Authority Over the Enemy

We quote this verse and then quietly edit the end of it, because nothing shall by any means hurt you is not what any of us have observed.

That objection deserves a straight answer rather than a louder reading. People who fear God are hurt constantly. The seventy who received this sentence were sent out by the same Jesus with a different sentence attached: behold, I send you forth as lambs among wolves. He said both things within a few minutes of each other, to the same men, and he was not confused. Church history is not ambiguous about how many of them died badly.

So look at what the promise is actually made about. Over all the power of the enemy. That is the domain. The authority he hands over is authority in a specific conflict, exercised in his name, against a specific opponent, and it is not a charm against difficulty, illness, or wolves. Serpents and scorpions are the small vicious things, the ones that get you when you are not looking, and treading is an unglamorous verb; it is what you do walking.

And then, this is the part that settles it, Jesus immediately moves their joy off the whole subject. Notwithstanding in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you. He gives them real authority in one verse and tells them not to build their happiness on it in the next. A man who wanted to sell them invulnerability would not have done that.

So use what was given, where you are standing, in the name it was given in. Pray over the house, over the child down the hall, over the fear that keeps arriving without a face on it. Then go back to bed, because authority that is never exercised feels exactly the same as having none.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 324 is Clothed With Humility (1 Peter 5:5).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna