Deliver Us from Evil – A Two-Step Process

Well, good afternoon, everyone. Wonderful to see you on this Sabbath afternoon. I must say, winter is here. The last couple of... about a week or so ago, we had a snowstorm already, or just a bit of snow. I would say a snowstorm, but it was not that much; but it covered the ground. So fall is almost behind us, and winter creeping up on us.

But everyone, as we begin with this message, if you could choose one practice, think about it, one such an essential practice that you would want your children to practice for the rest of their lives, what would that be?

Now, some of us might not have children. Think in your mind that you have children. What would that be that you would want children to practice for the rest of their lives? Now, the parents in the audience might immediately say, well, I want them to pack out the dishwasher or make their bed. Well, that’s important, definitely. You want to do that. You want them to practice that for the rest of their lives. But what if that same thing, everyone, that we talk about, include your final words before you die, something that’s so important that you wanted to include that.

Think about somebody, when they die, they do not have a lot to say at that final moment. They think about maybe the most important thing that you have that you want to say, that you want to convey to your family, to your friends. What would that be? One thing you want your children to practice, and your final words before you die? Now, we know that God is also a Father and He has children. Brethren, Christ, just before He died, His final prayer that we find recorded in Scripture, and you can turn with me to John chapter seventeen. As we turn there, Christ had final words to say to His people.

Final recorded prayer, and God found a phrase that we’re going to look at, what’s going to be our focus today. That same phrase is found in the final prayer that Christ gave us, that’s recorded in the final prayer. Also, God found it so important that He added into the model prayer that you and I should practice each and every day. That same phrase, we’re going to read now, brethren, as you are in John seventeen, and we’re going to find and look for that phrase right now. Let’s pick up in verse fifteen of John chapter seventeen, as you are there already.

Christ praying to the Father and He says, “I pray not that you should take them out of the world...” What a statement to make from Christ. He lived in the world, He’s ready to leave, He’s ready to die, everyone, and He is praying to the Father that He doesn’t want His people back then and today to be taken out of the world. There’s a lesson in for us, “...but that you should keep them from the evil.” That you should guard them, that you should protect them from the evil. There is the phrase, everyone, “keep them from evil”.

That’s in the final prayer, that’s the important words that Christ had, some of the important words as you read through the whole prayer. There’s much more there, but that phrase is one of them. Let’s go to Matthew chapter six, and I’m sure you already bring to mind the fact that you have read that chapter many times, the model prayer, those words, everyone, as we turn to Matthew chapter six and pick up in verse thirteen. Verse thirteen says, “And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” And He continues on, “For Yours is the kingdom, the power, the glory forever. Amen.”

There we see the very similar phrase, brethren, to deliver us from evil. That’s what our focus is going to be on that phrase today. Brethren, God alone has the power to deliver you and me, but He expects our active participation. He expects that you and I are involved. He’s willing to deliver you and me. We saw that in His final words, Christ prayed to the Father, and even a practice that you and I should do and pray each and every day. A very simple phrase, four words, “deliver us from evil”.

Now, as we focus on this, brethren, on God’s part and our part, He that says that He’s willing and He is the only one that can deliver us, we have a part to play, and that’s what I mentioned, that’s what we’re going to look at. We’re going to look at God’s part and our part that we play in this phrase, deliverance. Think about it, the first word there in the phrase “deliver us from evil”. Deliverance, brethren, comes in two steps, and also our part is also in two steps. That’s all that we’re going to look at today, the two steps that God delivers us, and there are two steps in the process, two responsibilities that you and I have.

Let’s look at the first one, and I’m going to illustrate it. If you look at the word deliver there in verse thirteen, I’m going to make an illustration, a physical illustration to help us to understand what the word deliverance actually means. That’s the first step. The first one here, deliverance, everyone, just simply means to rescue or to snatch from danger. There is nothing strange about it or something that we haven’t heard. That’s very simple. When you deliver somebody, you rescue them, you snatch them from danger.

Now, imagine yourself again, parents, here in the US, a very familiar scenario playing out on a daily basis during the school week. You see that yellow bus stopping at the bus stop. The red lights go on for those brethren in other countries or other parts of the world that you might have seen it in movies and so forth, but there’s an arm coming out of the bus with a red stop sign, and everyone has to stop, the oncoming traffic and those behind the bus.

Now, imagine a child getting off the bus and he’s walking across the road, and a passerby, a car that’s coming by, doesn’t stop. Now, a stranger sees what’s happening in this scenario, so to speak, what’s happening in front of him, and he grabs the child and he snatches him. He grabs him, he rescues him from this oncoming passenger car or van or truck, whatever is coming down the road. We could say that child has been delivered. That person, that stranger rescued the child.

Afterwards, the stranger would probably put down the child, and just, “Are you okay?” Look at the child, pat him down, no scratches, no injuries, and the stranger might look for the child’s parents and might just go on. Brethren, that is what a stranger would do, but that’s not what a parent typically would do. That’s the first step. That’s to rescue, to snatch from danger. But there is a second step, and something in this word that we do not often think about. When you think about rescue, you immediately think about, yes, somebody comes and rescues you or snatches you from danger, like the example that I used.

What about the second step? That is an important one that we want to focus on today as well. If you are looking at the same scenario, going through exactly the same scenario, but this time it’s not a stranger, it’s your child. You are there. You see what is happening. You see that same car or truck or van coming in front of your child and your child crossing the road. What would you do? you would do exactly the same. Run, snatch the child, rescue the child. And then you would do something that the stranger would not do. You would grab the child closer and give the child a hug. You would embrace that child, pull him closer to you. And that’s, brethren, what the second meaning, the second step in deliverance means. It means to draw towards oneself.

So think about God as a Father, God that says, “I will rescue you, I will deliver you.” We pray that each and every day, Christ praying that at the end of His life, praying about us, for us, that God would deliver us. Have that in your mind, brethren. Both ideas is important to have in your mind as we go through this message. When you think about deliver us from evil, have that in your mind. He rescues us from danger, and then He pulls us closer to Himself. That is how God delivers. He doesn’t just put us down, rescues us, and lets us go on our own. He’s actually pulling us closer to Himself.

Now, what does this phrase, “deliver us from evil,” tell us? There’s several things that it can tell us, brethren, and the time allotted to us today, I’m going to go through a couple of things to oil our mind, again, about God delivering us from evil. He’s doing His part. We’ve seen those two steps now, but what is this phrase telling us? First of all, it tells us, brethren, that evil is real. If God included that in the model prayer, there are sixty-six words in that model prayer.

Think about all the things that God had in His mind. Each and every time that you read in the Bible a list of some sort, it took a lot of thinking, a lot of meditation for God to decide, “What am I going to include in this particular list?” There are many lists. You think about the Ten Commandments. To boil it down to the Ten Commandments, it took God a lot of time in thinking what are the Ten Laws that He wants you and me to understand, mankind to understand, but specifically for you and me living God’s way, brethren, to understand and live by them.

The same applies for the model prayer. Think about, He could have added pages and pages and pages into the model prayer, but He didn’t decide to do that. He said sixty-six words are enough. And this phrase, “deliver us from evil,” He wanted in that model prayer that He wants us to practice every day, because one of the things is, brethren, evil is real. Another is, what is evil? If we think about it, this message, I’m not going to focus on all the things that evil is, but we at least want to think about what it is, what the meaning is.

Now, when I searched through the Bible and we used the electronic tools that we have, I found five hundred and sixty-nine verses that just used the word evil. Now, that’s a lot when we think about it. It’s a lot of God’s mind, a lot of verses, things speaking about evil. But think about all the verses that talk or use not the word evil but describe what it is that we have to avoid or what people did that was evil. Then we think about thousands and thousands of verses in the Bible that God focuses on evil, what it means.

