Let’s go back awhile. Back before Jesus came to Earth. Back to Israel. I’m reading from Exodus 14:30. “Thus the Lord saved Israel that day from the hand of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore.” The footnote in the NKJV reads “delivered” instead of “saved.” Same Hebrew, Yasha, two English words, but words that are synonyms.

The enemy had hemmed in Israel. Satan wanted to finish off the Jewish race here and now. Pharaoh had them bound, not only in Egypt, but later in the wilderness before the Red Sea. God comes on the scene and sets them free, in the glorious story we all know. That is deliverance, salvation. Yes, Moses had a “deliverance ministry.”

In Exodus 18:8, the same Moses is relating to Jethro all the hardships which Israel had undergone, but also how the Lord had “delivered” Israel from all of them. Satan has a plan for bondage. God has a plan for freedom. This is deliverance.

The Psalmist also talks of how God had “delivered” His people in and eventually from the wilderness. The history of Israel is deliverance history.

David experienced God’s salvation often. One time was when he escaped from a Philistine king. “For you have ‘delivered’ my soul from death, he says in Psalm 107:6. He claims in another place (Ps 34:6) that all righteous people will be afflicted with trouble, but that the Lord will “deliver” him from all of it.

Deliverance in Jesus’ ministry

I hope I am not being tedious, but I wish to drive home the point that deliverance has been with the people of God for a long time. It then was personified in the God/Man Jesus, the ultimate Deliverer. Listen to His stories:

I think first of the woman “bound by Satan.” Her story is told in Luke 13. Unfortunately, the latter half of the narrative is overshadowed by the legalists who saw not a deliverance, but a law-breaking healer. Let’s go back to the first half. This sickness was caused by a spirit, verse 11.

That’s significant. To put sickness and (demon) spirit in the same description is not politically correct among us today. We like to say that Jesus doesn’t do miracle things like this any more. But I ask you, does Satan still do the things like he used to do? Did He take a break because our theology will not accommodate spirits and such? If he is still working, don’t you think Jesus is too? Satan never went to our Bible colleges and had the miraculous conveniently excplained away for him. He still invades people’s lives.

Let’s write it down: Yes, Satan still binds people. Makes them sick. Sends spirits to them. Not necessary to argue about whether “Christians can get a devil,” but we will add here that Jesus calls this woman a daughter of Abraham. She was a Jew. Seemingly in “good standing.” We’ll make no more conclusions from that.

The point that is important here is that what we call healing and what we call deliverance can overlap. We do not see Jesus “casting out” a demon here. Only laying hands on her. What He prayed at the moment will forever be hidden to us. We assume there was a prayer of some sort, but even that is not stated. The healing was accomplished, and Jesus describes the event as a woman having been released from the bond of Satan, a bond reinforced by one of Satan’s personal emissaries, that we call a demon.

So was this an exorcism or a healing? Call it what you like, it was a deliverance. Deliverance is about setting free from any sort of bondage laid on one by the enemy of our souls.

Any other connections between demonic spirits and physical healings in Jesus’ Deliverance Ministry?

Remember the time the disciples failed to cast out a demon that needed casting? Mark 9. A Jewish man has a son “possessed with a spirit,” that makes him mute. That was the man’s assessment. And it was understated. That same demon would slam his dear boy to the ground and cause him to foam at the mouth. It would throw him into the fire, and had nearly killed him on several occasions.

A little like epilepsy, the doctor might say. But the man was convinced it was a spirit. And Jesus concurred. Mark labels the spirit “unclean” and Jesus proceeds to call it a “deaf and mute” spirit. He tells the spirit to leave and never come back. As an angry drunk who makes a show of vengeful anger and slams the door on his way out of a bar from which he has just been evicted, the disturbed demon rushes for the door throwing the boy into one last fit that seemed to end his life. One final miracle was Jesus’ raising the boy from death or near-death.

Now that is deliverance. The dramatic kind. But the elements are all still there. A person bound by Satan, overcome by One stronger than the enemy Who sets the captive free.

The story of the Gadarene demoniac is just as powerful, and probably even more familiar to most . We will not comment on this one.

But before we leave the life of Jesus, we need to look at other incidents which tell the same story with less fireworks. How about the woman taken in adultery? Is unfaithfulness and sexual immorality a bondage? Was this woman not captured by it? She was set free also, doubly. First, Jesus convicted the religious leaders away from their intentions, saving her life. Then He spoke the word, not only of forgiveness (neither do I condemn you), but of consecration (sin no more). I believe that woman was set free from sin from that day forward. That too is deliverance.

And the man at the pool of Bethesda. Healed of a disease that had bound him 38 years, and also warned about never returning to the sin that had brought him to that place. Set free.

And the woman at the well. A change of heart so dynamic that an entire village came to Christ.

Deliverance in the ministries/letters of Paul and Peter

Jesus commanded His disciples to cast out demons in like manner. And they did. Not as a separate “deliverance” ministry, but as a tool to use as occasion demanded. Peter was confronted with demon-filled people like Elymas/Bar-Jesus whose demonic powers were countered with the power of God in Peter. Paul, reluctantly, after several days, decided he must deal with a spirit of hell that was advertising for Jesus. Always an undesirable combination.