Göttinger Predigten
Göttinger Predigten im Internet hg. von U. Nembach
Good Friday, 04/14/2017
Sermon on Matthew 6:8-13, by Samuel Zumwalt
8…Your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 9 Pray then like this: "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. 10 Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. 11 Give us this day our daily bread, 12and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. 13And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
The Seventh Petition of the Lord’s Prayer
“But deliver us from evil.”
Martin Luther asks: “What does this mean? …We pray in this petition, in summary, that our Father in heaven would rescue us from every evil of body and soul, possessions and reputation, and finally, when our last hour comes, give us a blessed end, and graciously take us from this valley of sorrow to Himself in heaven.” (Small Catechism).
BUT DELIVER US FROM EVIL
In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Martin Luther writes: “In the Greek this petition reads, ‘Deliver or keep us from the Evil One, or the Wicked One.’ The petition seems to be speaking of the devil as the sum of all evil in order that the entire substance of our prayer may be directed against our arch-enemy. It is he who obstructs everything that we pray for: God’s name or glory, God’s kingdom and will, our daily bread, a good and cheerful conscience, etc.” (Large Catechism, Tappert, 435:113).
Luther adds: “…this petition includes all the evil that may befall us under the devil’s kingdom: poverty, shame, death, and, in short, all the tragic misery and heartache of which there is so incalculably much on earth. Since the devil is not only a liar but also a murderer, he incessantly seeks our life and vents his anger by causing accidents and injury to our bodies. He breaks many a man’s neck and drives others to insanity; some he drowns, and many he hounds to suicide or other dreadful catastrophes. Therefore there is nothing for us to do on earth but to pray constantly against this arch-enemy. For if God did not support us, we would not be safe from him for a single hour” (LC, 435:115-16).
Luther concludes: “Thus you see how God wants us to pray to him for everything that affects our bodily welfare and directs us to seek and expect help from no one but him” (LC, 436:117).
It is most fitting of all, then, to pray, “Deliver us from evil,” on this Good Friday. It is most fitting, because we are given to see most clearly today how it is that our dear heavenly Father delivers us from evil – through the death of His beloved Son, Jesus!
Luther fully understood that our life on earth is a battleground between God and the old enemy. Our Father gives us life here on earth and life eternal through His Son Jesus Christ. He wants to help us in every moment of every day. But we have an old enemy who, as the Lord Jesus says in John 10, comes only to steal, and kill, and destroy. It is that liar and murderer who tries constantly to drive us to ruin, to despair, and to hell.
The cultured despisers of God and His Church mock this talk of God and of Satan as so much childishness and superstition. Even sophisticated preachers laugh at Luther’s words and, yes, at those of the Lord Jesus as a kind of outdated, pre-modern worldview.
Without regard for malevolent forces and demonic influences, some say that all talk of Satan is to avoid responsibility for one’s own choices.
But the old enemy’s beastly footprints are all over today’s news, spread widely across our decadent culture, and trampled into the wounded lives of those who have known the kind of heartache that leads to hopelessness. We sin, not because the old ancient foe holds a gun to our heads and forces us to, but because, like him, we push our dear heavenly Father to the margins of our lives, so that we might be autonomous, a law unto ourselves, which is nothing other than wanting to be God.
You have doubtless heard that, on Palm Sunday, Muslim terrorists attacked two Coptic Orthodox churches in Egypt killing 45 people and wounding another 100. Before that the embattled president of Syria, Bashur al-Assad, a medical doctor, recently used the deadly Sarin nerve gas against his own people killing even dozens of children in addition to adults. National news outlets report daily violence, violence, and more violence. In fear, in hate, in anger, people keep choosing evil. The old enemy laughs.
Think now on your life and of choices made in fear, desperation, or loneliness. A voice whispering in your soul said this might be your only chance. He lies. He is not God.
How many women and men, girls and boys, foolishly think they can change a person whose godly potential is apparent but whose demons drive their lives? How many invest years trying to be savior to a person that does not want to change? It is arrogance and utter foolishness to think we can save anyone. Perhaps we tell ourselves we are so morally superior we could never become like those beaten down by the demons that drive them or never succumb to those demons whispering lies in our ears. Our enemy laughs.
But our dear heavenly Father never forgets us! He sends the true Savior of the world, His only begotten Son to deliver us from sin, death, and Satan. He sends the Holy Spirit to call every seeking soul to the prayers and to the Word, to the table and the bath (words reported by Professor Gordon Lathrop to have been inscribed on a church bell in the Danish Lutheran church in Luck WI).
God will be God, and the old evil foe will never overcome Him. Our Lord’s last Word from the cross today can be said in many ways: Finished! Accomplished! Done!
On this Good Friday, our dear heavenly Father wills us to pray to be delivered from every evil not only this day but at the last. Because our flesh is weak and because we are not puppets, our fallen will can lead us astray constantly, and it does. We need to pray without ceasing for the Church, for the world, for our loved ones, and for ourselves.
God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, and so we know our dear heavenly Father desires that none would perish and all would be saved through the death and resurrection of His beloved Son Jesus.
The Church Militant does its best fighting on its knees as we pray the Lord’s Prayer and our other petitions. On this Good Friday, I urge you to kneel at the foot of the cross, to give thanks that God in Christ has died for all of your sins and for the sins of the whole world. Never cease to pray to be delivered from every evil, from all the snares and lies of the old enemy. Never cease to pray for those you love and those you don’t to be delivered from evil through the unmerited grace and mercy of God in Jesus Christ, our Lord.
“Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, for ever and ever. Amen” (Ephesians 3:20-21).
In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.