Authority Over Demons
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· This is not mythology. This is theology.
· And the fact that Jesus takes them seriously should settle the question for every one of us. You see, when Jesus says this, we see the cannon of scripture at large points to this reality that demons and dark forces are out there. It says, "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this darkness, against evil spiritual forces in the heavens.
· We are going to read God's word. We're going to dive into a text and see what he calls and moves us to do. So, if you have a Bible, go ahead and grab it and open up to Matthew chapter 8. We're going to be in Matthew 8 starting at verse 28. Man, I'm excited as we move here is we are in week two of this brand new series called Miracles. And last week as we started this, we said that through this time, we'd be answering the questions that scripture poses and the questions that we need to ask of God and of what he has for us.
· And in Matthew 8 27 that we ended on last week, the disciples, they say they asked this question of what kind of man is this?
· They saw him perform a miracle. And the first question is like who is this? Who is this Jesus guy? Why is he different?
· Why is he so powerful? How does he have this authority? What makes this guy so different than the people around us? And you see, here's the exciting thing that as we go through this series that the miracles of the gospel, they answer this question explicitly. Is who is Jesus?
· Last week, we started this this journey and show that he is the God who can command the winds and the waves. that as they went out on a boat and they got caught in the middle of a storm, a storm that almost turned into a hurricane, they're freaking out. They think they're going to die. And Jesus stands up and he says, "Quiet, be still." And the wind and the waves just they go down. And we saw this God who can command nature, who has all authority over nature.
· But today, we up the Annie a little bit. is that God and Jesus doesn't just kind of come into a storm and and confront the forces of nature, but he confronts the kingdom of darkness itself. And as we pick up in Matthew chapter 8 and looking at verse 28, here's the question that's going to underly this entire passage that's going to confront us that we need to spend some time answering today is what does the Bible say about demons?
· Now, when you hear that, you might have a few different thoughts and might come from a different few places in that.
· You're like, "Demons? I don't know if I feel very comfortable about this."
· You're like, "Everything I know about demons is probably from like a horror movie. You watched The Exorcist as a kid and you've had nightmares ever since that you watch that, right?" And maybe your whole demonology, your theology of demons has come from Hollywood. But I think CS Lewis perfectly encapsulate this in the Screw Tape letters where he says this that mankind and humanity falls into two equal and opposite errors when it comes to demons. Either on one side they disbelieve them entirely.
· They say, "Ah, those demons are not a big deal. I don't even know if they exist.
· Like I don't think they affect my life.
· They don't impact me. I can still go to church and and talk about King Jesus, but that whole demon stuff, that's just like a little far-fetched and it doesn't really matter." Or the other opposite unhealthy thing is developing a fascination with them. And in CS Lewis says that the demons are equally pleased by both of these mistakes that we brush them off like they're nothing or we're fascinated and spend too much time thinking about them. But today as we ask this question, we're going to let the Bible speak.
· And in this passage, we're going to see four truths about the demonic. And every one of them points back to the authority of Jesus. And the very first thing we see here is the Bible is very clear that demons are real. Check out as we dive into this passage in Matthew chapter 8 starting in verse 28. It says, "When he being Jesus had come to the other side to the region of Gatenus, two demon-possessed men as they came out of the tombs. They were so violent that no one could pass that way.
· As we start this passage, the writer Matthew, Matthew was an eyewitness. He was a disciple. He was someone that watched Jesus' whole earthly ministry in these three years. Followed him everywhere he went. And as Matthew is recounting this experience that he saw with his own eyes. I I love that he starts here and he doesn't hedge his bets. Instead, when he writes this, he he doesn't say that these men had a psychological condition. All right? You might say that about your kids. Maybe they're demonpossessed. I'm just kidding. We'll get into that a second.
· But he's like, they don't have just some psychological condition. They they don't have some unnamed illness. They're not just dealing with a lot of stress and anxiety. He says right from the start is these guys were demonpossessed.
· It's the language of scripture that is used here. And we say this all the time at Cross Churches. We believe scripture is the word of God. We believe the Bible is what we build our faith upon. in the rock that everything that we know about Christ comes from. But here's some background that we need to see is in this region, this region of Gatenus, it was on the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee. And in this eastern side, it had become gentile territory, meaning this was pagan land.
· And and Jesus hadn't just crossed the sea in the middle of a storm to get here by accident. He didn't stumble into this encounter. Instead, he sailed here on purpose. Now, I think this tells us about who this Jesus is that we see in scripture is Jesus didn't just run from darkness. Instead, Jesus sails and moves straight into darkness. Is when Jesus came here, he didn't like, man, what bad luck. I ran into some demons.
· Like, Jesus knew what was coming when he went there. and and here for us that Jesus doesn't run from the darkness of your life, the sin, the grime, the grossness of it. Instead, he runs to you. He approaches the darkness to show you truth. And here is the beautiful thing in as the story progresses, we see that these two men, they were living in horrible, horrible means. They were in these tombs and and these tombs were really where dead people were buried.
· And this was not a good place to hang out under the Old Testament is if you were touching or by dead things you were ceremonial un you're defiled that you were unclean. But despite this they they were completely cut off from their community from their worship from everything that makes life human. Mark even gives us more details that they're crying out day and nights. Uh they're cutting theirelves with stone snapping chains off their wrists. They were naked and wild and violent. Satan had taken them to their very lowest place, but Jesus still went in.
· You know, in Arizona, our state is a beautiful place everywhere but Tucson. All right, can we all agree on that? Okay. Grew up and lived my whole life in Phoenix. Tucson is the armpit of Arizona. I have tried to make bills and laws like I'm going to talk to Nick after this about how we can like petition to give Tucson back to Mexico. All right. Um, yeah, I heard an amen over there. Dude, you are my man.
· We're going to talk later. All right.
· Um, but where was I going with this?
· Okay. All right. But Arizona is a beautiful state. Uh, but there's these parts of Arizona that you probably never go to. I I've lived here my entire life, but there are sections and cities that you may have never heard of, that you've never seen. And if you go through, you feel like you haven't been to a place.
· Uh, there we have a lot of mining towns in Arizona. And there's thriving economies that happen. But the the sad part is when the mine dries up and they get everything they need out of it, all of a sudden that town becomes a shell of itself. This actually happened in Jerome and Jerome completely died, but they actually revi they revitalized it as a tourist attraction. But there's others like Vulture City and there's other little towns out there that you walk into them and they're known as ghost towns now because the buildings are there. The structure is still there.
· You see homes, you see businesses, but inside it's empty. There's nothing there. There's barely people there. And what was happening in this story is is the men were there that were demonpossessed. You could see their outside flesh. You could see, they could speak, they could talk. But inside that demon was hollowing them out.
· Everything that made them a person, the warmth, the love, the willing to be a part of community, Satan and the demons were slowly destroying and ripping out everything inside of them in their soul to destroy and to wreak down their humanity and to turn them into something else. And you see, this is exactly what the enemy does when we say demons are real. Satan and the demon's goal is always to deface the image of God in a human being.
