The Church That Christ Builds (Repost)

The following is the text of a sermon preached on 18 May 2008.

We gather here tonight one week after Pentecost, that wonderful miraculous day when the Holy Spirit was poured out on Christ’s church, and we gather as part of Christ’s church. We also gather knowing that the highest court of our own denomination, the General Assembly is meeting in Edinburgh this week, and that our own minister, Howard, is going to play his part in making the decisions that will affect the church this year and perhaps for many years to come.

And so on a night like this, we look not at this or that Christian writer’s latest book on “How to do Church” nor do we look at reports of this or that General Assembly committee, but we turn instead to some words about the Church that come from higher authority than even the General Assembly. We turn to again at part of what our Lord Jesus Christ, the King and Head of the Church, himself taught about the Church in Matthew 16:18 where we find the words we are going to concentrate on this evening:

“And on this rock I will build my Church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

There are five things for us to have a look at in these words of Christ tonight.

There is a building: “My Church.”
There is a builder: Jesus Christ says “I will build my Church.”
There is a foundation: “On this rock I will build”
There is opposition and danger: “The gates of hell”
And there is the promise of safety and security: “The gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

So first, there is a building: “My Church.” Before any of the rest of this verse can be properly understood, it is crucial that we understand what this building, the Church is. It is a very special kind of building you see. It is a building not made of bricks or stone or marble or wood. It is a temple, but not one built by human hands, not one we can see standing on the earth. There is no cathedral, no temple, no chapel, no church building that you can see anywhere in the world and point to it or photograph it on holiday and say of it: “You see that place? That is the Church Christ is talking about in this verse.

No, the building being talked about by Jesus here, the building that he calls “my Church” is a great company of men, women and children. It is a spiritual building consisting of everyone who believes in the Lord Jesus Christ.

The word usually translated “Church” in English bibles here is the Greek word Ekklesia. And that’s a very interesting word. Literally it means “A Calling out” in the sense of people being called out to form “a gathering” or “an Assembly”. The Church is a group of people.

When William Tyndale first translated the New Testament he translated this verse as: “And
upon this rock I will build my congregation: and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

The New Jerusalem Bible translates it: "And on this rock I will build my community. And the gates of the underworld can never overpower it."

So this Church that Christ talks about is a congregation or community of people, not a collection of buildings or any human institution calling itself a church. It is not any particular denomination or branch of the church. It is not the Church of Scotland, or the Free Church of Scotland, or the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, or the Episcopal Church, or the Methodist Church, the Baptist Church or any Charismatic Church. And it is not the Russian or Greek Orthodox Churches or the Roman Catholic Church. None of these bodies are the “Church” that Christ referred to. None of them can claim to be definitively "His Church"though any and probably all of have members who are indeed part of the church Christ refers to here.

The Church in this verse consists of all true believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. It consists of all of God’s chosen people. It is the body of Christ, the flock of Good Shepherd, the Bride of the Lamb. It is the “one holy, Catholic and Apostolic church” that the Nicene Creed talks about.

It includes everyone who has repented of sin, and turned to Christ in faith. This membership of this Church is made up of all who have been washed in Christ’s blood, all who have been clothed in Christ’s righteousness, all who have been born again and sanctified by Christ’s Spirit.

J. C. Ryle says of it: "The Church of our text is one that makes far less show than any visible church in the eyes of men, but it is of far more importance in the eyes of God."

All the denominations, groups and fellowships we find in the world are visible churches. They are all human institutions to some extent, and they are all imperfect manifestations of Christ’s own church to some extent. But the Church of this verse is invisible, and it is not a human institution. It is an assembly or gathering of people from all over the world and throughout all of human history who form the covenant people of God, the people he chose, the people he saves, the people who have faith in him and follow him as their Lord.

J. C. Ryle gives an illustration of the difference between the various visible churches in the world and the one true, but invisible church made up of God’s chosen people who live by faith in Christ. He says that the visible churches of this world, be they Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Independent, Baptist, Charismatic, Reformed or Methodist are “the scaffolding behind which the great building is carried on.” The denominations are the scaffolding around the true Church of Christ, which is being built in the background.

Think of a mighty cathedral shrouded in scaffolding and plastic sheeting. The scaffolding is what is visible, but it is not itself the building being built. It is merely what can be seen, while within and behind the scaffolding, the real building work is going on. I think that’s a brilliant illustration. All this that we see around us, is merely scaffolding, while the real building work of saving souls and rescuing lives, of drawing men and women into a living covenant relationship with God and with fellow Christians is slowly, silently, relentlessly going on in the background.

The great congregation of the redeemed is the Church Christ talks about in this verse. Outside of this church, the body of Jesus Christ, the faithful congregation of all believers, there is no salvation. By definition this must be so since only believers in Christ can be saved.

Second, there is a builder: Jesus Christ. “I will build my Church…” says Christ. No one else can or will build it for him. He must build it with his own hands.

The prophet Zechariah said of the coming Messiah in Zechariah 6:12-13:

“Thus says the LORD of hosts, "Behold, the man whose name is the Branch: for he shall branch out from his place, and he shall build the temple of the LORD. It is he who shall build the temple of the LORD and shall bear royal honor, and shall sit and rule on his throne. And there shall be a priest on his throne, and the counsel of peace shall be between them both."

The Messiah will build the temple of the LORD. Not one part of the Church can be built without his work and his blessing.

It is Christ who calls the members of the Church to leave the world’s way and follow him. It is Christ who breathes spiritual life into sinners who were by nature dead in trespasses and sins. It is Christ who washes away their sins. It is Christ who gives them peace. It is Christ who gives them eternal life. It is Christ who grants them the gifts of repentance and faith. It is Christ who enables them to become God’s children.

He is the Alpha and Omega, the Author and Perfecter of faith. He is the life. He is the King and Head. From Him every part of the mystical body of Christians is supplied with all they need. Through Him they are strengthened for duty. By Him they are kept from falling. He preserves them to the end, and presents them faultless before the Father’s throne with exceeding great joy. He is all in all to all believers.

It is true that he does often carry on his work through subordinates, through human beings. He works through the preaching of his word, through the circulation and reading of the Scriptures, through Christian literature, through providential circumstances, through prayer, through church discipline, through fellowship and human friendships, through evangelism and mission. He works through all these things, but it is always Christ who is at work to build his Church.

Preachers preach, theologians write and discuss, but only the Lord Jesus Christ can build his Church. Not TV evangelists, not Popes, not even General Assemblies. Christ alone builds it.

Christ is the builder because of who he is and what he has done for his people. And that leads us to the next part of this verse.

Third, there is a foundation that Christ builds his Church on. “And on this rock I will build my Church.”

This is the most controversial part of this verse. There have been many different views put forward for what this foundation is that Christ will build on. The Roman Catholic Church of course say that the Church is built on the foundation of St Peter, the first pope, and on all the popes who have succeeded him to the office of Bishop of Rome. I don’t think it is too strong to say that such a view is totally without biblical warrant. Even if you interpret the verse to mean that Christ will build his church on the witness and work of the apostles and on Peter as the leading apostle, there is no way this verse can be used to justify the papacy. There’s no way these verses can be wrested to mean that. But actually, I don’t think that Christ was saying he would build his church on Peter at all.

