Throughout His ministry – indeed from the very start, Jesus mastered unclean spirits. In fact His very first act of supremacy was exercising dominion over, and imposing His will upon the chief unclean spirit – the devil. Luke Chapter 4 tells us that Jesus, being full of the Holy Ghost, and led of The Spirit, repelled the devil’s temptations during a forty-day fast. The Lion of Judah thwarted every pathetic, deceptive trick of the enemy deployed to destroy His ministry and seal our fate. The wicked one never stood a chance of prevailing against the Most high, or undermining His mission. How does our Lord establish His preeminence? How is He perfected in the flesh? And how does He snatch victory from the jaws of a defeated foe even in that first instance of testing? Well It can be more about what He doesn’t do …

1.  He doesn’t react to a pressing need: hunger, by yielding to doubt and pride  (same trick from The Garden. Eve fell for it. The First Adam succumbed to it. The Second Adam doesn’t.-  He’s resolute even after being subjected to 40 days of duress. He rejects the enemy’s bait to satisfy the flesh and turn a stone into bread:

“And Jesus answered him, saying, It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God” Luke 4:4

• He doesn’t embrace the devil’s ridiculous idolatrous deal to deny the Father, and swap His name and His position for fictious power. He doesn’t entertain the enemy’s delusions of being able to confer authority unto The Christ. Yeah, Yeshua passes on that whole devil worship trade. Steadfast in The Truth of His identity, in devotion to The Father and with the conviction of One in fortified alliance with God’s Word, He responds:

“Get thee behind me, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve” Luke 4:5-8.

• He isn’t distracted and intimidated by  the enemy’s license to tempt Him for forty days, to take Him up into an high mountain, or to bring Him to Jerusalem. He doesn’t make decisions rooted in doubting His own identity and capacity – His divinity. He doesn’t make dangerous decisions that result in self harm in order to unnecessarily prove a false premise to himself, or to satisfy an enemy’s bloodthirst and attempted perversion Truth.  He simply replies:

“…It is said, Thou shalt not tempt The Lord, Thy God.” Luke 4:9-12

The enemy fails miserably at his favorite pastime (stealing, killing, destroying). He fails to steal Jesus’ Identity and authority.  He fails to kill The Christ. He fails to destroy His ministry, our salvation and our inheritance.

After the wilderness encounter, Jesus proceeds to Nazareth where he’d grown up. He goes to synagogue where He essentially pronounces that He is indeed the fulfillment of scripture prophesied in the book of the prophet Esaias. To which the people respond with a kind of fascination and doubtful scrutiny. They question His identity (more so His capacity). “…Is this not Joseph’s son?”  Luke 4:22.  Misguided ideas about His identity were no big deal for The Christ. He had just decidedly dealt with Satan’s identity crisis.

Fully aware of the nature of their hearts, Jesus tells his audience that basically they’ll end up rejecting Him: “Verily I say unto you, no prophet Is accepted in his own country.’ Luke  4:24.  And sure enough He subsequently makes some remarks that infuriate them such that they “… rose up and thrust him out of the city, and led him unto the brow of the hill whereon their city was built, that they might cast him down headlong.” Luke 4:29

Hmmm … more desire to see The Son of Man cast down from a high place …. Interesting.

So what triggered that extreme and diabolical reaction – the compulsion to see Him murdered? Was it something He said? Well … yeah you might say that. Luke 4:25-27 sheds some light. Honestly I’d read these passages before and didn’t/couldn’t make the connection. But today The Holy Spirit gives me clearer vision …

It finally clicked. One thing The Holy Spirit had previously made obvious to me, was the way in which certain kinds of healing was realized. It seemed they occurred after a spiritual cleansing. They happened after, or in an environment where unclean spirits were rebuked and cast out.  That could explain why famine ravished the land leaving many widows destitute in the days of Elias, and why there were many lepers but only two were cleansed  (Luke 4:25-27). In those scenarios, there was no removal of unclean things – except for the case of Na’aman the leper who was cleansed and healed. But the angry mob listening to Jesus recount those events in the synagogue on the sabbath didn’t get it. They didn’t connect the dots and they didn’t take time to inquire and ask Him to demystify His speech; opting for trying to heave The Messiah off a hill instead. People would, however, eventually observe that when The One with all power and authority to cast out unwelcome, unclean inhabitants of a host body arrives on scene, deliverance and healing follow. Consider these accounts.

After leaving Nazareth, Jesus heads to Galilee and teaches in the synagogue on The Sabbath,

“And in the synagogue there was a man, which had a spirit of an unclean devil, and cried out with a loud voice, Saying, Let us alone; what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? art thou come to destroy us? I know thee who thou art; the Holy One of God.

And Jesus rebuked him, saying, Hold thy peace, and come out of him. And when the devil had thrown him in the midst, he came out of him, and hurt him not.And they were all amazed, and spake among themselves, saying, What a word is this! for with authority and power he commandeth the unclean spirits, and they come out. “Luke 4:33-36

Now when the sun was setting, all they that had any sick with divers diseases brought them unto him; and he laid his hands on every one of them, and healed them. And devils also came out of many, crying out, and saying, Thou art Christ the Son of God. And he rebuking them suffered them not to speak: for they knew that he was Christ. Luke 4:40-41

“And it came to pass, when he was in a certain city, behold a man full of leprosy: who seeing Jesus fell on his face, and besought him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.

And he put forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I will: be thou clean. And immediately the leprosy departed from him. ¹⁴ 

And he charged him to tell no man: but go, and shew thyself to the priest, and offer for thy cleansing, according as Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them.” Luke 5:12-14

In Luke 5;20 Jesus heals a man with “a palsy” by forgiving his sins.

On another occasion, following a night of prayer on a mountain, Jesus names His Twelve Apostles and He heals a multitude from various regions which had come to hear Him:

“…and he came down with them, and stood in the plain, and the company of his disciples, and a great multitude of people out of all Judaea and Jerusalem, and from the sea coast of Tyre and Sidon, which came to hear him, and to be healed of their diseases;And they that were vexed with unclean spirits: and they were healed. And the whole multitude sought to touch him: for there went virtue out of him, and healed them all. Luke 6:17-19 Ever wonder why there is such focus in Gospels on healing that manifests in the context of cleansing from or removal of an unclean thing or spirit? I think it’s because cleansing, casting out of unclean devils and healing oft times go hand in hand. They are often part of a single manifestation of a healing, revelatory work  – revelatory in that the work reveals Jesus to be the One true God with all power in His hand. It’s more than restoration for restoration sake, or even for our sake. It’s another “re” word: a reminder of who reigns supreme and  denys unclean things and spirits power – a reminder the enemy and his agents despise.