The battle is the Lord’s, but we think it’s ours. The battle is the Lord’s, but we fight it on our own. The battle is the Lord’s, and it’s up to Him to win.
But that’s not how it looks when the enemies come creeping. When the temptations stick their ugly heads up, when the sin starts to stick, doesn’t it seem like it’s up to us to fight? Doesn’t it seem like our obedience is our responsibility, our holiness comes from our efforts?
To think any other way seems like we’re slacking off. Like we’re taking sin too lightly, like we’re not taking responsibility for our own actions. If the pride, the lust, the envy, the obsession with food, the obsession with health, if these come after us, and our response is, "Well, there’s nothing I can do about this," it would seem like we’re dishonoring God. We’re rolling over and giving up even before the battle begins.
And we would be giving up if this attitude led to us sinning. If pride came after us, we threw up our hands, and we were proud. If jealousy struck, we were only human, and we were jealous. If this is how we see the enemy, if our attackers seem inevitable, then we’re not praying the Lord’s Prayer like we should. We’re praying, "Lead us not into temptation" but we really expect to be tempted, and we really expect to be beat.
This is not the way it has to be. Our request to be delivered from our attackers goes to the Lord who wants to deliver, who CAN deliver, who WILL deliver us. We just have to watch. Question 127:
"And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one" means, By ourselves we are too weak to hold our own even for a moment. And our sworn enemies-- the devil, the world, and our own flesh-- never stop attacking us.
The enemies never stop, and we can never resist, not even for a moment. Doesn’t that just seem disheartening? I mean, it would be one thing if we could hold for even a little bit. If we tried really, really hard and thought all kinds of good thoughts and fought to do the right thing, we’d feel a little better about ourselves.
But the fact is, we’re too weak to hold our own even for a moment. We may know that the devil is beat, we may know his tricks, but he’s still strong. He’ll get us every time. The world is all around us. Everywhere we look, it’s sending twisted, sinful messages that sound so right, they look so good. It’s a non-stop, constant barrage of sin coming right at us. So, we have the devil attacking us, we have the world yapping at us, and then we have our own selves, our own flesh, wanting to do the evil. We’re fighting against ourselves. We’re fighting enemies we ourselves will never, never conquer.
Just like Moses and the Israelites. Verse 8:
The Amalekites came and attacked the Israelites at Rephidim.
The Israelites are just on their way to the promised land. They just want to get through this desert safely. They just want to go home. And here come the Amalekites to take them out. A lot like us, just wanting to go home. We’re not looking for trouble. We just want to get to heaven.
And here comes the attackers, coming to take us out. Now, what the people of God to do? The enemy is on it’s way. Their itching for a fight. What do we do? Do we run? Do we hide? Do we give up? No way. Verse 9:
Moses said to Joshua, "Choose some of our men and go out to fight the Amalekites.
Go and fight the enemy. Attack the attackers. Take the fight to them.
But not in their own strength. Isn’t this a great story? Verse 10:
So Joshua fought the Amalekites as Moses had ordered, and Moses, Aaron and Hur went to the top of the hill. As long as Moses held up his hands, the Israelites were winning, but whenever he lowered his hands, the Amalekites were winning.
We all know this was not some military tactic. It wasn’t that Moses keeping his arms up distracted the Amalekites. It wasn’t his armpits that made them less effective.
It was the Lord. It was the Lord fighting the battle for the Israelites. Now, the people had to show up. If they had turned tail and run away, then the Amalekites would have won. If the people had been so afraid of the attackers that they threw down their weapons and stuck up their hands, it would have been all over. The people of Israel needed to trust. They needed to stand against the enemy.
But it was the Lord who fought the battle. And it was the Lord who won. So, when we pray "Lead us not into temptation", we’re praying:
And so, Lord, uphold us and make us strong with the strength of your Holy Spirit, so that we may not go down to defeat in this spiritual struggle, but may firmly resist our enemies until we finally win the complete victory.
There’s the strategy when the attacks come. And those attacks come every day. And they come when we least expect it. They usually come when we’re at our worst, our lowest, when our defenses are down.
