Children are given to questioning. So it could be anticipated that, at the annual Passover in Israel – when the lamb was killed and the family had their special meal with bitter herbs, after disposing of all traces of leaven – the children might ask, “What is this?” (Ex 13:14). The Lord had provided the parents with an answer: “By strength of hand the Lord brought us out from Egypt, from the house of bondage”. The Passover was intended to commemorate Israel’s deliverance from slavery in Egypt. It was impossible for them to escape; they were too weak and Pharaoh was far too powerful. Only God’s hand could effect their deliverance. Of course, God has no hand; He is a spirit. The word hand is used to help us understand: just as human beings exercise power by using their hands; so the Bible speaks of God’s hand, or arm, to indicate the exercise of His power.
This powerful deliverance of Israel from Egypt was intended as a type of a more wonderful deliverance: of sinners from Satan’s kingdom. Just as Israel could not escape from Egypt apart from God’s power, no sinner can escape from bondage to sin and Satan. Satan is too powerful and they have no spiritual strength. What is more, they have no desire to leave the ways of sin; their wills are corrupted; they love “darkness rather than light” (Jn 3:19).
The Saviour was pointing to Satan’s power to keep sinners in his kingdom when He said, “When a strong man armed keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace” (Lk 11:21); they are undisturbed while God leaves the sinner to his own sinful ways, while He does not work in the sinner’s heart by the Holy Spirit. Matthew Henry comments on this verse: “The heart of every unconverted sinner is the devil’s palace, where he resides and where he rules; he works in the children of disobedience. The heart is a palace, a noble dwelling, but the unsanctified heart is the devil’s palace. His will is obeyed, his interests are served . . . he usurps the throne in the soul.”
Further: “The devil, as a strong man armed, keeps this palace, does all he can to secure it to himself, and to fortify it against Christ. All the prejudices with which he hardens men’s hearts, against the truth and holiness, are the strongholds which he erects for the keeping of his palace.” So Paul warns about Satan: “The god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them” (2 Cor 4:4). He does all in his power to prevent the glorious good news about Christ penetrating into the darkness of the unbelieving heart. He leads sinners further and further into the ways of sin; he is pleased when sinners receive the teachings of false religions, or atheism and secularism.
But Satan is especially anxious to do all in his power to prevent sinners receiving the glorious gospel, the truth concerning the One who came into the world to save sinners – the Son of God who gave Himself, in human nature, to suffer and die in the place of the guilty, so that multitudes might escape from Satan and become free to serve God in this life and enjoy the fullness of blessing provided for believers for ever in heaven. It is impossible for Satan again to enjoy that supreme blessedness which was his when he was created and, maliciously, he does all he can to prevent any other creature from ever enjoying such a blessing. In this he is highly effective, not least because of his superhuman intellect. He is indeed the “strong man armed”.
Just as the Lord showed Himself to be stronger than Pharaoh when He brought Israel out of Egypt, so there is One stronger than the strong man armed – the Lord Jesus Christ. Whenever it is God’s will to bring a sinner out of the kingdom of darkness, not even Satan can prevent that purpose being put into effect. So Jesus continued His reference to the strong man armed by saying, “When a stronger than he shall come upon him, and overcome him, he taketh from him all his armour wherein he trusted, and divideth his spoils” (Lk 11:22).
Matthew Henry continues: “Satan is a strong man armed; but our Lord Jesus is stronger than he, as God, as Mediator. . . . He comes upon him by surprise, when his goods are in peace and the devil thinks it is all his own for ever, and overcomes him. . . . The conversion of the soul to God is Christ’s victory over the devil and His power in the soul, restoring the soul to its liberty, and recovering His own interest in it and dominion over it.” The Lord Jesus overcomes all Satan’s schemes to keep sinners in his kingdom – tempting them to sin, to give themselves to the world, the flesh and the devil, to follow false religion, to trust in self-righteousness.
The Saviour wields a mighty weapon: the Word of God. That was seen, for instance, when Paul, Silas and Timothy were preaching the gospel in Thessalonica. Paul looked back on the effects of that mighty weapon, as they had made use of it in that heathen city: “Our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance” (1 Th 1:5). The power was that of the Holy Spirit, not the power of these eminent preachers. They spoke; they used words; and that was necessary if the gospel message was to reach the minds and hearts of their hearers. But if that was all, no one would have been converted; no one would have been delivered from Satan’s kingdom. So we must conclude that Christ was powerfully present when these ambassadors preached the gospel; and accordingly the Holy Spirit applied the truth with power so that the people felt the authority of God’s Word; they were brought to an assurance that this Word had divine authority and that it was absolute truth.
