Amen. All right, welcome to Redemption
Church in North Ogden. Thank you for being here with
us. We are going to be in the Gospel
of Matthew, chapter 8. We're at the end of chapter 8
where we've walked through and and looked at all these
different miracles of Jesus. And we're in a story that I have
titled The Merciful Son of God to the Demoniacs.
That's going to be in Matthew 828 through 34.
Now what's a demoniac? Well, these are demon possessed
men that Jesus and the disciples encounter as they've just
crossed the stormy sea and Jesus calmed the wind in the waves.
And now right when they get to shore, they encounter these
demon possessed maniacs. So that's why I've titled it The
Merciful Son of God to the Demoniacs.
Now this story is also in Mark chapter 5 and Luke chapter 8.
A little bit about the synoptic gospels.
Matthew, Mark, and Luke in the New Testament are called the
Synoptic Gospels because they share a lot of the same content,
the same stories, the same narrative.
Now, not everything's exactly the same and not everything's
written exactly the same. Some of the chronology is a
little bit different. Some of the groupings of of
stories are different based on the person writing it.
Now, we must understand that all of scripture is breathed out by
God and he used human authors to write it down.
But we do believe that it was. It is without error that it is
infallible and it can be trusted.
But it's beautiful that God uses the man.
He doesn't take away all his mental faculties or his
personality, and he uses each one's different, different area
of influence. You can say each one of these
guys had a different audience that they were writing to.
And so that changes the way in which the gospels are laid out.
For Matthew, he's a he's, he's trying to reach a Jewish
audience and trying to teach the Jewish Christians how to reach
Gentiles. And so I bring all that up to
say, as we start this passage, there are some differences in
the, the different gospels. And I want to teach you this.
I didn't, I didn't want to just brush past this.
I want, I want to teach you when dealing with a difference in one
gospel story to another, how do we handle that?
Because there are no errors in Scripture.
So as we look at this, this first verse, Matthew 828 a the
first part of it, it starts out and it says when he came to the
other side, to the country of the Gadarenes, 2 demon possessed
men met him. Now in Mark and Luke, it says
the area that he went to was the garrisons.
So did somebody spell it wrong? No, that's not the case.
Actually, if we go back to our map, I showed you a map last
week. If you weren't here, that's OK,
I'll explain it. The context where we're at.
We're at the Sea of Galilee. Jesus recently got done with the
Sermon on the Mount, and so he came and started doing miracles
in Capernaum. He tells the disciples, let's
get in the boat and cross the sea.
There's the storm on the sea, and then they come over to this
area here, which is where we see the drowning of the swine.
That's our story today. Mark says the Gadarenes, the
country of the Gadarenes, which is a little bit more down at the
bottom of the Sea of Galilee. But this area here is the is
what they say the Garosines or the Girgasines.
This area is the specific area where where the thing happens,
but it's in the region of Gadera.
So, so to help you help that make sense, we are Redemption
Church North Ogden. We're meeting in Pleasant View
city. We have people that live in far
West and and all of that area. If you didn't know, some of your
mail, I bet says Ogden on it because this isn't the Ogden
area like Ogden proper, although they have different city names.
That's kind of like what's going on in this story is it's it's
Ghijera proper, but but the specific area is the garrisons
now. And another thing that's
interesting, it says 2 demon possessed men.
Now the other, the other gospels only focus on one guy, 1
demoniac. And there's a simple explanation
to that. None of them say it was only one
man. And so one must have to conclude
that one of the men was more prominent.
One of the men was the one that was doing the talking,
confronting Jesus. But there was another man who
was going through the same things that he was going
through. Could have been even more than
that, right? So that's just a little bit of a
teaching to help you understand when you have differences in
gospel stories, how they don't contradict one another at all.
And it's a necessary distraction from today's message because
when we're walking through Scripture, we've got to handle
this, right? We're, we're, we're not only
preaching, but we're teaching. So now that I've got that out of
the way, I've got 3 points in this passage I want to get to.
