And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil

Matthew 6:13

My last post was about the parable of the soils, specifically, the rocky soil. The “rocky soil” as explained by Jesus is the believer who has a shallow, superficial faith that cannot hold up under challenges of life. The parable lists three challenges all people face. One of these is temptation. So the Lord recognizes that we who believe have ongoing spiritual opposition. Part of the prayer “template” includes two elements of spiritual warfare.

Evil forces are at work to undermine the Word of God. This is the part of what the parable of the soils communicates. One of the ways evil works, arguably, the most effective way, is through temptation. We who believe have plenty of defenses against the forces of evil. We have everything we need to be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might, to avoid temptation and walk uprightly before the Lord in His righteousness. We have the Holy Spirit that dwells within us by faith in the Son of God. We have the Word of God which is the sword of the Spirit, and we have access to the Father in prayer through Jesus Christ, our great High Priest. We have been instructed how we are to pray.

Breaking down the Lord’s prayer into its components is helpful because if biblical Christians establish a pattern for their own personal prayers, which includes these components, then prayer complies with the teaching from the Lord and thus is more effective, keeping in mind other things are in play as well which I will address in a later post. Comply with the teachings of the bible. What a concept!

I’ve commented on the elements of the Lord’s prayer in previous posts, summarized here:

• Worship of God as the first priority of prayer – always begin in this way – always.
• The coming Kingdom of God and God’s will to be done on the earth as the first priority in our requests before God, second only to worship, and the only prophetic component of prayer.
• Our daily bread: Requests for our daily needs to be met. This is universally understood as requests for temporal needs to be met, which is partially true. But I explained it as a duality of purpose: temporal sustenance and spiritual sustenance, food for our bodies and food for our spirit which is the Word of God – each day – as well.
• Forgiveness of God towards us and forgiveness we exercise towards others.

Every element of the prayer is full of spiritual content including the request for strength and trust as we endure constant resistance from the enemy in the form of temptation.

The Evil We Need Deliverance From

I know this post is long but I need to devote some space here to partially describe our situation in the culture today. This is only partial and much more can be said. Maybe later.

Could it be that the cultural manifestations of wickedness and the progression of evil around the world is because biblical Christians are not praying as we should? In military terms, our strategy is wrong, our target is incorrect, and we are not engaging with enough firepower. That’s a recipe for military defeat – but I use a temporal allegory to illustrate a spiritual point. In modern warfare, air support is required for military success. In spiritual warfare prayer support is required for military success. Its an imperfect analogy but I hope you get my meaning of the importance of prayer.

My news feed is full of articles that disparage the Word of God and biblical Christianity. Christians are continually thrown under the bus for every social problem. Christianity is no longer recognized as a spiritual world view that has resulted in blessing for our nation and the world, but only as a political worldview that is portrayed continually in MSM as a threat to democracy, racist, responsible for mass shootings, and full of injustice and white supremacy.

The world today is full of darkness and evil because it seems the world culture is intent on the removal of the Lord God and His Word. There is an intensifying satanic campaign to suppress the truth. Its been very effective. Using the parable of the soils to help bring clarity to what’s happening, the culture around us is the path and the seed along the path which is the Word of God is being snatched away by the evil one. Luke’s gospel tells us this happens because the evil one’s purpose is to keep people from believing so that they would be saved. That’s is what’s going on here. Instead of believing unto salvation, people are made hostile towards the people of God and used as pawns to advance evil purposes. People think they can do whatever they want with impunity.

Unfortunately, there are well known, very public people masquerading as Christians and used by dark spiritual forces to feed the narrative that fuels anti-Christian propaganda. These false Christians understand nothing about the scriptures and disobey the Lord and undermine His purposes. Many of them are trusted politicians. But true Christians, biblical Christians who have nothing to do with these political expressions of pseudo-Christianity, are painted with the same broad brush. The church is portrayed in the media in a way that is completely false. The false narrative is used by spiritually hostile forces to divide people and fan the flames of hatred and violence.

There is a spiritual malevolence behind all of this. From a military standpoint, its actually a brilliant strategy the evil one is using to undermine biblical Christianity and hinder the gospel. If biblical Christians don’t wake up to it, its going to work. All of what’s going on in the culture today is at its very root, spiritual. It manifests itself politically and socially, but its spiritual. The spiritual battle is intense but unfortunately, that which is completely spiritual in its origin, has been framed as political and social, and so we look to politicians and social leaders as our saviors instead of Christ.

