3.19 Deliver Us From the Evil

Matthew 6:13

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.  For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory for ever.  Amen.

This is an interesting verse.  Some translations end this verse  with "deliver us from evil."  I think the reason the rest of the verse is omitted is that the idea of "for thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory" is found in the phrase "lead us not into temptation."

Here's what I mean. 

If you read the phrase, "lead us not into temptation," without any commentary, you might think God is capricious, a sort of god like the pantheon gods who would sport with human frailty just for fun.  Reading it without commentary, you might think God is like the Muslim's Allah who is just as likely to trick the faithful as to protect them, and so the commentary, for thine is the kingdom, etc.", was tagged onto the end of the verse because it explains exactly what "lead us not into temptation" means.

Let's just be clear right off the bat.  Jehovah, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, the God whom we know as Jesus Christ, NEVER EVER betrays His people into doing evil.  He NEVER EVER sets traps of temptation for His people for sport. 

And we know this (for many reasons in the Bible) through the phrase "and lead us not into temptation."  The words of this phrase in the original language give us a picture of a person who finds himself in contact with evil but with no power of his own to either avoid entanglement or to extricate himself once caught.   "Lead us not into temptation," is a plea for God to go before us and light the way through the darkness. 

The reason God is able to lead us through the darkness is because, if all belongs to Him, and He has all power, and He has all glory, then there is nothing He cannot do.  Young's literal translation puts it this way:

And mayest Thou not lead us to temptation, but deliver us from the evil, because Thine is the reign, and the power. and the glory--to the ages.  Amen.

Because.  The little conjunction gives us a big explanation in this verse. Because. 

We need to constantly rely on God because our hearts are deceitful and desperately wicked.  Jeremiah 17:9 We don't really understand the motives of our own hearts.  Second, we need to constantly rely on God because we have an adversary, the devil, who is leading astray the whole world.  Revelation 12:9

Then too, we trap ourselves when we heed the lure of the world by giving in to the desires of our flesh or the desires of our eyes, or when we are awed by the ostentations of life. 1 John 2:16  What's more, we are easy pickings for the spiritual forces of evil.  We are no match against the principalities, authorities, the rulers of darkness in the spiritual world. Ephesians 6:12

That's why Jesus taught us to pray, "Lead us not into temptation," because only God from His omnipotent position has the power and glory to deliver us from the evil.

We have seen example after example this month where God delivered His people in the Old Testament, and for the rest of the month we will look at its application to us from the New Testament. 

Temptation comes to all.  Even Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil, but it was not a game.  God allowed the temptation for training purposes (see Hebrews 5:7-8)  God was not setting His Son up for failure, He was teaching Him the power of God's word in the realities of life.  If Jesus, the God/man had to be taught of His Father, we too will have to be taught to depend upon God's word.

We do not do not walk alone, even when the walk takes us through some hard times.  We do not walk alone, even when the walk takes us through the valley of the shadow of death.  We do not walk alone, even when we walk through seasons of trial or temptation.

God, the omnipotent King of Glory walks with us.  Jesus Himself was tempted in all ways such as we are and yet He did not sin.  God kept Him safe, and He will keep us safe too.  Because Jesus suffered, Himself being tempted, He is able to help us when we are tempted.  Hebrews 2:18

Furthermore, you are not unique:

No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape. (1 Corinthians 10:13 NKJV)

When we pray, "Deliver us from evil," we are crying to God to rescue us from the devil, from adversity, from wrong motives, from anything that is keeping us from a full and free walk with God as we live out our lives in the flesh. 

By recognising temptation and taking a stand against it by turning away from the temptation and turning to God for deliverance, we give the Holy Spirit the final authority over the disposition of our lives.  Our lives are in His care.  We walk boldly where He leads, trusting that if the path leads through a season of temptation, not only did He foreknow it, but He has procured our deliverance ahead of time through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. 

The life of a Christian is a life of daily walking with the Lord wherever He chooses to take us.  We walk with God in a continual attitude of "deliver us from the evil" we know we will encounter along the way. 

3.14 Warnings From Ezekiel

Ezekiel 3:19-21 (NIV)

But if you do warn the wicked man and he does not turn from his wickedness or from his evil ways, he will die for his sin; but you will have saved [delivered] yourself. Again, when a righteous man turns from his righteous ways and does evil, and I put a stumbling block before him, he will die.  Since you did not warn him, he will die for his sin.  The righteous things he did will not be remembered, and I will hold you accountable for his blood.  But if you warn the righteous man not to sin, and he does not sin, he will surely live because he took warning, and you will be saved [delivered] yourself.

