Evil and the Evil One

Jesus knew that, like every other human in history, we would struggle with temptation. That’s why He taught us to pray, “Let us not yield to temptation.”

But we are not done. We need more than to simply “not yield.” We need rescue.

And don’t let us yield to temptation, but rescue us from the evil one.

Other translations render this last line simply “deliver us from evil.”

The language actually allows for either translation. I think Jesus did that on purpose.

See, throughout the Bible, evil is an internal and external reality. It resides inside of us as sin. It resides outside of us in our Enemy.

We need deliverance from both.

We cannot battle the evil inside of us.

Albert Einstein once said, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”

Likewise, we cannot combat the sin in our lives with the same sinful hearts that ushered it in.

We are not greater than our sin. But God is. We need His rescue.

We also cannot wrestle down the evil outside of us.

As James Emery White once wrote, “At this point it is customary to declare… that greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world. Yes, but he that is in the world is greater than you. That is why Jesus instructed us to pray not, you will notice, for dominance… but for deliverance” (The Prayer God Longs For).

We are not greater than our Enemy. But our God is. We need His rescue.

This is a humble prayer.

It eradicates any notion of self-righteousness. It forces us to confront out own weakness. It challenges the popular conception that we are “basically good.”

We are not good. But our God is.

We are not great. But our God is.

That is why we pray, “Rescue us, God, from the evil inside of us and outside of us.”

Temptation and Testing

Oscar Wilde famously quipped, “I can resist everything except temptation.”

It’s the cringe kind of funny, isn’t it? We laugh uncomfortably because it hits so close to home. Temptation is hard to resist.

It’s no wonder Jesus included it in the prayer He taught us.

“Lead us not into temptation.”

The Greek word translated as “temptation” is peirasmos. It can mean “temptation.” But it can also mean “test.”

So, before we can really dive into what we’re praying here, we need to understand the difference between being tempted and being tested.

The difference lies in the motivation – the intent.

Temptation comes from the Enemy. He wants us to fail.

Testing comes from God. He wants us to succeed.

The Bible affirms the existence of an Enemy – one who stands in total opposition to God and to the people of God. He is a created being that rebelled against God. He is, indeed, powerful, but he is still a creature under the rulership of the Creator. He can do nothing that God does not allow. And what God allows, He allows for our good and for His glory.

When God allows the Enemy to tempt us, He does so in order to test us.

The Enemy wants us to rebel against our God.

Our God wants us to prove faithful to Him.

We’ll talk more about what, exactly, Jesus is calling us to pray next week.

But, for now, let’s reconsider how we think about temptation.

Every temptation is a test. Every test is an opportunity for God to reveal and form our character.

Vulnerable

God often meets His people in the desert. It is a place where they learn to depend upon Him and upon one another. It is where He prepares them for the purpose He has for them. It is where God can speak to them into the stillness of the desert.

But God is not the only one we encounter in the desert. There is an Enemy lurking. He tries to lure and tempt us and, weak as we are, he often triumphs.

Jesus confronted this enemy while He was in the desert.

Jesus went forty days without food there and, in the greatest understatement in the Bible, it says He “became very hungry” (Matthew 4:2, NLT).

In this moment of vulnerability, the Enemy confronted Jesus.

Satan – which in Hebrew means “the accuser” – tempts Jesus three times. Each angle the Enemy takes is worth study in its own right, but perhaps the most telling line in the account is Satan’s prelude to his temptations.

“If you are the Son of God…”

Just prior to Satan’s temptations, Jesus had been baptized by a man named John. As Jesus came out of the water, a voice boomed from heaven. “This is my dearly loved Son, who brings me great joy” (Matthew 3:17, NLT).

God had just publicly declared Jesus was His Son. Yet Satan calls into question Jesus’ identity.

If you are the Son of God.

Here’s the thing. If you are a Christian, God has also made a declaration about your identity.

See how very much our Father loves us, for he calls us his children, and that is what we are! (1 John 3:1, NLT)

You are a part of God’s family.

But the Enemy will try to convince you otherwise.

He’ll come to you in the desert and whisper in your ear. He’ll call into question God’s love and care for you. He’ll come with accusation about how imperfect a child you are. He’ll plant the seeds of entitlement and distrust and bitterness and despair and anything else he can come up with to damage your relationship with God your Father.

He’ll even try to convince you that if you were really a child of God then you wouldn’t be in a desert in the first place.

The Enemy comes to us in the desert because we are vulnerable in the desert.

In our vulnerable state, we have two options.

We can be deceived by the Enemy or we can be dependent upon our Father.

Make no mistake. We’ll do one or the other.

If we are not dependent on God, we will be deceived by the Enemy.

When the Enemy begins to whisper, don’t listen. He’s a liar. Listen instead to the voice of the Father.

When the Enemy hurls temptations, ignore him and run to the Father for wisdom and strength.

When the Enemy calls into question your identity, remember who the Father says you are.

The Enemy is near, but the Father is nearer.