C, Midweek Lent 2 - The Lord's Prayer #3 - Matthew 6:9b,13b Luke 11:13 "Deliver us from Evil into Holiness"

“If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke 11:13 ESV)

Hallowed be your name… But deliver us from evil.

We have an Almighty God, who is our Father in heaven.  He transcends all of creation and the earth.  He is more powerful than the power humanity can collectively muster on earth.  Those who have had opportunity to see his glory, and that of his risen Son, fall down in reverence and fear in his presence.  Yet he wants nothing more than to be in fellowship with us.  He has created us out of his power and glory, to join him in his kingdom, and worship him in his power and glory.

But how can we who are evil come into his glorious kingdom without repercussions?   This Almighty God—who is all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving, present everywhere, inside and outside of time, perfect in every way, in patience, generosity, and sinlessness—is holy.

Jesus died to bridge the gap between evil and holy; he is the Christ, the Messiah who redeems us through his death.  But how can he deliver us into the Father’s holy kingdom and presence when our being is embedded in evil? 

When the disciples got a glimpse of the glorified Son of God at transfiguration, they were afraid and perplexed; they did not understand or know how to approach Jesus’ holiness. 

When Saul was confronted by Jesus on the road to Damascus, he too recoiled and was blinded by the glory of the risen Christ. 

So too was the Apostle John.  He shared a special relationship with Jesus in his ministry and is call “the one whom Jesus loved”.  But we hear in Revelation, he fell at the feet of Jesus as though dead when Jesus appeared to him on the island of Patmos.

If Paul and the Apostles react this way, those who knew and walked with the man from Nazareth, how are we to come into God’s presence?

The Introduction of the Lord’s Prayer, the Our Father and the doxology form the outer layer of Jesus’ prayer.  The Holy Spirit teaches us that God the Father is transcendent and present inside and outside of time.

Now the Holy Spirit leads us from this heavenly eternal transcendent reality and teaches us how Jesus joins the great divide between his holiness and our sinful nature and deeds, which Jesus rightly says, “makes us evil”

The essential nature of God’s Spirit is holy, so the Holy Spirit works to bring us to the glorified holy Son of God and our holy heavenly Father.  This work is spelt out by Jesus in the Lord’s Prayer and fulfilled in his death and resurrection.

The Holy Spirit makes us holy, by delivering us from evil into the holiness of Jesus.  Like a courier the Holy Spirit delivers us.

Martin Luther says it best in his explanation of the Third Article of the Apostles’ Creed.  He says, “I believe that I cannot by my own understanding or effort believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to him. But the Holy Spirit has called me through the Gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, and sanctified and kept me in true faith. In the same way he calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian church on earth, and keeps it united with Jesus Christ in the one true faith. In this Christian church day after day he fully forgives my sins and the sins of all believers. On the last day he will raise me and all the dead, and give me and all believers in Christ eternal life. This is most certainly true.” 

The Holy Spirit is the great doer and shaker of the Trinity.  He has been sent by God the Father and God the Son, to bring us to the Son so we can receive and believe the Gospel.  This gift makes you and me holy and keeps us, keeping on in Jesus. This gift is God’s Holy Word and hearing it creates faith.  In Romans ten we learn, “faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ.”  (Romans 10:17 ESV)

The Holy Spirit works faith so we as individuals and as the collective body of Christ remain in Jesus, pray his prayer and other prayers in his name.  The Holy Spirit also fights against all evil within us, and that which works from outside us tempting us to reject God and his holy gifts and live without him.

Living without God or making ourselves God is the evil that leads to all evils.  And the Holy Spirit works tirelessly to deliver us into the bosom of God’s mercy and the holiness of Jesus.  

Jesus was clothed in the weak flesh of humanity with all its desires, he resisted the devil, and pressure from those around him to please them rather than the Father.  He was weak as we are weak, yet without sin.  But despite his perfect life, bore the evil of our flesh on the cross, and was delivered into death.

