Clothed And In His Right Mind

Glad to be back with you guys. Thankful for being gone last week. It was very helpful to my family. It was a very sweet time, fellowship, and yet we missed you guys. And so we're glad to be back with you. This morning, after a long break, we're returning to the Gospel of Luke. We've been away from it for, what, four months? It's been a while. And we're returning back to it. This morning we're going to pick up in the middle of Jesus' earthly ministry. After he's chosen his disciples, he's gone out and he's now ministering. And we're picking up at a point where Jesus is going through and teaching, but he's also performing a lot of miracles. Healing people, raising them from the dead, calming seas, doing all kinds of things that we struggle to get traction with in our minds. When you start talking about Jesus commanding the waves, to stop. And he comes up out of the bottom of the, this is what comes right before our text. He comes up out of the bottom of the boat because the disciples are going, we're going to die. And he comes up and he rebukes the wind and the waves and says, where's your faith? And so he's, and they're going, who is this man? And so they've left Galilee and they're in the boat and they're on their way to the land of the Gerasenes, which is across the lake.

And over there we find that Jesus, he's greeted by the Gerasene demoniac. And so who's that? Well, that's a man who's naked, who lives by himself, who's uncontainable. They try binding him with chains and fetters and guards and all these kinds of things. And he breaks away from all of it. So this guy's nuts. And he's naked. He greets Jesus when he hits the shore. And so with that introduction, how do you feel about it? What is your expectation of being able to identify with what's about to happen? Naked crazy guy, demons, pigs running into the sea. You think, oh, well, there that is. Look at that. I want us to...

I'm not content for us to deal with it that way. I want us to be able to pull out of this text what's helpful and what's profitable to us. And so our goal this morning is to figure out what this text has to do with us. It's not something in a display case that we're to look at and go, oh, looky there. Look at that interesting thing that happened. No, it's been given to us for our instruction, for our rebuke, for our correction, so that we can be... trained in godliness. And so have your expectations that you would grow from learning about this passage this morning. Would you please stand for the reading of God's word from Luke chapter eight, verses 26 through 39. This is the word of the Lord and it is eternally true. Then they sailed to the country of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee. And when he came out onto the land, he was met by a man from the city who was possessed with demons.

and who had not put on any clothing for a long time, and was not living in a house, but in the tombs. Seeing Jesus, he cried out and fell before him and said in a loud voice, What business do we have with each other, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me. For he had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. For it had seized him many times, and he was bound with chains and shackles and kept under guard. and yet he would break his bonds and be driven by the demon into the desert. Jesus asked him, What is your name? And he said, Legion, for many demons had entered him. They were imploring him not to command them to go away into the abyss. Now there was a herd of many swine feeding there on the mountain, and the demons implored him to permit them to enter the swine, and he gave them permission. And the demons came out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned.

When the herdsmen saw what had happened, they ran away and reported it in the city and out in the country. The people went out to see what had happened, and they came to Jesus and found the man from whom the demons had gone out sitting down at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind. And they became frightened. Those who had seen it reported to them how the man who was demon-possessed had been made well. And all the people of the country of the Gerasenes and the surrounding district asked him to leave them. For they were gripped with great fear, and he got into a boat and returned. But the man for whom the demons had gone out was begging him that he might accompany him, but he sent him away, saying, Return to your house and describe what great things God has done for you. So he went away, proclaiming throughout the whole city what great things Jesus had done for him. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated.

I started off by saying that this text is hard for us to enter into because it's talking about things that we don't have much, if any, experience with. We're talking about demon possession, and good Reformed people don't know what to do with that. And as I was preparing, I was thinking, you know what I think? I think that demon possession is really just being so full of sin that you can't do anything else. Except sin. I think that at least has a lot to do with demon possession. So one of the things I do when I prepare is I read the text and I have my own thoughts about it, right? And there's this danger that I might be crazy. And so I don't leave it at that. I go and read what other wise men have had to say about it. And so I've started writing. Here's what Dave thinks. And so I start reading commentaries and I've realized nobody else thinks what I think.

And in fact, one of the commentators says, I'm wrong for thinking it. And that I'm crazy. And that demons are real. And as I was reading it, I was thinking, you know what? He's right. Because the text is very clear. The demons talk. The demons went into the man. The demons went out of the man. They didn't want to be put in another, you know, they didn't want to go to another place. This wasn't just the corruption of the man. There were demons in him. And I looked at it and went, I don't know what to do with that. And so I start in my mind trying to reason away the reality of demons. And we can't do it with this text. You can't do it in our lives, but we can't do it with this text. The demons are speaking through the man. They cry out, what business do we have with each other, Jesus, Son of the Most High? I beg you, do not torment me. For he had commanded the man's sinfulness to leave him. No, he commanded the unclean spirit to leave him.