In the Old Testament, the word evil, when you look at the word evil, you will see it means bad. Anything that’s wicked or harmful or troublesome, that, when you look at the word evil again in Hebrew. In the New Testament in Greek, it’s also... its meaning is wicked, depraved, something that’s injurious. Think about all the things that can cause people injury or cause you injury, it also means destructive. Anything that can destroy, anything that’s destructive in our lives, in other people’s lives, that’s what the meaning evil is about.

When you look in Matthew, in the phrase that we read there in Matthew chapter six, we’re still, brethren, evil can also mean deliver us from the evil one, meaning Satan. Think about all his characteristics that he has, he is the originator from evil. So a lot of things to think about when we just look at the word, particularly the meaning of evil in that phrase. Brethren, evil is anything that moves us away or move away from God, away from His truth, away from God’s law, anything. That’s what I want to use as a definition for us today. As I mentioned, do not want to dig so much and too deep into evil itself.

Now why do... Again, what this phrase tells us as we go back, we said evil is real. We looked at the definition of evil a little bit more of what it is. And then, brethren, another thing is we need deliverance. You and I need deliverance. It says there, “deliver us from evil”. Speaking about you and me, we that read that phrase, we as God’s people. Think about the different scenarios, situations that you can find yourself in each and every day when you travel to work, when you sit at work, when you travel to school, wherever you are. There are scenarios in this world as we saw in John seventeen where Christ said, “Don’t take them out of the world.” There was a reason that God want us to stay in the world, but to be delivered from evil.

Think about all the evil around us, things that you might see and know that can cause danger, destruction, things that are wicked, or things that you don’t even see. When we know it’s real and around us, brethren, we come to realize the same thing that Christ said to “deliver us.” We know that we need deliverance. Even you and me, everyone on a daily basis with human nature, we know we battle. We battle human nature. We battle harmful, selfish, destructive things that oppose God in our own nature. So it’s not just in the world, it’s also in our nature. We battle that, and when we get to know that more and more, we realize you and I need deliverance.

Again, if you see it, if you realize it at that point or not, visible and invisible. But brethren, we also said part of God’s role is He is the only one that can deliver us. That verse make it clear, “deliver us from evil.” Let’s go to Psalm thirty-seven. Psalm thirty-seven, making it clear that God is the only one that can deliver us. Very simple, brethren. We know that. But we want to stress that when we go through this simple phrase, four words, “deliver us from evil.”

If you are there, in Psalm thirty-seven, it says in verse thirty-nine, I’m going to read two verses here. Psalm thirty-seven, verse thirty-nine, it says, “But the salvation of the righteous is of the Lord.” We can say the deliverance. “He is their strength in a time of trouble.” This means in a time when you recognize there is trouble. But what about the times, brethren, even when you might not recognize it? He still says He is the one that delivers us. “And the Lord shall help them and deliver them. He shall deliver them from the wicked,” wicked people, wicked situations, wicked scenarios, things that want... what’s depraved, things that are destructive, and even the wicked one, brethren, the evil one. “And save them because they trust in Him.”

So clearly this verse shows us, again, what Matthew mentions, and John, that God is the one that saves us. Let’s go to First John chapter four. First John chapter four, and verse four, another familiar verse, strengthening this point, brethren, that when we look at this phrase, what does it tell us? It tells us that only God can deliver you. Here is a verse that you and I can make a mental note of. It says in verse four, First John four, verse four, John speaking about antichrists coming, “you are of God.”

I can say the same to you, brethren. You are of God. You are God’s children, little children. He says the same there for them. That verse applied to the first brethren in the first era, and that applies to you and me as well. John understood. He wrote down the words that Christ had in His final prayer. He understood that we’re God’s children. He understood what deliverance means. And here he says, “And have overcome them...” Speaking about anyone that’s evil. In this context, it was antichrists. “you overcame them because greater is He that is in you...” you have to understand that and realize, brethren, that God is greater. “He that is in you than he that is of this world.”

That is something that you and I have to, when we think about that four-word phrase, that God is greater than the evil one. He’s greater than all the evil that you face, the ones that you can see, and the evil that you cannot see. He is greater than that, greater than the evil one, greater than wicked people. Every aspect of evil that you can think about, everyone, He says, He is the one that can and will and want to deliver us. But in our mind, we have to see Him greater than that evil.

