House Church Talk - dealing with evil

[jim sutton]

I never cease to be amazed at the seemingly educated people who claim that 
there is no sin, no evil in the world. All around us (unless we live at the 
center of Antarctica) there are robberies, murders, adulteries, child abuse, 
cheating, hatred, sexual perversions of every kind, violence over silly 
arguments, enraged cursing, and more than I care to list here. This world is 
filled with sin and evil. Our own lives are often plagued by evil.

Thankfully, the Lord Jesus does not leave us in the dark about the evil that 
would destroy our lives. When asked to show them how to pray, our Lord Jesus 
Christ told His disciples to ask the Father to, "...deliver us from evil..."

The fact is, there is one and only One who can deliver us from evil. And we 
ourselves are not that one. Granted, we have power over individual sins, to 
avoid them, to resist them, to turn aside from temptation and go another way. 
 But in our own selves, we do not have the power to rid ourselves of the evil 
that clings to us and saturates all of human life on this planet. Only God can 
rid us of that evil.

As mentioned above, Jesus tells us to pray to the Father, asking Him to 
deliver us from evil -- and from the evil one. And we would do well, no matter 
who we are, or how highly we think of ourselves, to pray earnestly for just 
such a deliverance.

Only God is good. That's another thing Jesus tells us. There is none good but 
God. And because Jesus was walking among us as a mere man, and most people 
thought of Him only as a man, He would not even say that He Himself was good. 
Jesus was truly sinless and perfect, but He did not want to confuse us, or to 
make any room for the idea that some human beings might be good in themselves.

So then we know from our Lord Jesus that only God is good. Only God the Father 
can deliver us from evil.

We need to be delivered from the evil that issues forth from our own hearts. 
That's another thing Jesus teaches, by the way.

He said that sin and all impurity comes from within us, from our very hearts. 
This is what He said, "What comes out of a man, that defiles a man. For from 
within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, 
fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, an 
evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from 
within and defile a man." (Mark 7: 20-23)

Deliver us from evil, O Lord.

As human beings, we need the power of God in our daily lives. Just as we're 
urged by the Lord Jesus to pray for our daily bread, so also we need to ask 
God -- daily -- to deliver us from evil. Why? Because it's there, all around 
us, and welling up within our very own hearts, always ready and waiting to 
overtake us, ready to snare us, to ruin us and defile us.

We cannot simply make a resolution, a decision to always be good from now on. 
We need to Lord of heaven and earth to rescue us, to deliver us, to rid us of 
that which is a part of our very nature: the evil that is behind every sin.

Lord God, deliver us all, I pray, from evil.

And then there's the matter of owing and forgiving. All of us are deeply 
indebted to God, deeply overdrawn on all accounts, deeply in need of a very 
great forgiveness. But we're powerless to make things right. We cannot repay 
Him. We're powerless to cover the vast mountains of personal debts.

What can we do? We can only kneel before the Lord of heaven and earth, 
confessing Jesus Christ as our Rescuer.

The Lord Jesus is our Savior, the Mighty One who saves us from all sin by His 
own shed blood. Jesus, the righteous Son of God died on a cross for sin. And 
He is the only good hope we have before a truly good and righteous God, for 
the Lord is a genuinely fair and even-handed Judge. If we try to stand on our 
own merits, we will be crushed by our own sins, utterly destroyed by our own 
guilt.

Thankfully, Jesus Christ is willing to stand with us, interceding on our 
behalf, taking away the sin or shame that would otherwise cling to us, ruining 
us in the Presence of the Almighty. The Bible teaches us that as we confess 
our need of Jesus, and place all our trust in Him, the shed blood of Jesus 
takes away our every sin. As we admit our debt and ask for the Lord to forgive 
us, all records of our sin is taken away on our behalf. We're set free, 
forgiven, released from the obligations that we could never make right in 
ourselves.

But there is still one more thing that Jesus teaches us. There are the debts 
that others owe us.

In the course of life, other people have become debtors to us. The ugly things 
that some have said about us. They owe us an apology. They owe us the good 
name they took from us when they lied about us. Yes, they owe us. And others 
also owe us. Some have cheated us. Some have stolen money or goods from us. 
Some have refused to give us proper credit for work or other good things we've 
done.

All of these people owe us. They've wronged us, hurt us, delayed us, pushed us 
aside in their eagerness for self promotion, self-gratification. Oh yes, they 
owe us big time.

Jesus says that we're to take all those bills we have against others, all 
those IOUs we've been collecting, and preserving, and remembering (and 
cherishing), we're to take all those writs against others who owe us and tear 
them up. Then we're to burn the little pieces, and then scatter the ashes, and 
then plow them under and forget all about them forever.

In the same way we want and need God's forgiveness for all that we've ever 
done wrong, we must forgive all the offenses that we have in our hearts toward 
others. We are to forgive and forget, to make it as though they've never done 
us a wrong. Wash out the old heart of every evil remembrance against others, 
and let God's own forgiveness in us (by His Holy Spirit) sweep out all the old 
cobwebs that still linger there. We must let God give us a new heart for 
others, even as we need a new heart toward God.

In these and other ways, the Lord Jesus shows us that God will truly deliver 
us from evil on every hand. He delivers from the evil that is in the world. He 
delivers us from every spiritual wickedness that would devour us. He delivers 
us from sin and it's terrible power. And He even delivers us from an evil 
heart toward others -- other people who are sinners just as we are, sinners 
who need forgiveness just as we do.

In Jesus Christ our Lord, we are delivered from all evil.  Praise be to God 
for His unspeakable gift!

Jim