· God made man with dignity and purpose, designed us for relationships and to have reason and to strive for things, but the enemy systematically strips that away. And that's exactly what darkness does. It doesn't just harass, it dehumanizes. And here's when you see this first part is the Bible is clear is that demons are real spiritual beings. And it goes on to define them more. They are fallen angels who rebelled with Satan who were cast out of heaven. This is not mythology.
· This is theology. And the fact that Jesus takes them seriously should settle the question for every one of us. You see, when Jesus says this and when Jesus in this story, he's going to rebuke them in a second. But we see the cannon of scripture at large points to this reality that demons and dark forces are out there. In Ephesians 6:12, it says, "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this darkness, against evil, as spiritual forces in the heavens."
· When I sit on my couch today at 12:30 and I watch the Suns play the Oklahoma City, I am going to see OKC as my enemy. Like, SGA, dude, I can't stand that guy. Most unethical basketball player out there. All right. If you don't know what that means, he just draws a lot of free throws and he's overrated. But he they are my enemy today at 12:30 and for the rest of these next week and a half, however long it lasts. But the Bible tells us the enemies aren't sports teams. The enemy is not the guy that cuts you off on the road. The enemy is not your boss.
· That the true enemy is the demons and Satan and the dark forces behind it. And it tells us where they came from. In Revelation 12:4, it says its tale being Satan swept a third of the stars in the heavens and hurled them to the earth.
· They were angels, but they rebelled and they were thrown down. Second Peter 2:4 says, "For if God didn't spare the angels who sinned, but he cast them into hell, that they are real, that they are violent, that they want to dehumanize people." But the story doesn't end there. Demons not only are real, but check out what happens next. Demons are also afraid. This is where it gets good.
· Check out verse 29. It says, "Suddenly they shouted." These were the two men, the demon-possessed men. It says, "What do you have to do with us, son of God?
· Have you come here to torment us before the time?"
· This is important and we can't miss this, that the demons are the ones who are afraid in this situation, not Jesus.
· Jesus stepped off the boat into the most demonically oppressed scene that we have in the Gospels and he doesn't flinch. He doesn't like pray for angel backup. Like if I was you Jesus be like, "Hey, uh like call my lifeline like put some angels behind me just in case things get seriously. I just want to have this ready." Like Jesus doesn't like look for a manual. He doesn't all of a sudden pull out his phone and start looking up YouTube videos on how do you have like cast out demons. Um I'm sure if you do that you will find some videos. All right. Uh, just don't do it now. Do it after church. All right.
· Uh, when the suns are down by 30. You can look up how to cast out a demon and see what people have on YouTube. But he doesn't do any of that. Instead, he walks straight towards these men like a man walking in his own house. And you see, the reason is because that's exactly what Jesus was doing. This is Jesus's creation here on earth. This is his territory. And the demons, they knew it. And look at what the demons say to him. They call him son of God. You let that land for a moment.
· The demons had better theology about Jesus than most of the religious leaders in Israel. If if you go throughout the gospels, the Pharisees are constantly critiquing Jesus. They're trying to figure out who Jesus was. The scribes are debating it endlessly, but the demons at first glance, they're like, "Oh man, that's the son of God. That's Jesus right there."
· And here we we see they immediately knew him the moment he stepped off the boat.
· And they knew what they were dealing with. And scripture tells us that this is still the truth today. In James 21:19, it says, "You believe that God is one good." But listen to the conviction there. Even the demons believe and they shudder.
· The demons know who Jesus is. They don't embrace him and say, "I'm going to follow him." Instead, they are afraid of him. They They know who he is. And here's what gets me. The demons have fear because of their belief. They believe that Jesus is God. They know who he is. It terrifies them. They remembered heaven. You think about this for a second. They remembered the throne of God. They've seen the power of God up close. They remember and see the glory of the sun.
· And when he showed up on that shore, they were terrified because they remember how powerful he was and that he cast them out and they remembered the fate that would be coming for them.
· But here's where this hits us is the demons have fear because of their belief in their knowledge of who God is. I think if we're honest, so many of us have fear because of our unbelief.
· We worry, we stress, we lie awake at night, not because we know too much about Jesus, but instead either you have never known him for the first time or you need to remember how powerful it is the God you claim to follow.
· And notice the phrase here they use when they talk to him and they know that they are in trouble and they said, "What do you have to do with us?" And they said, "Have you come to torment us?" But they put this little line in here before the time. The demons know a day of final judgment is coming. Jesus would later talk about this in Matthew 25:41. It says, "Then he will also say to those on the left, depart from me who are cursed into the eternal fire that is prepared for the devil and his angels."
· That God is preparing an eternal judgment, but it is not meant for us. It is meant for sin and evil. And the devil and the demons will be cast into it. and he gets a lifeline outside of that. But here's what's important in this part of the passage is Jesus clearly tells us that eternal fire has been prepared for evil in the darkness. And they're not asking if they will be judged. They know, but they're asking why is it coming so soon?
· And they're just trying to buy more time. In the 1800s, uh there was this guy that was awesome. His name was the Duke of Wellington. This guy won battle after battle. He actually had such a reputation that when you look at throughout history, he either had good people writing about him who erased all the bad stuff or he was really just that much of a baller. But he never lost a major battle in his entire time. And and he actually his capstone battle was he uh defeated the well-known of history. Oh, I can't I I can't say that.
· Say I'm sorry, little person uh of history. Um and Napoleon at Waterlue.
· Okay. Uh you can cut that out. Um, but where were we at? Um, but he, this guy Duke, he was legit. Uh, so much so that he's the guy that took down Napoleon.
· Napoleon had to have anger problems. All right. If he's known for just anyway.
· Um, but here's why he was so impressive.
· The Duke of Wateroo when when history would talk about him and and what was written with him by his uh his soldiers and those who reported to him and his officers. One of his off officers wrote this that when they saw the Duke of Wellington come onto the battlefield.
· They said it was worth 40,000 men on the field. When they saw that guy, they're like, "We're not losing this battle."
· Like, he is calm. He's collected. He's a great leader. They're like, "We're going through this wall. It doesn't matter what's happened. We are winning this fight."
· And here's what I think is beautiful about this is this is a dim shadow of what happened on the shores of Gatenus on that day is Jesus showed up and the entire demonic army that we'll get into in a second how many they were. The entire army trembled not because the circumstances had changed but because of who stepped off that boat in the form of Jesus Christ. You see demons are real.
· Demons are afraid. But there's more. We also see demons are limited. Keep going in verse 30. It says a long way off from them, a large herd of pigs was feeding.
· It says, "If you drive us out, the demons begged him, send us into the herd of pigs."
· And in verse 32, he said, "Go," he told them. So when they had come out, they entered into the pigs. Now I want us to notice a few dynamics here that are at play. is first we see after Jesus comes off this boat and they start interacting with him. It says the demons are begging Jesus. They're not requesting per they're not like saying like hey can we do this? They're literally like requesting permission. They're not saying like this is what we're going to do. They're begging Jesus.
· They cannot act without Jesus's approval, his authorization. And we need to let that sink in for a minute because you think about kind of the context of it. These are powerful spiritual beings. Mark's gospel tells us that the demon's name was Legion. At this time, uh, a Roman legion consisted of roughly 6,000 soldiers. So, what they estimate is there was at least 2,000 demons that were possessing these men at this time.
