Luke chapter 8 verses 22 to 25 is where we were last week and
we were out on a boat. We're out on a boat with
disciples and with Jesus in the midst of a life threatening
storm. The waves were piling over the
boat, the water was filling it up, and there was just total
panic that was taking place amongst Jesus disciples.
And in that story, Jesus gets woken up and then he stands up
and he speaks and he with a word calms the waters, clears the
skies. And so last week we said the big
idea for that section of Scripture, for that part of
Luke, is that having Jesus in your boat, it doesn't keep you
from entering into storms. It doesn't keep the storms from
coming up. But it does mean that even in
the fiercest storm, you don't have to be afraid if you got
Jesus in your boat, because if you have Jesus in your boat,
he'll see you through. If life for you feels like it's
taking on water, If you feel like you're in the middle of a
storm, I just want to let you know we post all of our messages
online. You can go back and you can
check out the message from last week or any of the weeks that
you need to get caught up on. But I think we need to go back
and see where we were because they're on this boat for a
reason. They're heading somewhere.
They were crossing across the Sea of Galilee.
They were coming to this place, this spot where we find
ourselves today. They had gone from Capernaum and
now they're over in the Gerasenes.
It's about about probably a 12 kilometer boat ride.
It depends. They could, if they got knocked
off a little bit, that might have got a little longer.
I don't know what happened in the storm, but about 12
kilometers and I mentioned last week, I'm not usually fearful
about stuff when it comes to physical danger.
I am blissfully unaware of physical danger to a fault.
That's true when it comes to physical and material dangers.
But I've always been pretty freaked out by like the
paranormal and and and spiritual stuff.
So I don't know if, if any of you are old enough to remember
the old show unsolved mysteries. There was a particular episode
of unsolved mysteries, not just the theme song.
Even to this day, if I hear that theme song, I start to get like
the the willies. But there was a, a, an episode
about alien abduction and I don't think I slept for like a
month after watching that one. I, when I was a kid, like any
type of horror movies, especially if it dealt with
demonic stuff, just like it was not good.
And I will say that as a pastor in my, in my time in ministry,
I, I've been in situations where I have experienced the demonic,
real and alive in people's lives.
And in those moments, the hair on the back of my neck always
stands up. And and we find ourselves in a
very different type of situation, with a very different
type of power than the winds and the waves.
Today, Luke's taking us to a spot to show us that Jesus isn't
just Lord over the natural physical realm like we saw last
week, but the Jesus is also Lord over the spiritual realm.
He's stacked these stories, he's pushed them together.
He's put them into his narrative on purpose.
He's he's showing us a bigger picture.
He wants us to see, like I said last week, that there's no inch
of all creation and that includes both physical and
spiritual over which Jesus does not reign as Lord and King.
And if this is true, then whether you're dealing with
physical sickness this morning or whether you are in spiritual
bondage, Jesus's power is bigger.
Whether you feel like it's financial debt that is crushing
you today or it's, it's a spiritual shame that has you in
shackles. Jesus power is bigger because
Jesus is Lord over all of it. The spiritual and the physical.
The, the, the spiritual realities that feel like they
have us entrapped, have us enslaved, right?
That sin that we just can't seem to shake as hard as we try, as
as much as we white knuckle it, we just keep on coming back to
it. The darkness that just hangs
over us and, and feels like it's stalking us.
The, the, the chains that try as hard as we might, but we just
don't have the power to break free of.
Luke wants us to see Jesus is not just the storm Comer, he's
the chain breaker. And and that is such good news
for us, such good news for us, because every single one of us
in this room is either trapped in chains ourself this morning,
or we know somebody who who just can't seem to break free.
Or we will one day find ourselves up against it in a in
a spiritual battle that we simply don't have the power to
overcome on our own. And so want to see what Luke is
going to show us about Jesus authority, his power as we walk
back through that story that Laura has just taken us through.
Let's start in verse 26. Then they sailed to the region
of the garrisons, which is opposite Galilee.
And when he that's Jesus got out on land, a demon possessed man
from the town met him. So Jesus, the picture is steps
out of the boat and he's not greeted by welcoming crowds.
He's greeted by a man. Thankfully, this one is is fully
clothed, but a man in chains who is just in a desperate
situation. I think I, I put that picture up
in that Laura was asking because Laura doesn't like scary things.
