The Lord's Prayer - Adult SS - Lesson 6: Deliver Us

So we're continuing looking at the Lord's Prayer line by line. And if you remember last week, we didn't get to finish last week's lesson, which was on forgive us our sins or forgive us our debts.

! And we didn't get to look at that last clause as we forgive our debtors. And I do want to cover that. And so I want to cover that today.

It won't take too long, but it's really important. But I'm going to look at the end of the lesson, kind of when everyone comes in, all the parents come in. So we'll look at that at the very end. But to begin today, we're going to look at the next line.

We're going to look at it. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. But before we dive in, let's pray the whole prayer together. Pray then like this.

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread.

Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For yours is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever and ever.

Amen. So let's just have a reminder of the structure here. So remember, you can break the Lord's Prayer up into three sections. You've got the address, who we pray to. Then the next two lines are the petitions about God, asking things about God.

And then this is what we're in now, the petitions for us, asking things specifically about us. And again, Jesus is teaching us something here. In this prayer, he's taking us to a mini zoo, remember?

And this zoo is filled with different topics of the Christian faith. And in this prayer, he's teaching us to pray, but he's also teaching us the essentials of the Christian life.

And we see here in this section, the petitions about us, we see the three most basic and important needs of the Christian life. So think back to what we've seen.

We've seen our need to live daily bread and our need to be right with God's forgiveness. And the next big thing we're seeing today is our need for spiritual protection.

That's what this prayer is all about, spiritual protection. Now that we are alive, we need to be right with God and we need to be rescued from spiritual danger.

Or you can sum up, the Christian life has three big needs, three Ps. Provision, pardon, protection. Provision, pardon, protection. And we're on protection today.

And so as Jesus teaches us to pray for our spiritual protection, he's taking us back into the mini zoo. And he's taking us to the creation part of the zoo.

And he's teaching us about the presence and nature of evil in creation and in the Christian life. And he's also teaching us something about our own hearts.

He's taking us to the man part of the zoo, the humanity. And he's teaching us something about our own hearts. And he's also taking us to the God part of the zoo, showing us the power of God to rescue us from evil.

And so this petition, you kind of see it is split into two halves. So can you see this? Lead us not into temptation. Deliver us from evil. And just so you know, deliver just means rescue.

OK, so it doesn't mean deliver the post. It means rescue. So rescue us from evil. And although this is kind of in two halves, these aren't separate things.

OK, in a way, they are asking for the same thing, just in different ways. So to lead us not into temptation is to deliver us from evil and vice versa. OK, and so I'm not going to break this sentence down today.

I kind of just want to treat it all together. Kind of it's asking the same thing, but in different ways. And I want to look at all together and just see what Jesus is teaching us here. And the first fundamental thing we need to see is evil is real.

Evil is real. This is the first thing I want us to see today. So, again, I don't want us to miss something obvious here. The fact that Jesus teaches us this, it shows that evil is a real thing in this creation.

So good and evil is not just something kind of subjective in our own minds that we just kind of come up with, that we define what's good and evil.

And, you know, it's kind of it's a bit of an illusion, but it's not really real. No, evil is a real thing in this world. And what do we mean by evil?

Evil, well, you could get lots of definitions, but it's basically this evil is a corruption of what is good. So it's anything that is not the way God designed it to be.

OK, so God made everything good. But in the fall, that's when evil entered the world and it corrupted. That evil is the corruption of good. It's a corruption of creation.

And so in this fallen world, we need to just recognize the obvious here, but it's important that there is evil corruption everywhere in this creation.

The Christian life is a life surrounded by evil. And this evil, what's implied in this prayer is this evil is a danger to us.

We need rescue from it. Therefore, it's a danger. And so, well, by definition, evil, because it is a corruption of good, evil is destructive and bad for us.

It's a corruption. So if no daily bread can destroy us physically, well, evil here is what can destroy us spiritually.

And so Jesus is teaching us our need is to avoid this evil, to lead us not into temptation. And we need rescue from it when we're in it.

And so, because as Jesus puts it, evil is a temptation. Evil is an attraction.

It can attract us and pull us into that danger. So evil is both all around, but also evil tempts us. We are pulled toward evil.

