Rebuke the Enemy

Acts 16:16-18 Once when we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a slave girl who had a spirit by which she predicted the future. She earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune-telling. 17 This girl followed Paul and the rest of us, shouting, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved.” 18 She kept this up for many days. Finally Paul became so troubled that he turned around and said to the spirit, “In the name of Jesus Christ I command you to come out of her!” At that moment the spirit left her.
 
THE slave girl was not merely a slave to her human owner, the devil owned her. Throughout the Bible there are examples of people Satan had afflicted with various powers we would consider miraculous. For his reasons, God allows the devil to afflict certain people in this way until God’s chosen time to destroy Satan.
   You might ask, “Why did Paul command the spirit to come out of the slave girl? She was telling everyone, “These men are servants of the Most High God, who are telling you the way to be saved.” Shouldn’t everyone know?
   But consider what aggravation she was! Despite her words she was Satan’s weapon to destroy the evangelists’ mission. Her verbal interruptions would make it impossible for the men to plainly preach and speak to the people of Philippi. Her words would also confuse a people who worshiped pagan gods. Who was the Most High God to them? Many would have mistaken Paul and the others to be representatives of their own perception of a “high god”.
   Another reason to rebuke the spirit is the same as Jesus’ reason. Remember several times our Lord commanded demons who confessed his identity, “Be quiet!” (Mark 1:25) The Jews and others believed that if an evil spirit knew a person’s name, that person was associated with the demons.
   Satan was working to quiet the gospel. He’s good at making much noise to distract the world from God’s truth. For example, his noise is in common lies about God, celebration of evolution, self-glory, abortion, self-righteousness and many more outbursts of opposition to God.
   Paul silenced the woman, but he has not silenced the devil. As we’ll learn next, Satan did not go away quietly.
 
Note: Does God permit Satan to give supernatural power to humans? Yes, he does. An example of this is the prophet Balaam. Numbers 22 tells us Balaam had the power to curse people, even nations. Balak, king of Moab, paid a generous sum to Balaam to curse Israel. Even though Balaam knows God is supreme and it is useless to curse God’s people, he agreed to do so for the money. But God turned Balaam’s curses into blessings. The battle belongs to the Lord.
   Balaam and the slave girl were slaves to money and to wickedness. Peter used Balaam as an example of those who worship money above God: 2 Peter 2:15 They have left the straight way and wandered off to follow the way of Balaam son of Beor, who loved the wages of wickedness.