Sermon for the Twenty-Fifth Sunday after Pentecost,
THE LORD WILL KEEP YOU FROM ALL EVIL
Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus
Christ! Amen. In the Introit of the Day from Psalm 121, which we prayed at the
first part of the liturgy, King David makes a promise to you that you might not
want to believe is true, in light of your experiences. The promise David speaks
in this psalm, spoken to you by the authority of God Himself, might even cause
you to feel a sense of revulsion or a sense of indignation or a sense of
injustice when you think about some of the things that have happened in your
life. Viewed from the trenches of daily living in this sinful world, David’s
divine promise might even tempt you to think that either David was wrong or
that God is a liar. King David’s promise from God must be believed, even when
this promise cannot be seen or felt in your life: “The Lord will keep you from
all evil,” David promises. “The Lord will preserve your life.”
Dear Christian friends,
When Jesus gave you the Lord’ Prayer, which is the perfect prayer to
pray in every situation, He made it to the last and final petition for you to
pray, “Deliver us from evil” (Matthew 6:13). Why do you suppose Jesus would
make deliverance from evil the last thing for which you pray, unless He wanted
it to be the last thing for which you pray? Stated another way, Jesus wants
deliverance from evil to be your lowest priority and the least of your concerns
when you pray to your Father in heaven.
I know that it sounds strange to you that Jesus would regard
deliverance from evil to be your lowest priority in life, but that is mostly
because you and I continually want to make deliverance from evil our highest
priority in life. There is nothing any of us naturally wants more than to feel
comfortable. When it comes to daily life, we could easily define evil as
anything that disturbs our comfort. Taught by our experiences, evil includes
everything that we do not want to see or feel and everything we would rather
not experience: fear and uncertainty are evil; pain is evil; poverty, illness,
and death are evil; family struggles are evil; embarrassment and shame are
evil; boredom is evil, and so are loneliness and monotony. According to our
very human and very natural way of thinking, evil has to do with our senses and
with our thinking and with our experiences.
Given the opportunity, who wouldn’t want to correct Jesus and reverse
the order of the Lord’s Prayer so that deliverance from evil becomes the first
thing and the main thing for which we pray? Given the evil circumstances in
which many of God’s people must live—given the evil experiences most of God’s
people pass through at some time or other—who wouldn’t want to make deliverance
from evil a top priority? Who wouldn’t sometimes feel tempted to trade away
even the holiness of God’s name and the coming of His kingdom and the
accomplishment of His will in order to obtain a life that is free from the
evils we all dread?
Jesus lovingly and deliberately makes deliverance from evil the lowest
priority and the last thing for which we pray. Jesus does this for us, not only
by making deliverance from evil the last petition of the Lord’s Prayer, but
also by admonishing us elsewhere, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His
righteousness and all these things will be added to you” (Matthew 6:33).
Jesus makes deliverance from evil the last and final petition of His
Lord’s Prayer because He wants you to know and to believe there are things in
life that are much more important for you than avoiding evil, that is, avoiding
the things that make you feel discomforted and afraid. Jesus knows very well
that some of you have seen and experienced some evil things—even some terribly
evil things—but Jesus also wants you to know that these evils you have
experienced are really very small compared to the greater evils that exist
beyond your experiences, beyond your perceptions, beyond your feelings and your
thoughts. By putting deliverance from evil last in His Lord’s Prayer, Jesus is
showing you those things that are first and most important for you, even more
than deliverance from the evils you perceive:
· “Hallowed be Thy Name.” It is foremost and essential that God’s name be
kept holy among you, that is, that the Word of God be taught faithfully in your
midst and that this Word of God have its way with you and with the manner in
which you live your life. Without God’s pure Word in your midst—that is,
without the holiness of God’s name among you—there is no salvation, no hope and
no future for you. What benefit is deliverance from evil—that is, from the pain
and discomforts you wish to avoid—when your eternal life is in jeopardy?
· “Thy kingdom come.” It is also of utmost importance to you that God’s
kingdom come to you, especially since neither you nor I have any ability to
come into His kingdom. God’s kingdom must come to you—that is, God’s Holy
Spirit must come to you and enter into you by means of His Word—so that you may
be miraculously snatched up from the kingdom of darkness in which you were
born. Other than delaying the inevitable, what would be the point of avoiding
evil—that is, avoiding the things you fear in this life—if you have no place
and part in the kingdom of God “that cannot be shaken”? (Hebrews 12:28)
· “Thy will be done.” “God’s will is done when He breaks and hinders
every evil plan of the devil, the world, and our sinful nature.” Surely the
devil’s desire for your eternal suffering is a greater petition than
deliverance from the evils we experience day-to-day! Surely the corruption of
the world and of our own flesh is worth more of our attention in prayer than
the discomforts of daily life!