She's like, how scary is it going to be?
And I said, I think it was probably about 100 times scarier
than that reality that's on the picture.
Like if this is a movie, I told you I don't like scary movies.
If this is a movie I am not wanting to watch, this is what
it says. For a long time, he had worn no
clothes, did not stay in a house, but in the tombs.
This guy is naked. He's possessed.
He's homeless and he's living in a graveyard.
You can't come up with a more ideal setting for a horror movie
than that. He's sitting there with broken
chains and restraints hanging off of his body.
And this is where Jesus comes. The first thing I think that we
need to see here is that Jesus intentionally enters into the
dark places. Jesus made a decision to leave
Capernaum to to to leave the land of the Jews, the land of
God's people, and to come to the land of the Gentiles, to come to
a spiritually dark and barren place.
Like, again, Luke puts these things into his narrative
because he's wanted us to see some stuff.
He's stacking some details here. So what does he tell us?
Well, this is a Garrison, so it's a Gentile, and it is a land
of spiritual darkness. It's a graveyard.
It, it, it, it is an unclean place.
It's a place of death and hopelessness and brokenness.
He's met by a man who is spiritually not just tormented,
but oppressed and possessed. This is a this is a guy who no
one else could fix, who no one else could help.
They couldn't even manage him. They put him in restraints, they
put him in chains, and the demons would break it.
He was guarded, it says, bound by chains and shackles.
He would snap the restraints and be driven by the demon into the
deserted places, into the lonely places.
And this is where Jesus comes. This is where Jesus decides to
step off the boat. He comes specifically to this
place. He comes specifically to this
person, to this man. Maybe you're here today and you
think Jesus would never want to enter into my story.
Jesus, Jesus would never want to come to me because because of
the darkness in your life or because of the situations and
places to which you have put yourself.
And you say Jesus would never want to come there.
But that's exactly where Jesus comes.
He intentionally goes to the dark places because Jesus is not
scared of the darkness. Jesus is not surprised by your
situation, and that's because there's something else that we
see here, and that's the demonic power.
Although it's real, it is an ultimate.
It is an ultimate. Look what happens when Jesus
shows up. It's incredible when he.
That's the man possessed by the demons.
The demons saw Jesus, he cried out, fell before him and said in
a loud voice, I'd try and do my scary demon voice here, but it
will wreck my voice. What do you have to do with me?
Jesus, son of the Most High God, I beg you, don't torment me.
For he had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man.
Then you just go a little bit farther.
You go to verse 30. It says, What is your name?
Jesus asked him. Legion.
He said, because many demons had entered into him and they begged
him not to banish them to the abyss.
Do you Do you see this? When Jesus shows up, the demons
bow down. When Jesus shows up, the demons
bow down. The demons, plural, beg Jesus.
This is not a battle. This is like me walking into our
preschool room and saying, who wants to arm wrestle, right?
This is, this is not a fair fight.
This is groveling. We don't get any type of
struggle here between Jesus and the demons, But there's no
there's no tug of war going on here.
He immediately enters into the scene and exercises his power
without question. CS Lewis in the script tape
letters says there are two equal and opposite errors into which
our race, that's humanity, can fall about the devils.
One is to disbelieve in their existence.
The other is to believe and to feel an excessive and unhealthy
interest in them. They themselves are equally
pleased by both errors. Satan is real.
Demonic and spiritual realms and realities are real.
They inflict real damage. They affect real lives.
To deny that those things are real is foolish.
It's the realm of fools. It leaves you exposed.
It leaves you unprepared for the reality that exists.
But it is equally a mistake to assume that Satan and his devils
are behind anything and everything wrong that goes on in
this world, or that Satan and his demons are somehow in any
way an equal and opposite force to Jesus.
Satan would love you to believe that he is actually an
appropriate opponent, an equal opponent of Jesus.
But there is no power, no power of Satan, no power of sin that
Jesus does not hold authority over.
That means that when we're struggling against sin and
against shame, against darkness and against demons, we don't
have to fight for Christ's authority over any of it.
We get to fight by the authority of Jesus against it.
There's that means there's no addiction, there's no
oppression, there's no spiritual bondage that outranks Jesus in
power. Keep going.
