00:00:00.000 - 00:01:09.000

[Music] [Singing] Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven.

00:01:09.000 - 00:01:52.000

Give us this day our daily bread, And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Who Sends the Serpent? A message by Dr. Bruce W. Thielman.

00:01:52.000 - 00:02:12.000

Let us give reverent attention to the reading of God's word as it is recorded in Matthew's Gospel, the 21st chapter beginning at the 6th verse. And the disciples went and did as Jesus had commanded them, and brought the ass and the coat, and put on them their clothes, and they set him thereon.

00:02:12.000 - 00:02:37.000

And a very great multitude spread their garments in the way. And others cut down branches from the trees and strawed them in the way. And the multitude that went before and that followed cried saying, "Hosanna to the Son of David. Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest."

00:02:37.000 - 00:03:07.000

And when he was come in Jerusalem, all the city was moved saying, "Who is this?" And the multitude said, "This is Jesus, the prophet of Nazareth, of Galilee." And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his holy word. Let us pray.

00:03:07.000 - 00:03:57.000

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. As the colors of the spectrum, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet, go together to make the purity of white light, so the seven petitions of the patterned prayer go together to form the perfect petition to God. Archbishop Temple said of this prayer that no true lover of God could ask for any more to pray.

00:03:57.000 - 00:04:24.000

And it is so. Our Father, this speaks of the intimacy of God. Which art in heaven, this speaks of the infinite majesty of God. Hallowed be thy name, this God who is infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in whose being is wisdom and power and holiness and justice and goodness and truth.

00:04:24.000 - 00:04:53.000

O God, be unto us now and forever, God. Hallowed your name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done. We pledge to you our sovereignty. Thou shalt be our king, and we will win a world for thee. Give us this day our daily bread. God be with us in the valleys as well as on the mountain tops.

00:04:53.000 - 00:05:22.000

In the mundane matters of life, earning and eating, O God, if there's anything that's big enough to concern us, we know it's big enough to concern you. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. O God, even as thou hast forgiven our sin, grant that we might show like mercy and compassion on all those who have sinned against us.

00:05:22.000 - 00:05:48.000

And then the final petition which confronts us today. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. It is no accident that the petition which immediately precedes this one speaks to us of our sin yesterday. Forgive us our sin, that's our debt, that which we have had in our past.

00:05:48.000 - 00:06:09.000

And having gained God's forgiveness, we then offer to him our today and also our tomorrow. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. And in this single sentence, Christ teaches us three important lessons. He speaks to us of the nature of evil.

00:06:09.000 - 00:06:29.000

He speaks to us of the nature of temptation. And he speaks to us of the nature of God. The phrase might be translated, "Deliver us from the evil one." The idea of Satan, the concept of Satan, has had an interesting development in Scripture.

00:06:29.000 - 00:06:50.000

Originally the word Satan referred only to an enemy. David, for example, is described as the Satan of the Philistines, the enemy of the Philistines. Later the word took on the connotation of being an angel of prosecution. That is an angel of God who served as prosecuting attorney against men,

00:06:50.000 - 00:07:08.000

and launched against men every criticism and attack that he could discover. Finally, the word took on the connotation of liar. In the Greek, the word diabolos means slanderer. The Satan then is that one who is man's prosecuting attorney,

00:07:08.000 - 00:07:36.000

but his case is not built upon truth, but built upon deceit. He forges for himself a fabric of lies, and launches these lies against men and the children of men. And Jesus teaches us to pray, "Deliver us from the prince of liars."

00:07:36.000 - 00:08:03.000

A few years ago I suppose that most men would have thought this a remarkably unsophisticated prayer. They would have said that there is no point or purpose in believing that there is such a thing as a personal devil, one who goes about upon the face of the earth seeking to work men ill. But I wonder if men would be so prone to dispute the existence of such a one now.

00:08:03.000 - 00:08:30.000

It seems to me the evidence is well nigh incontestable. There's now in San Francisco a First Church of Satan. And here in Los Angeles we have black masses and orgiastic celebrations of evil. Masses and celebrations which end sometimes in acts of perversion and violence,

00:08:30.000 - 00:09:04.000

and perhaps even in sadistic, cruel, ritualistic murders. And if you do not see evil there, then come with me into a home where I see a father possessed by it. A father who loves his son so beating his son that I must stay his hand with my own. And as I look into his face, twisted, densed, made into something ugly and hideous,

00:09:04.000 - 00:09:34.000

I discover there not that man, but something that in that moment has possessed him. Or see it in poison. There is some person who worships in this sanctuary Sunday after Sunday. We know not whether they're a member of this church or someone who comes from the outside.

