Gloria Dei Lutheran Church | Urbandale, Iowa

Lord's Prayer:
Deliver Us From Evil

Pastor Burcham’s Sermon

Sunday, July 29, 2007

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Back quite a few years ago when my oldest daughter had just turned 7, so it was shortly after I got here to Gloria Dei, she decided she was going to come with Dad to the office one Saturday morning. Well, I was leery but okay, it’s going to be a Dad and daughter time so she packed up all of her crayons and all that other stuff so she’d be busy and not bother Dad in the office. So off we came. We got settled in and I started doing whatever project I was working on at that time. It wasn’t long and she said, “I have to go to the bathroom.” Well, we’d been here long enough. She knew where the bathroom was. I said, “Well, go ahead and go and then come on right back.” Now I assumed she would go the shortest distance, to the nearest restroom available. So she left.

Now I hate to admit this. I have no idea how long she was gone. When I work, I kind of get into a zone and I was in my zone and I tuned everything out. And all of a sudden, I got startled and I looked up and there was no Emily in the office. And I wondered, “How long has she been gone?” And then I hear this faint noise off in the distance. I can’t figure out what it is. I have to go find this girl. So I get up from my desk. I start towards the narthex and the closer I get to the narthex, I hear this noise get louder and louder. And it sounds like somebody banging on something. So I get into the narthex and it sounds like somebody’s crying, sobbing.

To make a long story short, she didn’t go to the nearest restroom in the narthex. No, she decided she was going to go down to the center wing of the building and go to the restroom down there. So she went through the fire doors that consequently shut and lock behind her, did her business and then came back. And I have no idea how long she stood at that door pounding on it, yelling for me. All I know is when I opened the door, she fell into my arms. She was shaking, she was so upset, so scared because she couldn’t get back to Dad.

You see, she had wandered off from me and no matter how hard she pounded on that door, no matter how much she cried out, she couldn’t get back to me. A couple of days later, I overheard her telling the story and she says, “And it wasn’t until my daddy came and rescued me.” I liked the sound of that but I thought it was a bit dramatic actually. Rescued me. But for her, that’s what it was. She couldn’t get back. She needed Daddy to come and rescue her.

This weekend, we finish up our series of messages on the Lord’s Prayer and we focus in on the seventh petition, the last petition, which says, “Deliver us from evil,” or I think a more accurate way of translating that is, “Rescue us from the evil one.” You see, we have wandered away from God and we can’t find our way back. No matter how hard we might try, no matter how loudly we might pound on the door, we can’t get back to our Father in heaven. We need Him to come and rescue us. Each time we say this petition, each time we utter the words, “Deliver us from evil,” what we’re really saying is, “God, I need you to rescue me.”

And God really rescues us from two things. And the first one may sound a little bit strange. God rescues us from ourselves. What I mean by that is God rescues us from our false way of thinking and our false way of thinking is we can face life on our own. Oh, if things get really tough and we really get into a jam, then, yeah, maybe then we need some help. But for the most part, we can handle everything ourselves. And so I dare say if you don’t know you need to be rescued, you never will be rescued. And for most of us, a lot of the time, we don’t believe we need to be rescued. It’s that whole idea we covered a couple of weeks ago that we as human beings like to consider ourselves very self reliant, able to take care of ourselves, able to handle any situation. Isn’t that why prayer ends up being the last resort instead of the first option? Because after we’ve exhausted everything else, “Well, I guess there’s nothing left to do but pray,” because we have this notion we can handle life by ourselves.

My Friends, we’ve wandered away from God. We cannot come back to God on our own. Let’s put it to the test, shall we? In one sense, the seventh petition serves as a summary of the rest of the Lord’s Prayer. So let’s take a look at the other petitions of the prayer and let’s ask ourselves, “How are we doing?” We pray the prayer all the time and we’re asking God these things. How do we compare, how do we fare as far as the things we’ve been praying to God? For instance, we pray, “Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed by thy name.” Do you always think of your God as a loving and gracious father, one who has your best interest at heart? Do you always keep His name holy, setting aside as special, never taking it in vain, never cursing it, never misusing it? How are you doing just at the beginning of the prayer?

How about thy kingdom come? Is it a burning desire in you that God’s kingdom would come to all people, that across the globe, all people would have an opportunity to call on Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior? Is that a burning desire in your heart at all times? Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Do we need to even ask that question? Is your life always in concert with God’s will? Are you always walking along the path He has designed for you? Give us this day our daily bread. Are we always recognizing everything we have comes from God, thanking Him, praising Him, even asking Him that He would supply that? Or do we get caught into thinking that I worked awfully hard for everything I have and it’s mine?

How about forgive us our sins as we forgive the sins of others? Do we really want to be held on that one? Do we really want God to forgive us the same we forgive other people? Or is that kind of a scary thought? Lead us not to temptation. Do we always call upon God when we’re tempted? Do we always look to God as the source of our power and our strength so we can resist that temptation? Or more often than not, does this happen? We do something which we know is wrong and so we say to ourselves, “I will never do that again. I will simply stop it. And by sheer willpower, I will change my life.” How’s that working for you? It doesn’t work too good for me.