Jesus says, “You are Peter and on this rock I will build my Church.” Notice that Christ did not say, “You are Peter and on you I will build my church.” And the rest of the New Testament does not give any real support for this either. Although we have two letters written by Peter in the New Testament, much more of the New Testament was written by John and especially by the apostle Paul for example. And far from being the infallible leader that the Church could be built on, though Peter was transformed by Christ and was one of the first leaders of the church, he was not perfect. He got things wrong. In Galatians 2:11, Paul says:

“But when Peter came to Antioch, I opposed him in public, because he was clearly wrong.”

Now of course “Peter” means rock and so that’s why the Catholic Church have used this verse to justify the doctrine of papal supremacy and papal succession. In effect they say that the verse says: “You are rock and on this rock I will build my Church.” But it’s very interesting when you look at the actual Greek words of our verse because two different words are used for “rock” in the sentence. Christ calls Peter “Petros” which is a masculine word referring to a stone or small rock, but when he says that he will build his church on “this rock” he uses the different word “Petra” which is a feminine word, referring to a large mass of rock, like a cliff or a mountain.

Also, it seems to me that Peter cannot be the foundation upon which the Church is built, because of what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 3:11:

“For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.”

I believe Christ’s meaning is properly conveyed if we translated the verse as “You are a stone, and on this rock I will build my church.” I believe what he meant was really “You are Peter – a little rock – but on the immovable rock of the truth that you have confessed – I will build my Church.” In other words, I think this verse teaches that Christ builds his Church on the truth of Peter’s confession, on the doctrine that Jesus is God’s Messiah and the Son of the Living God. These two truths lie at the heart of the Christian message, the gospel.

I agree with J C Ryle: “It was not Peter, the erring, unstable man, but the mighty truth which the Father had revealed to Peter. It was the truth concerning Jesus Christ Himself which was the rock. It was Christ’s mediatorship, and Christ’s Messiahship. It was the blessed truth that Jesus was the promised Saviour, the true Surety, the real Intercessor between God and man. This was the rock, and this the foundation, upon which the Church of Christ was to be built.”

When read in this light, we see that the rock solid foundation upon which the Church is built is not any person, not even the apostles personally, but on the truths concerning Jesus Christ that the apostles taught. This ties in much better with the rest of the New Testament and with other parts of Christ’s own teaching. For example in Matthew 7:24:

“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock.”

The gospel message that Christ is God’s chosen King and the Redeemer of his people is, I believe, the rock, upon which Christ builds his church.

Fourth, there is opposition and danger to this Church. Christ says that “the gates of hell” will try to oppose the Church that Christ builds.

In Bible times, cities were surrounded by walls. The gates by which they were entered were the principal places for holding courts, transacting business, and deliberating on public matters. The gates were where people made their plans, drew up their designs, negotiated deals and so on. The “gates of hell” it seems to me, refers to the plans and designs of Satan and his hellish minions against God and his purposes. The “gates of hell” are Satan’s evil plans against the Church.

It seems to me that the expression “the gates of hell” is a way of describing the spiritual forces in the heavenly realms that Paul mentions in Ephesians 6:12:

“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”

The Puritan commentator Matthew Henry wrote:

“The gates of hell are the powers and policies of the devil's kingdom, the dragon's head and horns, by which he makes war with the Lamb; all that comes out of hell-gates, as being hatched and contrived there. These fight against the church by opposing gospel truths, corrupting gospel ordinances, persecuting good ministers and good Christians; drawing or driving, persuading by craft or forcing by cruelty, to that which is inconsistent with the purity of religion; this is the design of the gates of hell, to root out the name of Christianity.”

History shows that Christ was correct in his view that the gates of hell – the powers of darkness – will always keep on trying to destroy his people. Such has been the case throughout history – both Old and New Testaments, and throughout this present gospel age. And the opposition and Satanic persecution of Christ’s people will go on until the end of the age.

The history of the Church, in all periods of history, is a story of conflict and war. This war between good and evil, between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of this world, has been going on since the beginning when Satan rebelled against God. It is one of the central and recurring threads that runs through the entire Bible. As far back as Genesis 3:15 we get the first glimpse of the war between Christ and Satan and between God’s people and Satan’s followers:

“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel."

That was true then and it is true now. The Church is always under attack by Satan. He hates Christ’s Church more than anything, except maybe the Holy Trinity. He hates us with an undying and virulent hatred. He is always stirring up opposition and trouble for Christians. The Church is the pillar of the truth and the guardian of the holy gospel that is able to make men wise unto salvation, and so Satan never tires of seeking to prevent the Church from spreading the gospel message and witnessing to Son of the living God to the world.

As J. C. Ryle says:

“Warfare with the powers of hell has been the experience of the whole body of Christ for six thousand years.”

There is no peace treaty between heaven and hell. The Church is always at war, never at peace with the world or the Prince of this world. It is always at war, always militant, always fighting. Its battle never ends. As Martin Luther said:

“Cain will go on murdering Abel as long as the Church is on the earth.”

Satanic opposition can come in hundreds of different ways. There can be direct assaults of course. There can be false teachers, heretics, who are thrown into the church lives wolves among sheep, to confound and confuse God’s saints with false doctrine and wrong teaching on how we should live.

But sometimes Satan’s opposition can be far more subtle. In fact I would say usually Satan’s opposition is far more subtle.

Do you ever get the feeling that when you try to get close to God or decide you’re going to do something for God, that you suddenly start to have problems you never had before? I know I do. It’s no accident that when I’m getting ready to take a service that’s precisely the time I seem to get a cold, or get toothache, or have something happen that distracts me from my purpose. It’s no accident that when a church decides it’s really going to concentrate on mission and outreach that it suddenly finds it’s members under attack from illnesses, bereavements, family problems, trouble in the workplace, falling out with friends. Satan doesn’t fight clean and fair. He fights dirty. And when Christians decide they are really going to live committed lives to their Lord and Saviour, Satan will do anything he can to stop that from happening.

That’s the gates of hell trying to rise up and stop us from being effective, obedient, loyal Christians.

But far from being surprised or scared when such things happen to us, actually we should expect it and rejoice when such opposition or persecution comes our way, for it means we are on the right track in our Christian lives. A church which faces no opposition or Satanic attack should be the one that is scared, not a church which does face the gates of hell rising against it.

Remember Christ’s words when such opposition comes and take heart. This is Matthew 5:10-12, part of the Beatitudes:

“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

And then also think about these words in 1 Peter 4:12-14:

“Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you.”

Things happen to us in life. Not everything is plain sailing. We go through hard times of suffering and loss and pain. Or we go through times of being mistrusted, disliked, mocked, and even hated because we have faith in Jesus Christ. The gates of hell are real and I don’t think there’s any Christian who is immune from such attack. It happens to us all.

Fifth, there is Christ’s promise of security and safety for his Church. “I will build my Church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.”