· And and the story starts that people couldn't even pass. They were so violent that no one could pass that way. They literally closed that road just like Surprise closes every road every second and tries to keep us on our toes, right?
· They like closed that road and like we're going to avoid it. Not because we're doing construction because there's demonpossessed people on that road. Like how crazy is that? And they were violent. They were angry. They were scary. Everyone fleed from it. But when Jesus comes out, they're begging him, "Hey, can we please do this? C can you please like don't torment us? Can can we please go out into those pigs?" They didn't demand. They didn't negotiate from a position of strength. They begged. The tormentor had become the tormented.
· The one who terrorized the region was now graveling before the son of God.
· Church, I think this tells us something critical about spiritual warfare. That Satan is not God's equal.
· And I think sometimes this is what we need to hear because maybe sometimes we think that because life is tough and life is hard and there are spiritual forces at play. Okay, there are darkness. Sometimes things happen to you. Sometimes a phone rings in the middle of the service that is super loud and shut OFF THAT DEMON. All right.
· But sometimes things happen in our worlds and we feel like there is spiritual warfare at place and that is a very real thing. But I think sometimes we're like we think we're like bystanders in this great battle between Satan and God and they're waging war.
· It's like a spiritual chess match and Satan is the king on one side and God is the king on the other side. But that is not how it is. That God is the king and Satan is a roaring lion as 1 Peter 5:12 says, but he's on a leash.
· He's tormenting people. He's hurting things. He's doing things that cause craziness in our world. And we're going to talk about that in a second. But Satan cannot do things beyond the limitations that God has given him. He He's given him room to operate in this dark and broken and hurtful world, but he only does it as far as God's authority allows it. You think about, we see this in the Old Testament. You think about Job, and I'm excited. We're going to be studying Job. So, if you're suffering a lot, come back in the fall.
· We're going to talk about how we can suffer together. But you look at the life of Job and and Satan could not touch Job's family, his possessions, or his health without explicit permission from God. And it's the same dynamic that we see here. The demons can't even relocate to a herd of pigs without asking Jesus first.
· And you think of how they do relocate when they beg and they plead Jesus and Jesus says go. He gives one word. He didn't do like some big old ritual. He didn't burn incense. He didn't bring out the essential oils. He didn't all of a sudden like bring out a manual on how to cast a demon. He said one word. This is how we know Jesus has an authority like no one else. He just said as thousands of demons are begging at his feet, he's like, "Go."
· I think about this verse sometimes as I'm lying awake at night. I don't know about you, but every now and then, you know, you might wake up and one night, it's like 12:00 and and 2:00 a.m. and you're trying to go back to sleep, and that's when all of a sudden all the weight of life wants to run through your head. It's like all of a sudden, you start thinking about finances. You start thinking about the stress you have. You start thinking about whether my kids will grow up and not be jerks and will be functioning adults. You think about your kids, if you have grown kids, if they're going to continue to make decisions that are wise and get correct path and all of a sudden like the weight of the world like comes on and all the things I have to do that week.
· I'm like thinking about and stressing about in its weight and then I think about this verse, the God who cast out thousands of demons with one word. If he can say go and they run to pigs and we'll see what happens to those pigs in a second. If he can do that, I think he can handle my Tuesday.
· How much is that like our lives? We stress about all this stuff. But the God who has authority over everything is the God who is has our back. The God who indwells us as believers. The God who empowers us to move forward. And I can't get to my ex my wrap-up yet even though I'm excited because we have one more point we got to cover. But here's the deal in this is demons are limited.
· Their power has a ceiling and that ceiling is the authority of Jesus Christ. Whatever you're facing, whatever spiritual battle, whatever darkness seems to be closing in, we have promises from scripture that it will not have the final word. I love first John 4:4. It says the one who is in you, that is the Holy Spirit, that is God, that is the resurrected Jesus Christ, the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the worlds.
· And that brings us to our final truth that demons are real. Demons are afraid of God. Demons are limited in their power. But demons are also chaotic. Keep keep going in the as we wrap up this passage of the second half of verse 32.
· It says when they entered the pigs and then the whole herd rushed down the stink bank into the sea and they perished in the water. They're running down and they run off a cliff. Some will say off a cliff or down a steep hill, but they go straight into this water.
· And this is in verse 33. Then the men who tended them fled. They went into the city and they reported everything, especially what had happened to those who were demonpossessed. At that the whole town went to meet Jesus. When they saw him, they begged him to leave their region.
· Here's what happens is the demons enter the pigs and the entire herd, probably about 2,000 animals according to Mark's account, charges down a steam bank and drowns in the sea. And you just imagine this scene. It's absolute chaos. Like just like seeing herds of pigs like you could probably feel the ground shaking. And Matthew and Mark and Luke are or Matthew and Mark are are watching this.
· And Luke would get his account from Paul, but they're watching this and like taking notes. like, man, we got to like paint this picture later, and they're seeing this, and it's just crazy, but it reveals something important about the nature of evil. Evil is inherently self-destructive.
· The demons could not even inhabit a herd of pigs without driving them off a cliff into destruction in order to kill themselves. What they could not accomplish in a man-made image, and I think this is an important thing. I think demon possession is real and and people can be have demons possess them and it causes them to do horrible things. But these men, these two men that had legions of demons in them did not commit suicide despite how much was raging on inside of them.
· And I think there's a little bit of common grace that we are created differently than pigs, for example, who have a little bit smaller brains um hopefully than us. But it's like we could somehow push back and resist that darkness that was trying to strip us of our humanity. But you see the pigs, they couldn't even last two seconds and they're running off the cliff and running and drowning. God's common grace is on mankind more than anything else. But still, the wreaking and the havoc and all this, the goal of those demons was to destroy.
· And here's what's important. We see this throughout scripture in John 8:44 when Jesus is talking. It says, "You are the father. You are of your father, the devil." And here's how he describes your the devil. He says, "You want to carry out your father's desires." He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in truth. He says Satan's whole goal is to bear false witness and to murder and destroy and to tear down. It says there's no truth in him. Whenever he tells a lie, he speaks from his own nature because he is a liar and the father of lies. Evil ma evil's whole goal is to tear down.
· Jesus says in John 10:10, he says a thief only comes to steal and kill and destroy. That's what demons do. That's what Satan does. That's what evil does. It tears down and destroys. But Jesus, I have come so they may have life and have it in abundance. You see, this is the contrast here. Satan's agenda is always death, but Jesus' agenda is always life. And you see, this is important because this same predictable pattern happens today.
· Now, I want to give you some encouragement is I think in this room, I don't think there's any demonpossessed people. All right? Because one, if you say you follow Jesus and the Holy Spirit has come upon you, you cannot have the Holy Spirit and have a demon in your life. Those are not compatible. But also, we see, I think today, I'm not going to perform an exorcism. My problem, I promise. Um, but we see that what demons shudder at is the word of God and the power of God. And I think if there's someone seizing in here, we might be a little bit scared.
