Escaping the Evil

How do you go about escaping the evil that rolls over us from the corrupt and fallen world that we inhabit? The Lord's direction is to make this a matter of prayer. Matthew recorded these instructions for us in Matthew 6. A pretty familiar passage that we refer to as the Lord's prayer. Praying to our heavenly Father is a positive activity. This model prayer encourages us to ask for some pretty common things, like bread, as well as some challenging things concerning His Kingdom and forgiveness. The disciples lived in very difficult times. The government of Rome was oppressive and demanding. Taxes were high and freedoms were being eroded. Most religious practices surrounding the disciples were a violation to all they held as sacred. The roadways and cities held many dangers. Robbery and assault were common. You did not travel alone, for there often were threats from wild animals and thieves. Luke 10 reveals those dangers in the story of the abused man and the good Samaritan. Evil was common and came in a variety of forms and from all directions. It should not be a surprise that this prayer includes instruction on deliverance from evil.

"But deliver us from evil" is a request that gets directly to the point. The NIV and NKJV translations add the word "one", personalizing the evil that assaults us. The added word is meant to help, however, it may diminish our struggle rather than clarify the assault. You could argue that all evil comes from the evil one, however, much of what we struggle with has become a part of the world we live in and is not personal attack by Satan, himself, on our lives. It would serve us well to take a deeper look at the words used here in Matthew. The Greek word for deliver here is, rhyomai, It means, to draw to one's self, to rescue. It is not the common Greek word, sōzō, often translated "save". Here in Matthew the request is to be drawn near to the One who can rescue us from evil. To be pulled in close to a place or person who can protect us, rescue us from the evil that we encounter all the time. It is may be a bit more relational than sozo. In the midst of our daily, moment by moment struggle with evil we need to be drawn near, to be protected, rescued from evil. This is not unlike what our Lord shared concerning His people in Luke 13:34, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you were not willing!" We need to be drawn close under His wings to be protected, the question might be, are we willing?

What kind of evil does the Lord suggest we need to be rescued from? The Greek word here is, ponēros. The meaning of the word is pretty broad, meaning, pressed and harassed by labors, bringing toils, annoyances, perils, hardships, even disease or blindness. It is to be weighed down by all the trouble of the world. To be compressed and feel like there is no way out. Evil confines us and can rob us of the freedom to enjoy all that God has so graciously given us. We need deliverance, to be rescued, to be protected, from this kind of evil all the time. This evil is not just from the evil one; it comes from living in a fallen and broken world. I can generate this evil on my own. If we are honest, there are times when we need to be delivered from ourselves. To be delivered from past mistakes and failures that oppress and hem us in and keep us from moving forward with the Lord. Just as we need daily bread, we need daily deliverance. We need to take shelter under His wings or the evil that pervades our existence may crush us. 

The remedy to evil is His presence. The closer we are to Him the greater our protection. This does not mean that we will skate through life problem free. the Scriptures make it clear that struggles and pain are a part of this life. It does mean we do not have to go through it alone. There is security in the Lord even in the darkest of times. There are tests and trials that God allows to build my faith and encourage my faithfulness. However, I am certain that they will be easier to endure under the shelter of His wings. Today I need to be delivered from evil. I would guess that you do as well.

   

The Terror of God's Mercy

Have you ever longed for God's Mercy? Maybe you have felt overwhelmed and sense potential disaster just beyond your vision. Jeremiah knew how you felt. He lived with ongoing destruction and conflict. His spirit was undone by the coldness of God's people, his own relatives and friends. In the midst of these difficult times he writes,  "By the LORD’s mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. New every morning. Great is Your faithfulness!" (Lamentations 3:22-23). It has been an encouragement to many and the source of Thomas O. Chisholm's well known hymn, "Great is Thy Faithfulness", composed back in 1923. The words can be a source of strength and assurance when we find ourselves in times of distress. God's mercies are new every morning, not jut scraps left over from the day before. However, have you ever considered what God's mercies look like? Have you put Jeremiah's encouraging words into the context from which he writes? Do you know of the history of the times? If not you may not see the power behind the Lord's mercies or how they were realized for Jeremiah and God's people. An honest look at the passage will show that there can be great terror in God's mercy.

I encourage you to take a minute and read Lamentations 2 and Lamentations 3. Let us consider a bit of history and a few excerpts to help you gain the context of Jeremiah's confident claim to God's unending mercy. In the days of Jeremiah Judah was in religious rebellion against the Lord. Idolatry,  Baal, and Ashtaroth worship permeated the land. The Northern tribes had already fallen to Assyria do to their unfaithfulness and now Judah was taking the same path. Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon was chipping away at what little was left of the kingdom of Judah. Judah's destruction was imminent. Jeremiah's message was one of impending doom and coming exile and the grieve he carries in almost unbearable. Lamentations 2 and 3 record his words of anguish. A few excerpts from the chapters reveal his heart and the emotions he endures.

