Untitled Sermon (6)

Scripture Introduction:

Luke 8:22-35.

Friends, I’m so tired of this virus. I’m tired of people being sick, tired of it disrupting stuff, tired of it seeming like we are pulling out of this and getting back to normal only to be hit really hard again. I know that this stuff gets politicized, I know there are heated opinions on this, and I don’t like that about it either. It’s something that threatens unity. It’s something that can easily pull us off mission. It can slow us down. It can discourage it. But here we are again.

We have to start asking tough questions. What is the best thing to do for the safety of our people, how do we best love our neighbor, how do we keep the mission of the church going? And I know that pretty much all of us has a strong opinion on these things. I’ll tell you what you should do….but the problem is you’ve got somebody else who’d say, “I’ll tell you what you should do…” and it’s the exact opposite. That’s tough in a local church. We’re united around the gospel of Jesus Christ. As I said over a year ago when all this craziness started—the way we make all these decisions is likely more important than the decisions that we make.

Now why am I sharing all this? Not because we’ve made any kind of decision or anything. We’re going to hope that we can ride out this storm. That through vaccines, herd immunity, and ultimately the grace of God…that very soon SWMO will no longer be one of the reddest places on the map for COVID outbreak. But we’re going to always be praying through this and making the decisions together that we deem best. No, the reason I’m sharing this is because all of this can make us feel like things are out of control.

And what do you want to do when you fell out of control? I think some want to just throw in the towel. Be distracted by other stuff…just deny that there is any kind of an issue. You can’t get control in your actual world so you escape to fantasy land. For others, we might want to try to gain control—go into overdrive to get control over our world. But sometimes you can’t. And when that happens we will start blaming, accusing, getting angry, all sort of things—again to try to get back some kind of control, some feel of safety and security.

Out of control is what we see in our text here this morning. We’re going to see Jesus and the disciples on a boat in the middle of the storm that is threatening their lives. And we’re going to see a demon-possessed man who is absolutely out of control. We’ll also see a herd of pigs out of control and then we’re going to see townspeople and how they respond to Jesus.

So as we open up this passage here, Luke 8:22 is where we will start, place yourself in the boat there with the disciples. What are you thinking? What are you feeling? Place yourself in the story of the demon-possessed man. Maybe you’re him. What’s it like to be so out of control, to be somebody you couldn’t even recognize in the mirror? Or maybe you are one of his family members, or somebody in the community--What are all of the questions that you are asking? Do you blame him? Is he the victim? Is he the perpetrator? The story is complex…sit with that for a bit. And then place yourself as one of the farmers in this community—how would you respond to Jesus? How do you respond to what happened to you?

Remember this story comes right after the parable of the soils. I think we’re still in part talking about how we respond to Jesus. And there are different responses to Jesus all throughout this passage. So listen up…see if you can spot yourself in this story.

READ LUKE 8:22-35

Sermon Introduction:

Did you notice all of the things that were out of control? None of this was present in the Garden of Eden. A wild storm. A wild man. A wild herd of pigs. Wild is not a word that described creation before Genesis 3. There were not wild storms upon the sea. Creation was not rebelling. But here it is and Luke wants us to see the great strength of this storm.

Luke also wants us to see the great strength of this demon possessed man. He wants us to see that nobody can control him. And I think the gospel writers have framed it this way for a reason. We are to feel the hopelessness of this situation…we’re going to see that in a couple weeks too with the woman who had been bleeding for 12 years and then a little girl who has died. All of these stories show our world being out of control. The natural world is raging—the spiritual world is turned upside down and that impacts creation---not only in the storm on the sea but also in the heart of this demon possessed man and then into the pigs. Then we’ll see how all of this impacts humanity with disease and death in the stories we’ll see in a couple weeks.

Whenever I land in this passage I’m always reminded of what the Puritan John Owen would say about sin and wildness:

Sin aims always at the utmost; every time it rises up to tempt or entice, might it have its own course, it would go out to the utmost sin in that kind. Every unclean thought or glance would be adultery if it could; every covetous desire would be oppression, every thought of unbelief would be atheism, might it grow to its head…every rise of lust, might it have its course, would come to the height of villainy: it is like the grave, that is never satisfied. -John Owen

Sin always aims at the utmost. We see this principle in full force in the story of this demon-possessed man—if you can even call him a man at this point. I like the description of James Edwards: Here is a man “with an unclean spirit living among unclean tombs surrounded by people employed in unclean occupations, all in unclean Gentile territory.” )

His humanity has been utterly destroyed. And this is what sin aims to do. It aims to rob us of our humanity, to make us less than human. To deprive us of our exalted status as the crown of creation, and to debase us to something even less than an animal. The portrayal of this man is more like that of a chained animal than a man created in the image of God. This guy once had a home and a family but now he is tattered, bloodied, naked, and living among the dead. He is a menace to himself and a menace to society.

