Again, we thank you for this time.
It's been a joy to be able to come and give you praise and
worship this morning. We thank you for the opportunity
to stop and remember our Saviour when we take communion.
Lord, as we come to hear your word this morning, Lord Mayor
hearts, be open to hearing that we will be challenged and
stirred by your word in. Father, we thank you for that
all we do pray for those in our congregation who are having
their struggles and trials at the moment.
Lord, we just pray for continue to pray for the Pinay family and
uplift them. And I said you will be with
them. Your hand of comfort will be
upon them in this time. Would we bring them before you
will. We pray for those that are
unwell in there's many but law especially remember Robbie
Fleming and Gwen Burger or just pray that your hand of killing
will be upon them and hand of peace and comfort on them also
and their families. All we remember Justin Bailey in
hospital at the moment asked that you will be with her and
watch over her. Lord, we pray.
Thank you for all your goodness and blessings that you pour out
onto us And Lord, we we just pray this morning and pray for
Dan and as he brings your word that you've laid on his heart,
give him clarity of thought in mind as he brings it message.
Lord, we just pray for our our hearts that they will be open to
hearing that word. We pray for our Sunday School
Lord, as they go in our team class that they say go out and
hear the message that there the Sunday school teachers have
prepared for them. Lord, may their hearts be open
to hearing your weird. Lord, we thank you for for our
children and the blessing that they are to our church.
We thank you for our Sunday School teachers and their
willingness and desire to bring your word to our children.
So we thank you for there. Our Father, we thank you for the
offerings that are given, whether it's online or in the
box. Lord, we just pray and thank you
that you are the one who provides all that we have and
Lord, may it be used, may those offerings be used for your glory
and that you will be honoured. So Lord, we bring these things
to you now and we thank you for this time that we share in Jesus
name, Amen. Good morning.
Hey, we are continuing our series through the book of Luke.
Title of the message Jesus has power over.
The scene and the unseen. Right.
So we've been going through the book of Luke, and Luke was a
medical Doctor Who became a missionary.
And he's writing this letter to a guy named Theophilus.
And he said, I've interviewed as many eye witnesses as I could to
try and put together an orderly account of what happened, all
about Jesus, right? Who was Jesus?
What did he say? What did he do?
What happened, right? And so a small sample of some of
the things we've seen so far, Jesus fulfilled a whole bunch of
Old Testament prophecies about the Messiah, right?
So the Messiah means that the appointed 1, the anointed one.
And then in the Old Testament, there's all these prophecies
about how the Messiah would come and save his people.
And Jesus fulfils a whole bunch of those, right?
He was a direct descendant of David.
He was born in Bethlehem, Mother was a virgin, and on and on and
on and on, right? So there's a whole bunch of
those. He resists Satan in a very
vulnerable time. He's able to resist Satan.
The very voice of God booms out and approves of him.
That's. Pretty serious kind of sign
there. He was able to heal all kinds of
physical ailments, right? He healed Peter's mother-in-law.
He healed a man with leprosy, which that was an incurable
disease in in those days, paralysed man right was able to
walk, get up and walk. He remotely healed the centurion
servant right. He didn't even have to go to the
house to do that. He even raises someone from the.
Dead. We saw that two weeks ago.
He also, he shows incredible wisdom and scriptural insight as
he teaches and he can, he's able to teach with authority.
He's saying from God's perspective, this is how God
sees it. And this is God's own life and,
and, and has this, this has this authority as he as he speaks,
but also this, this insight. And he claims to be able to do
things that only God can do right, such as forgive sins.
And these miracles that he's doing act as signs or we would
say in modern English as proof to show that he is who he says
he is. So let's continue with Luke's
eyewitness account of what happened.
We're going to Luke chapter 8 and we'll start off in verse 22,
right? I'm going to look at two big.
Events in the story of Jesus that that Luke gathered to hear
the for us from eyewitness. So Luke A 22 starts off and it
says this. Now it happened on a certain day
that he got into a boat with his disciples and he said to them,
let us crossover to the other side of the lake and they
launched out. Alright, so just a bit of a
explanation on this. This is what used to be known as
the Sea of Galilee. That's how it looked on Google
Earth as of about Thursday. It's a lake.
In in northern Israel, what's now northern Israel, and you can
see you, I don't know how well you can see.
But right at the top there is the town of Capernaum.