Without discernment, biblical Christians engage on a political and social level. Instead of praying as the Lord taught is to “deliver us from evil”, we introduce social justice, virtue signaling, woke ideology into our churches and find ourselves aligned with the wicked and at odds with the Word of God. We kowtow to the wicked to win the approval of man with apparently no concern we are offending God.

There are churches that are concerned about the takeover by the wicked. They seem to love God’s word but apparently not enough to become mobilized to spiritual action. We think that good teaching alone and measuring doctrine with a micrometer is the same as obedience to the mission. Churches claim to be gospel centered communities and yet don’t take the gospel outside church doors. Instead, its status quo: more fund raisers, facility, potlucks, and entertainment. Comfort Christianity continues to turn the Sunday morning crank like nothing is happening around us. If there is any action, its time and effort applied to politics, protest, and petition instead of prayer. We adopt the methods of the culture which, from a spiritual perspective, are ineffective and counterproductive.

We need to get back to praying “deliver us from evil”.

The Biblical Approach

Jesus Christ, our example of ministry, never engaged on a political level. When asked by Pilate if He was a King, the Lord said yes but he never said he had come to “take Israel back for God”. He said His Kingdom was not of this world and yet allowed himself to be crucified even though Pilate found no fault in him, no transgression of Roman law. The mission was deliverance and redemption of mankind and the strategy was the cross – to die once for all.

We who believe cannot be American patriots like the zealots of Judea who wanted to restore Israel politically. We who follow Christ are not of a worldly kingdom but of a Kingdom not yet realized on the earth. The Kingdom of God is coming. But until its here, with Christ ruling over the earth personally, we have a mission to do. It is a spiritual war waged with spiritual weaponry: prayer, purity, the gospel, and discipling others to do the same.

We as God’s people do not have any mandate from the Lord to establish the Kingdom of God on this earth. The mission of the church is not to “take America back for God”. God does not need our help to establish His reign upon the earth. That has been ordained and it will be accomplished by the Lord, personally, in due time (Daniel 2:44-45). But that day is not yet here, and so a key part of our intercession remains “thy Kingdom come”.

The pattern of our own prayers should reflect the Lord’s prayer to support the war effort against the kingdom of the evil one, knowing we need God’s help to remain on-mission, innocent of evil, and under the Lord’s protection from the hostile culture and spiritual forces that come against us.

And so we pray: lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

Resisting Temptation

Temptation is a primary weapon of the evil one used since the beginning. He even used it against the Lord who resisted using the Word of God. Temptation comes in many forms, each of which are designed to undermine our walk of faith and the mission the Lord gave us. Temptation appeals to our pride and to our fleshly desires. Its all spiritually energized by the forces of darkness. Since we are sinners, we tend to gravitate towards sin – its natural for us to do that, even as believers, and the enemy knows that.

For unbelievers, there is no way to resist temptation. For believers, we can and must resist. Part of that resistance is our prayer: lead us not into temptation.

The Lord does not lead anyone into temptation. This part of the prayer is a language device to establish contrast that magnifies the request to deliver us from evil. Indeed, the Lord has said that He will not let us become subjected to temptation beyond what we can bear. He has given us everything we need to resist the devil. Why then do we succumb to temptation and fall into sin? Part of it is back to the parable of the soils. What is the soil in your heart? Is it rich and able to produce a harvest in your faith? This is the only kind of faith that successfully resists the devil and can produce a harvest of righteousness and fruitfulness.

Deliverance from Evil

The culture is replete with evil. We need deliverance. The request that the Lord would deliver us from evil is a recognition that we cannot rely on anyone else. It was the Lord who cast out demons and started the spiritual war to forcefully take the kingdom of the evil one. We have that mission now. It remains unchanged: preach the gospel, make disciples of all people, teach them to obey all the commands of the Lord. There is nothing else.

We need deliverance from evil. The church needs deliverance from evil. The culture does as well. We have everything we need: we have a Savior who is Christ the Lord, we have the Word of God, we have the Holy Spirit, we have access to the Father by prayer through our great High Priest, and we have each other.

We need to pray for each other and the culture: Lord, keep us from succumbing to sin. Help us to live a life worthy of the calling you have placed on us and deliver us from evil.