Now, I'm not going to spend all of our time talking about demons because I don't know much about them. But I don't want the fact that there are demons in this passage and that they're real to distract us from gaining anything profitable from this text. Think of it this way. What model are we given to replicate as we come to God? How are we supposed to come to God? Like what? Like children. So, think for a second. If you were reading this passage to your children, would they be hung up on the fact that the man was demon-possessed? Nope. What would they do? They'd say, oh, that's really bad. That poor man. He didn't have any clothes or any house or any friends. It was awful for him. This is what our kids would observe about a demon-possessed man. They wouldn't question it. They would trust God's word. And so if we're to...

to be like them as we're commanded to, we have to approach this the same way they do. And they would acknowledge that's true. And they wouldn't become over infatuated with demons. They'd just go, demon possession's a thing because the Bible says it's a thing. And they wouldn't go, oh, well, it's just the man's sinfulness. That's what we do as adults because we're sensible. And if any of you ever thought, I wonder if that person's demon possessed. Every one of you's thought it. And don't you feel like you're standing out on the skinny branches to even have the thought? I don't even know if I should have thoughts like this. But you have them. So are there demons? Yes, there are. And they actually inhabit men and corrupt them. But that's not what I want to spend all of our time talking about this morning. I want to know what I want us to gain from this text. Help in growing.

in our growth and holiness. I want to see us grow in our love for Jesus Christ, in our obedience to him from this text. 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17 says, all scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work. And so that's the foundation under which we come to this text. It's here to teach us, to instruct us, to guide us, to train us. So if you were to pull out the demons out of this text, or let me ask you a question and say you can't mention demons as an answer, okay? What do you find interesting about this text? Christ's authority. Okay, yep, we're going to come to that. And that's something that we have a better handle on, the fact that Jesus is Lord, he is powerful, he has authority in this world as its creator. Okay, we can start to get some traction with that.

Is there anything else that's strange about this passage to you? They didn't like what Jesus did. Why do you say that? Yeah, so isn't that weird? They asked Jesus to leave. They asked him because they were scared. Would you please leave now? What were they afraid of? That's the question. What were these people afraid of? Were they afraid that the man was going to go nuts? And they thought Jesus would take the crazy... now sane, but maybe going to go crazy again man with him? Hopefully? No. What were they afraid of? Oak? Yeah. And why were they afraid of Jesus' power? I'll tell you. They were afraid of Jesus' power because they loved money. They loved money. And they saw Jesus coming into their land as creating a conflict in their economy. Because what was the result of Jesus showing up?

All those pigs died. And what do those pigs represent? Money, wealth, stability. And he hasn't gotten off the shore. And somebody's losing lots of money. So Jesus hits the shore. And there's this interaction with this man. And he commands the demons out and permits them to go into the swine. And they go off into the water and they die. Now it says that the herdsmen saw that. And having seen that, they went and told everyone in the city and in the country, what did they go tell them? This guy showed up and he talked to, he commanded the demons out of this man and all of our pigs are dead now. And everyone came out to see if that was true because that's crazy. Is it not? And all the people see it. They come out and they see what happened.

And they report in verse 36, it says, those who had seen it, who'd come out and seen this, they've seen the dead pigs, they've seen the demon-possessed man clothed and in his right mind, sitting with Jesus, sane. They went back and reported. That's how it happened. The pigs are dead and that demon-possessed guy is made well. And then they asked Jesus to leave because they were scared. And so what everyone was aware of, the disciples, the demon-possessed man, the herdsmen, the demons, the people who came and looked, they were all aware of the power of Jesus Christ. And the people of the garrisons, the garrison people who lived there, they said, we don't want that kind of power here. That's unbridled. That's dangerous. That's a threat to us. They had lived with the man who was crazy.

They tried binding him. They tried guarding him. And you get the impression that this man was at the very least a nuisance to their way of life. And they tried to restrain him, but they couldn't. They didn't have the power to. And so then Jesus shows up and changes this man. And all these pigs die. And the people say, we can't have that kind of craziness going on here. Who knows what he'll do next? We've got to ask him to leave. Jesus commanding, you read the interaction between the demons and Jesus and you see there's no question about Jesus' power. What do we have to do with us, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? Please don't torment us. And if you go to the parallel text, they say before our time. The demons recognize that there's a time fixed, that there's a judgment to come and that they will face the eternal torment of God. And they plead with him, don't torment us before our time.

