John Eckhardt - Deliverance and Spiritual Warfare Manual: A Comprehensive Guide to Living Free

DELIVERANCE IS AN EXPRESSION OF GODS MERCY AND COMPASSION

Blessed is the Lord God of Israel, for He has visited and redeemed His people, andhas raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of His servant David, as Hespoke by the mouth of His holy prophets, who have been since the world began, thatwe [Israel] should be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us,to perform the mercy promised to our fathers and to remember His holy covenant.
LUKE 1:6872

W HEN JESUS CAME, He came to bring judgment, but He also came to bring mercysalvation,deliverance, and healing, which are all manifestations of Gods mercy. Sometimeswe think that our deliverance and healing are based on what we do and dont do, butour deliverance and healing are based on the mercy of God, Gods loving-kindness,and Gods covenantal loyalty. God is connected with you, and He has made a covenantwith you through Jesus Christ.

Luke 1:6872 (quoted above) is saying that salvation came to Israel because God rememberedHis covenant with Abraham and that God was about to perform the mercy promised toAbraham.

This is saying that salvation came to Israel because God remembered His covenantwith Abraham and that God was about to perform the mercy promised to Abraham.

It goes on to say, ... the oath which He swore to our father Abraham: to grant usthat we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve Him without fear,in holiness and righteousness before Him all the days of our life (vv. 7375).

So we see mercy connected with covenant. Within the covenant there is mercy, loving-kindness,compassion, forgiveness, healing, deliverance, redemption.

Jesus was the promise and the fulfillment of the covenant. You can see that His ministryon earth was filled with the works of the covenant. In John 10:3138 Jesus talksabout the works that He was doing. He was healing the sick and casting out devils,doing the works of His Father, and many of the Jews did not understand what was takingplace. But He made it clear in this passage that these were the works of the Father.He made it clear that what He was doing was not done on His own. What He did wasan extension of the Fatherhealing, delivering, rescuing, and setting people free.He was not doing those things in His own power. He was doing them by the anointingand power of the Spirit of God. He was fulfilling the covenant God the Father madewith Abraham. Gods mercy was being revealed through the works of Christ:

Healing the sick

Casting out devils

Raising the dead

Cleansing the lepers

Opening blind eyes

Unstopping deaf ears

Loosing dumb tongues

Gods mercy was being manifested through JesusGods mercy, compassion, loving-kindnesson Israel; His love in saving them, healing them, delivering them, and restoringthem. Jesus demonstrated to themand to usthat He is the representation of God,who is concerned about people who are hurting, sick, wounded, bleeding, and dying.Jesus was a visible manifestation of mercymercy in action. All because of Godscovenant with Abraham, this same manifestation of mercy now comes to you.

God cannot break covenant. It is impossible for God to lie. He cannot go back onthat word. God cannot lie. God is absolutely faithful and committed to covenant.This is one of the essential aspects of God. He is loyal to His people. He will notever violate covenant. He will not betray His people.

We can trust and rely on Gods covenant because He is committed to His promises.When a covenant is made, the person enacting the covenant would swear by someonehigher than himself. This was so that if the covenant was ever broken, that personwould be judged and held accountable to the person higher than him. When God firstestablished His covenant with Abraham, He swore by an oath, and since He could swearby no one higher, He swore by Himself.

For when God made a promise to Abraham, because He could swear by no greater, Heswore by Himself.

HEBREWS 6:13

God is the highest. There is no one greater than Him. This means we can absolutelytrust, rely upon, and depend upon our covenant with God. God cannot lie. He willremain faithful to His Word and His covenant of mercy.

By Jesus coming to earth and bringing salvation and deliverance, we see the personificationof Gods faithfulness. From the time of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, through Moses,David, and the prophets, God had promised to send a deliverer. His name was Jesus,for He will save His people from their sins (Matt. 1:21).

That is why in the Gospels we see people approach Jesus with their issues, saying,Son of David, have mercy upon me. They understood that when the Messiahthe Sonof Davidcame, He would extend Gods mercy to Israel. We see that in the prophecyof Zacharias that I pointed out in the section above.

Zacharias was declaring that the Messiah has come and Israel would see through Jesusthe greatest manifestation of Gods faithfulness and mercy ever known to mansalvation.His incarnation was the manifestation of eternal salvation and eternal redemption.So not only would He perform miracles for Israel, but He would also ensure theireternal redemption, salvation, forgiveness, and bring them into the kingdom.

Contrary to what we may realize, Jesus was not a minister to everyone. His primarypurpose was to fulfill Gods covenant promises made to Abraham and to Israel, toconfirm them, to fulfill them to extend mercy to Israel, to save the remnant.

Jeremiah 31:3134 says:

I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judahnotaccording to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took themby the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke,though I was a husband to them, says the LORD. But this is the covenant that I willmake with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put My lawin their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shallbe My people. No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother,saying, Know the LORD, for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to thegreatest of them, says the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sinI will remember no more.

He did not come to minister to Jews and Gentiles. When Gentiles came to Him for ministry,He was shocked at their faith.

We see this proven in the story of the Gentile woman who came to Jesus and askedHim to heal her daughter. Jesus said, I was not sent except to the lost sheep ofthe house of Israel.... It is not good to take the childrens bread and throw itto the little dogs (Matt. 15:2426). That does not seem like a very compassionateor merciful response, to call someone a dog. She persisted and said, Yes, Lord,yet even the little dogs eat the crumbs which fall from their masters table (v.27). Basically she was saying, I dont want what belongs to the people of God. Ijust want what they dont want. Understand that God could have healed and deliveredeverybody in Israel, but Israel wasnt taking all that God had. So there were somecrumbs available. Crumbs are whats left over. And because Israel left behind somuch of what God had for them, Jesus healed her daughter.

People may not understand why Jesus responded to her the way He did. You have toremember that she was a Gentile and was not in covenant with God. She had no rightto claim mercy. She had no covenant, no relationship with God. Mercy is connectedto covenant. When you are in covenant with God, you can receive mercy. Mercy is availableto you.