And the first one is that the army of darkness takes its toll.
Now I want to ask you this question, Is supernatural
activity real? I mean, I think in our world,
there's a lot of confusion and and maybe we think it's some
kind of just stories or kind of fiction made-up, you know, fake
believe. We all like to be entertained by
by certain things like horror stories.
Now, now, if you're Christian, I don't think you should be
watching rated R horror stories and movies like that.
But generally we like to be scared and entertained and, and
some, some people think this is a a figment of our imagination,
supernatural activity and maybe that some stuff that goes on out
in the world is made-up. It is fake.
But the question is, are demons real if the Bible talks about
them, and angels for that matter, Is there a spiritual
realm that we don't even think about?
Because all we're focused on is what we can see, what we can
feel, what we can touch, what we can hear with.
Everything that we can grasp with our senses is real to us.
But what about the things that we can't see, feel, touch and
smell? Well, if the Bible says that
they're, they're real and it's true and you're a Christian, you
believe what the Bible says, then we automatically have to
say then yes, that they are real.
Now there are examples of, of supernatural activity that
happens out there in the world and it happens all the time with
possibly there's sightings of, you know, angels or, or demons
said to attack people. Now, do we have to have
discernment to realize what's true and what's not true out
there in the world? Yes, that's a a spiritual gift,
by the way. But the Bible says in Ephesians
2 that this world is in control of the evil. 1 The, the, the
spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.
There's a Satan himself who you've heard of is a fallen
Angel. Now let me talk about who the
demons are then. If Satan exists and he's the
enemy of God, then demons are the ones who follow Satan.
And the story goes in Scripture is that before humans were at
least before the fall, before the the narrative where Adam and
Eve are in the garden, sometime in heaven.
We don't know the exact time. Sometime in heaven there was a
great spiritual war and what took place was Satan, who was an
Archangel at the time. He was an Angel, a powerful
Angel, decided I want to be like God, I want to have power.
I think very highly of myself. So I'm going to take God's
position, take God's role. And God cast him out of heaven
because of that, because of his pride.
And a third of the angels were swept with him and he was cast
out of heaven. The Bible says down to the earth
now the earth now. So we see in the beginning of
Adam and Eve. And then Satan is able to
deceive Eve and Adam and, and sin enters the world.
And So what, since then, you know what's going on then in
the, the spiritual realm with these evil forces and, and the
heavenly hosts together in this spiritual war over God's people
and over God's creation. Well, again in Ephesians 6, it
tells us that there are, there is authorities, powers,
principalities that we, we, we fight not against flesh and
blood, but against, but against the, the spiritual forces in
heavenly places. There are, there is a spiritual
battle going on and Satan and the demons do want to thwart
God's work on earth. Now, how do they do it?
They do it through twisting of scripture and false religions
and false teachings. And they do it through fear and
attacks. And so that's why I've labeled
this first point, the army of darkness takes its toll.
Why do I call it army? Well, there's a in scripture, it
tells us that they're organized. It's not just some kind of some
happenstance random way that they do this, but in fact, each
of these demonic presences have spiritual territories that
they're assigned to and they have ranks even they're they're
very militaristic. If you want to kind of get a
sense of this a little bit more, in the book of Daniel, it talks
about how angels and demons are fighting over a territory.
But there's a book by CS Lewis called the Screw Tape Letters.
And in it, although it's kind of fictional, it's based off of
truth about, from scripture about how he thinks that demons
work against God's people. And it'll bring up the hairs on
your arms and the back of your neck like it's, it's kind of
freaky, but it makes you think like maybe some of the things
that we're going through in this world and in this life aren't
all just physical, aren't all just because of logical things
that we can explain, but it could be because of
supernatural. That's what the Bible says that
the the world is in under the control of the evil 1.
Now I had to do all of that to get us to this point to talk
about what's going on. So let's look at the verses in
the text today. It says 2 demon possessed men
met him coming out of the tomb so fierce that no one could pass
that way. And behold, they cried out.
What have you to do with us? O Son of God?