But don't send us out into the abyss. Don't judge us already. Let us go into the pigs. And it's not the time yet for judgment, and so Jesus sends them into the pigs. They understand his power, not just to cast them out of this man, but to judge them and to damn them eternally. They understood his power. You know, the Gerasenes, they saw the raw power of God. It's sort of like the Israelites at Mount Sinai. When God says, come to this mountain and purify yourselves, don't touch the mountain. And I'm going to come be with you in three days and I'm going to talk to you. And the people agree to it. And then God descends. And what do the people say? They say, Moses, you speak to us. Because if God speaks to us, we'll die. Tell him to go away. We can't handle that kind of power. We need someone else like us to talk to us, to deal with us.

They were scared and they, like the Gerasenes, they wanted the power of God to be controlled, to be away from them because they feared for their lives. It's a fairly natural response if you think about it. When you see unrestrained acts of power, do you want to be near them? Whether it's a person on a rampage with a gun or it's a hurricane. Or a tornado. You think it's crazy for people to want to go chase tornadoes. You know that. That's just absolutely insane. You're playing with death. Because there's raw, unconstrained power. It's going to do what it's going to do, and you can't do anything about it. And to want to be near that is backwards. It's to have a death wish. And so the Gerasenes' response, we want to look at them and we go, well, those silly people, they should have...

They should have known who Jesus was and they should have welcomed him and they should have done all these things. But they couldn't because what they saw was unrestrained power. What they saw was the power of a judge. That's what the demons understood. They understood Jesus' power to judge them. And the Gerasenes understood this man, whoever he is and by whatever power he has, has the ability to do whatever he wants. And we don't want him near us. Because of the effect it might have on us. But that's not the only way. And so let me ask you this. Is that, was that true? Does Jesus Christ have the power to do whatever he wants whenever he wants? Yes, he does. And if you have your head screwed on straight, you'll realize that's a scary thing to realize. That it can be very scary. It's a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

And so we should not look at the garrisons and see them and go, well, those stupid people, if they only knew. Jesus really isn't like that. No, he is like that. He is a judge. He will come back and he will come to judge every living thing. But that's not the only way to understand his power. You guys read the Chronicles of Narnia? Heard them, listened to them, something of that effect. What do they say? So you understand, if you like fiction, it's a... It's not a parody. What is it? It's a what? Allegory. That's the word. I can never remember these things. It's an allegory. And it's meant, so there are characters in there that play, that are meant to represent God and his people and different things like that. So Aslan is supposed to represent God. And so, and Aslan's a huge lion. And what the kids want to know is they want to know, is he safe? Is he safe? And what's the response? No, he's not safe. But...

He's good. And the problem that those children had in reconciling those things is the same problem that we have. We think good means safe. Not going to disrupt, not going to upset, not going to command our lives and our destinies. Not going to take all of our wealth and throw it in the lake. And so we're left wanting to do a couple of different things. One, like the garrisons, their response is to say, we want that power away from us. We don't want that sort of, crazy or instability or unpredictable near us. Another response is to try to make the garrisons out to being crazy for the response that they had. But they didn't have a crazy response. They had a completely normal response. It's called damage control. If you knew that there was something that could cause harm to you, you would set about the work of preventing it, minimizing it. It's only natural.

This is what we would do. We also do these strange things where we try to take bad things and explain how they're good things. Think of a funeral. Some of you guys were at Hank's funeral last week. And I said to the people there, and I was actually with some friends yesterday, and I was telling them about it, and I said the same thing. I said, you know, it's been my experience now having anticipated doing Hank's funeral and then having done it. and having done some weddings, that I much prefer to do funerals to weddings. And all my friends looked at me like I was crazy. Why? And I said, well, because people are honest in funerals. There's a dead body here, and this is our end. And we need to talk clearly and candidly about this reality, because this is where we're all going to end up one day. And there's a freedom there that's refreshing.

And so I was talking to my friends yesterday about the funeral, and I was recounting to them how much I appreciated the honesty. Because I said, you know, what we have in front of us is the reality that death is an enemy, and that it's bad, and that we don't like it. And that's the truth. Now, one of my friends responded, because I said all that, and then I said, I don't mean it's a grief as if we're without hope. We have hope in Jesus Christ that this here that we're all going to face isn't the end. And so we don't grieve without hope, but we have hope. And so as soon as I said hope, my friend picks up in the conversation and he says, he says, yeah, yeah, funerals, you know, I mean, I know there's grief, but, but what? But really a funeral, it's a celebration of life. No, it's not. No, it's not.

