Despite their loveliness great
houses have always been open
to all kinds of troubles;
to troubles from within,
from members of the family itself or
from those employed in the running
of the house, among whom may be
those who would deceive, steal or
even destroy the household. They are
also open to troubles from without,
from people who would break in and
help themselves to treasures,
antiques or important papers and
from those who would break in to
kidnap, hurt or destroy.
In
the kingdom of heaven, as with a
great house, our happiness and our
security lies in knowing the dangers
we face and in being watchful and on
our guard. So, from the warmth and
wonder of our heavenly Father's
goodness to us and purposes for us,
we must turn to be forewarned of the
evil depths of our own hearts, of
the sheer hatred of evil people and
of the malice and cunning of Satan.
Firstly, our Lord taught us to plead
for rescue from the evil thoughts, words
and deeds that are conceived, spoken
and done almost before we realise
what is happening.
i)
'Deliver us from evil thinking.'
It was the great German reformer
Martin Luther who taught us that we
cannot stop the birds flying over
our heads, but we can stop them
nesting in our hair!
It
is the nature of these brilliant
things we call our brains to be
constantly turning over all kinds of
ideas, often quite unconsciously.
All sorts of ideas 'just arrive' but
it is our responsibility before our
heavenly Father to either develop
them or expel them. Brilliant ideas
and useless ideas; wonderful, godly
and selfless ideas or vile, evil and
destructive ideas are constantly
entering our conscious minds either
to be enjoyed, delighted in and
turned into action - or to be
rejected and thrown out.
These ideas are inspired by all that
we see, hear and feel. They are
inspired by our present situation or
by the lovely or terrible
experiences of the past; inspired by
our heavenly Father or thrown in
like a hand grenade by the evil one
to wreak destruction. However they
arrive, the kind of ideas
presented by our sub-conscious minds
will be influenced by what we feed
into them and by what we welcome
from them.
We
may actively choose to restrict our
conscious thinking to all that is
good, honourable and worthy of
praise, as the apostle Paul urges us
to. Alternatively, we may invite
other 'birds' to settle. We may
welcome and revel in very negative
and destructive thoughts about
ourselves or about
those around us.
Allowing thoughts like these to grow
and develop lies at the root of so
many of the difficulties in our
relationships with one another.
By
our choice of cinema, television,
DVD and computer viewing our
sub-conscious minds are flooded with
very powerful images for good . . .
or for evil. We live in days when we
watch and regard as 'entertainment'
violence, vice and evil, but are
horrified when people put
into practice the very fantasies we enjoy.
The
potential is within each one of us, for
out of the heart comes all that is
pure, noble and lovely but out of
the heart comes also every evil
thought: unkindness, uncleanness,
theft, envy and murder. All these
come from within. Both Judas'
betrayal of his Lord and Hitler's
'final solution', the extermination
of the Jewish people, were once
'just a thought.'
'Lord deliver us from evil thinking,
rescue us from feeding and revelling
in that which is evil. Wake us up so
that we may recognise the poison of
evil thinking for what it is. Give
us strength, despite its
fascination, to turn it off, kick it
out, to scare away such 'birds',
before they 'nest' bringing
havoc to our homes, our lives or our
society . . . Father, keep us from
evil.'
ii)
'Deliver us from evil speaking.'
A retired missionary was telling how
the Lord first challenged him. As a
lad of sixteen, he was with
friends on a train. They were
'proving their manhood' by loudly
outdoing one another in foul
language. A man in the corner was
totally ignored but, as he left the
carriage, he very quietly said to
the future missionary, 'Young man,
if your heart is as evil as your
mouth, you are in very great
trouble.'
From
our lips escape all too easily all kinds
of evil: words that are lying or
deceitful; words that crush and
destroy; words that are foul or
words that throw into the gutter
something which is lovely or holy.
Too
many relationships are destroyed by
an unrecognised habit of evil
speaking! We are commanded to love
and build-up one another and yet
self-centred, arrogant, critical and
destructive words so easily escape
our lips: 'What is the matter with
you!' 'You've done it again!'