Take heart, Christians! Because as well as Christ’s warning about the gates of hell, there is also a promise that Christ makes to us in this verse, a promise all of us need to cling to and remember. Yes, the gates of hell will try to rise up and destroy us, but they cannot and will not succeed. The forces of evil will do battle with the Church, but they will never prevail against it. They will fight, but they cannot win. That is Christ’s promise to each and every Christian believer.

Have you ever thought about the emblem that came to symbolise the Presbyterian and Reformed Churches throughout Europe? It’s still the symbol used on the badge of the Church of Scotland to this day. It’s the burning bush. The first impression might be that this is a very strange symbol to choose. But actually it’s highly appropriate, not only because it symbolises God’s presence with this covenant people, but because that bush is always in the flames, always under fiery attack, but not consumed, never destroyed. “I will build my Church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.”

Only Christ’s church receives this promise from its King and Head. Other empires and earthly kingdoms rise and fall in human history. Think of the once mighty empires of the Persians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Vikings. Think of, in more recent times, the great empires of France and Britain. None of these earthly powers has stood the test of time. But Christ’s church stands and grows for ever. “The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdom of our God and of his Christ” as the Book of Revelation says.

The promise does not apply to all visible churches in this world however. In New Testament times there were churches all over the Middle East and what is now modern day Turkey. Today, few of those churches remain in existence. In Bridgeton there used to be six or more churches in the area now covered by this one parish church. Individual churches can disappear and close. This is especially true of churches that depart from Christ’s teaching, from the faith that was once delivered to the saints. Christ warned the seven churches to whom letters were sent at the start of the Book of Revelation that if they did not pay heed to what the Spirit was saying to the churches, Christ would remove their lampstand from its place – in other words remove his presence and the light of his glory from them – so they would cease to be churches at all. So, although the promise does not apply to every individual church, especially churches that are not faithful to Christ in their teaching and service, the promise does apply to Christ’s own church, to the great congregation of true believers in him. Against them, the gates of hell cannot prevail.

Even if Satan stirs up persecution so that Christians lose their lives, the gates of hell shall not prevail against this Church, because for Christian martyrs, death is only a doorway into Christ’s presence and eternal blessedness in heaven.

No matter what the enemies of the church do, whether they be worldly rulers, enemies within the church, or the cosmic forces of evil that work behind our human enemies, God’s people, God’s church shall never be overthrown. We have Christ’s own promise for that.

As the apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:8-10:

“We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.”

We can go through the mill in our sufferings. God sometimes puts us right into furnace with its blistering heat and searing pain. God puts us through it, but never without a good reason, there is always a purpose behind it, even if we cannot begin to imagine what it could be.

Romans 8:28: “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.”

In the 19th century, French troops liberated the prison of the Holy Inquisition in Rome. In one of the cells, a prisoner – probably a Protestant who had been excommunicated from the Church of Rome – had scratched some words on the walls. They read: “Blessed Jesus, they cannot cast me out of Thy true Church.” Not one single believer can be snatched out of Christ’s hand by the Devil and all his minions however hard they try.

The question each of us must consider tonight is whether we are truly members of Christ’s Church. Not members of the Church of Scotland – for that membership can save no man or woman. But members of the body of Christ, part of Christ’s great congregation who trust and follow him and for whom he died to redeem and save. For membership in that Church guarantees salvation.

“And on this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.”

Christian Struggles

This is the text of a sermon preached at the evening service on 26 April 2009 on 1 John 3:4-10.

I’m going to start by reading you a number of statements. After each one, I want you to put up your hand if you agree with what I say. Okay? Hands up if you agree.

1. Becoming a Christian means you don’t have any fun in life.
2. All Christians are ‘loving people’ all the time.
3. Bad things don’t happen to truly godly people.
4. Christian churches are places where you can trust everyone you meet.
5. Christians never have any struggles and always feel close to God.

Well done, folks. Each one of these statements is wrong for different reasons. Of course Christians can have fun – as Christians we are people with a deep joy inside us and it should show in how we celebrate the fact that Jesus is alive and our living King and Saviour. Christians are not always ‘loving people’ – sometimes we get it wrong and act towards others in ways we shouldn’t. There’s little much clearer in the Bible than its teaching that bad things will happen to good, godly people. Just look at Jesus. He truly was godly – in fact he was God – but they crucified him. Look also at Job, Joseph, David, Daniel, Peter, Paul – there’s hardly a believer in the Old or New Testaments about whom we don’t read undergoing periods of pain and suffering. Christian churches are not always places where you can trust everyone you meet. They should be – but I’m sorry to say they aren’t. For example, there are churches where false and damaging teaching is taught. It would be wrong to trust those teachers, even if they stand up and the front and claim they are preaching God’s word.

But it’s the last statement we’re going to concentrate on tonight. It is simply not the case that Christians do not struggle in their faith and always feel close to God. Life is a struggle for the Christian as much as for anyone else!

As I said, we’re going to concentrate on verses 4-10 of the passage tonight. Last week we say how the passage teaches that God is our Father who loves us and adopts us as his children. We also saw how we will one day ‘grow up’ to be something so amazing that John can’t really tell us what it will be because it will be so wonderful and so much more than we could ever appreciate in this life. We also saw that though the future is sparklingly bright for the Christian, the present is also good because we are God’s children, and since we are we need to live as God’s children and keep ourselves pure. We also saw that the way John envisages us doing that is not by our own efforts but by looking to Christ, by confessing our sins to him, by trusting in him and believing that ‘the blood of Jesus purifies us from every sin’ (as chapter 1, verse 7 says).

Tonight’s verses follow on from this statement that God’s children purify themselves and I think verses 4-10 tell us about three distinct – though linked – struggles that we all go through in our Christian lives. They are our struggle against sin, our struggle with the devil, and our struggle to be people of love, to do good and be righteous in how we live our lives. And as I said, these three struggles though distinct are nevertheless closely linked.

The first struggle the passage talks about is the struggle with sin.

John begins, in verse 4, almost with a definition of what sin is. ‘Everyone who sins breaks the law ... sin is lawlessness.’

Most of you will know that when I left school I studied law. One of the hardest subjects you study as part of the degree is called jurisprudence which basically means the philosophy of law – or in simple terms, what is the purpose of the law. What’s it for? As you might imagine, there are many different theories about this but almost every one agrees on one thing – the purpose of the law is to help groups of people live together in peace and harmony. The law is a series of rules designed to make life better for every one, and help people to get on with other. You might even say that the purpose of the law is to produce right conduct and where there is no right conduct to both punish the wrongdoer and give justice to those who have suffered from wrong conduct.

That might help us understand what John means here in verse 4. Sin is lawlessness. The particular Greek construction used here means the terms are interchangeable: sin is lawlessness, and lawlessness is sin. Sin is breaking the rules, flouting the law. Sin is anything that goes against the law including wrong thoughts, words and wrong behaviour. But at its heart, sin is anything that goes against right conduct designed to help people live in harmony with each other and with God.

The law John is speaking about here is not Roman law – the law of the state though – it’s God’s law he means, God’s rules of right and wrong. Not so much the particularly Jewish laws about kosher food, or Sabbath observance, but the moral principles shared by every society in the world – God’s law condemning dishonesty, pride, hypocrisy, anger, violence and so on.

