We say we believe Jesus and the Scripture promises regarding our salvation and acceptance into heaven at the end of our lives, and so we do.
But the Scripture also says this about our lives at present and the battles we face right now:
Jesus summoned His twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every kind of disease and every kind of sickness. (Mt. 10:1)
Wow, now that bears reading again…
What are we to make of these words?…Did Jesus tell the truth about heaven and the forgiveness of our sins, but then lie about demons and sickness, and our authority over them? Since God “is not a man, that He should lie,” (Num. 23:19) certainly these words have to be as true as the salvation promise.
Surely, we can’t take the position that we can believe one promise and not the other.
Consider just for a moment the ramifications of such a “great and precious promise” (2 Pe. 1:4) – authority over the devil’s minions, and likewise over all sickness…The mind boggles…
Well, you say, that authority was given to his disciples THEN, not to us NOW. But, I suggest, so were all the other promises – they were given to His followers THEN – don’t we still believe that they are for us NOW? Certainly, we know that Jesus “is the same, yesterday, today, and forever” (Hbr. 13:8) Was what He said true THEN, but not true NOW?
Of course not.
Samson wielded the donkey’s jawbone (symbolizing the Spoken Word of God) and killed 1000 Philistines – so are we to wield the Word of God over our enemies as it is the chief weapon of our warfare and effective to the pulling down of Satanic strongholds (2 Cr. 10:4) – sickness and mental torment.
The Promise of Authority is For Us Today
We should recall:
For as many as are the promises of God, in Him (Christ) they are yes; therefore also through Him is our Amen to the glory of God through us. (2 Cr. 1:20)
The promises of God are for us – you and me – and all those who are joined to the Lord and are therefore one spirit with Him (1 Cor. 6:17). We are co-heirs with Christ of all the promises of God (Rom. 8:17; Gal. 3:29), every one of which can be inherited through faith and patience (Hbr. 6:12).
The post-modern visible church may have disdained the inheritance – the promise of authority over demons and disease, but that doesn’t mean that we should. The evangelical carnival hucksters, tent show revivalists, and TBN frauds may have brought the promises into ridicule and disrepute, but that doesn’t mean the promises are no longer good – does it?
Christ is seated in the heavenly places at the right hand of the Father “far above all rule, authority, power, and dominion, and every name that is named, both in this age and the age to come” (Eph. 1:21), and guess what? - we are “seated with Him” (Eph. 2:6) and therefore we are also positioned “far above” all other authority in the Universe, including Satan. Everything under God is also “in subjection under our feet” (Eph. 1:22). God knows it , Satan knows it, the demons know it and tremble (Ja. 2:19), but we apparently don’t know it. And so we cower as Satan “prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” (1 Pet. 5:8)
Regardless of all that has gone on in this world since Christ ascended to heaven, and all the unbelief and Satanic attempts at undermining and discrediting the Word of God over the last twenty centuries, all of the promises of God are still good – there is no other alternative, for if all are not good, none of them are, and let us be honest then and forget about Christ and eternity now, and go grab and suck up everything we can out of this life because who knows what the next one holds.
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Our Real Enemies
According to Paul (and the Gospels), the demons are the purveyors of sickness and torment. They are our real enemies:
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. (Eph. 6:12)
Their right to torment us is based upon the fact of our rebellion against God, and the curse of that rebellion. When through Adam our forefather we joined Satan’s rebellion in the Garden, we became subjects in Satan’s kingdom. Consequently, he treats us as he likes, just as Pharaoh did the Jews, with a whip to the back, until God took the Jews out of Egypt, just as He has taken us out and “rescued us from the kingdom of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son.” (Col. 1:13)
But if we don’t know that we are out of Satan’s kingdom, and assert our right and authority to be free, Satan will still treat us like we are still in, and the tail of the whip will keep lashing our backs.
Christ ran up against demons constantly. We don’t becaue we don’t believe that they exist, and so we don’t fight back. Like snakes and termites, they operate in the dark - while we sleep they slither into the private places of our souls and rot the foundations of our homes and families because we refuse to expose them and shine the light of truth on them so that they might be discovered and smashed under the heel of our boot.