· Maybe someone's going to watch this online later. And if you're seizing, hopefully the demon gets out, right, as we read the word of God. But it's like they can't coexist in there. But that doesn't mean just because you're not demonpossessed that demons do not hurt and hinder the life around you. Is the darkness, the destruction, the evil they rot, it disrupts this broken world we live in. We think of things like addiction. Addiction promises pleasure, but it delivers devastation.
· And is only that evil that is rampant in our world that lets that sin enter into our life.
· We think of anger and bitterness and vengeance. It feels justified in the moment. That dude cuts you off. You feel like you have to cut him off, too. And when I say you, I mean me. But it feels justified in the moment, but it eats you alive from the inside out. in in the lies the enemy whispers. He tells us all over and over again in our sin that you're not enough, that you'll never change, that God's forgotten about you.
· That is the voice of chaos that wres havoc in our world. But you see, the voice is just trying to bring destruction. But the reason those lies feel so powerful is because often I think they go unchallenged.
· When we start challenging those voices, when we know who Jesus is, when we know who the authority he has in it, all of a sudden those lies fall where they are as just lies that we can move beyond. And when we have Jesus come and fight our battles for us, all of the sudden those demons, that sin, it begs to leave because it knows that Jesus has staked a claim over our life.
· And here's why I love how this story ends. And and we get more of an account from here from from Mark is that when these men have been delivered from their demonic oppression, they just go start and telling more people about it. They start spreading about, hey Jesus, this guy has changed my life.
· But he's not the only response in this story because there's another response that as those pigs ran off and those guys, those demonpossessed people are telling them about Jesus, all of a sudden the town people comes and they beg Jesus to leave. They say like, "Hey, we don't want you to hang out here anymore." And here's why. Because they had $2,000 worth of 2,000 pigs worth of money and economy just jump off a ledge.
· All of a sudden, their world was disrupted. All of a sudden, their comfort hit a roadblock. And when they had it and they were facing the God of the universe who caused them a an inconvenience, they asked him to leave instead of embracing what is greater.
· You know, one of the things that as a dad that I constantly fight against, and you might judge me or offer some um kind of critiques or some help in this, but just know they're not wanted, and don't come and tell me them after. All right?
· But one of the things of having four kids ranging from nine and two is is a few of them are picky eaters. And we like literally did baby weding. Like they ate food from like when they were babies, but it didn't matter. They just became picky one day and I'm like just eat the food. We've tried everything like Instagram res doing this blah blah blah. We starved them for 3 weeks and they're still picky.
· But this was a beautiful moment last night. Uh my son Archie, my oldest son, we had this amazing soup and it was just like a great soup. Like we are soup people. But I mean there was chicken, corn, some green chili in there. All it was it was a white bean. So all the flavor profile kind of fit that in there. But then here here was a little tweak we done this one is it uses masaharina which is like a cornmeal and you mix that uh with some of your broth and it thickens it without making you feel thick. You know what I mean? All right. Like sometimes you have a thick soup and you feel thick after.
· Uh but it's just great recipe. So I'm like selling like dude here's the deal.
· Instead of chicken nuggets that are frozen disgusting, how about you tonight you eat this soup and I'll let you pick any dessert in our house. I threw away all the desserts for No, I'm just kidding. Uh he got a he got something good. But in that he he's like so intrigued. He's like, "I don't like soup." I was like, "How do you know you don't like soup?" Because I don't like it. I'm like, "You've never tried it."
· He's like, "But that's cuz I don't like it." I'm like, "You don't know. You don't like it." And then like finally we convince him. He's like, "All right, I'll do it." And his face is so he's like, "It's hot." I'm like, "Blow on it." And then so he finally he tasted and he's like, "This is fantastic." And I'm like, "I'm going to punch you right now cuz this could have happened 5 years ago."
· But here's what little Archie what he discovered in that moment is that there was better food that was uncomfortable that was different that was outside of his knowledge that was a little bit stepping out that he didn't know it was better than the safe comfortable frozen chicken nuggets that he's been eating for the last eight years. And here's the deal. Following the Jesus of the universe is not an easy comfortable path. Jesus flipped tables.
· Jesus cast out demons. Jesus brought his disciples into the middle of a storm before he told it to quiet down. Jesus disrupts our lives. Jesus calls out our sin. Jesus tells us to be generous.
· Jesus changes everything. Jesus is over everything as we just sang. And he causes everything in our lives to transform to how we would follow him. In the question that we need to come to today that all of this passage builds to this miraculous truth we see in this passage when we ask about the demons is even demons know who Jesus is. But the question we need to ask is do you even the demons know who Jesus is. But do you know?
· Do you know the God of the universe who isn't necessarily going to give you a happy and healthy and hearty easy life that's going to be like skipping through daisies all the time?
· Sometimes you will be afraid. Sometimes you will have trials. But you know the God of the universe who has beat all the dark spiritual forces uh uh that we cannot see, that we cannot conquer, and who has the ability to take us and show us into something greater. And when we see this story, I think it is like a mirror that reflects back on us is which people are we in this story. You see three different responses in here.
· As you see the demon-possessed man who as he's healed, he he leaps for joy and he starts going and telling people about Jesus. He starts spreading the news that this guy delivered me. My life has changed and I want everyone to know about it. He actually became the first missionary in a gentile world to know about Jesus. He didn't know that Jesus would raise from the dead, but he's the first person telling him that Jesus is the Messiah in a gentile land. We get that man who's released from that. But then we also get the other characters in here.
· We get the town's people who when they come to him, they're so much wrapped up in their comfort and their trials. And they say when it's disrupted all of a sudden they push back against it and be like no I cannot go down that path. I cannot uh take this instead Jesus get away from me cuz it is too hard.
· Or we can be like the disciples who in seeing this gives more ammunition, more stamps to say, "This is the guy I'm going to follow because he has the authority to calm the sea, to cast out the demons, and to change everything about my life." If you're a believer, if you're a follower of Christ today, I want you to ask yourself if maybe you're not leaving this place demon-possessed and we don't have to do an exorcism.
· But maybe you've given those demons and that Satan a foothold in your life.
· There's an addiction.
· There's a sin. There's something that keeps popping up. And you need to trust the God who commands all spiritual forces to say, "Go get out. I trust him cuz he is bigger. He is greater than it all." But maybe that's not you. Maybe you don't know this Jesus yet. And you're exploring who this God is. You have your questions in your heart.
· But here is who this Jesus is. This Jesus is the one who calmed the storm, who cast out demons. We're going to see six more miracles of things that show his authority. But it all led to the greatest miracle where he died on a cross to take your place. He rose again to defeat your sin so that you can have a life that is free from the bondage of evil.
· That no longer do you have to let your sin hollow you out as a person and instead you can embrace the Jesus who gives life instead of the evil and the sin that bring death and destruction. In just a moment, we're going to witness baptisms. We got to see this in our first service. We're going to see eight more people who are declaring their faith to say, "I will follow Jesus."
· That I am done trying to rely on my own sin. I am done trying to fight the battles that I cannot win on my own. And I trust the Jesus who can rebuke demons. the Jesus who can give me a new life and who no matter what I'm afraid of that he will walk alongside me to show me what true life here and for all of eternity looks like.
· Church, the demons, they believe but they do not follow.
· Will you believe and will you follow the Jesus the God of the universe?
