Tag: deliverance

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Psalms

Lead me not into temptation…

Psalms

As Psalm 140 was a prayer similar to our Lord’s in asking for deliverance from evil, Psalm 141 continues that theme and adds the other part of that verse in the Lord’s prayer.

Lead us not into temptation. (Matthew 6:13)

David prays,

Set a guard over my mouth, O LORD;
keep watch over the door of my lips.

Let not my heart be drawn to what is evil,
to take part in wicked deeds
with men who are evildoers;
let me not eat of their delicacies. (Psalm 141:3–4)

It strikes me here that he focuses on two things: the words of his mouth and the meditations of his heart.

He prays, “Lord, don’t let anything evil come out of my mouth.”

So often, Christians struggle with just that. Whether it’s grumbling or complaining, gossip, slander, hurtful words, or whatever it may be.

Just a couple of days ago, I caught some sarcastic complaints coming out of my mouth. And God rebuked me for it.

David also worried about his thought life, and he said, “Don’t let my heart be drawn to what is evil. Don’t let my heart see the evil people around me and be attracted to it. To envy who they are and what they have.”

For when we allow our hearts to meditate on evil, it’s only a short step to acting on it.

Jesus also pointed out the importance of our thought lives in other areas.

He said that if we harbor anger in our hearts toward our brother, we have murdered him in our heart (Matthew 5:21–22).

He also said that if we lust after a woman, we’ve committed adultery with them in our hearts (Matthew 5:27–28).

God is not only concerned about our deeds, but our thought life as well. David knew this, and so he prayed that God would guard his heart as well as his lips.

He also determined to keep a humble, teachable heart that was willing to accept rebuke. He told God,

Let a righteous man strike me—it is a kindness;
let him rebuke me—it is oil on my head.

My head will not refuse it. (5)

So many of us take rebuke as burning coals. But David took it as soothing oil.

This is not to say that the words were soothing at the time. When Nathan confronted David for his sin with Bathsheba and his murder of her husband, it must have felt like heaps of burning coals on his head.

Yet he repented, and God forgave and restored him.

That’s one of the keys to fighting temptation. A humble heart that will accept correction. A heart that doesn’t harden itself to God’s rebuke.

David then closes by again asking for deliverance from evil, from the people that would destroy him.

Every day, may we pray the same.

And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. (Matthew 6:13 — NASB)

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Psalms

The God who brings us through trial

Psalms

Nobody likes trials. At least, I can’t say I do. But in Psalm 66, we see the rejoicing of God’s people having come through those trials.

The psalmist sings,

Shout for joy to God, all the earth!

Sing the glory of his name;
make his praise glorious.

Say to God, “How awesome are your deeds!

So great is your power that your enemies cringe before you.

All the earth bows down to you;
they sing praise to you,
they sing the praises of your name.” (Psalm 66:1–4)

He then points out the reasons for his rejoicing. He tells the people,

Come and see what God has done,
his awesome deeds for mankind!

He turned the sea into dry land,
they passed through the waters on foot—
come, let us rejoice in him. (5–6)

The obvious reference is to God’s deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt and how he made a way of escape for them through the Red Sea.

In doing so, he showed his power not only to Israel, but to all the nations. And so the psalmist warns,

He rules forever by his power,
his eyes watch the nations—
let not the rebellious rise up against him. (7)

He then looks back to their time of bondage in Egypt, and perhaps also to their time of wandering in the desert, and as he does, he sees God’s hand in all that happened. He writes,

Praise our God, all peoples,
let the sound of his praise be heard;
he has preserved our lives
and kept our feet from slipping.

For you, God, tested us;
you refined us like silver.
You brought us into prison
and laid burdens on our backs.

You let people ride over our heads;
we went through fire and water,
but you brought us to a place of abundance. (8–12)

It’s interesting to me here that he says it is God that brought about their troubles. It was he that brought them into prison and let people rule over them.

This is not to say that God is directly responsible for evil in our lives. Evil is part and parcel of a broken world.

But nothing passes into our lives without passing through the hands of God first. And God sometimes allows evil to come into our lives.

Why? Because he hates us?

No. To refine us. To purge out of our lives all of our pride and sin in order that we might become the pure and holy people that he desires.

But even through the fire, he never takes his hands off of us. Rather, he preserves us and keeps our feet from slipping to destruction. More than that, he will bring us out of our trials victorious.

Having come through the fire, the psalmist then offers his sacrifices of praise to God. But not only that, he shares his experiences with all those who would hear. He sings,

Come and hear, all you who fear God;
let me tell you what he has done for me.

I cried out to him with my mouth;
his praise was on my tongue.

If I had cherished sin in my heart,
the Lord would not have listened;
but God has surely listened
and has heard my prayer.

Praise be to God,
who has not rejected my prayer
or withheld his love from me! (16–20)

How about you? What trials are you going through now? Know that whatever you may be going through, God still has his hand on you.

So don’t lose heart. Cry out to him. Pour out your heart to him and you will see his deliverance.

And when you do, be sure to let all those around you know what he has done for you.

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Jeremiah

Deliverer and Redeemer

Jeremiah

As I write this, Christmas is drawing near. And as such, my thoughts turn even more than usual to the one who came 2000 years ago.

