MONSTER WHACKING --
MONSTERS SERIES, PART 5

Matthew 16:18-19, 12:22-29, 10:7-8 (NASB)
David Bruce Linn, Pastor-Teacher
4 June 2006
All Rights Reserved

In our last study we saw that the Bible teaches that the world as we know it is filled with spirit monsters. The angel Lucifer, the highest created being in the universe, rebelled against God and convinced a third of the angels to follow him. They are on mission to steal, kill, and destroy, with particular attention to those who believe in Jesus Christ.

Yet these spirit monsters are already defeated by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. No one who has become a child of God by trusting Christ for forgiveness of sins and eternal life needs to be harassed or oppressed by these spirit monsters. But the spirit monsters are hoping that you and I do not know that, so they will float every possible lie to make us think that we are at their mercy.

1. THE AUTHORITY OF THE CHURCH OVER SPIRIT MONSTERS

One of the most controversial texts in the Bible, Matthew 16:16-19, clearly reveals our authority over them. Jesus was at that time heavily engaged in dispute with the Pharisees. The identity of Christ as Messiah and Son of God was becoming obvious to thousands. Jesus then turned to his own disciples and asked them who they thought he was: "Simon Peter answered, 'You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.' And Jesus said to him, 'Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven. I also say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church; and the gates of Hades will not overpower it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven."

After all the dancing Protestants do trying to avoid the conclusion that Peter is the rock upon which Christ would found the church, it is surely the most obvious meaning of the text. Far from meaning that Peter enjoyed some sort of spiritual privilege, it meant that he would have the most responsibility and the greatest sacrifice to give. That is how Christ's servant kingdom is structured.

Christ promised that the very gates of Hades would be unable to withstand the church. Does that sound like we should be fearful of spirit monsters? Certainly not! They should be afraid of us. Furthermore, we see the critical transfer of authority from Christ to his church in the form of the keys of the kingdom. What are the keys? Regular metal keys lock and unlock things. Prisoners are kept in jail by keys, and when the day of their release comes, they are released by keys. Christ himself said of his mission which is also the mission of the church: "THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD IS UPON ME, BECAUSE HE ANOINTED ME TO PREACH THE GOSPEL TO THE POOR. HE HAS SENT ME TO PROCLAIM RELEASE TO THE CAPTIVES, AND RECOVERY OF SIGHT TO THE BLIND, TO SET FREE THOSE WHO ARE OPPRESSED, TO PROCLAIM THE FAVORABLE YEAR OF THE LORD" (Luke 4:18-19). We, as members of Christ's body, are now the ones anointed to preach the gospel, proclaim release to the captives, and free the oppressed. The previous passage uses specific terminology to reveal this purpose for Christ's church: "I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven." The function of the keys is to provide heavenly power for our earthly acts of binding and loosing.

The first thing we must know about binding and loosing is that it is not a method or technique. Christ is making a global statement about the path of the church through this world full of spirits and other monsters. There are many specific methods for applying Christ's authority in this fallen world which we will study later. The bare fact is that Jesus Christ has put immense power at the disposal of his church to do his will on the earth. The spirit monsters want us to think that we are vulnerable to them and in danger of losing the battle, but Christ teaches us the reverse. The very gates of Hades shall not prevent the advance of God's kingdom. Rather than being whacked by the spirit monsters, we are supposed to be whacking them! We are not the ones under judgment, they are! We are not the prisoners anymore, they are! The church of today needs to hear the sound of the keys of the kingdom of God jangling in our pockets, take them out, and use them.

I am confident that many of you are thinking that this is one of those fantasy doctrines which sounds good in a sermon but which does not work in real life. Two missionary friends of mine, Chuck Davis and Bill Trinidad, recount the following story: "In the summer of 1992, God spoke to us on two separate occasions about the need to start a prayer meeting with the specific intent of binding the strong man in Bamako, Mali. We met weekly for two hours. The first hour was worship, the second prayer against the strong man in that city.

"About six weeks after we began, an Islamic witchdoctor tried to conjure up a spirit and send it on an errand. It was something he did regularly, and it had always worked. But this time the demon was slow to manifest itself. The witchdoctor persisted, and it finally came.

"'What took you so long?!' the witchdoctor demanded angrily.

"It answered him, 'Il y a une force contre nous maintenant. C'est les chretiens.' ('There's a force against us now; it's the Christians.') Apparently, the witchdoctor's ability to conjure and send the powers had been hindered by our praying" (quoted in Binding and Loosing, K. Neill Foster, Christian Publications, 1998, p. 217).