Lamentations 2:1, "covered the daughter of Zion with the cloud of His anger," 2:2 "swallowed up and not pitied, thrown down in His wrath," 2:4 "Poured out His fury like fire," 2:7 "Lord has spurned His alter, abandoned His sanctuary," 2:8 "The Lord purposed to destroy," 2:17 "Lord has done what He purposed; thrown down and not pitied, caused an enemy to rejoice over you," 2:21 "Young and old lie in the streets. You have slaughtered and not pitied," In chapter 3 Jeremiah turns from God's hand against the nation to his personal pain. Jeremiah 3:1 "I am a man who has seen the affliction by the rod of His wrath," 3:4-9 "broken my bones, bitterness and woe, set me in dark places like the dead,made my chain heavy, shuts out my prayer, made my paths crocked." Jeremiah goes on; 3:11-16 "torn me to pieces,set me as an arrows target, arrows pierce my loins, ridiculed by my people, filled me with bitterness, broken my teeth, removed my soul from peace." After pouring out his desperation for the nation of Judah, for God's chosen people, Jeremiah cries out his personal pain in a flood of emotional distress. These chapters may picture the greatest rendition of God's wrath and judgement upon His people you will find in Scripture. It is hard to find a silver lining here when you read the text as it is  recorded.

After chapters of woe and destruction Jeremiah gives us 3:22-23, "By the LORD’s mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. New every morning. Great is Your faithfulness!" How can this be? The Hebrew word translated mercy is Hesed, which speaks of the depth of the covenant love shared by Yahweh and His people. It is often translated "lovingkindness" and is simply hard to capture in English. There is an intimacy and richness of commitment that offers security and grace. The word for compassion is the Hebrew racham, meaning bowels or womb. The picture her is a passionate and tender love that comes from the inner depths of our being. The power of God's magnificent covenant love keeps God's people from being consumed, finished, brought to an end. God's compassionate love, that flows from the very core of His being, never fails.

If Jeremiah is right, how can we reconcile such vivid and, in all honesty, terrifying pictures of God's wrath and judgement being poured out upon His own people? How can His fulfill servant, Jeremiah, know such suffering and torment? When you read chapters two and three do you come to the same conclusion as Jeremiah? Pain, bitterness, slaughter, fury, wrath, destruction all reveal the Lords unending mercy and compassion? Perhaps verses 22 and 23 belong somewhere else or maybe Jeremiah is trying to make us feel better in the midst of apparent annihilation. Or perhaps Jeremiah is right on target. Perhaps we are the ones who have packaged God's mercy and compassion in our own little box and misunderstand the depth of His covenant love for His people.

Solomon was the wisest man to have lived and gives this bit of advice in Proverbs 3:2, "For whom the LORD loves He corrects, just as a father the son in whom he delights." Solomon also tells us, "He who spares his rod hates his son, but he who loves him disciplines him promptly" (Proverbs 13:24). The writer to the Hebrews borrows this verse in Hebrews 12:6. In Johns Revelation he records the Lords words,  “As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten. Therefore be zealous and repent" (Revelation 3:19). Out of love the Lord must discipline. The longer and further His people go astray the stronger the discipline must be. Generations of warnings and disciplines had come and gone and yet God's people still worshiped other gods. From simple sacrifices on the high places to the burning of their children alive to appease some other god the Lord's people had forsaken Him and placed themselves in greater danger than they could have realized. Now the time had come to bring a severe judgement or correction to deliver them from themselves. Now God's temple would be razed. The people of God would be deported to Babylon. No temple to offer sacrifices, no alter to sprinkle the blood on when the Day of Atonement came. No Jerusalem to celebrate the required feasts and festivals. Just Babylon, the center of pagan worship. A serious time of judgement that would last for a generation. Even then it would be even more years before God's Temple would be rebuilt and the offerings restored. God's people got what they had long practiced. Pagan gods, pagan worship, no temple, no Jerusalem, no way to be obedient to the Lord's commands for worship.

Consider the consequences both of the discipline of the Lord and the dangers if the discipline had not come. The result of the deportation to Babylon, the temple's destruction, the razing of Jerusalem and the removal of the opportunity to worship in accordance with the lord's commands was deliverance. God's people would never again chase after foreign gods. No more Baal or any other god or goddess would be acceptable to God's people. Now consider the results of no discipline. Worship of Yahweh lost. The covenants fully forsaken and replaced with the religious traditions of the nations. Torah lost, the prophets replaced or executed. Yahweh becomes just another of the plethora of gods and goddesses demanding attention from Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome, Egypt and all the little local deities in regions of the Middle East. What would have happened to the promise of Messiah? What would have happened to the Covenant to David, or Abraham or Moses? All we believe in and hold to be true could have been lost. However, in the depth of His compassion and love God intervenes.From the depths of His mercy He brings the needed discipline to deliver His people from themselves. In the process Jeremiah reveals the terror of God's mercy.