Have you come here to torment us before the time?
Now I'm going to have to go back to the the Mark passage in Mark
chapter 5 because it tells us a little bit more detail about how
bad these guys had it. Like because I want to look at
what does demon possession look like?
What is demon possession? Well, the word possession is
demon ozai, which really just means to be demonized.
But that word possessed means to be fully controlled, fully
controlled by the demon. Now, there are different types
of of, of demonic activity in the world.
You can be attacked by a demon. You can be maybe like oppressed
by demonic activity. But then there's this third one
that's more of a controlling, which is demon possession.
That's what these guys are going through in the area that they're
at. They're not Jewish, they're
actually in a gentile area. And so let's look at the toll
that it's taking on these guys. And in Mark chapter 5, I don't
have it up here, but it says he lived among the tombs and no one
could bind him anymore, not even with a chain.
For he had often bound, been bound with shackles and chains,
but he wrenched the chains apart and he broke the shackles in
pieces. No one had the strength to
subdue him. Now, in our verse, it says that
they were so fierce that no one could pass that way.
So they had, they're living in basically a cemetery in the
tombs. No one in their right mind wants
to live in a cemetery, right? I don't even think you see a lot
of homeless people living in cemeteries.
Why? Because they're kind of freaky,
right? You don't really hang out there
much unless you're going to visit in the daytime.
But these people are sleeping there.
They, they live there. They're banished from society
because they're so maniacal. They're so crazy.
They're, they're so unable to tame it.
They have a supernatural strength, it says.
They're so fierce, nobody would even, nobody even wanted to go
that way anymore. They were isolated, often times
demonic possession or even, you know, evil oppression.
The goal is to try to isolate a person so that they can't have
any truth spoken to them, the gospel spoken to them, any power
of God's word coming around them.
And they they'll quick come into church.
They'll, you know, quit being around people there, there
there's a, there's a spirit of isolation that happens with
demonic activity. They try to get people alone and
to change their minds and twist the way that they think.
And there's also again, some evidence that they're there's
angels are strong. They're not.
Humans have their own strength, but angels are not humans.
They have supernatural strength and we can see that this isn't
just human strength. They're able to break chains and
shackles in pieces easily. Nobody could subdue these guys.
Maybe it took many people to try to subdue them.
Now, I used to be a a huge fan of this Christian group and I
can't remember what their name was, but there were these big
guys that would go around and do evangelism and then they would
like tear phone books in half and they would they would break
handcuffs and they'd break blocks of ice.
I mean, I don't know if you guys remember that.
That was so cool. That was why I think I first
started wanting to get into lifting weights because I was
like, I want to do that. Like, I can lift heavy things
and break things for Jesus, you know?
But even they, as big and as strong as they are, were no
match. Human strength still is no match
for demonic strength. And we see that and then it goes
on and it says night and day among the tombs and on the
mountains. He was always crying out and
cutting himself with stones. There's a certain amount of
depression and sadness and darkness and and loominess that
that goes with demonic activity. This, these beings are making
this man and these men so downcast, so sad, so depressed.
They're basically hopeless. They're outcasts of society.
Mark 59 says Jesus asked him what's your name?
And he replied, my name is legion for we are many legion.
The word legion in in Greek or used in in in the Roman army
meant 6000 soldiers. So this guy or these guys could
have been possessed with at least 6000 spirits maybe, or
maybe just thousands. There was these guys were so far
from God, they are so lost, so isolated from society that
they're, this is a story of basically no hope.
We think about our situations and and we go through a little
bit of darkness here and there and probably demonic attack and
things like that. But these guys are so lost.
The question is, how did they get that far?
Well, how does a person get possessed?
It's not exactly clear. There are some signs in
Scripture about how a person becomes possessed.
Now, first I'll tell you that Christians cannot be possessed
by demons. We have the Spirit of God in us,
therefore evil spirits cannot come up and take possession and
residence. If we are God's own possession,
He will not share us with evil demonic beings.
