Pastor Barry's "Chapter & Verse" Day 260

Posted by Pastor Barry Fredericks on

Pastor Barry's  "Chapter & Verse"  Day 260

September 16;   Luke 4:36;   48/260(II);   ‘Authority and Power’

Luke 4:36 Then they were all amazed and spoke among themselves, saying, "What a word this is! For with authority and power He commands the unclean spirits, and they come out."

 Jesus was teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.  The congregation was astonished at the teaching of the Lord, for He taught as One with authority, which indeed He had.  There was a man in the synagogue with the spirit of an unclean demon.  Notice the demon went right into the synagogue.  If the Lord Jesus is not magnified in ‘church,’ and all that is taught is religious ideas of men, the demon has no fear of being there.  When Jesus came into the synagogue, it was a completely different story.  The demon in the man screamed out in terror.  Demonic forces know that Jesus Christ has absolute authority over them.  Horror movies, depicting evil as more powerful than good, are created by deceived people, who do not know or do not want to know the truth.  The Lord Jesus cast the unclean demon out of the man.  The people were amazed at the authority of Jesus over the unclean demon.  Why would this be?  Because the religious leaders surely had no authority over the unclean demon.  It appeared that the people knew the spirit was on the man and they just ‘lived with it.’  Not so the Lord Jesus.  He knew who He was, He knew that satan and his demonic forces were defeated and Jesus treated the demon with the absolute knowledge of His authority over the evil spirit.  When the Lord Jesus rose from the dead, He took back the authority Adam yielded to satan when Adam sinned.  Jesus then gave that authority back to us, His church.  Now we too, just like Jesus, can fearlessly deal with demonic spirits, knowing that Jesus gave us authority over them. The devil knows this and so must we.