By The Finger Of God

             But if I drive out demons by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. (Luke 11:20)

 

            Today’s passage is Jesus’ response to some folks who claimed He was driving out demons by the power of Beelzebul, the prince of demons. 

            I didn’t put it into these words yesterday, but let me summarize the idea from yesterday’s passage: it doesn’t matter what we do, if we are doing it under the influence of the kingdom of God and/or for the kingdom of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon us and those around us.

            Jesus healed the sick and drove out demons. The disciples healed the sick. Those are showy things, displays of great power, we think. We should be doing these great, showy things, we think. But Jesus didn’t tell us people would know we are His disciples by our great showy things. He said they’d know we are His disciples by our love. That’s the showy thing God has in mind.

This is one of our problems with the kingdom of God. It’s hard to think of working a job, going to school, keeping house, gardening, walking the dog, taking people here and there, or any of the other things we do as a normal part of life as kingdom work.

            If nothing else, this is evidence of dualistic thinking along these lines:

Important	Not Important
Spiritual	Physical
Prayer	Work
Evangelism	Cooking dinner
Healing or other miracles	Gardening
Bible Study	Reading a bedtime story
Going to Church	Visiting a neighbor

 

            The problem is, even in yesterday’s passage, that isn’t the way Jesus works. He sent them to heal their bodies and teach that the kingdom of God was near. That may sound like two spiritual (and therefore important things) but He didn’t tell them to ignore the need for bodies to be healed and focus only on the spiritual needs of those they met. They were to meet physical needs, too. Of course, there are other people who take the opposite approach, that we need to meet the physical needs and not bother with the spiritual.

            A second problem is that we don’t have an indicator light that tells us that we are working by the finger of God now … and five minutes later, it blinks out because we’re not. We’re back to experimenting. We do something and see what happens. Somehow, I doubt Jesus would have reprimanded one of the disciples sent to heal and preach the kingdom if the disciple returned and said, “I’m sorry, Jesus. I didn’t heal anyone or preach the kingdom because when I arrived, they were all upset because their toddler had wandered off. We spent the day looking for her.”