But I will say that we can, as Christians, give over control to
demons. Now the unbelievers, people who
aren't possessed by God, who aren't children of God, that
don't have the Holy Spirit, they are open to attack.
And they can also make it even easier, inviting opening doors
by things like Pagan worship practices, sorcery and
witchcraft. Now, I think we, we like to
watch our, we have entertainment in Hollywood and we like to, you
know, read our novels and our stories about these types of
things, these Pagan magical incantations and things like
that. But it's a big deal to God.
He says that stuff is an abomination to him.
Any sort of supernatural activity outside of the out of
scripture that humans are trying to seek out.
That's not just some lie made-up or, you know, some kind of
innocent, innocent fun story. This is real stuff made-up by
demons in Ephesus and in these certain churches.
Paul in his sin lists, he'll list off these things like
sorcery and witchcraft, and then he goes on to talk about orgies
and different sexual immorality and things like that.
Drunkenness in Ephesians 5, it says don't be filled with wine,
but be filled with the spirit. Have you ever wondered why
that's there? The reason why he says that is
because in Pagan worship to these false gods, they used to
do all of this ritualistic dark magic.
Pagan in their worship practices like orgies, like getting drunk,
like getting high, like doing seances and things so that they
could reach their God or some kind of spirit and try to to get
some kind of a an experience or something like that.
And this was detestable to God. We then, as Christians should
not be doing these same things. We should be apart from this
right? We shouldn't, we shouldn't delve
into the same practices thinking it's it's fun or it's a hobby.
But also Even so, that's even unrepentant sin, though constant
unrepentant sin opens the door to more demonic activity in our
lives. False teaching sitting under
false teaching. Did you know that the Bible says
that demons are at the head of every false church?
That not these again, aren't just made-up things by men as as
as we're supposed to call out the men for what they are false
teachers who've made-up doctrines other than what's in
scripture or twisted scripture. But who, who is really behind
the twisting of of scripture and the making up of doctrines?
The Bible says there are doctrines of demons.
Behind every false church is a demon.
It's not just a man's made-up ideology, it's a demon.
This is spiritual. Satan has been doing this from
the beginning, twisting scripture in in the garden
saying God did not say but surely you can do this or that.
Satan probably twist scripture more than he tries to get people
to deny that God is actually real.
First Corinthians 10/20, Paul says this to them.
He says no, I imply that what pagans sacrifice they offer to
demons and not to God. I do not want you to be
participants with demons. See, every false church has been
started by a demon. We need to be aware of that.
This is demonic activity. This is how they work now.
That's called demonology, by the way, the study of demons.
I know, I know we probably don't talk about it a lot in church,
but since we're walking through Scripture, we have to handle
this. Now, going back to our text, it
said, what have you to do with us?
O Son of God? Have you come to torment us
before the time? What time?
Well, Satan and the demons know that their time is short.
Did you know that they know the Bible?
They probably know the Bible better than you and me, word for
word. They've been around for
thousands of years, by the way, because these beings are
spiritual. They don't die.
They're roaming the earth, watching us, listening to our
sermons. They, by the way, when Jesus
comes on the scene, they know exactly who he is.
What have you to do with this, O Son of God?
Have you come to torment us before the time?
And if they know the whole Bible, then they know how it
ends in the Book of Revelation. They're going to be cast into
the lake of fire and be tormented forever and ever.
And so that's why they're saying, have you come to do that
before the time? And so they are mad and they're
in denial. They think somehow they can turn
this around, but they're also mad that they're rejected and
they'll never get forgiveness for the sin.
Only God has forgiveness for humans, not for angels, which is
amazing in and of itself. Luke 831 says.
And they begged him not to command them to depart into the
abyss. Now, what's the abyss?
That's the bottomless pit in the Book of Revelation, as I've
talked about, where Satan, the beast, demons will all be bound
and chained as Second Peter tells us.
For if God did not spare angels when they sinned, but cast them
into hell and committed them to chains of gloomy darkness to be
kept until the judgment or Jude and the angels who did not stay
with their within their own position of authority, but left
their proper dwelling, He has kept in eternal chains under
gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day.
