Power and Authority

Authority of Jesus Luke 8:22-39

Last week we examined Jesus’ first major parable in Luke’s gospel as well as a couple of parables about what it means to follow Jesus.

Jesus stressed in those teachings how important it was to listen well to what he says.

And we talked about how listening well didn’t just mean hearing Jesus’ words but also included responding in action.

But I want to just think about for a second what those disciples might have been thinking as they listen to Jesus teach.

They were no doubt enamored with Jesus’ teaching and the miracles that he had performed.

They had witnessed a lot of things while following Jesus.

And at the same time, they knew the biblical stories.

They knew that prophets were able to heal and even at times raise people from the dead.

Now, I’ll admit that’s no small thing, but that begs the question.

A question that we’ve been looking at for the last several weeks “Who is Jesus?”

Is he simply another prophet?

Is he just a controversial teacher?

Is he a man that is called to overthrow the Roman Government and establish a new Israel?

And these would be all questions that would run through the disciples mind.

In fact in the first story we are going to talk about this morning Jesus blows their mind and their response is “Who then is this?”

One of the things that we too often take for granted is that we know the end of the story.

However, at this point in time the disciples didn’t know what to believe.

And Jesus is revealing it to them piecemeal.

And this morning we’re going to take a look at Jesus’ Authority.

Why does Jesus tell us that to follow and listen to him?

B/c he has the authority to do so.

This is going to be seen in the two scenes we are going to look at this morning.

The first will be in Jesus calming the winds and waves on the sea of Galilee the second will be the casting out of demons from a man possessed.

So you’re in Luck, this sermon only has two points.

Jesus is going to demonstrate his authority over Nature.

And his authority over the Supernatural

Before we dive in let’s ask the Lord to bless his word.

Luke 8:22–25 CSB

22 One day he and his disciples got into a boat, and he told them, “Let’s cross over to the other side of the lake.” So they set out, 23 and as they were sailing he fell asleep. Then a fierce windstorm came down on the lake; they were being swamped and were in danger. 24 They came and woke him up, saying, “Master, Master, we’re going to die!” Then he got up and rebuked the wind and the raging waves. So they ceased, and there was a calm. 25 He said to them, “Where is your faith?” They were fearful and amazed, asking one another, “Who then is this? He commands even the winds and the waves, and they obey him!”

Authority Over Nature

I have to admit this scene, to me, is one of the most awesome when it comes to the display of Jesus’ power and authority.

Healing the sick, raising the dead, those are all cool, but calming a storm with his voice is nothing short of epic.

So what’s going on here?

Jesus is an itinerant preacher and so he needs to make his way to the place where he is going to proclaim the good news.

This place happens to be across the sea of Galilee.

So the disciples and Jesus procure a boat and make their way across the sea.

Now to understand what’s happening we have to know a little about the geography of the sea of Galilee.

The sea sits below sea level.

And it sits in a kind of fish bowl, where mountains surround the sea.

And in the blink of an eye, wind comes up over the mountains and swoops down onto the sea and causes the waves to kick up.

Storms also pop up out of nowhere.

And here we get the perfect storm of perfect storms.

Now one thing we don’t need to forget is that at least 4 of these 12 disciples were professional fishermen.

They had been on the sea a lot.

They were used to these spontaneous storms.

But this one seemed categorically different than storms before.

The disciples were panicked.

The boat was being swamped.

Luke even tells us that they were in danger v.23

Meaning that their lives were at risk.

These disciples, including fishermen who had been on this sea before, feared for their lives.

And where was Jesus?

Jesus was asleep without a care in the world.

Jesus was exhausted.

Luke again uses this instance to point to the humanity of Jesus.

He was tired.

So there he was resting.

Knowing and trusting in the Father’s plan for his life.

It’s funny that in Mark’s account, he even stressed that Jesus was sleeping on a cushion.

Jesus was not worried and was comfortable.

Frantically, the disciples go to wake up Jesus.

“We’re all gonna die!” You have to help.

Jesus then gets up and rebuke’s the wind and the waves.

Jesus is putting his creation in it’s place.

The wind and the waves must obey Jesus b/c he is the creator of all things, even the winds and the waves.

He set these things in order.

At his rebuke all things went calm.

The waves that threatened to overtake the boat.

began to simply lap at the side.

The wind that came down tossing the disciples too and fro calmed down.

I can help but think about this in light of a few weeks ago.

When Hurricane Beryl came rolling through town I was awake watching out the window at the immense power of the storm.

I watched as those winds caused the trees in the front yard to appear as if they were headbanging to some Metallica.

And I just imagine Jesus stepping out on my front porch and telling the winds to stop.

