Matthew chapter 8, verse 28 to 34.

And it says, When He came down to the other side of the country of the Gadarenes, two demon-possessed men met Him coming out of the tombs, so fierce that no one could pass that way. And behold, they cried out, What have you to do with us, O Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time?

Now a herd of many pigs was feeding at some distance from them, and the demons begged Him, saying, If you cast us out, send us away into the herd of pigs. And He said to them, Go. So they came out and went to the pigs, and behold, the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea and drowned in the waters. And the herdsmen fled, and going into the city, they told everything, especially, what had happened to the demon-possessed men. And behold, all the city came out to meet Jesus. And when they saw Him, they begged Him to leave their region. I remember growing up very young and times I would spend time over at my grandparents’ house and just be with my grandmother. I don’t know why it was a thing, but we ate pretzels and dipped them in ranch. It was just a thing we did. It was weird, but I wouldn’t eat that now. But you did. But we watched Bonanza. You remember the show Bonanza? Or shows like The Rifleman, Matt Dillon, all those good shows, you know, or any given John Wayne film. There’s something really satisfying about

Westerns because it’s basically the same plot. Like, there’s these bad guys, they’ve overrun the town, and the gunslinger comes into town to clean it up. And like, you know, the dopey sheriff couldn’t do anything about it, but now this hero figure is there and he’s taking care of everything, and he rides off into the sunset, you know, and everything is well and good.

I think sometimes at the expense of justice, of right and wrong, I think our culture, our society, we deeply want to see Jesus just as this very loving, gentle figure. And Jesus is loving, and Jesus is gentle, but Jesus is also a God of righteousness, He’s a God of holiness. And as much as we don’t like to dwell on that aspect of God’s character, it’s there. It’s very much so there. And much like a gunslinger, Jesus is going to come around one day and Jesus will deal with right, and Jesus will deal with the wrong. And I want us to kind of look at this passage this morning and kind of ask ourselves, are we sure we’re on the right side? When Jesus comes around, are we safe? Have we surrendered? Okay. So go back to verse 28 with me.

It says, And when He came to the other side, to the country of the Gadarenes, two demon-possessed men met Him, and coming out of the tomb so fierce that no one could pass that way. And behold, they cried out, What have you to do with us, O Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time? Now a herd of many pigs was feeding at some distance from them, and the demons begged Him, saying, If you cast us out, send us away into the herd of pigs. And He said, Go. So they came out and went to the pigs, and behold, the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea, and they drowned in the waters.

So Jesus, He gets out of the boat. Remember, we saw the healings before, and Jesus calms the storm, and the disciples see how wonderful, how wonderful this Jesus is, that He can calm the storms. But here He is getting off the boat at the other side of the Sea of Galilee, and these two demon-possessed men run up and they fall down in front of Him. And these demon-possessed men, they’ve been entirely cut off from society. They’re entirely possessed by these demons. Matthew’s account is actually the shortest. Luke and Mark give quite a bit more detail. What we discover in the Gospel of Luke and in the Gospel of Mark is that these demons actually were for a time chained down. Not the demons the men were, but the demons made the men so supernaturally strong they could rip through the chains. They could rip through the shackles, and they would cut themselves with rocks. And it says they cry out day and night, and they would attack people, and often the demons would drive them out into the desert. So these men are helplessly violent against themselves. They’re helplessly violent against others, so much so that no one can pass the way of the tomb, the tombs of the graveyard, out of fear of being attacked.

And they come and they cry out to Jesus,

not to worship Him, but to question His presence. They don’t like that Jesus is there. They don’t want it. A time will come when they must meet with Jesus and get their due penalty for defecting to Lucifer’s camp, for waging war against God’s kingdom, for oppressing the church, but that’s not yet. And there’s no time for that. There’s no question, not even for the demons, that that time will come. They’re not questioning Jesus’ position, His power, His authority. They’re at the mercy of Jesus, and they know that all they’re trying to do is prolong the inevitable. And what’s inevitable for them is a certain destruction.