'You're useless!' or in their
absence, 'He'll never be any good!'
'He's rubbish!'
'Lord set a guard on our lips,
keep us from evil speaking, to one
another or of one another.'
iii)
'Deliver us from evil deeds.'
Evil deeds may be done for all kinds
of hidden reasons. We may be blinded
to what we are doing by sickness, by
the heat of lust, by anger or by
an all consuming commitment to a
cause. In lust and in anger we only
think of ourselves. In the total
devotion to a political, racial or
religious cause it is all too easy
to lay aside the godly principles of
kindness, courtesy, justice,
mercy and good will. We assume that belonging to
our group gives us the right to
treat other groups of people
with
contempt. We do to them what we
would not like done to ourselves.
The
Lord warned his disciples that they
would be persecuted and even put to
death by men who were really
convinced that they were doing it
'for God'. St. Paul was such a man
when, as Saul the zealous Pharisee,
he persecuted the Christian
believers. Many a man, like Saul,
has done terrible evil, believing it
to be right, because he has done it
for a political or religious
'cause'.
Harshness, hatred and persecution,
beatings, burnings, imprisonments,
shootings and bombings . . .
'Father, keep us from evil.'
Then, biologically, the sexual drive is like a fire. In the
hearth or boiler of our own home it can
give warmth and comfort, whilst
outside of godly marriage, it can
burn like a fire out of control,
raging and driving all before it.
Unchecked and unmanaged, our sexual
urge and lust can drive us to all
kinds of evil. It can lead to all
sorts of ungodly partnerships; to
unfaithfulness within marriage and
to the breaking of other homes and
marriages by adultery. In the
extreme it leads to perversion or
child abuse. Here is a prayer that
we may face our sexual nature and so
channel it that it burns only in the
God-given hearth of the marriage
partnership and does not become a
force for evil, destroying our own
and other people's lives.
Closely linked is that other wild
horse, anger. Anger is the
characteristic of the young man
which, wild and untamed, leads to so
much hurt and destruction. However,
'broken-in' and under control it can
enable us to stand with strong and
godly passion against oppression and
evil. It was in godly anger that the
Lord cleared the temple of thieving
money changers and crooked salesmen
who had made the house of prayer a
den of thieves. It was with godly
passion that William Wilberforce and
his colleagues fought for the
abolition of slavery. It is this
kind of godly anger that has driven
all the great social reformers.
Secondly, our Lord taught us to
plead for rescue from evil from
without. To pray for rescue from
evil people, evil days and from the
evil one.
The driving force behind the desire
for leadership is the desire for
power; power over people, power to
influence and change lives, power to
rule and direct. Like so many
things, such power is two edged, it
can be channelled and used for great
good or it can be used for great
evil. Here is a prayer that our
heavenly Father would keep us from
using the authority entrusted to us
in our homes, at our work or in the
wider society in a way that is evil. It is also a
prayer that he would keep us safe
from those who are using a position
of power for evil.
Evil
at home turns the place of love and
safety into a prison house of fear,
violence and abuse. At work, an evil
'boss', shop steward or group turns
a place of creativity into a place
of stress and abuse at every level.
In
the church evil men,
'wolves' as both our Lord and the
apostle Paul call them, may be
charming, eloquent and persuasive as
they gain power over us, 'relieve'
us of our money or lead us astray
morally or theologically.
In
society, where at best we support
and encourage one another, how
unthinkably terrible it is to come
under the power of terrorists or to
be under a death threat from evil
religious extremists, caught by a
violent gang, or hemmed in by an
organised crime ring. We do well to
thank God daily if we know nothing
of such things and to pray that he
would keep us safe. We need to cry
to God daily if we find ourselves,
or know of fellow disciples, trapped
by such evil, at home, at work or in
the wider society.
