4. Deliver Us From Evil
Matthew 6:13
When I was giving thought as to how I should begin this chapter, my wife told me about her experience at a conference she just returned from. The featured speaker, a very prominent person in contemporary Christianity,[2] told the attendees about all the bad things that his family was going through, and it made me stop and hurt inside for them.
The next day my wife went to a special prayer meeting at a church for a man who would be undergoing a new treatment for cancer that would require about 100 days of total isolation. Nothing can be brought in which might bring in germs from the outside. When you hear of situations like these, you can’t help but cry a bit inside as you share their pain and their wondering: Why is God allowing this? Where is He in all this?
Jesus the Son of God came into the world to die for our sins, yes, but also to show God to us, to teach us about life, ourselves, and God’s relationship with us. And He tells us now that we are to pray for protection from evil. Everyday. We have already seen that we are to pray for our daily bread. So if we are to pray for our bread everyday, then we are to pray for our protection from evil everyday. This is all in the same prayer. So if we are to pray for the one everyday, we are to pray for the other everyday as well. Early in the morning. Before the sun gets hot. Did you pray for your protection today yet?
There are a lot of things that can and do go “wrong” in people’s lives every day, good people, Christian people, even people who are not so good. When these things happen, it is hard not to share their grief, at least in some small way. And then you breathe a sigh of relief and offer a short prayer of thanksgiving that this did not happen to you. It’s like there is so much bad stuff out there, illnesses, and car accidents, and lawsuits, and bills, and unemployment, and it goes on and on. A person could become very afraid, just thinking about all the bad things that people experience and the likelihood that it could happen to us.
Like Job, we will never know in our lifetime why most of these things happen. But unlike Job, we have a lot more information than Job had, so we need not ask the same questions that he did, or wonder about God’s care or His character.
Since the book of Job was written, God has entered into covenants with people, where He has bound Himself to them to be their Protector, their Help, their God. God appeared to Job at the end of his ordeal, but we have no record or indication that prior to his trial, Job had had any promises from God or had any but the barest information about God.
The disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray. and He tells them that everyday they need to pray: “deliver us from evil.”
There are many valuable lessons for us to learn from Job. We learn that disasters or tragedies, whether caused by people or nature, can have a supernatural origin. (And if the ones Job experienced did, what about all the ones today?) Disease can come from a supernatural origin. If Job had been taken to Mayo Clinic, they could have described his condition, maybe even given it a name (Job’s Syndrome), and maybe they could have provided some medication that might alleviate the symptoms and provide some relief. They may hypothesize a cause (auto-immune disease), but we would know that the source is far more than bacteria or a virus or a breakdown of normal human bodily functions. There is a supernatural Adversary, and he is able to inflict all manner of sorrow.[3]
We learn also that we will never understand all of life or of God. We have to learn to trust God and give Him the benefit of the doubt when we don’t understand things that are happening in life.
Yet. Yet now thousands of years after Job, Jesus the Son of God has come on the scene. And now He is teaching us something. About evil. Pray for God to deliver us from it. Everyday. Before it happens. But maybe we need to be clear here just what this means.
Can we be delivered from evil and still be experiencing it? Or, to ask it another way, Is deliverance from evil just a mental and emotional detachment from it, or is it the actual overcoming of it? What did Jesus mean when He spoke about deliverance from evil?
I think a lot of people believe that God’s preferred method of deliverance is to give a person a transcendent peace, even in the midst of pain or in the face of the severest of trials. But the fact is: at no time did Jesus ever leave a person in his affliction, saying that it would be better for the person’s character and spiritual growth for that person to suffer and endure. The only time we know that Jesus let a person die who was sick was the case of Lazarus,[4] and Jesus raised him from the dead. And I am sure that Jesus was already intending to do this when He got word that he was sick.
Does this mean that nothing will or should go wrong in a person’s life when they pray this? Again, like Job, there is still a lot about life that we don’t know, things that are bigger than we, things that we are unaware of or cannot foresee.
But words mean nothing, if this prayer is not meant to make a difference both in what evil might come our way and what happens when it does. I know many people will refer to, say, the Hebrews 11 Hall of Fame and cite examples of believers who suffered greatly and did not receive what had been promised to them.[5] But the promise the writer of Hebrews was referring to was not the promise of deliverance from their particular trial.