Sometimes when we’re in a troubled situation, we look and focus more on that troubled situation. We get fearful maybe in that situation where we are, and we do not realize the one that wants to deliver us, the one that we just prayed that morning, “please deliver me from evil that I might face, the temptation that I might face today,” that He is not just able and willing to do it, but He is greater than that evil. He’s the greatest, brethren. He is greater, as He says, that’s in us. God strengthening us. That means we can also do our part.

That helps us to think about, brethren, that’s where we’re going to go now. God promises deliverance. That’s what we often think about. But you and I, brethren, as in anything as Christians, what we do, God requires our participation. Think about anything in Christianity. We are living, we’re active living sacrifices. That means we have to do something. We’re alive. We have a role to play also in this verse, in this phrase. When we want to be delivered, when we pray each morning, when you get up, “deliver us from evil.” Brethren, you trust God that He will do that, that He will fulfill His promise, but also that you will do your part, and He will even help you to do your part. Brethren, we’re not alone in that situation.

But as I mentioned, we looked at God’s role, and there’s two steps involved, as we mentioned. He rescues us, He pulls us closer to Him, and then we have our responsibility. Let’s look at the two-step response from our end. Let’s go to Hebrews. You are in First John, just a couple of chapters back, and go to Hebrews chapter five, and we will pick up in verse fourteen. Hebrews chapter five and verse fourteen, and we look at the first step that you and I need to do, our responsibility.

Hebrews five and verse fourteen says, “But strong meat belongs to them that are of full age.” This just simply means, brethren, that we as Christians must grow to mature. We must develop. We start at one point, learning God’s truth, learning about God’s way of life. We drink the milk of God’s word, and as we begin to develop, Paul, through the Hebrews, tells us today that strong meat, meaning steak, belongs to those that are of full age, the mature Christian.

How do we become more mature? “Even those who have by reason of use...” by exercise of daily praying this prayer, daily doing their part, everyone, “...by the reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.” That is our role, brethren, to discern both good and evil. God doesn’t want you and me to experience evil. I remember I had a friend in college, he wasn’t a religious man at all, but I heard him often use the... or paraphrase the verse in Thessalonians, speaking about, “you have to prove all things and hold fast to what is good.”

In his mind, he thought that you can go out and do anything that you wanted to do, experience what you wanted to experience, but through that experience, you will find out what is good, and then you will be able to hold on to that. That’s not what God is saying here, brethren. God wants us to discern between living our lives between what is good and what is evil without experiencing evil. You don’t have to and want to experience evil, but living our lives in this world, brethren, we can learn, and as God protects us from evil, you can begin to discern what is good and what is evil and what God wants us to know, that difference.

Christianity is a lifelong process of learning. Adam and Eve failed in that learning process early on, but for you and me, it is learning from our start as baby Christians to discern good and evil, and as we do it more, we grow more. In the beginning, God had to show us what is the difference between the day that you and I have to worship. We didn’t know that day. Many of us worshiped on Sunday and believed that was the day to worship. Then God showed us, He had to show us the discernment, give us the discernment that Sabbath, there is nothing different between the Sabbath in itself, the sun sets and rises in the morning. God has to show us the seventh day was the day that you and I have to worship. That’s easy.

We learn what is right and what is wrong, but brethren, there are things in our lives as we grow as Christians that it becomes more difficult to discern. Is this right or is this wrong? Is this good or is this evil? Let’s go to Proverbs chapter four. We have to discern, brethren, between what is right and what is wrong. Some of those things are, as I mentioned, those are easy to discern and we see that there are things that are much more difficult, but I want to show through an illustration, a simple illustration, as we turn to Proverbs four, verse twenty-seven, everyone. Give you a simple illustration of thinking about when we think about discerning good and evil.

