Driven

Luke 8:26 – 39

 

When I was a junior in high school, I joined the dairy cattle judging team in FFA. I made the A team, but on the morning that we were supposed to leave to go to Freson State field day for that contest I overslept and got left behind.

 

That got me dropped from the A team, and so I did not compete at state finals at Cal Poly that year. The team that did go, went on to win state finals and competed at the national contest in Louisville, KY that fall. I overslept and missed the opportunity to be on that team.

 

The following year I was the only returning senior to make the A team, and I was driven by having missed out the year before to do my absolute best. From my own practices with our own cows at home, to taking to heart the feedback to slow down when I talked, I worked at it for months.

 

It paid off. I won state as an individual, and my team won state as well and Hilmar FFA returned to nationals that year and finished in the top 10 in the nation that year. It became apparent to me that what I let drive me impacted what I did.

 

As the last 20 years have gone by, I can look back and tell you that what has driven me had often changed, usually because life had changed. As Paul writes in 1 Cor. 13:11, “When I was a child… When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.”

 

After I started a family, my family became the driving force that impacted my decisions in life. I was no longer able to just think about myself, I had other lives that I was responsible for.

 

And I’ll admit, I often failed at that, I still fail at that. But it wasn’t until I had my own, very personal experience with God, my own deliverance story, that my love for God became what I’m driven by.

 

As we continue through the Gospel of Luke, we encounter a man driven by something awful, and who is saved and refocused by Christ. Let’s read God’s Word together, beginning with Luke 8:26.

The journey across the Sea of Galilee that began in our passage last week ends in today’s passage. The eastern shore, the shore opposite from Galilee, was avoided by most good, observant Jews because that was Gentile territory.

 

Specifically, Jesus and the 12 sailed to the Decapolis, a region of 10 Gentile cities that were the center of Greco-Roman culture in the area. They were as Pagan as they could be over there, and Jews had no business going there.

 

Jesus’ decision to lead His disciples across the lake, through a deadly storm, into Gentile territory was deliberate. He put them in immediate danger to reach the Gentile man He’s about to encounter, but He was driven by a greater purpose.

 

By sailing through a dangerous storm over to Gentile territory, Jesus is showing and teaching His disciples that His mission to redeem a people for God extends well beyond Israel to include non-Jews.

 

This moment in Christ’s ministry illustrates so well the great reversal seen throughout Luke. It’s Christ’s counterintuitive love and discipleship on display. He’s showing love and mercy to those that conventional wisdom would say God has forsaken.

 

He’s putting on a masterclass on discipleship for the 12. They are enrolled in the most intense discipleship class in history, one that puts their very lives seemingly at risk but that demonstrates Christ’s power and mercy and love. In doing so, as these four miracles do, Jesus is preparing His disciples for the mission He’s called them to.

 

Nothing Jesus does is by accident, so when He steps off the boat onto land, here comes the guy that Jesus was there for. This man was possessed by demons—not one demon—but demons.

 

In Jesus, the spiritual realm was embodied on earth, and because of that the demonic part of the spiritual realm was drawn to Him. Here again, after having demonstrated His power of nature, Jesus once again displays His power over demons, this time with more depth and drama.

 

This poor guy had been demon possessed for some time, living naked and out among the tombs instead of in a house for most of it.

On the one hand, this man living among the dead made him ceremonially unclean, never mind there’s demons inside of him. This didn’t matter to the Gentiles, but it would have very much mattered to disciples with Jesus.

 

But worse than that, was the extreme alienation from other people and the constant association with death and despair. Nobody chooses to live in isolation among the dead. But these demons exerted some serious power.

 

They seized this guy so violently that he was kept under guard and bound up with chains and shackles, for either his own protection or the protection of others, or both. But when the demons took over, he would break the chains under their superhuman power and he would be driven out into the desert, into the wilderness, into solitary and deserted places, like tombs.

 

The tombs weren’t by the sea, but yet he was drawn to Jesus. When he saw Jesus, the demons immediately cried out through the man’s voice and he fell down at Jesus’ feet shouting, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?”

 

Wait a minute. Through the storm, the 12 were left wondering who this Jesus is, but this demon knows exactly who Jesus is. Chew on that one for a minute. That the 12 guys who Jesus chose to build His church through still didn’t know who He was but a demon did is wild.

 

Every time we encounter a demon in the Bible, they seem to know who Jesus really is, but as James tells us in 2:19, they shudder. The Devil knows who God is, therefore, his minions know who God is too, but they have no love for God, no love for Jesus whatsoever.