Sometimes, 'Deliver us from evil'
will be a cry for godly wisdom,
strength and protection from within a
terrible situation. Sometimes it
will be a prayer for courage and a
godly way of escape, for the New
Testament unashamedly urges us to
escape from evil oppression.
Sometimes it will be a prayer for
those we know who are caught up in
evil.
Sometimes this prayer will be a
cry from the heart as far-reaching,
perhaps national, choices, decisions
and appointments are made. 'Lord,
spare us from evil leaders and from
evil laws.' For nationally, too, we
do well to pray that our heavenly
Father would keep us from evil. How
terrible it was for godly men and
women to be caught up under Hitler
and the Nazi regime on the far right
of politics, or under Stalin and the
Communists on the far left. How
almost impossibly hard it is for a
Christian, especially for a
Christian leader, to live for the
Lord under an evil regime be it
atheistic or religious. 'Lord,
deliver us . . .'
'Father deliver us . . .' can also
be a cry, from within an evil
situation, to deliver us from the
natural anger and resentment and malice that
wells up in our own hearts towards
those who threaten and abuse us - this is in
itself an evil that would destroy
us. From the prison camps have come
many accounts of those who, by the
grace of God, have learned to rise
above the malice and hatred of the
camp and to be free before God to pray
for, and even to love, those who
taunted, persecuted and imprisoned them.
Then the
evil day; the evil day is the day we hear from the
doctor that our remaining days are
very short. It is the day of
domestic calamity; the day we learn
the terrible truth of trust
betrayed, or witness the sudden
death of those we had loved with all
our heart. Although we must all walk
through the valley of the shadow of
death, it is the promise of our
heavenly Father to walk with us. We
need fear no evil. Nevertheless we
are taught to pray that our heavenly Father
would spare us from such
overwhelming evil.
Evil
days can touch a whole nation; days
of financial ruin, days of famine or
days of war with the accompanying
loss of home, loss of loved ones,
loss of everything. The whole book
of Job wrestles with such evil days;
days of utter calamity.
That book of Job also shows us that behind such days
can be very evil forces. As we pray,
'keep us from evil' it is also right to pray,
'keep us, deliver us, from the evil one.'
The Lord's Prayer is not about sweet
sentiment. It is about the glorious
and terrible reality of living for
our heavenly Father in this fallen
and often evil world. It is an
essential prayer for safety and
deliverance for ourselves, our
families, our land and our fellow
disciples throughout the world.
'Father we thank you for every day
that you spare us from evil.
Evil that, in this fallen world,
may touch our lives at any time.
Help us to use the good days you
give us for your honour
and walk closely with us through the
dark days. By your grace, bring us
safely through them.'
References
'Good, honourable' etc. -
Philippians 4:8
'Theft, murder, envy' etc. - Mark
7:21-23
Murder, 'for God' - John 16:1-3
Saul persecuting Christian believers
- Acts 8:1-3 & 1 Timothy 1:12-15
Clearing the temple - Luke 19:45&46
'Wolves' - Matthew 7:15, Acts 20:29,
2 Peter 2:1-3
Escape evil oppression - Mark 13:14
With us in the valley of the shadow
- Psalm 23
Questions
Our thoughts
1 Would it be good if all the
thoughts that pass through our minds
were known to those around us?
2 What kind of negative and
destructive thoughts, allowed to
grow and develop, might destroy
ourselves, our home lives or our
working relationships?
3 How do we feed our minds? How do
we regard the fantasy world of the
magazine, television or computer?
4 How can we control what we think
about?
Our words
5 How evil are our mouths? Do we
cheapen godly or precious things by
the way in which we speak?
6 Do we use our words to encourage
and build up or to crush and
destroy?
Our deeds
7 Saul persecuted the early
Christian believers out of religious
zeal. Are there people that we
despise or treat unfairly? How can
we keep ourselves from such evil?
8 Can our strong sexual passions
lead us to do evil?
9 What has our heavenly Father
provided to be the right place for
passionate love and to keep us from
such evil?