Why did he come? He came not to judge, but to deliver and redeem us from our captivity to sin and to set us free that we might have a relationship with him once again.

As usual, we see a lot of the judgment of God in this passage.

God told Jeremiah not to mourn with those who had lost loved ones, because there was no comfort to give. God had withdrawn his blessing from the people.

And soon, so many would die that there would be no one left who could bring comfort to others. All would be suffering from pain and loss.

Then he told him not to join in their feasting because all joy and gladness would soon be taken from them.

God told Jeremiah to make crystal clear to the people why judgment would come. That it would come because they had turned their backs on God and started serving other gods in the stubbornness of their own hearts.

But then the tone of the passage changes a bit in verses 14–15.

God asked Jeremiah, “Do you know how people always look back at how I saved the Israelites from the hands of the Egyptians. That’ll be nothing compared to how I’ll bring all my people back from exile into the land I promised their forefathers.

“From that point on, people will no longer point back to the Exodus, but to their return from exile.”

And that’s exactly what God did. He brought them back from Persia into their own land.

And after Rome decimated Jerusalem during the time of the apostles and all the Jews were scattered, 2000 years later, in our very own time, he brought them back into their own land.

Why did he do so? To prove to them that he is their deliverer and redeemer, not the gods that they had been seeking.

The day will come when all Israel will acknowledge that. And God says concerning them,

“Therefore I will teach them — this time I will teach them my power and might. Then they will know that my name is the Lord.” (Jeremiah 16:21)

Today, there are many people lost in their sin. Who like the Israelites have turned their backs on God in the stubbornness of their own hearts.

But Jesus came to deliver and redeem them. To show them who God really is, that they might know him and have a relationship with him.

So as we look around at the people around us this Christmas, let us keep that in mind and share with them the good news that they can be delivered and redeemed as well.

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2 Chronicles 2 Kings Isaiah

Laying our problems before God

Kings,Chronicles, and Isaiah

Hezekiah had finally turned his heart back to God, but it was still troubling times for the people of Judah, as Assyria was still bent on taking Jerusalem.

But with his faith in God restored and perhaps taking heart from God’s promise of deliverance after his recovery from illness, Hezekiah told the people,

Be strong and courageous.

Do not be afraid or discouraged because of the king of Assyria and the vast army with him, for there is a greater power with us than with him.

With him is only the arm of flesh, but with us is the Lord our God to help us and to fight our battles. (2 Chronicles 32:7–8)

Upon hearing this, the people of Jerusalem were initially encouraged.

But that didn’t last long as the king of Assyria sent his field commander to intimidate them while the Assyrian army was laying siege to one of Judah’s major fortified cities, Lachish.

And as Satan is wont to do, Assyria’s field commander used a mixture of lies and truth to try to discourage the people.

Basically he told them that Egypt couldn’t help them, that no nation had been able to stand against the Assyrians. None of these nations’ gods had been able to protect them from the Assyrians’ hands either. All this was true.

But then he said that God himself couldn’t help them, and that even if he could, he was really on the Assyrians’ side. He claimed that God himself had sent Assyria to attack Jerusalem.

This especially was an interesting mix of truth and lies, the lie of course being that God couldn’t help them.

But I do wonder if they had heard about all the words the prophets of God had warned Jerusalem with. That Assyria would come and attack.

It’s possible that they were saying, “See, even your own prophets told you we were coming. God sent us to destroy you.”

This was of course conveniently ignoring the prophecies of Assyria’s own destruction and the fact that the reason God gave these warnings was so that Jerusalem might repent and be saved.

Hezekiah immediately went to the temple upon hearing these words and through Isaiah the prophet was told once again that God would deliver them.

When the Assyrians were forced to withdraw because of an attack by the Cushite king and his army, they sent word to Hezekiah basically saying (very Terminator‑like), “We’ll be back.”

And they once again boasted of all they had done to the other nations.

What did Hezekiah do? He took the letter out and spread it out before God. Then he prayed,

O Lord Almighty, God of Israel, enthroned between the cherubim, you alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth. You have made heaven and earth.

Give ear, O Lord, and hear; open your eyes, O Lord, and see; listen to all the words Sennacherib has sent to insult the living God.

It is true, O Lord, that the Assyrian kings have laid waste all these peoples and their lands.

They have thrown their gods into the fire and destroyed them, for they were not gods but only wood and stone, fashioned by human hands.

Now, O Lord our God, deliver us from his hand, so that all kingdoms on earth may know that you alone, O Lord, are God. (Isaiah 37:16–20)

I think there are several things we can take from this prayer.

First, when we are in trouble, the first thing we should do is remember who God is. That he is God in heaven, and that he alone is God over all the earth. That he is the creator and that he has the power to help us in our time of need.

Second, lay our problems before him. Be completely honest with him about our needs and our doubts.

Finally, humble yourself and ask for his help.

And because Hezekiah did this, God heard him and delivered him. He slaughtered the army of Assyria and then had its king killed by his own sons.

What troubles are you going through in your life? Remember that God is bigger than your troubles.

Lay out your problems before him. Ask for his deliverance. And then trust him, doing exactly as he says.

If you do, like Hezekiah, you will find God’s salvation in your life.