And Jesus responds by demanding. Demanding they come out of the men. And He asks them their name. And again, I’m pulling from the other accounts. And they say, our name is Legion. For we are many. Now, how many demons were there? Well, Matthew Poole reminds us that a Roman legion in the army was 12,500 men. So, were there that many? It’s hard to say. All we know is that there are somehow a whole lot of demons

possessing these men. And their plea is, don’t send us out of the country. Please don’t send us to the abyss. Again, other accounts reveal this. Now, what’s the abyss? If we kind of put all scriptures together, we can say the abyss is like this shadowy underworld. It’s like a netherworld where souls go. It’s a place of the dead. It’s a place of terror. We’ve seen in the Revelation, it’s like the bottomless pit. It’s described there. And it’s the place from which evil comes. It’s the place from which evil originates. Kind of the apocalypse. It has a major role there. So, whatever that place is, somehow they’re not there yet. And they really don’t want to go there until they have to go there. So, that’s all we can say about the abyss. It’s some really terrible place that even demons don’t want to go.

And I think when we get to that point, I’m thinking, well, too bad. Jesus is getting ready to send you to the abyss. Like, what else would Jesus possibly do with these demons but send them to the abyss? But Jesus doesn’t do that. Jesus, in His wisdom, He honors their request. And He says, okay, go. And He grants this request that they go into this herd of 2,000 pigs. These pigs run down a steep bank. They drown. We can only assume that frees the demons to continue on in their tyranny.

Charles Spurgeon says, we need not dread the powers of hell. They fly in a confused manner before our Lord.

I want to say, if it seems like a strange thing, and it does seem strange, maybe even it seems, maybe it seems wrong as to why Jesus would let these demons go longer for a time. Here’s what you and I need to remember. Okay? These demons, long before they had possessed these men, while they were possessing these men, and long after they possessed these men, all the way up to the present day, they’ve always been under the authority of Jesus. Those demons and all of evil have always been under the thumb of Jesus, never allowed to do what Jesus has at first, allowed them to do, despite what it looks like in our life, despite what it looks like in our world.

I want to say to you this morning that true disciples are always aware of Jesus’ indisputable power over His enemies, which are our enemies, right? In 1 Peter, the Apostle Peter says, be sober-minded. He says, be watchful. Your adversary, the devil, he prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone, someone to devour. So in other words, I think if we’re going to live with this very healthy, which we have to have, a very healthy, conquering awareness of God’s power over the forces of evil, I think we’ve got to do that thing that a lot of people today, what we don’t do is spend enough time realizing, admitting the fact we actually have an enemy. It’s not fiction. And if we can’t see the enemy, friends, we’re not looking for him. Without question, we’ll be flanked. We’ll be attacked. We’ll be overwhelmed. I don’t think the Apostle Peter throws around the words roaring lion lightly. I don’t think Jesus said Satan is a strong man who needs to be bound haphazardly. He’s there, right? He’s not a character in the Bible. Satan is not somewhere else on another continent. He may be here right now in this room doing his best to keep you from hearing my voice. He may be here right now in this room doing his best to keep you from hearing my sermon.

So it’s no wonder that Satan is described as a crafty, deceitful serpent. He’s a disguiser pretending so often to be an angel of light. So Satan has a great power. He has great knowledge. He has great abilities unparalleled except those of Christ. And so the aim here for this morning is not to make you paranoid, right? I’m saying this like, where is he? The aim is not to make us paranoid, okay? I want to give us what we need and that’s a godly awareness of the forces of evil so that we wouldn’t be overwhelmed by them. And here it is, friends. You and I live in a very, very pragmatic, we live in a very skeptical age. Like if I want to see it with my eyes, I want to hear it, I want some real hard proof, right? And all that does, living in that kind of society, it primes us even inside the church to be especially prey to the unseen. Paul says this though in Ephesians 6.12

So it’s not paranoia that’s going to help us. It’s a godly awareness of the fight we’re in, the enemy we have as those that bear the mark, the marks of Christ.