· “Forgive us our trespasses,” for without forgiveness, we would not even
dare to pray for deliverance from evil.
· “Give us this day our daily bread” so that we have the physical
strength that is necessary to endure the evils we daily experience.
· “Lead us not into temptation.” Help us, Lord, always to know and to
believe that the things we experience are only the things that we experience;
that the things we experience are but light and momentary (2 Corinthians
4:17)—even when our experiences terrify our eyes and frighten our hearts and
crush our dignity. “Lead us not into temptation.” Guard us and protect us so
that the evils of our days would not cause us to despair of having God’s name
and kingdom and will among us, so that we would never doubt or depart from the
forgiveness of sins, so that we would not think too little of the daily bread
that You provide.
Think of the great gift Jesus gives to you by ordering the petitions of
the Lord’s Prayer so that deliverance from evil is the last and least
consequential thing for which you pray. If I were Johnny Cochran or Dr. Seuss,
I might say that the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer give you both a corrective
and a perspective.
1. The corrective you have heard: deliverance from evil—that is,
deliverance from the experiences you do not wish to have—is the last petition
because there are much bigger fish to fry for your salvation and eternal life.
2. The perspective is this: when you have been given the first petitions
of the Lord’s Prayer, your daily troubles—that is, the evils you experience in
this life—begin to look different for you. Rather than being horrible and
insurmountable monsters that threaten to destroy you, the daily evils of life
become more like gnats on a summer day: you cannot swat them away very well,
and their bite definitely hurts, but the Sun is still shining and it is still a
summer day.
a. God’s name is holy among you, God’s kingdom has come to you, and His
will is being done among you. You know this as well as I do. God has already
answered the first three petitions of the Lord’s Prayer for you and you know
that He has because His Word is in your midst and His Word has shaped your life.
b. God has given you your daily bread—sometimes more, sometimes less, to
be sure. But you know this prayer has likewise been answered for you. Whenever
you might doubt it, just pinch an inch.
c. God has forgiven you all your sins and trespasses by the death and
resurrection of His Son, your Lord Jesus Christ. Forgiveness is fully yours,
despite what guilt or regret you might inwardly feel.
d. God likewise guards you against temptation, despite what desires and
sensations come upon you in your weakest moments. We each still fall into sins,
to be sure, but that is our fault. Even despite that, your God faithfully
guards and protects you so that you will not fall too far, or be misled into
“false belief, despair, and other great shame and vice.”
e. If we can believe that God faithfully answers these greater petitions
of the Lord’s Prayer, how much more shall we trust in Him to answer this least
and most inconsequential petition of the prayer, that He deliver us from evil.
No matter what you experience day to day, the Lord’s Prayer has already taught
you about the greater evils from which He has delivered you—the evils of being
outside His Name and His kingdom and His will. God’s deliverance from the
greater evils will certainly give you perspective on the day-to-day evils you
see and experience. You might even be able to say that God has delivered you
even from these things—say it right while you are suffering these things—say it
just as boldly as you say that you believe in forgiveness even while you are
feeling guilty.
“The Lord will keep you from all evil,” David promises. “The Lord will
preserve your life.” The promise David speaks in this psalm, spoken to you by
the authority of God Himself, might cause you to feel a sense of revulsion or a
sense of indignation or a sense of injustice when you think about some of the
things that have happened in your life. So maybe that is not the best way to
handle this promise. “The Lord will keep you from all evil. The Lord will
preserve your life.” Maybe it would be best to read and to hear these Words
from the viewpoint of eternity and from the perspective of the coming Last Day.
On that Day, Jesus will return and the dead shall rise. On that Day you will
see that nothing has been lost, despite what you have had taken away from you,
and no evil has been suffered, despite the bad things you have experienced.
Christ has died and the worst evils in your life were killed with Him. Christ
has risen from the dead, and
you also shall rise. The evils of your life shall not.
___________________________________________________________________
'CAT 41 Sermons & Devotions' consists of works that are, unless
otherwise noted, the copyrighted property of the various authors;
posting of such gives members of this list implied consent for
redistribution _with_attribution_ unless otherwise specified by
the author (as long as no charge is made for the work and it is
not made part of a compilation), as well as for quoting or use
in a congregational setting _with_or_without_attribution_.
Note: This list's default reply is to the *poster*, NOT the list.
Do *not* reply to the list with your comments, but to the poster.
Subscribe? Send ANY note to: sermons...@cat41.org
Unsubscribe? Send ANY note to: sermons-...@cat41.org
Archive? <http://www.mail-archive.com/sermons@cat41.org/>
For more information on this or other lists offered by Confess And Teach
For Unity, you can contact the CAT 41 list administrator at:
Rev. Fr. Eric J. Stefanski <MoM [at] lists (dot) cat41 <dot> org>
