[0:00]we're going to continue now with our study of the gospel according to St. Luke and we're still in the eighth chapter. And I will begin at verse 26 and read to the end of that pericope. Then they sailed to the country of the Ganes, which is opposite Galilee. And when he stepped out on the land, there met him a certain man from the city who had demons for a long time. And he wore no clothes, nor did he live in a house, but in the tombs. When he saw Jesus, he cried out, fell down before him, 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, for he 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. And Jesus asked him saying, What is your name? And he said Legion, because many demons had entered him. And they begged him that he would not command them to go out into the abyss. Now a herd of many swine was feeding there on the mountain, and so they begged him that he would permit them to enter them. And he permitted them. 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. When those who fed them saw what had happened, they fled and told it in the city and in the country. Then they went out to see what had happened and came to Jesus, and they found the man from whom the demons had departed, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind. And they were afraid. And they also who had seen it told them by what means he who had been demon possessed was healed. And then the whole multitude of the surrounding region of the Gatherins asked him to depart from them, for they were seized with great fear. And he got into the boat and returned. Now the man from whom the demons had departed begged him that he might be with him. But Jesus sent him away saying, Return to your own house and tell what great things God has done for you. And he went his way and proclaimed throughout the whole city, what great things Jesus had done for him. Again we have the record here of an event that took place in Jesus' earthly ministry that is recounted in other synoptic gospels as well with minor variations that obviously referring to the same event. And it is an event that is strange to our ears in this day and age, and we're not sure exactly how to comprehend it. But again the record that you have just heard was not a cleverly devised myth from antiquity, but comes to us as the veritable word of Almighty God being sealed with his truth. Please receive it as such. Let us pray. Again our Father when we consider this moment in Jesus' ministry, we ask for your help as we seek to understand it and find its application for our own lives in this time. And so be merciful to us by visiting us this morning with the Holy Spirit that he may illumine this text for our understanding and may he take its message and use it to pierce our hearts for our sanctification and for the glory of Jesus, for we ask it in his name. Amen.
[4:33]If you recall the last passage we examined in the gospel of Luke was the account of Jesus calming the storm that came up on the sea of Galilee. And on that occasion we recall that prior to Jesus calming of the storm, the disciples were afraid that they would perish and after Jesus performed this astonishing act, instead of their fear being removed, it was intensified and they became very much afraid and they cried out, What manner of man is this that even the winds and the sea obey him? Now what happened immediately after that, we don't know, because Luke doesn't take up the narrative until the boat in which Jesus and the disciples are sailing reaches shore. I can't help but wonder if there was any conversation among the disciples or with Jesus after they asked their question, what kind of a man is this? And I wonder how long the terror that they experienced in Jesus' presence remained with them. But I can only imagine that as the boat came nearer and nearer to the shore there on the Sea of Galilee in the area of the Decapolis, that they were feeling a greater sense of relief because they wanted to get out of that boat and for a time at least, they wanted to get out of the presence of Jesus.
[6:28]Because for them, this has been one of the most traumatic and terrifying days of their lives. And now of course, what follows immediately is only more trauma and more terror. Because as the boat comes into land on the shore, it is greeted by the wild man that Luke defines and describes here in the text. And so we read that when they sail to the country of the Ganes, which is opposite Galilee, and when he, that is Jesus, stepped out on the land, there met him a certain man from the city who had demons for a long time. Let me just pause there for a second. This is not the only incident of demon possession that we encounter in the New Testament. It's not the only case where Jesus cast out demons from these people who were so sorely afflicted. And we are not generally accustomed in our day to seeing people demon possessed and at least in this part of the world, though there are occasional accounts of that. Nevertheless, we see in the New Testament a heavy concentration of this phenomenon. And one explanation that has been given historically is that during the earthly ministry of Jesus, all hell broke loose, that is to say, Satan whose power was under attack with the presence of Jesus, marshaled all of his minions, his whole host of demons under his control to manifest his satanic power in the region where the Son of God was carrying out his ministry. Another theory of course, is that when the writers of the New Testament talk about people being demon possessed, that that was simply a pre-scientific diagnosis of dementia or of insanity and that now we know that this kind of erratic behavior that is manifested by people who are said to have been demon possessed was simply due to some form of lunacy and not some actual inhabitation by alien spirits.