And if that’s scary, that’s because it should be scary. I think with these demoniacs, if they couldn’t help themselves and all this is true, who’s to help us? What am I really to do about that in life if these demons are so loose and they’re real? We trust in God. God would help us. God will help us. Jesus did help us. As pervasive as evil is in our lives, in our world, God is always perfectly, indisputably in control. You remember Job. Job who was righteous. Job who loved God. And it seemed from Job’s perspective, out of nowhere, he lost his fortune. He lost his health. He lost his family. And he lost it all by the hand of Satan. But do we not see God in the very beginning of Job say, Hey, Satan, your hand can only do this and no more. Right? You can do this and you can’t do that. Satan needs God’s permission. He needs God’s permission to do anything. Just as these demons need God’s permission to do anything. That’s always the way that it is. And I think that seems to

probably, I think, immature disciples to even non-disciples, non-believers. I think that seems really strange. It seems cruel. I think we’re pushed to reason, well, why does God let evil happen at all? Like, why does God ever let that start? Or why does He let the devil and demons have any kind of territory? And here’s the difficult answer, and it’s going to take a lot of spiritual godliness. It’s going to take a lot of faith to believe. Here’s the reason why God allows evil to persist. For His own glory.

God will never allow a thing to come to pass if it has not been purposed to bring about a greater magnification of who He is and His power and His holiness, which in turn draws us in to greater love and affection of who He is.

It belongs to the mysterious wisdom of God as to why He employs evil. But we see it so clear in Scripture, don’t we? Go all the way back to the garden. What happens there? We say things like, well, how come God didn’t stop Adam and Eve? Like, why did He allow that to happen? He knew it was going to happen, right? Go all the way to the book of Revelation, to the Antichrist, and it looks like, oh my gosh, Satan has completely won. Like, he’s taken over everything. Look about your own life. Have you not seen it? Have you not seen great evils in your life? Have you turned on the news lately and looked at the world around you? Friends, if anything’s true, it’s true that God is allowing evil to run a course in this world. But I really believe that we will run out on God faster than we can blink if we can’t refuse or if we refuse to accept that God places evil in our life. Authentic discipleship requires we see it as a means God is bringing glory to Himself, okay? So I’m going to read John 9, 1-4, okay? And don’t miss this verse.

And it says, As He passed by, He saw a man blind from birth. And His disciples said, Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? So hey, Jesus, this guy that’s got a really bad life, he’s been born blind, he’s a beggar. How come this great evil is in his life? Is it because he did something wrong or his parents did something wrong?

Jesus says, no, no, fellas. It’s not that this man sinned, or his parents, but so that the glory, the works of God would be displayed in his life.

Would I have done it that way? Would you have done it that way?

No, friends, but that’s where you and I need godly humility to say, I’m not God, and His ways and His thoughts are higher than mine. And whatever He’s doing, however He’s employing evil, He’s doing it for His glory, and He’s doing it in a way that’s going to, bring him the maximum amount of glory. So if I’m following Jesus, what I need is just a passion for the glory of God and trust that he knows what he’s doing. And in the end, all things then will be made plain and clear. But in the now I’m trusting and I’m following in the midst of evil that I see in my life. God is trying to give you and I through evil, a greater, more satisfying picture of how powerful and how wonderful he is. We see in the presence of evil, the depths to which we have fallen, but oh, how we see the heights that God would lift us up and rescue us. I can’t explain that, but by grace, friends, and humility, we accept that.

And I want to say this, the indisputable power of God over the enemies of darkness. Friends, we know that we can have that in our lives. You know, I’m not saying that we can’t have that in our lives, but I’m saying that we can have that in our lives. You know why? Because we get the greatest picture of it in the cross of Christ. Jesus, the first, Jesus, the last, Jesus, who is Alpha, Jesus, who is Omega. He had no beginning and he’ll have no end. And he created the world and he created angels and he created demons. He created Satan like Jesus, who created everything, bore the sins of the world. And he was nailed to a cross and he was spat upon and mocked and he was beaten, not because God allowed it to come to pass in the moment, but friends, because God willed it. Acts 2.22, men of Israel, Peter speaking at Pentecost, Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst. As you yourselves know, this Jesus delivered up according to what did God will. He willed evil to come to pass in Jesus’ life. The definite plan and foreknowledge of God. That’s why Jesus was crucified. You crucified him and you killed him by the hands of lawless men. But God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death. God willed that the greatest evil would come to pass in Jesus’ life. But you know, through Jesus’ experience, the greatest of evils, Jesus secured the greatest of power and authority over it. Jesus, by bearing all evil, though Satan laughed for the moment, you know what? Jesus, when he came up out of that grave, he broke the teeth of the serpent. He crushed the head of the serpent. His heel was bruised, but Satan’s head was once for all crushed. And Jesus holds the indisputable power over evil. So when you and I believe in Christ and we have Christ in the spirit, whatever evil we have going on, whatever bad things happen, we know that Jesus has experienced all evil and all wrong. And since he saw the cross through to the grave and back to life again, whatever I’m experiencing, God’s going to give me power to get through that. And through me, enduring that with the power of Christ in me, it’s only going to draw me closer and closer and closer to God. That’s why God’s using evil in your life and mine. It’s a tough thing, but it’s what God’s doing to bring himself glory and to do good to you and I.