2. BINDING THE STRONG MAN

Christ used an episode of loosing to first display this reality and then explain it: "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" (Matthew 12:22). Immediately we see that physical healing and loosing are connected. A human being is made up of body, soul, mind, and spirit in a unified way. These parts are not compartmentalized, so that a person with a spiritual problem may have physical problems as a consequence.

Christ purposely displayed his total mastery of the spirit realm and it had its desired effect: "All the crowds were amazed, and were saying, 'This man cannot be the Son of David, can he?'" (Matthew 12:23). The average Jewish person knew that such spiritual authority was a mark of the Messiah, and only he. The Pharisees could not allow the people to come to that conclusion: "But when the Pharisees heard this, they said, 'This man casts out demons only by Beelzebul the ruler of the demons'" (Matthew 12:24). This was a stupid thing to say, and more important, it was a blasphemy.

Christ knew their thoughts and chose to destroy the logic of their argument by appealing to a universal principle of military science: "And knowing their thoughts Jesus said to them, 'Any kingdom divided against itself is laid waste; and any city or house divided against itself will not stand. If Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself; how then will his kingdom stand?'" (Matthew 12:25-26). You see, if Jesus was merely operating by the power of a demon he could not expel the ruler of the demons. He would have to be Satan in order to expel Satan, and that makes no sense. There are not two Satans.

The Pharisees' argument also boomeranged upon themselves: "If I by Beelzebul cast out demons, by whom do your sons cast them out? For this reason they will be your judges" (Matthew 12:27). There were Pharisees who regularly practiced Jewish exorcisms. It makes no logical sense to ascribe identical effects to opposite causes. If Jesus cast out demons by demonic power then so did members of their own sect. They were trying to argue that the rule of God had not been revealed by Christ's demonstration of power, and they utterly failed: "But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you" (Matthew 12:28).

Then Christ explains the charter of the ministry of binding and loosing in the church: "Or 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" (Matthew 12:29). Christ had just stolen a man out of Satan's grasp. He had loosed the man by casting out a spirit monster, and in the process healed him of blindness and the inability to speak. That should have been one happy man! The kingdom of God had come for sure, proved by the fact that demoniacs were being liberated by Christ at will. He is the one with supreme mastery over all powers in heaven and on earth, and the almost unbelievable fact is that he delegates his power to us to bind and loose according to his will.

3. THE DELEGATION OF BINDING AND LOOSING AUTHORITY

My rational mind struggles with the idea that Christ has put his kind of power in my hands. I have two separate feelings. First, I sometimes think that this is simply not true. Perhaps the cessationists are correct that none of this supernatural stuff really happens anymore. On the other hand, I am afraid that it might really be true, and I do not feel up to the task! I feel like a little kid who has had a running chainsaw placed in his hands.

Again we turn to the word of God to see if Jesus actually delegated binding and loosing authority to his church, and Matthew 10:7-8 speaks to this: "And as you go, preach, saying, 'The kingdom of heaven is at hand.' Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. Freely you received, freely give." It is clear that Christ actually did place a running chain saw in the hands of his disciples. But many object and say that this kind of power was only exercised by Christ and the specific people mentioned here or those who were close to himself.

So we look to the letters of Paul which were written decades after Christ had ascended to heaven, and we find 1 Corinthians 12:8-10: "For to one is given the word of wisdom through the Spirit, and to another the word of knowledge according to the same Spirit; to another faith by the same Spirit, and to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, and to another the effecting of miracles, and to another prophecy, and to another the distinguishing of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, and to another the interpretation of tongues." The early church considered the miraculous to be normal events in life and ministry. Every one of these gifts has a function which impacts binding and loosing. Again, binding and loosing are not methods but an umbrella ministry of the church. The person with the gift of healing may loose someone from an illness or injury. The person with the gift of the distinguishing of spirits may detect a spirit monster at work in an individual or group. The person with the gift of wisdom may be the one who knows what specific method is the right thing to bind or loose. The person with the gift of the miraculous may be the right person to effect a binding in a special case, but you and I have delegated power to use on a daily basis.

Without attempting a complete survey of methods for binding and loosing here let us think for a moment about how binding and loosing is the umbrella for many methods. Jesus' commission to the disciples when he sent them out was to preach the kingdom of heaven and to call people to repent and believe in Christ. The method of this most powerful application of binding and loosing is to preach the good news of Christ and persuade people to believe because that is the means ordained by God himself. We do not move people from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light by shouting at them: "I loose you from the kingdom of darkness!" Rather, as Paul wrote to the Romans: "For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek" (Romans 1:16). No one is more thoroughly bound than someone who is a prisoner in the kingdom of darkness, and no one is more completely and eternally loosed than someone who has believed the good news of Jesus Christ and been saved.

