15 One day the evil spirit answered them, “Jesus I know, and I know about Paul, but who are you?”
There were some people trying to use Jesus as a magic wand. They were traveling around trying to drive out demonic spirits using Jesus’ name without knowing Jesus personally. One day the spirit answered back! I bet that took these people by surprise! What the spirit says is a powerful statement. This evil spirit knows Jesus and about what Paul is doing. Some today would like to deny the existence of evil spirits. They want to dismiss them as ignorance from a simple-minded past. They want to sell themselves as intellectually superior, as someone who doesn’t need such infantile beliefs. But evil spirits do exist. They don’t appear as often as some preachers say they appear, around every sinful habit and every “bad” thing that happens. The Scriptures give us a good ratio. They are fairly rare in the post-resurrection period. Most encounters that the early preachers in the New Testament had with their audiences were not filled with demonic encounters and deliverance services. That is one of the reasons this account stands out so starkly. This demon has more knowledge than these men who are trying to invoke Jesus’ name. The evil spirit recognizes Jesus’ authority and Paul’s ministry, but not them. They are nothing to the demon. They have no power over him. The demon is free to take matters into his own hands. We need to recognize the limits of our authority. We can’t just go around claiming some power we don’t possess. We can’t claim to know the will of God for others’ lives. We must be very careful not to step beyond our scope of ministry.
The Arnold Journey 