 

Instead they fear Him, and rightfully so, because Christ has the divine power to not only command demons, as we’ve already seen before in Luke, but to bring about their destruction in the final judgement.

 

So this demon begs Jesus not to torment him, because Jesus had begun to command the unclean spirit to come out of the guy. It’s here that we see a most curious twist, a deeper layer of Christ’s power over the spiritual realm.

Unlike the previous encounters with demons in the Gospel of Luke where Jesus rebukes them and commands them to come out and not say anything about who He truly is, He instead engages with this one. This is the only encounter in the Gospels where Jesus has a conversation, albeit a brief one, with a demon. He asks for his name.

 

Legion, the demon responds, because there’s many demons in that one man. You know, a legion in the Roman army consisted of six thousand men. This guy is tormented not by one demon, but by many.

 

But it doesn’t matter if there’s one demon, or a whole legion of demons, Jesus Christ has divine power over all of them. So again they beg Him, this time they specify not to cast them into the abyss, their final destination in the final judgement. They feared that Christ would bring that upon them early.

 

There happens to be a large herd of pigs, (2,000 by Mark’s account) feeding on the hillside close by, so the demons beg Jesus to allow them to enter the pigs. Jesus doesn’t just drive out demons; His divine power is such that they have to ask Him permission!

 

Don’t forget that the disciples are witnessing all of this! The only reference of them is at the beginning of our passage, they sailed to the Gerasenes. They essentially drop out of the story, but they are there watching all of this unfold.

 

Never mind the question the disciples asked in the boat about Jesus, “Who is this that even the wind and waves obey His command,” I’d be asking, “Who is this that even the demons have to ask for permission?”

 

Yet, that’s precisely what He does, Jesus gives them permission to leave the guy and go into the pigs. Jesus wasn’t passive here. Yes, He permitted the legion of demons to go into the pigs, but that permission demonstrates just how powerful He is.

 

Who is this Jesus then? He is the Son of God, Lord of all creation, whether the physical world (wind and waves) or the spiritual world of demons, He is exactly who the demon already said He was, Jesus, Son of the Most High God.

 

When they go into the pigs, just as they drove the man into desolate and lonely places, they drive the pigs down the steep bank and into the sea to drown. Their drowning is caused by the demons. Looks like they rather go back to where they came from than be near Jesus.

 

The disciples get to see Jesus casts out demons in Jewish lands and in Gentile lands. He is wholly bringing about the end of the grip the devil has on the world and ushering in the kingdom of God everywhere.

 

But they aren’t the only witnesses to Christ’s power over the demonic. When the herdsmen tending to the pigs saw all of this that happened, they ran off afraid and told everyone not just in the city but all over the countryside too!

 

Then, people from all over the city and countryside gather and come to see for themselves what had happened and they are astounded at what they find. There was the man from whom the demons had gone out, and instead of being driven about by the demon, he was sitting.

 

Instead of being without clothes, he was dressed. Instead of being among the tombs and the dead, he was at the feet of Jesus, among life itself. Instead of being chained and shackled hand and foot and kept under guard, he was in his right mind. 

 

The man himself, more than the drowning of the herd of pigs or even the casting out of the demons themselves, was proof of the miracle, evidence of Christ’s power. The demons’ prisoner had been set free from their oppression; his transformation being the sign of God’s presence breaking into Gentile territory.

 

And the people were afraid. They had witnessed for years the power the demons had over this man, and now they were gone. Clearly there stood before them a terrifyingly great power in Jesus.

 

The herdsmen who had witnessed the demons leave the man and go into and drive thousands of pigs to their watery death told the crowd how the man was healed—how he was saved—by Jesus.

 

Make no mistake, Jesus saved this man, not just from being tormented by demons, but of everything that separated him from God. Once Christ restored him this man then sat at Jesus’ feet as a disciple.

But on hearing this, the people of the surrounding country were seized with great fear. So they ask Jesus to leave. Despite what they had heard and witnessed, the people of the Gerasenes wanted Jesus to leave.

 

It was quite clear, that just as hearing God’s word alone is not enough, so seeing God at work is also not enough. Even a greater miracle can’t compel faith. Apart from a noble and good heart, a heart cultivated and prepared to receive the word by faith, God’s presence produces only fear.

 

Now for the believer, that fear turns into holy awe, but to the unbeliever it is only a fearsome dread from which they can’t get far enough away from, a fear that they want to rid themselves of.

 

That is the sad but true reality of unbelief. The reality of experiencing God naturally leads to worship from His children, but leads to terror in those who refuse to believe.