Temptation. Temptation. That's what temptation is. It's a pull. And so, again, think about what this prayer is implying.

We aren't immune to evil. So it's all around and it pulls us and we aren't immune to it. The Christian life isn't a walk in the park through all this evil.

No. Evil is real and it's a real danger to us. And I wanted to see what kinds of evil there are in the Bible.

So if evil is, in general, a corruption of good, okay, but what do we mean by evil? What kind of things pull us? Well, I wanted to break out into groups and see what the Bible highlights for us.

What kind of evil, what kinds of evil and temptation do people face in the world? Do we face in this world? What do, so that's the first question, and what do these things do to us?

Okay, so what are the evils and what do they do to us? What are they trying to do to us? So break out into groups. I'll give you a few minutes for that and then we'll bring it together. Go for it. Go for it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

5 and Ephesians 6, we need to realise Satan is a real spiritual being with real power, cosmic power, active in this world. And he acts and schemes in this world against the church. And what is he trying to do? You can see in 1 Peter 5, he's trying to devour us. He's trying to get Christians to walk away from God. He's also acting toward non-Christians as well. He wants people to be blinded to the gospel so they don't even hear the gospel or believe it. But particularly for us in the Christian life, he's trying to get us to walk away from God. He's like a lion seeking to devour Christians, destroy their faith. And how does Satan do this? Well, he has lots of schemes, lots of plans. But if we think about 1 Peter in particular, the book of 1 Peter is all about persecution, actually. So persecution against Christians. And this is one way Satan gets us to walk away from the faith. It is by scaring us with persecution. So trouble at work because of your faith. Crack down from the government with, let's say, conversion therapy laws or anti-conversion therapy laws. Hounding online because of Christian views on marriage. Whatever it may be, those are the roars of Satan trying to scare us and make us think, Jesus isn't worth this. I'm just backing out.

And that's why it says Satan roars of all things. So a lion's roar scares you, doesn't it? And it makes you run away. Well, Satan tries to do that with persecution. And that's one scheme, Satan, that's one evil in this world and one scheme that Satan uses to tempt us away from God. But he can also use all sorts of things. We'll think about more of this in a moment. But think about how many people have walked away from the faith because of a relationship. I want that boyfriend or girlfriend more than God.

But Mark 4, if we can see, it might help us to see some other things he uses. What other temptations are there out there? What other things pull us away?

So we've seen in Mark 4, there is also Satan's mentioned and persecutions mentioned as well. What else? Cares of the world, right? What are some of those things? What are the cares of the world?

Riches. Riches. Riches. Okay. The deceitfulness of riches is mentioned there. The deceitfulness of riches, it's an evil that pulls us away from God. Deceitfulness of riches. Okay. And notice, Jesus doesn't say riches or money is evil here. No, having money is not an evil thing in itself.

Wealth is a good gift from God. But money can deceive. We can want money and a big house and a nice life. We can want that more than anything else, more than God. And we can think it's worth it.

Money becomes our God. And what does it do to us? You can see, it chokes out the word. We hear the gospel and think, well, okay, well, forget that. I'm fine the way I am. I've got plenty. I have money. And so it's the deceitfulness of riches that is a real evil that pulls us away from God.

And it's linked to, do you remember, the self-sufficiency we saw two weeks ago. Money makes us think we are self-sufficient. And so it deceives us thinking, well, I don't need God. I'm sufficient all by myself. And so there is an evil that pulls us into destruction. It is the deceitfulness of riches.

And you can broaden this out to, as Noah highlighted, the cares of this world or worldliness. Okay. So the love, not just of money, but just love of things in this world. It pulls us away from God. Relationships, houses, careers, sports. Not that those things are evil in themselves.

Sports are a great thing, but worldliness is the love of those things more than God. And that attraction, it is a real temptation and evil that pulls us away to the point that we say, oh, well, football on Sundays. Of course, that's a no brainer. I'll choose football and instead of church. I'll put my career before anything else at all before God. Worldliness is preferring this world now to the world to come. And before we know it, God is choked out of our lives.

These are all that the dangers that surround us. And just like persecution, Satan can use all these things to pull us into sin. So either to pull us away from the faith or just to pull us into sin, into the ruin of sin. And he uses things like money to do that, which is why it's appropriate to pray.

