12 Deliver Us
Deliver Us
The vision of life in God’s family which we learn from the Lord’s Prayer has three dimensions. It is a life of devotion, of dependence, and of danger. “Deliver us from evil” is a plea for protection in face of danger that threatens—dangers that appear throughout the New Testament as constantly threatening the Christian believer.
Danger
In our comfortable routines of life we do not think of ourselves as being in danger. But we should; for we are. Once more, the Anglican Prayer Book provides much insight. Thus, the Litany expands “deliver us from evil” into five distinct petitions, and among the evils specified, side by side with circumstantial troubles, are these:
“From sin, from the crafts and assaults of the devil . . . from all blindness of heart; from pride, vain-glory and hypocrisy; from envy, hatred, and malice, and all uncharitableness . . . from fornication, and all other deadly sin; and from all the deceits of the world, and flesh, and the devil . . . from sudden [unexpected, and unprepared- for] death . . . from hardness of heart, and contempt of thy Word and Commandment, Good Lord, deliver us.”
Now we see what our deepest dangers are, and whence they arise. The deliverance we need is not only or mainly from adverse circumstances, but from the spiritual evil within us which makes both adverse and favorable circumstances its springboard for attack. Sin in our hearts, spawning all kinds of inclinations to do something other than God’s will and to love something or someone more than God himself, is the source of our danger. Always and everywhere, the danger of being led astray by indwelling sin remains.
Deceit
Look again at the extract quoted from the Litany. All the evils listed flow spontaneously from the fallen human heart. Satan may be their ringmaster, deciding in what order they shall come on for their performance, but he does not have to inject them into our system; they are already there. And sin works for the most part by deceit. “Blindness . . . deceits . . . hardness of heart” are the keywords on sin’s methods, as “pride . . . hypocrisy . . . uncharitableness” are the keywords on sin’s manifestations. But pride and uncharitableness will masquerade as zeal for God, his truth, and his church—and other moral and spiritual evils will regularly creep in unnoticed while our attention is on something else. This is the way of what a Puritan called “the mystery of self-deceiving,” and what Hebrews calls “the deceitfulness of sin” (Hebrews 3:13).
Facing danger, sensible men keep cool but go carefully, keeping alert, watching each step and ready to cry “help” at the first sign of trouble. So too the sensible Christian will watch and pray, lest he enter into temptation (see Matthew 26:41), and the cry for deliverance from evil will often be on his lips. And then he will be kept safe.
Deliverance
The television program, “This Is Your Life,” reviewed each guest’s personal history from the outside, in terms of work done and friends made. But if you were asked, “What is your life?” you would speak from the inside and go deeper. As a human being, you are a creature of purpose, and you would willy-nilly describe your life in terms of goals you have had, and of challenges, conflicts, frustrations, and progress in pursuit of them.
The secular, man-centered way of doing this is by estimating achievement and non-achievement, success and failure in tasks tackled. Memoirs and biographies of public figures review their careers in this way. Bible writers, Bible characters, and biblical Christians, however, do differently.
To start with, they look at their lives God-centeredly. They see God as the One whose action has been the decisive factor shaping their lives, and as the only one who is able to assess what they have achieved. And they see his action in terms of two main concepts. The first is mercy: their lives appear to them as, in the words of the hymn, “mercy from first to last.” The second concept is deliverance: they see themselves as having been delivered over and over again from trouble and opposition that threatened to keep them from, or obstruct them in, God’s service and their fellowship with him. God “delivered us from so deadly a peril [the Asian affliction], and he will deliver us; on him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again” (2 Corinthians 1:10): so spoke Paul, and his sentiment is typical of the whole Bible view of life, according to which hope for mercy and deliverance from evil, sin within and storms without, is an essential element in faith at all times. A little time with a concordance exploring the Bible uses of “deliver” and “deliverance” will convince you of this.
Can you yet see your own life in terms of being threatened and endangered by evil of all sorts, and so of needing God’s deliverance every moment? If not, believe me, you cannot yet see what you are looking at! You are like a person wandering blindfolded and with ears plugged in the middle of a city street, with traffic coming both ways. Learn from the Lord’s Prayer what is really going on in your life, and as you are increasingly enabled to discern the dangers, lean harder on the Great Deliverer. “Because he cleaves to me in love, I will deliver him”—that is God’s promise to each saint (Psalm 91:14). Claim it; it is for you.
Further Bible Study
A song of deliverance:
2 Samuel 22 (= Psalm 18)
Questions for Thought and Discussion
What does the fact that we must regularly pray for spiritual protection tell us about our lives?
What is meant by the phrase “the spiritual evil within us which makes both adverse and favorable circumstances its springboard for attack”?
What is meant by the Puritan phrase, “the mystery of self-deceiving”?