In particular, the Lord would have blessed the call of the gospel as the preachers spoke. One can easily think of Paul or one of the other preachers repeating the call that Jesus gave: “Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Mt 11:28). In Thessalonica, the Saviour exercised His power as the One greater than the strong man armed and drew a significant number of sinners out of Satan’s kingdom, the Holy Spirit making them willing to come to Christ and follow Him. Another way of expressing the result was: they “turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God” (1 Th 1:9). In turning to God they forsook the bondage of Satan’s kingdom, and they did so because God exercised His power – the strength of His hand – through the Word of God being declared.
Every revival, from Pentecost onwards, was a remarkable demonstration of God’s power to bring sinners out of Satan’s kingdom. One of the most remarkable instances of the pouring out of God’s Spirit in Scotland was at the kirk of Shotts in 1630, through the preaching of John Livingstone. He was still only 27 and not yet an ordained minister, but already he had been several times at Shotts to preach.
Livingstone gave the following account of the particular time of blessing: “In that place I used to find more liberty in preaching than elsewhere. Yea, the one day in all my life wherein I got most presence of God in public was on a Monday after a communion, preaching in the churchyard of the Shotts, 21 June 1630. The night before, I had been with some Christians, who spent the night in conference and prayer. When I was alone in the fields about eight or nine in the morning, before we were to go to sermon, there came such a misgiving of spirit upon me, considering my unworthiness and weakness, and the multitude and expectation of the people, that I was consulting with myself to have stolen away somewhere, and declined that day’s preaching, but that I durst not so far distrust God, and so went to sermon, and got good assistance. I had about one hour and a half upon the points I had meditated on Ezekiel 36:25,26.”
As Livingstone was about to bring his sermon to a close, a heavy shower came on suddenly, and the people quickly began to put on their cloaks. This set Livingstone off on a fresh train of thought, something to this effect: “If a few drops of rain disturb you like this, how disturbed would you be, how full of horror and despair, if God would deal with you as you deserve? And thus He will deal with all the finally impenitent. God might justly rain fire and brimstone upon you as He did upon Sodom and Gomorrah and the other cities of the plain. But (for ever blessed be His name!) the door of mercy still stands open for such as you are.
The Lord Jesus Christ, by tabernacling in our nature and by obeying the law, which we have wickedly and wilfully broken, and suffering that punishment which we have so richly deserved, has now become a refuge from the storm and a covert from the tempest of divine wrath due to us for sin. His merits and mediation are alone the defence from that storm, and none but those who come to Christ just as they are, empty of everything, and take the offered mercy at His hand, will have the benefit of this shelter.” Livingstone summed up this latter part of his discourse: “In end, offering to close with some words of exhortation, I was led on about an hour’s time in a strain of exhortation and warning, with such liberty and melting of heart as I never had the like in public all my life”.
The result of this sermon was 500 souls delivered from Satan’s kingdom. These effects were clearly not fundamentally the result of special human ability, though Livingstone was an able preacher; the real cause was the strength of God’s hand. The subsequent course of providence seems intended to demonstrate that. “Some little of that stamp remained on the Thursday after,” Livingstone noted, “when I preached at Kilmarnock. But the very Monday after, preaching in Irvine, I was so deserted, that the points I had meditated and written, and had them fully in my memory, I was not able . . . to get them pronounced. So it pleased the Lord to counter-balance His dealing, and hide pride from man. This so discouraged me, that I was upon resolution for some time not to preach, at least not in Irvine; but Mr David Dickson [minister of the town] would not suffer me to go from thence till I preached the next Sabbath Day, to get (as he called it) a mends [revenge] of the devil. I stayed and I preached with some tolerable freedom.”1
Children ask questions, but we all should ask ourselves questions. Let us note this vital one: Which kingdom am I in, God’s or Satan’s? In the Bible we will find the right answer, as it spells out the evidence of those who trust in God and express Paul’s desire: to “be found in [Christ], not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith” (Phil 3:9).
1These quotations are from Select Biographies, Edinburgh, 1842, vol 1, pp 138-9. This two-volume set has been reprinted by the Banner of Truth as Scottish Puritans.