You notice we've been praying, deliver us from evil, but it's also appropriate to pray, deliver us from the evil one. Have you prayed that before? You might've heard both those versions.

Some translations put it that way. And that's because the Greek for what we would say evil, the Greek could be translated evil or the evil one. And I think actually that the evil one is most likely meant here. Maybe that's the most accurate translation, but both are appropriate. So please do pray either. Because either, both work because either it just means all sorts of evil deliver us from all sorts of evil out there, which includes Satan or Satan. We, or we pray deliver us from the evil one who uses all kinds of evil in his scheme. Either way, right? So they kind of, they end up meaning the same thing. Either way, we are praying, rescue us from all these dangers, Lord, and please don't lead us through any of those things. But there's another danger, another evil that tempts us. What does James one say? What's another evil in temptation?

temptation? Our own desires. Our own hearts. Tempt us. Right. Actually, what's a better way to do this? And it's our own desires. Right. Our own hearts. So there are temptations not only out there, but temptations within that pull us towards sin. It's those sinful desires that the lust, the anger, the pride, the laziness, the cowardice, the greed, all in our hearts, our own desires, what we want, pull us towards sin. And that's the nature of being fallen. Okay. Our desires are corrupt. And so we actually want to do evil. We want to sin. So the evil and danger, it's not only out there, it's inside of us. And we want to do that evil. And so even though we are forgiven, remember, this is the children of God praying to our heavenly father, even though we are forgiven, this is always a real danger. To fall into the sin that displeases our father. Do you remember last week? Our sin displeases our father. And we can so easily fall into that. And it can ruin our faith. It can ruin our lives. And because we want to do this, it is only by God's mercy that we don't. On our own, we are weak and vulnerable and at risk to all these dangers outside and in. And so Jesus teaches us to pray, pray to God to protect you, even from your own desires. And so to pray, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. It means we are asking this. Heavenly father, as your child, please protect me from the schemes of the devil, because he's after me. Please don't let me fall for the deceit of riches, because I can so easily fall for that. Keep me from the pull of this world, which is very strong. And keep me from where I know my heart will go, because without you,

I will end up in ruin. And so when we pray, lead us not into temptation, we are not saying that God tempts us. Notice the wording here. We're not saying, Lord, please don't tempt me. We're not saying that. We are asking, lead us not into temptation. We are asking, we are recognizing all these things tempt us. Even my own heart tempts me in this life. And so Lord, please don't lead me in those paths.

You guide my life, Lord. And so please don't lead me into things that will pull me away from you. And if I do fall into temptation, rescue me from it, all of it. And so Jesus is showing us something important about the Christian life here. We are not only dependent on God for our spiritual, for our physical needs, for physical life, our daily bread. We are dependent on God for our spiritual life.

We are spiritually dependent. But Jesus, he's not teaching us this just so we get kind of paranoid and scared about all this evil around us. No, he's teaching us to pray this so that we don't get scared. So we don't need to be scared and overwhelmed by all this. But instead, he's teaching us so that we know that God rescues us from evil. And so the second thing I want us to see, God rescues us from evil. We'll stop for questions at the end of this point. So if Jesus is teaching us about the human heart and the evil around us, he's also teaching us what God can do about it. He can deliver us from evil. He can rescue us. And I want us to see why we can pray that. I want us to go to the God part of the zoo now. I want to see why we can pray this and pray with such confidence. So break out into groups and ask these questions, this question, why can God deliver us from evil? Why? What is it about God that he can deliver us from evil? I'll give you just a minute for this.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, wrap it up there.

Okay, why can God deliver us from evil? What is it about God? Why can God deliver us from evil? What do we see in Job?

Because he's omniscient and omnipotent. Yeah, omniscient meaning? Knows all things. Omnipotent meaning? All powerful.

You've been listening to the kids talk. Well done. He's... Because God is powerful. He's all powerful. Because of God's power, he is utterly, completely powerful over all things.

So the forces of evil in this world, though they're all around us, and there is real power there, power in Satan's hands. Though they are real, evil and God are not equal and opposite forces in your life.

It's not like yin and yang, right? No, God is utterly powerful. And sin and evil and Satan, they are not kind of 50-50 powers in this world.