On the other hand, I find that spirit monsters often distract and attack right at the moment when I am attempting to speak the good news to someone. I may choose to pray for God to bind or to speak directly to a spirit monster to bind it at that moment. When I preached the last message in this series which ripped the mask off the activities of the spirit monsters I felt a spiritual resistance which was confirmed by at least one other person. So please pray for your pastors, teachers, and the body of Christ before, during, and after every teaching because the spirit monsters hate the word of God and do everything they can to try to blunt its effect.

Although the binding and loosing ministry of the church seems clear in the Bible, I am guessing that most who have followed me thus far are still feeling that it does not line up with their experience. Furthermore, all believers should be concerned that this seems to put us in danger of attempting to command God which is both absurd and sacrilegious. The only thing which makes the doctrine of binding and loosing both possible and sensible is found crystallized in an often-overlooked statement of John the Baptist.

It was during a time of the overlap of John's ministry with that of Jesus. Some of John's disciples saw the crowds going over to Jesus for baptism, and they exclaimed to John about it: "Hey, everyone is going over there!" "John answered and said, 'A man can receive nothing unless it has been given him from heaven'" (John 3:27). All of the gifts, powers, and manifestations of God's Spirit are controlled by his sovereignty. We can only use the delegated power of Christ to whack the monsters God wants to whack, when, and how he wants to do it.

We are actually quite familiar with the restricted use of power. On the one hand, some Christians approach the solemn duty of binding and loosing the same way Arab insurgents approach their guns. Whenever they feel happy out comes the AK-47 assault rifle and they rip off a hundred rounds into the air. When they are afraid of the enemy, they do something which military people have come to call "spray and pray," which means that they point their weapon over or around a wall without aiming and just drain the magazine. I have also heard this called "Beirut offhand," and it does not work! It is like the well-intentioned brother I heard attempting to cast out the "spirit of twisted ankle." I can see anointing someone and praying for healing, or the gift of healing which may speak healing directly, but I am not aware of any Bible verse which places the cause of twisted ankles on spirit monsters who need to be cast out.

Most Christians in my experience are like those cities which have totally banned all handguns. They allow the possession of long guns but require them to be unloaded and locked in the house. They thus prevent the valid use of small arms in self defense. I am standing here because two generations of my forebears protected our family with small arms. Most Christians have been so afraid of binding and loosing that spirit monsters which should have been whacked have had free play with their families, friends, neighbors, and churches. This is an unacceptable situation.

In contrast to these two extremes the reality of binding and loosing is more like the legal use of guns for sport. Every boy or girl who receives a .22 rifle or .410 gauge shotgun as a present wants to know the same thing we all want to know about the power of Christ: Where can I shoot this? And the answer is only found when the children undergo instruction on the safe and legal use of their guns. They can only pull the trigger when a whole list of human wills line up, included parents' permission, local, state, and federal laws, and the rules of any club or range where they might shoot. Eventually, if the youngster gets all the wills to line up, he or she can sight in the target and pull the trigger.

The proper use of binding and loosing is like this. First, we must engage our own willingness to whack spirit monsters in this way. Secondly, and much more important, we must have the express will of God for that specific situation lined up. When missionaries Chuck Davis and Bill Trinidad sought to bind the strong man over Bamako, they were following the Lord's explicit guidance for their situation. Their story also illustrates that the territorial spirits cannot simply be shut down during the church age because the Lord himself has given the world over into their hands in a limited way. The spirit being called by the witchdoctor in Bamako was hindered, but he got through. Other spirit monsters have no such permission from God and can be shut down entirely.

CONCLUSION

There is a pronounced tendency in the church to focus on methods for whacking the spirit monsters, and this always has the danger of sliding into the mechanical and magical. If God wanted us to have many explicit methods he would have given us the equivalent of a book of spells. On the contrary, binding and loosing is founded on the deepest of truths about God, Christ, humanity, and the spirit world. Because of this Dr. Neil Anderson, my former professor and author of The Bondage Breaker, prefers to call most of our work in binding and loosing truth encounter rather than power encounter.

Christ equipped his church with powerful spiritual weapons. Will we use them? Or will we permit a lost world full of spirit monsters to harass and oppress our loved ones? Are you tired of your church being stuck in certain ways? Do you long for an open door for evangelism in the community? The New Testament reveals a list of things from which people may be loosed, including sin, Satan, bondage of the tongue, debt, prison, and sickness (Foster, p. 16-17). There is no doubt an application of binding and loosing to be made to all of these these crucial matters.

In our next study we will look at a list of specific tools we can use to be a church which moves in the delegated power of binding and loosing.