Just a final note, the terror that was God's mercy touched the righteous as well as those who strayed. Jeremiah had to hold onto the memories and knowledge of who the LORD was in order to endure the discipline that fell upon the nation as a whole. And it was enough, Lamentations 3:20-21, " My soul still remembers and sinks within me.This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope." Can we be like Job? "Behold, how happy is the man whom God reproves, so do not despise the discipline of the Almighty" (Job 5:17). I appreciate the truth shared in Hebrews 12:11, "Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it." The discipline of Lamentations chapters 2-3 did not seem joyful. They were times of terror and apparent disaster. Yet, the result was deliverance and the protection of God's promises and covenants. Our loving Heavenly Father demonstrates His love, His mercy, His deliverance, in His discipline. Sometimes the terror of God's mercy is precisely what we need. 
     

 

Leaven Lessons

How important is leaven to you? Bread, donuts, sticky buns, pizza crust, even some pastas have leaven. It is in most of the baked goods we consume. It is not a bad thing. It actually makes food it unites with better. For the most part I am not a big bread eater, unless it is pizza dough. Well, there is this really good rosemary, olive oil bread that makes amazing toast. I can sit for a moment, eyes closed, inhale deeply and allow my olfactories a moment of ecstasy. Most would admit that there is something comforting about the smell of fresh baked bread. Bread is one of those staples of life. Leaven helps make that possible.

God talks a bit about leaven, however, not always in the most complimentary ways. Yeshua told his disciples, "Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees" (Matt. 16:6). The Apostle Paul gave a similar warning in 1 Cor. 5:6-7, "Your glorying is not good. do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Purge out therefore the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, as you are unleavened."

Leaven often refers to sin or impurity and always points to the nature of leaven to spread and permeate things it is joined with. We are warned how sin can do that to us. It tends to sneak in and then try to permeate who we are. But leaven is not always seen as evil. Yeshua borrowed the properties of leaven when speaking of His Kingdom: "Another parable spoke he unto them; The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened" (Matt. 13:33). The promise is that God's Kingdom, in God's time, will permeate the world. The question is, are we being permeated by sin or by preparation for the kingdom?

Back in the days of Moses, God introduced a new use of leaven, or rather the non-use of leaven. Following Passover, when all leaven had been removed from the house, God's people were to observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Seven days of avoiding eating anything with leaven. Lots of Matzo. Technically, the passages only prohibit the consumption of leaven. It does not say that all you could eat was unleavened bread, so it appears that meat, fruits and vegetables might be allowed. However, many Jews restrict their diet to just Matzo for the week. As a Gentile I had not observed the Feast of Unleavened Bread. What benefit could there be in going a week without my usual fare of leavened products? Still, it was God's idea, so I thought I would join my Jewish friends and avoid leaven for a week. I did eat other stuff, like meats and vegetables, but avoided consuming anything with leaven in it.

It can be pretty amazing what your brain and body do when you decide not to eat something. Bread and pizza smell incredible. Even leavened stuff I never eat took on a strange appeal. Throughout the week I was reminded over and over again of the danger of sin mixing into my life. It made me consider everything I ate, from fruit to junk food. My mind reviewed the events of Passover several times a day. I thought more of God and sin and His deliverance that I had for a while. Just by avoiding leaven.

One of the lessons I was reminded of is the remarkable integration of my being. God did not design us with individual compartments. We often speak of our mind, will, emotions and body as almost separate entities. Our Lord said, "Watch ye and pray, lest ye enter into temptation. The spirit truly is ready, but the flesh is weak" (Mark 14:38). Indicating that the spirit and flesh are connected. Weakness in our flesh has an impact on our spirit. What we do physically touches how we think and how we feel. A good physical workout can leave us mentally and emotionally refreshed. Not eating leaven put the integration of my being on display before me in a remarkable way. My random mental activity went something like this:  

"I am hungry, but don't eat leaven, by the way, how is your purity going? Okay, and I know I am delivered like Israel was... by the blood of the Lamb, who warns me of the dangers of sin while delivering me from death. Sooo, are you really hungry? Maybe a little fasting would be good for your body. Let's just have a glass of water. Put down the M & Ms and walk away. Take a moment and thank the Lord for all you have, rather than what you don't have. Remember the simple act of denying yourself is the call of Messiah on your life. What would Jesus do is more than a bracelet. Hmmm, maybe God has a bigger point to make in my life than just not eating leaven. Maybe that has always been the case."

My leaven-free week has actually been very encouraging. It has been mentally, spiritually, physically, even emotionally satisfying. It has reminded me of how every part of who I am is connected to every other part. My physical state touches my mind, spirit and emotions. My will, exercised in successfully passing over leaven, strengthened my will to pass over some of the temptations and attitudes that invade my life. There has been no "down side" to the unleavened week. I am grateful for the Spirit's prompting and my decision to give my will a bit of exercise for the week.

Now I wonder, "what has God hidden in all those other feasts and festivals in His Word." I am wonderfully saved by grace through faith alone. However, it seems the Lord may well bless us for simple observation of things He provided so Israel would not forget the God who delivered them from the hand of Pharaoh. There truly is a depth of riches in the memorials the Lord has given. Perhaps we are missing more than we think as we run from Torah. Maybe next year you too will be prompted to go "unleavened" for a week. In the meantime I am off to find some of that rosemary, olive oil bread.