It started in the garden when the serpent—that should have been in subjection to humanity—gets mastery over the first couple. It turns everything on its head. And things spin out of control. Certainly God is still on His throne. He is still in control---don’t hear me wrongly—but from our perspective things aren’t flowing as they ought to be. Sin does this. But don’t hear that wrong either. Some of the dysfunction and brokenness and difficulty and pain and heartbreak aren’t a result of our sin—and it may even be hard to trace it to sin around you. This isn’t me saying if a tornado happens or a hurricane or a building collapses it happens because somebody sinned and God is punishing them. There is more going on. These things don’t have simple little answers.

But what do you think we’d be saying if we saw this man in our community? How would he be labeled? We don’t do well when people are out of control like this. He’s a madman. He’s harmful to others. He’s harmful to himself. We like to give simple answers to this stuff. We like to label. We like to believe that it's all this guys fault and there is no way that I could end up at a place like this myself—if I make good decisions then my lot isn’t going to be there.

But we don’t know details in this guys story. We don’t know where it all started. We don’t know how he left himself open to demon possession. We don’t know why all this happened we just know that it did. That’s so often where we enter into the stories of those around us. We don’t know all the details. We just know that when the devil has his way in this man’s life it leaves him completely broken.

This story also explains your newspaper and the evening news. Anytime you’ve started a sentence with saying, “I don’t see how someone could…” this is your answer. When our enemy gets his way he aims to utterly destroy our humanity. Chaos and destruction are the tools of his trade.

And these same words appear in that story of the wild storm. So what do we make of this? What is this text all about? Ultimately, it’s about Jesus’ power over everything. It’s about His authority. It’s about His ability to heal anything, to calm any storm. I think there is application even here for things like mental illness.

But it can also be dangerous in our application. We can think that what this text is saying is, “if you just believe right then Jesus can fix anything.” It’s true that Jesus is good, and kind, and strong, and loving, and that He can do anything. But it’s also true that there is a mystery with this stuff and we don’t understand always why some might receiving healing and others not. God is doing something beautiful. And so we have to reject simplistic understanding. But we also have to let this text speak.

Jesus has power. And if we are going to experience healing then it’s going to come through Jesus. In fact as we tell the whole story of the Bible we see that every bit of healing comes through Jesus. And that’s what we do with a passage like this. Yes, in this instance the storm is calmed. The demon possessed man is brought again into his right mind. BUT that is only a foretaste of what is coming.

What will bring calm? What will help you sleep at night. That’s what this story is about. Jesus brings peace to the out of control.

I want you to notice something about both of these passages. Look at verse 22 of chapter 8. It’s evening. It’s bed time. But the disciples aren’t sleeping because a great windstorm arose. Chaos is threatening them and this is no time to sleep. They’ve got to get water out of their quickly sinking boat. The chaos of the storm threatens their existence.

How can you sleep at night when the world is going to hell? How do you sleep when the storms of financial ruin threaten your family? How do you sleep when death is lurking? How do you sleep when anxiety keeps you up at night—you don’t even know why you are restless but you just have this terrible feeling of dread? How could you possibly sleep while the strong man is out there building his hellish kingdom?

Or look at verse 27. For a long time he had worn no clothes, and had not lived in a hosue but among the tombs. Mark adds this—“Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always crying out and cutting himself”. His self-destruction doesn’t take a nap. He likely only sleeps when he passes out from exhaustion.

How can you sleep at night when you loath yourself? How can you sleep at night when all the evil that you’ve done parades across your mind as you try to sleep? How could you possible doze off into peaceful slumber when the strong man has taken up residence? It’s not going to happen.

I’m not sure if you have sleepless nights or not. But I know that you’ve likely got anxiety. You wonder what is going to become of this world. And you’ve got skin in the game. You love your children, your grandchildren, your great-grandchildren and you wonder what kind of world they are going to live in. You grieve the thought of loved ones, neighbors, even people you barely know spending eternity in hell separated from the good presence of God.

How can you sleep at night?

That’s why it’s kind of shocking that we see what we do in verse 23. The Son of God is asleep. Chaos all around him. The one guy who can fix it is asleep. Jesus is asleep while the storm is raging.

Luke has the disciples simply waking Jesus up. Mark again puts a bit more words to it. Their response to his sleeping is quite similar to how our own response would be. “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” They’ve been around Jesus long enough now to know that if they get in a bind he is the guy that they ought to go to fix this mess. He’s healed people. He’s cast out demons. He’s touched a leper and caused him to be clean. He’s got power. And so He is going to know what to do—perhaps he can somehow miraculously get all the water out of the boat, maybe he can figure out a way to speed up the process—maybe give the rowers super human strength. He’ll know how to help.

But he’s not helping. He’s asleep. The Son of God is in the stern sawing logs while all the disciples are about to be swallowed up into the sea. So they wake him up and what Jesus does next is perhaps more impressive than anything else he has done. Nobody calms the waves. Nobody but the Creator can tame the Creation. But Jesus stands up and in words typically reserved for an exorcism—Jesus rebukes the wind and said to the sea, “Hush!”