After a brief sashay away from our word of the month in yesterday's post, today we are back to the hunt and find ourselves looking at the word, deliver, as it occurs in Ezekiel.  There are two things going on in today's reading.  God has tasked Ezekiel to warn the wicked and He has also tasked Ezekiel to warn the backslider.

In this particular spot in the Bible, wicked is defined as one who has an internal wickedness of heart that manifests in externally wicked actions.  It is the same idea as when Jeremiah said, "The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked: who can know it?" Jeremiah 17:9  The backslider is someone who is filled with his own ways expressing himself in attitudes or actions that are contrary to Biblical principles.  Proverbs 14:14

Jesus died and rose again to save mankind from this internal wickedness.  Christians generally understand that the Great Commission would have us share the gospel with those who are still trapped in their sins, where, prayerfully, they will repent and be saved.  We share in many different ways, some boldly speaking, some quietly demonstrating the truth of the gospel, but however the gospel is shared, everyone expects Christians to evangelize.

Back home we had a man who liked to stand on public street corners, busy street corners, with a sandwich board hanging from his neck on which a Bible verse and invitation to repent was written in bold, black letters for motorists to see.  Some passersby laughed at him, others prayed for him, but all understood that he was following a Christian "instinct" to share Christ in the way he had determined would reach the most people.  We may or may not agree with his method, but we certainly understand his passion to call people to repent and be saved from the wrath of God.  Whether or not we agree with his method, we have to agree that the sandwich board man understood and was living out the truth of Ezekiel 3:19.

We don't as a rule have a difficulty with Christians sharing Christ with the lost, true?

We do, however, sometimes stumble when occasion seems to call us to share a hard word with a fellow believer over a matter of personal unrighteousness.  It is easier to let a Christian brother/sister go than to go after him/her to pull them back from the flames of destruction.  Nobody likes confrontation.  If we did love confrontation, we ourselves would be in need of a corrective word.

While Ezekiel 3:20-21 is probably a call of God specifically to Ezekiel for a specific purpose to the times in which he lived in the midst of Israel's apostasy at that time, there is still a principle for us to consider when it comes to speaking a restorative word to one another as Christians who live in an equally apostasy-ridden world.  It is possible for any of us to slip on a banana peel of sin. 

If I see the banana peel in your path and don't warn you, I am partly responsible if you unwittingly slip on that sin and are harmed spiritually or physically.  That doesn't mean we have each other under the microscope!  We do not indulge in suspicion like some sort of game of candid camera. 

But it does mean that if a brother or sister in Christ tells us they are contemplating an action the Bible directly labels as sin, we have a responsibility to share our Bible knowledge with that person and pray that they take it to heart.  So often, however, we turn a blind eye in the name of privacy, a clear violation of the principle of accountability referenced in Ezekiel 3:20-21.

I love a story my husband told me last week about something that happened at work.  He works with a crew, most of whom call themselves born-again Christians, and the subject of divorce came up during break time.  Larry was in the group when the subject came up and one of the guys asked him his views on divorce.  He could have back-pedaled since the prevailing opinion being expressed was in favor of divorce, but he chose to take the hard road and tell his co-workers what the Bible had to say on the subject. 

That, I think, is the principle being displayed in today's verses.  We are not confrontational, not looking for spiritual fights, but when a sin or temptation to sin is manifested by Christians in our immediate sphere, we have an obligation to weigh in on the subject.  And I'll tell you something.  Usually, in these circumstances, it is easier to just stay silent.  It takes an effort of love to give a word of warning, especially in a public forum.

Today's verses certainly give us food for thought.

God Leads but The Devil Uses Pitchforks

Psalm 23:2

God leads me beside still waters; He restores my soul.  

How do you know that you are doing God's will for you life?  Really know that you are doing God's will?  I mean, there are so many good things a person could do with her life. 

I learned something yesterday that I want to share with you.  I learned that if you are being prodded from behind to do what you are doing, then you are not walking with God, because God never pushes from behind, He leads us and gives us the choice whether or not we will follow where He leads.

I learned that if you are being poked from behind with a pitchfork, the one doing the poking is not God.  And if it is not God pitchforking you from behind to keep you moving along the path, who do you suppose is doing the poking?  Folklore artists who draw the devil as a guy in a red suit brandishing a pitchfork are not far off the mark.  Well, the red suit may be a stretch of imagination, but the pitchfork is right on target. The devil pushes us from behind.  Pitchforks us quite painfully. God never pushes us. He leads us. 

