It doesn’t exactly feel as if my demons have submitted yet, but maybe they just want me to think they haven’t.  The truth is they’re done.  They’ve lost.  They aren’t stronger than Jesus, even if they do howl loudly from time to time.  Jesus has won the victory and is now engaged in a clean-up operation.  I can breathe a sigh of relief, but it’s not time to let my guard down.

It’s odd to think of Satan as ever having been in heaven.  Baptist pastor and author Steven J. Lawson, by way of interpreting Ezekiel, has written that Satan was “the highest of all the angels in glory, endowed with extraordinary gifts, dazzling beauty, and vast wisdom [. . . .] given the closest proximity to God’s throne.”[1]  Then he took a notion to replace God with, well, himself.  The same old problem: self-serving, self-seeking, self-exalting.  As far back as the peaceful garden of joy, people have been interpreting God’s word after their own hellbent inclination, yet God translates us to His glory.

Back in 1667, Paradise Lost came out, by the English Puritan poet John Milton, who memorably imagined Satan’s fall: “Him the Almighty Power / Hurld headlong flaming from th’ Ethereal Skie / With hideous ruine and combustion down / To bottomless perdition, there to dwell / In Adamantine Chains and penal Fire, / Who durst defie th’ Omnipotent to Arms” (I:44-49).  The Son witnessed that “fall like lightning from heaven” (Lk 10:18).  We’ve seen lightning: sudden, brief—maybe big, bright—even frightening—but temporary.

Jesus doesn’t elaborate.  He doesn’t make Satan out as one before whom we ought to tremble.  Be aware, yes.  Wary, of course.  Jesus tells the seventy-two, and I think he’s also telling us, that he has given us authority “to overcome all the power of the enemy” (10:19).  Authority to overcome.  Now, how do people exercise authority?  By speaking, communicating.  Authority is given; it does not originate with us.  We have been given the Word, and by the Word we overcome the power of the enemy.  The Word is God’s authority in us.  What power does the enemy have?  For the most part, our spiritual enemy has only the power we allow him, give him, by our weakness, by how we can be tempted.  Our enemy knows just how to tempt us; our enemy is expert at tempting us; we are all of us, including yours truly, all too temptable.  We also know just how to be delivered: by going to God’s Word, going to our knees in prayer, falling on our faces in prayer.

The disciples were chattering excitedly about evil submitting to them.  They were marveling at this power, at what they could do by this power.  What they could do.  Hmm.  Surely whatever power God gives, the authority he grants us by His grace, is not for what we can do with it but for what He means to use us to do for Him, for His kingdom, for His glory.  The authority is not our authority; the power is not our power.  It is given, for a purpose.  Satan didn’t understand; he had other plans.  He lured Eve and Adam into those same plans—plans to be god for themselves, a law unto themselves, interpreting God’s Word for their own hellbent inclinations.  Well, we live with the results of that every day, with each new sorrow and terrible grief the news brings.  How broken this world is!  How broken, these times!  How can our hearts bear it all?  How could they possibly bear any more?

Jesus calls his followers back, away from the demonic way.  Yes, he has given authority, the power of the Word, so that we shall overcome.  “However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven” (10:20).  Not “see what I can do” but see what God has done; consider what God will do.  Elsewhere, Jesus cautions his followers against using authority and power the way the rulers here below do, for lording it over others (Mk 10:42-45).  They say jump; we say how high.  We’ll do whatever you say; just keep the checks coming.  The world rejoices in power and conceives of power mostly as subjection: power means I can make you do what I say.  Really?  Every couple years, politicians pledge that if we the people give them the power, they’re going to change this and that, and we’ll be so happy; just wait and see.  The only thing that changes so far as I’ve seen has been their net worth: politicians tend to come out much better off than they came in.  Meanwhile, we’re supposed to be out in the streets over those fat cat businessmen and their excessive profits.  It pays to have the people send you to the seat of power.  Public servants.

Do Christians have power?  Yes, but not power as the world thinks of it: compulsion.  The power we have is as God gives.  Power for us means we can do what God says; we really can, difficult as that may be to believe.  God makes it possible; power is not compulsion but possibility, ability.  Grace is power—God with us, at work in us, “to will and to act in order to fulfill His good purpose” (Phil 2:13).  Salvation is great power.  Perseverance, patience, faith, courage—remarkable power.  Self-humbling, sacrificial love—tremendous, holy power.

And Jesus calls us to delight not in the power as power but to delight in the salvation: our names are written in heaven.  They are written in the book of life about which we read in Revelation: “And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened.  Another book was opened, which is the book of life” (Rev 20:12).  I want to be, be, be, in that book, when the saints go marching in!  Knowing that our names are written there makes much lighter whatever remains of the chains you and I still bear.  No, we won’t always be heavy-laden!