Was Christ deluded as to the existence of demons, mistaking demons for “mental illness”? If He truly is God, then we have to conclude that He wasn’t confused. According to Jesus, demons caused sickness, or at least most of them (e.g., Mark 9:15-27; Luke 13:11-16; Mat. 8:15-17) – to get rid of the sickness, roust and oust the demon.
This is how Peter summarized the life of Jesus:
"You know of Jesus of Nazareth, how God anointed Him with the Holy Spirit and with power, and how He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him.” (Acts 10:38)
According to Peter, those who needed healing were those who were oppressed by the devil. Healing then comes by taking authority over the devil - the authority Jesus gave us in Matthew 10:1 quoted above.
We act as if we have no supernatural enemies, - but if we really have none why do we think there is so much in the Scripture about Christ being the means by which we are set free from our enemies? As Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist prophesided about Jesus before His birth:
Blessed {be} the Lord God of Israel, For He has visited us and accomplished redemption for His people, And has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of David His servant-- As He spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from of old-- Salvation from our enemies, and from the hand of all who hate us;… To grant us that we, being rescued from the hand of our enemies, Might serve Him without fear, In holiness and righteousness before Him all our days. (Lk 1:68-75)
Either the prophecy was false or Zacharias was talking about Satan and his horde, because Christ did not rescue Israel from any physical enemies while on earth.
Jesus Himself first announced His prime messianic purpose at the synagogue in Galilee - “I have come to set the captives free” (Lk. 4:18) - and in the next scene (Lk. 4:33) He demonstrates precisely what this means by confronting a demonized man and casting out the evil spirit.
Jesus actually called deliverance from demons/sickness “the children’s bread” (Mat. 15:26) when addressing the Syro-phoenician woman who tracked Him down because her daughter was at home “sorely vexed by a demon.” In other words, it is so essential for our health to be free from demons that to continue on without relief is like trying to live without bread. We shouldn’t try to live without bread – we also shouldn’t try to live without being free from demons and their sicknesses. "So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.” (Jn. 8:36)
Demons are just as active now as they were then, unless we are to believe that they have since gone into, well, demon retirement. Of course, they are probably much more active now, as presumably we are substantially more degenerate in 21st century Western society than they were in ancient Israel. Fresh demonic hordes are no doubt free to set upon us with every new Top 10 album, TV series, or Hollywood blockbuster.
The Battle is the Lord’s
People go to church sick with cancer, anorexia, epilepsy, ADD, arthritis, and the rest of the lot, and they leave church unchanged and still sick. People go to church mentally tormented by fear, anxiety, worry, lust and the rest of the lot, and they leave just as tormented. The visible church today has nothing to say to the sick and tormented, other than to tell them to wait for heaven.
And in the meantime – just suffer.
Christ didn’t tell people to wait until death for release from sickness and Satan – he went out immediately to plunder Satan's kingdom and take no prisoners (Mt. 12:29). He announced that the war between God and Satan, between one kingdom and the other, is here and now:
The seventy returned with joy, saying, "Lord, even the demons are subject to us in Your name.” And He said to them, "I was watching Satan fall from heaven like lightning. Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing will injure you.” (Luke 10:17-19).
"And as you go, preach, saying, 'The kingdom of heaven is at hand.'Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. Freely you received, freely give.” (Mt. 10:7-8)
Aren’t we to do what Jesus did? He is a warrior, why aren’t we?
“The Lord is a warrior, the Lord is His Name.” (Ex. 15:3)
If one side understands that there is a war and fights and the other side derides the idea of war, or denies the fact that one is ongoing, who do you think will win?
We are not to be intimidated by the thought of war against unseen and powerful enemies. We are to take courage because the battle is the King's. As David, a mere slip of a boy at 17, said before separating the eight-foot tall battle-hardened Goliath from his head: “The battle is the Lord’s” (1 Sam. 17:47).
All we are asked to do is show up and have a bit of courage (Jos. 1:6-7) so that the Lord can fight His enemies (and ours) through us.
God has already given what we have asked
Our problem is not that we ask God for too much - that we end up disappointed because we over-estimate His goodness. The problem is that we terribly under-estimate the incredibly magnificent thing He has done in sending the Lord Jesus to us.