That's where they were and they're going to make sort of a
diagonal trek across across the lake from the from the top there
over onto the Eastern Shore. Now this lake is a is a really
weird one in that it actually sits below sea level.
It's about 270 metres below sea level.
And you can probably see there that there's a kind of big,
quite big steep mountains all around it.
Fish over on the eastern side there right on the right hand
side of the the screen. And So what happens is very,
very hot air that's coming up from the Jordan Valley can get
trapped on top of the lake. And then you get this really
cool ear kind of blows in over the top.
And when you get these kind of storms, like these wind storms
that come in the, the locals call it the Shakir.
And when the Shakira comes in, particularly from the eastern
side, it'll roll down over those hills and straight down onto the
lake hits the hot air and, and cause these massive storms.
And this can happen in 30 minutes.
So you can go from the lake looking like like glass.
It's about the size of Lake Rotorua.
Yep, it can go from looking like glass to three metre waves,
right? 10 foot waves.
Now in about 30 minutes in 1992, they had one of these Shakir
storms and the people that lived in Tiberius, which is the city
over on the West western shore there, they thought there must
have been an earthquake. It's quite an earthquake prone
area because because of the way that the waves were chopping
around and there were three metre tall waves and they were
chopping and they must be an earthquake.
They actually hadn't been. It was just the storm had come
down, you know, the cool wind that hit the hit the.
Hot, hot air. And that's what what had
happened, right? They launch out across the lake
going to make this diagonal trip.
And then verse 23. But as they sailed, he fell
asleep. Jesus fell asleep in the boat as
they were sailing and a windstorm came down on the lake.
So you see that sort of wording there, and they were filling
with water and were in jeopardy. Now, whoever Luke interviewed
about about this described this as a windstorm, right?
And we're probably talking about the Shakira as it comes down.
But interestingly, in Matthew's account, he uses the word
seismos to describe it. The Greek word seismos, That
word has a double meaning in Greek and it can can either be
translated storm or earthquake. It's where we get an English
word seismic from. And so it's probably the same
thing that they saw in 1992, right?
Where there was chopping up so big that it felt like I felt
like an earthquake, right? So the body's getting swamped,
possibly, you know, waves 3 metres tall and they are in
jeopardy, right? Their, their lives are in real,
real peril here. Look at the start of this 24 And
they came to him, to Jesus and awoke him saying, Master,
master, we are perishing. And Matthew's account, they say,
Lord, save us, right? Rescue us.
We are perishing, right? We're about to die, rescue us.
In Mark's account, it tells us that Jesus was actually asleep
on a pillow and while all this is going on and they woke him.
Up. And they said, don't you care
that we are perishing? Don't you Care now when a storm
is so bad that the professional fishermen think they're all
going to die? You know, it's a bad storm,
right? The guys that are out on that
lake everyday. What?
But what's interesting is as we look at the all three of these
gospel accounts is we see that the disciples are terrified
about what might happen. They believe Jesus can actually
save them. You know that that he could
rescue them, but they doubted whether he would.
Or whether he even cared. There's a number of times in the
Gospels right the the four books of the Bible that that tell the
story of Jesus, Jesus life. Where he he says, here is all
the bad stuff that is going to happen to you and he kind of
lays it out for them. He never pulls any punches on
this stuff, right with the with the disciples.
Like on one occasion he said you'll be arrested, you'll be
put on trial, everyone will turn against you.
And then he says, and do not fear.
Do not fear, right? They risk you.
Don't be afraid. Let's weird, isn't it?
Cause you think, well, didn't you just say that you're going
to be arrested and put on trial and everyone's going to turn
against us Yeah. And then in the middle of that.
Do not be afraid specifically actually that occasion, he said
This, he said. And do not fear those who kill
the body but cannot kill the soul, rather fear him who's able
to destroy both soul and body. In hell, right fear God, right
don't worry about people who can only, you know, at the waist and
kill your body and and Jesus introduces them and he
introduces us to something that he'll go back over and over and
over again in the Gospels, right and and here's the great news
for. For you and me, these guys that
he's teaching this to didn't get this to the till the very end,
right? This wasn't one of those times,
you know, where one of these lectures where you know he's
talking and they go, Yep, alright, got it.
Yep, full stop. Okay, what's next?
This was an ongoing process to be able to find themselves in
very difficult circumstances and yet not allowed fear to take
hold. You know, Jesus said, he said
not too Sparrow sold for a copper coin, right?
Sparrows aren't worth much, right?
