May 3, 2026: From Evil - Matthew 6:13

As we continue our series on the Lord's Prayer, this is part

three of three. On the 6th petition of the

Lord's Prayer, there are 6 petitions.

We are on the 6th petition. As we consider what this means,

we consider to whom we are praying, to a heavenly Father,

Father who has adopted us and is full of love, but also the

Creator of the universe who is fully able.

And to this God we pray for our needs.

Last week and the week before we talked about our need for

deliverance from evil for the spiritual life.

Life is very dangerous. We have enemies within our own

evil desires and we have enemies without in the world and in the

devil. We desperately need a champion

to fight our battles and win the victory for us.

And thanks be to God, this champion is our Lord Jesus

Christ. So this morning we're going to

talk about this deliverance, this deliverance through our

victorious champion. It's an interesting thing going

on in this verse that you may or may not have noticed before in

the Greek behind this verse. It's a little bit tricky.

You can see this as deliver us from evil or it can be

translated deliver us from the evil 1.

The Greek actually has the article V in there.

And so it's a little bit tricky to try to figure out what what

is Jesus saying? Is he telling us to pray

specifically against the devil? Or is he being more generic and

saying pray against all evil that we may encounter in our

lives? In the last couple of weeks,

I've been arguing for a more generalized understanding of

evil, that evil is anything that draws us off, that tempts us to

neglect our faith in the Lord. So what is going on with this

particular text? Your text in the text itself, if

you have the ESV, probably says evil, but maybe down there's an

in the in the footnote it says the OR the evil 1.

If you have the NIV, it says the evil one.

What does it? What does it mean?

Thankfully, friends, if I'm stressing you out with this

question, it doesn't matter that much.

Ji Packer, whom we've been quoting extensively, says they

both interpretation sort of lead to the same end.

Let's look what he says together.

Jesus tells us in this petition, tells us to ask God to deliver

us from evil. Whether this Greek phrase means

evil in general, so the ESB text, or the evil 1, so the ESB

margin does not matter. Good, though the second is

perhaps likelier. The first rendering would mean

deliver us from all the evil in the world, in ourselves, in

other men, in Satan and his hosts.

The second rendering would mean deliver us from Satan, who seeks

our ruin, and from all that he exploits to that end, all the

ungodliness of the world, all the sinfulness of our flesh, all

spiritual evil of every sort. Both renderings come to the same

thing. And he, I believe, is correct.

And since over the past couple of weeks we've talked a little

bit about the evil within and also the evil in the world.

I wanted to spend some time specifically considering the

fact that we have a great enemy, a mighty foe.

And we need to consider the fact that we have this foe and

understand a little bit of his strategies in order to live as a

successful Christian flourishing in the Lord Jesus Christ by his

Holy Spirit living in US. We're going to spend some time

on that this morning. Now, you may know that it's easy

to get into two ditches with regard to the devil and his

minions. These equal and opposite errors

have been addressed briefly by CS Lewis and his preface to the

screw tape letters. He says this There are two equal

and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the

devils. By devils there he means Satan

and the demons. 1 error is to disbelieve in their existence.

The other is to believe and to feel an excessive and unhealthy

interest in them. They themselves, the devil's

that is, are equally pleased by both errors and hail a

materialist who doesn't believe, or a magician who's obsessed and

occultist with the same delight. It's interesting that our Bible

doesn't answer all of our questions about the devil and

his minions. In fact, the biblical data is

surprisingly scarce given the immensity of the destructive

power that he has wreaked in the world.

And yet I think that the Bible itself is teaching us to

understand his place, to respect his power and his schemes, his

craft, but also to understand that our God is far, far

greater. So when we go into a sermon like

this one, we need to stay on the road and we don't delve into

curiosities about the devil and his demons, but yet understand

and respect the position and schemes, the threats that he

represents, but also take stock of our resources in the Lord

Jesus Christ. Ever since last week when

Brighton had us singing A Mighty Fortress is Our God, I've been

having that stuck in my head all week because as you know, in

that hymn, he's talking about the Prince of Darkness, Grim,

this foe, this enemy, and how God is our refuge and protection

against him and how Christ will fell him with a single word.

And so as I was making your outline for this week, I just

decided to RIP off Luther and pull the outline headings

directly from A Mighty Fortress is Our God.