And it’s in breaking this law and committing sins that is the first of the Christian struggles identified in the passage.

John isn’t mealy mouthed about it – he ‘shoots from the hip’ as the saying goes. He gives his readers it straight.

You are God’s children, he’s just told them. Jesus Christ is your big brother and as you’re all in the one family, you’ll keep yourself pure just as he is pure. That’s what John expects of Christians. We’ve to be pure. He is also very realistic and knows that we fail to do that – and we looked at that last week – the importance of coming to Christ for forgiveness and restoration to purity through his blood.

I hope you can follow John’s train of thought here in verses 5 and 6 and again in verse 9. You know, he says to the readers, you know that when Christ appeared he took away your sins. This is reminiscent of John the Baptist’s words about Jesus quoted in John’s Gospel – ‘Behold, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.’ He took away your sins, and there was no sin in him, so no one who is in union with him, who lives in him, who abides in him, and has his Spirit living inside him or her, keeps on sinning. And he even goes as far as to say in verse 6 that any who does ‘keep on sinning’ has not really met Jesus or trusted in him.

These are strong words that John says. And I don’t want to minimise the forcefulness of what he says. Christians – you and I – should have nothing to do with sin. If we are in union with Christ, joined to Christ by faith, then sinning should never happen. There’s never a good excuse for sinning. It’s never ‘okay’. It’s always serious, it’s always wrong, and it always hurts our relationship with God. But at the same time there is always forgiveness, pardon and restoration available to a sinner who truly comes again in repentance and faith to Jesus for the first time or the millionth time.

However, at the same time I don’t want anyone to get the wrong impression. Notice that John does not say that a true Christian never sins. John knows very well that Christians sin. As we’ve seen before, he actually says in chapter 1 of this same letter that if we say we don’t sin we make God out to be a liar and the truth is not in us! What John says – and it’s well brought out in the TNIV we’re looking at – is that real Christians don’t keep on sinning. Other translations say things like ‘No one who lives in him makes a practise of sin’. In other words, Christians don’t go on and on sinning continuously. Yes, there are sins we might struggle with for years – maybe even our whole life – that’s not what John means. He means that if a person goes on and on sinning and it doesn’t bother him or her – if you can sin and not feel guilty about it, then you might ask yourself how real your relationship with Jesus Christ really is.

The point is reiterated in verse 9. ‘Those who are born of God will not continue to sin because God’s seed remains in them; they cannot go on sinning, because they have been born of God.’ In other words, we are God’s children, so we will act in a different way - we will act like God is our Father and his ‘seed’ is in us. This is a metaphor which means God’s life changing, life growing power is inside us - and we know this probably refers to the Holy Spirit who lives in us. John’s point is basically that when Christians sin they are acting ‘out of character’, which is the opposite to the situation for the people of the world. They are sinners by nature; when they sin, it’s no more than them acting in character. But for Christians to sin is unnatural because they have a new nature and a new life as God’s children.

Nevertheless, although the Christian has a new nature whose inclination is not to sin, we have not totally got rid of our old selves. And so, our struggle with sin remains very real. It exists and we shouldn’t minimise it, and though it should be fought against, it shouldn’t consume our lives with guilt either. We need to cling to verses like Romans 8:1: ‘There is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus’ and remember they were written to sinners, not to perfect stained-glass saints.

Also remember that the best way of combating it is not by trying to live a stricter and stricter moral life, keeping yourself out of harms way, out of the way of temptation. That’s almost the worst thing you could do. I know – I’ve been there. When I was younger I was like a young Pharisee. I would avoid sins by avoiding certain places, by avoiding certain activities, by avoiding certain people, by cutting myself off more and more from the world around me. The trouble is that the more and more effort you put into overcoming sin through your own moral efforts, the less and less you look to Jesus and the less and less you are living under the gospel. You are actually going backwards and living under the law. The way to tackle sin is yes to break bad habits of actually committing sins (the Bible says we are to put sin to death – we are to murder sin in our lives) but alongside that we need to keep the cross of Christ and the forgiveness we find there firmly in view. Whether it’s a law of nature for all of us or not, I don’t know. But I do know that I find it much much easier to do something because I want to than if I have to. By that I mean, paradoxically, it’s actually easier not to sin once you realise you are living to please God because you want to and not because you have to.

If I can use a sporting analogy – have you noticed how well the Scottish football team or Rugby team play when there’s nothing at stake? You know how it is, they’ll get beaten by Peru and draw with Iran and then when they’re out of the World Cup, they’ll beat Brazil or Holland. It’s because the pressures off, isn’t it? There’s no weight of expectation. The team can go out and just play for fun, and guess what – suddenly they are playing like world beaters and it is fun!

That’s a bit like the struggle against sin. If we live fearing God won’t accept us because we’ve sinned again and again, if we live guilt-ridden lives that focus only inward on how bad we are, if we are always disappointed with ourselves, then we end up failing more and the pressure becomes too great. But once we know we’ve already ‘qualified for the next round’ (because unlike the Scotland team, we are ‘more than conquerors’ and our name is already on the trophy so to speak), we can play for fun and actually sin less.

So that’s the first struggle – the struggle against sin.

The second struggle is our struggle against the devil.

The Bible is very clear that the devil exists. I know that nowadays there are many people who scoff at such things. Some of them are even in the churches. But as we are Christians who take the Bible seriously, we’re faced with clear teaching in passage after passage – from Genesis to Revelation in fact – that the devil is very real. The Bible is sketchy about his origins. It seems he was one of God’s angels who rebelled against God and was thrown out of heaven. He is known as ‘the Prince of the air’ or ‘the Prince of this world’ which could mean that he was originally meant to help God rule on earth, but decided instead to take over and rule himself without reference to God. What we do know is that he is the implacable enemy of God, he is opposed to Christ and he is the enemy of Christ’s people.

This passage teaches us a couple of things about the devil. In verse 8 it says that the devil has been sinning from the beginning. He is in fact the worst sinner of all because he is the first sinner, he is totally evil and he is never going to change. He is going to be sent to hell one day forever.

The devil is not just a mere personification of evil, he is an evil being – a fallen and depraved angel – who is determined to wreck as much of God’s creation and as many lives as he can before his time runs out.

Our struggle as Christians against the devil is two-fold I think. First, it is clear that the devil will try to get us to commit sins. He will tempt us. The very first time we encounter this figure in the Old Testament is in the Garden of Eden when he appears in the guise of a snake, tempting Eve to disobey God. We also know that the devil tempted Jesus in the wilderness at the beginning of his public ministry. He comes to tempt us too. In fact several times in the New Testament, he is called ‘the Tempter.’

Each one of us will be tempted in different ways, but all of us will be tempted in some way. I know that’s the case for me anyway. The devil always seems to come to me in areas where he knows he can get at me. And it will be the same for each one here. I suppose it’s in the nature of ‘temptation’ that it is only felt in areas of our life where we are actually susceptible to temptation.