And and he said, but not one of them falls to the ground apart
from your father's will, right? Even even God cares about what
happens to them, he said, but the very hairs of your head are
all numbered. Do not fear.
Therefore you have more value than many sparrows, you know?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He, he really cares.
He cares about the minute details, right?
So here's where Jesus is taking his followers.
He's taking us to a place where our faith in God is so big,
right and so strong. It takes us to a place where our
faith and our Father's love is so strong that even in the
middle of circumstances where it looks like it looks like our God
has forgotten us. Or maybe he didn't even know us
to begin with. You're in the middle of a light,
we hear him whisper. Fear not, I'm with you right
now. The message of Jesus was never
this right. It was never fear not.
I won't let bad things happen. He never said that right?
He, he was very clear about that.
The message of Jesus was don't be afraid when bad things
happen. That's confidence in God, right?
That's confidence that's so big, so sure of God's presence, so
sure of God's love, so sure of God's protection.
Faith is so big that it actually overwhelms and overshadows the
things that we're afraid of. See the place where God wants to
take? You and God wants to take me is
to a place where we wake up every single day and think.
What would it look like for a person like me if I had absolute
confidence in God? What would life be like, right
That you, you, you'd wake up and say, what decision would, might,
would, would I make if I, if I had absolute confidence that God
was with me, right? So what, what, what decision
would I make in light of what my employees are saying about me?
Or what decision would I make in light of what my boss is about
to ask me to do? What decision would I make is I
have a doctor's appointment this morning.
Right. What would somebody like me do
if they were absolutely confident that God could protect
the soul despite what somebody might do to the body?
What would somebody like me do if I had that kind of confidence
in God, right? And that's where Jesus was
trying to take the side of this where he's trying to take us.
And Jesus saying I want you to follow me because if you.
Follow me. That's where I'm going to take
you right. I'm going to take you to a place
not a not a denial, not of hocus pocus, not of followed this
formula and you can get Jesus to do what you want.
I'm going to take you to a place that your face.
And may Jesus would say, And then your heavenly Father is so
confident that even in the midst of circumstances.
That should terrify you. You won't be afraid.
Over and over and over. Again, he's taking them there.
All right, back to the storm, right?
So that's that. They're there.
They think they're going to die. Don't you care that we're
perishing, Right? This, this number 24, they came
to him and they woke him, saying, master, master, we are
perishing. Then he arose and rebukes the
wind and the raging of the water, and they ceased, and
there was calm. There's 25.
But he said to them, Where is your faith?
Where's your faith? And in my account, he says, why
are you so fearful? How is it that you have no face?
Interesting. I like when you when you look at
that, right? Well, actually, let's look at
rest of this. 25. And they were afraid, and they
marvelled, saying to one another, who can this be for?
He commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him,
right? They were afraid that that
phrase in in Greek is they fear the great fear.
Yeah. So before they they thought I
was gonna die in a storm, right? And so they had this level of
fear. But now they realise who they
were in the boat was. Now, now they fear the great
fear, right? They realised, you know, they,
they suddenly got this sort of picture of.
What it means to fear the one who can control the destiny of
the soul and refuse to fear anything or anyone with the most
they can do is simply harm your body right in that moment they
got a snapshot. What it means to understand.
Fear not, your Heavenly Father knows what you need, where I can
be in terrifying, fearful circumstances and still not
fear. And Jesus says that's where I'm
trying to take you. So, so far, Luke, right we've
we've already built up this picture that Jesus has mastery
over sin and disease and even death.
And now we've just seen over the forces of nature, right?
He just tells the storm could it, and it stops and it stops,
right? Well, what about things you
can't see right? What about things like mental
health? What about demonic influences
that plague us? What about that stuff about 1?
50 years ago, the way people saw disease and the way it spread
was very different to the to the.
Way we view it now. Right.
They handed kind of a actually a weirdly sort of evolutionary
view of the way things work. So the idea was that if you left
some meat out on the bench, it would eventually grow into
maggots, right? There was that was kind of the
way people thought. And that if you, if you drank
bad water, it would grow into bad stuff inside you, right?
The word malaria is Latin for bad water, right?
Because that's what they thought was happening.
If you drink water that was too stagnant, it would grow into bad
things, right? They didn't realise it was the
mosquitoes that lived around there.
That was that was a spring, their disease, right?
They even thought this about the air, right?
