Sunday Am 10/15/00 Matthew 6:13 " Deliver us from Evil."
With the events of the past week, and the disruptive events in the Middle East; can we say that evil does not exist? We live in a day where men bomb abortion clinics and are applauded as
hereos. Where individuals are summarily beaten and killed because they have a different set of beliefs or skin color or behavior.
1. Deliverence is the universal longing. We have sought it in our prayers orally and spiritually.
*It is as old as humanity.
It is an urgent plea amidst a storm tossed life.
2. deliverence is at the penticle of Salvation.
Gen 3:8-10 Adam and Eve needed deliverence from sin, sorrow, and death. They had lost their fellowship with God, and they were ashamed after their disobedience.
- Deliverence is the cry of the Psalmist: Psalm 51:4
It was the crie of King Saul after he had disobeyed God:
1 Samuel 13:9-12
In all of these cases the urgent need is dileverence.
In the museum at Venance the statue of marble entitled Lacoon
says it all. A father and his two sons have been entangled by three
serpents. They stuggle and fight against the snakes.
Their faces reflect an anguish and fear. And yet we see our society
in this same difficult vise, choking and hurting wound by the
serpents grasp. God stands by awaiting our cry and yet we
never call, pride and ego, and self assesment keep us from
reaching outward to a loving God.
3. Jesus is seeking all types of deliverence for us, from the micro. to the maxi.
To give us victory from:
- moral evil
- freedom from sin sorrow, and death.
- we are asking for clean hands and a stainless heart.
- For freedom to do our very best.
- Deliverence from a sickening sense of impotence that stiffles
us as we face our daily demands that life seems to heap on ourbacks.
- we are coming seeking a deliverence from the anger of berevment,
from the wolf of poverty. We pary for deliverence and victory
in the face of dreams that have never come to fruition, and
hopes that have been defered and illusions that have made our
hearts sick.
4. We find encouragement in Christ's prayer for us,
- in that Christ sees evil as a reality.
- He sees it as grim and gruesome.
James 1:13-15
1Cor 10:13
2 Peter 2:9
No evil is ever according to the will of God. We cannot do
something evil in the name of God and try and hide it behind
church work, it just will not jell. God cannot bless mans' motives when they are contrary to His will.
I cannot begin to explain to you why life is harder for some
than for others. I do know that many of us quietly bare our
own burdens and live in our own private hells. That is why we must strive to love our brothers and sisters in Christ. That
is why we must let each person who assembles with us know that
they are loved and that they are cherished. We should tell
them that there lives are important to us, because they are our friends. And when we do not have a friend we loose out on an entire possibity for the days to come.