The other struggle we have as Christians against the devil is in his primary role of being the Accuser. In fact that’s what the devil means. In Hebrew his title is satan, in Greek diabolos from where we get ‘devil’ and both mean ‘the accuser’. It could mean that, as one commentator puts it, he was indeed God’s appointed Accuser – the chief prosecutor in heaven – and he got so caught up in wanting to find things to report to God that he ended up encouraging heavenly beings to disobey God so he could accuse them.

Whereas the devil’s role as tempter is uppermost when he’s trying to get us to sin, his primary function as accuser comes to the fore when we have sinned. That’s when the devil comes and really goes to work on us.

You probably know how it is when you realise you have committed a sin? You get that feeling inside - the feeling of guilt. Now, let’s be clear, there’s nothing wrong with that feeling. Guilt is supposed to be there when we do things wrong. God put it there in that part of our mind or our spirit that we call conscience. Feeling guilty when we sin is not the devil’s work. No, he moves in after that. Maybe we’ve realised we’ve sinned, we come to God and confess our sin and ask him to forgive us, or we go to the person we’ve sinned against and say sorry. Then the devil goes to work on you.

Because according to God’s Word, when we confess our sins, God forgives us. We start off again with a clean slate and are to move forward with God again. But the devil comes along and whispers in your ear: ‘You’re not really forgiven. There’s no way God is going to forgive you this time. You’d be as well giving up now. You’ve had it.’ Or he comes and says: ‘Call yourself a Christian? How could you do what you’ve done if that’s the case? You’re a sham. You’re no more a Christian than all those other hypocrites.’ Make no mistake those accusations from the devil are very real and they are very powerful. They get to us deep inside, don’t they?

The devil’s accusations can be like having a monkey on your back. They stop you in your tracks - they make you change your focus from looking outward to Christ to looking inward into yourself. They can make you feel so much false guilt that you become totally paralysed and ineffective as a Christian.

Both of these works of the devil are a real struggle for every Christian at times I think, maybe even a lot of the time!

I have to say verse 8b is one my favourite verses in the whole Bible. It’s a verse it’s worth memorising and coming back to again and again when the devil is tempting or accusing you. ‘The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.’ There’s a whole sermon in those words. All I will say tonight is that we need to remember that Christ has already destroyed the devil’s work and defeated the devil through his death on the cross.

So, when the devil comes to us as tempter, we can say to him - Christ has defeated you and so sin has no power over me. I have died with Christ through trusting in his work on the cross. As Paul wrote in Romans 6:11: ‘Count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.’ If we’re dead as far as sin is concerned, we are free from sin. We don’t have to give into temptation, not through looking towards our own efforts, but in looking at the cross.

Similarly, when the devil comes as accuser, we need to remind ourselves that we are saved through Christ’s work and that work is complete. We do not need to fear. ‘It is finished, it is accomplished’ was Christ’s shout of victory on the cross. The devil can have no hold over any child of God any more. The penalty for my sins has already been paid in full by Jesus Christ; God cannot punish me for sins for which Christ has already been punished.

As an old hymn by Augustus Toplady puts it:

‘If Thou hast my discharge procured,And freely in my room enduredThe whole of wrath divine:Payment God cannot twice demand,First at my wounded Surety's hand,And then again at mine.’

As it was in the Garden of Eden, Satan can only have a hold over us if we let him, not as of right. So when we struggle with the devil’s words in our ear we need to remember that Jesus has already destroyed his works, and put the apostle James’s advice in practice: ‘Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you.’ (James 4:7-8).

Very briefly I want to look at the third struggle Christians face - the struggle to love, to do good and be righteous.

There are a couple of verses in the passage that touch on this struggle. In verse 7, ‘Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. The one who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous.’ And again in verse 10, ‘Those who do not do what is right are not God’s children; nor are those who do not love their brothers and sisters.’

The first two struggles we’ve looked at have been against one thing and another - the struggle against sin and against the devil. The third kind of struggle is very different. It’s a positive struggle if I can put it that way: the struggle to do the right things, to love other people.

Maybe you’ve heard the scientific principle that ‘nature abhors a vacuum’? Basically it means that in the world around us, the scientific laws mean that any empty space gets filled in very quickly. A vacuum is a space where there’s no air. As soon as that space is opened, air rushes in to fill the gap. A similar principle means that if you clear a piece of ground, before long weeds will grow there. If you dig a hole in a field, it will soon fill up with mud or water. A clean shelf soon gathers dust.

The same thing is true of our lives. We cannot live empty lives. We will fill our time with something. The only question is what things will we spend our time doing. If we’re going to try to do better in our struggles against sin and against the devil, we need to spend time doing positively good things. No-action neutrality is not an option.

The positive things we are to do are good things. We are to love others and show it in our words and actions. We are to do what is right - in other words act in ways that the Bible calls righteous. We are to be kind and generous, we are to do good. In Galatians 5:22, the apostle Paul says that we are to have the ‘fruit of the Spirit’ in our lives, which are: ‘Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.’ He also gives a picture of the kinds of things we are to fill our lives with in Philippians 4:8: ‘Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.’

If only it was as simple as just getting on with doing that. But the fact is that we often find it a struggle to do those positive good, loving things we want to do. All the struggles we have looked at are related to each other. We find it hard to live righteous lives because we find it all too easy to sin (to live unrighteous lives). Finding it hard to do good is the flip side of struggling with sin.

That means that both struggles are intimately connected. They’re like a see-saw that goes up and down. When doing good increases, sin decreases; when sin increases, doing good decreases. It also means that one of the important ways to combat sin is to do good.

Fortunately, Christianity isn’t about following a set of rigid rules that constitute ‘doing good’ or that equal ‘love’. So I can’t stand here and tell you what to do different tomorrow, or next week, or from now on. Because each one of us is different. Christianity is about relationships - with God and with other people. Christianity is about great principles that stand immoveable. But how you put the principles into practice can be done in hundreds of different ways.

The thing to grasp, the thing to actually act on is to consciously try to love more and do good more often. If you are a Christian, you have the Holy Spirit living inside you. He will tell you what putting it into practice means for you. Listen to that still small voice that is prompting you to speak to that person you ignore every day on the way to work, or send a cheque to that charity, or write that letter, or visit that friend you haven’t seen in ages, or pray more, or whatever it is.

The main thing is to live as righteous children of God. Not in a legalistic way because we are not under law but under grace. Not for fear of hell, because there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Not even just because it’s the right thing to do, though God delights in our obedience. But if we centre our lives on love - love for God and love for our brothers and sisters and our neighbours, then may, just maybe, we will live as God’s children should and show the devil and the world who our Father really is and live lives that are offerings of thanks to him for all he’s done for us.

Encounters with Jesus: The Evil Spirits

The history of the Scottish Church is nothing if not eventful. And it is a history marked by conflict. The big battle in the Church in the 1600s was between the Stuart monarchs, who thought the king should be the head of the church and in control of the church through a hierarchy of bishops and archbishops, and the Covenanters, who maintained that Christ was the only head of the church and that the Presbyterian system of church government – that is government by a plurality of elders all of the same rank – was the system taught in the Bible. This conflict was only resolved at the time of the Glorious Revolution in 1688 to 1690, but early on the battle lines were clearly drawn at a famous meeting between King James VI and Andrew Melville, the leader of the Presbyterians, where at the end of a particularly acrimonious argument, Melville called the King "God’s silly vassal". He then said this to the king: "Sir, as divers times before so now again I must tell you, there are two Kings and two Kingdoms in Scotland: there is Christ Jesus, and his Kingdom the Kirk, whose subject King James VI is, and of His Kingdom not a King or a Head nor a Lord, but a member."