They're kind of hashing it out, trying to battle, and God's trying to win, but evil kind of like fights back. No, it's not that. Evil cannot win against God.

He is all powerful over evil. And so not only can God rescue us from evil, he is guaranteed to rescue us from evil because of his power.

What about Mark? What do we see in Mark? Why can God deliver us? Yeah, Noah? He has power over the devil. Power over the devil. Particularly, well, maybe another word for power, right?

Is it power? What does it say in Mark? What do they see in Jesus? Authority, right? Yeah, it's similar to that.

It's all connected to power. But Jesus has authority over the devil and over the spirits, the evil spirits, right?

Satan's schemes are big and clever and they are global. But Jesus' word destroys them. It's nothing to Jesus.

He, or we see it in 1 John, he has destroyed the work of the devil. And what about Colossians? What do we see in Colossians? It's not so related to God's character, but more what has God done that means he can deliver us from evil.

Because he's cancelled the death against us. They don't have any power. Yeah. That power was all new. Exactly.

Yeah. Because of the cross, Satan and the powers of evil are weaponless, disarmed against God's people. So Jesus took our guilt on the cross.

And that is Satan's weapon against us. He can accuse us of doing all these things and say, look how guilty they are. Look how guilty they are. But Jesus has taken that guilt away. And so he's taken Satan's weapon against us.

Satan does have influence in this world still. But he's ultimately weaponless against the church. He can't actually take us down. He can't snatch away those who belong to Jesus.

And so he is. He's what? God is victorious on the cross. And this is why we can pray this prayer with such confidence.

The sin in our lives that we wrestle with every day. The temptations that we face as we just walk about our daily lives. It is a strong pull.

And we are very aware of that, aren't we? It is a strong pull inside and out. But we want to live like the world. We see it and we want to be like that. And we have so many desires in our hearts that we just want to follow.

But our Heavenly Father knows what we go through. And he loves us too much to lose us. And so we can cry to him for help.

Jesus is teaching us, cry to him for help. Because he will rescue us. He is all powerful. He has the authority over evil. And he's victorious.

Now I must say, it may be the Lord's will that we still go through trials in this life. Okay. This isn't a promise that we will never go through trials.

There may be seasons of hardship and even persecution that may be a part of the Lord's will for us and for this church. But we know that Satan will not win in those times.

And that the Lord is with us in those times. And he's doing it for our good. So just look at James 1 there. So again, this is dealing with persecution.

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds. For you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. Even for these Christians, James writes, it could be the Lord's will that you do experience evil.

The evil of persecution. But actually, it's in the Lord's hands. He's powerful over it. And he's using it for your good, for the refining of your faith, the strengthening of your faith.

And even then, we know, even in those times, we know that the Lord will rescue us. If persecution comes and hits this church, if people are outside with signs and protesting against us, that may be the Lord's will, but the Lord will rescue us from it.

Satan will not win. The Lord will not lose those who are his. And ultimately, he will deliver us. We will never be lost. Any questions on that?

Any questions on what we've had so far? Sam, go for it. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I don't know.

We've run out of Bibles. So, in... Basically, yes. Spiritual. Yeah. Because in... It elaborates more in Ephesians 6.

Speaks of the cosmic powers. We're speaking of supernatural forces here. It's basically... Oh, thanks. So, thanks, Claire. It's Satan and his armies of demons.

It also mentions that the heavenly places somewhere else in Ephesians... That's actually talking about angels there. But, yeah. Go on.

Or do you have more thoughts? I mean, that makes more sense. It's just... It is an obvious compliment there, which is to say, there is no spiritual authority that can...

May say there's nothing that has been disarmed and there's no power that will be above God. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Precisely. So, yeah. It's not speaking about kind of earthly rulers and authorities. Although, Satan can use those earthly rulers. He's not speaking about it here, but he can use that in the case of persecution.

He can use those... Yeah. Those forces. Yeah, Rory. Does Satan really use evil? Or does he create that evil as well?

Because I think that he... Like, you need to destroy it, not create it. Mm-hmm. Does he create the evil? Or does he just use it? So, here's the thing about...