And then the instant quiet that comes along with that.

How remarkable and confounding that would be.

With just a word he tells everything to quiet.

Be still.

The peace and the tranquility from this use of power and authority would be louder than the sound of the wind and the waves.

Truly the silence would be deafening.

Jesus then looks at the disciples and asks them this question, “Where is your faith?”

What a question that strikes at the core.

This question penetrates the heart.

If Jesus was fast asleep, not concerned with the wind and the waves, why were they?

I guess it’s important for us to take a second and talk about what faith is.

And the reason it’s important is b/c the idea and concept of faith has become distorted.

Faith is simply trust.

Faith isn’t some magical fairy dust that if you had more your problems would go away.

Faith isn’t an incantation that wards off disease and sickness.

Faith is trust in God regardless of what’s happening in the world around you.

Faith is belief that God is going to work out his plans and purposes faithfully.

Faith is believing that one way or another, these disciples are going to get to the other side of the sea.

I want us to notice that Jesus doesn’t call them faithless.

He doesn’t refer to them as an absolute lost cause, but he does admonish them for their weak faith

We can’t divorce this story from the rest of Luke’s gospel.

So, why do think it’s important that Luke place this story here?

What lesson is the Lord trying to tell us?

This incident happens right after the parable of the soils.

One of the soils that the seed landed on was among the top soil. v.13

The top soil had hard rock underneath.

And the plant sprouted up and b/c it got beaten by the sun, which Jesus told us was testing, the plant died.

Remember Jesus knows the trials that his disciples are going to face when he departs from them.

He is aware of the hardship that comes with being his disciple.

And the reaction of the disciples during the storm at least hints at the fact that they may fall away.

That the trials they may face could cause their faith to wither.

If their faith is this feeble when Jesus is with them how is going to be when he’s gone?

Will they persevere?

Storms and trouble in our lives cause us to worry, be anxious and afraid.

This reaction to the issues of life quickly distract us from our trust in the Lord.

We start to think that maybe he doesn’t see us.

Maybe he doesn’t know what we are going through.

Maybe he is absent or asleep.

This is the lack of faith that the disciples demonstrated.

They didn’t trust in the mission of God when their life was on the line.

One of the things that we often forget is that trials are the proving ground for our faith.

We don’t like the trials.

We don’t like the tests.

We don’t like the winds and the waves crashing upon us.

But the trials is where our faith grows.

This is talked about time and time again in the Scriptures.

One prominent place is in Romans.

Romans 5:1–5 CSB

1 Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 We have also obtained access through him by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we boast in the hope of the glory of God. 3 And not only that, but we also boast in our afflictions, because we know that affliction produces endurance, 4 endurance produces proven character, and proven character produces hope. 5 This hope will not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.

Listen none of us want to go through difficulties.

None of us want to go through trials.

None of us want to face the storm head on.

But we have to understand that it is in the trials that our faith does grow.

If our lives were easy and we never butted up against any difficulty then we would never grow in our trust of God.

We would never get to see him pull through and keep his promises.

We would never get to experience the fullness of his goodness and glory.

Without difficulties, without trials, without stresses, and even failures, we would never grow to be what we should become. Storms are part of the process of spiritual growth.

That doesn’t mean that the trial is going to be pleasant.

That Doesn’t mean that the storm isn’t going to rock us and make us feel like we might die.

It means that in the midst of the storm we have hope.

We have trust.

We have faith, that God is going to accomplish his will regardless of what is happening around us.

And much like the disciples we will get to see a clearer picture of who Jesus is.

Here for the disciples, Jesus does calm the storm.

And even this amazes those on the boat.

The disciples knew that there is only one who could speak to the waves and cause them to swell or calm.

This is seen a few places in scripture.

One would be when Jonah ignores God’s instruction to go and preach the gospel.

Instead he flees in the opposite direction, gets on a boat and tries to get as far from his calling as possible.

Jonah 1:4“4 But the Lord threw a great wind onto the sea, and such a great storm arose on the sea that the ship threatened to break apart.”

Theirs some panic on the ship, and Jonah eventually tells them why and he is tossed overboard and Jonah 1:15 “15 Then they picked up Jonah and threw him into the sea, and the sea stopped its raging.”

So we see that the Lord is in control of nature.

Now the disciples know this too.

And yet, the teacher they are following around commands the winds and waves to stop and they stop.

He doesn’t petition the Lord.

There isn’t a prayer said.

Jesus says the word and they stop.

Demonstrating his dominion over creation.

so the natural question that arises is “Who then is this guy?”

Who could possibly accomplish this outside of the power of God.

So Jesus is dropping hints at who he actually is to the disciples without coming out and say it.