Well I for one think Andrew Melville was right. And to this day, although the Queen is our head of state and is also considered the head of the Church of England, she is only a member of the Church of Scotland, because we Presbyterians still recognise no other king and head of the Church than Jesus Christ himself. But you might be saying to yourself, "That’s all very interesting, but what’s that got to do with the passage of Scripture we read?" Good question if you were asking it to yourself.

The point is that just as Melville could see two kingdoms in Scotland – the earthly kingdom and the heavenly kingdom – so the Bible pictures two kingdoms in this world at perpetual war with each other. One kingdom is the kingdom of God, where Christ is King, the great church invisible made up of all God’s people, the hearts of all who believe in Jesus Christ. The other kingdom is a very different place. The Kingdom of the darkness, where the Prince of this world rules from a counterfeit throne over a kingdom of sin and evil. It is in rebellion against God’s kingdom and at constant war with it. It is ruled over by a usurper, who has no legitimate claim to rule it at all. It is called the kingdom of this world. It is the counterfeit kingdom of Satan and all the fallen angels and evil spirits who follow him.

Jesus himself states that Satan has a "kingdom" in Matthew 12:25-26:

"Knowing their thoughts, he said to them, ‘Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and no city or house divided against itself will stand. And if Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then will his kingdom stand?’"

Paul describes the kingdom of darkness that Christians are called to fight and wrestle against like this in Ephesians 6:12-13:

"For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armour of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm."

It is the kingdom that rules in the hearts of everyone who does not follow Jesus Christ. They don’t know they are subjects of Satan, but they are.

Ephesians chapter 2, verses 1 and 2: "In the past you were spiritually dead because of your disobedience and sins. At that time you followed the world's evil way; you obeyed the ruler of the spiritual powers in space, the spirit who now controls the people who disobey God."

Most of the time God’s kingdom and Satan’s kingdom war with each other invisibly, in the spiritual realms that we don’t see. But occasionally, the fighting breaks out, as it were, in our world. The passage we are looking at tonight is such an occasion and it gives us a vivid picture of the constant struggle going on between good and evil in the universe. As we study it, I think we will firstly gain an insight into our enemies – the principalities and powers in Satan’s kingdom that Paul talked about in Ephesians 6. And I think we will also gain a tremendous insight into the courage and strength and glory of our Lord Jesus Christ as he shows his supreme authority over all the powers of darkness.

So, the events in our passage quite neatly can be divided into three aspects of the demons and their work, and then three aspects of King Jesus and his work. We’ve therefore got quite a lot to get through. I hope you’ll follow me as we go through the passage. Once again it will be helpful to have the passage to hand as we go through it as I will be referring to it.

The three aspects of the demons in this passage I want to look at tonight could be summarised as: their activities, their knowledge and their character.

We’ll look firstly at their activities, which we find described in verse 28:

"And when he came to the other side, to 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."

The events immediately preceding this passage take place in the town of Capernaum which was Jesus’ base at the northern end of the Sea of Galilee. Jesus and his disciples then crossed the lake and during the journey Jesus calmed the storm which made the disciples wonder to themselves, "What sort of man is this, that even the winds and waves obey him?"

And now here again in this passage they will be challenged to ask themselves "Who is this man?" as another series of extraordinary events takes place.

Jesus and his disciples land in their boat at the south-east shore of the Sea of Galilee which is here called "the country of the Gadarenes". There was a town called Gadara about 6 miles inland from the shore and it is likely, many scholars believe, that the whole region was named after the main settlement in that area (a bit like a county or shire being named after the main town in it in our country). And in this area there are steep hills or cliffs that come right down to the water’s edge, and in those hills there are caves visible to this day that were then used as tombs. It is almost certain that this area was populated by Gentiles rather than Jews. This is evidenced by the fact that the herdsmen in this region kept pigs. This would not be tolerated in a Jewish area, as pigs are an unclear animal that Jews are neither permitted to eat or touch.

It’s here in this rather desolate and barren landscape that Jesus and his disciples encounter these two men deeply disturbed and quite frightening in their appearance. I think this was precisely why Jesus wanted to go to this area in the first place. After all, it was not really on the way to anywhere else, and by the end of this passage, Jesus heads back to where he had just came from on the other side of the Sea of Galilee at Capernaum. So the only reason for going to the country of the Gadarenes would seem to be to meet the demon-possessed men.

I should just mention in passing that Matthew’s account is the only one that mentions two men in this story. Both Mark and Luke only mention one demon-possessed man. The most likely explanation would seem to be that the other gospel writers concentrate their story on the man who does the talking while Matthew concentrates on the fact that the demons were able to possess more than one person at a time and make them act in concert with each other. Where all the gospels agree is that there was certainly more than one demon involved. In Mark 5:9, when Jesus asks the demon’s name, it replies, "My name is legion for we are many."

As regards the activity of the demons, we should note right away that everything these men do and say in this passage is not their own doing but the doing of the demons through them. And it for that reason that I called this service Jesus and the Evil Spirits rather than Jesus and the Demon-Possessed Men. The men are passive in the story, completely under the control of the evil spirits.

The first thing I want you to note is that demon-possession was a real phenomenon. It was not, as liberal scholars suggest, merely the way that mental illness or abnormality, or unexplained sickness, was "explained away" in biblical times. I believe as God’s Word, the Bible cannot contain such errors. If the Bible describes demons possessing a human being, I believe that is what happened. No, demon-possession was a real phenomenon that happened to people at the time of Christ. And by that I mean at the time of Christ in particular. There is very little mention of demon-possession in the Old Testament and there are almost no references to demon-possession in the New Testament outside the Gospels. What this seems to indicate is that during the years of Christ’s life on earth, and particularly then, Satan’s legions were for some reason granted this particular ability to "possess" a human being, quite possibly because Satan knew the crucial importance of trying to stop the Lord Jesus’ ministry for succeeding and so he concentrated all his forces on those brief thirty or so years of Christ’s earthly life. This would explain why there is either no such thing as demon-possession in our day, or else it is a very rare occurrence indeed.

The two men in our story certainly do not seem to be in control of themselves. Both their actions and their words appear to be those of the demons in control of them rather than the men themselves.

And this leads us to look at what the demons did through the men they have possessed. I want to stress that everything about it is contrary to the way God wants people to live and designed people to live. Everything about it is evil. (And remember this is the demons’ doing, not so much the men under their control).

I think this expresses itself in two ways in the passage. At the beginning of the passage it seems that these demon-possessed men were living alone, cut-off from the rest of society, either living in the entrance chambers to the tombs or in abandoned tombs either in natural caves or in man-made caves hewn in the rocks. This is what is meant by "coming out of the tombs" in verse 28. God designed us to live with other people, in families, social groups, tribes and nations. One of the joys of being human is to spend time in other people’s company. But the demons destroy this – taking the men off into a wilderness, living alone, in abandoned graves, cut off from other people.