So, the Holy Spirit leads us to pray, “deliver us from evil”.  We can be reassured we are being delivered from the evil of ourselves into the holiness of God’s kingdom, power, and glory.  We are being delivered from the powers and principles that demonise us within from day to day.

We are being delivered from the evil of this world that comes to us through others, and the many gods we have created for ourselves. These are the evils to which our sinful selves naturally gravitate towards because of the Old Adam within.

And we are being delivered from the devil and his entourage of powers and principalities, that are overcome and completely powerless to the name of Jesus and the work of the Holy Spirit in which we pray, deliver us from evil, into the holiness of Jesus’ name.

After Jesus teaches his disciples how to pray the Lord’s Prayer, he continues encouraging them to be consistent in the power of prayer.  He says, “…I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.  For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.” (Luke 11:9–10 ESV)

Then he says, “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke 11:13 ESV)

If God the Father would send his Son to die for you on the cross, and he wants you to be with him in his kingdom, so you can worship him and glorify him, he will certainly give you all the assistance your need to be delivered from all evil into the holiness of Jesus’ name! 

Pray for the Holy Spirit, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to deliver us from all evil. Amen.

Next week we continue the series on the Lord’s Prayer, “Your kingdom come… Lead us not into temptation”.

C, Lent 2 - Genesis 15:1-15,17-18, Psalm 27, Phillippians 3:17-4:1, Luke 13:31-35, "Forsaken House - Forgiven House"

Luke 13:31–35 (ESV) At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.”  And he said to them, “Go and tell that fox, ‘Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I finish my course.  Nevertheless, I must go on my way today and tomorrow and the day following, for it cannot be that a prophet should perish away from Jerusalem.’  O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!  Behold, your house is forsaken.  And I tell you, you will not see me until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!’ ”

Two of the readings today speak about a house. 

First there is Abram.  He saw his house would be inherited by a servant of his household and not a born heir.  Then, in the Gospel reading, Jesus speaks about Jerusalem and its house being forsaken.

Saint Paul’s epistle to the Philippians, speaks of the body of a person being transformed into a glorious body by Jesus, to be like Jesus.  He teaches the listener to imitate him and others who set an example, as those who have been made Christ’s own (Phil 3:12) through the righteousness of faith (Phil 3:9).

There is no mention of a house in this text per se,  but the body of a person houses one’s understanding, feelings, and desires.  Paul laments over those who have let their bodies become houses of unrighteousness, just as Jesus laments over Jerusalem becoming a forsaken house, that no longer was willing to allow God to gather its people from danger.

These two examples of unwillingness and rejection to follow God’s will, are warnings for us as individuals and church who wish to be of the house of God.  Do we above all else seek God, and want to be with God?

In Psalm twenty-seven it reads, “One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple.” (Psalm 27:4 ESV)

Is your ultimate goal to do as the Psalmist does?  To dwell in the house of the Lord, ALL the days of your life!  Is God the most beautiful of all beauty to you?  Do you wait for the Lord?  Or rather, do you trust in your own efforts? 

Those Paul speaks of as putting their understanding, minds, or feelings in earthly things, will be misguided, and will not be transformed from our lowliness into the glory God wants for us.  He says their end is destruction.  They’re unwilling to stand firm in the Lord, and therefore, are enemies of Christ.

Jerusalem is the centre of Jesus’ attention, and he says of those who should be the children of God, but have rejected the prophets, “your house is forsaken”.  If God’s house in Jerusalem can be forsaken, then so too can the house of your body, if you or I push away God’s protection and the transformation, he seeks to perform in all of us. 

This makes us more like King Herod than King David.  Have we become sly cunning foxes, parading  as people of God, justifying ourselves in a princely lifestyle and seeking Jesus for our entertainment only as Herod did? 