Reading chapter four of Proverbs, verse twenty-seven, it says, “Turn not your right hand, nor to the left hand, nor to the left, remove your foot from evil.” Let’s look at that first part there, “Turn not to the right hand, nor to the left.” Now your hands, brethren, are very similar. You have a left hand and you have a right hand. Sometimes they are a little bit different. One can be more skilled. I write with my left hand, I’m left handed, but I can write with my left hand or maybe if I want to sketch or draw something, I can do it with my left hand, but put a pen in my right hand, not so much. The sketch will look more like a first grader’s sketch or drawing than putting it in my left hand.

So there is similarities, but there is a difference as well. When I want to turn a wrench, I will use my right hand. When I throw a ball, I will do it with my right hand. So there is a difference between the right and the left hand. But brethren, human nature often treats good and evil very much in the same way. We put them next to each other, almost like what you put in your left hand or in your right hand. Let’s say I put evil, I say evil is represented today as a ball, a bouncy ball, our doggy, he loves to play fetch, you throw a ball, and he brings the ball back.

So let’s say I take one of those balls, a red ball, and let’s say that represents evil. I put it in my left hand today, that’s a red ball in my left hand, that represents evil. Let’s put a green ball in my right hand, and that represents what is good. So you have good and evil. You can look at me, if I had those balls in my hand, you would say the left ball, Mr. Viljoen, the red one, that’s evil. And the one in your right hand is green, that’s what’s good. You can easily discern between the two. But what if I change them up and I put the green ball in my left hand and the red ball in my right hand? you will still say, now, evil is in my right hand and good is in my left hand.

But if I leave it there for long enough and I begin to switch them over, brethren, over time you can begin to think, “Is good in the left hand or is it in the right hand?” you can get confused. It’s easy to get confused in our mind, brethren, even as Christians, between what is right and what is wrong. Let’s go to an example in Isaiah chapter five, Isaiah chapter five. We can get confused with even the simplest things that we can discern, brethren, even if they are a little bit more difficult.

Isaiah five verse twenty, it says, “Woe unto them that call evil good and good evil.” People knew at one point what is good, and they begin to call it evil and evil good. People can get confused. Even you and I can get confused as well. “That put darkness for light and light for darkness. That put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.” We just looked at those two balls and said we will not become confused, but brethren, we can get confused. And I want to use just an example of that.

When we grew up in South Africa, I never really... I saw in the movies, again, like the yellow bus we saw in the movies about Halloween. But each year, and we just came through Halloween, brethren, and as I prepared this message, looked at a couple of articles and thought about it. That’s something where people, entire society, entire culture celebrates horror, darkness, and evil. It was projected this year alone that in the United States, everyone that participate and buy all the trinkets, the decorations, the candy, even gift cards, would spend thirteen billion dollars just this year alone.

Think about that, brethren, celebrating something that God opposes. He doesn’t oppose the things on people’s lawn, but He opposes what it represents, that evil, that gore. But people celebrate it. They start to begin to call what is evil good. They celebrate what is scary, what is destructive, troublesome. Now, you and I, our response is not that we go run on the lawn and begin to vandalize the different things on the people’s lawn, “Oh, that’s so evil, I break that gory skeleton, and you have to get it off your lawn. That’s evil.” No, that’s not what we do. What do we do? We can discern, brethren, just using an example, that that’s an extreme element, but we can say that’s evil.

But we also can realize that with God’s help, everyone, we need to discern between things that’s maybe not as obvious, because this is an example where human nature, brethren, makes something that is evil good, and we want to stay away from those things. Let’s go to Psalm twenty-five, asking for discernment for the obvious things and those that are not obvious. Psalm twenty-five, and we will pick up in verse four, David asking God here, he says, “Show me your ways, O Lord, teach me your paths.” Show me your ways. I don’t know. I don’t know necessarily by myself, especially in a world that is filled with evil, that God didn’t want to take us out, brethren, but we can ask, “Show me your ways, O Lord, teach me your paths.”

