The Incarnate Finger of God

With his stick, Moses amazed the Egyptians. With a single touch of that stick, he brought as many bothersome, biting gnats to plague the Egyptians as the specks of dust lying on the surface of their soil (Exod. 8:19).

But by a greater, fuller manifestation of the superior strength of God’s kingdom over Satan’s, Jesus made the mute to speak with his finger (Luke 11:20).  Matthew reports that the man was both deaf and dumb, and attributes the healing wonder to the Spirit of God (Matt. 12:28).  But Dr. Luke investigates carefully, and specifies that Jesus declared: “I drive out demons by the finger of God.”

This finger of Jesus—it is the incarnate finger.  It is not Michelangelo’s dramatic Sistine Chapel finger of God depicting the creation of Man, mistakenly making God like Man rather than Man like God.  For as any instructed child can tell you, God “has not a body like man.”

But wonder of wonders, Jesus is God incarnate.  Every part of him, including his finger, is incarnate God.  All the authority and power of Almighty God resides in that single finger.  The incarnate finger has the power to drive out, to forcefully expel the host of hell’s demons.

Elsewhere the gospels record that Jesus healed another deaf person by pressing his fingers into his ears (Mark 7:33).  Could Dr. Luke’s inquiry have uncovered the fact that on this occasion Jesus touched the lips, even plunged his finger into the mouth of the mute?  In any case, the pulsating finger of Jesus was more powerful, more sensitive, more compassionate, more full of grace than the stick of Moses.  For this incarnate finger was an integral part of the incarnate Man.  The Son of God took on flesh and blood that he might offer himself as a sacrifice for the sins of his people.

By this sacrifice, the kingdom of Beelzebub, that lord of bothersome flies, was driven out once and for all.  For if by the incarnate finger of God he drove out demons, then the kingdom of God has come for us.

Do you believe it?  Has the power and the authority of that kingdom come to you?  Has the finger of God, equivalent to the Spirit of God, touched you?  This same incarnate Son now sits at the right hand of the Father.  From that exalted position, his finger, his Spirit, can and will drive out your demons, the plague of your own heart, and publicly display for all to see, that the kingdom of God has come.