So, okay. Think about the definition of evil before. What is evil? It's a corruption of good. Okay. So, evil in itself is not kind of a thing, like a lump of evil.

It's not a new creation. It's a corruption of creation. And so, can Satan create evil? Well, it depends what you mean by that.

In the sense of a new thing, this lump of evil, no. Because that's not what evil is. It's a corruption of good. But can Satan cause the corruption of good?

Yeah. Like, that's what he's doing. That's a part of his schemes. He's out to corrupt. Does that answer your question? Yeah. Great.

Nice and simple. To finish, I want us to think about what we didn't get onto last week. I know this is a bit of a gear shift. Now you've got to think about the previous petition.

But I want to get back to that last phrase, the previous petition. As we also have forgiven our debtors. Remember, we're thinking about debtors. Or sin as debt.

And so, please excuse this gear shift. But I think this is really important. I just want us to just end on this. I want us to realise, forgiven people forgive. Okay.

So, do you remember, we saw last week how God has forgiven our sins. And what that means. Well, now, at the end of this position, it says, forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.

And when it says that, we need to realise this isn't saying, God, I scratched your back. So, now you've got to scratch mine. Right. I forgave John, so you better forgive me now.

Okay. No, it's not saying that. This request, it's recognising that we forgive others because we've already been forgiven by you, Lord.

So, someone who forgives reflects the forgiveness that they've already been shown by God. So, forgiven people forgive. There is a connection, almost a two-way connection between God's forgiveness and us, God forgiving us and us forgiving others.

And so, as we pray this, we are asking, Lord, please forgive us our debts in your mercy in the same way that we forgive others because of your mercy.

And so, Jesus, he's doing something with this phrasing. He's teaching us, first of all, forgiving others is not optional in the Christian life.

It is essential. Forgiven people forgive. We cannot be forgiven and then refuse to forgive others. And Jesus is also doing another thing.

He's convicting us here in this phrasing. By making us ask, God, treat me as I treat others. It makes us kind of stop, doesn't it?

And it makes us ask ourselves, wait, how am I treating others here? I'm refusing to forgive this person, actually. I still have a grudge against them.

So, wait, hold on. How can I ask God this? So, it's quite a sobering thing to ask intentionally. But it's striking because Jesus wants us to realise how important it is for us to forgive others.

But also here, by highlighting this connection for how God forgives us, it's all connected to us forgiving others. It shows us then how we are to forgive others.

Because if our forgiveness toward others, if it's a reflection of God's forgiveness towards us, like kind of an outflow of it, then how God treats us is how we should treat others.

And so, do you remember the five points of forgiveness that we saw of how God treats us when he forgives us in Christ? Those five points are actually a really helpful guide for then how we should practically forgive others.

And so, I just want us to end by thinking about this. If someone has sinned against you, this is what it then means to forgive them. I've just copied and pasted those five points.

This is what it means to forgive them. Whatever they've done, however someone has sinned against you, we are saying to them, when we forgive them, we are saying to them and to ourselves, number one, I will not think about this sin.

Because God doesn't think about my sin. I will not talk to others about what you've done. Because neither does God.

Remember, he doesn't whisper it to the angels. He doesn't bring it up. He doesn't put it on a big advertising board. No. And third, this is how we forgive. I will not bring it up and use it against you.

Because God would never do that. God doesn't bring up our sin. Wait, hold on. You can't ask for that because you did this last year. You did this last night. God would never, ever do that to us.

And number four, I will not let it stand between us and hinder our personal relationship. Because what are we like with God now? We only have peace with God. And so number five, what is God?

How does God treat us? How should we treat others? I will bless you with the blessing of Christ. I will now pray for you and love you just like Christ does for me. Okay. Forgiveness, it's not just about our feelings.

It is something objective that we do for the sake of the relationship with that other person. And so actually, forgiveness, it's a God-like thing to do.

And by his grace, we are able to do this. Forgiveness, even forgiving the most difficult sins against us because God has forgiven us of infinitely more and infinite debt.

And so forgiveness is essential to the Christian life. Daily forgiveness from our Father and forgiveness toward those who sin against us. I realise that's very different to what we've been thinking about today.

But I wanted to end on that. Are there any questions? Yeah, Paul. Thank you.