Dealing with the Destroyer

Exodus 12:23

It was the last night the Israelites would spend in Egypt as slaves. God was in the process of delivering His people with a powerful hand from their bondage to a cruel master from whom they had no power to deliver themselves—doesn’t that sound like what happened to each of us when Jesus saved us from the cruel master of sin?

John 10:10 says that the devil comes to do nothing more than to “steal, kill, and destroy.” The destroyer comes to devastate anyone and anything in its path. The destroyer does not care to what race or status you belong—even if you are part of God’s people. The destroyer looks for a way in to our lives to wreck havoc any way he can. Though we are redeemed by Jesus, and no one can take away our salvation, the destroyer looks to corrupt the good things that God is doing in and through us. He comes to bring sickness, temptation, divorce, lies, and fear that causes us to live in everything less that what God has for us. If the destroyer cannot touch our souls, he can at least limit our lives, our happiness, our effectiveness, and our futures. The destroyer looks to enslave us once again to our former master through lust of the flesh and the vicious and threatening lies of the devil that whisper to us “You’re mine and you will never be free.”

On this night of the first Passover, the destroyer was unleashed over Egypt. Before it came, however, specific instructions were given to Israel that they were to eat the sacrificial lamb and splatter its blood over the sides and top of the doorframe of their house and “[God] will see the blood on the top and sides of the doorframe and will pass over the doorway, and He will not permit the destroyer to enter your houses and strike you down.” (Ex. 12:23). Nothing would have escaped the destroyer except for those whose houses were covered in blood.

For the past few weeks sickness has plagued my house. Three of my kids have been sick off and on and my wife has had pain in her arm. We are healthy people and I understand that we still live in frail bodies that can get sick, but when the destroyer—a spirit of infirmity—comes against the family, enough is enough. Last night as a family we stood up to the destroyer. We took of the meal that Jesus instituted on the night of His last Passover—The Lord’s Supper. We ate of the Lamb of God, which is body of Jesus Christ, and the Blood covered us as we drank the cup—which you can do in your home, too! As we did, we rebuked the destroyer by the authority given to us in the blood and the Cross of Jesus Christ. The rest of John 10:10 says “But I [Jesus] have come to give life and life abundantly.” Whether you face the lies or temptation of satan, your marriage is on the brink of divorce, there is sickness, depression, heaviness in your house, or anything else that destroys the abundant life that is offered to us in Jesus Christ, come under the Blood of Jesus and God will keep the destroyer from coming to your home.

Under His Blood with You!

Pastor Kyle Bauer