14 - Temptation Deplored

Chapter 14 TEMPTATION DEPLORED "Lead us not into Temptation"

There are not wanting those who impugn the doctrine of pardon, as relaxing the obligations to practical godliness. To say nothing of the absurdity of this slander, upon other grounds, it is an interesting fact, that in immediate sequence to the request for pardoning mercy, the Saviour puts into the lips of his disciples another, growing out of and dictated by the spirit of the former, the object of which is to quicken and sustain their tenderness of conscience, and excite unsleeping vigilance in view of enticements to evil. " Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors: and lead us not into temptation! " The suppliant is not to expect pardon, aside from his desires after holiness. The stronger the assurance he has of his own gracious state, the more earnest are his supplications for preventing grace. Just in the measure in which he clings to the Lord Jesus, as his only hope, is he conscious of this hallowed work of the Spirit in his own heart. Admitted to the divine fellowship, and with an open door into the holiest of all set before him, it is most congenial to all the affections of his renewed nature, to distrust himself, and take refuge in the watchful care, the preventing providence, and the restraining grace, of his Father who is in heaven.

"He knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are but dust." He who included the request, " Lead us not into temptation," in the compend of prayer to be daily offered by his disciples in every age of the world, must have known what is in man. It is a request indited with wonderful wisdom; a request so constantly, so universally needed, and comes home so closely to every man’s " business and bosom;" that we know not which the more to admire, its matchless wisdom, or its ineffable sympathy and tenderness.

Plain Christians, as well men of a more philosophical turn of mind, have, as it appears to us, been sometimes perplexed by the language of this request. The Holy God is no tempter. He never corrupts men; never flatters; never deceives; never acts the part of a seducer; never entices to evil. He makes no promises, and offers no bribes with the view of inducing them to do wrong. The word tempt has two significations; one is to entice to evil, the other to try, or put to trial. The latter he does, the former is abhorrent to His nature. That pure and holy mind has no art, no craft, or cunning; but the most perfect and transparent honesty. He everywhere forbids sin, condemns, reproves, and punishes it; nor do his purposes or his providence, when rightly understood, ever hold a different language from this uniform spirit of his moral government. Nor is he in any way " the author, or approver of sin." ’’ Let no man say, when he is tempted, I am tempted of God; for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man." Ever since sin entered into the universe, he has done everything compatible with his own perfections to restrain and suppress it; to reclaim and restore fallen man. But while he never tempts men in the sense of seducing them to evil, he tries them, and throws them into circumstances in which their character is put to the test. His government is universal, and extends to everything. " He worketh all things after the counsel of his own will." His providence, which is nothing less than " his most holy, wise, and powerful preserving and governing all his creatures and all their actions," is the counterpart of his purposes, and the agency by which they are accomplished. He has, therefore, a control over all those events that exert an influence on the character and conduct of men. He is concerned in their sinful conduct, in that for wise and holy ends he permits it, " suffering all nations to walk on in their own ways;" in that he limits and restrains it, as it is written, " The wrath of man shall praise thee, and the remainder of wrath shalt thou restrain;’’ and in that he so governs and directs it, in order to make it subserve great and important results, so that while its perpetrators "think it unto evil, God means it unto good." Nor could we have any consolation in view of the wickedness of man, but for the precious truth that the providence of God is thus concerned in it all. Nor is there any evidence that the designs of God, either in regard to the church, or the world, could be accomplished, nor that the wickedness of man would not ultimately prevail and triumph; had we not the assurance that the Lord God omnipotent thus universally reigns. This every good man knows and feels, and recognizes in his prayers ; and it is his happiness and joy so to do. There is a controlling power above him, which nothing else controls; a supreme and universal providence over all his course; one at whose disposal are all creatures and all events, and in whose hands are all those alternations and varieties of incident and circumstance which exert such prodigious power in forming his character.

