And do keep your Bibles in hand and turn back with me, this time to Matthew’s gospel in the New Testament scriptures, Matthew chapter 6. If you are using one of our church Bibles, you will find that on page 811. We have been thinking on Sunday mornings about the teaching of the Lord Jesus in the gospels about the importance of prayer. And lately we’ve been making our way, slowly, phrase by phrase through the Lord’s Prayer. And we are going to think about that again – Matthew chapter 6. We’ll be reading from the ninth verse through verse 15. Last time when we were here, we looked at the first half of the sixth petition, which is, “Lead us not into temptation.” And today we are coming back to think some more about the sixth petition, the second half of it, which said, “Deliver us from evil.” And I want to come at the teaching of the second half of the sixth petition under two very simple headings. First of all, we’ll think about the danger this part of the petition addresses. The danger the petition addresses. And then secondly, we’ll look at the deliverance that this petition seeks. So the danger this petition addresses, and the deliverance the petition is seeking.
Before we get to that, let’s pause and pray and then we’ll read the Scriptures together. Let us pray.
God our Father, as we bow now before You with Your Word open in our hands, we pray that Your Spirit would open our minds, our understandings, our hearts, and incline our wills to receive and rest upon Christ as He is offered in the Gospel to hear His holy Word and by faith, trusting in Your grace, to become obedient to it. For we ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.
Matthew chapter 6 at the ninth verse. This is the Word of God:
“Pray then like this:
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”
Amen, and we praise God for speaking to us in His holy, inerrant Word.
The Danger the Petition Addresses
Let’s think first of all about the danger this petition addresses. The danger this petition addresses. Jesus is teaching us to pray, “Abba Father, deliver us from evil.” That makes it quite clear, doesn’t it, that we live our Christian lives in a dangerous context. We live under the shadow of evil. We are engaged in a spiritual war. For a long time, the island of Cyprus in the Mediterranean was a part of the British Empire. In the 1950s, however, there was a rising Cypriot independence movement that eventually erupted into open, armed conflict. On the 12th of December, 1955, two British units arrived independently at the village of Spilia in the Troodos Mountains – one unit coming down from the north; another unit approaching from the south. Unable to see each other through thick, impenetrable fog, the each thought the other was a surrounding force of Cypriot insurgence and opened fire. An 8-hour firefight ensued, involving airstrikes, artillery bombardments, and constant heavy weapons fire. When the fog finally lifted, 250 British soldiers lay dead at one another’s hands.
Sometimes our understanding of the nature of the battle in which we find ourselves is foggy and clouded and indistinct and unclear, and if we are not very careful, we could all too easily misidentify the enemy. We need to know who our enemy really is. In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus teaches us to pray about the spiritual battle with evil in which we are always locked as Christians. But we need to know – it’s a vital question, actually, because the stakes are high – who is our real enemy. If you have an English Standard Version, the version we use here at First Presbyterian Church in your hands, you’ll notice Jesus’ words are translated, “deliver us from evil.” But there is some debate about whether that’s the best translation of the Greek. Should it be, “deliver us from evil,” in a more abstract and general sense, or should it read, as I think the footnote in the ESV says, “deliver us from the evil one,” meaning the devil more specifically. The ESV takes the former position as does the King James Version along with many of the older commentators. And on this view, Jesus is teaching us to ask for deliverance from any number of possible evils – whether the evil of suffering or the evil of sin that could refer to natural disaster or human malice. It is a general, comprehensive term for anything bad that might possibly befall us.
And that is certainly an appropriate and helpful prayer to pray, isn’t it? In fact, if you are a praying person at all, it’s probably your most instinctive prayer that you ever offer over and over again. Whenever stress or difficulty threatens, we pray like this, don’t we – “O God, don’t let me get sick! O God, save my kids from pain! O God, deliver us from evil, all kinds of evil!” What a great prayer to pray. But there are a number of reasons why, along with the majority of more recent interpreters, to take Jesus’ words to refer here not to evil in general but to the evil one specifically, that is to the devil. Let me list three of them for you very quickly. First of all, notice the preposition, “from” – “deliver us from evil.” In Greek, there are actually two different words for “from.” We only have one word in English; there’s two in Greek. One term is used for a personal object and another for an impersonal object. “It’s the difference,” suggests Philip Ryken, “between saying, ‘I got this book from the library’” – the library is a thing and not a person so you would use the impersonal preposition. But if you wanted to say, “I got this book from Bob,” you’d use a different word entirely because Bob is a person and not a thing, a “who” not an “it.” And in the Lord’s Prayer, the preposition is personal not abstract. “Deliver us from the evil person,” not “the evil thing.”
