Deliver US from Evil (2)
This world is out of joint, an understatement for sure. But our King Jesus is doing a new thing, putting the world to rights. A new heaven and a new earth wait to be born through pain and travail as the Holy Spirit continues to reconcile the world to Christ. Heaven and earth to be enwrapped in total goodness with no room for evil whatsoever.
The prophets of Israel anticipated the work of making all things new. Same with the prayer of Jesus for deliverance from trials of the evil one. Sixteen prophets begged the people for centuries to turn from their wicked ways. Their refrain: “You’re breaking covenant with God. But his love will never fail.”
They asked and they warned: “Why are your widows and your poor taken advantage of, neglected and begging? Why do you shame God by finding loopholes in the law of love? Can’t you see, apart from God, goodness wanes and evil flourishes? Hope dies. Fear conquers. And horror, like fog, pervades all. A new world must be birthed.” Christ was the attendant physician.
King Herod was the first to unleash his wrath on evil’s terminator. He determined to slaughter innocence. But angels were looking out for the infant Jesus. And Herod’s victims along with Mary and Joseph cried out from the depths: “Deliver us from evil.” They escaped; their prayers delivered him from evil. How often Mary would have told her son so!
When Herod’s evil reign subsided, the family returned under the watchful eyes of angels. Decades later, at age 30, the Holy Spirit thrust Jesus into the arena to fight against the greatest evil ever unleashed on earth from the heavenly realm. He defeated the evil one behind the desert temptation by prayer and fasting. His moment by moment refrain for 40 days and 40 nights was, “Deliver me from evil.” God answered.
Now the demons entered the battle. By ones, by twos and threes. By legions. He fought them valiantly and crushed them. The Psalms, his “sword of the Lord”, these daily prayers his people prayed, were weapons of choice in the conquest of evil.
Finally, Gethsemane and the long day after. All hell was unleashed, this time by the hands of religious leaders. They falsely accused Jesus and man-handled power-hungry Pilate to do their evil bidding. Jesus was justice, innocence, and love personified. With one hateful blow after another they savaged him to death. Their whistling whip, his whispered breath prayers. Their hammered nails, his “Father, forgive them.” Their vicious insults, his victorious “Thy will be done… deliver them from evil”. It was on the cross that deliverance from evil became a fact of history. Jesus threw himself under the wheel of world history. Although it crushed him, he forced it to turn in the opposite direction. He delivered us from evil.
Our Lord lived what he taught us to pray. He knew horrific evil would crouch and pounce. He knew death’s darkness would sweep from the hill of the cross into our every-day lives. The prayer he taught us was rooted in his daily life. It must be also in ours. His prayers crushed evil. Let ours do too.