A large herd of pigs was there and they were feeding on the
hillside, and the demons begged him to permit them to enter the
pigs, and he gave them permission.
The demons came out of the man and entered the pigs.
The herd rushed down the steep bank and into the lake and
drowned like the demons. All demons want to do is wreck
and destroy. When the men who tended them saw
what had happened, they ran off and reported it in the town and
in the countryside. Then people went out to see what
had happened. They came to Jesus and found the
man the demons had departed from sitting at Jesus feet, dressed
and in his right mind, and they were afraid.
I love this. I love this so much because this
is this is what this part of the story.
What Luke tells us is that Jesus deliverance restores what demons
destroy. Jesus deliverance restores what
demons destroy. Look what happens when Jesus
exercises his authority. The man who was out of control,
what's he doing now? He's sitting calmly, sitting
calmly at the feet of Jesus. The one who was naked is now
dressed. The one who was isolated and
alone in the deserted places. Where is he now?
He's in community with Jesus and with his disciples.
See, Jesus doesn't just come in and remove the man's demons.
He restores his dignity. It's so good because that's what
the Gospel does. This is what the power of Jesus
does. It doesn't just remove darkness.
It restores the image of God and humanity.
It makes us more human. It makes us the humans we were
meant to be, the men and women God designed us to be.
The power of Jesus doesn't just allow us to to be set free from
our sins. That in and of itself would be
good news. But it sets me free.
It sets you free to be the me that I was created by God to be.
That's what the power of Jesus does.
It's so good. And yet notice this.
Not everybody welcomes the freedom that Jesus brings.
It's right here in the story too, right?
Verse 36. Meanwhile, the eyewitnesses
reported to them how the demon possessed man was delivered.
They've gone back to town and they've said, hey, this is what
Jesus did and you think everybody would be like yay, go
Jesus. Then all of the people of the
Garrison region asked him to leave them because they were
gripped by great fear. So getting into the boat, Jesus
return, the townspeople see what Jesus has done and their
response is get lost. Jesus you need to get out of
here. We don't need your type of
realm. We thought the demon possessed
guy was bad, but you're obviously greater than that.
Jesus represents a power that cannot be controlled.
Jesus represents an authority that is beyond their ability to
manage. And that was incredibly good
news for the man who was set free, incredibly good news for
the man who was set free. It's unbelievable news for the
one who already knew and understood that he was under the
power of powers he couldn't manage.
But it was terrifying for those who thought that they had more
to lose by inviting Jesus in than they had to gain by having
him there, right. They they didn't.
They didn't see any need to have Jesus here.
We've got things under control. Everything's just fine.
And if you come in here, Jesus, you might wreck everything.
You already destroyed our pigs. What else are you going to wreck
around here? I just want you to know Jesus
never just comes as Savior. To recognize him as Savior
always also requires for us to recognize him as Lord, to
recognize him as the authority over all authorities.
Lots of people love the idea of a Jesus who will fix the things
they want him to fix. But we're a lot less comfortable
with the idea of a Jesus who doesn't just come to fix things.
He comes to rule over us. He comes to rule over things.
But at the end of the day, listen, listen, listen.
If Jesus is going to break your chains, you need a Jesus who is
big enough not just to break those chains, but to rule over
all things. You need Jesus who is big enough
to set you free and to make you whole.
We don't just need this is our I think so much of us think our
problem is we just need a better way of living the life we want
to live. We we just need somebody to fix
some of the things that we just can't seem together.
But if he could leave the rest of it alone, that would be
great. It just need a slightly fixed up
life. You don't need a new way of
living. You need to be brought from
death to life. You need to move from the realm
of slavery to sin and darkness to slavery to Jesus Christ.
That that's the invitation that Jesus offers.
Come to me, not so that I can make your life a little better.
Come to me, you who are dead, and I will make you alive.
Come to me, you who are dead, and recognize that I have died
on the cross so you don't have to be dead anymore.
And I have risen from the grave, not just to be alive, but to
know, so that you can know that you can be made alive.
That's the invitation to every single person here today is to
trust in Jesus as Savior and as Lord, as the one who came to
fixed was broken, and to rule and reign over your life.
Watch what happens when Jesus comes in, when he delivers us.
The man from whom the demons had departed begged him earnestly to
be with him, but he sent him away and said no.