Secondly, it’s important to understand that whenever Matthew uses it, the expression translated here as “evil” always has a personal agent in view, someone, whether it’s a human being or the devil who does the evil that is being done. So in Matthew there is always an evil doer behind the evil done. For example, Matthew 12:35, Jesus says, “The good person, out of his good treasure, brings forth good. And the evil person” – there’s our phrase – “out of his evil treasure, brings forth evil.” But then in Matthew 13 in the famous parable of the sower that we looked at together a few months back, uses once again the same phrase translated here as “evil,” this time to describe not just an evil person in general but the devil specifically; the devil in his malice opposing the ministry of God’s Word. The seed sown along the path, remember, sits on the surface. The Word of God can’t penetrate a hard heart. And the birds come and take the seed away and that’s a picture, Jesus says, for the evil one, the devil, who steals away the seed of the Word. So the evil one is the devil.
And again, the ESV doesn’t bring this out, but in the third place, notice that there is a definite article. It’s not just, “an evil person,” or even, “an evil thing,” but “the evil person” – the one in particular, one very specific evil that Jesus has in mind. We are praying here, “Abba Father, deliver us from the evil one.” So when you take all of that together, I think it’s clear that Jesus is teaching us to pray for deliverance from the great enemy of our souls and from the malice of the devil.
And actually it’s really quite challenging, isn’t it, when you think about it. Jesus is teaching us to make the opposition, the enmity of the devil, a regular part of our daily prayer routines. But how many of us actually do that, I wonder, and make deliverance from the devil and his schemes a conscious part of our regular prayer lives? That is the teaching of the Lord Jesus here. And give its prominence, that He would place it here in His model of how we ought always to pray, I can’t help but think that Christian obedience and the development of godly graces and the destruction of our remaining sin, all would progress far more consistently in our lives were we much more mindful than we tend to be of the devil’s schemes and much more faithful in seeking the help of God to withstand them every single day. Perhaps each of us need to assess whether or neglect of this part of the sixth petition is not in fact one important reason for our spiritual weakness and our lack of growth and our lack of fruitfulness. We need to know our true enemy.
Too often, like those soldiers killed by friendly fire back in the 50s on the island of Cyprus, our attention, when we think about enemies, our attention never rises any higher than other people in our lives. Other people become our greatest opponents, our keenest enemies. And we forget the teaching of the apostle Paul in Ephesians chapter 6. You remember what Paul says? “We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the principalities and powers, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” If we could keep a firmer hold of that truth, that our real enemy is not other people but ultimately the devil himself, I dare say there are other parts of the Lord’s Prayer that we would find easier to pray and far easier to live.
For example, if we never think our opposition goes any deeper than other people in our lives, you’re always going to find it hard to forgive them as the fifth petition of the Lord’s Prayer requires us to do – “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” But if you never think that your real opponents in this world are anything other than other people, if the real enemy is other people, you’re going to find it harder and harder to forgive them as the fifth petition requires. But if you know, no matter how fierce the enmity of our peers might sometimes become, if you know that behind it all actually stands the malice of the evil one himself, we will have discovered one of the keys to forgiveness. We will have begun to realize that no matter how hateful they may be toward us, no matter how wrongheaded or dangerous their ideas or their actions may be, they’re not really our ultimate enemy after all. No, the devil is our ultimate enemy, so let’s forgive them and oppose him. Let’s forgive them and oppose him.
And while we’re thinking about how this petition, the sixth petition, connects with some of the other petitions of the Lord’s Prayer, let’s not overlook the fact that it comes right at the very end of the Lord’s Prayer, after all the other themes have taken precedence. So God, God is to be first in our affections and our devotions and in our lives. And so before everything else, we are to hallow God’s name, remember, and cry out for the coming of His kingdom and the performance of His will. And then after the glory of God and the advancement of His purposes in the world, then we pray for basic daily necessities – bread for our bodies; forgiveness for our souls. And only then, after all of this, are we to pray in a focused way about temptation and about the tempter. There is a reminder here I think, as we think about who our real enemy is and as we contemplate the malice of the devil, there is a reminder here I think about proportionality. Yes, we need to think about the devil and his schemes and make them a priority in our prayer lives, but no, they ought never to become a preoccupation. It should be a priority but never a preoccupation.