00:09:34.000 - 00:10:14.000

And they write upon those little yellow cards notes of hatred that would shock you if you read them. Accusations so foul, insinuations about worship so profane that I will not share them with you. I showed one of these cards to one of my colleagues. He saw it and uttered one word, and in that word summed it all. "Demonic."

00:10:14.000 - 00:10:39.000

Or see it in what friends can do to one another. If there was one lesson I'd like to get across to the hearts of our young people, it's this. That the devil can make a friend into an enemy. I've never had one of my friends come to me and say, "Come, I shall show you a delightful new thing."

00:10:39.000 - 00:11:07.000

Instead they come and say, "I will show you a delightful new pleasure, a new experience, a new adventure, a new joy you have not known before. This I will offer to you." And they do it in the name of friendship, and there is no treachery in their hearts at the moment. But they're owned by someone other than themselves.

00:11:07.000 - 00:11:46.000

And he attacks us, doesn't he, even in the confines of our own family. There are young people worshipping with us every Sunday morning now, who pay a price for being here. Who are criticized, attacked, socially limited, accused by their own parents because of their faith. There are young people worshipping with us who have been driven from their homes by their mothers and fathers because they love the Lord Jesus Christ.

00:11:46.000 - 00:12:14.000

Are you going to suggest to me that such an ugly thing can happen in a home by accident? I do not believe that is so. You see, I discover him everywhere. When I open my eyes, I see him in the face of strangers, and sometimes in the face of friends.

00:12:14.000 - 00:12:33.000

And when I close my eyes, I see his countenance scribbled on the inside of my eyelids. He tingles in the tips of my fingers. He does dances on the guitar strings of my nerves. He sometimes writes on the papers on my desk.

00:12:33.000 - 00:13:01.000

I find him hidden in my files or dozing in the newspapers or staring at me from posters on the walls. You cannot tell me that there is no Prince of Light. There's a medieval legend that tells of a monk who went to a theater and saw an illicit play. And in the midst of the play, the devil attacked him.

00:13:01.000 - 00:13:22.000

And he turned to the devil and said, "How dare you attack a servant of God?" And the devil said to him, "How dare you trespass upon my territory?" It's an interesting legend, but grossly inaccurate. For the devil has no territory.

00:13:22.000 - 00:13:45.000

He moves where he wishes to move. He works where he wishes to work. And even the Church of Christ is not exempt from his attack. For I have seen and known him here.

00:13:45.000 - 00:14:08.000

And that's the first thing that Jesus tells us in this petition. "Pray to be delivered from the evil one." He then goes on to say something to us about the nature of temptation. You see, whenever you have evil and you have freedom, you have temptation.

00:14:08.000 - 00:14:31.000

If you have no evil, there is, of course, nothing by which to be tempted. If you have no freedom, if you are like some puppet guided by springs and wires, then you have no possibility of doing evil, and therefore there is no temptation. But when both evil and temptation are present, then there can be temptation.

00:14:31.000 - 00:14:52.000

And temptation, of course, in and of itself, is not wrong. Our Lord Jesus was tempted. Was tempted throughout all the course of his ministry, and yet he was without sin. It is not evil to be tempted, but it is evil to yield to temptation.

00:14:52.000 - 00:15:11.000

And it must be remembered when we think of temptation, that temptation can be, at least in some subtle and indirect way, given to us by God. I mean by that we can be tested. We can be tried.

00:15:11.000 - 00:15:37.000

It seems to me that in the pages of Scripture, the evidence is given again and again that there are times when God wants to see what we're really made of. I was taking a group of missionaries through Disneyland a few weeks ago. That sounds strange, doesn't it?

00:15:37.000 - 00:15:55.000

But I was, and we came to a little antique store on a corner. I'd never noticed it before, and we went in. And on the walls there was a very beautiful display of butterflies. Real butterflies had evidently belonged to some collector at one time and now for sale.