10 What good and what evil can come
from anger? Can you name some
examples?
Other people
11 How deep in human nature is the
desire for power?
12 Can you think of examples in
which people have used their power,
a) for great good, b) for great
evil?
13 How much are we aware or
concerned about our fellow disciples
who are being evilly oppressed?
14 How natural is it to return evil
for evil, hatred for hatred? How can
we begin to cope?
Evil days
15 Why and how does the evil day
narrow our vision?
Deliver us from evil, continued . .
. the one who would destroy
A
heart that readily wells up with
evil dreams and plans, flesh that
delights in them, a fallen world
that brings to us all kinds of evil
days, people, circumstances and
opportunities . . . and in the
shadows, hiding behind all these
things is Satan, the evil one. In
scripture he is also described as
the deceiver and the destroyer. In
the Lord's Prayer it is legitimate
to translate, 'deliver us from
evil,' 'deliver us from the evil
one.' We do not only wrestle with flesh
and blood but with mighty, deceptive
and destructive spiritual forces
under the evil one.
We
are guests in our heavenly Father's
world and yet Satan, a fallen
servant of God, will constantly
suggest that God's commands
are irksome, restricting; that
our heavenly Father is denying us a basic 'right',
namely, to do as we will, to be as
gods. He tempts us to
break free from God and do as we
will. Here is Satan's basic ploy.
See how he uses it again and again.
Satan
and society
'A people's greatest treasure is their reverence for the LORD.'
In modern Western culture, with our
great Christian heritage, perhaps
the most effective way in which the
evil one has been at work is by way
of liberal, secular, humanist thinking. Here is
a way of thinking that cuts free
from God and his fatherly commands
and instructions. By it Satan has
been able to bring our godly
heritage all but tumbling down.
Our secular government has laid aside
godly moral values and
replaced them with a whole sea of
relative values. These are human
values that simply depend on current
social thinking, the circumstances
in which we find ourselves, the effectiveness
of a pressure group or on
the whim of a ruling political party.
Such thinking is always
presented very plausibly and
forcefully and yet it has exposed us
to a flood of evil right across our
society.
In
Britain, godless thinking
underlies the throwing off of godly
ways and a sliding back into old and
pagan ways right across the moral
spectrum. Godly chastity before
marriage and faithfulness within it
are being displaced by a widespread
thinking which regards the exclusive
and lifelong commitment of marriage
as of little importance, relatively stable
partnerships becoming the normal
pattern. It is a way of thinking
that can lead to the collapse of
godly family life, and unltimately
to the collapse of society.
How
far will we slide? Roman society
women dated the year by the name of
the then current partner. Indeed,
the ancient Romans accepted any
partner, homosexual or heterosexual,
at any time - with children of mixed
parentage loosely attached along the
way. For our encouragement,
this was the very cradle or seedbed
of the New Testament church.
In
Roman times, Christian disciples
were a people with a new and
distinctive way of living. However,
the effect in our own days of
declining godliness is, firstly, to
make appear 'very odd' those
Christian disciples 'still living'
our heavenly Father's narrow but
best way and, secondly, to alienate
great swathes of people, who have
nothing against the Christian church, but find
themselves excluded from it by the
way in which they have been encouraged to live.
There is a very great social cost
attached to the prevailing godless
way of thinking. It has undermined
the family, offering 'equally valid'
alternative lifestyles, but they are
lifestyles that tend to the breaking
down of society. These ungodly
lifestyles have produced, often not
of their own choosing, many more
single parents and homeless
teenagers. This flows from the
casual nature of modern parenting
partnerships where one or the other partner
may move on or be replaced, and
youngsters find that the new
relationship in some way excludes
them. This casual or uncommitted
approach has also given us a
spiralling tax burden that the rest
of society must pay to care for
those who are no longer in
economically efficient, mutually
supporting families.
