The Lord’s Prayer: The temptation to isolation.
Maybe we should take the final petition in the Lord’s Prayer, “Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil,” and conclude that we should get away from the temptation altogether and get out of the world.
Should we leave society and the people of the world and isolate ourselves in the wilderness?
In the first two centuries of the church there were some who adopted lifestyles of a mere subsistence level and lived in extreme asceticism. From this thinking came those who would isolate themselves from the world, and at the first, it was the Egyptian desert that provided the most fertile soil for the growth of monasticism. The word “monk” derives from the Greek word monachos, which means solitary.
Society, with its noise and its many activities, was seen as a temptation and a distraction from the monastic goal. The term “anchorite,” which soon came to mean a solitary monk, originally meant “withdrawn” or “fugitive.” For these people, the desert was attractive, not so much because of its hardship, but rather because of its inaccessibility. They were not after so much the burning sands, but the separation from the world and its temptations.
One of the first famous monks, Anthony, owing his fame to the Christian writers Jerome and Athanasius, wrote: “Monks who leave their cells, or seek the company of others, lose their peace, like the fish out of water loses its life.”
Another famous monk from that period was a man named Paul. Jerome wrote a brief record of him. Towards the middle of the third century, fleeing persecution, young Paul went to the desert, where he found an old abandoned hiding place for counterfeiters. There he passed the rest of his life, spending his time in prayer and living on a diet that consisted almost exclusively of dates. According to Jerome, Paul lived in such conditions for almost a century, and his only visitors during that time were the beasts of the desert and the elderly monk, Anthony. Certainly the account is exaggerated, but it reveals the desire and praise of solitude that the monks had.
In some ways it is a consideration of some people today.
This manner of isolation is tempting to the flesh because the fallen nature desires isolation, not desiring the challenges to itself that comes with human contact and real relationships of friendship and intimacy. Why did the world jump right into the fake life of social media? For the same reason that the flesh seeks a life without challenge or risk.
Real relationships challenge you. You have to give and sacrifice in real relationships that have some level of intimacy. We are sinners and will fail one another. We have to deal with being let down and forgiving and loving unconditionally. Wouldn’t it be easier to just be alone with a phone or laptop and the television?
Reaching out to the unsaved with the gospel also challenges you. They will likely reject it and perhaps persecute you and judge you.
Now we do see Jesus heading off to be alone and pray from time to time, but if He did that the majority of the time He would not have had a ministry at all. He invited and encouraged and touched and travelled to many places in order to be in the presence of the sinners and the needy and He reached out to them and ministered to them. He touched the lepers and the outcasts and healed them and spoke to them.
Why do we not want to reach out, which makes this a prime area of temptation from the devil? Fear.
58 times in the NASB it says, “Do not fear.”
Isa 41:10
'Do not fear, for I am with you;
Do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you, surely I will help you,
Surely I will uphold you with My righteous right hand.'
Isolation with media
Perhaps the body of believers should together isolate themselves from the world in a Christian commune. I found some that exist now that advertise off-grid, self-sustaining, radical living for God.
1Co 5:9-10
I wrote you in my letter not to associate with immoral people; 10 I did not at all mean with the immoral people of this world, or with the covetous and swindlers, or with idolaters; for then you would have to go out of the world.
Paul instructed them not to associate with members of the church who were immoral, of which they had to be openly so, or seen to be. He mentions going out of the world, but in the context he does not condone it.
The monastic actions remove us from our witness to the world and so we are trying to solve one problem by creating another, and that kind is never a solution from God.
You are to be a light to the world and not hidden in a basement. You are not to divorce or separate from friends to whom God has sent you to witness. We have to be in the world and live in God’s joy and love while being prepared for the many varieties of tests that are coming our way.
Jesus told us to get out there in the world and shine.
Mat 5:14-16
“You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden; 15 nor does anyone light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. 16 Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.”
And this witnessing of the good news of the gospel also includes reaching out to the downcast and brokenhearted as Jesus our Lord did. What stops us from doing this is fear.
Satan’s temptation is to use fear move you out of the arena of witnessing to the world as Christ’s disciple and into isolation (exile).
Adam and Eve were exiled, Babylon was exiled when God confused their language, Israel was exiled. All longed for home, the place of comfort and loved ones (one hopes at least). These exiles are a depiction of the epic drama of the entire Bible. In every age, through our sin and our self-centeredness we have created false homes based on status and power and wealth and in them we seek a safe kind of contact with the outside world. We live in an exile of our own making.
Jesus came into the our fallen world, never having a home on this earth, to bring us to our real home, which is not here but in heaven. Here we are sojourners and aliens, but not homeless. We long for and live with heaven in our hearts and live on earth with courage and joy.
Jesus taught His disciples this.
Mat 10:24-39
“A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a slave above his master. 25 "It is enough for the disciple that he become like his teacher, and the slave like his master. If they have called the head of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign the members of his household!
26 Therefore do not fear them, for there is nothing concealed that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. 27 What I tell you in the darkness, speak in the light; and what you hear whispered in your ear, proclaim upon the housetops. 28 Do not fear those who kill the body but are unable to kill the soul; but rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. 29 Are not two sparrows sold for a cent? And yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. 30 But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. 31 So do not fear; you are more valuable than many sparrows.
32 Therefore everyone who confesses Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father who is in heaven. 33 But whoever denies Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in heaven.
34 Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 For I came to SET A MAN AGAINST HIS FATHER, AND A DAUGHTER AGAINST HER MOTHER, AND A DAUGHTER-IN-LAW AGAINST HER MOTHER-IN-LAW; 36 and A MAN'S ENEMIES WILL BE THE MEMBERS OF HIS HOUSEHOLD.
37 He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. 38 And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. 39 He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it.”
Casting your fear upon the Lord and loving Him above all else (you will when you know Him) and courageously and graciously confessing Him as His disciple will be the path to finding your life, which is the life that God has always desired for you. Don’t you want to find it?
We are going to be tempted. What the Lord is getting at in His prayer that we should say every day, is that in this old world, we must desire to walk the narrow path of the new and living way, and then we will be prepared for whatever temptations may come. If our desire to stay on the path and run the race then we will lay aside all of the encumbrances and sins that easily entangle us and run in such a way that we may win. That is the point of the petition, and in fact, of all of the petitions together.
Petitions 1-5 set us up for success in petition 6.