This is already happening. There are already angels in the
pit. Now that that or fallen angels.
That brings up a whole crazy, you know, question of, well, why
are there some demons that are roaming the earth and some that
are locked up in hell getting tormented already?
And that's going to be a really fun small group discussion.
I could bring up a lot of stuff. I mean, there's all kinds of
different scenarios that people believe, you know, the Nephilim
are involved with that. And so that's a fun one for you
to talk about or to go study into research.
But because I don't exactly know for sure the question, I'm not
going to teach a doctrine to you on that.
What we know though, is that Scripture says that there are
some locked up and there are some that roam the earth and we
need to be aware, and that it seems like demonic activity is
more noticeable in the unreached areas of the gospel.
Like if you look at when Jesus pops up on the seam, there's not
a lot to talk about demons in the Old Testament, although that
they were there, there was few and far between.
And then Jesus comes and he brings the Kingdom and they're
like, we don't like this. This is our world, this is our
earth. And Jesus was like, Nope, we're
spreading the Kingdom. We're coming to take ground.
And that's what we are doing. You might not see it, but
spiritually we are taking ground back from the darkness, from the
evil forces. When we get up here and preach,
when we gather together, when we send out church plants, when we
send out missionaries, when we when we're praying, we are
taking ground for the gospel so that that's it.
The army of darkness does take its toll and we need to be aware
of it. But I wouldn't want to leave you
there. We need to talk about the power
of Jesus over these unclean spirits.
I don't want to leave you in fear.
I don't want you to be worried about it because you don't need
to be as a Christian, it says. And behold, they cried out, What
have you to do with us, O Son of God, have you come here to
torment us before the time? Now a herd of many pigs was
feeding at some distance from them.
And the demons begged him, saying, If you cast us out, send
us away into the herd of pigs. And he said to them, Go.
So they came out and went into the pigs.
And behold, the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into
the sea and drowned in the waters.
All right, let's handle this. First.
We have to handle the fact as I said before the Jesus, the the
demons know exactly who Jesus was and is Mark 57 it says
crying out with a loud voice. He said, what have you do to do
with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?
I adjure you by God, do not torment me.
For he was saying to them, come out of the man, you unclean
spirit. They know that he's the Son of
the Most High God. Why did they know this?
Because they were angels with him in heaven before they were
cast out of heaven. They knew exactly who he was.
Think about this last week, our story.
The disciples were going across the lake and Jesus calms the
wind and the waves and they ask this question, what sort of man
is this that can calm the wind and the waves?
But these guys as soon as he comes out onto the shore, said
Son of God most high, remember they know who he is.
That should help us or challenge us to want to know who he is
better than the demons. And this also proves that Jesus
is who he says he is. They are witnessing to the fact
of who he is. The disciples probably were
like, oh man, they passed the test a lot quicker than we did.
Second, he cast them out with one word.
He just says, go. In our passage.
He's not doing a bunch of moaning and wailing and fasting
and wordy chants, but he simply just says go and 3rd.
The bigger question maybe that's puzzling to us is why the pigs?
Why send them in the pigs? It's interesting today I went
back in the kitchen and I was like, man, I smell bacon and
it's actually ham. You know, we're eating pig
today. If you're interested for
fellowship at the end after this.
But why the pigs? Is there a correlation between
unclean spirits and unclean animals Maybe?
Do demons have to inhabit flesh of some kind?
We know that angels, you know, can make donkeys talk and things
like that. We know.
Do they have to be in some kind of flesh?
And then why did the pigs go over the Cliff into the water?
Was it to antagonize the herdsmen toward Jesus?
I'll tell you this. I don't actually know all the
answers to that question. Isn't this a great sermon?
You just say, hey, this says this.
I don't really know what it means, but there are things in
Scripture we just have to be honest about.
But here's what I will say. Here's some interesting thing.
When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, this is in
Matthew 12. We'll get to this in some
months. Talking about when a demon is
cast out of someone, it says this is Jesus.