We have wandered away from God and no matter how hard we try, we can’t come back to God on our own. We still have that sinful nature which is within us and that prevents us and separates us from God. St. Paul knows exactly what that’s about. In Romans 7, he has this inner battle which is going on inside of himself. He says, “The things I want to do, I don’t do.” He says, “The things I shouldn’t do, that’s what I end up doing.” He concludes it this way, “So I find this law at work. When I want to do good, evil is right there with me.” He can’t find his way back to God. In conclusion, he says, “What a wretched man I am. Who will rescue me from this body of death? Who will rescue me?” St. Paul knew that he needed to be rescued.

We need to be rescued from our own way of thinking. And in this petition, we’re saying, “God, rescue us from ourselves. Rescue us from our false thinking, our false thinking that says we’re self reliant.” We’re asking God that He would convince us that we’re lost without Him, that we’re broken without Him, that it’s hopeless without Him and we’re praying to God, “God, I need you to rescue me.”

And what God rescues us from is the evil one. Deliver us from evil or rescue us from the evil one. We have to know who the real enemy is if we’re going to be rescued from that enemy. Part of the problem is I think we get confused on who we’re fighting against and who the real enemy is. You see, we think the enemy are things in this world and because of that, that’s why I think we’re pretty self-reliant. If it’s just the circumstances of this life, then we should be able to handle this. So we think the enemy is my schedule or the enemy is the economy or the enemy is my job or the enemy is the family or the relationships. We think the enemy is of this world when in reality, our real enemy, the true enemy is not of this world. It is rescuing us from the evil one, that is, Satan. It’s rescuing us from the devil himself. But how seriously do we take him? How often do we even talk about him? Well, if a recent poll is any indication, the news is not good. In 2006, they ask Americans what do they believe and what do they think about the devil or Satan. Over half of them, 55% says he’s not a real being. That’s just an idea or a concept, a symbol for something which is bad. 44% of the Christians which were asked didn’t believe in the devil either. If we don’t know who the enemy is, how can we ever stand a chance of being rescued from the enemy? We need to identify the enemy. My Friends, we are in a spiritual battle and this is a spiritual war which is being raged and it is a war we can’t hope to win on our own.

St. Paul when he wrote to the Church at Ephesus, he said this, “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realm.” That’s the same word Jesus used in the prayer He taught us. When He said, “Deliver us from the evil one,” St. Paul uses here, “Our enemy is against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realm.” We’re battling something spiritual. It’s something much larger than this world and when we pray that last petition, we’re saying, “God, rescue us from that. God, go to battle for us. We can’t win the spirits we’re fighting. Only you can. Rescue us from the evil one.”

And even before we utter the words, God says He has. For God has already gone to battle for us and God’s already won the war. St. Paul writing to the Church at Colossi, “For He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son He loves in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins,” the same words used here that Jesus used in the Lord’s Prayer. He has rescued us from the dominion of darkness. You see, God sent His Son into the world to go to war for us. Jesus came and did battle with the evil one. He went toe to toe with the devil and He won. We saw one of the famous battles of Jesus out in the desert for 40 days and for 40 nights. As He goes head to head with the devil, don’t think it was just three isolated incidents when Satan came to Him and tempted Him. It was 40 days of being barraged by Satan, constantly needling Him, constantly coming after Him and the weaker Jesus got, the more Satan ramped up his attacks upon Him, enticing Him, tempting Him but Jesus overcame them by the word of God. And He won that battle.

But that was just the beginning. There were three years worth of battles that raged day in and day out as Satan would do anything and everything to divert Jesus from His plan of redeeming mankind. So He used the religious leaders of the day who would question Jesus and mock Jesus and stir up the crowds against Jesus. He used His family members at one occasion to come up and question Jesus and His sanity. How about His own disciples? What did they do? They ran away from Him. They denied Him. One of them even betrayed Him. And then when Jesus was at His weakest point, after He had been beaten, flogged, spit upon, laughed at, nailed to a cross and as He hangs halfway between heaven and hell and our salvation hangs in the balance, Satan is relentlessly coming after Him, doing anything to divert Him from His plan of redemption for us. And so the religious leaders come by and they say, “If you’re really the Son of God, why don’t you jump down?” Satan’s whispering in His ear, “Why are you doing this, Jesus? What have your people done for you? They’ve all turned their back on you. They beat you up. They’ve laughed at you. They’ve nailed you to a cross and watch you die. Why don’t you come down, Jesus? Let it go.” But He stayed. He stayed until He breathed His last and He says, “It’s finished.” Sins paid for. Battle won. Doors of heaven burst open. Rescued.

Deliver us from evil. Rescue us from the evil one. We’re praying that God would rescue us from ourselves, that He would change our way of thinking and our attitude. We’re asking that God would rescue us from the spiritual warfare that we’re engaged in, that God would rescue us from Satan, the devil, from the evil one, that God would burst open heaven’s doors and welcome us home.

I’m pretty sure from now on, each time I say the seventh petition of the Lord’s Prayer, in my mind, I’m going to see my daughter, Emily, outside those doors, banging on them, crying, crying, waiting for her daddy to come to her rescue. I took too long. Our heavenly Father doesn’t. He rushes in to rescue us and He bursts open the doors of heaven to all who believe. So we pray, “Deliver us from evil.” Rescue us from the evil one. And so He has. Amen.