There is teaching involved, there is discernment involved. Each and every day as we pray that prayer, we can think about our role, just to discern, show me to see what is evil, to discern it, to know, “Lead me in your truth.” We said evil is everything that takes us away from God’s truth, what it is not. So, “Lead me in your truth, show me, Father, and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation. On you do I wait all the day.” I wait on you to help me, to teach me, to help me to discern. So brethren, we discern first. That’s the first step that you and I take, to ask for discernment and to practice it, as we read in Hebrews five.

Make our senses, exercise our senses, living the Christian way of life, actively participating, looking, watching. And then, brethren, the second step is to step away, bring distance between you and evil. We saw there in Proverbs four that it said, turn not to the right hand or to the left, remove your foot from evil. In our mind, we shouldn’t have them close to each other like your left and right hand and think they are similar. You have to take your foot away, you have to bring distance between you and evil, and that is the second step, and that’s where we’re going to spend a little bit more time for us on what you and I need to do, brethren.

That is the second step for you and me. Our response is to learn to fear and obey God. Let’s go to Proverbs. I mentioned Hebrews before, it’s still in my mind, but Proverbs chapter eight, again, a very simple verse. What can you and I do, everyone? What is our responsibility after discerning, after learning? Proverbs eight, verse thirteen says, if you are there, Proverbs eight, verse thirteen, “The fear of the Lord is to hate evil...” and it goes on to a list. That’s a list that we can add when we talked about evil, there is a list of a couple of things.

“Pride…” If you can learn and discern pride in yourself, we often see it more in other people, but we sometimes lack to see it, and it’s difficult to discern in ourselves; “…arrogancy, and the evil way.” That’s a summary statement for everything that we talked about, brethren. The evil way, you and I have to discern between God’s way and the evil way. It takes a lifetime to exercise our senses to effectively do that. “The forward mouth,” God says, “I hate.” So you begin to hate what God hates. If you want to love the truth more, brethren, how can you strengthen that through this step?

The more we hate evil, you will walk away from evil. Where do you walk? You walk closer to God. You get closer to His truth, closer to His way. You begin to love the truth more. The more you hate evil, the more you will begin to love God’s truth, everything about it. As we mature, brethren, we learn to hate evil, and that again, you have to know what it is. Small and great. The big things and the small things. We don’t hate people, we hate the effects. We see this world destructive, we look at those things, and we hate it. We don’t balance them in our hand and think, “Oh, that’s not so bad.” We create distance, we run away from it in our mind and in our actions.

The more, brethren, we see clearly the destruction of evil, the more we move towards God. That’s an active process. That’s the two-step, the second step there that you and I fear and obey God. Let’s go, we’re in Proverbs eight. Let’s go to Proverbs chapter one and read verse thirty-three. It says, “But whoso hearkens unto me shall dwell safely and shall be quiet from evil, the fear of evil.” Evil tends, when you look at Halloween, these scary movies... I read an article where they say all these things on people’s lawns and the movies, everything is getting scarier and scarier. People want more of that scary.

The scary things that was scary ten years ago is not making them fearful anymore. We want to hate fear, brethren, but God says here that if we obey Him, if we fear Him, we will be safe and we will be quiet from the fear of evil. What a position to be in, brethren, when a world around us is getting more and more deplorable, more evil, that you and I can be free from that, safe from that. The more we hate evil and the more you and I strive to obey God, listen to Him, obey Him, the more you and I will be free from the evil around us.

Brethren, why does God deliver us? Let’s go to Psalm ninety-one. Why does He deliver us? Psalm ninety-one, and we will just read verse fourteen, picking up in verse fourteen and verse fifteen. Psalm ninety-one, “Because he has set his love upon me...” meaning obeyed me, “...therefore will I deliver him. I will set him on high because he has known my name. He has known that I hate evil, and he has striven to obey me and hate that evil. He shall call upon me and I will answer him.” Call upon Him each and every day as we pray that verse, everyone. “I will be with him in trouble.”