Truly, we must say with Paul, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

But I want you to keep this in mind. The knowledge of the cross does not give you and I an immunity towards the blows that God allows Satan to give us, the tactics, the schemes of Satan. It gives us access to the power. So let’s look all the way at the end of Revelation chapter 20, verse 7.

John says, And when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be released from his prison and will come out to deceive the nations that are the foreclosures, corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them for battle. Their number is like the sand of the sea. And they marched up over the broad plain of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the beloved city. But fire came down from heaven and consumed them. And the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were. And they will be tormented day and night forever and ever. That will happen. It hasn’t happened. So you know what that means is in the meantime, you and I have to be about the work of fighting, of resisting the devil. Grace does not give us immunity. Grace creates the responsibility of discipleship. OK, you don’t get saved and I’m done. God has shown you and I grace and he’s raised us back up to spiritual life that you and I would apprehend Christ, that we would resist Satan, that we take up the sword of the Spirit, that we pray without ceasing. So as much as God has given you and I grace and power to live, friends, you’ve got a very real responsibility to withstand the enemy, to fight back, to take ground for the kingdom of God. That’s something that you and I get to do together. And the journey is long and the journey is hard and the enemy is great. But I say to you, the cross of Christ is proof that there’s more than enough power for you and I to meet the challenge and to meet the responsibility well, to meet it. To meet it with joy, to meet it with hope. So that’s an active awareness, I think, of of God’s indisputable power over every enemy at work in your life and in mine.

You remember Joseph in the Old Testament?

His brothers throw him into slavery and spends his whole life away from his father and he gets accused of adultery and he gets thrown in prison for a long time. And. Finally, at the end of his life, dad passes away. The brothers come. Hey, Joseph, now that dad’s gone, what are you going to do to us? Remember this? And Joseph is really, I believe it says he weeps. He’s broken that they would even ask. And he says, no, no. What you meant for evil, God meant for good. God meant it for good. Right. He’s always in control. But I want to answer this question. I think sometimes we hear. We hear that like, great. But this is like we talked about faith a couple of weeks ago. Like, how do I get more faith? Is there some secret formula? Somebody’s keeping from me somewhere. You have to go to seminary to get that formula. Like, where do I get more faith? And I think it’s the same question. What does it mean to really live in the power of God? And so I just want to give you a few thoughts. First one is this. The scriptures tell us to be alert. Right. To be mindful. So mistake number one on the battlefield. You can’t just wake up and last minute and I’m throwing on wrinkles. Clothes. I’m driving to work and blah. And I come home and eat dinner. My kids. Life is not something to just stroll through. You’ve got to be making a strategic plan for life. Like Satan, you’re there. I know you’re there. So I’m just going to be alert and see how you’re trying to attack me with temptations. Maybe God’s going to allow you to do something bad in my life. But I’m not going to let it catch me off guard because I’m always pressing into who Jesus is. I’m always thinking about the reality that I am in a battle. So. So when Satan does attack me, it’s not going to catch me off guard. I’m always alert. The second thing I want to say to you, this is humble submission and prayer. James says, when we draw near to God, God will draw near to us. When we ask God for power, he’ll give it. What does Paul say to the Colossians? I’m praying that you would be strengthened according to God’s glorious might. So you cannot forsake probably your greatest weapon in resisting and fighting. Even that’s prayer. And I know we talk about prayer a lot. And I hope we always talk about prayer because we can’t get over, you know, the access we have to the general. Like I got a general up there and I’m, hey, this is going on down here. I need you to drop these supplies. So constantly praying for more power in my life. And the last thing, and Paul says this in Romans 15, is friends, when you believe, when you believe in the spirit, he gives you power. So, so there is this very real sense. That like either you is or you ain’t in the Christian life. Like if I believe that I’m a follower of Jesus, I really just, I need to live with a constant belief that I have the third person of the Trinity in me. And he’s giving me power. Like I need to live in that belief. What is the opposite of belief? When we talk about this, it’s despair. Like, oh, I can’t get over that sin. Oh, what if something bad happens to me? Oh, that’s, that’s not, that’s not how you live if you have the Holy Spirit. So again, I’m mindful. I’m alert. I’m praying without ceasing. I’m asking. I’m praying for it. And I’m just believing that the spirit’s really there and the spirit’s going to do what the spirit does to empower me to follow Jesus.

