Authority Over Demons and Disease
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I’m going to use the gun if a big bear starts coming down on me, and I’m not going to wait until
he gets to my nose, either. Why did God give us the authority? Why did He give us the power?
So disease could rule over us and destroy our lives? So demons could make us miserable and
destroy us? No! He gave it so we can do what He did while He walked the earth. He rebuked
them. He bound them. He shut them down. He ran them out.
Sometimes when you start talking about some of these things, people get nervous. A lot of folks
don’t even like to talk about demons at all, and of course it’s the devil’s favorite thing for you to
just pretend that there is no devil. His favorite thing is for you to believe there are no demons,
and that there is no devil. If he can’t get you to believe that, then he wants you to be afraid of it,
mortified, terrified.
Most of the Church will get in one ditch or the other. They get in the ditch over on one side and
pretend there is no devil and there are no demons. “Oh, don’t talk about that. I don’t like talking
about that.”
Or they get out of that ditch and go across the middle of the road into the ditch on the other side,
where
everything
is the devil, and it’s all fear. “Oh, there’s a devil behind every bush. There’s a
devil. Oh, you’re a devil. Oh, oh! The devil, the devil…” Everything is a devil. You know that
it’s wrong when it produces fear. The Lord didn’t tell us these things to make us afraid of the
devil. He gave us these things to have dominion, authority, and victory, and when the devil starts
doing stuff, to shut it down.
In Mark 1:21, Jesus went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day, and He taught, “and they were
astonished…”
Astonished
is a strong word, and if you look it up to define it, it gets even stronger
than what you might think. They were absolutely amazed, awestruck, at His doctrine. Why? It
wasn’t for the reasons you might think. It was because of
how
He taught them.
Some teach, “As we cover this point, it would be good to remember that Dr. So-and-So has this
position, but of course the other Dr. So-and-So has his position, and perhaps there is a happy
medium between the two, and you just decide whatever it is you think it means and should be,
because we all have a right to believe whatever we think is best…” But that isn’t how Jesus
taught at all. He taught like a lion. He said, “God said this, and this is what it is! There isn’t any
other way!”
And the people said, “Nobody has taught like that!” He wasn’t talking theories. He taught with
authority. This is one of the things that marks His whole ministry: authority—in His teaching, in
His actions, and in His operations. Now some go down the wrong path and say, “Well…., it’s
Jesus!” But He is operating as a Man. Don’t take my word for it. Study it out. Study it in
Hebrews, Romans, Philippians, and the Gospels. Jesus emptied Himself and showed us how to
do it as a man.
Verses 22-24 say, “…for he taught them as one that had authority, and not as the scribes. And
there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit; and he cried out, Saying, Let us alone;
what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? art thou come to destroy us? I know thee
who thou art, the Holy One of God.”
