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

Okay, while He is over here teaching the parables, there is one man and possibly two men, but because Scripture focuses on one, I will focus on one. A man who, at one time, was a fairly normal human being, for reasons we do not know, was possessed with a demon. Then a most hideous thing happened: several demons and more demons, until he literally became demon headquarters, and he was the hangout of demons, so that they became almost innumerable the demons that lived in him, or at least possessed him, I should say. So much so that he ran out into the wilderness, a desert, a forsaken place, a place of mountains and a place of a graveyard, and he lived there among the tombs and probably in the caves.

When he went mad, he went mad; people tried to control him. They had tied him up in ropes, and in fits he had ripped them loose. So, they tried chains. Can you imagine human strength in the presence of a fit, a demonic fit, so great that he could break chains that bound him? He is now scratching himself, cutting himself. Chains hang from his wrist. He is walking among the tombs and in the caves and the wilderness, stark naked, and standing there and raising his face toward heaven in bloodcurdling screams. I see time and space leak, and the Lord, sitting in the quiet and calm areas of Galilee, senses and perhaps sees this man on the other side of the sea and feels the pity of God as God has beheld this man.

So the storm has passed, and the boat comes to shore, and it’s a fascinating story. There’s no question about its fascination. I’m sure this story has been used many, many times to preach the gospel and many, many times to talk about the Lord’s power over demons. I want to look at it in its simplest form and know that it happened because of God’s pity. The Lord pities us; God takes pity.

Well, they’re starting to get out of the boat, and they’ve gotten up on shore, and they hear this blood-curdling scream, and several of them jump back in the boat. The Lord steps off. He starts up the slopes. They cautiously get out of the boat, looking right and left. They’ve heard the legend. They know the stories. You don’t keep a story like that hidden. Two mad men appear on the crest of the hill. Both of them are out there. I guess they’re used to scaring the wits out of people. Perhaps at this moment they’re only gurgling and doing crazy things. Perhaps they’re not having a fit, but the Lord approaches them, and you begin to see the human soul and the evil spirit speaking from out of the man’s flesh, or whatever it is that is possessed by unclean spirits.

The man says, “Don’t harm me. Don’t hurt me. Please don’t inflict pain on me. Don’t torment me. Please.” It’s a cry of survival because he has been hurt so much by so many, and something about this man approaching Him is threatening. Then there is an instant change. It is no longer he who speaks through his voice but the voice of demons, and they say, “Son of the most high God, have you come here to torment us before?” The man speaks again and says, “I implore you by God. Do not torment me.”

I’ve learned two things about this man, though they may not be valid. One is that he seems to have gone out into the tombs to avoid scaring people to death. He must have something redeeming about him. Another one is that he’s a religious man. He asks in the name of God for pity, so he will not be tormented by this one approaching him. And the demons, in turn, are concerned about their eternal state. I tell you this; this tells us so much.

I wonder what you learn from the demons who are calling the Son of the Most High God? What do you get out of this? What do you see? Audience: Well, they recognize something that the people don’t.

That’s right. They know what no one else does. They know Him to be the Son of God. They are absolutely clear that He is the Son of God. They also have a sense of time. I don’t understand that, but they have a sense of time, and they know this is not the hour; that they have a rendezvous with the Son of God, and this is not it. They are terrified that he has walked half the earth to find them just to torment them ahead of their time for being tormented. The tormentor knows that one day he will be the tormented, and it is an encouraging thing to know that there is a time, and the astounding thing is that they know it. They have a certain theological understanding. They know who He is. They know they will be tormented. They know that time is coming…and they know that time has not yet arrived. Audience: And when that time comes, they’ll be heading to the abyss.

We’re going to come to that in a moment. They also know that they… I’m a little reluctant here. I remind you that I am not Pentecostal. I was not raised in a Bible school. I am not a fundamentalist. I was not raised in a fundamentalist seminary. I am a conservative. This is how I was taught: to be very careful with my words. They make a statement here that is very difficult to understand: Legion is mentioned, He says what your name is, and he began to beg Him not to order them away from that region into the abyss. Alright, I don’t know what abyss means; are they begging not to be sent to hell, or are they begging not to be sent into the water? The answer is we don’t know, and we should not be dogmatic, because we don’t know. Anyway, coming back to this, a lot is going on here that the unclean spirits seem to understand, but no one else does. He asked for their name, and they are a legion, and that is a large number. If they’re going by the Roman count…Audience: 6,000.

A lot of them, enough to keep 2,000 pigs busy. Audience: In one person.

The man was literally headquarters for a group of demons. They seem to sense His absolute control over them. They don’t even say, “Don’t cast us out.” They start negotiating for the best possible place to be cast out. There seems to be no question in their mind that they’re about to be cast out. They ask not to be tormented, but they don’t ask not to be cast out. They seem to know the minute they see Him that this is it’s up. They don’t want to go to the abyss, whether that’s water, I don’t know, or whether that’s some pit of destruction, I do not know. Perhaps they feel that He’s going to deliver them out of time and space and throw them into eternal damnation. I can’t say, but I would like for us to look at all of these things as possibilities. We’re going to go all the way through the Lord’s life and Acts and everything else, and we will have the ability to refer back to this and remember and weigh rather than being dogmatic.

Audience: Whatever it is that they don’t want to go.