The first point, we need to do a profile on the Prince of

Darkness, a profile on the Prince of Darkness.

Notice I did not capitalize Prince or Darkness.

There's a reason for that. And like giving the credit more

due than he deserves. And the fact is that the devil

is presented in Holy Scripture as a usurper.

Titles, but bogus titles. And if you need an image to kind

of think about what that looks like, think of the White Witch

from CS Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia.

She has power, she has enchanted the world, she has minions, but

it's all twisted. It's all usurped, it's all

stolen. It is illegitimate.

So the Prince of Darkness, similarly, is a a usurper.

The Bible teaches us that he has been motivated by envy of the

Most High. He was created as a beautiful

Angel, perhaps a very high-ranking or Archangel, and

he had pride in his heart, envy for the Most High.

And he fell even before the creation of the world.

And from this fallen state he decides from envy and cruel

hatred to wreak as much havoc and destruction as he possibly

can. He begins in the very early

stages of Genesis, as you know, tempting the humans to disobey

God, plunging the human race into a type of slavery.

And he comes in as this usurper that has this weird kind of

authority over a fallen world, but he still needs permission.

He still is ruled by God in some ways, and his doom is sure.

Let's talk a little bit about where Luther got this term.

The Bible doesn't actually have a Bible verse that says the

Prince of darkness grim. That's in the song.

It's a composite Luther drawing together several scriptures.

Let's look at some of those together.

In Ephesians 6, the famous Armor of God chapter.

Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand

against the schemes of the devil.

And look what it says about the devil's power and his minions.

For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the

rulers, authorities, cosmic powers over this present

darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly

places. This rule is world ruled by the

devil and his minions, these cosmic powers of darkness.

In 2nd Corinthians 4, three and four, he's called the God of

this world, and even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled

to those who are perishing. In their case, the God of this

world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them

from seeing the light of the gospel and the glory of Christ,

who is the image of God. There's darkness availing,

darkness that keeps people from seeing the light of the gospel.

The word Prince comes in Ephesians chapter 2 and you who

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

were dead in the trespasses and sins in which he once walked,

following the course of this world, following the Prince of

the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons

of disobedience. So he has this usurped

authority, this jurisdiction over the world for this period

of time. First Peter talks about him,

this imagery of a a lion that's on the prowl.

Be sober minded, be watchful. Your adversary, the devil,

prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour.

Sounds scary. It's hard to know exactly how to

understand the threat. Personally, if I knew that there

was a hungry lion walking around upland, I would probably stay

inside. So how should we think about

ourselves in this world with that kind of enemy on the loose?

Paul wants us to think about that carefully, so that we would

not be outwitted by Satan. For we are not ignorant of his

designs. We need to know something not

only about his person, but also what his strategies are.

So we study Scripture to know a little bit about his designs,

his schemes, and we find out that one of his main resources

is deception. He is a deceiver.

He takes the truth and he twists it.

We get our word perversion from a twisting, a good that should

be a good just twisted. He is motivated by envy.

He is a perverter of truth. He seduces us by playing upon

our good desires. You can see this in the way that

he attacked Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

Their desire for food is a good thing given by God.

So the devil comes in and he, he sows a seed of distrust in God's

word. Did God really say you shouldn't

eat? You know, Eve tries to clarify,

and now she's ready. He's ready to lie directly.

You won't die if you eat that. And it says that she saw the

fruit, that it was good and good for food and good for knowledge.

Good desires. We want food and we want

knowledge. But the devil wins here because

he twists those desires to get those good in rebellious ways,

to get knowledge that has not been approved by the Lord.

He twists things, he deceives, he seduces by playing upon our

desires. Revelation 12/9.

He's actually called the deceiver, and the great dragon

was thrown down, that ancient serpent who is called the devil

and Satan, which means adversary, the deceiver of the

whole world. Jesus too picks up on this

deception theme in John 8. Very high drama text.

He's confronting the Pharisees. He says you, you are of your

father, the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires.

He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in

the truth because there is no truth in him.

When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a

liar and the father of lies. He's a liar and his lies lead to

murder. He is an agent.

He is an agent of death. He likes abortion and war and

euthanasia. He likes murder and he lies and

whispers to these ends. He attacked Adam and Eve, and he

goes on, and he attacks the children of Israel in the Old

Testament, and he attacks us as well.