According to His own Word, He has given us all He has – there is nothing more for us. He has held back nothing, and yet the time we do spend in prayer, instead of spending it affirming all that He has provided for us in Christ and praising Him with every fiber of our being for it, we spend it complaining and cajoling and hoping against hope that He will somehow deign, as cold and distant and heartless as we believe He is, to toss us a bone and maybe heal us of leukemia or diabetes – and just for once come through.
God doesn’t answer that prayer when we pray it because, quite clearly, He has already answered it – He has sent Jesus, and given us the authority to use that Name, the Name above all Names, as our infallible weapon against sickness and torment, as Samson wielded the jawbone against His enemies.
God’s will is absolutely crystal clear on the subject of illness (See, e.g., Ps. 103:1-2; Mt. 8:3, 16). Jesus never refused healing to anyone. All who came to Him were healed, without exception. None were told to come back later after they had “suffered for God” or “learned a lesson.” Unlike those who speak such nonsense now, He had compassion on all who came to Him. And He has not changed.
As a parent would you refuse healing to your child if he asked for it? Of course not. Are we better than God - our Father?
"Or what man is there among you who, when his son asks for a loaf, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, he will not give him a snake, will he? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him!” (Mt. 7:9-11)
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Our Fear of Man
But, unfortunately, we have a slight problem. Most of us really don’t want healing and deliverance from demonic oppression/sickness if it means doing what Jesus did; frankly, it’s just too embarassing to lay hands on people, to speak healing out loud with conviction, and to cast the denizens of hell back to the pit from which they emerged to afflict us. Someone might laugh at us.
Better to suffer – such is the power of pride in our lives, and the fear of what man thinks, that we permit ourselves and our loved ones to continue down the road to death and destruction in the face of the fabulous rescue promised us from the very mouth of God.
We reassure our spouses at night: “The kids are alright – really they are…” while we spend our time alternately cowering in fear of their rage and rejection and crying tears over their sin and self-destruction.
I suspect that Satan lies awake at night fearing that at some point we will wake up and choose to come into our inheritance, and so he does all he can to de-legitimize the promises, and our authority over him and sickness. He knows that most of us fear man, and man’s disapproval and ridicule, and that we desire to be respectable above all else. He then uses that to empower the guys with the hairdos on TV to make a mockery of the wonderful gifts of the Holy Spirit, and the authority we have in Jesus, to ensure that we never summon the courage to act out in faith Christ’s words to us, for he knows that that would be the end of his kingdom.
Fortunately, Jesus promises that we will do all the works He did, and even greater works. (Jn. 14:12). And that means ridding ourselves of demons and disease, because that’s exactly what He did over and over again.
Jesus also commanded us to love one another as He loved us. How did He love us? – by preaching the kingdom, healing the sick, and casting out demons, before finally laying His life down for us, to receive the due penalty of the curse in His own body, thus taking the curse off us (Gal. 3:13) – the curse of sin and sickness (Dt. 28:15 et seq.). Since Jesus has come, demons and their associated sicknesses have no more right to us, but they are happy to carry on with their whips and torment, at least until we summon the courage to challenge them.
And so we still suffer, and refuse to do anything about it. After all, we are respectable people. We don’t want to be laughed at, and so we, and our spouses, and our kids are freely tormented by the Evil One – some even to the point of acute depression or suicide, while others are just mauled by disease, and the church quietly readies the funeral sacraments while it lies helpless in the face of evil.
We don’t do what Jesus did because we don’t believe what He said, and we’re way too timid to give it a try. We are comfortable with Christianity. We are not comfortable with Jesus. In fact, He apparently embarasses us.
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Those in the body of Christ who criticize deliverance are the ones who don’t deliver anybody. They maintain that we are to be satisfied in the here and now with religious words and unprovable salvation promises, whereas Paul said that “my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God.” (1 Cr. 2:4-5)
The Scripture makes clear that the demonstration of power that he referred to was in the authority he exercised in Christ over demons and disease.
Even Jesus said that if you don’t believe me, “believe because of the works themselves.” (Jn. 14:11). God didn’t expect people to believe then without demonstrations of power, why should we expect people to believe now?
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If we believe the Lord Jesus Christ, and if we love our families and friends, and if we love the Lord Himself who calls us to battle, we will do as He did.
"[B]ut so that the world may know that I love the Father, I do exactly as the Father commanded Me. Get up, let us go from here." (Jn. 14:31)