[9:08]However, when you look at the pages of the New Testament carefully, the authors of the New Testament make a clear distinction between the category of lunacy and the category of demon possession. So they did not blend the two into a confused mass. Rather, the view is that the biblical account is a sober one that the demonic world is real and that it is an extremely active then and it is active today. When I was doing my doctoral work in the Netherlands, my professor GC Berkower made the observation on one occasion, he said, there can be no theology without demonology. Because the New Testament looks at this matter of invisible wicked spirits takes it very seriously. I remember teaching a college course in philosophy many, many years ago, so many years ago, I can hardly remember. And the question of the reality of Satan came up in the class and I asked the people, how many of you believe that there really is a devil? And there were about 30 students in the class and three raised their hands and the other 27 voted in the negative or at least didn't vote at all. And I said, okay. Now, how many of you believe in God? And to my astonishment at that time, all 30 hands in the room went up in the affirmative. I said, now, let me define God as an invisible supernatural being who has the ability to influence men for good. You believe in that. Yes. I said, and if I define Satan as an invisible, supernatural being who has the ability to influence men for evil, 27 out of the 30 of you don't affirm that. What is it? It seems to me there's more evidence here for evil, even in this room than there is for goodness. And part of the reasons that they gave at least they said, they didn't believe in the devil is a grotesque character in a red suit and a long tail, a pitchfork and horns. And I said, where does the Bible describe Satan in that manner? In fact, the very opposite is the way the devil is described. He's described as an angel of light who goes about seeking to debar as he wills. He appears as we say in theology subspecies boni, that is under the auspices of the good. He will look much more like Billy Graham than he would and that's no reflection on Billy Graham. He would look much more like Billy Graham than he would look like this strange fellow in the red pajamas with the pitchfork. He said, well, where did that idea come from? Oh, it came from the Middle Ages when the church was acutely conscious of the reality of Satan and they wanted to ward off his influence and they said that the point of vulnerability of Satan was his pride. And so in order to attack his pride, they would invent these wild caricatures of him making him look ludicrous. And then later generation said, well, I don't believe in that devil. Well, nobody did when that image was first projected. That was done to insult Satan, but in any case. We have the record here of a man who were told is demon possessed, but he differs from other demon possessed persons to what degree? Well, anyone who is demon possessed is in a serious state. It's a horrible thing to have to experience or to contemplate. But if demon possession can admit to degrees, this particular fellow was severely demon possessed. And if for no other reason, it was for the number of demons that had entered into him. Obviously, the New Testament sees the possibility of demon possession is involving more than one demon on any occasion. But in this case, we're told that this man is possessed by a multitude of them as the conversation explains. We read, this man who had been in the city and who had been demon possessed for a long time, now, wore no clothes. He ran around naked. Nor did he live in a house, he wasn't living in the city anymore, but he lived in the tombs. The area that is being described here is right on the edge of the Sea of Galilee, where it rises up a steep cliff to the top and on that cliff was built a cemetery that is multiple graves and tombs, most of which were filled, but some of which were still vacant. And you talk about a homeless person. Here was this poor soul living not in the streets of the city, in a cardboard box where he was from, but he had been banished from his own town, sent now out into what was the wilderness and lived naked in a tomb.
[14:56]And we said, when he saw Jesus, he's up there on the hill, and he sees this boat coming to the shore. And when he saw Jesus, he cried out and he rushed down to Jesus, as Jesus steps forth on the shore. And with a loud voice, he screams at Jesus, this question, and I'm to be faithful to the text. I should scream the question, but I don't want to scare you to death. And so I'll just try to do this in a normal tone of voice, because I might scare you to death if I imitated a demon, what some of you would call method acting.
[15:46]Thank you. I try to have humor that's a little bit subtle, but maybe it's just too early in the morning. I don't know. But anyway, this man said in a loud voice, What have I to do with you, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?
[16:27]Now, I see supreme irony in here. The last time we saw a question in this text was the question raised by the disciples when Jesus calmed the storm. What manner of man is this? Who is this fellow?