What's more, He leads us beside still waters.

This is an important point, especially for married women.  Consider what the apostle Peter has to say about the primary call of a married woman in 1 Peter 3:3-4 (NIV):

Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewelry and fine clothes.  Instead, it should be the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight.

My point is that when you are led by still waters you will have a gentle and quiet spirit.  Women with gentle, quiet spirits are a rarity in today's world.  Quiet-spiritedness, however, is our only true calling.  Everything in our lives should be measured against the standard of gentle quiet-spiritedness.  We measure ourselves by asking this question:

• Do my activities promote in myself a gentle and quiet spirit?  

• Alternately, do my activities detract from a gentle and quiet spirit?

 

The only way to know is to put the issues, one by one, before God.  I did this yesterday and found something in my daily routine that was making me neither gentle nor quiet.  It was a good thing, a "church" activity, something honorable and worthwhile, except that I was doing the work because I felt driven to do it.  Now, you have to understand that no outside person was driving me from behind; my type-A personality had been taken hostage by the guy (the Adversary by name) with the pitchfork and, therefore, the good work that I was doing was making me neither gentle nor quiet.  It was making me anxious and... what's the opposite of quiet?

Hmmm...

Boisterous?

BOIS'TEROUS, a.

1. Loud; roaring; violent; stormy; as a boisterous wind.

2. Turbulent; furious; tumultuous; noisy; as a boisterous man.

3. Large; unwieldy; huge; clumsily violent; as a boisterous club.

4. Violent; as a boisterous heat.

Don't you hate Webster?  Boisterous, is the word, although it didn't describe my outward behavior as much as it described the roughhousing that was going on in my inward spirit.  I was noisy inside.  The Holy Spirit knew it.  My husband knew it too.

Which brings me back to 1 Peter 3:6, which says we married women are to be like Sarah, "who obeyed  Abraham and called him her master.  You are her daughters if you do what is right and do not give way to fear."

Sisters in Christ, if there is any ministry over which your husband is not your direct head, then you have no business being in that ministry, no matter how needed it might be, no matter now many people you think it would hurt if you disengage yourself from it.   Your husband may not be an active leader over you, and by that I mean that he may delegate all of the working of that ministry into your care, but over top of it he must be your head, the person who approves wholeheartedly over your involvement, and to whom you are directly accountable for your performance in that ministry. If he does not wholeheartedly approve, withdraw, because the ministry will not, outside of your husband's headship, produce in you the gentle and quiet spirit that is of so great a worth in God's eyes.  In fact, performing that ministry without your husband's headship will make you boisterous, first inwardly, then outwardly, which is a bad thing.

Don't believe it?  Try looking up Proverbs 7:11 (NASB):

She is boisterous and rebellious.  Her feet do not remain at home.

The NIV translates Proverbs 7:11-12 in almost the same language but adds:

She is loud and defiant, her feet never stay at home; now in the street, now in the square, at every corner she lurks.

This does not describe the character of a woman who is on the right path.  You can almost feel the prongs of the devil's pitchfork on this unfortunate woman's backside, can't you! The end result of this Proverbs 7 woman is that she ended up betraying her husband in the manner of a prostitute, breaking up her own home.  Boisterousness is not a godly trait.  It is an especially dangerous character flaw in a married woman.

A married woman's first allegiance is to her husband and children.  Her home is her primary ministry.  I am not suggesting that Christian women ought not work or have a career or engage in ministry.  God calls women to these activities every day.  But the difference between a calm-spirited woman and a boisterous woman is in their motives for engaging in activities outside the home.

God prizes the woman who works from a desire to do her husband good all the days of his life and not out of a desire for self-fulfillment.  For her, everything she does adds to her beauty because she has a gentle and quiet spirit.

For me, yesterday was a day of review.  I had a couple "works" that I had to ditch.  Good works, but not the works God was leading me into.  Not works my husband wished me to do.  And so I let them go.  And true to Scripture, an inward calm has returned to my spirit, something I have not had in quite some time.  It feels like I have been set free once again.

It is for freedom you have been set free!  (Galatians 5:1 NIV)

I encourage you to step into the light of God's Spirit and allow Him to examine you for trouble spots.  Are you free to follow God's master plan for you as a helpmeet for your husband in your home? Or is something preventing you from cultivating that gentle and quiet spirit that is of such great worth in God's sight?  Do you need to be set free today?  Take it from me, there is nothing like being free!