00:15:55.000 - 00:16:12.000

And one of the missionaries from the Cameroon told me that he recognized some large and exotic butterflies typical to that part of the world. And he told me an interesting story about them. And it was the first time he had ever seen one of those large butterflies

00:16:12.000 - 00:16:32.000

trying to fight its way from its cocoon. He decided that he would help it, and so he took his knife and cut the cocoon in part so that the little creature could escape more freely, and it did. The only difficulty was that having so escaped,

00:16:32.000 - 00:16:52.000

it had only about half as much color in its wings as its brother. For you see, it is in the vigorous struggle against the cocoon that the chemical transformations take place within that little creature that give it the brilliance of its wings.

00:16:52.000 - 00:17:12.000

And that's so. God sometimes puts us in a cocoon where we're made to struggle and pull and push. And in this struggle, we gain the color, the brilliant wings spread, if you will, that will lift us in the end to the kingdom of heaven.

00:17:12.000 - 00:17:33.000

There are times that God tempts. But God always tempts to bring us good. Indeed, I do not like to say that God tempts, but rather that God tries. God puts us on trial to lift us higher,

00:17:33.000 - 00:17:54.000

like the coach that sets before the player a more difficult goal. Like the professor who sets before the student something to that point beyond him that he's not yet attempted. So we are being challenged always to climb, to lift, to struggle a little bit higher

00:17:54.000 - 00:18:19.000

and closer to the one who made us, and who stands with us in all of this, who supports us in the moment of trial. For no one ever falls before the trials of God if they confront those trials with God. A young girl said to me on a college campus,

00:18:19.000 - 00:18:33.000

"The trouble with you is you're a preacher." She divided all people into three sexes, men, women, preachers. "The trouble with you is you are a preacher, and as a preacher you cannot understand the temptations that we have to endure,

00:18:33.000 - 00:18:53.000

the challenges toward promiscuity which are ours." And I said to her, "I've never been a co-ed on a college campus, so I'm sure that's true, at least in part. Yet I must say to you, my young friend, that I've never seen the corroded face of lust

00:18:53.000 - 00:19:08.000

enter my office and sit down right across my desk from me and say, 'Now preacher, I plan to enter into some acts of fornication, and I thought I'd better talk to you about it in advance.' I've never had a man come to me and say,

00:19:08.000 - 00:19:24.000

'Reverend, I plan to start fooling around with another man's wife, and I thought I'd talk it over with you before I started.' I've never had an individual do this, but there comes a time, you see, when the deed is done, when the temptation has been flunked,

00:19:24.000 - 00:19:36.000

the trial has been failed. There comes a time when a man who's tried to go it alone comes into my office, when the moral ambulance has been summoned, and you can hear it scream in every word that he says.

00:19:36.000 - 00:19:58.000

There comes a time when all hell breaks loose. Then I hear about it. Then I see it. The one who tried to go it all alone. Jesus says to us, "Beware, there is an evil one.

00:19:58.000 - 00:20:19.000

Beware also that there are trials in life, but you can confront the trials and you can defeat the evil if you understand the nature of God. If you pray to him, lead us not into temptation,

00:20:19.000 - 00:20:36.000

and deliver us from evil." It's important that we catch what Jesus is saying to us here. He is not saying that every sorrow, every trial, every burden that we bear in life is given to us by God.

00:20:36.000 - 00:20:54.000

Certain things happen to us because of our own sins. The custodian of the church in which I served before was a man who for many years carried the burden of a terrible alcohol problem and eventually, through commitment to Christ, broke that habit.

00:20:54.000 - 00:21:13.000

But he had in his years of dissipation so injured himself physically that he died from cirrhosis of the liver, a long and a difficult death. And in the course of that difficult dying, he said to me, "Why would God visit such a thing as this upon me?"

00:21:13.000 - 00:21:33.000

And I had to say to him, "God has not visited such a thing upon you. You sowed the wind. You are reaping the whirlwind. You did this damage to yourself, and having done this damage to yourself, there is no way in which it can be avoided."

00:21:33.000 - 00:21:52.000

I am not saying that Jesus is saying that every difficulty we confront, every burden we're called upon to bear is given us by God. It is not so. Some of these things we do to ourselves. And let us recognize, too, that Jesus is not saying to us

00:21:52.000 - 00:22:16.000

that every pain in life which is ours to experience is given to us by God, but rather that some of these things come through the course of natural experience, the inexorable working out of natural law. A child goes to the third floor window and steps out and is killed.