Not only is he a crafty lion and a whispering snake, the Bible

tells us that he's able to disguise himself as an Angel of

light. I don't know about you, but I

think that's scarier than the lion.

No wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an Angel of

light. He can disguise himself.

He can pervert the truth. He's hard to detect.

Acts 1310 and said, You son of the devil, you enemy of all

righteousness, full of deceit and villainy, will you not stop

making crooked? There's that twisting, making

crooked the straight paths of the Lord.

So this Prince of darkness, but motivated by envy, is a liar and

a murderer. He works by deception,

perverting the truth and seducing us by playing on our

evil desires. He attacked Adam and Eve.

He attacked the children in the wilderness.

He attacked our Lord in the text that was read this morning.

And he not only attacks our Lord in the temptations of our Lord

in Matthew chapter 4, but the Bible teaches us that the devil

Matthew 4 · chapter mention

himself was active at particular moments in time during the life

of Christ. We learned that he was active

even in the Christmas stories. When Jesus is born in Bethlehem

in Herod hatches A scheme to kill the baby boys of Bethlehem

is satanic. The devil is there trying to

wipe out the Christ child from the very beginning.

As we go through his life, we see him constantly healing

people who are oppressed by demons, casting them out.

There's all this demonic activity.

We have this temptation narrative in the text.

We also have his interactions with Peter.

Jesus predicts that he has to go to the cross, and Peter says,

surely not, Lord? And Jesus says, get behind me,

Satan. That's a Satanic idea.

Do not pull me off of my mission.

Later, in the mouth of Judas, we find out that Satan actually

entered Judas. The text says Satan entered

Judas during the betrayals. He's on the attack.

He's trying to get at our champion, the Lord.

He's trying to wreck him by having him to sin.

It's not going to work, and it doesn't work for greater is he

that is in US than he that is in the world.

So we have to, after this profile of the devil, we need to

look at our Lord. What does it mean for our Lord

to do war with the snake? It's so easy for us to think

about our redemption being accomplished by the cross, and

most certainly it was. That's the moment of great

sacrifice. That's the ground of our pardon.

But it can be easy. It can be easy, friends, and our

focus on the cross, to forget about the life of Christ that

fulfills all righteousness, that qualifies him to be indeed the

Lamb of God, that takes away the sins of the world.

And so you need to consider the life of Christ as you read them

in the Gospels as part of your redemption too.

And the fact that this second Adam has to face temptation like

Adam and Eve had to face temptation in the garden so many

years ago, that this second Adam has to face temptation and to

come out unscathed and victorious is part of our

redemption story that he fights and wins in these temptation

narratives. If you have your Bible, we're in

Matthew chapter 4, and what we see is this sort of battle of

Matthew 4 · chapter mention

Scripture, Satan quoting Scripture to our Lord, trying to

tempt him. And you'll notice that his first

tactic is very similar to the Garden of Eden.

In the Garden of Eden, he says, look at the fruit, take and eat.

And in this temptation narrative, he goes after Jesus's

stomach. It says he hasn't eaten for 40

days. And I love this.

It's like the best understatement in Holy

Scripture. And he was hungry, hasn't even

for 40 days and he was hungry. So he starts with his stomach.

It worked so many years ago. Command these stones to become

loaves of bread. But Jesus answers back with

scripture. It is written, man shall not

live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the

mouth of God. Stage 2 The devil takes him to

the holy city and set him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said

to him, if you're the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it

is written. Now he's quoting from Psalm 91.

He will command his angels concerning you, and on their

hands he will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a

stone. Jesus said to him again it is

written, you shall not put the Lord your God to the test.

Stage 3, Verse 8 Again the devil took him to a very high mountain

and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory.

And he said to them, All these I will give you, if you'll fall

down and worship me. Then Jesus said to him, Be gone,

Satan, for it is written, You shall worship the Lord your God,

and him only shall you serve. Then the devil left him, and

behold, angels came, and we're ministering to him.

He does war against the snake by pointing out where he is.

Twisting Scripture uses scripture appropriately, finally

says be gone and the devil has to leave.

It's an amazing story indeed. Our Lord is called Lord Saba

oath by Martin Luther. Lord Saba oath his name from age

to age the same. You don't often have to sing

Hebrew words in church. We try to make it easier for

you, but we're following Luther. He put in a Hebrew word Lord

Saba oath. What does this mean?

