Luke 10:17-24 Jesus rejoices

Luke 10:17-24 Jesus responds to the results of the ministry of the seventy. The first observation is a perception He had of the results in the spiritual kingdom of their ministry. He was watching Satan fall from heaven like lightning. It is hard to tell exactly what He was referring to here. The actual casting of Satan out of heaven is recorded later (Rev 12:7-9), but even the timing of that is difficult to discern. In some eternal sense, it may be outside of time, or it may be that Satan was cast from eternity into the space-time continuum, whenever that happened. Or perhaps Jesus was speaking metaphorically, that He foresaw that through the church's ministry Satan would be defeated. Nevertheless, He cautioned His followers not to rejoice in their power over demons, even though it was a cause for Him to rejoice, but to rejoice that their names are recorded in heaven.

         Jesus then went on to rejoice in the Holy Spirit. He rejoiced that God's plan was working, that the simple and the naive were able to triumph over the evil, and that He was in the midst of fulfilling and implementing God's plan. Then He tried to explain to His disciples how blessed they were at this moment, because the entire Old Testament pointed to and led up to this moment, and longed to see His day, and they were the ones who were there to witness it. This is very similar to a passage told in the context of parables that Jesus explained privately to His disciples. (Matt 13:16-17)

         One aspect of the innumerable Old Testament prophecies concerning Jesus' coming was the mystery surrounding how this would be possible. The messianic aspect of prophecy was to some extent understandable - the Christ would be a great deliverer like Moses or perhaps like the Maccabees. But how could God live among them and talk to them without destroying them, as was the warning to Moses? (Exodus 33:20) That God could somehow take on flesh was possible through the miracle of the incarnation, which although prophesied, had no Old Testament foreshadowing. And what would God be like when He was in the flesh? Their concept of the presence of God was conditioned by the experience of Moses in the Tabernacle in the wilderness, in which a column of smoke by day and a pillar of fire by night indicated God's presence. And there was a complete revelation of truth and life through the words of Jesus. The disciples were truly blessed beyond all Old Testament prophets.