“Who so rewarded evil for good, evil shall not depart from his house.”
Proverbs 17:13
Is there evil in the house where you live? No one wants to think about having evil in their own home, but when you reward someone who has done evil as being good; beware, for evil has entered into your house. Evil is anything that opposes the word of God. First, we have natural evil with destructive forces of nature such as earthquakes, tornadoes, volcanic eruptions, and tidal waves. The second is moral evil to which we choose in what actions we take. The actions of war, crime, cruelty, and slavery.
It is said that moral choices can bring on God’s judgement in natural disasters. We may not see all like God, but whatever kind of storm is coming, we need to heed the warning signs. All we have to do is to remember Noah’s flood and Sodom and Gomorrah as an example of moral evil where physical natural signs were displaced across the heavens because of man’s evil works. Why we have pain and suffering is because of man’s sin. Everyone is affected by a human choice that was made. We forget to think that our individual choices affect others around us. We also forget that the choices we made limits God’s hand from working in our own personal life.
We must remember that God did not create evil. It was Satan, a fallen angel who rebelled against God. Satan rebellion bought evil into the world. Satan slanders God’s people and leads people to sin through believing something that is not the whole truth.
“Let not an evil speaker be established in the earth: evil shall hunt the violent man to overthrow him.”
Psalms 140:11
We must pray to God to keep us from all evil. As King David prayed in Psalms 140, look at verse 4, “keep me, O Lord, from the hands of the wicked, and preserve me from the violent man, who have purposed to overthrow my goings.” God is our shelter and our strong arm when we pray and allow Him to stand on our behalf. O Lord, preserve us from the violent man, who would overthrow our goings in this world. Yes, pray to God to deliver us from evil as is stated in the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew chapter 6, verse 13.
Keep my mouth from evil and my lips from speaking guile [see Psalms 34:13]. Now look at the next verse.
“Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it.”
Psalms 34:14
Cleanse yourself and your house from all forms of evil. It only takes one person in the house doing evil or being rebellious that affects others within the home. The home shelters the evil. There is no peace, but bitterness, strife, and hatred. Sometimes running away may not be an option. But the Lord God can give us grace to be able to endure. When you begin to see the person doing evil, you may wonder what is causing it. That person needs your prayer to overcome the evil. We must be able to do what the apostle Paul told the Romans.
” If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirsts, give him drink: for in so doing, thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head. Be not overcome of evil but overcome evil with good. “
Romans 12:20-21
John P. Newport wrote in the Holman Bible Dictionary, that “Jesus Christ became the victim of evil so that there might be victory over evil.” Whatever the circumstances we are in, “we are more than conquerors through him that loved us,” [Romans 8:37]. God hears the prayer of the righteous, and He will make a way out of the situation. Wherever you go in this world, you will find those in need of help from evil. Let us not reward evil but overcome evil with good and pray that evil will depart from the home.
