But deliver us from evil
The Lord's Prayer • Sermon • Submitted
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· 7 viewsJesus teaches us to pray for to be rescued
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We have an enemy
We have an enemy
Matthew 6:13 “And do not bring us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.”
‘Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.’
Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.’
On reaching the place, he said to them, ‘Pray that you will not fall into temptation.’
My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one.
But the Lord is faithful, and he will strengthen you and protect you from the evil one.
Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.
Devoured or delivered?
Matthew—All Authority in Heaven and on Earth Lead Us Not … but Deliver Us
The idea here is not, “Lord, please don’t bring us to the place of temptation,” or “don’t allow us to be tempted.” We know from 4:1 that God’s Spirit brought Jesus into the wilderness to be tempted. So what is being asked here is rather, “Lord, don’t let us succumb to temptation,” or “don’t abandon us to temptation.” Here we find a petition for utter dependence on God’s providence, protection, and power. It is a prayer of a weak person to a strong God.
Matthew—All Authority in Heaven and on Earth Lead Us Not … but Deliver Us
Temptation is one thing, but evil another. So Jesus teaches that we are to pray not only “lead us not into temptation,” but also “deliver us from evil” and/or “the evil one” (v. 13). The word here for “deliver” can be rendered “snatch.” It is a most aggressive word. So here we are asking God, with his divine hand, to snatch us from Satan. “Lord, grab us from the grip of the evil one and his evil ways” is the sense of the prayer. The parallelism plays out as follows: Lead us not into temptation (i.e., lead us not into Satan’s temptations), but deliver us from the evil one (i.e., deliver us from Satan).
Matthew—All Authority in Heaven and on Earth Chapter 16: How to Pray (Matthew 6:9–15)
ONE WAY YOU KNOW that a work of art is a masterpiece is that you cannot exhaust it with observations. You can stare at it for hours and still miss important facets. And then each time you return to stare at it again you find new and wonderful aspects you never saw before, components that continue to reveal the true genius of its creator. At the center of the Sermon on the Mount (almost exactly the center, as there are 116 lines before and 114 after it) is a perfect masterpiece on prayer—the Lord’s Prayer—which is perfect in both structure and substance.
The Bible Knowledge Commentary 6:5–15 (Luke 11:2–4)
Believers recognize their spiritual weakness as they pray for deliverance from temptation to evil
the use of the conjunction “but” instead of “and” to link these phrases, as this contrasting conjunction shows what the alternative to being led into temptation looks like.
could seem to be praying for God to deliver from all sufferings and challenges of this world; that God would make this life peaches and cream for us.
Jesus guarantees suffering for those who follow Him!
(1 John 2:13, 14; 5:18).
...we are reminded that there is an enemy out there who opposes God and seeks to destroy us. Therefore, not only are we asking that God not leave us on our own in these battles, but for Him to bring us through them victoriously. This sort of request would echo Jesus’s prayer about protecting us from the evil one (John 17:15) and other statements in the Bible about overcoming the attacks of the evil one (1 John 2:13, 14; 5:18).
Who is the devil?
Should it be “from evil” or “from the evil one”?
“Being poor is not evil”… “Suffering is not evil”…
The ultimate reason why people are poor and/or suffer might be evil.
We might illustrate Jesus’ words “Lead us not into temptation” like this: a mother takes her young children grocery shopping with her and comes to the candy aisle. She knows that taking her children down that aisle will only stir up greediness in their hearts and lead to bouts of whining and pouting. In wisdom, she takes another route—whatever she may have needed down the candy aisle will have to wait for another day. In this way the mother averts unpleasantness and spares her children a trial. Praying, “Lead us not into temptation,” is like praying, “God, don’t take me down the candy aisle today.” It’s recognizing that we naturally grasp for unprofitable things and that God’s wisdom can avert the unpleasantness of our bellyaching. - Got Questions
A psalm of David.
I call to you, Lord, come quickly to me;
hear me when I call to you.
May my prayer be set before you like incense;
may the lifting up of my hands be like the evening sacrifice.
Set a guard over my mouth, Lord;
keep watch over the door of my lips.
Do not let my heart be drawn to what is evil
so that I take part in wicked deeds
along with those who are evildoers;
do not let me eat their delicacies.
Let a righteous man strike me—that is a kindness;
let him rebuke me—that is oil on my head.
My head will not refuse it,
for my prayer will still be against the deeds of evildoers.
Their rulers will be thrown down from the cliffs,
and the wicked will learn that my words were well spoken.
They will say, ‘As one ploughs and breaks up the earth,
so our bones have been scattered at the mouth of the grave.’
But my eyes are fixed on you, Sovereign Lord;
in you I take refuge—do not give me over to death.