When the unclean spirit has gone out of a person, it passes
through waterless places seeking rest, but finds none.
And then it goes on to say, and when it doesn't find its home,
it comes back to the house swept clean and brings more demons
back than when it first started. And the state of the person is
worse than the first. There's something interesting to
that statement. Waterless places.
Which brings up again the idea of the flood and and God judging
the earth and and why? Why do demons need to be in in
some kind of flesh? Can't they just roam the earth
as spirits? Again, I don't fully know but
it's just something to think of. I've I've heard stories of
exorcists, Catholic exorcists so you don't have to fully trust
it. But I've heard that they would,
before an exorcism, use a bowl of water and put it next to the
person that they were casting a demon out of.
And in order to make sure they knew the demon was cast out
there would waves would ripple across the water in the bowl.
Does that freak you out a little bit?
Let's think about it this way in the context of this story where
it's placed at going back a couple of verses.
And behold, there arose a great storm on the sea so that the
boat was being swamped by the waves.
Remember this storm, the storm that they went through?
Jesus was teaching them a lesson.
Now we know God is sovereign, but many theologians would say
it wasn't just that God caused the storm, but it was in fact
possibly demonic activity that was bringing about the waves on
the disciples to bring about fear.
And God was using that as a teaching moment to strengthen
their faith because what do they meet on the other side?
But these demon possessed men, something demonic activity that
that stirred the waters possibly.
But again, remember this God is sovereign that he still is the
one allowing this. He's still the one allowing the
the demonic possession in these men.
Knowing that this story was going to be written in
scripture. Do you remember these demons
have to get permission. We see that in this story.
They're asking for permission to go into these pigs.
They couldn't just go on their own.
The sovereignty of God and his authority had to allow them to
go into the pigs in Job. In the 1st chapter or two of
Job, it has a story of Satan coming before God asking if he
can test Job and God says yes. So I bring all of that up just
to say don't think that you're not going to come up against
demonic activity in your life as a Christian, because it's most
likely going to happen. If it happened to the disciples
and it happened to Jesus, it's going to happen to you.
But don't be afraid because Jesus has power over the unclean
spirits. They cannot inhabit you.
Please don't open the door to them by unrepentant sin or false
teaching or Pagan practices or even worldly ideology, But just
know that Jesus has the power over all of the darkness in the
world, and that power now resides in us with the Holy
Spirit. Though disciples didn't have the
Holy Spirit at the time, we have the Holy Spirit now.
And in first John 44, John reminds us, he says little
children, you are from God. You have overcome them.
For he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.
Don't cower back in fear when you come up against demonic
activity in your life. I was doing a marriage class.
We're doing a marriage class in Sunday school.
We recorded it. If you weren't here, we'll put
it up on on Spotify and Apple podcast this week.
But I talked about how Satan, if he wants to get at Christians,
one of the greatest ways he does it is through our marriages and
through our families. If he wants to isolate us, make
us lonely and miserable and fight against one another and,
and instead of love, we have hate, he's going to be working
against us. We need to know that they exist
and we need to know the power that we and Jesus has over them
because it is going to come up in our lives.
And I think when we run into scriptures like this, we have to
handle it this way. We have to talk about it like,
oh, you don't have to worry about that.
No, you don't need to worry about that, but you need to be
mindful and prepared. There are other scriptures that
talk about spiritual warfare that we must No, Jesus has the
power over these unclean spirits.
And it's like he's saying to the disciples, as he said, let's get
in the boat, let's cross the water.
And some scary time pops up and he says you need to have some
faith. So I'm stealing the water.
Now here we are. And now I need to show you the
enemy. I need to show you the enemy
personally and they, the disciples are actually doing
nothing in this entire story. It's all Jesus, by the way.
So don't worry about having to do weird incantations or chants
or, you know, saying all these kind of long things and, and
prayers and stuff like that. Just allow this to strengthen
your faith to know God is sovereign over all that happens.