When you need deliverance, again, when you see it and when you don’t, brethren, a lot of the deliverance God does for you and me, brethren, we never saw. We never even knew about it. We were quiet from the fear of evil, but God still delivered us. “I will deliver him and honor him.” That’s a promise, again, that God makes. That’s why He will deliver us when we choose to fear Him and choose to obey Him, put our love upon Him, our love upon His ways.

Brethren, this message will strengthen your partnership with God and strengthen your prayers, and it will change them. If you apply this, what we’re learning, just to those four little words that we read. Let’s go to First Thessalonians. First Thessalonians chapter five. We begin to draw to a close, everyone. What can you and I do more when we fear God, when we obey Him? Thinking about things that you and I can do here, First Thessalonians five verse twenty-two, it says “Abstain from all appearance of evil.” You don’t want even evil to appear in your mind. That’s the first place where it often starts.

Let’s go to Romans chapter twelve. That’s where it often starts in our minds. It says not just the appearance when you are walking in a grocery store, and you know your struggle is with alcohol or cigarettes. You want to avoid the aisle. You don’t want evil to appear in front of you. When you go and walk down in Amsterdam, you don’t want to walk down the red-light district. You want to avoid that. You don’t want to put your body, yourself in that situation. But what about our thoughts, brethren? We don’t want it even to appear in our mind.

Romans twelve verse twenty-one says here, “Be not overcome of evil...” Interesting that evil is mentioned first. That’s the first thing that comes to our mind. Human nature, good is not the first thing coming to us, brethren. With human nature, often, it’s evil that comes first. But it says, “Be not overcome of evil...” You know it will come. We read it in our daily prayer that we have to pray knowing, brethren, that we need deliverance. But it says, “Be not overcome of evil but overcome evil with good.”

There is an antidote that you and I can... Again, if we discern what is evil and put that out of our mind, we fill it with something that is good, fill it with God’s truth. Fill your mind with the truth, everyone. That’s how you and I conquer. It must be subdued when thoughts that you know that you are struggling with come into your mind. Subdue them, overcome them, conquer them with good thoughts.

Then let’s go to Proverbs chapter eight. Proverbs chapter eight and verse six. It says, “Hear, for I will speak of excellent things, and the opening of my lips shall be of right things. For my mouth shall speak truth, and wickedness is an abomination to my lips. All the words of my mouth are righteousness. There is nothing froward or perverse in them.” Even if it’s in our thoughts, it will come out in the way that we speak as well. The more we fill our mind with God’s truth, brethren, and speak it, there will not be place for evil.

Brethren, that is the two steps for you and me, that we discern first evil and then fear and obey God. That’s a double strength. It strengthens the truth. This strengthens our relationship with God. As we conclude, everyone, brethren, this message of “Deliver us from evil” is far more than a line in a prayer that we pray each and every day. It reveals a living relationship, a partnership with God and His people. God’s part is unmistakable. We know that He says He will rescue us, He will protect us. He knows how to deliver His people in ways that you and I do not always understand, but you and I have a part, a vital part as well.

We should learn to discern evil and then distance ourselves from it. We fear God. We obey Him, and that draws us closer to Him. You see the connection, brethren. Both steps must work together. God’s deliverance part is not complete when God snatches us from evil. When He pulls us closer, you and I must do the same as a child... Think about a child. If you rescue your child, the father will grab the child, and the child will do exactly the same because he’s thankful for God’s deliverance. He grabs a hold of his father. That’s the same thing that you and I do, brethren. When we fear God, when we discern evil, we draw closer to Him, and that relationship strengthens us.

Brethren, here is an astonishing truth. The closer we stay to God, the less power evil will have over us. The more we fear God, the less we fear anything else. The more we love the truth, the more we hate what destroys it. We don’t always know when God delivers us, but He does. He knows how, He knows when, and He knows exactly what His children need. Every day we pray, brethren, this command from Christ, “Deliver us from evil.” And every day we live the response God expects, to discern evil, to hate it, to obey Him, and to draw closer to Him. Because in the end, deliverance is not just God pulling us out of danger, it is God pulling us into His love, into His truth, and His protection.