He who has ears let him hear.

This act of commanding the wind and the waves demonstrates that Jesus is, in fact, God in flesh.

Now they can’t completely comprehend what they have witnessed, they still need time to process the events.

And gratefully Jesus is going to continue to reveal to them the truth of who he is and what he came to do.

And the next way that he’s going to do this is through showing his authority over the Supernatural.

Luke 8:26–39 CSB

26 Then they sailed to the region of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee. 27 When he got out on land, a demon-possessed man from the town met him. For a long time he had worn no clothes and did not stay in a house but in the tombs. 28 When he saw Jesus, he cried out, fell down before him, and said in a loud voice, “What do you have to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, don’t torment me!” 29 For he had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. Many times it had seized him, and though he was guarded, bound by chains and shackles, he would snap the restraints and be driven by the demon into deserted places. 30 “What is your name?” Jesus asked him. “Legion,” he said, because many demons had entered him. 31 And they begged him not to banish them to the abyss. 32 A large herd of pigs was there, feeding on the hillside. The demons begged him to permit them to enter the pigs, and he gave them permission. 33 The demons came out of the man and entered the pigs, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and drowned. 34 When the men who tended them saw what had happened, they ran off and reported it in the town and in the countryside. 35 Then people went out to see what had happened. They came to Jesus and found the man the demons had departed from, sitting at Jesus’s feet, dressed and in his right mind. And they were afraid. 36 Meanwhile, the eyewitnesses reported to them how the demon-possessed man was delivered. 37 Then all the people of the Gerasene region asked him to leave them, because they were gripped by great fear. So getting into the boat, he returned. 38 The man from whom the demons had departed begged him earnestly to be with him. But he sent him away and said, 39 “Go back to your home, and tell all that God has done for you.” And off he went, proclaiming throughout the town how much Jesus had done for him.

Authority Over Supernatural

I want to begin this by talking about the fact that there is a supernatural world.

In our day and age too many people, even those who call themselves Christians, don’t believe in a supernatural world.

Everything is just protons and neutrons bouncing off of each other.

There is just physical matter and nothing else.

But to have a biblical worldview.

To be a follower of Jesus means that we recognize that there is more than just the material world.

There is something beyond what our eyes can see and our ears can hear.

All it takes is reading the gospels to see that Jesus believed in the supernatural world.

There were demons that interacted with Jesus.

Though dismissing the supernatural is true for most people in modern times.

Now on the other hand, there are those who think that everything is supernatural.

That there is a demon under every rock and around every corner, but this isn’t apparent in the Scriptures either.

So we do have to have a balanced view of the supernatural without going too overboard.

Anyway, Jesus encounters this man who is demon possessed.

Here’s the picture that is painted about him.

He is naked and lives at the tombs.

Sane people don’t walk around naked all the time and definitely don’t live around tombs or in a graveyard.

or as one commentator says

“The healthy man has a horror of a decaying corpse and avoids defilement; it is only deranged people who have any desire for death and decay.”

Luke tells us that this man is demon possessed.

A better translation is “a certain man having demons”.

This hints at what we discover later in the story that there are many demons in this man.

The question that naturally arises is what is a demon?

A demon is simply a fallen angel.

And they can possess people.

That is they can take over their bodies and use them for their purposes.

This lets us know that demons are stronger than humans.

They have powers and abilities beyond human capacity.

We are told in v. 29 that this man was tied up with chains and shackles. He was strong enough to snap the restraints.

That’s not normal strength.

Why is it important for Luke to tell us that he lived among the tombs and that he was naked.

This would have added to the outcast nature of this man.

For the Jewish people being among the dead could cause one to become unclean if they touched a tomb or body.

So people wouldn’t frequent the tombs.

This goes to further tell us about the isolation and alienation of this man’s condition.

Now upon Jesus arriving where this man can see him, I want us to recognize what he says.

Luke 8:28 “28 When he saw Jesus, he cried out, fell down before him, and said in a loud voice, “What do you have to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, don’t torment me!””

The demons that possess this man, know who Jesus is.

Son of the most high.

this is the same title that Gabriel uses when speaking to Mary about Jesus’ birth.

The demon doesn’t have to ask the question “Who then is this?” like the disciples b/c he knows who it is

This is the one who has come to conquer the grave.

He’s the one sent by Almighty God to overcome the wickedness of the devil and his demons.

These demons know their fate.

Did you see that?

He says, “I beg you, don’t torment me”

They know their end.

They know that Jesus, the son of the most high, is going to defeat them.

And he’s trembling in fear in the Presence of Jesus.

I find it telling and ironic that the demons recognize Jesus more than his disciples do.