We like to think of Jesus as happy.  That’s a good way to think of him; Luke describes him as joyful just here with “joy through the Holy Spirit” (10:21).  Jesus speaks his joy.  His joy is in his Father.  Let us also speak our joy in our Father in heaven.  Jesus says, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children.  Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do” (10:21).  Part of the power of salvation is ability to know God, to be in relationship with God.  Knowing God is with us is great power!  Where do those who have no use for God or faith in God find power, power for living?  What motivates them?  Where could they possibly go to nurse their sick souls?  A 2014 poll indicates that around eight in ten Americans believe in heaven, whatever that might mean for them.[2]  This has been steady for decades.  The same poll shows that about 67% believe in hell, which has also been remarkably consistent for decades.  But did you notice?  More believe in heaven than in hell, which causes me to think more have faith in hope than in God’s Word.

Human wisdom gets us only so far.  What is the sum of human wisdom, Murphy’s Law?  “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.”  What is the sum of human wisdom, nihilism?  Mao’s Cultural Revolution?  CRT?  Being learned, educated, can get you far, but not as far as heaven.  But we’re told, even in some branches of the church, that the goal isn’t heaven but a transformed earth.  Marx wrote, “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways.  The point, however, is to change it.”  To transform human life on earth.  And earth will be transformed, but not as the wise and learned envision.  O, their visions!  And the havoc, devastation, and suffering they have caused.  Enough with the visions of man!  Public servants.

Now, why would God hide things from the wise and learned?  Wisdom and education are good, and they can become sources of pride.  That’s not wise.  No one comes to God by way of pride.  Pride leads away from God, as Satan can attest.  Pride is not God’s way.  God reminds us as often as we need reminding that we do not come to God: God comes to us—Christ, Word, Spirit.  We do not seek God: God seeks us.  We do not love God: God loves us.  All the initiative is with God who blesses with holy wisdom those who prayerfully ask it of Him.

God reveals.  God is a God of revelation.  God does not refuse to reveal: He is happy to reveal holy things—the way, the truth, the life—to those who approach Him as He wishes to be approached: as our Father in heaven.  The German theologian of the last century, Rudolf Bultmann, wrote that “Man must approach God like a child, content to receive a gift, and innocent of any appeal to privilege or merit.”[3]  We are often reminded that we earn nothing from God except condemnation.  Any wisdom we believe we bring with us into our relationship with God counts for nothing in God’s sight.  To be truly wise is to learn wisdom from God.  Any education we think we bring with us into our relationship with God counts for nothing in God’s sight.  To be truly educated is to learn what God desires to teach us.  What counts is faith, trust, hope, expectancy, love: the very things children have to offer, all that children are able to offer.  Is it so very little? Revelation is for faith.  God gives eyes to those who have faith, gives ears to those who have faith, gives tongues to those who have faith.  And God gives the faith.

Faith makes assertions, not assumptions.  This is part of what drives irreligious secularists nuts about Christians.  “You can’t say that!  You can’t know that!  You’re presumptuous!  You’re arrogant!”  By faith, we can say, and we must say.  Shall we claim less for Jesus than he claims for himself: “All things have been committed to me by my Father” (10:22).  A cosmic claim.  All things.  Everything is quite a lot.  We sing “He’s got the whole world in His hands”: the hands of Jesus.  All things.  Nothing is excluded.  Everything is under the eye of Jesus, in the hands of Jesus.  Jesus assures us, saying “I’ve got this.”  We need to hear that, more often than we may realize.

We tend to think of the eternal Son of the eternal Father exclusively as Jesus of Nazareth, with the beard, the long robe, the red sash, or is it blue?  There’s so much he did while on earth among us physically that we are mostly occupied with talking about those things, sharing his words and deeds, his call and his love.  This is all very good.  It’s also very good to remember and reflect on what the Bible tells us of the eternal Son, through whom all things were made, seen and unseen, to whom the Father has committed all things.  In the Son, we might say we behold the hands of God.  At the outset of his telling of the Gospel, John is quite clear about who Jesus is: “Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made” (Jn 1:3).  The Word is the power of creation.  Next time you wonder how God can raise from the dead, or if He can, remember the Word is the power of creation.  The Word speaks what does not exist, and it comes into existence.  The Word speaks, and there is life.  Where the Word speaks, there is life.

And to Jesus Christ, who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests of his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever.

               [1] Steven J. Lawson.  Made in Our Image: What Shall We Do with a “User-Friendly” god?  Sisters, Oregon: Multnomah.  100.

               [2] https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/paradise-polled-americans-and-afterlife

               [3] Rudolf Bultmann.  Primitive Christianity in Its Contemporary Setting.  Trans. Rev. R. H. Fuller.  New York: Meridian, 1956.  73.