Sermon text: Luke 8:26–39
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
The Old Testament reading began with these couple of verses: “I was ready to be sought by those who did not ask for me; I was ready to be found by those who did not seek me. I said, ‘Here I am, here I am,’ to a nation that was not called by my name.” Now, if there was ever a city or a nation or people not called by His name and not interested in Jesus at all, it was the people of the Gerasenes.
These are people who were steeped in the pagan religions of the day. This was particularly true of a particular man. After all, what does this kind of man have to do with Jesus? He is the most unclean of the unclean people. First, he’s a Gentile and not a Jew. But that’s the least of his problems. We don’t know what caused the problem. We don’t know if the man was a participant in the local pagan religions or participated in some ritual that opened a door for him to be invaded by demons, or some other cause. But the man who now lives among the dead is demon-possessed. But not just by one demon: by a legion of them. A legion is a few thousand soldiers in the Roman army. That is, this man’s body had been taken up as the residence for a great many demons that controlled him. He was in fact a mess.
For one thing, he didn’t wear clothes, and clothes from the earliest time of Genesis chapter 3 were for the purpose of covering shame. This man wants nothing to do with clothing that would cover his shame. He’s trapped in a life of it. The man wants nothing to do with anything good or holy or righteous, or any of his neighbors whatsoever. He is alive, but he didn’t live in a house. He lived among the tombs, dwelling in a cave among caves where human remains were interred. So, let’s look at everything we know about the man from the biblical text.
Number one: he’s a danger to himself and others. Thus, he’s chained up. He’s been put under guard and bound with chains and shackles for everybody’s safety, including his own. The demons had previously provided for him superhuman strength, so on occasion he could break free from his bonds and be driven out into the desert. He lives a life of shame among the tombs. He’s cut off from everyone because of the demon possession. He’s out of his mind. The demons give him strength from time to time to get away. He’d rather be by himself, driven mad with the demons, than to be with anybody else.
The man we are told in the gospel lesson this morning is a man who’s simply too far lost. He’s too far gone to be among the people. He’s a danger. So what does this kind of man have to do with Jesus, and Jesus with him? And that’s the question posed to Jesus as He approaches the man, the demon-possessed man: “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me.”
First, notice the possessed man knows who Jesus is. While everybody on the other side of the lake, on the west side of the lake, the Jewish side of the lake, is still speculating whether Jesus is the coming Messiah or not, the possessed man on the east side in the Gentile territory: he identifies Jesus rightly so. Jesus, the Son of the Most High God. It’s unlikely that the possessed man has put the two together himself. He’s filled with demons who know full well who Jesus is. They know what they’re looking at, and they know the power that He possesses. So the man is going off based upon what the demons are telling him.
Furthermore, he begs that Jesus would not torment him. He understands the power now that Jesus has as well. He doesn’t challenge Jesus to see who’s more powerful: the legion of demons or the Son of the Most High God. The demons know full well the answer to that question. They know that they are no match for the Son of the Most High God. And all they want to do is get away from Him. But — and it’s a big but — they can’t get away from Him without His word of permission. He not only has control over the wind and the waves of the Sea of Galilee, over nature itself. He has control over the ability of the demons to move. They’re held captive to the word of Jesus. He is so much more powerful than the legion of demons. The demons had to stay put and squirm until Jesus decides their fate.
The demons beg Jesus. They beg Him not to send them into the abyss. In the ancient world, the abyss was a general term. It meant a place of torment and destruction and despair. It’s hell even for the demons. It’s a place where Satan reigns. It’s a place where all the demons and unbelievers will be sent on the last day, judgment day, never to escape. The book of Revelation tells us a little bit about the nature of the abyss. Revelation 20:1–3: “Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, holding in his hand the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain. And he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years, and threw him into the pit, and shut it and sealed it over him.”
