GREAT THINGS ENTERPRISE
CLAUDE BLACK
Mark 3:27
Strong Man Bound
There was a recent story about a female jogger being attacked by a man as she ran along the path. The petite jogger appeared to be an easy target, so the man launched his attack. What the attacker did not know, however, was that the female jogger was a self-defense instructor. When the attacker grabbed her from behind, she instinctively grabbed the attacker’s arm from around her neck, twisted it, and delivered a swift kick to the man’s groin, which caused him to bend forward. His face met her swiftly rising knee, crushing his nose. She twisted his arm behind him as he fell to the ground, tearing ligaments in his shoulder. She placed her knee on the attacker’s back, shoving his arm high behind him in an unnatural position. Holding the stunned attacker down, she took out her cell phone and called the police. The man had to be taken to the hospital by ambulance. His rotator cuff was dislocated, and his nose had to be reset.
It might be a metaphorical leap, but when Jesus’ critics accused him of casting out Satan by the power of Satan, he used several scenarios to show the absurdity of their argument. For example, he said, “But no one is able to enter the house of a strong man and plunder his goods unless he first binds the strong man, and then he will plunder his house.” (Mark 3:27) The critics acknowledged that Jesus was casting out demons. Jesus, therefore, argued that the only way he could do that was to bind the master of the house, in this case Satan himself, if he was plundering his house. Otherwise, the plunderer would find himself in the same position as the attacker in the story above. No, if Jesus was driving out demons, which the teachers of the law acknowledged, he had bound the master of the house—that is, Satan.
The message that the teachers of the law apparently did not see coming, was that the domain of Satan had been plundered. In Jesus’ metaphor, Satan’s possessions—in this case, those who had been healed—had been plundered by one stronger than he.
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