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Miracles of Jesus
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· This is not mythology. This is theology.
· And the fact that Jesus takes them seriously should settle the question for every one of us. You see, when Jesus says this, we see the cannon of scripture at large points to this reality that demons and dark forces are out there. It says, "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this darkness, against evil spiritual forces in the heavens.
· We are going to read God's word. We're going to dive into a text and see what he calls and moves us to do. So, if you have a Bible, go ahead and grab it and open up to Matthew chapter 8. We're going to be in Matthew 8 starting at verse 28. Man, I'm excited as we move here is we are in week two of this brand new series called Miracles. And last week as we started this, we said that through this time, we'd be answering the questions that scripture poses and the questions that we need to ask of God and of what he has for us.
· And in Matthew 8 27 that we ended on last week, the disciples, they say they asked this question of what kind of man is this?
· They saw him perform a miracle. And the first question is like who is this? Who is this Jesus guy? Why is he different?
· Why is he so powerful? How does he have this authority? What makes this guy so different than the people around us? And you see, here's the exciting thing that as we go through this series that the miracles of the gospel, they answer this question explicitly. Is who is Jesus?
· Last week, we started this this journey and show that he is the God who can command the winds and the waves. that as they went out on a boat and they got caught in the middle of a storm, a storm that almost turned into a hurricane, they're freaking out. They think they're going to die. And Jesus stands up and he says, "Quiet, be still." And the wind and the waves just they go down. And we saw this God who can command nature, who has all authority over nature.
· But today, we up the Annie a little bit. is that God and Jesus doesn't just kind of come into a storm and and confront the forces of nature, but he confronts the kingdom of darkness itself. And as we pick up in Matthew chapter 8 and looking at verse 28, here's the question that's going to underly this entire passage that's going to confront us that we need to spend some time answering today is what does the Bible say about demons?
· Now, when you hear that, you might have a few different thoughts and might come from a different few places in that.
· You're like, "Demons? I don't know if I feel very comfortable about this."
· You're like, "Everything I know about demons is probably from like a horror movie. You watched The Exorcist as a kid and you've had nightmares ever since that you watch that, right?" And maybe your whole demonology, your theology of demons has come from Hollywood. But I think CS Lewis perfectly encapsulate this in the Screw Tape letters where he says this that mankind and humanity falls into two equal and opposite errors when it comes to demons. Either on one side they disbelieve them entirely.
· They say, "Ah, those demons are not a big deal. I don't even know if they exist.
· Like I don't think they affect my life.
· They don't impact me. I can still go to church and and talk about King Jesus, but that whole demon stuff, that's just like a little far-fetched and it doesn't really matter." Or the other opposite unhealthy thing is developing a fascination with them. And in CS Lewis says that the demons are equally pleased by both of these mistakes that we brush them off like they're nothing or we're fascinated and spend too much time thinking about them. But today as we ask this question, we're going to let the Bible speak.
· And in this passage, we're going to see four truths about the demonic. And every one of them points back to the authority of Jesus. And the very first thing we see here is the Bible is very clear that demons are real. Check out as we dive into this passage in Matthew chapter 8 starting in verse 28. It says, "When he being Jesus had come to the other side to the region of Gatenus, two demon-possessed men as they came out of the tombs. They were so violent that no one could pass that way.
· As we start this passage, the writer Matthew, Matthew was an eyewitness. He was a disciple. He was someone that watched Jesus' whole earthly ministry in these three years. Followed him everywhere he went. And as Matthew is recounting this experience that he saw with his own eyes. I I love that he starts here and he doesn't hedge his bets. Instead, when he writes this, he he doesn't say that these men had a psychological condition. All right? You might say that about your kids. Maybe they're demonpossessed. I'm just kidding. We'll get into that a second.
· But he's like, they don't have just some psychological condition. They they don't have some unnamed illness. They're not just dealing with a lot of stress and anxiety. He says right from the start is these guys were demonpossessed.
· It's the language of scripture that is used here. And we say this all the time at Cross Churches. We believe scripture is the word of God. We believe the Bible is what we build our faith upon. in the rock that everything that we know about Christ comes from. But here's some background that we need to see is in this region, this region of Gatenus, it was on the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee. And in this eastern side, it had become gentile territory, meaning this was pagan land.
· And and Jesus hadn't just crossed the sea in the middle of a storm to get here by accident. He didn't stumble into this encounter. Instead, he sailed here on purpose. Now, I think this tells us about who this Jesus is that we see in scripture is Jesus didn't just run from darkness. Instead, Jesus sails and moves straight into darkness. Is when Jesus came here, he didn't like, man, what bad luck. I ran into some demons.
· Like, Jesus knew what was coming when he went there. and and here for us that Jesus doesn't run from the darkness of your life, the sin, the grime, the grossness of it. Instead, he runs to you. He approaches the darkness to show you truth. And here is the beautiful thing in as the story progresses, we see that these two men, they were living in horrible, horrible means. They were in these tombs and and these tombs were really where dead people were buried.
· And this was not a good place to hang out under the Old Testament is if you were touching or by dead things you were ceremonial un you're defiled that you were unclean. But despite this they they were completely cut off from their community from their worship from everything that makes life human. Mark even gives us more details that they're crying out day and nights. Uh they're cutting theirelves with stone snapping chains off their wrists. They were naked and wild and violent. Satan had taken them to their very lowest place, but Jesus still went in.
· You know, in Arizona, our state is a beautiful place everywhere but Tucson. All right, can we all agree on that? Okay. Grew up and lived my whole life in Phoenix. Tucson is the armpit of Arizona. I have tried to make bills and laws like I'm going to talk to Nick after this about how we can like petition to give Tucson back to Mexico. All right. Um, yeah, I heard an amen over there. Dude, you are my man.
· We're going to talk later. All right.
· Um, but where was I going with this?
· Okay. All right. But Arizona is a beautiful state. Uh, but there's these parts of Arizona that you probably never go to. I I've lived here my entire life, but there are sections and cities that you may have never heard of, that you've never seen. And if you go through, you feel like you haven't been to a place.
· Uh, there we have a lot of mining towns in Arizona. And there's thriving economies that happen. But the the sad part is when the mine dries up and they get everything they need out of it, all of a sudden that town becomes a shell of itself. This actually happened in Jerome and Jerome completely died, but they actually revi they revitalized it as a tourist attraction. But there's others like Vulture City and there's other little towns out there that you walk into them and they're known as ghost towns now because the buildings are there. The structure is still there.
· You see homes, you see businesses, but inside it's empty. There's nothing there. There's barely people there. And what was happening in this story is is the men were there that were demonpossessed. You could see their outside flesh. You could see, they could speak, they could talk. But inside that demon was hollowing them out.
· Everything that made them a person, the warmth, the love, the willing to be a part of community, Satan and the demons were slowly destroying and ripping out everything inside of them in their soul to destroy and to wreak down their humanity and to turn them into something else. And you see, this is exactly what the enemy does when we say demons are real. Satan and the demon's goal is always to deface the image of God in a human being.