The demons beg Jesus for a kind of mercy. And Jesus even grants a measure of mercy to the demons themselves. They have to get away from Jesus. So they ask permission to enter a nearby herd of pigs. Jesus ultimately grants their request, and as soon as the demons enter the pigs, the herd rushes down a steep bank into the lake and they’re all drowned. It was a brief reprieve from the abyss.
The demons were gone, though, sent away by the Son of the Most High God. And now the herdsmen go into the city and they tell the people what has happened. And a great crowd gathers and marches out to see this Jesus of Nazareth. They find the man who was previously possessed, but he’s no longer possessed. And he’s no longer running around like a madman. He’s sitting at the feet of Jesus, listening to Jesus teach him theology: the law and the gospel from the Old Testament. The formerly possessed man is now wearing clothes, and he’s in his right mind.
Now that the demons are gone, the man isn’t trying to get away from Jesus. He’s been made clean. He wants to sit with his Savior. He wants to hear Jesus’s words. He wants to learn what the text in the Old Testament has to say about this man, the Son of the Most High God.
As for the crowd, they’re no longer afraid of the formerly possessed man. Instead, they’re now afraid of Jesus, the Son of the Most High God. Verse 37 says, “Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes asked him to depart from them, for they were seized with great fear.”
Now, we would expect that the people would be appreciative that Jesus tamed this wild man, drove the demons away, and now they can dwell a bit more securely than they had previously known. But it might be because they had a lot of money invested in that herd of pigs. Jesus might have cost them an awful lot of money. After all, it looks to me like they chose to worship the idol of money and food rather than the Son of the Most High God who would provide them gladly their daily bread and all good things. But they’re not interested.
But it’s more likely they were all aware that Jesus wouldn’t be getting along with their pagan gods and their pagan rituals and their pagan religions. They see Jesus as one who has come to deliver them from the religions that they like: from the way of life and thinking that they had inherited from their ancestors. In fact, though they’re not possessed by a legion of crazy demons, their unbelief prompts the same response towards Jesus in them that the demons prompted in the previously possessed man. And since it’s their territory, they want Him to go away.
Although the people respond in the same way as the demons, Jesus treats them differently. Against the demons, He stood His ground and demonstrated His power over the demons and sent them away, ultimately to be drowned in the lake. But Jesus treats people differently than demons. He doesn’t overpower them. He honors their request. He departs.
It’s not that He’s too weak to do anything else. Rather, while He has the gifts of grace and life, He wants to give those gifts to these people. But Jesus never compels us to believe. He never compels us to receive. He simply offers and empowers and lets the person go their way. They either follow Him or they don’t. So when Jesus delivers the man from the demons, He is saying to the Gerasenes, “I have come to deliver you from sin, death, and the power of the devil.” But they don’t want deliverance. They want Jesus to go away.
Not unlike our family and friends and neighbors and communities, cities, our country, who now want nothing to do with Jesus or His bride, the church. They have their lives and their gods, and they are all good with that. The Gerasenes were saying in effect, “What have you to do with us? We don’t want you around, Jesus.” So Jesus gives them what they want: their sin, their isolation, their death before a righteous God. But Jesus doesn’t leave them without a witness. Though the author of grace and life departs, He continues through one man’s story.
For the man who was healed wants to stick with his Savior and be in His presence. Verse 38. And Jesus sent him, the formerly possessed man, away, saying, “Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.” The man does as instructed, and even more: he doesn’t just proclaim it to his own household, to his own kinfolk. He went away proclaiming throughout the whole city how much Jesus had done for him. He lives in a city that wants nothing to do with Jesus. But he tells the entire city what Jesus has done for him. He’s now God’s instrument declaring salvation to a people who sit in darkness. He is God’s merciful witness, in the hope that those who sent Jesus away might repent and still believe in Him. Now he has something to do with Jesus. He has everything to do with Jesus.