[16:51]The answer to that question is provided by the demons. The demons don't have to say, What manner of man is this? They knew exactly what manner of man it was, and they recognized what the disciples didn't recognize that they were in the presence of God incarnate. And they use the title Son of the Most High God. You know, when I read that phrase Most High God in the New Testament, I sort of get chill bumps because of it. For this reason, it's it's not a description of God that we normally use. But yet in the realm of anthropology and sociology where scholars have gone around the world, that I mentioned the last time about discovering religion among the most remote people in the world's and among animistic tribes and so on, and for the most part, that the religion that the animists have is one that's completely negative. They have evil spirits that they have to appease, spirits that indwell the alligator or the crocodile or the rhinoceros or whatever. And their religion does not focus upon a monotheistic deity. But the anthropologists have said that when they probe the people about their religion, they're able to discover that they have a vague memory of the God who's on the other side of the mountain. The God who's not a part of their daily lives. And they refer to him as the Most High God.
[19:34]I like that and the theological implications that it has. There's a term in Latin that that is used in technical theology to describe God, where he's called the Ens Perfectissimum. I love it. The most perfect being, and even there, the theologians of the Middle Ages, who invented this kind of language, were prone to stutter and to redundancy.
[20:14]To talk about the superlative degree of perfection. I didn't know that perfection admitted to degrees. If something is perfect, it can't be most perfect, because most perfect gains nothing over perfect. If you're perfect, you've reached the ultimate limit of what can be. But as a matter of intentional hyperbole, the theologian spoke of the most perfect being. Because they couldn't find an adequate way to extol the perfection that resides in God. And now these demons understand that, and they recognized Jesus. And now it's not the men in the boat that are terrified. It's the demons who are terrified, and they're the ones who are saying, what are you doing here? Have you come to torment us?
[21:24]For Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. And then more background supplied by Luke, he says, for it had often seized him, and the man had been kept under guard, bound with chains and shackles, while he was still in the town. He was demon possessed when he was in the town, and he behaved in this wild manner when he was in the town, so much so that he was a threat to the well-being of the citizens, so they bound him as tightly as they could. But no matter how tightly they bound him, this man found a way to break his bond and free himself.
[22:05]And so the people drove him into the wilderness. So now Jesus asked him a question. They had acknowledged that they knew Jesus, what his name was, and so he says to them, okay, but what's your name? You know my name.
[22:25]You have me at a disadvantage. Please tell me your name. And he said, Legion. Because many demons had entered him. And they begged him that he would not command them to go out into the abyss. Oh, there's a lot in that sentence. The demon possessed man, whoever was the spokesman for the demons identified himself by the name Legion. Now, a legion in Roman categories consisted not of a handful of soldiers, but a multitude of soldiers numbering 6,000. So if you take this literally, you would the demonic being is saying, Our name is Legion because there's 6,000 of us in this poor man. Well, I doubt if that was the case. I doubt if there were 6,000 demons crammed into this one poor guy. But rather, here we have another evidence of hyperbole, where saying that we're so many that we're like a legion, like a whole host of us are here. Well, maybe when we're in heaven, we can get the exact number. But for now, the message is clear that this man's possession was from a multitude of demonic spirits. And they begged Jesus.
[24:04]What was it that they begged him? This is significant. They begged him that he would not command them to go into the abyss. The abyss is a bottomless pit, and obviously is symbolic of hell itself. And if we compare this with the other synoptic gospels, there was another element added to it, where they beg Jesus not to command them to go into the abyss. Quote, before the time. These demons knew what their future held. They knew their destiny. They knew that God in his sovereignty had appointed a day in time where the demons would be shut up forever in the abyss. But that time had not yet come.
[25:01]The atonement had not yet been made. The kingdom of God had not reached its consummation as it would at the end of the age. And in fact, the demons knew that the day in which they would be sent into the abyss was way off in the future. At least that was the theology they had been taught by the prince of demons, Satan himself. Well, Jesus knew that that chiros, that time that God had appointed was not yet.