The anger at our husband, our wife comes at 10:30 at night, just when we want to relax, when we have very little patience. And the words fly. The pride comes, just when we’re really needing to feel important, and we make that statement, or we think that thought. The condemnation comes when we are feeling vulnerable, because we know what we ourselves are guilty of. So if we can condemn someone else before we get judged, we can hide a little longer.
The attacks come, and we can do nothing about it. But we try. We sure try. We think really hard about not doing the sin. We fill our minds with our own thoughts, the truths that we, in our great wisdom, have figured out. We resist, we resist, we resist…and then we crash. We sin. Every time. Because we just are not able to defeat the attackers, we’re just not able to.
But the Lord is. Let’s be very clear. If we are going to get through an attack, if we are going to resist a temptation, it’s only, ever going to be because the Lord fights the fight. This is where we run into trouble. It’s hard for us to tell the difference between showing up for the fight, and fighting the battle ourselves. Again, we need to show up. We don’t turn and run away cowering from the temptation. We don’t throw up our hands and give up. We stay on the battlefield. We name the enemy. We call it what it is. We point to the feelings, the thoughts inside us and we say, "That’s pride I’m feeling. That’s lust. That’s envy that is tugging at my credit card." We use the words.
But then we let God fight the battle. If we’re fighting, if we are taking on the struggle, we’re getting in the way. Proverbs 3:5 says:
Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;
If we’re leaning on our own understanding, then we’re not trusting the Lord. If we fighting the temptation, then the Lord isn’t, and we will lose.
So, when temptation hits, we pray this prayer, "Lord, lead us out of temptation. Lord, fight the battle for us. Lord, get rid of the pride. Lord, remove the judgmental attitude. Lord, wipe out the envy." And He will.
This is what Jesus did when He died on the cross. That was not just a death. That was an attack at the root of evil. He cut the power of evil, when He gave up His spirit. And if He attacked sin by dying on the cross, then He’ll attack sin when we’re looking in our refrigerator, or when we’re flipping through the channels, or when we’re talking over the latest neighborhood news. He’ll attack it and kill it.
And as long as we’re turning to Him to fight, we’ll remain pure. As long as Moses hands were up, in praise, in prayer to the Lord, acknowledging total dependence on God, the Israelites were winning. As long as we’re looking to the Lord for victory, we will win.
That’s why Jesus ends His prayer the way He does. Answer 128:
"For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever" means, We have made all these requests of you because, as our all-powerful king, you not only want to, but are able to give us all that is good; and because your holy name, and not we ourselves, should receive all the praise, forever.
He’s able and willing to fight the battles. He’s able and willing to take out our attackers. In verse 14, He promises to completely blot out the memory of Amalek, and now He promises to completely blot out our tempters, our attackers, the areas of sin that come against us. He wants to do this.
And He deserves the credit. If resisting temptation is up to us, even just a little bit, then we get a little bit of the praise, don’t we? We did pretty good, there, fighting that temptation. But we know that’s not right. We know that it’s the Lord that fights the battle, and so it’s the Lord that gets the glory.
That goes for everything else, too. It’s the Lord who forgives, and gives us the ability to forgive, like we saw last week. It’s the Lord who gives us our daily bread. It’s the Lord whose will is going to be done, on earth as it is in heaven. It’s the Lord’s kingdom that is going to come, not our political agenda, but His heavenly kingdom. It’s the Lord’s name that is going to be hallowed. It’s His Kingdom, His power, His glory, forever and ever.
And we shout amen. Which is not just the period at the end of the sentence. It’s one little words that gathers up all the assurance and gratitude and joy that we have inside and lets it out in one expression. Answer 129:
"Amen" means, This is sure to be! It is even more sure that God listens to my prayer, than that I really desire what I pray for.
We know what we’re praying for. We know we’re praying for protection from evil, for comfort in grief, for security for life. We know we’re praying for this world to be made holy, for our nation to be pure. We know we’re praying for our daughters, our sons, our moms, our dads. We know what we’re praying.
And when we say "Amen", we know, we know, we know that it’s more certain that God is listening, than that we’re praying. We know it’s more certain God will answer, than that we’re asking. We know, for certain, that we belong, body and soul, in life and in death, to our faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. We know. Amen.