Keep me safe from the traps set by evildoers,
from the snares they have laid for me.
Let the wicked fall into their own nets,
while I pass by in safety.
Heidelberg Catechism Question 127: What does the sixth request mean?
A: “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one” means, by ourselves we are too weak to hold our own even for a moment. And our sworn enemies - the devil, the world, and our own flesh - never stop attacking us. And so, Lord, uphold us and make us strong with the strength of Your Holy Spirit, so that we may not go down to defeat in this spiritual struggle, but may firmly resist our enemies until we finally win the complete victory.
We have enemies bigger than we are. Mike Tyson. We are no match. Unless we are in a tank. Outside the tank we can’t win. Inside the tank we can’t lose.
He said: ‘Listen, King Jehoshaphat and all who live in Judah and Jerusalem! This is what the Lord says to you: “Do not be afraid or discouraged because of this vast army. For the battle is not yours, but God’s.
“The sixth petition of the Lord’s Prayer reminds us that life is a spiritual struggle… Too many of us face the day giving little thought to our enemies. If we were in a physical war, we would scout out our enemies’ positions each morning and plan carefully for possible attacks and counterattacks. But when it comes to spiritual battle, we suffer from gross overconfidence. Our sworn enemies - the flesh, the world, and the devil - are not at rest, so neither should we be. This very day we will face temptations…How earnestly we ought to pray for protection against our thoughts, the world’s lies, and the devil’s strategems… There is no cruise control for Christianity. Each day is a fight. Daily we must look for the Lord’s mercy that we might keep ourselves in the love of God...
keep yourselves in God’s love as you wait for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ to bring you to eternal life.
Jesus came to undo the work of Satan.
Sanctification
A woman is swept away in a surging river. The current is too strong for her to overcome. With all her might she fights to keep her head abover the water. She cannot swim to shore. Worst of all is where the river is taking her, because up ahead is a thundering waterwall which no person could expect to survive.
A friend spots the women in danger, runs along the riverbank and expertly throws a rope. The desperate woman in the water grabs hold of the end of the rope and wraps it round her arm so that whether she has strength to cling on or not her friend will still have hold of her. The rope is pulled taught by the force of the river giving some stability, enabling her catch her breath. With determination on her face her friend at the riverside digs in her heels and begins to haul the rope in. Finally, the friends are reunited as the woman is dragged onto the sand.
Question: When was the woman in the river saved?
God tells us in the Bible that we are all like the woman in the river. We are struggling for breath and heading for calamity. We can’t save ourselves. We need someone to rescue us.
Now the snake was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, ‘Did God really say, “You must not eat from any tree in the garden”?’
The woman said to the snake, ‘We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, “You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.” ’
‘You will not certainly die,’ the snake said to the woman. ‘For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.’
When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realised that they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.
Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, ‘Where are you?’
He answered, ‘I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.’
And he said, ‘Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree from which I commanded you not to eat?’
The man said, ‘The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.’
Then the Lord God said to the woman, ‘What is this you have done?’
The woman said, ‘The snake deceived me, and I ate.’
So the Lord God said to the snake, ‘Because you have done this,
‘Cursed are you above all livestock
and all wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life.
And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel.’
To the woman he said,
‘I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with painful labour you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.’
To Adam he said, ‘Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, “You must not eat from it,”
‘Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.’
Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.
The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. And the Lord God said, ‘The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live for ever.’ So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.
From that moment humanity fell into the the river. From that moment humanity has been lost. The LORD promised a Rescuer. 3:15
Before the Messiah was born Joseph was told to give Him the name Jesus because He will save His people from their sin.
Before the Messiah began His ministry John the Baptist declared: “Look! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”
Jesus explained that He had come to seek and to save the lost.
Mark 3:20–30 (NIV 2011)
Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat. When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, ‘He is out of his mind.’
And the teachers of the law who came down from Jerusalem said, ‘He is possessed by Beelzebul! By the prince of demons he is driving out demons.’
So Jesus called them over to him and began to speak to them in parables: ‘How can Satan drive out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand. And if Satan opposes himself and is divided, he cannot stand; his end has come. In fact, no one can enter a strong man’s house without first tying him up. Then he can plunder the strong man’s house. Truly I tell you, people can be forgiven all their sins and every slander they utter, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; they are guilty of an eternal sin.’
He said this because they were saying, ‘He has an impure spirit.’
Before Jesus died He
Satan never sells his poisons naked—he always gilds them before he vends them.
Charles Spurgeon
Satan has three titles in the Scriptures, setting forth his malignity against the church of God: a dragon, to note his malice; a serpent, to note his subtlety; and a lion, to note his strength.
Edward Reynolds