[25:37]And so on the surface, it seems as though Jesus now is negotiating with these demons. Because they are reminding him that it's too early to be sent into the pit. And we see then that Jesus doesn't send them into the pit, but it was time for them to come out of this man.
[26:17]And so Jesus responded. In this manner, as Luke tells us, there was a herd of many swine feeding there on the mountain. And they begged him that he would permit them to enter them. And he permitted them. Oh, does this cause a hue and cry among people who are saying, See, Jesus wasn't such a good guy after all. He was unfair, unjust, and gave cruel and unusual punishment to these animals. In fact, there were those in the town that wanted to start a whole movement called Save the swine. And make the swine protected species lest this Jesus ever come back into their village again. But you know, Jesus understood the difference between human beings and the beasts of the field. Jesus created the world, and he knew that the animals were created for man, not man for the animals. Jesus knew nothing of a world where fish eggs were protected and unborn human beings were destroyed. That was as foreign to his way of thinking that anything could be. I read in the paper this past week, by the way, a lady wrote a letter and said criticized some man for questioning the legitimacy of abortions, you know, with the same old argument. She knew before she read the rest of the whole article that it was a man that wrote it, because men know nothing about pregnancy, and men, of course, obviously are incapable of making any kind of analysis of ethical issues. Only women can do that. And she said reciting the mantra that you hear all the time, abortion is a matter between a woman and her doctor. And I I think of that. I mean that now there's an intelligent observation and I wanted to hear her say next and. Bank robbery should be a matter of choice, it's a matter between the robber and the banker. And homicide should be a matter of choice between the murderer and the victim. What madness that people use these statements and nobody laughs at them. I don't get it. But anyway, back to the story. There are those who are upset that that Jesus harms these poor little pigs. Well, as you know, pigs were considered unclean animals by the Jews, and there were a lot of Gentiles that lived here in the Decapolis, and this is probably a Gentile herd of swine. But here's the point. If it took invading the pigs with these demons to rescue one human being from Satan. Jesus would sacrifice the whole herd of pigs. Jesus told us that God notices the landing of every bird in the air. Every sparrow that lands is noticed by God and are you not worth more than a bird? Are you not worth more than a pig? Of course we are in the scheme of creation. And so Jesus sent the demons out of the man into the swine, and immediately the herd ran violently down the steep place into the lake and drowned. Now when those who fed them saw what had happened, what had happened, they fled told it in the city and in the country. They went running back home and said, You can't believe what happened out there. This fellow came along and he cured that wild man that we know about who kept breaking his bonds, but he told sent these demons into our pigs, and then the pigs went down over the hill into the water and drowned. They had lost the whole herd. And so they went out to see what happened, of course, and they came to Jesus and found the man from whom the demons had opened, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed now, and in his right mind. Not only had Jesus calmed the sea, he healed a human being, who was tormented by demons and now was in his sound mind. And what was the response of the townsmen? The same response the disciples had on the boat on the Sea of Galilee, and they were afraid. Now, the reason why they sent that man out to the tombs in the first place is because they were afraid of him. And now they come and they find him calm, clothed, in his right mind, and they're scared.
[31:19]What does this tell you? They also who had seen it told them by what means the demon possessed man was healed. And so the whole multitude of the surrounding region of the Gatherins asked him to depart from them. When they heard how this man was healed, they didn't ask Jesus to come into the city and set up a practice. They said, Please leave. As I mentioned the last time, nothing terrifies human being more than the presence of the Holy. And these town people realized that they were in the presence of one who was holy and they were not, and they wanted him out of there. You wonder why Jesus was killed? He wasn't killed because he was bad. He was killed because he was holy, and he had to be done away with. So Jesus got into the boat and left. But the man from whom the demons had departed begged him, and when I went up, grabbed the gun of the boat and said, Please don't leave. Stay here. Take me with you. Jesus said, no, return to your own house. And tell what great things God has done for you. And he went his way and proclaimed throughout the whole city what great things the Son of the Most High God had done for him. I don't know that I was ever possessed by demons, but I was certainly in bondage to sin. Like every unbeliever is. And served Satan, rather than God, as every unbeliever does. The ones God rescued me. He gave me the duty and you the duty to proclaim his great works to the whole world.
