Sermons from Moorpark Presbyterian Church

Deliver Us From Evil

by Dave Wilkinson

Matthew 6:9-13

September 3, 2000

There is a story that I really, really hope is true, about a man who worked the four to midnight shift. His walk home led him past a cemetery. One night he was in a particular hurry, and since the moon was full, he decided to take a short-cut through the cemetery. The shortcut took five minutes off his walk, so it became his regular path. But one black night, he had an unfortunate mishap. He fell into a freshly dug grave. He wasn't hurt, but the hole was so deep he was unable to get out. He scrambled and pulled at the side and the edges but couldn't escape. He began to yell, but nobody heard him. Resigned at last to simply wait for morning, he pulled his coat up around his neck and huddled in a corner to go to sleep. But after and hour or so, he was awakened by the noise of a falling body. A second unfortunate man had stumbled into this same large hole. Sleepily, the first arrival watched his new companion trying frantically to crawl out. After a few minutes, he felt obliged to comment, "you'll never get out that way." Well--he did!

The sermon this morning is about getting out of holes. In the Lord's Prayer when we pray: "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil," we do not only pray that we may be kept out of holes, but that even when yield to temptation, we may still be plucked out of Satan's hand.

What do I mean "plucked out of Satan's hand?" It's what Jesus literally tells us to pray--"lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one"--not just evil as a concept but the evil one himself.

Actually, the biblical manuscripts are divided--some have "evil" and some have "the evil one". The oldest and best manuscripts have "the evil one." But it makes little difference whether we speak of evil in general or of the "evil one" in particular. For we know that there is a force which attacks goodness and which invites us to sin. That force may be a personal force, or it may be the cumulative effect of all the evil acts and evil decisions which have been part of the human scene. In any case, it is there. And this prayer is that we may be armored against it and pulled from its grip. This prayer asks for God's help in the battle against evil.

Now, there are many kinds of evil. There's the evil we know about in our own lives--the bad choices we make, our own selfishness. And we can expand that personal evil and look out into the larger society and see evil there--the same evil we find in ourselves: racism, dehumanization, social crises, social evil. But Jesus, in this prayer is alerting us to even more than just that. The deliverance we're praying for here is the deliverance from cosmic evil, the evil at the cosmic center of things.

In the Lord's Prayer, Jesus recognizes the existence of a larger stage on which we live our lives. It's not only that we are battling against our own sinfulness. We are, believe me, but there is also a cosmic evil that we have to face.

Let me give you two passages that portray this in the New Testament. One is in John 17, which is our Lord's high-priestly prayer. In that prayer, there are many elements that are present in the Lord's prayer--the our Father prayer. Notice this one, John 17:15. Jesus says, "I do not pray (He's praying now for His disciples to His Father) that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the evil one." There's that same phrase again, to ponero, "the evil one." Then this sentence in verse 20. "I do not pray for these only, but also for those who are to believe in me through their word." Now that's our Lord's Prayer for you and me today. Some twenty centuries later that prayer holds.

The second passage is where the Apostle Paul deals with this in Ephesians 6. We looked at this passage in detail at the beginning of the year. Paul says, "finally be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we are not contending against flesh and blood, (see, it's not just our own sins or the sins of society that we're contending against) but against the principalities, against the world rulers of the present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places."

In the light of this great conflict, isn't it good that we have the Lord's Prayer and Jesus' prayer for us in John 17. You see one result of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and one result of this prayer, is that you don't need to be preoccupied with evil -- because we know that evil does not have the last word. Jesus Christ does.

Earl Palmer of University Presbyterian Church in Seattle writes: "I was so impressed, when I wrote my commentary on the book of Romans, that in the whole book of Romans, which is Paul's "great book," he only mentions the devil twice: once in romans 8, where he calls the devil the principalities and the powers that are arraigned against us, (but he says there that Christ has the last word); and the other place he mentions the devil is in the sixteenth chapter when he says, "did you know that it is God's will to trample Satan under your feet." Paul is not preoccupied with the devil. Why should I be preoccupied with him? I can't face him anyway. But Jesus Christ can and He has. He has the last word.

Remember Martin Luther's great hymn "A Mighty Fortress." It's a hymn in which we have this promise:

"The Prince of Darkness grim--we tremble not for him;

his rage we can endure, for lo! His doom is sure

one little word shall fell him."

That is the promise we have. We do not need to fear the enemy. For we have God's Holy Spirit within us. And God assures us in 1 John 4:4 that "greater is the one who is in us (the Holy Spirit) than he (the devil) who is in the world."

In a way our Christian life, and the way we should live it, is like an airplane flight.

Watch people on a rough flight - like one I took on a small plane over te Southern Rockies a few years ago. Some get nauseous. Plenty like me get worried. They grip the armrests as though their white knuckles are all that's holding the plane up in the air. A few years ago I took a very small plane over the Rockies in rough air. The plane was bucking and jumping — just like our lives do sometimes.

The message that God gives to us worried, white-knuckled people is that we are going to make it. It's not because our grip on the seat is so tight that the plane can't go down. It's simply that God's plane isn't going to crash, and as long as we're on it, we'll get where we're supposed to go. Actually, we could let go of the armrest. We could relax and enjoy ourselves. We could pay attention to helping others in the plane who are feeling nauseous. Because "God is greater." He will get us to the destination. We don't have to fear. We just have to stay on the plane.

In the great words of Jude 24-25, "now to Him who is able to keep you from falling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory, blameless and with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and authority, now and forever."