Go back to verse 33.

Now it says the herdsmen fled and going into the city, they told everything, especially what had happened to the demon possessed men. And behold, all the city came out to meet Jesus. And when they saw him. They begged him to leave their region.

So they see Jesus cast out, which this would be a site, wouldn’t it? Cast these demons out of these men. And they go into their herd of Mark tells us it’s 2000 pigs. And they see these pigs run into there. I think I would run to town and tell everybody I know this is just happened. You know, those crazy men. And, you know, they were so. Strong and all that come and see. And so everybody comes and sees. But this is where the story gets really unexpected. This is where the story really gets despicable. It’s not despicable with naked men calling themselves tearing through chains as much as you would think. Jesus handily dealt with that problem, didn’t he? That’s not that’s not what’s despicable. That’s not what that’s not what’s out of order here. What’s out of order here is the people’s response to who this Jesus is. And what this Jesus has done.

Even the demons, as vile as they were from ancient times, raging against God. Even they have enough respect to fall before him and to address him by the proper title. Not these people. The people saw the demon possessed men that could not be helped. That could not have a changed circumstance.

And yet they see these demon possessed men who wreak so much havoc on their life. Sitting. Sitting at Jesus feet, clothed and in their right mind. Matthew Poole says, surely they will fall down at his feet and beg more grace in favor of him that he would continue with him with them and be the author of more good amongst them. But that’s not what happens. It says when they see all this, they beg. It does not ask like, wow, that was cool, but we need you to go. It says they beg Jesus to get out. They beg. They beg Jesus to leave.

It seems the loss of pigs, which surely was a meaningful asset to their economy. There’s too great a loss. And two lives saved doesn’t mean near enough. They want no more of Jesus. They want less. They don’t want a greater measure of the wonders of heaven. Friends, they want an absence of them altogether. Here’s why. Why Jesus messed with their status quo.

Jesus saved them from their bare minimum, but they want their bare minimum back. Fear of the unknown of security and safety, even as bad as their life was with demon possessed men running around. They didn’t care. They didn’t want to part with it. So they were afraid not so much of what Jesus might give. They were afraid of what is Jesus going to possibly take or change?

And I’m almost wondering if you could ask these people, would you undo it? Would you see these two men demon possessed again? Also, you can get your two thousand pigs back. Would it be worth it? See how Jesus broke into their darkness, but they refused to celebrate it. They refused to see it as a good thing.

Jesus has power. But secondly, I want you to see that Jesus with that power will always bring. Very great, indisputable change in our lives. Here’s the difficult thing to believe. Jesus is always out for your good and you are always out for your bad.