That if you breathe in bad air, it would grow into bad things
around you. This is a plague mask from the
Middle Ages. The way this thing worked, they
got this big leather beak, right?
And in the end of the beak they would stuff like lavender and
rose petals and nice smelling things.
And the idea is you just breathe in nicely air, right?
And you wouldn't breathe in the bad air and then it couldn't
turn into bad things inside you. Alright?
But then this guy came along, Louis Pasteur.
And Louis Pasteur said, well, that doesn't work right because
I can take piece of meat and I can stick a big glass.
Jar over it and it doesn't grow into maggots, right?
But I can take another piece of meat that's got some maggots on
it, and I can stick that in the jar with it, and then all of a
sudden the other one's got maggots on it, right?
And, and he came up with this zoom theory, right?
And this zoom theory was, maybe there are some bugs, you know
how you get tiny little ants and things like that.
Maybe there are some bugs that are so small we can't even see
them. So there's this invisible realm,
but it affects the visible realm.
Yeah. And people thought he was crazy.
The entire medical fraternity of France, so to say.
Look, medicine is about empirical science, right?
It's things that you can observe and, and, and, and, you know,
write about this idea of an invisible realm you can't see
that's affecting the the physical world.
It's still like a fairytale. Does it stay in your lane?
You're not even a real doctor, right.
But then he cured a kid of rabies.
Rabies is one of most deadly diseases there is in all of
recorded history. Once you get the full on
symptoms of rabies, only about only six people have ever
survived the fallen symptoms so this kid gets bitten by a very
rabid dog. He's going to die and Louis
Pasteur through his germ theory, he comes up with The Smiths and
and saves the boy's life. And then everybody took notice,
right? And then he came up with a, you
know, where the cure anthrax and other things as well, right?
And now the stuff that he talked about, we just, we just know it,
right? We know there's this invisible
realm, but it affects the visible realm, right?
That's why we wiped the bench down after there's been meat
sitting on it, raw meat sitting on it, right?
We just kind of know that's the case.
Why did I tell you that story? Fishermen's 1940s written all
destroy the wisdom of the wise and the discernment of the
discerning of thwart, right? Paul's quoting Isaiah 29 there,
right? When you think about the story
of Louis Pasteur and then you look back on those doctors who
were some of the wisest people in the country at the time and
said, you're crazy, right? And we think, wow, they look
pretty stupid now, right? You look at that plague mask
looks just looks comical, doesn't it, when you when you
look at it now, right? And the idea of an unseen realm
that affects the the visible realm is just something that we
we all. Accept now when it comes to
fighting disease. But in the Bible is very clear
and Jesus talks about this and it's all through the Bible.
There's a different kind of unseen realm, but it's very real
and it affects the, the physical realm, the world that we live
in. Alright, so we're gonna have a
look at how this works, right? Verse #26 Then they sailed to
the country of the Gadarenes, which is opposite Galilee,
right? So they did that diagonal trick.
So they're actual, that western side of Galilee was a different
country in those days, right? So they're in Gentile territory.
Sometimes you'll see it. The region was called the Gaga
scenes. But the biggest town in that
region was the IT was Gadara. So sometimes it's called the
country, the gatherings. It'll be like this part of
Waikato and we call it, you know, the land of the
Hamiltonians, you know, so you, you get that Kettering's
magazines sometimes Google scenes.
So this is where they go, and Jesus.
That was aware of the need of a man across there and I believe
Jesus went across especially for this man.
Bubble indicates that if people. Are really searching for Jesus
and for God's reality in their lives.
God will bring about opportunity for them to meet Christ Jesus
promised seek and you will find right.
So in verse 27, we're introduced to this scattering man who's
about to have this encounter with Jesus that's not only going
to change his. Eternal destiny, but it's going
to change his everyday life from this point on.
And this guy has some pretty serious issues.
Severe problems of the most extreme kind.
And so the good thing about this story is that if Jesus can help
this man, he can help you no matter what your issues are, no
matter how extreme they seem, right?
And he can fix mine as well. Let's have a look at this number
27. And when he stepped out onto the
land, they met him, a certain man from the city who had demons
for a long time. All right, so let's not get too
excited about the, the, the, at this point about the idea of
demon position. There is a lot of religious
hype, there's a lot of superstition and there's a lot
of Hollywood exaggeration and dramatisation when it comes to
this idea of demon position. God is not responsible for that
hype, right? And the association, the
associated confusion that comes with.