The second manifestation of evil is the uncontrollable violence they exhibit. We know from verse 28 that these two demon-possessed wretches had been causing havoc in that area for some time. They are described as "so fierce" (or "exceedingly violent" as Leon Morris translates these words in his commentary) that people knew to steer clear of that area and not try to pass through it. In the parallel account of this incident in the Gospel of Mark, chapter 5, verse 4, it says that at least one of these men:

"had often been bound with shackles and chains, but he wrenched the chains apart, and he broke the shackles in pieces. No one had the strength to subdue him."

It seems almost as if the demons gave the men superhuman strength and aggression!

From the mention of violence and people’s reticence to pass through the hills where these two men roamed about, it seems quite obvious that there was a history of these two characters assaulting, maybe even killing, people whom they came across in their aggressive, irrational, and evil mental states. And again this turns God’s will upside down. "Love your neighbour" is the summary of our duty towards our fellow human beings. Senseless violence against other human beings is the ultimate Satanic dismissal of God’s way of life for mankind.

If the activities of the demons strikes us what we might expect, as we move on to look at the knowledge these demons have of Jesus and of the future, this might strike us as more surprising.
The two demon-possessed men see Jesus and his disciples and approach him. But rather than attack them, they cry out to him – this is the demons crying out through the men remember, not the men themselves – literally they "scream out at Jesus", probably in a hair-raising, horrible voice:

"What have you to do with us, O Son of God? Have you come to torment us before the time?" (verse 29)

Two questions certainly, but two questions that reveal the demons already had a significant amount of knowledge about Jesus.

The first question is: "What have you to do with us, O Son of God?" A literal translation would be something like "What is to us and what is to you, O Son of God?" The meaning is really "Why are you bothering us?" – we have nothing in common with you."

And we notice immediately that the demons know who Jesus is. They recognise the man who gets out of the boat as the Son of God. This reminds me of a passage in the Letter of James. James 2:19:

"You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe--and shudder!"

William Hendriksen comments on this first question the demons ask Jesus: "They recognise Jesus as the Son of God…They know they are face-to-face with their arch enemy – their Judge – and they are suddenly terrified of him." You know the look of horror that passes over a villain’s face when they finally see the superhero standing in the doorway, arms folded, ready to dispense justice? Well that’s the scene here as far these demons are concerned. And so they blurt out the first question in fear, "What have you to do with us, O Son of God?"

And then they ask the second question: "Have you come to torment us before the time?" And I think this is an even more amazing question. Not only do they know who this is, they know that one day he is going to judge them and send them to hell. When we use the word "torment" it usually carries with it connotations of mere annoyance. We’d tell a child not to torment its brother or sister. But "torment" here means "torture". "Have you come to torture us?" "Have you come, is this the moment, you will send us into the fires of hell?" "Is this the appointed day of judgment for us?" This is the kind of undertone to this question. I find it slightly ironic that the devils themselves believe in hell, but many a liberal theologian denies there is such a place. Go figure.

They know a lot these demons, but I must also point out that they don’t know everything. They are not omniscient. Only God is. They don’t know why Christ has come to them. They don’t know if this is the day of judgment for them. And as we shall see they don’t know what will happen once they go into the pigs. In the end the evil spirits are just creatures, with limited knowledge and power. And it is important that we remember this to keep things in perspective here. But even so, let’s not underestimate the intelligence and knowledge possessed by our spiritual enemies.

One thing we certainly shouldn’t underestimate about them is what their character is like. They are evil. They are truly evil in everything they do – they are violent, they are destructive, they are cunning, and they enjoy wickedness for its own sake – just because it is the opposite to God’s commandments. We have already seen how they made these two men behave. And now when confronted by Jesus they look for some way out of the situation and how to best carry on their devilish activities.

And it’s then they notice the herd of pigs feeding some distance away (verse 30). Mark’s Gospel tells us that there were actually around 2000 pigs in the herd. So it’s a big herd we’re talking about here, not just a few porkers on a hillside. It is very likely the demons asked for permission to enter the first living creatures they could see as they quickly look around for a bolt-hole. The pigs would have been an ideal host of course. Not only were they unclean animals according to God’s law, which the demons would doubtless have approved of as their new home, but they probably see the chance through possessing the pigs to cause more destruction (pigs in the wild are well-known to be destructive of crops and farmland) and also, it could just be, that these demons realise that by ruining the herd of pigs, Jesus is likely to be feared and despised by the local population.

So that’s what the demons are like. That’s what Satan and his minions are like. That’s what the kingdom of darkness is like. A pretty awful bunch they are. Evil through and through, destructive, the enemies of God and the enemies of humanity, out to make our lives a misery.

All this could be pretty depressing were it not for what this passage also teaches us about the Lord Jesus Christ. Again there are three I want to focus on:

The first and main lesson is that Jesus Christ has authority over Satan and all his demons. He has absolute power and control over them, as a master controls a muzzled dog on a leash. This is the reason that the demons are afraid of him. They know that they are under his power. They have no choice but to obey his voice. Notice in verse 31 that the demons are forced to beg Jesus that if he is going to cast them out of the two men, they would be allowed to enter into the pigs. Notice too, that they can neither refuse to come out of the men if Christ commands it, and they cannot then enter the pigs without Christ’s permission to allow it.

Jesus' authority over evil, the reluctance of their obeying him, but their inability to do otherwise, is well-illustrated by this story – it’s a true story told in the words of Frank Koch of the United States Naval Institute. "Two battleships assigned to the training squadron had been at sea on manoeuvres in heavy weather for several days. I was serving on the lead battleship and was on watch on the bridge as night fell. The visibility was poor with patchy fog, so the captain remained on the bridge keeping an eye on all activities.

Shortly after dark, the lookout on the wing reported, "Light, bearing on the starboard bow." "Is it steady or moving astern?" the captain called out. The lookout replied, "Steady, Captain," which meant we were on a dangerous direct collision course with that ship. The captain then called to the signalman, "Signal that ship: 'We are on a collision course, advise you change course twenty degrees.'" Back came the signal, "Advisable for you to change course twenty degrees." The captain said, "Send: "I'm a captain, change course twenty degrees.'" "I'm a seaman second-class," came the reply. "You had better change course twenty degrees." By that time the captain was furious. He spat out, "Send: 'I am a battleship. Change course twenty degrees.'" Back came the flashing light more urgent than ever, "I am a lighthouse." The captain changed course immediately. It was either that or we would founder on the rocks.

This is always the relationship between the powers of evil and God. If you read the early chapters of the Book of Job you will read there how Satan comes before God and has to ask God for permission to attack Job before he can do it, and of course God permits Satan to take away Job’s possessions, his family, his health and so on. But each time, God puts a limit on what Satan is allowed to do, and Satan is bound to obey God’s will.

In our passage the same principle is at work. The demons have to ask for permission to go into the pigs and wait for Jesus to give the word, which he does in verse 32.

