The Devil, and The Finger of Divine Power

The people and their leaders – that is the Priests, the Scribes, and the Pharisees -  have all just watched as Jesus drove out a devil. Someone in the crowd, obviously not a disciple of Jesus yelled out, “By the power of Beelzebul, the prince of demons, he drives out demons.”

Beelzebul, Satan, Mephistopheles, Lucifer, the devil – they are all the same thing. They are all names for the spiritual reality that is evil by its nature. Don’t let yourself be confused. The Evil One uses our confusion against us.

Since the accusation was shouted out from the crowd, for all the crowd to hear, Jesus had to respond the same way. He pointed out that, as powerful as it is, this evil spirit cannot work against itself. “Every kingdom divided against itself will be laid waste and house will fall against house. And if Satan is divided against himself, how will his kingdom stand?”

Basically, He told them they’re wrong – dead wrong. What they were saying didn’t even make sense. He pointed that out. The Jewish religious leaders themselves had prayed to have devils driven out; so, Jesus asked them, “If I, then, drive out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your own people drive them out?”

Maybe He could have stopped with there, but He took one more step in the counterattack: “But if it is by the finger of God that I drive out demons, then the Kingdom of God has come upon you.”

The phrase – the Finger of God – has always stood out; it demands my attention; it must mean something..

God’s power is so great that even His little finger can do mighty deeds. Didn’t God write the commandments in the stone tablets with His finger? The finger of Jesus in the deaf man’s ears opened those ears. The same finger loosened the tongue of a mute man. In the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, don’t we see the Creator’s finger pointed to, almost touching, the created man?

People with legitimate authority often use hand gestures that include the finger as a way to assert that authority. Every parent has pointed to their child and said (ever so gently) “Stop that!”. We might even wave the finger slowly side to side as we tell the child something like, “Don’t do whatever it is that I know you’re thinking about.”

Some decades ago, on our First Halloween together, married for 11 months, pregnant, and settled into a new neighborhood, we weren’t sure how the neighbors would celebrate the holiday. We bought some candy, lit an electric jack-o-lantern and waited. I decided to dress for the occasion. For reasons that don’t need to be included here, I owned a full tuxedo; I put it on. When the doorbell rang, I opened it and found the middle school boy and his younger companion. Extending my finger toward him, with the screen door still between us, using my best Boris Karloff, I said “Good Evening”. Middle school boy and companion went screaming down the path, to the street, and around the corner, never to be seen again. Come to think of it, not many others came after him, either.

So, the “Fickle Finger of Fate”, and the “Almighty Finger of God” have worked their way into our world view.

May we all make proper use of the authority we invoke. May we never be on the wrong side of God’s authoritative finger.

It’s such a great way of communicating; I hope to use it properly. I wouldn’t lift a finger to change it.