It. Satan is right, but this this
kind of two dangerous extremes, extreme views, which we can take
when when it comes to demon position.
On the one hand, they can be like those doctors in the time
of Louis Pasteur and we say invisible realm.
That's all nonsense and just dismiss it right, when the Bible
is very clear that it's a real thing.
The other extreme is we just see a demon under every rock, right?
And, and and we think that everything that happens is some
some sort of, you know, demonic influence and stuff.
I used to work with a guy and the river near his house burst
its banks, but he didn't want to drive around the long way.
So he decided just to drive through it and he drove in there
and completely swamped his car completely flooded it and was
diesel engine. So what have got an engine
completely destroyed? It and insurance didn't cover
it. Oo kind of a tragic thing to
happen, but a young boy who wasn't a wealthy guy at all
heard about this and said man, I heard what happened.
I want to give you a car and gave him a car as a replacement.
So three days after doing this, he takes the new car that's been
given to him. He drives down to the same spot,
doesn't want to drive around and drives through the same place
and floods the new car and destroys it, right?
And then he's telling everybody, and Satan is really.
Giving us a hard time this week, yeah?
Was he there? Yeah.
Was he though? You know, sorry.
These are the extremes, right? And the truth lies somewhere in
the middle as we look at what? Scriptural demon position is you
start to realise it's very real, but it's not as mystical and
it's not as hocus pocus as it's made out to be and hopefully by
the end of this morning. We'll see the issues more common
than we probably realise and the idea in in the in the area of
modern living in areas that we might not have recognised as
being associated with with demon position.
But it's a biblical issue, right?
And so. We want we want to come to this,
you know, a balanced so might not not get overcome with
emotional develop some Hollywood style fantasy about the stuff.
What we're going to see is that demon position really has is
really to do with what or really who is influencing your life or
who is in control of your. Life.
And any mature Christian will tell you that when it comes to
influencing the world, there are ultimately two sources.
Right there is God or Satan, right?
And from there, you know good or evil, God or Satan, and even
many ungodly religions acknowledge that truth.
And so when we boil it down, the decisions that you make will
either take you toward God or away from God, right?
They they either please God or that they please Satan.
And the problem with the Get Irene man was that he had
allowed his life to be influenced by Satan, by demont
demonic things and to the extreme that in his mind he lost
all control over it and get a remains problem that was that he
had had had demons a long time. He was possessed, right.
He was under their control, under their mastery.
Now, before we look more closely at.
What being possessed is really about.
Let's have a look at the effects it had on his life.
Right? So there's 27 there and he wore
no clothes, nor did he live in a house, but in the tombs.
So just a few things about him, right?
He's he's personally dysfunctional.
Poor self-care, no clothes, disinhibited, kind of cast off
any restraint when it comes to his presentation.
He didn't care for himself. Right.
He's also domestically dysfunctional.
He he's got no real home. He lives among the tombs, right?
Graves of the dead. He's not able to provide himself
with with an appropriate place to live.
And verse 28 tells us he was. Afraid.
Let's have a look. There's 28.
When he saw Jesus, he cried out and he fell down before him, and
with and with a loud voice said, What have I to do with you?
Jesus, Son of the Most High God, I beg you, do not torment me.
He knew who Jesus was and I I think most people do, but they
spend most of their lives trying to avoid as a reality, right?
And and he understood his wickedness, and he assumed that
Jesus had come to punish him like he deserved.
That isn't why Jesus came, right?
Jesus doesn't hate us, right? He hates anyone godliness and
and ungodly influence in our lives.
Scripture says, you know, for God sent not his son to condemn
the world, but the world through him might be saved, right?
Might be rescued, delivered right?
What else about him? Man was under extreme
psychological and spiritual persecution.
Torment from was so extreme that Mark tells us in his account
that the guy cried day and night, cutting himself with
stones. Yeah, so this is in in mental
health profession, they call this a tension reduction
activity, right. And it's where the inner anguish
is so extreme that people will will physically hurt themselves
to try and cover for the. The inner pane right make make
some out of pain, right? Can you imagine what how much
you must be suffering right to to go through these extremes to
to seek relief, right. We're cutting yourself feels
better than what you're experiencing on the inside and
and. When people do this, it also
has. Some other benefits for them,
like they feel like they're punishing themselves, right, and
so it can bring some relief when they feel like they've been
punished enough for what they've done right.
