<p>6:13&nbsp;<em>And lead us not</em>- The Greek&nbsp;<em>eisphero</em>&nbsp;definitely means to lead inward. The internal process of temptation is in view here, as explained specifically by James 1:13-15- which may be a specific comment on this part of the Sermon. Much of James is an expansion upon the Sermon. Whilst the process of temptation is internal (and note how internal processes are the great theme of the Sermon), God is capable of leading a person in the process. The dynamics in the upward and downward spirals are ultimately of God.</p>
<p><em>Into temptation but deliver us from evil- </em>This<em>&nbsp;</em>can only really come true when we are changed into divine nature; for only then will we be freed /delivered [aorist- once, finally, for all time] from the 'devil' of sin. The word for trial / temptation is&nbsp;<em>peirasmos</em>, and I have never been entirely satisfied that we can reconcile the Lord's words here with the fact that God does not tempt any man (James 1:13-15). However, I feel happier with the idea that the Lord may specifically be bidding us pray for deliverance from the latter day holocaust to come upon the saints. The Lord Jesus can keep us from &quot;the hour of trial [<em>peirasmos</em>] which is coming on the whole world&quot; (Rev. 3:10). When the disciples were bidden pray that they enter not into temptation (Mk. 14:38-&nbsp;<em>peirasmos</em>&nbsp;again), they were being asked to pray the model prayer with passionate concentration and meaning. Yet those men in Gethsemane were and are representative of the latter day saints who are bidden pray that they may escape &quot;all those things&rdquo;, the hour of trial /<em>peirasmos&nbsp;</em>which is coming, and to stand acceptably before the Son of man at His coming. We ought to be praying fervently for this deliverance; but I wonder how many of us are? For the days of the final tribulation will be shortened for the sake of the elect- i.e., for the sake of their prayers (Mk. 13:19,20). The final tribulation of the last days will be the supreme struggle between the flesh and spirit, between the believer and the world, between Christ and the Biblical 'devil'; and we are to pray that we will be delivered victorious from that struggle. Thus &quot;Lead us not into 'the test'&quot; (Mt. 6:13) could in this context be understood as a plea to save us from entering into the time of final tribulation- just as the Lord specifically exhorts us to pray to be delivered from that time. The implication would be that the final time of testing will be so severe that indeed the elect will scarcely be saved. It seems to me that none of us have the urgent sense of the time of testing ahead which we should have; how many are praying daily to be spared it? How many are in actual denial that it will ever come, even though it's clear enough in Scripture?</p>
<p>We must pray not to be led into temptation (Mt. 6:13); but when we fall into such temptation (s.w.), count it all joy, James says (1:2). The exercise of praying not to experience those temptations was for our spiritual benefit, and God is willing that it should be so.</p>
<p><em>&quot;</em>Deliver us from evil&quot; is surely alluded to in 2 Pet. 2:9 &ldquo;The Lord knows how to&nbsp;<em>deliver</em>&nbsp;the Godly out of temptations&rdquo;. Evil and temptation are thereby paralleled.</p>
<p>The Lord Jesus based this part of His prayer on Old Testament passages like 1 Chron. 4:10; Ps. 25:22; 26:11; 31:8; 34:22; 69:18; 78:35,42; 140:1 and Prov. 2:12; 6:24, which ask for &lsquo;deliverance&rsquo; from evil<em> people</em>, sin, distress, tribulation etc. here on earth. Not one of those passages speaks of deliverance from a personal, superhuman Satan. Esther&rsquo;s prayer in Es. 4:19 LXX is very similar &ndash; &ldquo;Deliver us from the hand of the evildoer&rdquo;, but that &lsquo;evildoer&rsquo; was Haman, not any personal, superhuman Satan. Even if we insist upon reading &lsquo;the evil one&rsquo;, &ldquo;the evil one&rdquo; in the Old Testament was always &ldquo;the evil man in Israel&rdquo; (Dt. 17:12; 19:19; 22:21&ndash;24 cp. 1 Cor. 5:13) &ndash; never a superhuman being. And there may be another allusion by the Lord to Gen. 48:16, where God is called the One &ldquo;who has redeemed me from all evil&rdquo;. As the Old Testament &lsquo;word made flesh&rsquo;, the thinking of the Lord Jesus was constantly reflective of Old Testament passages; but in every case here, the passages He alluded to were&nbsp;<em>not&nbsp;</em>concerning a superhuman Devil figure. God &lsquo;delivers from&rsquo; &ldquo;every trouble&rdquo; (Ps. 54:7), persecutors and enemies (Ps. 142:6; 69:14) &ndash; but as Ernst Lohmeyer notes, &ldquo;There is no instance of the [orthodox understanding of the] Devil being called &lsquo;the evil one&rsquo; in the Old Testament or in the Jewish writings&rdquo; (Ernst Lohmeyer,&nbsp;<em>The Lord's Prayer</em>, translated by John Bowden (London: Collins, 1965) p. 214).</p>