You go back to your home and you tell all that God has done for
you. And so off he went, proclaiming
throughout the town how much Jesus had done for him.
What we see here is that by the power of Jesus, the delivered
becomes sent. By the power of Jesus the
delivered becomes sent. Jesus frees this man by his
power and then sends him out with new purpose.
That's what Jesus does. If Jesus has freed you, if he
saved you, Because listen, every single salvation is ultimately a
story of deliverance. Every single salvation is a
story of deliverance. It's being moved from the
Kingdom of darkness to the Kingdom of light.
Every story. If that's your story, if that's
your story, if you've trusted in Jesus, you've called out for him
to be Savior and Lord. If then you've been healed,
you've been set free, you've been given life.
Your story is a story of deliverance.
And if Jesus has set you free, if he's broken your chains, if
he's freed you from bondage, then what are you supposed to
do? Go tell others your story.
That's what he calls you to do. So many of us, we're like, we're
like this guy. We're like, this is great,
Jesus, I'll just hang out with you now and that's wonderful.
You need to spend time with Jesus.
Don't get me wrong, but Jesus didn't just save you to hang out
with him. Jesus saved you to send you.
That's your job. He said, what's my purpose?
That's your purpose. If you're saved, go tell people
the story of the deliverance that God has worked and is
working in your life. This guy, he's sent out with no
credentials, He's sent out with no training.
He's got one thing, he's got a story.
He's got a story of what Jesus has done in his life.
And he says you go, you tell people about that.
That's what he does. So I'm just saying, so many of
us get nervous about this thing called evangelism.
I don't know what to say and I don't have the words I need.
The Five step program and tools are great and tools are good.
We offer lots of classes through about evangelism through the
year, which tend to not be as well attended as you would
think. Ultimately, go Share your story.
If God's real in your life, He should be doing something, and
if he's doing something, you should be telling somebody about
it. That's evangelism.
Jesus comes ashore. He comes ashore, and how many
people does he set free? One.
But one was all it took. He came.
He took this whole boat ride over through the storm.
He lands. He meets the demoniac.
He sets him free, they say get lost.
He says OK, and then he tells this guy, go tell everybody what
I did because that's that's what he came there to do.
By the power of Jesus, he would now go out and share the story
of Jesus with others because by the power of Jesus, anyone who
is delivered is also sent. And I just one other important
side note that I should notice here.
Jesus gave him an instruction. He said go back to your home and
tell all that God has done for you.
OK, that was the instruction. Tell all the God has done for
you. Luke tells us he went
proclaiming throughout the town how much Jesus had done for him.
What is Luke telling us? Jesus is God.
I I say this to say we can move
past this. I know there are Amanda works
then in pre team and she told me the other day, like every time
she explains the kids Jesus got the light bulb goes on for
somebody. So maybe this morning the light
bulb is going on for you, Jesus, the Father, the Holy Spirit.
They're the three in one. They're the Trinity, they're all
God. So just a little note for you
there. So as we come to the closing,
what have we seen? Our story today began in a
graveyard. It started with a man who was
isolated, who was broken, who was under spiritual powers that
he could not control and who had no power to fight against.
He's literally in chains. He's literally living amongst
the dead. That's that's where he is.
It ends with that guy, same man, sitting at the feet of Jesus,
clothed in his right mind and sent out as an ambassador of
Jesus to tell the story of how Jesus had taken him from where
he was to where he is. Because that's the power of
Jesus, that that's what Jesus does.
This is what he does. Some of you today, you feel more
like that man than you would ever care to admit You, you feel
naked in chains, chased by demons, living amongst the dead
than you would ever like to admit.
I'm thankful that all of you decided to come close.
Thank you for that. But but so often we we put on
clothes, we we try and put ourselves together to make it
look like we have it all together.
But deep down inside, in our moments on our own, we feel a
lot more like that guy. That's what our life feels like
behind closed doors when no one is looking.
There are chains, there's strongholds, there's patterns of
sin. When you're sitting in front of
that screen that you for the life of you, you can't break on
your own. There is shame that keeps so
isolated. You come here, you with 1000
other people, and you feel totally alone, partially because
you think if anybody knew, if anybody else knew what was going
on in my life, anyone else knew of the stuff that I was
participating in, the type of things that power me, the things
in my past that have just kept me chained, they just reject me.