Sin can only produce sin. Darkness can never show forth light. And for those who are under the bondage of sin and death, the presence of truth, the presence of life altogether absent. We are not what we are not. But Jesus has broken into our dark world. He’s broken into our lives to shine his light, to expose the darkness, to make us by grace what we are not. To show us what the wages of sin truly are. They are wages that deserve Jesus’s only death, only destruction. All that sinful people call good, all that people pursue and spend their life trying to get. Jesus shows it as the smallest and silliest of things. And he shows the way of heaven. He shows himself to be the greatest treasure. He shows the measure that could be ever had. He’s worth having at the loss of everything else. Not everything, probably even most things that you and I put in our hands and we call so valuable, has the value we give them. And Jesus shines his light and says, hey, see it from my perspective. And I think we can see Jesus’s perspective as a different kind of good or a different kind of bad. And I think if we see Jesus’s perspective on us and our life as a different kind of good, or a different kind of bad, it shows whether you and I are not love the light or whether we truly love the darkness. Remember those Israelites, all that God did, all that God provided, and oh, how they wanted to go back to Egypt. They pined for Egypt. God would have filled their hands with the treasure of Canaan. They would have had the straw and the clay to be slaves making bricks for the Egyptians. You know, it’s been said before, you can take the… People out of Egypt, but you can’t take Egypt out of those people. But compare those gatherings we’re looking at with the woman at the well. Remember the woman at the well? Jesus is like, hey, see it from my perspective. You are an adulteress. You are doing wrong. And she doesn’t say, get out of here. She says, she goes into town, just like those herdsmen did. And she says, hey, come meet a man that told me everything I ever did. Which he didn’t tell her everything she ever did, but he knew there was something different about this Jesus. He was the Messiah. And so all the people come, and we can only imagine that Jesus gives them the same punch He gives them. And hey, I’m the Messiah. This is what’s right. And what do the people say? They don’t say, get away. The people say in Samaria, Jesus, would you stay with us two days? Would you stay with us? And it says that they believed in Jesus. And they were changed. Friends, what do you want? It’s going to cost you your lesser. It’s going to cost you maybe what you find to be so valuable in your own hands. If we ask Jesus to stay around, He’s going to make changes. He’s going to take stuff away. But hear me say, He’ll always give back a harvest that we can never dream of. It comes down to a question of desire. What do you desire most? What do you want most? Who do you want most? What do you want most? What aren’t you? Who aren’t you willing to part with? Who aren’t you willing to part with? There you’ll find your life. There you’ll find your love. There you will find truly even your God. The people that we love, our own health, our personal fortunes. Jesus oftentimes makes painful changes in these surroundings, not to hurt us. I know it’s a difficult thing to hear, but to heal us, to change us, to make us more like Him. He’s so good. He won’t let us settle for second best, even in very good things. And children are very good things. And spouses are very good things. And money is not a bad thing. It’s a good thing, but it’s not Jesus. And Jesus wants to be treasured and valued above everything else. And He’ll do anything in our life that needs to be done. We’re at the place of saying, Jesus, at the cost of all change, I have you and you are enough.

How much do we really want Jesus?

Grace. Grace. That’s the only thing I think that can keep you and I, who are so easily satisfied with food and drink and a roof over our head. Grace is the only thing that keeps us desiring and living for Christ. I remember Esau, for a bowl of soup, he traded his birthright. Friends, let it not be said of us. That we’re willing to give up Jesus. Let those words never come into our minds. Let those words never come out of our mouth. Depart from me, Jesus. No. No.

Have you ever heard of Stockholm Syndrome? Stockholm Syndrome is a psychological term coined in the 70s. In a Swedish bank in the 70s, this man took hostage a bank. And he took, I believe it was two females and one male. Hostage. And over the period of a couple of days, they not only liked their captor, but they were totally, completely on his side in allegiance to him. They thought the cops were a bad guy. They were very affectionate with him. One of them even called him our emergency God. And so when they finally brought him out, they hugged and they kissed one another. And they pleaded with the cops to keep him safe. They visited him while he was in prison. It’s bizarre. It’s bizarre, isn’t it? So it’s called Stockholm Syndrome. And as awkward and weird as you think it would be to get Stockholm Syndrome, friends, do you and I get it all the time?

All the time. You and I can see about this far in front of our faces. And I just want my little life. And I just want to be happy. And I’m just kind of comfortable here. And if we could just hit the pause button, I could just kind of live in my own happy, comfortable world and get what I want, experience what I want. I’m good. And Jesus is like, no. The prince of the power of the air, the spirit that’s at work and the sons of disobedience. Like he’s ruling here. Jesus is going to come and shut this place down. Don’t love this place. That’s Stockholm Syndrome. Spiritual Stockholm Syndrome. Maybe I coined that. I don’t know if anybody’s ever said that. But friends, you and I, we have that so often. And I need Jesus. And I know I’m saying hard things this morning to myself. I need Jesus to make me uncomfortable. I need Jesus to make change. I need Jesus to make changes in my life so I don’t just partially, halfway pay homage to him. Like, yeah, I’m a Christian. Yeah, I say the right thing. Yeah, I do the right thing. Like, no, I want to be with Paul and I want to die. I want to give up everything so that it can be said I’ve gained Christ. And I think that’s got to be a burning passion we live with. Don’t be a Sunday morning Christian. Don’t be an American Christian. Jesus isn’t here to just make your life better. He’s not here to give you some therapy. He’s here to kill you off and raise you up. A new life in himself for eternity. It’s totally different. Do you really, really, really want Jesus? I want Jesus.

