Friday March 1, 2024
Luke 10:17
The seventy-two returned with joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons
are subject to us in your name!”
Here we meet some happy people.
The seventy have just returned from their first missionary journey. They are now seated around Jesus telling Him all about it.
They are as happy as children. All of them dwell on the things which have made the greatest impression upon them. The mighty acts which they had before with wonder and trembling seen Jesus perform they had now been permitted to perform themselves. And Jesus rejoiced with them.
And when they had related their experiences, He told them of a vision which He had had during their absence. He had seen Satan fall.
Now that Jesus had won His first followers, whom He could send out in the supernatural armor of God against the kingdom of Satan, “the beginning of the end” had come for Satan.
We hear the rejoicing in the words of Jesus as He tells His simple-hearted and weak friends that He has equipped them with an invisible armor against which the weapons of the enemy are vain. How happy Jesus was in that moment we see most clearly from the words which follow immediately after our text. There we read: “I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth!”
Verily, Christianity and joy are inseparable, our passage tells us today.
Does that hold true of my Christianity, you inquire. How can I be happy when I see how disobedient and unfaithful and useless I am?
No; but Jesus knows that, too. Therefore He said: “In this rejoice not, . . . but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”
“Oh, if I only knew that!” you say.
Well, you learn that from the Word of God. The names of those who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb are written in heaven.
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD 
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