This
tide of secular thinking has also
destroyed so much that was orderly,
good and godly in the education of
our young people. It has added to
godly honest dealing a range of so called
'creative' financial approaches. It
has brought into medicine what is in
practice abortion on demand, the
'right' to destroy a dependent life
that is not wanted, a way of
thinking naturally to be extended to
euthanasia. It has filled our
society with groups demanding rights
of every kind, and has largely taken
away the sense of personal
responsibility. In short,
ungodly liberal thinking has brought
with it a whole rising tide of evil.
And most sinister of all, it lays out a 'red carpet' for
the advance of a determined alien culture.
A culture which, across the world, consistently threatens and
crushes with violence all that stands in the way of its advance
and in particular crushes godliness and godly people.
And behind all this Satan smiles as
deceit and destruction flourish and the
godly foundations of our society
are steadily undermined.
Satan
and the church
Within the church the strategies of
the evil one have been equally
effective. By the same ungodly
liberal thinking, he has undermined
true faith in great sections of the
church, offering well-presented
human teaching which displaces the
teaching of our Lord and of his
apostles. By this thinking, for
example, he has torn apart the
church over the central issues of
Christian belief, over the ministry
of women and the acceptability of
homosexual practice.
In
our worship, Satan, the deceiver,
delights to replace sincerity of
heart and holiness of life with
splendour of ceremony or with heat
of emotion.
In
our fellowships, at every
opportunity, Satan, the destroyer,
sows those fast-growing weeds of
mistrust, discord and envy. How we
need to be constantly on our guard,
praying that 'we may agree in the
truth of God's holy word and live in
godly love and unity'; testing all
we hear and read against the plain
teaching of scripture, and actively
guarding our fellowship with one
another. Satan delights both to lead
us astray and to divide us. He
delights to see the church, at the
local, national and international
level, destroying itself.
Satan
and ourselves
Satan is the master of his art. His constant aim is to cause us to stumble.
Behind Job's terrible trials was Satan seeking to cause Job
to curse God to his face. Behind Peter's terrible night, as he found
himself denying his Lord, was Satan seeking to cause Peter to fall. Yet,
on the surface, all could be accounted for by personal weakness, by the
pressure and persuasion of the people around them or by the circumstances
in which they found themselves.
The evil
one plays on our anxieties, fears
and hardness of heart in order to
undermine or destroy our walk with
our heavenly Father and our walk
with our fellow disciples. This
world really is a spiritual
mine-field!
Satan works indirectly through
material wealth, pleasure, anxiety
or the pressures of life, to make us
forgetful, fruitless and cold
towards the things of God. It is for
this reason that it is so hard for
the successful person, modern and
materialistic, to enter the kingdom
of heaven. It is for this reason
that young Christian disciples, who
begin so full of vision and passion
for God, so often end up in middle-life cold,
indifferent and fruitless. 'Father,
keep us from evil.'
Satan works more directly as the
destroyer as he presents ideas and
convictions that would wreck our
walk with our heavenly Father or our
usefulness in his service. The
recorded temptations of our Lord are
exactly of this pattern. Each,
though presented as apparently
highly desirable, would have either
destroyed him or his work. He was
tempted to use his authority and
power for his own gratification.
He was
tempted to commit a spectacular
suicide and so destroy himself. And
finally he was tempted, in the
privacy of the moment, to gain all
with ease - at the price of becoming
a double agent, a secret servant of
Satan.
We
will face similar times of testing.
For us, the temptations of Satan can
be presented as the persuasive
argument of an atheist, the advice
of a 'friend', or simply a 'gut
feeling'.
More
rarely, but dramatically, Satan
works as the destroyer through
tricks of the mind. He is sometimes
behind quite overwhelming and
terrifying thoughts of destruction,
both of ourselves and of those
around us. Fiery darts indeed, to be
recognised by their sudden force and
destructiveness. Our heavenly Father
does not shout at us! So if, when
you are under great stress,
depressed or just very tired, you
feel a strong prompting to 'Finish
it all, throw yourself in front of
this train,' - hold fast. If it is,
'I could kill you,' - hold fast. If
it is, 'Drive into the ditch, now,'
- keep steady. Or, in the early
hours you might awake from a dream
with a mind filled with the most
unthinkable scenes of violence or
vice, from which you recoil in
horror. Such things are by no means
uncommon, but they are not of God.