<p>It&rsquo;s been observed that every aspect of the Lord&rsquo;s prayer can be interpreted with reference to the future coming of the Kingdom of God on earth. Prayer for deliverance from evil, the time of testing (Gk.), would then tally well with the Lord&rsquo;s exhortation to pray that we may be delivered from the final time of evil coming on the earth (Lk. 21:36). Another insight into this petition is that God does in fact lead men in a downward spiral as well as in an upward spiral of relationship with Him &ndash; Pharaoh would be the classic example. &ldquo;Why do you make us err from your ways?&rdquo; was the lament of Israel to their God in Is. 63:17. It is perhaps this situation more than any which we should fear &ndash; being hardened in sin, drawing ever closer to the waterfall of destruction, until we come to the point that the forces behind us are now too strong to resist... Saul lying face down in the dirt of ancient Palestine the night before his death would be the classic visual image of it. And the Lord would be urging us to pray earnestly that we are not led in that downward spiral. His conversation in Gethsemane, both with the disciples and with His Father, had many points of contact with the text of the Lord&rsquo;s Prayer. &ldquo;Watch and pray that you enter not into temptation&rdquo; (Mt. 26:41) would perhaps be His equivalent of &ldquo;lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil&rdquo;.</p>
<p><em>For Yours is the Kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever</em>- AV and some manuscripts. &quot;For Yours<em>...&quot; </em>is significant. The sense of &lsquo;for&rsquo; is definitely &lsquo;because&hellip;&rsquo;, but it could simply be with reference to the entire preceding prayer. Or it could particularly be with reference to the preceding request: &ldquo;Deliver us from evil&rdquo;. In any case, the question arises: Why should God answer the prayer, be it the entire prayer or the specific request for deliverance from evil, because the Kingdom, power and glory is God&rsquo;s? The idea may be that because the Kingdom we seek now to be part of, and to eternally live in, is God&rsquo;s, therefore it follows that He earnestly desires to grant it to us His children. And we plead that He hears our requests, especially for deliverance from temptation and evil, because surely He wants to give us His glorious Kingdom. Because the Kingdom is&nbsp;<em>His</em>, all glory is to Him, and He wants to see us giving Him glory; because He has all power- therefore we ask Him to give us the requests we have made, because they are all intended to achieve glory to Him and to ensure our entry into His Kingdom. Another angle of exposition would be to consider that we ask for deliverance from temptation and sin because we know that God has rulership (&ldquo;Kingdom&rdquo;) and power over all- given His unlimited physical and spiritual power, we ask Him to use it to answer our requests. This reasoning of course assumes that all that has preceded in the prayer is in order for us to enter the Kingdom and to see His glory worked out. Any requests for merely human benefit and advantage cannot be concluded with such an argument- that we ask God to hear this&nbsp;<em>because</em>&nbsp;the Kingdom, power and glory is His.&nbsp;</p>
<p>This is the appropriate conclusion to a prayer that asks for the establishment of that Kingdom. Whilst commenting upon the Lord's prayer, it is worth pointing out that the Lord repeated the essence of each phrase at various points during His life. When facing His ultimate struggle when facing up to the cross, He asked that the Father's Name would be glorified (Jn. 12:28)- quoting His own words from His model prayer. It hurt and cost Him so much to pray that prayer- the prayer we may have known for so many years that we can pray it almost at no cost. But to truly ask for the Father's will to be done is in fact a commitment to the way of the cross (Jn. 6:38; Heb. 10:7-10; Mk. 14:36). So let us pray the prayer- but putting meaning into the words.</p>
<p>May I place two well-known Scriptures together in your minds. &ldquo;<em>Yours&nbsp;</em>[God&rsquo;s] is the Kingdom&rdquo;. And &ldquo;Blessed are you poor, for&nbsp;<em>yours</em>&nbsp;is the Kingdom&nbsp;<em>of God</em>&rdquo; (Lk. 6:20). The Lord assures us that the Father wants to give&nbsp;<em>His</em>&nbsp;Kingdom to those who are poor in spirit, to the broken, to the self-doubters, the uncertain, those uncomfortable with themselves, the unbearably and desperately lonely, the awkwardly spoken&hellip; the poor in spirit. Those who would be the very last to believe that God would give&nbsp;<em>them</em>&nbsp;what is evidently&nbsp;<em>His</em>&nbsp;Kingdom. But not only&nbsp;<em>will</em>&nbsp;the Father do this, but Jesus stresses that it&nbsp;<em>is</em>&nbsp;ours right now. The certainty of the glory that will be revealed for us means that we cope better with suffering; as Paul writes, they &ldquo;are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us&rdquo; (Rom. 8:18).&nbsp;</p>
<p><em>Amen</em>- AV and some manuscripts. Joachim Jeremias mentions that &quot;according to idiomatic Jewish usage the word&nbsp;<em>amen&nbsp;</em>is used to affirm, endorse or appropriate the words of another person [whereas] in the words of Jesus it is used to introduce and endorse Jesus' own words... to end one's own prayer with&nbsp;<em>amen&nbsp;</em>was considered a sign of ignorance&quot; (See the article &quot;Amen&quot; in Joachim Jeremias,&nbsp;<em>New Testament Theology</em>&nbsp;(New York: Scribner's, 1971) pp. 35,36). Thus the Lord Jesus was introducing a radically new type of speaking. But He did so because He wanted us to realize that if our spirit is united with God&rsquo;s, then our words to God are in a sense God talking to Himself; hence we say &lsquo;Amen&rsquo; to our own words, when &lsquo;amen&rsquo; was usually a confirmation of God&rsquo;s words. Jn. 16:26 fits in here, where in the context of speaking of the unity of the believers with the Father and with Himself, the Lord says that He will not need to pray for the believer, but God Himself will hear the believer. I take this to mean that Jesus foresaw that the time would come when our prayer would be His prayer. It&rsquo;s not so much that He prays for us, but rather prays with us and even through us.</p>