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VOL VII  NO. 1  JANUARY 2006

REV. ROBERT KELLEY

 


Releasing the Strong Man! - Part II

 

Rev. Robert Kelley is the founder and president of Open Door Communication Ministries, Inc. and pastored the St. Mark Baptist Church of Portland, Oregon at the time this was published.

 

(Editor´s Note: This is part two of an article proclaiming the way of release to every man who will put his faith in Jesus Christ!)

 

The Mission Of Jesus Christ
The prophet Isaiah wrote of Israel´s long awaited Deliverer and His mission some 700 hundred years before His birth.  He quoted Him as saying, "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me, because the Lord has anointed Me to preach good tidings to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound," (Isaiah 61:1, NKJV).  Luke 4:16-30 reports how Jesus of Nazareth read this passage to His hometown crowd gathered in the synagogue and alluded to Himself as fulfilling it.

 

The people of His community angrily sought to kill Jesus that day because they refused to believe in this Man who they had watched grow into Manhood before their very eyes.  Also, he had rebuked their biased belief that the Messiah would only bless them as a nation.  Later, the whole nation led by their religious leaders blinded in unbelief, rejected Him as well and instigated His crucifixion.  Regardless, did Jesus of Nazareth show He was the One of whom Isaiah wrote?  Yes!  All of the Bible´s New Testament and millions of people from around the earth over nearly the past 2,000 years give evidence of this fact!

 

The Liberating Power Of Jesus Christ!
Jesus Christ was anointed of the Father and empowered by the Holy Spirit to preach good news to the poor and heal the broken-hearted.  The poor are not just the financially and materially impoverished.  They are every human being spiritually separated from God and dead in their trespasses and sins as well as enslaved to Satan.  All suffer broken hearts to one degree or another since normally no human being passes through this life without experiencing the painful consequences of sin including death and the evil tyranny of Satan.

 

The good news is the arrival of God´s kingdom in the Person of Jesus Christ and deliverance from sin, death, Satan and his cursed world system.  God has done this out of the riches of His mercy, love and grace; men respond through simple child-like faith (Ephesians 2:1-9; Titus 2:11-14).  Thus, Jesus Christ suffered and died on the cross for our sins, was buried and rose again on the third day triumphing over sin, death and Satan (Colossians 2:11-15; Hebrews 2:14-15).

 

Before the Lord Jesus went to the cross, however, He demonstrated the superior power of God to release men from Satan´s ties that bind and shackles that enslave in fulfilling His mission.  In proclaiming liberty to Satan´s captives and opening the prison doors where he had bound the children of Israel, the Lord Jesus went about forgiving their sins and healing their sicknesses, diseases and physical afflictions. The lame walked, the blind saw, the deaf heard, the mute spoke and the lepers were cleansed!  Along the way, He cast out the demons responsible for much of their suffering and who oppressed many of them from within.

 

A case in point is a man brought to Jesus, "who was demon-possessed, blind and mute; and He healed him, so that the blind and mute man both spoke and saw," (Matthew 12:22, NKJV).  The people were amazed and wondered rightly whether Jesus was in fact the Messiah.  The Pharisees heard the people and resentfully in their hearts accused Jesus of casting out demons by the chief of demons (Matthew 12:23-24).

 

The Lord answers the blasphemous thoughts of the Pharisees by pointing out the absurdity of a house divided against itself and Satan casting out Satan.  Satan´s kingdom would not stand if he fought against himself.  Then he asked them by what source their sons cast out demons if they accused Him of doing it by Satan (Matthew 12:25-27)?  Thereafter He declared, "But if I cast out demons by the Spirit of God, surely the kingdom of God has come upon you.  Or how can one enter a strong man´s house and plunder his goods unless he first binds the strong man?  And then he will plunder his house," (Matthew 12:28-29).

 

The method of binding up the man of the house so one can freely plunder it is as old as sin among angels (Ezekiel 28:12b-18a). Satan in his fierce and covetous trading among the angels was no doubt the first to use this method for evil and continues to use it to this day among men.  As I have already written, the common ties he uses to bind men are sin and the fear of death.  Among black men the ties include the negative mental and emotional legacies of physical slavery and racism.

 

Jesus Christ spoke of the method of binding up the strong man as being evident in His righteous and superior display of power to bind up Satan as the strong man of his house (the kingdom of darkness) then plundering it (releasing captive men)!  What the Lord did in fulfilling His mission in the 1st century He did among our slave forefathers and still does now.  Therefore, to those weary slaves of sin and Satan; those potential strong men of God bound in shackles of despair longing to be free, look now by faith to Jesus Christ to be released!

 

To Be Continued Next Issue

 

 

©2006 Open Door Communication Ministries, Inc