'Lord, deliver us from evil. Keep us
safe, keep us steady.'
Even
more directly, if we have in some
way played into Satan's hands, we
may find ourselves or come across
others who are directly under the
influence, or even control of the evil
one. We can so easily bite on his
bait for it is always presented so
attractively. As a former generation
put it, 'Satan's delicacies are
always served on silver salvers.' It
is so desirable to know the future;
to have hidden powers; to be in
touch with the spirits; to be in
contact with those we have lost
through death. Yet to pursue any of
these is to bite on Satan's bait.
Can this also be a hidden danger
behind an invitation to join a
secret brotherhood or lodge, or even
behind certain job or financial
offers?
We are involved in
spiritual warfare where powerful spiritual agencies
would enthrall us, ensnare us and enlist us for their
own ends and purposes. They may offer us 'the world,'
as Satan offered our Lord. They may offer all we could desire
as Satan offered in the garden of Eden, but the aim is always
to lure us from a single-hearted loyalty to our heavenly Father
In the early chapters of Genesis, it tells
us that, after their fall, both the
man and the woman hid themselves.
After such an encounter with Satan's
temptation, whether we fall or not,
it takes very great courage to come
to our heavenly Father in honest and
open confession. And yet our Father does
not look on the outward appearance
but on the heart.
In the kingdom of heaven there are
no hidden secrets and there are no
double agents.
If we have been caught by the evil
one we need to cry to our heavenly
Father for mercy. Deliverance and
forgiveness are freely available,
they have been purchased for us by
the cross of the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. To be
given them demands very courageous
openness with our heavenly Father,
from whom nothing is hidden. It
takes very great courage, but, for those
who dare, for those who come to him
hiding nothing, he has promised
forgiveness, deliverance and a fresh new start.
The wonderful truth is that there
are no depths of evil, into which we
may fall, from which the
grace of God in our Lord Jesus Christ cannot rescue us
'Father, spare us,
rescue us from
the evil we have brought on ourselves. Keep us
safe from the evil one, with all his subtlety and with
all his skill. Turn us again to hunger after that which
is godly and to stand against that which is evil. May your
name be honoured, your kingdom come, your
will be done.'
References
Greatest treasure - Isaiah 33:6 (TEV)
Wrestling with mighty spiritual
forces - Ephesians 6:12
Satan behind Job's temptation to
curse God - Job 1:9-11
Satan behind Peter's fall - Luke
22:31-34
Satan behind the temptations of our
Lord - Matthew 4:1-11
Warning to Peter - Luke 22:39-46
God looks on the heart - 1 Samuel
16:7
Questions
1 To what extent does Satan keep in
the shadows?
2 Why do moral values that are not
anchored to godliness drift? What
anchor has God our Father given us?
3 Why will true disciples appear
increasingly 'odd' in an ungodly
society?
4 Why might it encourage us to know
that the ancient Roman Empire was
the seed bed of the Christian
church?
5 In what ways does ungodly thinking
undermine the family? Are there
costs, of different kinds, to the
children, wider family, community
and state?
6 In what ways have you seen Satan
play the secret destroyer among
disciples in the church?
7 Do we need to be personally
watchful? For what kind of things,
situations and people?
8 How can evil creep up on us until
we are all but spiritually dead, or
at least fruitless?
9 Do we need to be aware and praying
much more for one another: that we
may recognise and resist Satan's
fiery darts?
10 In what ways might we play into
Satan's hands?
11 How will the fact that true
disciples are caught up in spiritual
warfare affect the way in which we
live?
12 'No hidden secrets or double
agents' - Why is it so hard to
openly confess? What encouragement
is there to do so?
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