The fact is that Jesus taught His disciples how to pray in approximately 30 A.D. These Old Testament believers did not receive the benefit of Jesus’ teaching. Yet the Old Testament is filled with many examples of great prayers, so people did have some idea of how to approach God with their needs. But the fact remains that the disciples still felt a need to be taught how to pray, and Jesus agreed with them, and He told them to pray everyday for protection from evil.
Near the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry, Peter asked Jesus a question about one of the other disciples. And Jesus essentially told him not to worry about him, just to take care of himself. “If I want him to remain until I come, what is that to you? You, follow Me.”[6] Many people will ask about someone they know or heard of, a great Christian no doubt, a very famous one indeed, who went through a horrendous experience. What about them? I don’t know, and you don’t either. I do know that I have been in churches my whole life, and Bible school, a good one at that, and nobody ever told me that I was supposed to pray for protection from evil everyday. Why should we think that they did?
And the only reason I can think of why they didn’t was that they didn’t really know about it. Because if they had, they sure would have said something. Because this makes a difference. A huge difference.
There is a story in Acts 12, which I think shows this principle at work. King Herod, who had a strong dislike for the Christians, had James, one of the Apostles, killed. Afterward, he thought to himself: “That went pretty well. Let me do some more of this.” So he then had Peter arrested, planning to kill him the next day. But the Church prayed fervently for Peter. That night an angel appeared to Peter in prison and led him out, so his life was spared.
The question is, of course: was it God’s will for James to be killed and for Peter to escape? Some would say yes, because that is what happened. Some would say that we just don’t know. But I would have to say that what happened to James would have happened to Peter as well, if the Church had not prayed for Peter. That is certainly the impression the text gives from the way it talks about the “fervent”[7] prayer that was made on his behalf.
So one was spared, and one was killed. The only reason that we can see, and I believe it is safe to make a conclusion based on the written text, is that one was prayed for and one was not. We like to think of the Apostles and the early Church as super-Christians, meaning that, if James was killed, God must have wanted him to be. But the clear implication from the text is that Peter was delivered because of the fervent prayers of the church.
Did James pray that morning for protection from evil? I don’t know, and neither do you. And we shouldn’t assume that he did. I do know that Jesus told us to. And if Peter was delivered because he was prayed for, we are led to believe that James would have to. Sometimes evil can come very quickly, and we are not prepared for it. So, what to do? Everyday, before the sun gets hot, pray for deliverance from evil.
And why would He tell us to pray for protection from evil every day, if it doesn’t matter whether you pray or not? We speak of the sovereignty of God, that God does whatever He wills. But obviously God is not overriding our freewill. And if we don’t do what He tells us to do, like praying for deliverance prior to the fact, we might not have the deliverance we were supposed to have prayed for.
But if everything that happens is a result of God’s sovereignty, why then do we ask for things when we pray? I know some will say that prayer changes us. But you can’t read the Bible and not see where prayer does make a difference in the world around us. And if prayer makes a difference, and Jesus tells you to pray for something, you better believe that it makes a difference if you don’t pray for it.
And that means that if Jesus tells you to pray everyday for protection from evil, and you don’t, don’t be surprised if and when evil comes, and don’t be so quick to say that this was God’s will. He told you what to do ahead of time, but you didn’t.
Does this mean that hope is all lost if we haven’t prayed and evil comes? Not at all. The Psalmist says: “Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all.”[8] The Psalmist didn’t know about the Lord’s Prayer, and it is true that we have an Adversay, a thief, who comes to steal, kill, and destroy.[9] But even the Psalmist knew that when trouble comes, yes, there is hope.
The prayer is for God to deliver us from evil. The fact that we are to pray this everyday before the sun gets hot says that the prayer is meant to protect us from evil happening to us. But then, if we don’t and evil happens, we can still pray for God to deliver us from evil. But let us be clear as to what that means. If a prayer for deliverance from evil before it happens is answered by evil not happening to us, then a prayer for deliverance after evil happens would be answered by the removal of that evil.