You just need to be prepared and to react with faith, just like
last. And I tell you, this was a mercy
of Jesus to cast the demons into the pigs.
Not for the demons necessarily, He did give them permission, but
this was the mercy for the herdsmen, the disciples, the
others in the area and the men themselves most importantly.
But nobody really got what happened, only these men, which
we'll see how they reacted. But first we need to see how the
people reacted. And they rejected Jesus for
their possessions. The herdsmen fled going into the
city. They told everything, especially
what had happened to the demon possessed men.
And behold, all the city came out to me, Jesus.
And when they saw him, they begged him to leave their
region. They don't notice the merciful
character of Jesus. They don't know that he's the
Son of God. They might understand that he
has power over evil, but they would rather have their evil
than have Jesus. They're more comfortable with
the evil presence in their lives and the way that they're living
and their possessions, rather than have to face the reality
that God, it's real and he's come down to start a war in this
world with its ruler. Mark tells us that there were
2000 pigs. By the way, that's a lot of
money. They didn't fear the Lord,
rather they feared the loss of income and change of lifestyle.
Now how about you? What if Jesus coming into your
life meant that some evil and darkness was going to be
exposed, dealt with, and it might change the way that you
live forever? I think that's the reason why
people reject Jesus because they're too in love with the
lifestyle that they have right now, knowing full well there's a
lot of evil and sin going on. They're comfortable with that
rather than having to deal with that head on, rather than their
their sin being exposed and them being confessing at first, being
forgiven, repenting. Repenting is so hard for people.
What the word repent is, is to change your mind, to turn from
sin. And it's so hard, it's
impossible. It has to be a miracle of God in
you because we are so stubborn and we're so idolatrous.
We love our lifestyles and our comfort, the way that we've
designed it, the way that we've made it.
And we don't like it when when Jesus comes in and he says, I
want you to change this, this and this, and oh, by the way,
I'm going to make it known about your sin here and your sin
there. Did you know that's a grace of
God when he does that? Some of you probably have been
accused that you only tell the truth because he got caught.
You ever heard that before? I've heard that before.
But thank God I got caught. And that's the mercy of God
because we're too stubborn to allow the light of Jesus to come
in and just expose it all. They're rejecting that.
Brother and sister, if you get caught in a sin, count it a
grace and a mercy of God that He's coming to change you from
the inside out. You need accountability.
Don't live in shame and guilt because of that.
You know that Christ went and died on the cross for that sin
specifically. Don't hold on to it in
unrepentance because that's your comfort, because you're scared
of living a different life in a different way.
Except Jesus, while he comes to expose the evil in your midst,
the evil around you. We go back two weeks when Jesus
taught before they crossed the lake, he said to count the cost
of following me too. Not just the sin, but but even
the way of your your life. You know, you might have other
things in higher priority than than Jesus that we had the
teacher who said I'll go wherever you go and Jesus like,
no, you won't. I don't even have a place to lay
my head. You think you're going to come
follow me? You're going to leave the
comfort of your life to come do the hard work that I'm doing.
No, you won't. The other just the disciples
said, oh, I got I got family things going on.
My father died. I've got to go bury him.
We got some things going on, then I'll come follow you Jesus.
And Jesus was like the kingdom's more important than that.
Now I know we talked about how it's, it's, I'm not, we're not
saying that you can't go to a funeral and have closure with
loved ones. But if anything comes in the way
of, of you having Jesus as your Lord and really excuses to not
worship, excuses to not follow him, then you're not ready to be
a disciple. They weren't ready for Jesus to
turn their world upside down. Well, let's end the story by
looking at how the demon possessed man or men respond to
Jesus. And we'll have to go back to to
Mark's story for that. Mark's, Mark's version, it says.
And they came to Jesus and saw the demon possessed man, the one
that had the legion sitting there clothed and in his right
mind. And they were afraid.
And those who had seen it described to them what had
happened to the demon possessed men and to the pigs.
And they began to beg Jesus to depart from the region.