It's really sad treatment of this is some success, but a lot
of times it's not successful. A lot of times the the person
will just switch one kind of coping mechanism for another.
So they might switch cutting to anorexia or, you know, drug use
or, you know, even as far as, you know, suicidal, you know,
psychosis, these kind of combinations of these things as
well. So Jesus offers another another
solution right in dealing with this kind of torment and we're.
Going to see it's not some kind of hocus pocus or heebie jeebies
either, right? But just a couple more things
about him #5 his behaviour said he's.
Social Both Mark and Matthew in in recording their accounts of
this man's presentation, described them as fierce right?
Which means someone who's violent, someone who lashes out
physically. The man at times had no
self-control but was impulsive and driven right.
Have a look at this 29. If we had commanded the unclean
spirit to come out of the man, for it had often seized.
Him and he was kept under guard, bound with chains and shackles,
and he broke the bonds and was driven by the demon into the
wilderness. Last point on him, right, the,
the the man was socially isolated and almost certainly
lonely, being driven into the wilderness to live this kind of
life of pain and anguish among the tombs of the dead, right?
So in terms of the life of a human being.
Doesn't really get much worse than this, right?
It's, it's an incredibly sad state.
And so the big question is this. How does someone get to such an
extreme state of unwellness? Right.
This is an extreme case, isn't it?
Like, you know, how do you get to this point?
And the lady here is that you know well the.
The answer really is when we allow.
Ourselves to be open to the influence of ungodly sources.
We're open to all kinds of emotional and mental and
spiritual problems and even physical problems, right?
God tries to protect us as much as possible from these kind of
problems, but we're not puppets on strings, right?
We, we have free will. So if we if we are determined to
ignore God's prescription for spiritual and mental health,
we're placing ourselves in there in an at risk situation, right,
to develop these kinds of problems to greater or lesser
extent. Now, like I say, obviously this
guy is a very extreme case. There's a lot of different ways
that we can be prone to Satan's influence, whether that's
consciously or unconsciously. But let's see how.
This guy got to this state of our unwellness right now.
Let's go back to verse 27 again. It says there's some.
Winnie stepped on the land. They met him, a certain man from
the city who had demons for a long time.
That would head squeak would echo.
That means to have whole sees or possess.
This is where we get this idea of demon position from.
Right? Have hold seasonal possess, but
who's doing the possessing? Yep.
And actually the grammatically it's in the the Greek active
voice, which basically just means the man is doing the
action. Yeah.
So he reached out and he possessed them?
Yeah, for whatever it was. Maybe it was just he reached out
because they could help cope with stresses in his life, or
maybe it was for fun or whatever.
But he reached out and possess them and so he opened himself up
to being influenced and eventually, for the most part,
he ends ur mastered by Satan. Do you do actively seeking,
pursuing, grasping and godliness and and now it possesses him,
right? Now you want to say here it's
one thing to make the mistake of.
Giving in to ungodliness right on occasion, and and repenting
right being sorry for that and and repenting.
But when we continually entertain sin any ungodliness in
our lives, we become greatly at risk of being controlled by it.
This is what position is right position.
Is all about losing control of our life.
Feeling unable to make choices for myself in a situation
because I feel overpowered, right?
Or compelled to act in a certain way.
Right. I just have to have a drink.
I had to hit him, you know, I had to say that, you know, you
know, just you experience an overwhelming desire to do
something that you feel unable to resist, or the resisting of
the desire becomes so distressing that you just kind
of give in to it. We see this all the time, don't
we? In our modern world, we call
these things addictions, compulsions, obsessions, right?
Anything that controls us to the point where we believe we can't
control it, right? Or we can't resist the urge.
That's something that's possessing our lives, right?
It's it's in control of us. We're not in control of it.
Right, so the gettering man he possessed.
These themens, right? He reached out for them, he
begins to toy with or pursue ungodliness and I'm sure he had
the intention of retaining control over it but in the end
all this stuff in his life ended U controlling him.
Look at this number 29 free claim the Spirit unclean spirit
come out of him, out of the man for Ed head.
Often seized him that would seize.
That's the same word echo right have hold seasonal possess it
Often possessed him. He reached out for it.
Test it. And now it it has him, it
possessed him. Now at this point we need to
look more closely at the the nature of biblical demons or
devils as they were called in In Old English, demons are the the
fallen angels of God that followed Satan when he was cast
out of heaven at the beginning of.
Creation. We don't have time to go and
look into that, but Revelation 12.