They recognize the power and authority.

Knowing that Jesus has dominion over every created being in the universe.

This is something that we don’t think about often, but should when it comes to the devil and his demons.

They are created beings.

They aren’t self-existent.

They were created by God to serve him, then decided that they wanted to abandon his design for them so they fell from his grace.

And the fact that they are created means that ultimately they are in subservience to him.

So The Lord can tell them where to go, where to stop, what to do and when to do it.

Nothing escapes the sovereignty of God.

So Why does the devil and his demons attack and possess people?

If they know that they aren’t going to win.

If they recognize that their resistance is futile.

Why do they continue to fight?

B/c he hates the things that God loves.

He wants to take what God has made and crush it, distort it, and destroy it.

He is a wicked and vile creature bent on wreaking havoc on God’s creation.

He wants to destroy the image of God that each human bears.

But do you know what Jesus does?

He came to restore our broken image.

He came to heal and set free those in bondage to sin and death.

He came to defend his children against the threat of the devil.

And we see this in the story.

This man is overcome with demons.

Jesus asked the demons their name and they responded with “Legion”

To the 1st century reader of this text that would have set them on their heels.

Legion is a military term.

A Roman Legion consisted of about 6,000 foot soldiers and 120 horsemen.

This may suggest that there were some 6000 demons within this man.

We don’t know how many, but we do know that there was more than one.

What we are supposed to see from this encounter is the power and authority of Jesus.

He has the power and authority to overcome not just one demon, but a whole legion of them.

It’s not just that Jesus’ power and authority are somewhat greater than the demons, he is of a completely different category.

The demon recognizes Jesus’ power and authority and requests that Jesus send them into a heard of pigs.

Recognize that he makes a request.

He doesn’t demand, he doesn’t asks

So Jesus allows this to happen.

And the pigs run off the side of a cliff into the lake.

There they drowned.

I guess the lore and story of Jesus’ interaction had spread.

B/c the people come out to see Jesus and this man.

And when they came, they saw a transformation.

The naked man who was out of his mind was now sitting in front of Jesus.

He was clothed and “in his right mind”.

Luke, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is very careful in how he relay’s this story.

This is a story of restoration.

The man who was full of demons is now freed from them.

The man who ran around naked is clothed.

The man who didn’t live in a house is getting to return home.

When full of demons he fell down and shouted at Jesus, now he is sitting at the feet of Jesus.

Though he was once out of control, now he’s in his right might.

What an amazing God we serve.

That he can bring about this type of transformation.

Though this is no doubt a story about a man who was demon possessed, there are some spiritual realities here as well.

We should be able to see ourselves in the reflection of this man.

Prior to Jesus we are are bound to the chains of sin and death.

We are controlled and led by the prince of darkness.

We are dead in our sins and trespasses and we live among the dead.

Jesus comes along and sets us free.

He comes to release the captive.

He comes to restore, renew, and recreate us.

We go from being his enemy to being his friend.

The image that the devil tries to destroy in us is recreated into Jesus’ image.

That’s the good news of the gospel.

Now to the gospel the response is to sit at Jesus’ feet to learn from him.

And to do what he tells us to do.

That’s what happens with this man.

Jesus commissions him to go out and tell everyone about his radical transformation.

In Luke’s gospel, this formerly demon possessed man is the first missionary.

Luke 8:39 “39 “Go back to your home, and tell all that God has done for you.” And off he went, proclaiming throughout the town how much Jesus had done for him.”

This is the response to those who have been transformed by Jesus.

Go and tell the world.

Mark tells us that this man goes out to the Decapolis, that is 10 cities in the Roman Empire to tell everyone about what God had done for him.

This is seed that fell on good soil.

However, there is another response to this man’s transformation.

The people of the town drive Jesus away b/c he’s bad for business.

A whole herd of pigs were just destroyed b/c of Jesus’ salvation of this man.

And people don’t like it when their money is messed with.

So they ask Jesus to leave.

They were more concerned with their livestock than they were with this man’s transformation.

How silly is it that they had witnessed a true miracle and all they could think about was the lost herd of pigs.

People are so easily distracted from what really matters.

Let us a be a people that celebrates God’s work in the lives of others even if it costs us something.

The restoration and renewal of one man’s soul is priceless.

The excitement that comes with those far away from God being drawn near should be contagious to us.

This is the driving mission of the church.

Whether it makes us uncomfortable or not.

We should celebrate those Jesus restores.

Knowing its the act of a loving God who brings sinners to repentance.

Who releases captives from their chains.

And raises dead men to life.

Let’s thank the Lord that he’s still in the business of saving souls and changing lives.

Let’s pray.