What does this mean? Lord Saba Oath refers to the

Lord's being the Lord of Angel armies.

It's often translated as Lord of Hosts or Lord of Armies.

This is not just anyone. This is a God who is mighty, the

Almighty. And this Lord Saba Oath.

His name is the one who takes on the serpent in this temptation

narrative and overcomes. He is motivated by love instead

of envy, instead of being a deceiver and a liar.

He is the truth, the way, the truth and the life, the living

truth. Instead of being a murderer, it

says our Lord is a life giver, someone who resurrects the dead.

He's the champion of the people. He is the victor over the the

devil and he is the defender and blesser of the brethren.

We learned that the the devil is called the the accuser of the

brethren. The Lord is the defender and

blesser of the brethren. Interesting in this text too

about how the Psalm 91 is being used and I got kind of excited

about this. I wanted to share this this

morning. It's interesting that the devil

is trying to get Jesus to command his angels in an

inappropriate way, to put God to the test.

He commanded his angels concerning you on their hand, on

their hands. They will bear you up, lest you

strike your foot against the stone.

Throw yourself off Jesus. You're the Lord Saba oath.

You're the the commander of Angel armies.

They'll do what you say. They'll keep you from hitting

the ground. Do it.

Jesus says no, it is written, you shall not put the Lord your

God to the test. And what is interesting and what

is kind of embedded in here, though it may not be Matthew's

main point, we can dig in here and learn.

You know what else is really cool about Psalm 91?

Satan is quoting Psalm 91 to try to tempt Jesus to command his

Angel armies in an inappropriate way.

You know what else is cool about Psalm 91?

If you just go to Psalm 91 and read about it a little bit, let

me show you. Let me show you this.

Verse 11 Psalm 91 For he will command his angels concerning

you, to guard you in all your ways.

On their hands they will bury you up, lest you strike your

foot against the stone. So far so good.

We've heard all this. Keep reading.

You will tread on the lion and the adder, and adder is a snake.

You'll tread on the lion and the adder.

The young lion and the serpent you will trample under foot.

You think the devil knew that? The very Psalm that he was

trying to use to tempt the Lord to sin.

Just a couple verses down, predict and sing about his

downfall. That prowling lion that's

seeking someone to devour like Scar in The Lion King.

The usurper, the whisperer, the deceiver.

Guess what? We got a better lion, the Lion

of Judah. You will tread on the lion, but

also the snake, the snake in the Garden of Eden, the whispering

snake that tempts the humans to sin.

It says even in Genesis that someone is coming that will

stomp his head. I remember years and years ago

when the Passion of Christ first came out and I was in this

packed movie theater up in Dallas, down in Dallas, up from

where I lived, packed movie theater in Dallas.

I didn't know what to expect. There's a lot of hype.

Movie theater was packed things in Aramaic.

I have to read this whole movie. This is an interesting

experience. And in the very first scene,

we're in the Garden of Gethsemane and there's a snake.

I hate snakes. This movie is not going so well.

I have to read it. And now there's a snake.

Jesus is praying in agony and there's a snake and then I'll

never forget this. I'll never forget this.

This. The scene has him stand up and

he stomps so hard. It looks like he sends that

snake all the way to the core of the earth.

I mean, it just disappears. Boom, just like that.

Now, that imagery is not in your Bible, but it's consistent with

biblical themes. A snake stomper is predicted,

and Jesus comes and stomps the snake.

And I was amazed about how they included that in the film.

And I wanted to jump up in this crowded theater from my seat and

go, yes, but I thought I should probably just sit there and

watch the rest of the movie, which is what I did.

Stomps the snake. You will trample him under foot.

Greater is he that is in you that is in than he that is in

the world. He wins.

And we can go on and see how he is predicted to be the the

victor. And though we still live in this

world where the devil has some limited jurisdiction, is able to

create mayhem and we have this, this this enemy.

We have a Savior that has, that has conquered him and will

conquer him completely when He returns.

Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, He,

Jesus Himself part, likewise partook of the same things.

That is, He became human for us, that through death He might

destroy the one who has the power of death, that is the

devil. Hallelujah, John, little

children, you are from God and have overcome them.

For he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.

Friends, I get a little bit concerned sometimes when I hear

Christians talk about the devil as though he's just as powerful

as God. Like the devil and God are yin

and Yang, these opposing opposites that are locked in a

arm wrestling match that's just going to be dead, even stalemate

forever. And we're worried about the

devil like he has a plan for our life and that he knows all

things and and that he's all powerful.