Luther retold a story in his day that used to circulate in the medieval period. The story goes like this: that the devil went to church one day, and as the people recited the Nicene Creed, it was customary for them to bow at the words “and was made man” — a recognition of Jesus’s incarnation for our salvation. When the man next to the devil didn’t bow in reverence, the devil hit him so hard as to make his head split. And he said in part, “If God had become an angel like me, and the congregation said, ‘God was made an angel,’ I would not only bend my knees, I’d bend my whole body to the ground. Yes, I would crawl down into the ground. And you vile human creature, you stand there like a stick or a stone. You hear that God did not become an angel but became a man like you, and you just stand there like a stick or a piece of wood.”
The fable makes the point that Jesus didn’t in fact come as an angel. He didn’t come to save fallen angels. He came to save fallen man. So He came as a man. He gives no quarter to the demons, aside from a brief reprieve from the abyss for a moment. He simply forces them to go where He wants them to be. There’s no negotiating or fighting with the demons. There’s no somehow mediating between right and wrong and meeting someplace in the middle. There is the right and the righteous, and there is the wrong and the unrighteous. There’s no negotiation. The demons aren’t getting a fair fight.
On the other hand, look how merciful Jesus is to the possessed man among the tombs. He’s the most unclean of the unclean, but he is not below the Savior’s mercy. Jesus speaks to deliver him from the Legion’s grip. He sets him free from sin, death, and the power of the devil. He makes him clean and holy in the eyes of God the Father Almighty. That’s certainly all he’s doing. It’s not like the demon-possessed man was asking for help, but He proclaims it, and the man believes.
But while the cleansing and the deliverance is all He’s doing, He doesn’t force it upon anybody. Grace is a gift, and gifts are never compelled. When the other people don’t want Him, He doesn’t say, “You’re stuck with me.” He simply gets into the boat and departs. That’s one of the lessons of the text: look at how merciful the Lord is with you and with me.
Another is this: that no one’s gone too far, sunk too deep into sin, to be saved. If anyone would be, it would be the ravaging, naked Gentile who lives among the dead. But not so. Jesus finds him, saves him, and the man is delivered and given eternal life. The man wasn’t beyond the mercy of Jesus, and neither are you.
But the devil is crafty. He’ll twist the miracle to convince you of something else. Namely, that Jesus is really only necessary for people who are in that bad a shape. Think of the naked man among the tombs possessed by the devil. And know that this is where the devil wants to put you. No matter how much wealth or power or personal satisfaction, any sin or negligence on your part, the end goal is to leave you like that man was: ashamed, tormented, and dwelling among the dead.
Now, your sins may not live with you, and you may not live among the tombs, but they may take you to the village of the Gerasenes. In other words, they may gradually lead you away like the villagers who say, “We’re doing fine on our own. We’re content with our own gods, our own religion, our own way of thinking, our own rituals. We want Jesus somewhere else other than in our daily lives.” That’s the plight of so many today. They don’t feel particularly opposed to Jesus Christ in his grace, but neither do they seem to have a need for Him. But like the villagers, when Jesus comes in power on the last day, they will become afraid. They’ll want nothing to do with Him. They’ll want Him to go away, but it’ll be too late. They will want to be somewhere else, but they won’t be able to get there.
The good news for you is that there is no need for fear of God in a person like you, one who repents and has true Christian faith. And people live in fear all the time: fear of death, fear of trouble, fear of finances, fear of what might happen to their family or their friends, fear of consequences of things that have already taken place. All of that fear results in sin. And all of that leads people to fear God. But by faith you know that Christ has not come to bring more fear to you, but rather freedom and peace with God the heavenly Father. He declares that He has died and descended into hell for you, so that you will never be relegated to the abyss, and He has risen to give you new life, and He clothes you with His very own righteousness. That’s the epistle reading: “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.” He sets your mind right, trusting in His unfailing love.
By His grace, you are not the ones who ask, “What do you have to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?” Instead, you know and confess the good news that Christ has done everything for you and to you necessary unto salvation. He has cleansed you of your sin and joined you to Himself through the church forever and ever. It is by His work and His word you are delivered from sin, death, and the power of the devil, because your sins are forgiven. Even to the deepest poor. Amen.
May the peace that surpasses all understanding keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.