These principles and facts show us how God may tempt men, without seducing them to sin, and without compromising his own rectitude and goodness. He may try them; he may put their integrity to the proof. He may even permit others to seduce them; and he himself may place them in circumstances which shall develop their true character, show them and others what is in their hearts, make them feel their dependence, and lead them, by unexpected discoveries of their sinfulness, to " go softly all their years." Nor is there any doubt that he does this, and in various ways. Some he tries by the vigor, and others by the imbecility of their physical constitution and intellectual capacity. Some by health, and others by sickness; some by wealth, and others by poverty. Some by the adulation of their fellow-men, and some by their neglect and reproach. Some by those exposures which address themselves to an ardent and sanguinary temperament, and some by those that assail the more dull and phlegmatic. Some by the office they hold, the titles they bear, and the services they render to their fellow-men. Some by the place of their residence, the usages and habits of the society which surrounds them, the counsel of their advisers, and the varied success of their secular enterprises. These things bring out motives, and discover secret springs of action. They bring to light easily besetting sins; and though many of them seem to be of very trivial moment, they show the utter uncertainty of all human calculations, and how absolutely the character, as well as the destiny of men, is in the hands of God,

All the changes that men meet with are trials of their character. Nero was a very different man while the pupil of Seneca, from what he was as the Emperor of Rome. Solomon was a very different man in the early part of his reign, from what he was in those voluptuous periods of his history, during which he brought such reproach upon the throne. Men do not know themselves. Hazael the subject was a very different man from Hazael the prince. Who would have thought the youthful Mary, the Queen of England, the translator of the Gospels, would ever have deserved the appellation of the " bloody Mary ?" Who would have supposed that Robespierre, once so sensitive to the sufferings of his fellow-men, that he resigned a lucrative office under the government, rather than condemn a culprit to the scaffold, would have filled Paris with blood; or that William Dodd, once so celebrated for his usefulness as a minister of Christ, would have been executed at Tyburn, for forgery? Sometimes a mere change of place, an unexpected conflict with an individual or a party, an unhappy alliance in business, or an unlooked for alteration in public affairs, proves a touchstone to the character, before, which truth and integrity wither, and gives a blow to the spirit of self-confidence, which is never so renewed that the sufferer can lift up his face before the world. Sometimes these very incidents result in a well-tested integrity and honor, prepare those who endure the trial for still severer conflicts, and furnish them for exemplary toil and sacrifices. They had this effect upon Abraham, Joseph, Nehemiah, Job, Jeremiah, Daniel, Paul, and thousands of others in later times. The entire providence of God, and the history of every man in the world, if minutely inspected, will be found to be a series of temptations peculiarly adapted to his character. " I have led thee," says God, to the generation of Israel in the desert, "I have led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to prove thee, and to humble thee, and to see what is in thine heart, and whether thou wouldest keep my commandments, or no." He well knows how thus to try and prove men, and bring out their whole hearts. They see the objects, and witness the scenes and changes by which he is trying them; but they are not always sensible of his design, nor, indeed, melancholy to confess, do they always acknowledge his overruling hand. " Thou art a God that hidest thyself, O God of Israel the Saviour!" Some of these tests are more severe than others, and men are on their guard against them; while of most of them they seem to have no apprehension, and therefore walk on in darkness. This searching process is all the while going on, but they are unconscious of it. The trial may be designed to bring into exercise, improve, and make manifest rare graces and virtues, so that " the trial of their faith" may be to praise, and honor, and glory; " and it may show them their weakness, and cover them with shame and sackcloth. No one can truly adopt the language, " lead us not into temptation," who does not possess the fear and hatred of sin. The world in which we live abounds with seductive influences. It is no sin to be tempted, unless we solicit the temptation. Good men are afraid of it, because they are afraid of sin. This deep and inwrought sentiment is one of the great incentives to this particular request; for if the enticements to sin were not likely to lead us astray, there would be no use in the petition.