They'd run me out of here, right?
There's that fear. It drives us into lonely places
just like that, man. You've tried everything.
You've tried everything to fix it, tried everything to manage
it, tried everything to restrain.
That was this man's story, Chains and ropes, guys guarding
him, trying to restrain him. There was no power available
that could break the real chains that he was under where he was
till Jesus showed up. Trying harder, just white
knuckling it with willpower, self-discipline, beating
yourself up and then building yourself up depending on which
self help book you've read and which therapist you've been to
recently. Medication distraction, man, you
have tried them all. Try all the different things.
And by the way, not not saying those things are bad.
Some of them are actually good things.
Some of them are things maybe you need to participate in, but
they won't break the chains that you need broken today.
Those chains don't get broken by our power.
They can't get broken from just simple self improvement.
But no sin and no spiritual power is too strong for the
freedom granting chain breaking power of Jesus to enter into
today. There's no there's no addiction,
there's no bitterness, there's no unforgiveness, there's no
stifling shame, no involvement in the occult, no generational
sin that just keeps getting passed down from generation to
generation, repeating the cycles of brokenness over and over
again. There's no secret sin that you
just keep hidden in the closet. Blade is crushing you and eating
you up and devouring you from the inside.
There's no crushing anxiety or depression that sits so heavy
and despair. If a if a legion of demons, if a
legion of demons bows at the feet of Jesus and begs, what
makes you think the darkness in your life is too dark and too
big and too strong for Jesus to set you free from the same Jesus
who who set this man in our story free?
I believe he has the power to set people free.
Today we sang about it. I'm sick of singing songs that
we just kind of sing but don't actually believe.
Jesus is the waymaker, the miracle worker, the promise
keeper, the light in the darkness.
That's who he is. He breaks chains today too.
So here's what we're going to do in a moment.
The band's going to begin playing.
If while I've been talking, the Holy Spirit has been saying he's
talking to you. He's talking about your chain,
he's talking about your darkness.
He's talking about that power that you can't seem to overcome
in your life. If there is a spiritual
stronghold, if there is an abiding sin, a habit that you
just can't break, that's destroying you, I'm going to
invite you to have the courage to come forward.
And we're going to have a team of people up here to pray.
And they want to pray over you and they want to pray for you,
and they want to pray that Jesus would break your chains today.
I'm going to ask you to come forward because not because
there's any power in coming down the aisle to the front of the
church. There's nothing special about
here. The power is in Jesus there.
There's no power about this space other than Jesus is in
this space. There's no power in the words of
our prayers other than Jesus hears our prayers.
And so I want you to come as a confession, part of the power of
coming forward and stepping forward.
It's like it actually makes you say, Jesus, I got something and
I can't fix it. There's something going on here
and, and I'm I'm out. I, I just confess I can't do it.
I need your power in this place in my life.
For some of you, I just want to say today, I believe will be the
day that you'll get rescued from some stuff.
Today could be the day where you stop trying to manage the
darkness, you stop trying to manage the optics, and you come
and you just surrender to Jesus in his power.
And, and, and I'll say this to you who are here and you say
I've been freed. My story is a story of
deliverance. Jesus has saved me.
He's rescued me by the glory of God.
I'm not where I want to be, but He's helping me through.
I'm making progress. I don't, I don't think that
Jesus is coming and calling on me to be that.
That's great, No problem. But don't just sing the words
that we're about to sing in the song that we're going to sing in
the safety of this room and go silent when you're around people
who need Jesus. I'm sick of it.
Don't just sing words and go silent when you're around people
who are in bondage and broken and who need to know the same
Jesus who set you free to set them free.
If Jesus saved you, He sent you. So go out and let this be your
song. Pray every morning, Lord, you
show me who I need to share the story of my deliverance with
today. So prayer team, you come on
forward band, you start us off and if you you need prayer, then
as the band is playing, you come.
And if we're part way through the song and you're just like, I
know I need to get up there, then get up.
If we're 3/4 and you've been fighting Jesus for 3/4 of the
way through the song, the Holy Spirit will work on you and you
need to come up, come up and we'll, we'll go.
And we'll trust that the chain breaker is going to break some
chains today. We're going to trust that that
the Jesus who enters into dark places there enters into dark
places here, and that if he delivered that man, then that he
can deliver us now.