Should we be more like King David who trusted in the Lord, even though he was the highest in the land?  Who allowed God to confront his sin as an adulterer, and murderer, and confessed his sin to the Lord?  Who despite being king of Israel, allowed God to make him increasingly aware that his greatest enemy, was not the foreign countries around him, but rather the very core of his own sinful being?

If all this makes you feel uncomfortable and uneasy, good, it should!  If you feel like a fox that has been caught in the spotlight of God’s glory, and your life has been one of secret doubling back on yourself to hide your tracks in the darkness, this too is good.  If you feel, understand, and realise your situation as caught out, with impending doom as a result of your activities, it’s not a bad thing.  And if this hasn’t happened in your life as of  yet, it will.

When your death is put on your agenda, when the end of your life is imminent, if you haven’t beforehand realised what the consequence of sin is, death will show you.  How does the thought of death make you feel?

Abram saw his house was dead, because he had no heir onto which he could pass on his inheritance.  In his old age he was as good as dead, and an heir seemed impossible.  But it’s when we are as good as dead, that the power of God can be realised, and we’re called to put all our understanding, feelings (good and bad), and trust in him.

With Abram God first takes him outside and shows him the stars, then after this he makes a covenant with him.  But this is a covenant like no other in the Old Testament.  Covenants require both sides to make a promise.  Here though there is only a promise made by God.  Abram was in the state of deep sleep, a stunned, or deathly state, and is solely the recipient of God’s covenant.

When the severity of God’s law comes upon us, it causes death within us, and although it makes us feel woeful and as though we are dead, it’s a good thing.   We need to see what the house looks like if God vacates and leaves the house empty.  Here I am speaking specifically of the house of your body.

Jesus declares Jerusalem forsaken, dead, rotten, and off.  Like a piece of rancid meat, he rejects its house.  Yet Jesus returns to Jerusalem to die and be cast out, as if he was the cunning and sly fox that we have become in our sinfulness.  He becomes our rottenness and is cast out!  He dies because of the deadliness we bear.  That which he wishes to expose in us, he covers with forgiveness.  He also casts out feelings of guilt and gives us his blessing.  We are blest because he comes to us in the name of the Lord!

When we allow the Holy Spirit to expose our sin, so we can confess it, it gets covered by Jesus’ death.  When we allow the Spirit to invoke the death of our sin, we allow him to raise us with Jesus Christ to life eternal. 

When God does this, he out foxes the fox within us, he out cunnings the cunning within us, he shrewdly uses fear of eternal death to save us from our second death.  We are reminded in baptism eternal death is now deceased in those who hold onto faith in God and reject faith in oneself.

We also know of the deadliness of our house and the life Christ brings to it, and in this we continue in hope for those who have become dead to God’s church, and to be restored in love.  So we pray, doing the work of God, asking they be once again given the desire to be in God’s presence, and receiving his gifts of life, that will take all who seek God to death and through it into God’s eternal presence.

Saint Paul holds out hope for the Jewish people, despite their unbelief.  He knows, he was made dead by Christ but was graciously grafted into him through his death on the cross.

We too, stand before God with the same hope as Paul, having been grafted into Christ, despite being as good as dead…

Note then the kindness and the severity of God: severity toward those who have fallen, but God’s kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness.  Otherwise you too will be cut off.  And even they, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in, for God has the power to graft them in again.  For if you were cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree, and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these, the natural branches, be grafted back into their own olive tree.  (Romans 11:22–24 ESV)

If God can sever his chosen people, the Jews, and graft them back in, he can also revive the faith of those who have become dead in the faith.

Our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ,  despite the deadliness within.  In fact, we can thank God for showing us our deadliness, in just the same way Jesus knew Jerusalem was the place where others died and he would die, yet declared, “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.”

Let us pray.  Heavenly Father let us die to self, pick up our cross and resolutely walk with Jesus.  Protect us from all that can sever us from eternal life, and hear our prayers for those whose faith has died, so they might be grafted back into the life-giving blood of Jesus Christ. Amen.