FBC Daily Devotional – August 19, 2021

Faith Baptist Church

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:06

Well, a good Thursday to you. I hope your morning has gotten off to a good start. I hope you got a good night of rest last night and are ready for the day ahead.

00:16

Let me ask you this question. How often do you pray that the

00:23

Lord delivers you from temptation and actually keeps you from it?

00:29

How frequently does that make its way into your prayer life? You know, in the

00:35

Lord's prayer, as we often call it, that model prayer, one of the things the

00:41

Lord told us to pray is, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.

00:49

Deliver us from evil. Well, we see in the garden, the scene in Luke chapter 22, where Jesus takes his disciples to the

00:57

Garden of Gethsemane, the setting of this situation and the circumstances surrounding it will never be the same for us as it was for the disciples.

01:09

I mean, Jesus is about to be arrested. They don't know that. The disciples don't know it.

01:15

Within 24 hours, he's going to be buried in the darkness of a cave, in a grave, and they don't know that either.

01:24

They don't understand that either. But Jesus does. He knows what's coming. He brings them to this garden scene, and he wants to pray.

01:33

He needs to pray. And what agony of soul do you see displayed in Jesus' praying, his praying that is so intense that he sweats drops of blood.

01:48

But before he goes into the depths of the garden, he says to his disciples, he says to them, watch and pray that you don't enter into temptation.

01:59

Says this in verse 40, pray that you may not enter into temptation. And he actually says this a couple of times in the course of those moments while he is in prayer, pray that you don't enter into temptation.

02:16

And how rarely do we really pray that? How frequently do we find ourselves just like these disciples, strongly exhorted and encouraged by Jesus to pray because temptation is coming and pray that you don't enter into that temptation.

02:35

And yet he goes off into the little further off into the garden and they lie down there and before you know it, they're sleeping.

02:45

They're sleeping to the power and presence of the temptation that is coming right before them.

02:54

And they're not ready for it. They're not going to be ready for it. And I wonder how many times I do the same thing.

03:00

How many times do you do that? The Lord has exhorted us, pray in his model prayer, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

03:10

And yet that's not a part of our daily praying. Instead we fall asleep, we're, we're oblivious to the power and the presence of the temptation.

03:24

And before you know it, before you know it, just like the disciples, I've yielded. I think one of the things that Jesus was talking about there when he said, pray that you don't enter into temptation is what he had just told

03:37

Peter a little while earlier. And that is, you know, you're going to deny me tonight before the, before the rooster crows in the morning, you're going to deny me three times.

03:46

You're going to deny me. No, no, no, not me, not me. Pray that you enter not into temptation.

03:54

And then just a few moments, the temptation is coming. He's there in the, in that inner courtyard, warming his hands by the fire.

04:04

Hey, aren't you one of his followers? No, no, no, no, no, not me. I don't know him. Surely you're one of his followers.

04:11

No, no, not me. I'm not one of his followers. I, I, you sound like a Galilean. You, you gotta be one of his followers, curses and swears.

04:21

Not me, not me. And we are amazed when we read the account of how

04:27

Peter, how quickly Peter went from the confidence, self -assured professor of loyalty to Jesus to a denier.

04:37

How in the world did that happen? Pray that you don't enter into temptation.

04:44

Same way it happens to us, I suppose. We don't pray that we enter not into temptation.

04:50

And before you know it, because we're asleep and we're oblivious, we've yielded.

04:56

Well, I hope Peter's failure and Jesus' exhortation to prevent that failure will serve to be an encouragement to us to pray and to pray earnestly.

05:11

Our Father and our God, I pray that even today, even in these moments before this broadcast is done, we will pray,

05:21

Father, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

05:28

And may those words be on our lips or in our minds frequently through the course of a day as the wicked one is relentless in sending temptation our way.

05:39

This we pray in Jesus' name and for his sake. Amen. All right, well, have a good rest of your

05:47

Thursday and I pray by the grace of God, you will not fall into temptation.