· God made man with dignity and purpose, designed us for relationships and to have reason and to strive for things, but the enemy systematically strips that away. And that's exactly what darkness does. It doesn't just harass, it dehumanizes. And here's when you see this first part is the Bible is clear is that demons are real spiritual beings. And it goes on to define them more. They are fallen angels who rebelled with Satan who were cast out of heaven. This is not mythology.
· This is theology. And the fact that Jesus takes them seriously should settle the question for every one of us. You see, when Jesus says this and when Jesus in this story, he's going to rebuke them in a second. But we see the cannon of scripture at large points to this reality that demons and dark forces are out there. In Ephesians 6:12, it says, "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this darkness, against evil, as spiritual forces in the heavens."
· When I sit on my couch today at 12:30 and I watch the Suns play the Oklahoma City, I am going to see OKC as my enemy. Like, SGA, dude, I can't stand that guy. Most unethical basketball player out there. All right. If you don't know what that means, he just draws a lot of free throws and he's overrated. But he they are my enemy today at 12:30 and for the rest of these next week and a half, however long it lasts. But the Bible tells us the enemies aren't sports teams. The enemy is not the guy that cuts you off on the road. The enemy is not your boss.
· That the true enemy is the demons and Satan and the dark forces behind it. And it tells us where they came from. In Revelation 12:4, it says its tale being Satan swept a third of the stars in the heavens and hurled them to the earth.
· They were angels, but they rebelled and they were thrown down. Second Peter 2:4 says, "For if God didn't spare the angels who sinned, but he cast them into hell, that they are real, that they are violent, that they want to dehumanize people." But the story doesn't end there. Demons not only are real, but check out what happens next. Demons are also afraid. This is where it gets good.
· Check out verse 29. It says, "Suddenly they shouted." These were the two men, the demon-possessed men. It says, "What do you have to do with us, son of God?
· Have you come here to torment us before the time?"
· This is important and we can't miss this, that the demons are the ones who are afraid in this situation, not Jesus.
· Jesus stepped off the boat into the most demonically oppressed scene that we have in the Gospels and he doesn't flinch. He doesn't like pray for angel backup. Like if I was you Jesus be like, "Hey, uh like call my lifeline like put some angels behind me just in case things get seriously. I just want to have this ready." Like Jesus doesn't like look for a manual. He doesn't all of a sudden pull out his phone and start looking up YouTube videos on how do you have like cast out demons. Um I'm sure if you do that you will find some videos. All right. Uh, just don't do it now. Do it after church. All right.
· Uh, when the suns are down by 30. You can look up how to cast out a demon and see what people have on YouTube. But he doesn't do any of that. Instead, he walks straight towards these men like a man walking in his own house. And you see, the reason is because that's exactly what Jesus was doing. This is Jesus's creation here on earth. This is his territory. And the demons, they knew it. And look at what the demons say to him. They call him son of God. You let that land for a moment.
· The demons had better theology about Jesus than most of the religious leaders in Israel. If if you go throughout the gospels, the Pharisees are constantly critiquing Jesus. They're trying to figure out who Jesus was. The scribes are debating it endlessly, but the demons at first glance, they're like, "Oh man, that's the son of God. That's Jesus right there."
· And here we we see they immediately knew him the moment he stepped off the boat.
· And they knew what they were dealing with. And scripture tells us that this is still the truth today. In James 21:19, it says, "You believe that God is one good." But listen to the conviction there. Even the demons believe and they shudder.
· The demons know who Jesus is. They don't embrace him and say, "I'm going to follow him." Instead, they are afraid of him. They They know who he is. And here's what gets me. The demons have fear because of their belief. They believe that Jesus is God. They know who he is. It terrifies them. They remembered heaven. You think about this for a second. They remembered the throne of God. They've seen the power of God up close. They remember and see the glory of the sun.
· And when he showed up on that shore, they were terrified because they remember how powerful he was and that he cast them out and they remembered the fate that would be coming for them.
· But here's where this hits us is the demons have fear because of their belief in their knowledge of who God is. I think if we're honest, so many of us have fear because of our unbelief.
· We worry, we stress, we lie awake at night, not because we know too much about Jesus, but instead either you have never known him for the first time or you need to remember how powerful it is the God you claim to follow.
· And notice the phrase here they use when they talk to him and they know that they are in trouble and they said, "What do you have to do with us?" And they said, "Have you come to torment us?" But they put this little line in here before the time. The demons know a day of final judgment is coming. Jesus would later talk about this in Matthew 25:41. It says, "Then he will also say to those on the left, depart from me who are cursed into the eternal fire that is prepared for the devil and his angels."
· That God is preparing an eternal judgment, but it is not meant for us. It is meant for sin and evil. And the devil and the demons will be cast into it. and he gets a lifeline outside of that. But here's what's important in this part of the passage is Jesus clearly tells us that eternal fire has been prepared for evil in the darkness. And they're not asking if they will be judged. They know, but they're asking why is it coming so soon?
· And they're just trying to buy more time. In the 1800s, uh there was this guy that was awesome. His name was the Duke of Wellington. This guy won battle after battle. He actually had such a reputation that when you look at throughout history, he either had good people writing about him who erased all the bad stuff or he was really just that much of a baller. But he never lost a major battle in his entire time. And and he actually his capstone battle was he uh defeated the well-known of history. Oh, I can't I I can't say that.
· Say I'm sorry, little person uh of history. Um and Napoleon at Waterlue.
· Okay. Uh you can cut that out. Um, but where were we at? Um, but he, this guy Duke, he was legit. Uh, so much so that he's the guy that took down Napoleon.
· Napoleon had to have anger problems. All right. If he's known for just anyway.
· Um, but here's why he was so impressive.
· The Duke of Wateroo when when history would talk about him and and what was written with him by his uh his soldiers and those who reported to him and his officers. One of his off officers wrote this that when they saw the Duke of Wellington come onto the battlefield.
· They said it was worth 40,000 men on the field. When they saw that guy, they're like, "We're not losing this battle."
· Like, he is calm. He's collected. He's a great leader. They're like, "We're going through this wall. It doesn't matter what's happened. We are winning this fight."
· And here's what I think is beautiful about this is this is a dim shadow of what happened on the shores of Gatenus on that day is Jesus showed up and the entire demonic army that we'll get into in a second how many they were. The entire army trembled not because the circumstances had changed but because of who stepped off that boat in the form of Jesus Christ. You see demons are real.
· Demons are afraid. But there's more. We also see demons are limited. Keep going in verse 30. It says a long way off from them, a large herd of pigs was feeding.
· It says, "If you drive us out, the demons begged him, send us into the herd of pigs."
· And in verse 32, he said, "Go," he told them. So when they had come out, they entered into the pigs. Now I want us to notice a few dynamics here that are at play. is first we see after Jesus comes off this boat and they start interacting with him. It says the demons are begging Jesus. They're not requesting per they're not like saying like hey can we do this? They're literally like requesting permission. They're not saying like this is what we're going to do. They're begging Jesus.
· They cannot act without Jesus's approval, his authorization. And we need to let that sink in for a minute because you think about kind of the context of it. These are powerful spiritual beings. Mark's gospel tells us that the demon's name was Legion. At this time, uh, a Roman legion consisted of roughly 6,000 soldiers. So, what they estimate is there was at least 2,000 demons that were possessing these men at this time.