And as he was getting into the boat, the man who had been
possessed with demons begged him that he might be with him.
And he did not permit him, but said to him, go home to your
friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you and
how he has had mercy on you. And he went away and began to
proclaim in the Dicopoulos how much Jesus had done for him.
And everyone marvelled. A couple things I just want to
close with as we look at that he what he was clothed in, in his
right mind, it was physically evident to the people around
that this guy's life had changed.
It said that he used to be naked in the tombs.
Now he's clothed. He's not acting all wild and
crazy anymore, but he's more calm and civil that it it was
physically evident that he wasn't under control of the
demons any longer. What would that look like to us
happened to give up some of maybe even what sin has done in
our lives, the way it's made us act, look, think and talk?
Is is evil or is holiness represented in your life as a
believer? Are you sitting?
He's sitting at his feet. Are you in the the humble
position to learn to sit at his feet and learn as this man is?
Are you willing, do you desire to hear the teaching of Jesus?
And then it says that he begged him that he might be with him.
As I said, do you desire to be with Jesus?
Do you want to follow him and forsake all else?
And then Jesus tells him to go tell his testimony to his
friends. And what does this guy do?
He not only goes to tell his friends and his family about
what Jesus has done, but he goes and tells all of the decopolis.
That's 10 cities. That's what that word means.
Decopolis, 10 cities. He goes into 10 cities and
proclaims the mercy of the Lord Jesus on the worst cases of sin,
that he is merciful and powerful and he wants to help people in
their hopeless spiritual state. And he's powerful enough to do
it. He's powerful enough to change
people from the inside out. Would that be us?
Have we experienced the mercy of Jesus?
So much so that we want to go tell others.
Let it not be the only truth that it's only those who are so
far gone that see the mercy of Jesus and that they become
radical. Let all of us not have to be
demon possessed so that we would go to the Decapolis, that we
would go to the 10 cities, that we would go tell of the mercy
and grace. Because the reality is the
picture of this demon possessed man or man is just like you and
me. We were born and and and acted
in a way that made us further from God than there was no one
further from God than you and me.
Why? Because we're all at equal
footing or on equal level and ground at the foot of the cross.
We we have nothing to bring Him and we are there's nothing that
makes us worthy for him to accept us and love us.
He is so far gone and Jesus could change this man.
And you and I were these men. Maybe our sin didn't get that
far, but just know that this is talking about the helpless state
of depravity that all human beings are in.
And by the way, this is all grace.
The man did absolutely nothing. Did you see any part in this
narrative or any of the narratives where the man spoke
up and said, please help me, Jesus, please save me.
I'll be a better person. I'll do this, I'll do that.
Did you hear him pray a prayer? Did you hear that he went to
church? He didn't do a single thing.
It was all Jesus. Jesus comes and says I'm going
to set this guy free because I have chosen him and I'm going to
use him as a banner and billboard to go tell people of
my mercy and my grace and we are the representatives of Jesus as
well. Would we go do that?
Jesus left this town although they all rejected him.
Jesus even has mercy on this town.
Why? Because they left them, not
these maniacs any longer to where that nobody could pass by.
But he left them a radical missionary that was going to be
bold enough to tell them time and time again for the rest of
his life that Jesus was merciful.
Would we do that? Are you a missionary to your
home? To your workplace, to your
neighborhood. Let us be representative of
Jesus like this guy was. Let's pray, Father.
Thank you, Lord, for sharing with us.
Just a wonderful story, a picture of Your grace, Your
mercy, your love over even the worst cases of sin and evil.
You've come to cleanse and cast out evil from this earth.
And I thank you, God for all those who are are saved.
Father, you have done that in US.
You've made us holy. You've washed us clean and
you've put your spirit in US. Help us to have discernment for
the evil out there in the world, to have faith, to trust you
through it. And I pray, Lord, help us, help
us God, to do your will to go share what you've already done
in our lives, how you've changed us from the Kingdom of darkness
and transferred us into the Kingdom of your son.
I pray in Jesus name, Amen.