I need a mind set on eternity. I need Jesus to give me almost tunnel vision where I’m just seeing him. I need to hold everything in my hands loosely. I need the Lord to give and I need the Lord to take so that in everything, I can say, blessed be the name of the Lord. I need grace to save me and I need grace to help me endure to the very end. And so do you.

In Mark chapter five, I want to read the ending that Matthew doesn’t give.

Mark chapter five, verse 18.

It says, as Jesus was getting into the boat,

the man who had been possessed with demons begged him that he might be with him. And Jesus did not permit him, but said to him, go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you and how he has had mercy on you. And he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him. And everyone marveled. You know, this man got his life back. You know, like maybe he had a wife, at least one of these men. Maybe he had a wife and children. Maybe he could have just gone home and gone back to the plan and started working again and saving up money for nice vacations. And, you know, maybe he just could have gone back to it. And I’m sure he would have been grateful that Jesus healed him.

But it’s not what happens at all in this man, is it? He experienced the indisputable power of God in his life. He was changed by Jesus. And it gave him a taste for heaven. He couldn’t go back. There was nothing to go back to. He was surrendered to Jesus. Jesus had Jesus’ way in that man’s life.

When Jesus comes around, Jesus gets his way.

And you say, well, nuh-uh. He didn’t have his way with those Gadarenes. They gave him the boot.

They didn’t give him the boot. Jesus is going to get his way with them. Look at me in Revelation. Revelation chapter 18, verse 9. It says, And the kings of the earth who committed sexual immorality and lived in luxury with her

will weep and wail over her when they see the smoke of her burning. They will stand far off in fear of her torment and say, Alas, alas, you great city, you mighty city Babylon, for in a single hour your judgment has come.

Babylon is, is, will be a great city at the end times and it will be a place of immeasurable wealth and all the kings that follow the Antichrist and all the merchants as Jesus comes and he wipes the city out and Jesus’ great power is shown, the change Jesus brings to come and they have no repentance. They weep over Babylon. They weep that they lost their little city of the Gadarenes. They lost their pigs. They’re weeping because Jesus, Jesus has brought destruction on their city and Jesus has brought destruction on them. So I say to you again, Jesus has come around and Jesus is coming back around. I wonder if in this first time that he’s come around, friends, do you and I want to surrender to the power of heaven, be set free from the bondage of sin and death? Do you and I want to be changed into the image of Christ, readied for eternal life in the kingdom of heaven? Our joy and our peace and our life will have no end. If we don’t want that, Jesus will respect that decision.

But he’s coming back around, friends, and he’s slinging the gun and he’s even going to ride off into the sunset with his bride and that’s the church. And I want to be right there at Jesus’ side when he commences a new heaven and a new earth. That’s just the life, that’s the peace that Jesus is offering to you and I if we surrender. So again, I want to ask, I want to ask you, are you a Christian in general or have you surrendered to Jesus? Is he your Lord? Is he your life? Don’t settle for anything less than all of Christ. It’ll cost you all you have, but it’ll be infinitely more than you ever have had. Alright?

Let’s pray.

Father, I know that there is danger and familiarity.

We live in a time and place where we can hear about you often. We can hear the Gospel often. Lord, my prayer is that it wouldn’t fall on deaf ears, that we wouldn’t have callous hearts, that we would be broken down in the most callous, hard spot of our heart.

Lord, what idol we’re hanging on to, what safety, security we’re hanging on to. Lord, that there wouldn’t be one thing that we love more than you. Not our time, not our money,

not our safety.

Oh, by your grace, we would set everything aside. Father, to be found in your Son, Jesus. That’s nothing I can do. It’s something we can do. It’s something only your Spirit can do. I just pray you would just awaken a greater desire, a greater faith,

to be the people of God, to desire Christ to come and change us and keep us to the very end, Lord.

Lord, I pray we would be like the healed demoniac and we would say, Jesus, what do you want me to do? Who do you want me to be?

Lord, we just pray for this.

And we know that as difficult and as impossible as that person is, suit is for us oh how possible things are with God so we ask it

and we ask in faith and because we’ve asked in faith we’re going to believe that it’s going to happen Lord we’re going to believe that it’s going to happen

in this we pray in Jesus name Amen