Friday, October 29, 2004
I'm sort of a news junkie. I really like to watch a national news cast sometime before the day is over. But there are some words I cringe at when I hear them in the news, like "hostage." As soon as you hear the word "hostage" you know that there is a potential life-or-death stand off going on between some angry desperate assailant and the police. The law enforcement people are trying to save the hostages that he's holding. Recently I talked with a police officer friend of mine about how they handle those dangerous rescues. He said, "First, you want to use something like tear gas, or fatigue, or a marksman - anything that will immobilize the hostage taker."
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Spiritual Tear Gas."
Our word for today from the Word of God comes from Matthew 12:29. Here Jesus describes the ultimate rescue operation. "How can anyone enter a strong man's house and carry off his possessions unless he first ties up the strong man? The he can rob his house." This is talking about first of all Satan is the strong man in the context here. Jesus is talking about Satan's possessions, He's talking about people who don't know Christ; who belong to the enemy because they've never been rescued by the Lord Jesus. When you carry off Satan's possessions that should never have belonged to him, you're literally bringing those people to a relationship with Jesus Christ.
Colossians 1:13 describes it this way. It talks about the fact that we've been rescued from the kingdom of darkness and God has placed us in the kingdom of His dear Son. Evangelism is a rescue operation.
Jesus describes the mission further in these words in Luke 11:21-22. "When a strong man," - there's the devil again - "fully armed, guards his own house, his possessions are safe." Okay, now Satan is fighting to hang onto the people that you know are without Christ. But it goes on to say, "But when someone stronger attacks and overpowers him, he takes away the armor in which the man trusted and divides up the spoil."
Our Lord wants us to know who these people are that we work with, and go to school with; the people we live near. They are prisoners of the Prince of Darkness. He's trying desperately to hang onto them until the day they die so he can have them forever. Jesus also wants us to understand this life-or-death mission we have to rescue the lost people around us by introducing them to the Savior. But often in our efforts to reach people for Christ, we miss an essential first step. Just like the police in a hostage situation, we have to immobilize the assailant before we go running in to rescue his hostages. Like Jesus said, we have to tie his hands. We need to tie up Satan first.
No program can do that, no plan, no organization, no work, no planning. You can only tie Satan's hands through prayer. Any rescue effort that is not preceded with a strong enemy-neutralizing time of prayer is likely to fail. We need to spend fervent time with the one described here as "someone stronger." We need to pray by the name and the blood of Jesus that the enemy's efforts to blind, distract, confuse, and hold his prisoners will be totally overcome by Jesus. That kind of prayer is the spiritual tear gas that renders the devil powerless.
My police friend said the bottom line whenever an assailant is holding hostages is this: never let him be in charge - especially when that hostage taker is the devil himself. On our knees, unleashing the overcoming power of Jesus, we can disable the hostage taker and help a hostage go free - forever.