There are those who are greatly exposed to sin, and who have strongly besetting sins, who never pray that they may not be tempted to commit them; and the reason is, they have no abhorrence of these sins. It gives great emphasis to such a request as this, to have deep impressions of the evil and odious nature of all sin. If we make light of sin, we shall make light of temptation. One of the most subtle temptations is that which would fain induce us to believe that it is a small matter to sin against God. An enlightened and tender conscience, and much more a heart renewed by grace, looks upon sin as deadly poison. However small, it is the " cockatrice’s egg’’ and wall " break out into a viper." Every man is tempted when he " is drawn away by his own lusts and enticed. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin ; and sin when it is finished, bringeth forth death." And it is no abortion, but vigorous, full-grown death. Just as one who has experienced the agony of bodily suffering, prays as no other man can pray, to be delivered from pain, so does he who knows by experience the evil of sinning, pray as no other man can pray, that he may not be led into temptation. Such a man is afraid of the opportunity of sinning; his daily prayer is that he may not be thrown in the way of it. There is no surer sign of a man’s ignorance of himself, than his unwillingness to admit the power of temptation. A cautious Christian has lost his self-confident courage, and seeks rather for preservatives from sin, than for occasions to prove his steadfastness. He solicits rather that God would circumvent him by his providence, and on every side multiply and increase the obstacles and difficulties in his way of sinning, than suffer him to fall into temptation. The man who offers this request with a becoming spirit, contemplates his exposure. The world is full of those who have been led away by temptation, who, before they were led astray, would have said that it could have had no influence upon them. Most of the boasting among men proceeds from the want of being tried. " He that trusteth to his own heart is a fool." The spirit of self-confidence runs into temptation; it even tempts God. It should never be forgotten that a pardoned sinner is not past all peril. " Watch and pray," says the Saviour, "that ye enter not into temptation; the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." This exposure to sin arises principally from the following sources. In every human being this side the grave, there is a melancholy tendency to evil. To whatever extent this innate tendency to wickedness may be counteracted it is always in opposition to the strong natural bias of the mind. His own heart is his strongest tempter. The system is a false one, that it is as easy for a man to do right as to do wrong. Left to himself, he is " wise to do evil, and to do good he has no knowledge." Even after every restraint and every influence, every inducement presented in the word of God, and even large measures of his grace, he utterly fails to subdue the power of " sin that dwelleth in him." He may feel that sin is a burden, and yet commit it. His conscience may be wrung with anguish in view of past sins, while this is no security that he may not commit them in time to come. He may form resolutions of new obedience every day he lives, and still live to groan under the body of sin and death. His very desires and efforts to mortify and subdue his corruptions, furnish him with affecting indications of their power. Rarely does he go to the throne of grace, but he feels the severity of the conflict, and complains of his moral corruption. It is a mournful truth, that ’’ the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked" — wicked to project and perpetrate everything: that is vile, when once all restraints are removed and strong temptation is present to the mind. No man knows what he may be left to do; nor what " earthly, sensual, devilish’’ device may find a place in some of the secret folds of his deeply imbedded wickedness. The source of his exposure is not a blinded understanding merely; nor a faithless conscience, nor a treacherous memory, nor a perverted judgment, nor a wild, polluted, and incited imagination, nor the want of experience; but a corrupted heart. This is the weak spot, the sore spot, the deadly plague in the human character. He knows little of himself that does not know this melancholy truth. Nor is this all. With such a heart as this, he is destined to live in a world of sin and snares, where, whatever his condition may be, he is tempted on every side. He is exposed from the men of the world and the things of the world; from friends and foes; at home and abroad ; from the untender walk of Christians, and from the bolder corruptions of the wicked; from what he sees and hears, enjoys and suffers. He is exposed sometimes from too retired, and sometimes from too social a spirit, and amid communications that are as contagious as they are unavoidable. He is exposed, where he least suspects it, and from his very insensibility to exposure, insensibly and deceitfully conducting him from one sin to another, till he stands on the brink of the precipice, and wonders he has not made the fearful leap into the abyss below. His mind becomes familiarized with evil; and before be is aware of it, his principles become shaken, his faith shivers in the wind, and his frail bark is tossed on the dark, angry sea.

