"Lead us not into temptation." It is not "Lead us not into sin"-nothing so impossible as that our Father which is in heaven should do that. But He can lead us into temptation; that is, to be sifted by the enemy, into the place where the flesh shall be exposed and crucified, when this is needful, because hardness, or lightness, or inattention to His patient warnings has supervened. He can lead us into temptation as the last and forced necessary means of self-knowledge and discipline, and it is great grace that the Lord will take this pains with us; but yet, seeing our weakness and the terribleness of the conflict with the enemy, and the holy fear of falling, which becomes us, it well becomes us to pray that we may not be cast into this furnace, that the Lord may have no need [to do it] with His thus humbled child. Satan is ever active, and he has, as it were, certain rights and vast power now that sin has entered, if the children of God are not watchful to prevent his having occasion, and do not walk in communion and dependence (for in the times of sifting, a bad conscience tends to drive to despair);:
The flesh in its carelessness and undiscerning blindness meets the trial in distress and uncertainty, or carnal opposition, and falls, and Satan so far has gained his point, though the Lord may restore. If, on the other hand, trial be there, we have this model [in Christ] of our position before God-not proud heroism which despised the sorrow, the pain, and the danger, but entreaty to be spared the evil, casting the soul on God for that, and spreading out its desire before Him in blessed and childlike confidence which does not fear to tell all its sorrow and its feeling, but in perfect submission desiring that the Father's will be done.