00:22:16.000 - 00:22:37.000

And you say, "Why does God permit such a thing to come to pass?" God does not want such a thing to come to pass. But were God in that moment, for example, to stop that child in midair before it hits the earth? If that child were to somehow be enabled to fracture every rule of gravitation that we know,

00:22:37.000 - 00:23:02.000

if gravity were for that moment stopped, every airplane would fall from the sky, every railroad train would sail into the sky, and we ourselves would fall into space. You say to me, "Well then, then why does he not just abrogate the rule of gravity for children, just for little children that are falling?"

00:23:02.000 - 00:23:26.000

And you know children as well as I do. What would happen if a child could discover he could jump from the third floor window without being hurt? And what would happen when other children discovered it? And then what would happen when they came to that time in life where it didn't happen anymore?

00:23:26.000 - 00:23:44.000

You see, this universe has been constructed like a fine watch. Every dimension of it ties into every other dimension of it. The very laws which sometimes cause us pain most often cause us good. And when we try to break those laws, we find that we do not break those laws,

00:23:44.000 - 00:24:01.000

but break ourselves against those laws, for those laws are expressions of good. What I'm saying to you is this. The self is a center, and about this self we as Christians have the will of God. What does that mean?

00:24:01.000 - 00:24:22.000

That means that although temptation will reach us, trial will reach us, suffering will reach us, vicissitude and difficulty will reach us, none of these things can reach us without first going through the encircling will of God. And that means, you see, that everything that comes to us in life,

00:24:22.000 - 00:24:41.000

though it may not be willed by God, though it may be the result of our own sin, though it may not be willed by God, though it may be the working out of natural law, no matter what comes to us in life, it comes to us through His will.

00:24:41.000 - 00:25:01.000

It passes, as it were, through His hands. And God, as the one who made us and loves us and understands us, has decreed that He will permit nothing that will come to us that we cannot handle. If we'll handle it with Him.

00:25:01.000 - 00:25:23.000

God doesn't will cancer. Cancer is somehow or other built into the warp and woof of this world, and because we've spent so much money on bombs and bullets and other instruments of terror and murder, we've not had the money to discover how to defeat cancer.

00:25:23.000 - 00:25:44.000

God does not will cancer. But God will come to us, and will never let that disease visited upon us by natural circumstance defeat us, if we'll put our hand in His.

00:25:44.000 - 00:26:06.000

Oh, it may take our life, but not our life that is eternal. This is a difficult concept, I admit it. But the sum of it is this. That in the warp and woof of human experience,

00:26:06.000 - 00:26:42.000

there's evil, there's trial, there's law, there's sin. There are many things that can burden and break us, but they'll never break us if we understand that He doesn't have to confront these things alone. But that the God who permits life to be as it is,

00:26:42.000 - 00:27:00.000

inserts into it His own hand, and in His own hand is love. So on Palm Sunday they threw down branches and they cried "Hallelujah!" and they filled the air with hosannas and it was a joyous time,

00:27:00.000 - 00:27:17.000

but you see, slithering amongst those palm branches was the serpent. And you say to me, "Who sent the serpent? Who sent the evil into that circumstance?" I say to you, that question is as old as Eden.

00:27:17.000 - 00:27:40.000

Who sent the serpent there? God to test Eve? I do not know. Was it perhaps that Eve had flaming within her a desire to be like God that was so great that it possessed her and made her less than she could have been? I don't know. Could it have been the fault of Adam? Had he been ignoring Eve, gone away,

00:27:40.000 - 00:28:05.000

and in her loneliness she turned to this? I don't know. I only know this, that regardless of who sends the serpent, regardless of why evil or burden or pain or suffering or sorrow comes, with the anguish God sends the answer.

00:28:05.000 - 00:28:44.000

With the torment God sends the capacity to triumph. If we will but pray, lead us not into temptation, and deliver us from evil. For you see, more stately than any palm is the shoot out of Gepid, that one who is fairer than the lily of the valley, that one whose breath is sweet,

00:28:44.000 - 00:29:14.000

that one whose presence ennobles and ennobles. We hold up on Palm Sunday and on every day of our lives, not just palms, but the rose of Sharon, the Christ who is God with us. And in Him we are saved.

00:29:14.000 - 00:29:39.980

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father, and the communion of the Holy Spirit the Comforter, be and abide with us both now and forevermore. [ Silence ]