Just as matter acts upon matter, so mind acts upon mind. Disastrous revolutions are effected in the moral world by the contact of minds; nor is it at all to be wondered at, that spiritual life should be jeoparded in a world that " lieth in wickedness."

There is a Great Deceiver, too, who is not only permitted to have the power, but is long practised in the arts of seduction. We "are not ignorant of his devices." He knows where and when the people of God are most vulnerable. There is no dark chamber in the understanding, no unguarded outpost in the conscience, no defective spot in the heart, which he has not his eye upon, and to which he is not fertile in expedients to find access. He sports with the understanding, and would fain tempt to the belief that there is no religion revealed from heaven, no hereafter, no God. He sports with the conscience, and would fain tempt to the belief that sin is a little matter; that the threatenings of God are unduly severe ; that nothing is jeoparded by a single deviation from duty; that others have sinned and found mercy; and that there can be no great peril in sinning if such transgressors as Noah and Lot, David and Solomon, Peter and the thief on the cross, were pardoned offenders. He sports with the imagination, painting in gaudy colors the delights of the ambitious in the hope of elevation, of the avaricious in their anticipations of wealth, of the voluptuous in the revelings of their impurity. He sports with the heart, adapting his seductions to every age, every constitutional infirmity, every condition and exigency, every employment and relation in life, every hope and fear, every opinion and prejudice, every exposure, every season of rashness, and every former sin. There is no form of sinning which he fails to exhibit in its most alluring attractions. It is " fruit greatly to be desired and pleasant to the eye;" the deed is soon forgotten, and never detected; it is the best if not the only means of realizing expectations to which have been devoted years of otherwise fruitless toil.

There are three things, among others, which strongly mark the temptations of this crafty adversary. One is the untiring patience by which he would persuade men to hearken to his suggestions; the indomitable perseverance by which he employs himself with their thoughts by day and by night, pursuing and worrying, hunting and dogging his victims year after year, until he has planted his barbed arrow so deep, that they despair of escaping his fury. The other, inconsistent as it may be, is the suddenness of his assaults; the unexpected fury of his onsets, giving his victims no time to deliberate, entering into no discussions with them, but summoning all his artifice and energy to carry them by surprise. And the third is, to keep himself out of sight; to secrete himself from observation, from suspicion even, until the " bird is taken in the snare, and knoweth not that it is for his life."

Such are some of the more ordinary exposures to sin which this request contemplates The world, the flesh, and the devil, these three mighty kingdoms, in all the strength and subtlety of their unhallowed alliance, are, ever and anon, directing their assaults against the men of prayer, against all men, and with an unweariedness and success that are surpassed only by him whose eyes never slumber, and who is stronger than the strong man in his armor. Here then we may discover what it is a Christian prays for when he says, "Lead me not into temptation." He would be delivered from the severity of this conflict; and if he may not be free from it, he asks that he may be supported. "For this thing I besought the Lord thrice," says Paul, " that it might depart from me; and he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee!" This petition more especially contemplates as great an exemption from this exposure as is consistent with the designs and will of God. In the wide range between sinless perfection and absolute apostasy, some degree of exposure is unavoidable; nor does he know how much may be needful for the " trial of his faith," for the proof of his integrity, for his usefulness in the world, for the conquests of divine grace, and for ultimately securing his everlasting crown. It is well that the history of the people of God in this particular is an unknown history, and that it never will be fully known till the day when the promise is made good, " To him that overcometh will I give to sit with me on my throne, even as I overcame, and am set down with my Father on his throne."