If if you want to want to see that right.
So they're really a group of bad angels.
The word Angel means messenger one sent with a message, right?
So This is why. They are sent with a message.
What is the purpose of a message?
I was thinking about that this week.
I think the purpose of a message mostly is to convey information.
What's the purpose of information is to try and
influence decisions. Is to try and influence
decisions. Not all information is good or
true. Yeah, there are two ultimate
sources of information, right? Either God or Satan.
The goodness of God's information is written in the
Bible, right for for us to you know, God's information about
life and him and us and important life decisions are all
found in the Bible and God gives it in an attempt to influence
our lives for the better, right influence them towards influence
us towards him, make us more like Christ, give us more really
to give us the option to be protected from pain and hurt and
condemnation. That doesn't mean that no bad
things anything happen. We just saw that the storm
right, but but to be able to handle in the right way.
The message is that Satan uses to influence influence us come
from all kinds of different things, right.
You know, maybe it's Insta, Facebook, TV, YouTube, radio,
magazines, school, uni, you know, workplace parties,
wherever there are people that will allow Satan to influence
them. Right now, any message that
contradicts what God says comes from Satan, right?
This is what? Jesus said about Satan's
purpose. This is how how he put it.
He said the thief is does not come except to steal and kill
and destroy. That's what he's trying to do,
right? I have come that they may have
life and that they may have it more abundantly right over the
top. It would mean sorry see the
Gathering man's become overcome with ungodly influences that
we're ruining his life because he had paid attention two and
become obedient to the influences of messages that went
from God. They came from demons, and at
that time he probably had no. Idea of what the long?
Term impact was going to be on his life right?
I doubt he would have got involved in these things if he
understood the ramifications over time.
Anytime we give ear to a message that is ungodly, we're playing
with fire, right? And whether you a are a follower
of Jesus Christ or not, Satan and his demons can still
influence you with with his messages.
You can still give yourself over to his control now you'll still
be saved, right? You're eternity is fixed
salvation, but it can ruin your life, right?
We can influence them in the wrong direction, right?
And these messages. Can take any kind of form,
right? You know.
Look, you got to get drunk to cope with the, you know, the
stresses in your life right now, right?
You know Jesus is just a mess. None of this is real.
It's just all made-up by somebody, right?
You don't deserve to be loved. You're an idiot.
You you'll never amount to anything.
You know well, anything, right? These ungodly messages and these
messages go against what God says and their vehicles through
which Satan wants to kind of play with their minds and
influence us, influence us away from Christ.
If we listen to those messages from those messengers, our lives
will become mastered by them or or more precisely by the one
who's propagating them. And the result can be we end up
having total controller. We seemed to have total control
over our lives because when we try going against these messages
that we bought into, we we experience fear and guilt and
anguish, and the result is being possessed by something to a
greater or lesser extent, the extent to which our lives are
bound up by these things. By godly, by ungodly influence
depends on how many satanic lies we've sort of bought into and
there are those lies that we've. Accepted as adults, there are
those who have accepted as kids and we've been brought up to
believe about the world and ourselves and and and and God.
Look at this city right gathering man had swallowed a
multitude of satanic lies and got ungodliness now tormented
his life since this Jesus asked him, saying what's your?
Name and he said Legion because many demons had ended him right.
Legion means huge crowd like thousands up to thousands.
Think about the the multitude of satanic lies that we can swallow
in a lifetime, right? Alright, and for the negative
rate it it. Let's see what Jesus does with
this guy. There's 31 and 32 that the
demons attempt to to bargain with Jesus.
Because they know they're doomed, but they want to make
the best of a bad situation, right?
Says this. And they begged him that he
would not command them to go out into the abyss.
Now heard of many swine was feeding there on the mountain.
So they begged him that they that he would permit them to
enter them. And he permitted them.
Now we think, ohh, he seems to be letting them off lightly
here. But look what happens. 33.
Then the demons went out of the man and entered the swine, and
the herd ran violently down the steep place into the lake and
drowned. They didn't get off lightly.
They ended up damned right. But but Jesus uses their
willingness for a purpose, right?
And here it is, right? Boost 34 When those who fed them
saw what had happened, they fled and told it in the city, in the
country. They went out to see what had.
Happened, came to Jesus, and they found the man for whom the
demons had departed sitting at the feet of Jesus.
Clothed and in his right mind. And they were afraid right
because they realised who this is, right?
