Life of Christ #6- Jesus Went After the One Everyone Forgot | The Compassion of Christ

If you take that binding of the strong man as the close of where we were and eliminate the parables, then we come to exactly where we are tonight: the story of the Gerasene demoniac. He is another illustration of this tremendous power that Jesus Christ had at His disposal to plunder the strong man.

When I said to you the other night that the Lord had bound the strong man, I said He bound him with His Word. But I did not say to you, “He bound him with His Word by means of His cross.” I know your first response, “But He hadn’t been crucified.” No, nor had He been resurrected, but Moses parted the Red Sea based on the Lord’s resurrection, and we were redeemed, even in eternity past, by the cross of Christ. It is through the power of His resurrection that all things are wrought, because the cross is an eternal matter that is free from and uninhibited by time and space. And even though Satan, Lucifer, was, at the time the Lord began His ministry, alive and well, nonetheless the Lord could come into His realm, his kingdom of darkness, and bind them because of a future cross. Future to time, but not future to God.

I’d like to share one other thing that came out of our meeting afterward here the last time we met. I didn’t say it; another brother did, and it was a point well taken. I hope you’ll recall that in the last video you saw, the Lord’s family came to get Him because they were very concerned about Him. This took place either in Capernaum or in Nazareth. His people, His own immediate family, came to Him, and He said, “These people in this room, here is My brother, here is My mother, here is My sister,” and Lance made an observation.

Now, those of you out there who are listening to the video, I’m aware that, you know, Lance is a man who’s nearly 90 years old now, but he made this statement back before he was 40. He said, “Isn’t it interesting that the Lord did not hold to past relationships?” Many times I have watched Christians deal with past relationships because Joe and John had a wonderful spiritual relationship and grew up together. Sometimes they feel that relationship binds them to the present and into the future, and that previous relationships almost control you. Lance made the point that previous relationships did not bind the Lord; He had been very intimate, very close with a brother, possibly a sister, brothers, and a mother, but He had outgrown them, you might say. I’m sure you’ll understand; I say that with qualification. He was presently involved in the ministry of His Father, and here were new people, new to Him less than two years, probably less than one year. But because it was spiritual and focused on the present and the future, He did not look back at the past, nor did it control him. Past relationships did not affect His relationship to brothers and sisters, who, on a spiritual level and because of the present and the future, took precedence over natural and past relationships.

We’re in Matthew 8, Mark 4, Luke 8, and we have come to the story of the Lord’s time beside the sea and some very packed events. Now, I’m going to talk to the people in the room. Something very interesting is going on here that you probably wouldn’t notice. As best I can discern, the day that this happened and either the day following this or certainly the day that is recounted after this are probably the two longest days recorded in the Lord’s life up till the day of His crucifixion. If you will go back and study this closely, you’ll see that on the same day and the day that follows, this one seems almost never to end. It must have been packed from the moment He got up until the wee hours of the night.

It gives us some insight into why John said all the libraries in the world could not hold the life of Jesus Christ, because here are just two days that are just a blur of activity. He’s been telling parables all day. He’s been beside the seashore. I do not know what time of day it is right now, but it says the same day toward evening or when it was evening. I do not know what that means, but if this is evening, watch and see how much more gets packed into this day. It’s rather remarkable, if not almost impossible to conceive of so much in one evening. It’s the longest evening.

It is evening, and the Lord looks around at the multitudes pressing in about Him. You would almost expect it to say next, ‘and He was moved with compassion, and He healed them and in something or other.’ But the very opposite is true. He sees the multitudes around Him, and He decides to push off into the water and leave, completely leave the multitudes. He’s not being very Christian. Boy, I’d like to know why He left. Why did He leave the multitudes? But what did the Father prompt Him to do? What was going on inside the Lord?

I’ve got two possibilities. One: He decided to take care of His soul for a little while. Maybe He knew He had reached His limitations, and it was time for Him to be very human and get out from under the pressures that He was under. I think that’s one possibility. I don’t know. Maybe the other one is a little too religious. Maybe I’m putting too much on God. It’s possible there was a prompting in Him…perhaps He saw a cemetery and a madman. Possibly He had an overwhelming sense of God’s pity. Perhaps, across the Sea of Galilee, a man was having a raging fit at that moment. I can tell you I don’t know what it was. I would personally be inclined to say it had to be one of those two. Unless one of you brothers can come up with a better one. We’ll just say that it was one of those two.

For some reason, He decides to leave them. I love the scene here. There’s obviously an enormous amount of popularity and hero worship going on. You’ve seen the pictures of the victorious ship steaming into New York Harbor, Southampton Harbor, with people everywhere. Well, He’s leaving, and folks begin getting in their little boats and going along with Him just out of tribute to this marvelous person, to add one more minute, and possibly to get His attention by waving to Him.

Well, they go a little farther out on the water, and Jesus Christ gets in front of the boat. There seems to be – everybody seems to know – who read this 2,000 years ago that there’s a cushion in the front of the boat, because it’s what? A cushion at the front of the boat because it says so, matter-of-factly. The front boat cushion, and He had laid down on it and He had fallen asleep, a little evidence that He knew it was time to take care of His soul. He was a tired man, and He obviously fell into a deep sleep.

I told you all that I once had the privilege of watching a storm blow up on the Sea of Galilee…the Lake of Galilee. Supposedly the most tempestuous lake in the whole world, because it’s so far down, so low, and because of the atmospheric pressures there, especially being affected by the Dead Sea, which is just a little bit further over in the mountains, that highs and lows move in on that thing. If I hadn’t seen it, I really wouldn’t have believed that, but we were sitting by the Sea of Galilee eating fish that had just been caught from it. Literally, all of a sudden, lightning and thunder and storm and wind and rain right out in the middle of it lasted about 20 minutes, and it was over with. It was a remarkable sight to see. Did not affect us. It was right out in the middle of the lake.