Deliver Us From Evil

“We like to think the world is a safe place, but it is not. The world is a tremendously dangerous place. We like to imagine that evil is distant but, as the headlines reveal, evil is always lurking near.”

The World is full of Enemies - Even invisible ones (COVID-19)

When we think about enemies there are 2 sources:

Those without (Spiritual Forces)

Those within (The Flesh)

We cannot over- or under- emphasize either of these realities!

“If Christians truly embraced biblical teaching on demonic powers, we would come to church with a tremendous sense of the fact that God has rescued us from the domain of darkness.”

We cannot be indifferent to the fight - to be indifferent is to fail. The Christian life is not a stand still; you are either winning or losing.

This fight is daily!

Transition: When we think about the issue of temptation we are returning to the topic of Kingship.

We must surrender to the rule of God to say no to temptation and if we do not surrender to the kingship of God we will fall into temptation. ( - who is your master?)

Christians must recognize that temptations are a real and daily threat to communion with God and life with Christ.

This petition reminds us that we are not able to resist temptation by our own power.

Christians must pray for endurance in the fight against temptation.

God does not tempt us with evil - he allows testing and our response to that will either lead to growth or to failure.

Scripture clearly teaches Satan is not an anti-god in some form of theological dualism with two equally powerful forces of good and evil.

But note, we are transferred into a kingdom—a kingdom made visible by local congregations who gather in the name of the Lord to share in one another’s lives and in the work of the ministry. This is why Jesus teaches us to pray in the plural, “deliver us from evil.”

“Lord, teach us to pray.”