John in the vision of the Apocalypse heard the voice, " What are these which are arrayed in white robes, and whence came they?" It was the inquirer himself who rejoined, " These are they which came out of great tribulation and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb." They had labored and suffered for the gospel. They had stood firm and fast in a persecuting and degenerate age. They had not fallen, nor fainted in the "hour of temptation that came upon all the earth," but sealed their testimony with their blood. God has thus tempted thousands of his people, to whom he has given grace to be "faithful unto death," and to whom he has awarded "a crown of life." He tempted Abraham by a command filled with all the emphasis of terror; he tempted Job and he tempted Paul "Beloved," says the Apostle Peter to the dispersed people of God, " think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing had happened unto you." It is no new thing that temptations should beset them; nor is it any phenomenon in the divine government, that they should be turned to good account. " There hath no temptation overtaken you," says Paul to the Corinthians, " but such as is common to man; but God is faithful who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it." I have known those who, from a sinful confidence in their own powers of endurance, and from a self-righteous desire to express their own meekness and submission under trials, actually desired this conflict with themselves and the powers of darkness. And I have seen them most bitterly bewail their presumption. Though good men may come unscathed from temptations, they are not to be sought. It is time enough to " glory in tribulation," when it comes. If God bring it, he will deliver. It is not in piety then to be a rebel; she may not then resist and oppose the will of God, but " rather count it all joy when she falls into divers temptations, knowing this, that the trial of her faith worketh patience," and that it is no loss when " patience has her perfect work, entire, wanting nothing." Nor is it any strange thing that piety, when thus unavoidably exposed, should be the gainer by every seduction successfully resisted, every trial patiently endured. There is honey even in the carcass of the lion; " out of the eater comes forth meat, and out of the strong comes forth sweetness." Thus tempted, the child of God has many a promise to sustain and comfort him. He who came from the bosom of the Father to "destroy the works of the devil," was himself exposed to the impudent assaults of this Spirit of all evil. If he did not escape the assault, much less may we escape. Like a brave prince, he not only commands his followers, but places himself at the head of his embattled hosts, and himself breasts the first onset of the enemy. It is not unfrequently with them, after sore temptations, as it was with him, when behold, "the devil leaveth them, and angels come and minister unto them."

While the petition, " lead us not into temptation," therefore, does not contemplate an entire exemption from temptation, it contemplates as great an exemption as is consistent with the will of our Father who is in heaven. In such a world as this, and with such a heart as dwells in man, who feels not the strong propriety the urgent need of such a request? Nothing is more helpless than a Christian unprotected by the providence, unsupported by the grace of his heavenly Father. He is as a sickly plant, under the withering tempest. He is like the lost sheep, bleating in the lone and dense forest, or trembling on the cragged rock, pursued by savage beasts and savage men, and never secure, save when He who "gathers the lambs with his arm, and carries them in his bosom," maketh him to " lie down in green pastures, and leadeth him beside the still waters." It is not so much in resisting temptation, as in not being led into it, that his safety lies. Be this, then, the reader’s prayer, " lead me not into temptation." Tread not too closely on the borders of evil, when there is a " highway of holiness." Make no treaty with the foe. Beware of scenes and objects, of places, employments, and men, of feelings and fancies, which ensnare.

" My soul, be on thy guard, Ten thousand foes arise ; And hosts of sin are pressing hard To draw thee from the skies."

If a man is doubtful of the moral rectitude of any course of conduct, let him bring it to the test, by asking the question, Is it not ensnaring? Of this one thing he may be assured, that it is more than doubtful, if he cannot enter upon it with the petition on his lips, " lead me not into temptation." Listen to the counsels of heavenly wisdom, when they say, " Be sober, be vigilant; for your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, goeth about seeking whom he may devour." Be vigilant, because your foes are subtle, and aim their most envenomed arrows in the dark. Be sober, because levity and folly tempt the tempter. These days of temptation will soon be over; therefore " be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might." It is not against flesh and blood alone that you are wrestling; wherefore "put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day."

" Alas ! what hourly dangers rise !

What snares beset my way ! To heaven, O let me lift my eyes, And hourly watch and pray !

"O keep me in thy heavenly way And bid the tempter flee. And let me never, never stray From happiness and thee !"