And calm comes.

Why does Luke give us this story? Because it shows us that Jesus does what only God can do. And the disciples clearly begin to understand this because they are filled with fear and ask the only fitting question, “Who is this guy?”

How do you sleep at night? The first answer to this question is given to us in the story of Jesus calming the storm. We sleep at night—just as the farmer in the parable of the seed growing—we sleep at night because the Lord is sovereign over the storms.

I know I’ve preached on this before but I’m always stirred up by the truths of Revelation 5. Is He Worthy?

We sleep at night because God is sovereign and he holds history in His hands.

The second answer to this question is given to us in the healing of this demon possessed man. Notice again the language used of this demon possessed man. The gospel writers really wants to highlight that this man is so strong that no human power can contain him. Just as no human power can calm a raging storm—so also, no human power can calm the inner storm inside of this man. But contrast this with verse 28. Here is the man kneeling at the feet of Jesus. We don’t know is this man somehow able to overcome the demons and crying out for mercy—or is this the demon showing his subjection to the Lord Jesus. We don’t know and it’s possible that it is both. But either way we see the great power and authority of Jesus.

The Lord Jesus is overturning the works of the devil and he is doing it in a mighty way. We see this also by what happens in verse 30, with Jesus asking his name—demanding his name. And we also see this in what happens with the great herd of pigs. We are told that it’s a great heard of pigs and that his name is Legion for the simple reason that this guy is possessed by a massive amount of demons. Again what happens when our enemy gets his way is chaos and destruction with the aim at dethroning God and destroying us.

But what happens when Jesus overcomes? When Jesus comes to town. Redemption. Look at verse 35. Here you’ve got this guy clothed and in his right mind. I don’t know why but every time I read this part of the passage it’s everything I can do not to weep.

That’s a side point to all this for us today. There was always a human there. Always the image of God. Just as we saw a few weeks ago with the sinful woman....Simon do you see this woman? I think we’re called to ask that question here as well. Do you see the man…or do you see the monster?

And I pray that we grow in seeing our community in this way, with these eyes. That rather than simply seeing the drug addict—and casting them aside because of their poor choices—that we are able to see somewhere within there the image of God, shattered though it is. That somewhere we can still see the fingerprint of God. And that rather than shunning or ignoring or labeling or casting aside or any such thing that we’d be moved by the brokenness. That every ounce of our anger would be reserved for the demonic who has brought about this through His devilish quest to dethrone the Almighty. He’ll destroy the image of God anywhere he finds it. And so first as we look at this man in brokenness I want us to weep for what we see.

I think we are also invited to see this as our own story as well. Apart from grace this is where sin will always lead us. As one preacher used to say, sin will always take you further than you wanted to go. This is where that little sin aims to take you.

How will you respond to the redemption of Jesus. Here I am Lord. Have me. Do your work?

But there is another response to all this. Redemption can also be destructive. Story of the pigs. Think about the parable of the soils. What would need to happen for the seed to take root on the path? You’d have to plow it up. You’d have to take that hard heart—and it’d need tilling done to it. You think that isn’t going to hurt? You think that isn’t going to bring some change and some tough questions. You better believe it will.

Or the seed that falls along the rocks. Rock removal. Or the one in the thorns. Pulling those things out…you think that isn’t going to be painful? You think that isn’t going to come with sacrifice.

And so that’s where we see a really sad and painful thing happen in this story. The townspeople are afraid. They are afraid of Jesus’ power—but they are afraid of what it will mean…they are afraid of what they would have to lose in order to follow Jesus. This guys farm is wrecked…his livelihood is destroyed. And this is one of those questions that always comes up in commentaries and people wrack their brain over this…because it doesn’t seem right. It doesn’t seem right that pigs die. It doesn’t seem right that this farm loses his livelihood. What in the world did he do?

But doesn’t that kind of beg the question of this text? Isn’t it worth it? What’s more important that Jesus is rescuing and restoring and booting out all sin and unbelief from his kingdom—or your farm, your economic prosperity, the thorns in your life….what’s more important? Is redemption the sweetest thing. Stay, Jesus. Wreak havoc if you must. Tear down all the stuff we’ve built. Burn it to the ground if it needs to go…and rebuild it all for your glory. Scary statement isn’t it? Would we rather boot Jesus out?

And what about those pigs? I think it’s actually pointing to something greater. Unclean pigs. Rushing headlong down a hill. The demonic always bring destruction and chaos and ruin. At first glance this looks like Jesus is sacrificing pigs for humanity. And I think there is some truth to that. But there might be some foreshadowing here about what Jesus will do on our behalf. He made him who knew no sin to become sin on our behalf. He takes all the forces of hell upon himself. He endures our hell so we don’t have to. And he rises from the dead because He has more power than that.

So what will you do with this Jesus today? What will you do with this work of redemption? Join Him in it? Fear it and boot him out of town…only giving Him so much?