So two questions remain here: if we pray this prayer everyday, does that mean that nothing bad will happen to us today? There are two responses I would give to this question. The first is the sports analogy I gave in the introduction mixed with the Job story. No team stays undefeated forever. But some teams win most of their games, some win maybe half and half, and some are perpetual losers. Like Job, we soon learn that there is a lot about life that we don’t know, and there is so much we need to learn. So, yes, some evil may get through at times. But when that happens, I believe we can expect a deliverance from that evil that will cause us to bow in worship or shout for joy, depending on our personalities. But it will be one of those experiences that you will remember and tell others about.
But evil is evil, and God’s will is for our deliverance from it.
In 2004, I lost my job. It was a very good job. I thought I was not only performing well in my position, but I also felt I was making a very positive contribution to the company in terms of bringing a Christian influence into the workplace. But, one day I was called into my boss’s office and was fired before I even knew what to say. Was this evil? Yes. But like Joseph was able to say later in his life: “You meant evil to me, but God meant it for good.[10]
I may never have written this book, if I were still working there. Actually this is the second book that I have written since I lost that job, and in a sense, because I lost that job. When it happened, I knew that something a lot bigger than I was going on. Was I scared? You have no idea. Scared of what? I came face to face with my weaknesses, my failures, my inability to achieve any type of “lasting” success, whether in the eyes of the world, the church, my family, or myself. So I admit I was not so confident of the outcome. I had no idea of what to expect.
Would it be another temporary, okay position that I would have for a few years, only to have to leave it one way or the other and go through this again? I knew on the one hand that so much of life is out of my control, but I was scared about how I would handle the part that was under my control. I admit I wasn’t so sure about how God would handle His end either. I felt a lot of disappointment with Him as well.
Someone will say that God brought this evil into my life to bring about a greater good. The answer is no. The answer is that this is what the sovereignty of God is all about. Nothing is too big for God. He has purposes to fulfill, plans to work out, and promises to keep. Just like we make lemonade out of lemons, God can take an evil situation and use it to produce something good.
Did God want the evil to happen in the first place? Well, it certainly didn’t take Him by surprise. But if Jesus told us to pray for deliverance from it, I think He meant that God wants to deliver us from it. But don’t worry. There will always be plenty of circumstances and people to try the faith of the strongest of us.
Moving mountains requires great faith, but there is no indication that the mountain is an evil. Just some big obstacle standing in the way of God’s work. Nothing in this chapter is to be understood as suggesting that life will be smooth sailing, if we just pray this prayer in the morning.
So, when I talk about praying everyday for protection from evil, no, I am not saying that nothing bad will ever happen. I am saying that a lot of it is not in God’s plan for us, I am saying that a lot of it is unnecessary, I am saying that a lot of it is just junk that is thrown out onto us humans like spam on your computer and it is better to just block it at its source. Just like we resist sin by avoiding tempting and compromising situations, we should avoid evil by putting up our defences before it comes. Some may get through, for any of a number of reasons. Most we can do without and Jesus would want that we do it that way.
But yes, trials build our faith,[11] but it is in the overcoming of them rather than the mere enduring of them that is important. I know the passages of the Bible that talk about endurance, but that is only because trials can have a wearing effect on us. I did some wrestling in high school and college. You need endurance and stamina and an attitude of never quitting or giving in. But the goal is winning, not just seeing how long you can keep from being pinned.
It’s like the story of David and Goliath.[12] The two armies stood in opposition to each other for 40 days, the Israelites afraid to fight their opponent’s champion. So they endured the Philistines’ hostility and oppression in their land. But was that God’s will for them? No, the trial is not the enduring of the problem, but the overcoming of it.
I mentioned in the last chapter how that in 1992, I was going through another time of unemployment, and, in rapid succession, our oven broke, our refrigerator, our television, and our disposal and that I made it a point, even though I was not working regularly, to get a larger refrigerator and a bigger television. I was not going to be intimidated by my problems.
No, praying this prayer will not solve all your problems, but Jesus told us to do it and it will make a significant difference in your life. So pray it everyday expecting God’s protection from evil. Thank Him everyday for what He has done for you. And, if some evil makes it through, approach the problem boldly and with confidence and joy as you watch God deliver you from it. Sometimes, like Joseph, [13] a problem may persist longer than we would wish, but we need to see God’s view of the problem; and this prayer makes it clear what that is: Deliver us from evil.
