17 The seventy-two returned with joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name!” 18 And he said to them, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. 19 Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you. 20 Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”
"Success" is not guaranteed. This was one of the things Jesus was trying very hard to get his disciples to understand.
He sent 72 of them out, giving explicit instructions. When rejected, they were to kick the dust off of their feet and then go on. Rejection was going to happen and so they needed to get used to it.
When the 72 returned, they came home rejoicing. The demons had bowed down to them. Jesus, however, warned them not to rejoice. Why? Because the demonic were still alive and active. Next time things might not turn out so brilliantly.
They were to rejoice, Jesus said, not in the demons falling, but in the fact that their names were written in heaven. In other words, they were to rejoice not in being on the winning side, but rather on the good one.
A couple years ago, we had the Central American refugee crisis down on the border and all those mothers and children who were fleeing such terrible conditions were greeted with such vitriol by protesters here in America. A group of Christian clergy here in Lubbock got together and decided to make a counter statement. We were all worried about how things were going to be taken as we wanted our work to be as successful as possible.
I will never forget my now-deceased friend, mentor and Methodist pastor Ted Dotts stood up. "Now wait a minute," he said. "We follow a man who was rejected and arrested by all the authorities, abandoned and betrayed by all his friends, and hung to die between two criminals. Now you tell me, is that success?"
The room was completely quiet. Ted then finished with this sturdy and sobering line:
"We're not called to be successful; we're called to be faithful."
The demons may or may not fall in submission. That is not what matters. What matters is that for better or for worse, for success or for failure, we went ahead and decided to put our names down on record for which side we're on.
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