Who Jesus is. They fear the great fear.
Jesus used the the pigs as a visual aid so they could see,
you know? Real change had gone on here and
the guy is miraculous, miraculously healed of his
demons, right? He's freed from the enslavement
that he's experienced by embracing a multitude of demonic
lies over his lifetime. Now he's sane and he's balanced
and he's able to live a life of peace and joy in Jesus.
Now important to note here, right, the practise of exorcism,
right of, of, of casting out demons was a miraculous gift
that Jesus used during his ministry and he allowed his
apostles to use it as well. Now, when these miraculous gifts
phase faded out with the fulfilment of.
The word of God. So did this form of exorcism,
right? Despite all of the shames that
you see in false claims and modern religion, God doesn't
deal with ungodly influence in this way anymore through someone
exercising someone else, right? So.
How do we deal with? It.
A couple of ways, right? How do we deal with it?
Just like the gathering man, we have to surrender to Jesus, even
though it may feel scary doing that right when we acknowledge
that Jesus is God and our only hope and, and, and when we did
that, we asked them to forgive our sins.
He freed our souls from the ultimate consequence of Satan's
influence over us right forever. At that point we had.
Eternal life. Roman 623 right for God for the
wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in
Christ Jesus our Lord, right? However, to deal with the
demonic false beliefs that kind of get ingrained in us, in their
minds, and the bad patterns of behaviour in our lives on a
daily basis, that's another. Issue right, It takes time and
it takes surrenders to Jesus couple of verses there right.
We use God's word as an. Active weapon against these
things and we use prayer communication with God to plug
into his power right prayer and reading the word why that's why
we hammer the stuff all the time it's so important it helps with
these things right but in the book of James he gives.
Us a really simple formula right now.
Hollywood hype here. No sensation, just humility.
Here's what he says. Therefore, submit to God.
Resist the devil and he will flee from you.
That's it, right? Simple, right?
But remember, submitting to God involves turning around from
ungodly patterns of behaviour, right?
And James goes on to explain that in the rest of the passage.
And it might sound simple, but and it kind of has went with
Jesus when we really surrender. But if you try and fight the
demons and their messages without Jesus.
Right, you'll lose. Right Jesus, without me you can
do nothing, Paul said. I can do all things through
Christ who strengthens me. Jesus is able to help us when we
surrender to his authority. All right conclusion.
Don't be misled by religious. Or Hollywood height.
Regarding demon position, it's really a simple matter of who is
influencing your life and who is in control.
Who are you living, being, control?
You'll either buy into false demonic messages that don't come
from God, and eventually those ideas and those practises will
control. You.
Or you'll listen to what Jesus says in terms of false ideas.
We need to look at what did God tell us right in his word and
overcome those sort of thoughts and processes and then just
stick close to, to God to work through them.
Now the, the get a gettering man is an extreme case, but he's not
out of the question. My, my daughter works with
homeless people up in Auckland. And you do sometimes see people
at this extreme end right. But he came to Jesus with a
confused, broken, conflicted mind.
Jesus took their life and gave him a sane, balanced mind, a
whole healthy life, peace in his heart, the home in heaven right
now. Jesus will save you in an
instant. But don't expect a miracle like
the Gallerian guy had to sort out your daily life because it
doesn't happen like that, right? But as we surrender everyday,
God, today I want to do what you want me to do.
I want to act like Jesus would act.
Be honest about all the false messages we bought into in our
lives. Jesus will help us get away from
all of that, right? So we have a choice to make.
To be like the Gallerian guy who?
Who submitted to Jesus and was made free?
Or to reject Jesus and continue to struggle with the curse of
ungodliness. And in fact, in Matthew's
account, it says there were two of these guys in the teams.
Only one of them came to Jesus. Here's the question, will we
let? Jesus take the confusion,
brokenness, and strife in our life and turn it into something
beautiful because He's the master of everything, the stuff
that we can see and everything we can't.
And that is our choice we're going to face.
All right, let's pray. Line back Father, we we thank
you for yeah, these Luke's gospel and these this amazing
pattern and picture that's built up of who Jesus is.
And we thank you for the fact that he is the master of
everything over the stuff we can see and the stuff we can't.
Thank you for the fact that you are God who cares about the fine
details in their lives and we just pray that we would be
people who would hand these things to you and and stay close
to you. Lord thank you that you never
leave us. You stay close to us.
We thank you in Jesus name.