02/13 – Matthew 6:13b – Lord’s Prayer: Seventh Petition

Grace to you, and peace, in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Technology has a tremendous impact on our lives. Perhaps its greatest affect has been in finances. The ease of access to our money. You remember the “good ol’ days.” You work all week. At the end of the week you get your paycheck. Then you take that paycheck and head to the bank to deposit it and get some cash. The only way to spend that money would be go the bank and make a withdrawal. It may have been easier to keep track of exactly what you spent because most every transaction was with cash.

These days things are different. With credit cards and check cards, spending money has become far more convenient. Many cell phones now have NFC or Near-Field Communication which allows to you to hold your phone over a scanner and without even touching your wallet or purse a happy little tone says you can take your stuff home. No money, no visible transaction, no fuss, no muss.

With this convenience comes a danger. It is really easy to overspend. It takes the same effort to touch your phone for a ten thousand dollar charge as it does for a ten-dollar charge. The result is many people have charged so much they find themselves in serious financial trouble. All of that: “No money, no visible transaction, no fuss, no muss” is an illusion. The bill will come and the bill must be paid.

Here’s the darker truth. If someone were to pay off a person’s entire debt, they would be back in the same situation in just a short time. What is needed is to learn to control the bad spending habits and deal with the temptation to spend more than you can afford.

So, what does any of this have to do with the Lord’s Prayer? Previously we learned what it means to pray, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive others.” We learned God has canceled our debt to Him. Jesus paid the bill. Still, we live in a sinful world and the temptation to run up our debt of sin is always an ever present danger.

Today we are asking God to prevent this from happening to us. We are asking God to keep temptation out of our sight, or give us the strength to withstand it, so we will not run up our spiritual debt. Today we learn to pray, “…deliver us from evil.”

Last week we explored the question: “Why would I ask God not to tempt me? He wouldn’t do that anyway, would He?” No, He wouldn’t. The book of James tells us:

When tempted, no one should say, ‘God is tempting me.’ God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone.¹

It is the devil who tempts us to sin.

If you look closely at the sixth petition you will see that we are not asking God not to tempt us. We are asking God not to lead us into temptation. It literally means, “Do not carry us into temptation.” We are asking God not to allow us to fall prey to the temptations of the devil whose temptations are not to be taken lightly. We are warned in 1 Peter:

Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.²

Martin Luther once wrote:

The devil takes no holiday; he never rests. If beaten, he rises again. If he cannot enter in front, he steals in at the rear. If he cannot enter in the rear, he breaks through the roof or enters by tunneling under the threshold.

The devil will use whatever is at his disposal to tempt us. If a person is poor the devil will tempt him to blame God and covet what others have. If a person is rich the devil will tempt him to rely on wealth rather than on God. If a person is young he will tempt him to think he can do whatever he wants without consequence. If a person is old he will tempt him to blame God for his regrets about the past and his suffering in the present.

Whatever our station in life, poor or wealthy, young or old, the devil will look for an opportunity. So we go to our heavenly Father and ask, “deliver us from evil!” To whom else can we go?

It was He who defeated the devil by sending His Son to pay our debt of sin and destroy the power of death by His resurrection on Easter morning. 1 John 3:8 reminds us

The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.

Revelation 20 pictures the devil’s defeat this way:

I saw an angel coming down out of heaven, having the key to the Abyss and holding in his hand a great chain. He seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil, or Satan, and bound him for a thousand years.³

God allows the devil to prowl around looking for someone to devour, but the devil is limited, like a dog on a chain. Martin Luther wrote:

Why should you fear? Why should you be afraid? Do you not know that the devil has been judged? He is no lord. You have a different, a stronger, Lord, Christ, who has overcome and bound him. Therefore let the devil look sour, bare his teeth, and make a great noise, threaten and act in an unmannerly way; he can do no more than a bad dog on a chain, which may bark, run here and there, and tear at the chain, but because it is tied and you avoid it, it cannot bite you.

Unfortunately, we often get too close to the devil and his temptations. Like a fool who walks within the range of a chained dog, we put ourselves within range of the devil’s temptations. We ask God not to lead us into temptation and then surround ourselves with the people, places, television, magazines and Internet that are certain to tempt us!

Once we are in his sights the devil pounces and tries to devour us. He digs his fangs into our conscience and growls, “Now you’ve done it! God will never take you back! Not after this!” When we feel the devil tearing at our conscience, we must look to the cross. There we are reminded our debt has been paid. There we are reminded we have a loving heavenly Father.

When we crawl back to Him bruised by our battle into which we foolishly walked, our Father binds our wounds with the bandages of His Son’s Body and Blood. Our Father holds us and reminds us He loves us still. Once again safe in His embrace, we look up into His loving face and plead,“… deliver us from evil.”

It’s like the boy who was walking with his father one winter day. His father warned him not to run too fast because there were patches of ice and he would fall. The boy didn’t listen and his feet went out and his bottom went down. After his father helped him to his feet he apologized for not listening to his father’s warning and then, tightly grasping his father’s big hand he asked, “Keep me from the slippery spots. Don’t let me fall again.”

Don’t let me fall again. That is what we are praying in this petition. It is no coincidence the very last thing for which Jesus tells us to pray is to be delivered from evil. We hear a lot about evil these days, but evil is not always easy to define. Perhaps it is easiest to understand it this way: God is the ultimate good and whatever separates us from Him is evil.

Those who would prevent us from focusing on God’s Word, or placing God’s Word as the primary source for all we do. This world is full of evil. The land mines of temptation cover the battleground of life. While we are here we will never be rid of evil, while we are here. There will be deliverance one day. When our loving God decides that our time on this earth is spent, He will deliver us from evil, forever.

Between now and then may we continue to go to the Lord’s throne of grace with the wonderful words of this prayer we call His.

As Luther wrote in his hymn:

From evil, Lord, deliver us;
The times and days are perilous.
Redeem us from eternal death,
And, when we yield our dying breath,
Console us, grant us calm release,
and take our souls to you in peace.⁴

Amen.

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