· And and the story starts that people couldn't even pass. They were so violent that no one could pass that way. They literally closed that road just like Surprise closes every road every second and tries to keep us on our toes, right?
· They like closed that road and like we're going to avoid it. Not because we're doing construction because there's demonpossessed people on that road. Like how crazy is that? And they were violent. They were angry. They were scary. Everyone fleed from it. But when Jesus comes out, they're begging him, "Hey, can we please do this? C can you please like don't torment us? Can can we please go out into those pigs?" They didn't demand. They didn't negotiate from a position of strength. They begged. The tormentor had become the tormented.
· The one who terrorized the region was now graveling before the son of God.
· Church, I think this tells us something critical about spiritual warfare. That Satan is not God's equal.
· And I think sometimes this is what we need to hear because maybe sometimes we think that because life is tough and life is hard and there are spiritual forces at play. Okay, there are darkness. Sometimes things happen to you. Sometimes a phone rings in the middle of the service that is super loud and shut OFF THAT DEMON. All right.
· But sometimes things happen in our worlds and we feel like there is spiritual warfare at place and that is a very real thing. But I think sometimes we're like we think we're like bystanders in this great battle between Satan and God and they're waging war.
· It's like a spiritual chess match and Satan is the king on one side and God is the king on the other side. But that is not how it is. That God is the king and Satan is a roaring lion as 1 Peter 5:12 says, but he's on a leash.
· He's tormenting people. He's hurting things. He's doing things that cause craziness in our world. And we're going to talk about that in a second. But Satan cannot do things beyond the limitations that God has given him. He He's given him room to operate in this dark and broken and hurtful world, but he only does it as far as God's authority allows it. You think about, we see this in the Old Testament. You think about Job, and I'm excited. We're going to be studying Job. So, if you're suffering a lot, come back in the fall.
· We're going to talk about how we can suffer together. But you look at the life of Job and and Satan could not touch Job's family, his possessions, or his health without explicit permission from God. And it's the same dynamic that we see here. The demons can't even relocate to a herd of pigs without asking Jesus first.
· And you think of how they do relocate when they beg and they plead Jesus and Jesus says go. He gives one word. He didn't do like some big old ritual. He didn't burn incense. He didn't bring out the essential oils. He didn't all of a sudden like bring out a manual on how to cast a demon. He said one word. This is how we know Jesus has an authority like no one else. He just said as thousands of demons are begging at his feet, he's like, "Go."
· I think about this verse sometimes as I'm lying awake at night. I don't know about you, but every now and then, you know, you might wake up and one night, it's like 12:00 and and 2:00 a.m. and you're trying to go back to sleep, and that's when all of a sudden all the weight of life wants to run through your head. It's like all of a sudden, you start thinking about finances. You start thinking about the stress you have. You start thinking about whether my kids will grow up and not be jerks and will be functioning adults. You think about your kids, if you have grown kids, if they're going to continue to make decisions that are wise and get correct path and all of a sudden like the weight of the world like comes on and all the things I have to do that week.
· I'm like thinking about and stressing about in its weight and then I think about this verse, the God who cast out thousands of demons with one word. If he can say go and they run to pigs and we'll see what happens to those pigs in a second. If he can do that, I think he can handle my Tuesday.
· How much is that like our lives? We stress about all this stuff. But the God who has authority over everything is the God who is has our back. The God who indwells us as believers. The God who empowers us to move forward. And I can't get to my ex my wrap-up yet even though I'm excited because we have one more point we got to cover. But here's the deal in this is demons are limited.
· Their power has a ceiling and that ceiling is the authority of Jesus Christ. Whatever you're facing, whatever spiritual battle, whatever darkness seems to be closing in, we have promises from scripture that it will not have the final word. I love first John 4:4. It says the one who is in you, that is the Holy Spirit, that is God, that is the resurrected Jesus Christ, the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the worlds.
· And that brings us to our final truth that demons are real. Demons are afraid of God. Demons are limited in their power. But demons are also chaotic. Keep keep going in the as we wrap up this passage of the second half of verse 32.
· It says when they entered the pigs and then the whole herd rushed down the stink bank into the sea and they perished in the water. They're running down and they run off a cliff. Some will say off a cliff or down a steep hill, but they go straight into this water.
· And this is in verse 33. Then the men who tended them fled. They went into the city and they reported everything, especially what had happened to those who were demonpossessed. At that the whole town went to meet Jesus. When they saw him, they begged him to leave their region.
· Here's what happens is the demons enter the pigs and the entire herd, probably about 2,000 animals according to Mark's account, charges down a steam bank and drowns in the sea. And you just imagine this scene. It's absolute chaos. Like just like seeing herds of pigs like you could probably feel the ground shaking. And Matthew and Mark and Luke are or Matthew and Mark are are watching this.
· And Luke would get his account from Paul, but they're watching this and like taking notes. like, man, we got to like paint this picture later, and they're seeing this, and it's just crazy, but it reveals something important about the nature of evil. Evil is inherently self-destructive.
· The demons could not even inhabit a herd of pigs without driving them off a cliff into destruction in order to kill themselves. What they could not accomplish in a man-made image, and I think this is an important thing. I think demon possession is real and and people can be have demons possess them and it causes them to do horrible things. But these men, these two men that had legions of demons in them did not commit suicide despite how much was raging on inside of them.
· And I think there's a little bit of common grace that we are created differently than pigs, for example, who have a little bit smaller brains um hopefully than us. But it's like we could somehow push back and resist that darkness that was trying to strip us of our humanity. But you see the pigs, they couldn't even last two seconds and they're running off the cliff and running and drowning. God's common grace is on mankind more than anything else. But still, the wreaking and the havoc and all this, the goal of those demons was to destroy.
· And here's what's important. We see this throughout scripture in John 8:44 when Jesus is talking. It says, "You are the father. You are of your father, the devil." And here's how he describes your the devil. He says, "You want to carry out your father's desires." He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in truth. He says Satan's whole goal is to bear false witness and to murder and destroy and to tear down. It says there's no truth in him. Whenever he tells a lie, he speaks from his own nature because he is a liar and the father of lies. Evil ma evil's whole goal is to tear down.
· Jesus says in John 10:10, he says a thief only comes to steal and kill and destroy. That's what demons do. That's what Satan does. That's what evil does. It tears down and destroys. But Jesus, I have come so they may have life and have it in abundance. You see, this is the contrast here. Satan's agenda is always death, but Jesus' agenda is always life. And you see, this is important because this same predictable pattern happens today.
· Now, I want to give you some encouragement is I think in this room, I don't think there's any demonpossessed people. All right? Because one, if you say you follow Jesus and the Holy Spirit has come upon you, you cannot have the Holy Spirit and have a demon in your life. Those are not compatible. But also, we see, I think today, I'm not going to perform an exorcism. My problem, I promise. Um, but we see that what demons shudder at is the word of God and the power of God. And I think if there's someone seizing in here, we might be a little bit scared.
· Maybe someone's going to watch this online later. And if you're seizing, hopefully the demon gets out, right, as we read the word of God. But it's like they can't coexist in there. But that doesn't mean just because you're not demonpossessed that demons do not hurt and hinder the life around you. Is the darkness, the destruction, the evil they rot, it disrupts this broken world we live in. We think of things like addiction. Addiction promises pleasure, but it delivers devastation.