Perhaps you know the astute observation made by C.S. Lewis in the preface to The Screwtape Letters that offers us so much wisdom on this very point. He says this. “There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe and feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased with both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with equal delight.” You see his point? We need to be careful to avoid these two extremes, neither scoffing nor obsessing at the reality of the supernatural. And the balance and the proportion of the Lord’s Prayer actually teaches us most helpfully to do exactly that and to get the balance right.
And now with that reminder in place – it should be a priority but never a preoccupation – with that reminder in place, before we move on to consider the deliverance that this petition seeks, I thought it might be helpful to pause and list out some of the common strategies that the devil typically deploys when he comes and assails us. In 2 Corinthians chapter 2 verse 11, the apostle Paul talks about not being outsmarted, outwitted by Satan, because he is aware of his schemes, of his designs. And in order for us to wage a successful warfare against the evil one, we do need to know the devil’s schemes, his strategy. How will he assail us typically?
Well one writer, Bob Bevington, in his great little book, The Good News About Satan, says there are three main lines of attack that the devil commonly uses; three fiery darts, to use Paul’s language from Ephesians chapter 6, that the devil hurls especially at Christians. First, there is the fiery dart of deception, the fiery dart of deception that targets our minds. Deception that targets our minds. Secondly, the fiery dart of temptation that targets our desires. And thirdly, the fiery dart of accusation that targets our consciences. Deception that targets our minds, temptation that targets our desires, and accusation that targets our consciences.
Deception that Targets our Minds
The fiery dart of deception first of all, targeting our minds. Revelation 12:9 speaks of the evil one as that ancient serpent who is called the devil and Satan, “the deceiver of the whole world.” John 8:44, Jesus says of the devil that, “He does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” The point is, the devil loves to deceive. He wants to lie to you and persuade you that his lies are the truth. That’s why it really matters that Christians learn to love the truth, the true truth. Do you love the truth? The truth of God revealed in His holy Word. I want you to read deeply the best Christian books and to love sound teaching. I want you to know your catechism and understand the system of doctrine taught in holy Scripture, because if you do not care to know the truth, you will be ripe for deception. You will be ripe for deception. Do not be satisfied with the bare minimum. Go deep. Grapple with hard things. Press into the Word of God. That will always be your best defense against the deceptions of the devil.
Temptation that Targets our Desires
The second fiery dart the devil typically uses is temptation, targeting our desires. Twice in the New Testament the devil is named, “the tempter.” The first, of course, is in Matthew chapter 4 where we read the record of our Lord being tempted in the wilderness. After fasting 40 days and 40 nights, He was hungry, Matthew says, “and the tempter came and said to Him, ‘If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.’” The other place where he is called the tempter is 1 Thessalonians chapter 3, verses 1 through 5. Paul writes to the Thessalonians, “When we could bear it no longer, we were willing to be left behind at Athens alone and we sent Timothy our brother and God’s coworker in the Gospel of Christ to establish and exhort you in your faith, that no one would be moved by these afflictions. For you, yourselves, know that we were destined for this. For when we were with you we kept telling you beforehand that we were to suffer affliction, just as has come to pass and just as you know. For this reason, when I could bear it no longer, I sent to learn about your faith for fear that somehow the tempter had tempted you and our labor would be in vain.”
