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."
