Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Matthew 12:22, 29 Then a demon-possessed man who was blind and mute was brought to Jesus, and He healed him, so that the mute man spoke and saw . . . "how can anyone enter the strong man's house and carry off his property, unless he first binds the strong man? And then he will plunder his house."
JESUS DOMINATES THE DEVIL
Some of the people Jesus healed were medically sick. Others had been taken over by evil spirits. Some, like the man in this reading, were afflicted in both ways.
This man was possessed by a demon who had taken away both his ability to see and his ability to speak. When someone brought this poor demon-possessed man to Jesus, the forces of good and evil collided. But our text doesn't describe much of a fight, does it? When Jesus saw the man's terrible condition, He quickly tore the demon out of the man and restored what the demon had taken -- the man's sight and speech.
God's Word says, ". . . The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work" (1 John 3:8). By healing the sick and casting out demons Jesus was fixing what the devil had broken. By healing these effects of sin, Jesus was destroying the Devil's work.
But healing sicknesses and casting out demons was only part of Jesus' work, and not the most important part by far. Jesus demonstrated His dominance over the Devil by casting one demon from this one man. Jesus further demonstrated His dominance by restoring health to many sick people. But Jesus would completely humiliate the Devil by taking away the Devil's favorite weapon: our sin.
When Jesus received the full punishment for our sin on the cross, the Devil lost his power to accuse us before the Father. Christ bound the Devil through His cross. Then He took us from the Devil's house of darkness to the Father's house of light.