Now notice in both cases – in the case of the Lord Jesus in the wilderness and the Christian’s that Paul had ministered to in Thessalonica – in both cases, the temptations of the devil seized the opportunity presented by their circumstances. Jesus’ hunger becomes the opportunity to tempt them to break His fast, to turn stones into bread. Paul feared that affliction would become the opportunity of tempting the Thessalonians to move from the faith in which Timothy had been sent to establish them. And that is generally the devil’s strategy. Haven’t you found that in your own experience? Think about your own life. The devil appeals to what we need or at least to what we believe we need. Or he seeks to persuade us that what we do not need we really have to have. Or he appeals to our sufferings, our stress, our long struggles as an excuse for sinful indulgence. “You deserve this. If only other people knew what you had to put up with, all that you have been through, then they’d understand why you do this. You’re only doing this because of the situation. It’s the situation that’s to blame, not you. It’s all going to be over soon anyway, and then you needn’t repeat your misdemeanor.” And remember please that Satan loves to mix his poisons. He will blend temptation with plenty of deception. He masquerades, remember, as an angel of light, after all, and so he rarely tempts us to something that doesn’t look attractive. He will make sin look reasonable. He will excuse it and justify it and minimize it. He will tell you, “You can stop anytime you like. You are in control.” He’ll tell you, “Everyone does it and it’s no big deal.” He will hide the hook while dangling the worm in front of you. “There will be no consequences,” he will say. “No one is being hurt and no one ever needs to know.”
And perhaps for a while you are able to hide your self-medication with alcohol and still function without missing a beat. Perhaps for a while your porn addiction flies under the radar. Maybe the devil even lets you stop for a while, whispering to you that after a few weeks, “You have beaten this thing!” all the while making sure that you have not cut off your right hand or plucked out your right eye. There is a clear path remaining open to returning to your sin like a dog returns to its vomit. Perhaps you even have begun to identify what you take to be signs of God’s blessing on your life so that you have now begun to tell yourself clearly, “This secret sin that I’ve been battling, it’s not such a big deal after all. Look how the Lord is blessing me!” But brothers and sisters, be warned, be warned. Eventually, no matter how much line he is willing to let you run with, the tempter will set the hook and he will begin to reel you in.
Accusation that Targets our Conscience
Then there’s the third fiery dart; the fiery dart of accusation. Deception targets the mind, temptation that targets the desires, now accusation that targets your conscience. In Revelation 12:10, Satan is called “the accuser of our brethren, who accuses them day and night before our God.” In the famous vision of Zechariah chapter 3, the prophet sees Joshua, the high priest, and he is dressed in filthy, polluted, disgusting garments, standing before the angel of the Lord and at his right hand Satan appears, coming to accuse him. The devil loves to accuse the people of God, and generally he doesn’t need to invent accusations to hurl at us, does he? I mean let’s be honest, he is good at his job and we often are deceived and we often do fall into temptation. Like Joshua in Zechariah’s vision, the simple fact is that we are filthy with the dirt of our many transgressions, aren’t we? Aren’t we? None of us are clean. “There is no one righteous, not even one.” And so all Satan ever needs to do is highlight this or that and say, “Now look here, see this – you call yourself a Christian? You’re still doing this, still thinking this, still saying this, still not doing this, still not saying this, still not believing this. You call yourself a Christian? What a fraud you are! How skilled you’ve become presenting a Christian face to the world, but look at the lust and the anger and the pride and the greed and the envy and the hate all boiling away in your wicked heart! Jesus died for sinners, it’s true, but not you! You are beyond the pale.”
Haven’t you heard those accusations in the courtroom of your conscience? I have. Haven’t you? What is the devil doing? What’s he doing? He’s trying to paralyze you with shame and he’s trying to make you believe you are beyond the reach of redeeming grace, that God isn’t going to work His grace into your heart after all. Deception, temptation, and accusation. That’s his gameplan. I’m sure it seems familiar to you. And as you look over your own personal histories, haven’t you found his strategy very often to be highly effective? So the danger – do you see the danger this petition is addressing? “Satan prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.” He is predatory. Are you ready for it?
The Deliverance the Petition is Seeking
Well what then, can be done? What can be done? How do we respond given the malice and predatory behavior of the evil one who stands opposed to us? What are we praying for when we pray, “Abba Father, deliver us from the evil one”?
Run to God for Deliverance
Well the first thing to notice as we think now about the second major heading – the deliverance this petition seeks – the first thing to notice is very simply and obviously this prayer teaches us to run to God for deliverance; to run to the Father to rescue us. Yes, there are things we should do to resist the devil and flee temptation. Yes, we need accountability, the accountability of faithful elders, of brothers and sisters in the congregation. We need God honoring routines and we need the cultivation of healthy habits in our daily lives. Yes, we need to make diligent use of the means of grace – the Word, the sacraments, and prayer. If you forsake the assembling of yourselves together, Lord’s Day by Lord’s Day, you place your soul in spiritual danger and you weaken your resistance to the attacks of the devil. Yes, we need to do all of those things. “Put on the whole armor of God.” Yes. But while we’re doing it, let’s never forget we cannot be the source of our own deliverance in this fight. The Lord is our defender. He is our strength and our shield. You know, like a little child when they get scared, they immediately turn tail and run to mom or dad. When the devil comes against you, your best defense, your first response must be to turn tail and run to Abba Father and say, “Deliver us! Deliver us! Be my defender and rescue me!”
