“But if I with the finger of God cast out devils, no doubt the Kingdom of God is come upon you.”

(Luke 11:20)

There is nothing more visible and plain than the fingers of one’s hand. Next to the features of a person’s face, the fingers of our hands are often the most characteristic expressions of our personality. For it is with our hands that we do our work, gesture to reinforce our emotions, and perform all the necessary as well as the needless, nervous movements of our daily lives.

I find that some of my most vivid memories of my father are the characteristic movements of his fingers. Whenever I see someone carve a turkey, or peel an apple, or sharpen a pencil with a pen knife, or fix the plug on an electrical cord, I see my father’s fingers at work as I saw them so often as a child and I recall him.

But it is not my father’s fingers moving that I remember, but rather the emotional charge of those moments when I observed those hands. The most characteristic qualities of his spirit, gentleness and patience, and careful economy, and respect for property and people, and joy in doing a job well — all come back to me, for one of the outlets of the expression of his spirit was in the movements of my father’s fingers.

We all know what the fingers of a man’s hand are — but what are the fingers of God? What can Jesus possibly mean when He says in our gospel lesson for today: “But if I with the finger of God cast out devils, no doubt the Kingdom of God is come upon you.”

The setting of this saying in St. Luke’s gospel is the healing of a man who cannot speak. When Jesus restores to this man his powers of speech, some of the crowd who watched this merciful miracle said, in a snide, cynical way, that Jesus was able to control the evil spirit which plagued that man because he was in league with the devil himself. Then Jesus countered with this enigmatic remark: “But if I with the finger of God cast out devils, no doubt the Kingdom of God is come upon you.” What did Jesus mean?

Happily for us the parallel passage in St. Matthew’s gospel contains a variant reading which gives us a very plain clue — nay, more than a clue, a complete decoding. There Jesus is reported to have said: “If I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, then the Kingdom of God is come among you.” (Matthew 12:28)

“The Finger of God” therefore is a dramatic and symbolic expression Jesus uses to describe the Spirit of God as present and active in human life through Jesus’ own earthly ministry.

When we turn to the Old Testament we find three rare instances of the use of this same term — “the finger of God.” They all refer to some activity of the Spirit of God among people.

The first is the 8^th Psalm where the Hebrew poet, exulting in the glories of God’s creation sings: “When I consider the heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the starts, which Thou hast ordained: what is man that Thou art mindful of him?” Obviously, the expression, “fingers of God” is the Psalmist’s picturesque way of describing the creative activity of God. Michelangelo, in painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, represented the creation of man by showing God floating by on a cloud and just pointing the index finger of his right hand — and Adam, as if rousing from sleep, comes into existence; while Eve, yet uncreated, is nestled under the left arm of God. The finger of God is the Old Testament expression of the Spirit of God active in creation.

The second Old Testament reference to the finger of God is found in the parallel passages of Exodus and Deuteronomy where God’s activity in revealing his moral nature to his people is described in the words: “And God gave unto Moses, when he had an end of communing with Him on Mt. Sinai, two tablets of stone, written with the finger of God.” (Exodus 31:18; Deuteronomy 9:10) So here we see the Old Testament use of the phrase, “Finger of God” describing the Spirit of God revealing the moral character of God to human beings by transcribing these spiritual qualities in words carved on stone tablets, to be observed as commandments that they may be obedient to their God.

The third use of this figure of speech is found in the Exodus account of the mighty acts of God wrought for deliverance of His people in the words of the Egyptian magicians who said to Pharaoh of the plagues they were suffering: “this is the finger of God.” (Exodus 8:19)

In the Old Testament then, the phrase “the finger of God” is used to describe the characteristic activity of the Spirit of God in creation, in revelation, and in redemption. So, when Jesus says: “If I with the finger of God cast out devils, no doubt the Kingdom of God is come upon you,” He means that the Spirit of God, acting through Him, has come to its fullest consummation in the creating, revealing and redeeming work of His ministry.

All the writers of the Synoptic gospels witness to the presence and activity of the Spirit of God in the life and ministry of Jesus. According to Luke, His coming was preceded by a widespread outpouring of the Holy Spirit, inspiring Elizabeth and Zacharias and Simeon to prophesy. It was by the Holy Spirit that the forerunner of Jesus, John the Baptist, was sent and prepared for his work and given his message. The gospel record in both Matthew and Luke is that Jesus’ birth was by the power of the Holy Spirit — as the Apostles’ Creed states: “He was conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of the Virgin Mary.”

At Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptizer, the Holy Spirit came upon Jesus with power. Afterward, the record is, strange as it sounds, that He was driven by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the Spirit. Why would the Spirit of God tempt or try the Son of God as He thought through the direction and character of his life work? How well T. S. Eliot answers this question in his Murder in the Cathedral, where Thomas Becket says: “We may do the best deeds from the worst motives.” So the Holy Spirit must try and tempt the spirits of men and women that they may face the possibilities of choice — not just the good and the bad, but also the better and the best.

So St. Luke describes Jesus returning from the temptation in the wilderness to enter into His life work, “in the power of the Spirit of the Lord”. And Jesus goes into the synagogue on the Sabbath Day, reads the scripture from Isaiah 61 where the prophet had written: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because He hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; He hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.” And at the end of the reading Jesus said: “This day is the scripture fulfilled in your ears.”

The witness of the gospel writers is that in the life and teachings and ministry of Jesus, the Holy Spirit of God, which in times past had spoken on occasion by the prophets in a fragmentary way, and dwelt in varying measure in the just judges and wise rulers, and courageous warriors and creative artists of God’s people, had in Him, Jesus, God’s anointed Messiah, dwelt permanently and in plentitude of power.

Furthermore, the gospels bear witness to Jesus’ teaching His disciples very definite truths concerning their relationship to the Holy Spirit. If Jesus was dependent upon the Holy Spirit, living a life filled with the Spirit, empowered by the Spirit, His followers must be even more dependent upon the Spirit.

First, Christ’s disciples must be baptized by the Spirit. The principle burden of the message of John the Baptist was: “I baptize you with water but one comes after me who will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” The Christian is supposed to be a person baptized by the Spirit. It makes little difference how or when or with how much water the Christian is baptized. The question is — the question of John the Baptist or Paul the Apostle — “Have you been baptized in the Holy Spirit?”

The word for baptize in New Testament times was a secular word before it was a sacred word. It was used of a dish being dipped in water, or of a garment being dipped in dye. “The Christian is a person dyed through and through with the Holy Spirit. A Christian is one whose whole life is soaked in the Spirit of God, a person the color of whose life has been changed and is being changed by the Holy Spirit. The Christian is a Spirit-dipped, Spirit-anointed, Spirit-saturated, Spirit-dominated human being. And the drabness of life, and the inadequacy of life, and the futility of life, and the earth-boundness of life, which characterizes so many of us, all come from the failure to submit to that baptism of the Spirit which Christ alone can give.” (Barclay — The Promise of the Spirit, p. 25)

The New Testament reveals that Jesus placed the price tag of highest value, among all God’s good gifts to men, on His gift of the Holy Spirit. In St. Matthew’s gospel Jesus says to His disciples: “If ye then being evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Heavenly Father give good things to them that ask Him.” (Matthew 7:11) But St. Luke’s recording of this saying reads: “If ye then being evil know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more will your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him.” (Luke 11:13)

Jesus also taught His disciples that the Holy Spirit would be their unfailing ally in time of need. If persecutions arose, or they were bewildered or bested by life, they were not to fear or to be anxious, about what to do or to say, for, said Jesus: “In that same hour the Holy Spirit will tell you what to say and what to do.” (Matthew 10:20, Mark 13:11, Luke 12:12)

Furthermore, Jesus taught what the later experiences of the disciples was to confirm, that the church would be the channel through which the Spirit would most ordinarily come to people for cleansing, changing, healing and empowering their lives. Matthew records the Risen and Ascending Christ as saying to that tiny handful of bewildered and grieved Galileans: “Go ye, therefore, into all the world and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.” (Matthew 28:19-20)

“The task of spirit-filled men and women is to make a spirit-filled world. Everyone who has received the gift of the Spirit knows well that he or she must be the channel of God whereby the Spirit comes to others.” (Barclay — Ibid. p. 26)

Well, what about us and our response now to the insistent, ceaseless Spirit of God in our lives? What about the finger of God — no, the whole hand of God on your heart?

“The Spirit and the bride say, Come. And he that heareth, let him say, Come. And he that is athirst, let him come: he that will, let him take the water of life freely.” (Revelations 3:20)