 

All too often, when Christ is preached and life itself stands before the unbeliever what they are truly afraid of is what that life holds for them. They don’t want to give up their sinful and worldly life and submit to Jesus as Lord.

 

But often times believers are afraid of what a fully committed life in Christ would be like. Too often we cling so desperately to our vices, our addictions, our comfort, and we’re afraid to release control over lives to Jesus, so we just ask Him to leave us alone out of fear.

 

We ignore Him, we think we can put Jesus in a box in our lives and that He only is Lord over Sunday mornings. When we do that, we limit the effect of Christ’s power in our lives.

 

God can be rejected, as the people of the Gerasenes in fact did. They asked Him to leave, and Christ obliges. Peace, however, did come to the demon possessed man. He who was last now became first. Jesus’ purpose in going across the lake has been fulfilled.

 

He demonstrated His power to His disciples over creation by bringing them through the storm, and then He demonstrates His power over the spiritual realm by the way in which He healed this Gentile man possessed by a legion of demons.

Jesus is Lord over all creation, physical and spiritual. The power to carry out His mission, to do whatever He calls you to, comes only from Christ, and it is the same power of Christ that is on display here and throughout Scripture.

 

You must be driven by who Christ is to sit and learn at His feet and to go and tell everyone about Him.

 

Jesus got back in the boat and headed back with His disciples to Galilee. But as He did, the man whom the demons had left begged Jesus that he could be with Him. He wanted more than anything just to be with Jesus.

 

But Jesus tells the man no, go back home, to the place that the demons had driven him from, and to tell everyone how much God has done for him. Jesus’ mighty works are such that to proclaim them is to proclaim what God has done. What God does, Jesus does.

 

The man who used to be unable to live at home but instead lived among the dead in the tombs was now directed to return home. Jesus restored him to life and the land of the living with a purpose, to spread the good news of Jesus in Gentile land.

 

Understand that Christ is preparing and training the Twelve for the mission He’s going to send them out on. Christ is always teaching His followers how to live like Him, the same way today as back then, by His word and His mighty works.

 

Genuine discipleship is the key to carrying out Christ’s mission, to driving the gospel throughout the earth. Sitting and learning at the feet of Jesus, at the foot of the cross empowers you for the mission Christ has called you to.

 

When Jesus heals you of whatever is afflicting you, when He delivers you and saves you from your sin, the natural, worshipful response is to follow Him as closely as possible, and to tell everyone you encounter about how much Jesus has transformed your life.

 

Discipleship, learning to be a disciple sitting at Jesus’ feet, is essential to understanding the need and how to share the gospel. Without sharing the gospel, there won’t be anyone to disciple. They go together.

So, first, I want you to commit yourself to the journey of discipleship. After Jesus delivered the man from his demons he wanted nothing more than to be with Jesus and sit at His feet.

 

Let what Christ has done for you drive you to get to know Him better through studying God’s Word and through learning from other believers further along in their own journey’s.

 

Spending time in God’s Word is crucial to your growth as a disciple, a follower of Christ, a Christian. It truly has the power to transform your life. And don’t’ get me wrong, it’ll be a bumpy ride.

 

Jesus commanded the man to a life of discipleship in his own village, in his own home. We weren’t meant to walk this journey alone. We should never stop being discipled, but when equipped we should also be discipling others.

 

There are books, there are programs, and there are apps to help you on your journey, but nothing can replace the discipleship you’ll receive in your local church. I love to teach (never thought I’d be saying that) and it would really be my joy to teach you about Jesus on days that aren’t Sunday too.

 

Second, go and tell everyone about what Christ has done in you. The good news of the gospel is for all people; you and I included. The man’s request to go with Jesus wasn’t rejected, but rather refocused in that he was to also proclaim the good news to his own people.

 

God saves who God saves. It is not our job to determine who should be saved, rather it is our job, our mission, to make Christ known by sharing the good news of the gospel with everyone.

 

Part of discipleship training is learning how to share the gospel, we must make disciples that make more disciples. But there is no technique more personal, more powerful, and more effective than sharing what God has done in your life through Christ.

 

Like the demon possessed man sitting at Jesus’ feet in his right mind, if you are in Christ, you are living, breathing, walking proof of Christ’s power to deliver and transform.

 

When God gets a hold of you, when Jesus works in your life and transforms you, don’t keep it to yourself, tell everyone. Tell everyone what God in Christ has done in you. That’s what the man did after he was saved, and it is what you are called to do too.