Some people may regard this chapter as simplistic and maybe even unfeeling for those who are experiencing extreme difficulty and suffering in their lives. I hope it is not seen in that way. I have had enough junk in my life that I would never want to go through again or wish on anyone. I have had cancer, marital problems, depression, job losses, and some things that I won’t mention.
But our goal here is to understand what Jesus is teaching us about prayer. Does prayer make a difference as to what kind and how much junk we will experience in our lives? Yes. But it is also not the mere quantity of our prayers, but the specific content and the timeliness of it as well.
We may point to the lives of so many people we know or have heard about and see how much they are suffering by whatever problems, but I will say this again: I have never heard this before taught anywhere, and I have been in churches all my life. It is in the Bible, we know the words, but we don’t stop to think what all this really means.
And do we think it is really true? This is not something that we just try to see if it works. We decide if we believe in the truthfulness of Jesus and in the truthfulness of the Bible, and we act on it. And, yes, we will see that things will change.
There are still many questions that remain, I am sure. I highly recommend my book The Importance of Healing in that it specifically addresses that evil we know as sickness, but it also deals with God’s deliverance in every other area as well.
But if Jesus tells us to pray for deliverance from evil, then we need to believe that God wants us to be delivered from evil. And even before it occurs.
[1] Out of context, this verse can be translated three different ways. Grammatically, the expression a)po\ tou+ ponhrou= can be understood either as ‘from (that which is) evil’, ‘from the Evil One (the devil)’, or even just as ‘the evil person.’ Traditionally in the West, this has been understood as ‘from evil.’ In the East, as ‘from the Evil One.’ Elsewhere in Matthew’s Gospel, o( ponhro/j (ho po – nay – ros’) occurs twice at least where it refers to the devil (13:19 , 38).
So the question is: is the prayer a prayer for protection from evil in general or for protection from the devil? Obviously a prayer for protection from evil would include protection from the Evil One, but not necessarily vice versa, depending on your theology.
I accept the more general ‘evil,’ for two overlapping reasons. I believe the theme of protection from evil is found in other places in the Bible, so this is not some foreign concept only found here; and one of those places is Psalm 91, which has already been featured prominently in Matthew’s Gospel in chapter 4. Psalm 91:10 says: “No evil shall befall you, and no plague shall come near thy tent.”
;!×elFhf):B bÛar:qéy-)ol (agèenºw÷ hÕf(fr !yØel") hØeNu):t-)×ol
The rest of the Psalm speaks equally strong about an incredible protection from evil. And that is what I think is part of our problem: it’s too incredible for us, so we don’t believe in it. Other similar passages include Psalm 121:7, Proverbs 1:33, 12:21 .
[2] Don’t you hate it when somebody talks about a famous person without telling you who that person is. I know I do. I am glad at least this time I know who the person is.
[3] At this point, surely it will be noted by some that Satan was only allowed to inflict Job within parameters set by God. He had to have permission first before he could do his evil. But perhaps that is more than we can properly conclude from the narrative.
Satan proposed a test for Job. So in keeping within that framework, God laid out what would be the rules. But to say that Satan was not able to inflict any evil on people without God’s permission and without God setting the limits I think is reading more into the text than what is there.
In chapter 11 on temptation, I discuss more the questions about Satan and his going before God and whether this still takes place today.
[4] John 11
[5] Hebrews 11:39
[6] John 21:21f tou=ton ouÅn i¹dwÜn o( Pe/troj le/gei t%½ ¹Ihsou=, Ku/rie, ouÂtoj de\ ti¿; le/gei au)t%½ o( ¹Ihsou=j, ¹Ea\n au)to\n qe/lw me/nein eÀwj eÃrxomai, ti¿ pro\j se/; su/ moi a)kolou/qei.
hf(fr (rah-ah’) evil, misery, distress, injury
[9] John 10:10
[10] Genesis 50:20
[11] Romans 5:3-5, James 1:2-4
[12] I Samuel 17
[13] Genesis 37, 39-41
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