Luke tells us, Jesus was led about by the Spirit in the Desert, all the while tempted by the devil. Jesus ate nothing in that time; after 40 days, He suffered hunger. One who knew no sin, Jesus could not be tempted by sin. Human like us, He knew hunger, thirst, weakness. Then, the trio of tests came.
Demonstration in the Desert
Of great encouragement to our souls in this testimony of Jesus is that He was not alone in the Desert. The Spirit was there to strengthen Him even as the devil sought to weaken Him further. Instead, Satan’s attempt to conduct business in the wilderness served as the perfect foil for Jesus – not by using His divine attributes, but as Son of man – to demonstrate that He was superior in the areas of physical, moral, and spiritual strength.
When we pray, lead us not into trials which we have not the grace to bear, we are asking Our Father to keep us from the testing of our ability (our own human strength) to withstand the devil physically, morally, or spiritually.
In agreement with Holy Spirit who made it real to Brother Ed and made it real to me, the kind of testing Jesus went through is not meant to be exacted from us. He went through it on our behalf that we may know our strength is not in ourselves. Our strength is in and flows through Christ, the One already tested in all these areas of life, Who came through it all as the Conqueror in our stead. This is mercy, and the grace in which we stand.5
to be continued…
Part 2 of this article has to do with the secondary sense of temptation; the same kinds of allurement we all face.
~ Nancy
1 Romans 8:2-11 2 Matthew 5:1-12 3 expressed under subheading Proving Ground 4 Job 1:8, 2:3; chapters 38-42 5 Hebrews 4:15-16
Job 42:1-17 – RESTORED TO RIGHT RELATIONS WITH GOD *
In complete surrender Job bowed before God, confessing his ignorance and owning that he had spoken glibly of things which he understood not. He had retorted to his friends that he was as good as they, but now he confessed, as did the Apostle {Paul} after him, that he was of sinners the chief. It is one thing to hear of God, another to see and know Him close at hand. Well may we loathe our proud words and repent in dust and ashes, Job 42:6. When Job was right with God, the Almighty took his side against his accusers and silenced them. It was through Job’s intercessions that they were forgiven. He himself was not fully forgiven till he could pray for them with loving forgiveness. But immediately he had done so God turned “the shadow of death into the morning” and gave him the double portion of the first-born. Thus men, when forgiven and restored, are heirs of riches greater than they had forfeited. (F.B. Meyer commentary) ▪ (Note: double portion: heritage/abundant blessing/restoration; significant increase in blessing, honor, or spiritual power)
Accompanying reading: Pattern of Seven: Bringing Our Things into Right Perspective*
Pattern of Seven: Forgive Us Our Debts, As We Forgive Our Debtors
Psalm 23 – Jesus Christ’s Burial Song
Blessing for Your Spirit – The Heritage of the Servants of the Lord
Click here for a printable PDF of this article: Redemptive Gifts Pattern of Seven – Lead Us Not Into Temptation
Leave a Reply