He's not his craft and power are great, but he's not omniscient

or omnipotent. He's able to get around pretty

fast and has lots of workers, but he's not omnipresent either.

God asked him, what have you been doing?

And he says I've been walking to and fro on the earth.

You think God has to walk around places to be places?

He doesn't Prowling line. That sounds scary.

It is, but he has only in one place.

And So what do we need is a respect for the devil, but

understanding whatever his PowerPoints are, when you

compare them to omnipotence and omniscience and omnipresence and

the almightiness of the almighty God, which is infinite.

Whatever his PowerPoints are, there's an infinite gap between

the creator and the creature. And we need to have faith in a

bigger God, a greater God than we do our worries about this

ancient foe respect but a greater view of Jesus.

What are some of our applications this morning?

Try to draw these specifically from Holy Scripture.

James 4 has some helpful thoughts.

James 4 beginning in verse 7. Submit yourselves therefore to

God. Resist the devil and he will

flee from you. Draw near to God and he will

draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners,

and purify your hearts. You're you double minded.

It's easy to think of that maybe as an unrelated list, but I

think it's probably better to think about that as a unit.

You want to know how to be successful against a spiritual

adversary like the devil? We need to submit ourselves

therefore to God. And what have we been learning

to pray in the Lord's Prayer? Not my will but yours be done.

Not my will, but yours be done. Not my will but yours be done.

Resist the devil and he will flee from you.

We saw that in the text. Jesus said get out of here.

And he left, and the angels came and ministered to him.

The Lord of hosts, the captain of Angel armies, resist the

devil. You will flee from you.

And then the opposite of resisting is drawing near.

So you're this to the devil, drawing near to God, and you'll

draw near to you. We draw near to him in prayer.

We draw near to him in worship. We especially draw near to him

in corporate worship, and we especially draw near to him in

the communion table of corporate worship.

Draw near, cleanse your, cleanse your hands, you sinners, purify

your hearts, you double minded. He ends by saying, look, can we

be honest about our sin? Can we resist the devil by

confessing our sin, by asking the Lord to forgive us, to take

another step of faithfulness? Then Ephesians 616 through 20,

we'll finish with this text. In all circumstances, take up

the shield of faith, the great armor of God text.

Take up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the

flaming darts of the evil one. Take and take the helmet of

salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of

God. And then look how emphatic Paul

is about prayer, praying at all times in the Spirit.

And in case you didn't hear me with all prayer, and in case you

didn't hear that and supplication, which is prayer.

So after all of this beautiful imagery about the armor of God,

you know what he tells you to do, friend, be a prayer warrior.

Pray. It is so easy and probably

Satanic for us to think that prayer does nothing, that prayer

is weak sauce. Oh, there's nothing left to do

but pray. The Bible, I think, explicitly

teaches that prayer is mighty, that prayer is powerful, that we

resisted, that we resist the devil through prayer and

supplication. We must be people of prayer.

If you also notice the mention of the sword of the Spirit,

which is the word of God, because I think it's very

insightful to notice that Jesus knew his Bible.

He knew that the devil was twisting his Bible and he

rebutted with other texts. He was able to win this Bible

battle with the devil because he knew Holy Scripture.

So I think that's an application for us.

Do we know our Bibles? Are we people of prayer?

Are we prayer warriors? And I hope through this careful

and slow exposition of the Lord's Prayer that we're not

just learning about prayer. They're not just thinking about

all of these Bible verses, but that it's actually changing our

habits as individuals in our times of prayer with Jesus on

our own. But it's also helping our church

be a platoon of pray, praying people, of prayer warriors that

pray against all evil and especially the devil.

Can we do that together? Let's do that together.

Even today as we conclude. We have a great enemy, friends,

but greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world.

We've been concluding by saying the Lord's Prayer out loud

together. If you don't know it, that's OK

No pressure. And then we get to that line

where we don't know what to say. Trespasses or sins or debts.

We'll say together. Trespasses.

OK, let us pray together. Our Father, who art in heaven,

hallowed be thy name, thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done

on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day Our Daily

Bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those

who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but

deliver us from evil. For thine is the Kingdom, and

the power and the glory forever. Amen.