Remember that Jesus Christ Provides Deliverance
And then secondly, remember as we are doing that, as we are going to God, remember He has already acted in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to defeat the evil one and provide the deliverance that we need. Doesn’t that give us great confidence when the devil assails us, to come and cry to God to rescue us because He has already acted in Jesus Christ who has triumphed over Satan and over sin at the cross? You may remember we talked about this last time – Luke 22 verses 32 and 33. Jesus told Simon Peter, “Satan has demanded to sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.” Simon was going to fall under the assaults of the devil. He would deny the Lord Jesus three times over. But Jesus knew he would turn back, he would repent, he would come back to Christ. How could He be so confident? On what grounds was Christ’s confidence founded? “I have prayed for you.” That’s why He was so confident. The prayers of Jesus are omnipotent. They are almighty. They always accomplish what He asks. “I have prayed for you.”
The story is told of Dr. John Kennedy of Dingwall, a small town in the Highlands of Scotland. He once preached on this text from Luke 22 at a communion season and he appealed, “to every tempted, tempest tossed soul, to lay its weight on this gracious advocate, this glorious eye. All its guilty yesterday, all its sinful today, all its unknown tomorrow.” Isn’t that a beautiful phrase? Brothers and sisters, Satan will assail you, and sometimes he will prevail over you for a time, but Jesus prays for you, our Advocate with the Father at His right hand, and you can lay all your weight, all your guilty yesterday, all your sinful today, and all your unknown tomorrow on Him. Your security, the guarantee of your final victory, doesn’t lie in yourself but in the person and work, the death and resurrection and the heavenly intercession of Jesus, your Advocate and High Priest. Remember Romans 8. “Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is there to condemn?” – Satan accuses. “Who is there to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died, more than that who was raised, who is at the right hand of God who indeed” – is doing what? What is He doing at the right hand of God? He is interceding for us. He is pleading your cause. Whatever the accusations of the devil, however precise and exacting the litany of our transgressions may be, no matter how exhaustive the indictment he files against us, our Savior lifts His nail-pierced hands and says, “Father, I have paid in full for each of them!”
Don’t we need to be reminded of that? Have you forgotten it? When the devil assails you, sing out, “Five bleeding wounds He bears, received on Calvary. They pour incessant prayers; they strongly plead for me. ‘Forgive him, O forgive,’ they cry, ‘Nor let that ransomed sinner die!’” And as you do that, remember, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” You are Teflon coated. None of the devil’s accusations can stick; none of them, when you are robed in the righteousness of Christ. Your Jesus has made you clean. Satan is a defeated enemy, defeated already. Jesus is a victorious King who has triumphed already and so your deliverance is not in any doubt, not really. Certainly you might stumble and fall like Simon Peter for a while, but you will turn back if you are a child of God, you will, not because you are strong but because Jesus is and He pleads your cause.
The danger this petition addresses – Satan is real and he hates you and he comes against you with deception to target your mind, temptation to target your desires, accusation to target your consciences. But remember the deliverance that this petition seeks. Run to Abba Father. He is your defender and He has given His Son who died and rose and reigns and prays for you, Your heavenly Advocate with the Father, and His prayers on your behalf, not one of them, not now and not ever, have failed. Never, and they never will, and you can rest there.
Let’s pray together.
Father, we thank You for the Lord Jesus who pleads our cause, who is our Advocate and our heavenly intercessor. We do lift our cries that You would deliver us from evil. How hard pressed we are under His constant assaults, yet we bless You that Jesus has triumphed and crushed the head of the serpent and reigns over all things. We pray for His final victory in our hearts when sin is done with forever and we shall be like Him, seeing Him at last face to face. Till that day dawns, strengthen us by Your Spirit to submit to God, to resist the devil, and to flee temptation, for we ask this in our Savior’s name, amen.