"Go" says Jesus. "Go ahead," he says. Literally "Begone." And immediately the demons come out and enter into the herd of pigs. Leon Morris in his commentary on this passage points out that this is Jesus giving them an order and they have to obey it.

And then things really get out of hand. The pigs go berserk when the demons possess them and they stampede down the slope right into the sea where they are all drowned. We don’t know why the pigs react like this, although it has all the hallmarks of a blind panic. I don’t think this was the demons’ doing. I don’t think they saw this coming, though that is possible. But my reading of the passage is that this is something that Jesus knew would happen but the demons didn’t.

Now the question that tends to be asked here is: Why? Why did Jesus allow this? Why did he bring this about. William Hendriksen has a good discussion about the possible reasons in his commentary on this Gospel. He begins by stating what are probably the wrong explanations that have been given. Some commentators say that the reason is mainly because the herd was pigs. They were unclean animals and those who kept them were breaking God’s laws. But Hendriksen rejects this reason and I think rightly. He points out that this was a Gentile area, where keeping pigs was not an issue as Gentiles are not under the kosher laws of Israel. Instead Hendriksen gives two reasons for why Christ allowed the pigs to be drowned and agree with both of his reasons. The first thing Hendriksen says is that Christ knew that this was not the time for the demons to be cast into hell forever, but in the meantime, before that final judgment, he wanted to remove the demons from harming anyone else. I think this is the key. We don’t quite know what happened to the demons after the pigs drowned but it certainly seems that they never came back to bother anyone again. It seems likely to me that once the pigs drowned, the demons were once again banished to hell to await their final justice. I think Jesus knew that would happen and wanted that to happen. Secondly, Hendriksen says that Christ wanted to teach those who dwelt in this region that the lives of human beings were worth much more than any number of pigs. And he could hardly have pushed that lesson home any more forcefully than by allowing the pigs to drown after the two demon-possessed men are delivered from their spiritual bondage.

That leads me on to the second lesson this passage teaches us about Christ. It teaches us that he is a compassionate Saviour. Although Matthew’s account doesn’t say anything about the men who the demons came out of, the other gospels do mention them and there is real encouragement for us in what happened to them. We should not overlook the fact that in the midst of all the other action that’s going on, two men whose lives had been a living hell were restored to normality, to good health, to rationality, to peace, to living like human beings again, and best of all, to faith in Christ. In Luke’s account of this story, when the people of the region come to meet Jesus, Luke chapter 8, verse 35 says they "found the man from whom the demons had gone, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind."

You know, there might not be demon-possession in our society. But there are many many people in our society whose lives are in bondage to other evils. And whether that be drug or alcohol addiction, gambling, sexual sins, materialism, new age religion, the occult, whatever it is, Christ is still just as powerful a Saviour. He is still able to come to those who are outcasts, those who are feared and shunned by society, and he is able to command whatever evils possess them to come out, to leave them clothed with his righteousness and in their right mind again. That’s one reason why the gospel is to be preached to every creature, as Mark 16 puts it, because it is good news for every kind of person, no matter who they are, no matter what they’ve done, no matter how far from God or from God’s standards they feel they are. Christ is able to save anyone and he is willing to save anyone who comes to him. "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved" is the gospel and it’s true for anyone who believes.

And so we come to our final point this evening.

The third thing this passage teaches us about Jesus Christ is that it is impossible not make a decision about him once you hear the good news. There can be no sitting on the fence where Jesus Christ is concerned.

Some people believe in him, follow him and have their lives changed. This was certainly true for at least one of the two men who had been saved by Jesus from the demons. Not only was he restored to his right mind, he then went on to become a witness for Christ in his home town, telling others what the Lord had done for him. This is told in the parallel account of this story in Luke chapter 8, verses 38 and 39:

"The man from whom the demons had gone begged that he might be with him, but Jesus sent him away, saying, ‘Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.’ And he went away, proclaiming throughout the whole city how much Jesus had done for him."

But not everyone reacts to Jesus the same way. Not everyone accepts him or his message. Verses 33 and 34 at the end of our passage show this all too clearly as well:

"The herdsmen fled, and going into the city [or probably more a village or small town] 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."

What a sad ending to a great story! Imagine it if you will. News reaches us that Christ has come back to earth. He’s appeared in George Square with all the drug addicts in the city and he’s healed them. People whose lives were being destroyed and are now in their right minds again. Free and able to enjoy life for the first time in years. But in so doing that, he took all the drugs and gathered them into every sleazy night club and dance hall in the city and burned up all the drugs and all the dens of iniquity burned up with them. And the people gather in the city centre. They crowd into George Square. And they call out, begging Jesus to leave Glasgow and never come back. Look at all the property that’s been lost. Look at all the revenue that could have come from these places. How are we going to enjoy ourselves now? they shout. Look at all we’ve lost, just so a few junkies could be made well? Imagine it. Because that’s just the kind of reaction that the people in this region have to Jesus in our story tonight. They come across as a pretty heartless community. Rather than rejoicing that two of their neighbours had been rescued, they feared that if Jesus stayed and changed any more people’s lives, they would lose out financially and materially as the herdsmen did. So they put money before people. They put mammon before God. And rather than praise Jesus for what he did, they ask him to go away out of their lives.

And so they ask Jesus to leave them and he does. The first verse of the next chapter in Matthew tells us that he went away in the boat again back to the other side of the lake.

And isn’t there a real challenge and choice laid before all of us in these different reactions that the man who was rescued and the people of the town had to Jesus? You see everyone must come to a conclusion about him one way or the other. You are either for him or against him. You either want to live with him and follow him, or you want him to leave your region or your life as the people in our reading did. Do you rejoice each time a person leaves the rebel kingdom of darkness and comes home to the kingdom of God, or deep down do you see Christians as sad people who have wasted their lives, living boring lives without any excitement or enjoyment? Do you look forward with hope and joy to the end of this world, and eternity in heaven? Or do you dread that it might be true? Is your joy in life to be Christ’s servant? Or are you more like Satan in Milton’s Paradise Lost who said that he would rather rule in hell than serve in heaven?

Well whether you are for him or again him he will triumph. He has already destroyed the works of the devil through his cross and resurrection. He still has absolute authority over all the powers of darkness, and they are permitted to do their works only in so far these comply with God’s sovereign will and eternal decrees. And slowly but surely, whatever happens in our lives, whatever happens in the world, Christ’s kingdom goes from victory to victory, according to God’s unchangeable plan, so that "the kingdom of this world has become the kingdom of our Lord, and of his Christ. And he shall reign for ever and ever," (as Revelation chapter 11, verse 5 puts it).

Or in the words of Martin Luther’s great hymn, Ein’ Feste Burg:

"And though the world seems full of ill,
with hungry demons prowling,
Christ’s victory is with us still,
we need not fear their howling.
The tyrants of this age
strut briefly on the stage:
their sentence has been passed.
We stand unharmed at last,
a word from God destroys them.

"God’s word and plan, which they pretend
is subject to their pleasure,
will bind their wills to serve God’s end,
which we, who love him, treasure.
Then let them take our lives,
goods, children, husbands, wives,
and carry all away;
theirs is a short-lived day,
ours is the lasting kingdom."