· And is only that evil that is rampant in our world that lets that sin enter into our life.
· We think of anger and bitterness and vengeance. It feels justified in the moment. That dude cuts you off. You feel like you have to cut him off, too. And when I say you, I mean me. But it feels justified in the moment, but it eats you alive from the inside out. in in the lies the enemy whispers. He tells us all over and over again in our sin that you're not enough, that you'll never change, that God's forgotten about you.
· That is the voice of chaos that wres havoc in our world. But you see, the voice is just trying to bring destruction. But the reason those lies feel so powerful is because often I think they go unchallenged.
· When we start challenging those voices, when we know who Jesus is, when we know who the authority he has in it, all of a sudden those lies fall where they are as just lies that we can move beyond. And when we have Jesus come and fight our battles for us, all of the sudden those demons, that sin, it begs to leave because it knows that Jesus has staked a claim over our life.
· And here's why I love how this story ends. And and we get more of an account from here from from Mark is that when these men have been delivered from their demonic oppression, they just go start and telling more people about it. They start spreading about, hey Jesus, this guy has changed my life.
· But he's not the only response in this story because there's another response that as those pigs ran off and those guys, those demonpossessed people are telling them about Jesus, all of a sudden the town people comes and they beg Jesus to leave. They say like, "Hey, we don't want you to hang out here anymore." And here's why. Because they had $2,000 worth of 2,000 pigs worth of money and economy just jump off a ledge.
· All of a sudden, their world was disrupted. All of a sudden, their comfort hit a roadblock. And when they had it and they were facing the God of the universe who caused them a an inconvenience, they asked him to leave instead of embracing what is greater.
· You know, one of the things that as a dad that I constantly fight against, and you might judge me or offer some um kind of critiques or some help in this, but just know they're not wanted, and don't come and tell me them after. All right?
· But one of the things of having four kids ranging from nine and two is is a few of them are picky eaters. And we like literally did baby weding. Like they ate food from like when they were babies, but it didn't matter. They just became picky one day and I'm like just eat the food. We've tried everything like Instagram res doing this blah blah blah. We starved them for 3 weeks and they're still picky.
· But this was a beautiful moment last night. Uh my son Archie, my oldest son, we had this amazing soup and it was just like a great soup. Like we are soup people. But I mean there was chicken, corn, some green chili in there. All it was it was a white bean. So all the flavor profile kind of fit that in there. But then here here was a little tweak we done this one is it uses masaharina which is like a cornmeal and you mix that uh with some of your broth and it thickens it without making you feel thick. You know what I mean? All right. Like sometimes you have a thick soup and you feel thick after.
· Uh but it's just great recipe. So I'm like selling like dude here's the deal.
· Instead of chicken nuggets that are frozen disgusting, how about you tonight you eat this soup and I'll let you pick any dessert in our house. I threw away all the desserts for No, I'm just kidding. Uh he got a he got something good. But in that he he's like so intrigued. He's like, "I don't like soup." I was like, "How do you know you don't like soup?" Because I don't like it. I'm like, "You've never tried it."
· He's like, "But that's cuz I don't like it." I'm like, "You don't know. You don't like it." And then like finally we convince him. He's like, "All right, I'll do it." And his face is so he's like, "It's hot." I'm like, "Blow on it." And then so he finally he tasted and he's like, "This is fantastic." And I'm like, "I'm going to punch you right now cuz this could have happened 5 years ago."
· But here's what little Archie what he discovered in that moment is that there was better food that was uncomfortable that was different that was outside of his knowledge that was a little bit stepping out that he didn't know it was better than the safe comfortable frozen chicken nuggets that he's been eating for the last eight years. And here's the deal. Following the Jesus of the universe is not an easy comfortable path. Jesus flipped tables.
· Jesus cast out demons. Jesus brought his disciples into the middle of a storm before he told it to quiet down. Jesus disrupts our lives. Jesus calls out our sin. Jesus tells us to be generous.
· Jesus changes everything. Jesus is over everything as we just sang. And he causes everything in our lives to transform to how we would follow him. In the question that we need to come to today that all of this passage builds to this miraculous truth we see in this passage when we ask about the demons is even demons know who Jesus is. But the question we need to ask is do you even the demons know who Jesus is. But do you know?
· Do you know the God of the universe who isn't necessarily going to give you a happy and healthy and hearty easy life that's going to be like skipping through daisies all the time?
· Sometimes you will be afraid. Sometimes you will have trials. But you know the God of the universe who has beat all the dark spiritual forces uh uh that we cannot see, that we cannot conquer, and who has the ability to take us and show us into something greater. And when we see this story, I think it is like a mirror that reflects back on us is which people are we in this story. You see three different responses in here.
· As you see the demon-possessed man who as he's healed, he he leaps for joy and he starts going and telling people about Jesus. He starts spreading the news that this guy delivered me. My life has changed and I want everyone to know about it. He actually became the first missionary in a gentile world to know about Jesus. He didn't know that Jesus would raise from the dead, but he's the first person telling him that Jesus is the Messiah in a gentile land. We get that man who's released from that. But then we also get the other characters in here.
· We get the town's people who when they come to him, they're so much wrapped up in their comfort and their trials. And they say when it's disrupted all of a sudden they push back against it and be like no I cannot go down that path. I cannot uh take this instead Jesus get away from me cuz it is too hard.
· Or we can be like the disciples who in seeing this gives more ammunition, more stamps to say, "This is the guy I'm going to follow because he has the authority to calm the sea, to cast out the demons, and to change everything about my life." If you're a believer, if you're a follower of Christ today, I want you to ask yourself if maybe you're not leaving this place demon-possessed and we don't have to do an exorcism.
· But maybe you've given those demons and that Satan a foothold in your life.
· There's an addiction.
· There's a sin. There's something that keeps popping up. And you need to trust the God who commands all spiritual forces to say, "Go get out. I trust him cuz he is bigger. He is greater than it all." But maybe that's not you. Maybe you don't know this Jesus yet. And you're exploring who this God is. You have your questions in your heart.
· But here is who this Jesus is. This Jesus is the one who calmed the storm, who cast out demons. We're going to see six more miracles of things that show his authority. But it all led to the greatest miracle where he died on a cross to take your place. He rose again to defeat your sin so that you can have a life that is free from the bondage of evil.
· That no longer do you have to let your sin hollow you out as a person and instead you can embrace the Jesus who gives life instead of the evil and the sin that bring death and destruction. In just a moment, we're going to witness baptisms. We got to see this in our first service. We're going to see eight more people who are declaring their faith to say, "I will follow Jesus."
· That I am done trying to rely on my own sin. I am done trying to fight the battles that I cannot win on my own. And I trust the Jesus who can rebuke demons. the Jesus who can give me a new life and who no matter what I'm afraid of that he will walk alongside me to show me what true life here and for all of eternity looks like.
· Church, the demons, they believe but they do not follow.
· Will you believe and will you follow the Jesus the God of the universe?
More from this series
Miracles of Jesus