And it's not helpful to the people who are actually grieving to tell them that this is a happy time. It's possible to grieve with hope for yourself and for that person who's passed. But it's not a happy time. David opened the funeral service by saying it's better to be in the house of mourning than to be in the house of rejoicing. And yet what we've done with funerals, and this is just an example, is we've taken something that's bad and said, no, no, no, it's good. And I say, no, no, no, it's bad. Death is an enemy. It's a bad thing. It's not something to rejoice in. But it's a coping mechanism that we use when we face things that are difficult for us. We go, I don't want this to be difficult, and so I'm going to try to find a way to not have this hurt, not have this be scary to me, not have this be painful to me. It's a good thing. They've gone to a better place. That may well be true.

And praise God for that. But it's still a grief. And so you understand how crazy it would have been if someone would have stood up and said to the herdsmen who just lost their wealth and their livelihood and said, no, no, no, it's a good thing. It's really a good thing that all your pigs died in one fell swoop. That's really a good thing. I mean, if you were a herdsman, what would you say? Uh-uh. No, it's not. You'd be down in the water trying to at least reclaim some of the meat or something. This is not a good thing. And so I want us to be able to be honest and see that the garrisons losing their pigs is not good and not okay. And they respond the way that any one of us would if something bad like that happens to us. Oh, it's good you lost your job. That's actually a good thing. No, it's probably not a good thing.

And so they understood the power of God to be one that was unbridled and it was dangerous. And they said, we can't have that here. Would you please leave? And we're not so different than they are. But that's not the only response that can be had to what Jesus did. The man who was demon possessed, that wasn't his response. And he was a part, intimately a part of the goings on, right? Here he's naked. Here he's crazy. Here he's uncontrollable. And here's Jesus Christ commanding the demons. And the demons are talking through him. And do we even have a category in our brain for this sort of thing happening? And yet there it is. And when the demons are expelled, he's clothed and he's in his right mind and he's worshiping Jesus Christ and saying, I want to go with you. So shall we assume that he didn't see the same sort of...

exertion of power that everyone else did? No. Do we think that he didn't know about the pigs and the calamity? No, he would have known, but he understood the power of God to be a good thing because he understood Jesus to be kind and merciful to him. He understood Jesus not to have the power of a judge, but to have the love of a father. Jesus was there because his father sent him to be there. And the garrison man understood that to be kindness. And there was no conflict between the kindness of God and the power of God. Was Jesus safe? Think outside of this text and just say, if you had to categorize Jesus' life and ministry, would you categorize it as one that's safe? No. He's in the temple flipping over tables at the beginning and at the end of his ministry.

And he's taking the Pharisees to town publicly for their corruption and their hypocrisy. He's not safe. And we have to get it out of our minds that Jesus has to be safe and comfortable for us to approach. Jesus is not a sweet little, innocent, limp-wristed, soft-haired man. He's the Son of God. And he has all of the power of God. dwelling within him, such that demons recognize him and say, what are you doing here, son of the most high God? What do you want with us? What you have to get into your mind is that he uses that power for good and that he controls that power, not you. That's what the Pharisee man understood. And he wanted to leave everything and follow Jesus. And you say, well, what did he have to leave? He's living in the tombs. He didn't have any clothes.

But Jesus tells them to go where? Where does Jesus tell them to go? He says, go back to your home. Go back to your family. Go back to what you had and tell them what God has done for you. If you want to come to Jesus Christ, if you want the people that you love to come to Jesus Christ, if you want your friends and your neighbors and your families to come to Jesus Christ, you can't lie to them about God's power. You can't believe lies about God's power. And you'll want to because it's scary. The Gerasenes were normal and thinking, what's this guy going to do if he stays here? What are the implications for us? Those are the thoughts that you'll have. Those are the temptations that you'll face. And over and against that, you have to know and believe that God is good. Another thing about coming to Jesus Christ, what we have here is an account of a man being converted.

All through the Gospels, Jesus is telling people, you have to leave your family, you have to leave your possessions, you have to leave your home, and you have to follow me. Anyone who's not willing to do that's not worthy of me. And so here we find a man who wants to do that. And the only reasonable thing for us to conclude is that he was converted. He was made a Christian by the power of God because he's bearing the fruit of that conversion in his life. He wants to follow Jesus. And I want to tell you another thing we learned from this text is you following Jesus does not mean you will get what you want. What did this man want? He wanted to follow Jesus. Did he get that? No. He got told to go home and to tell everybody about what God had done. And Jesus didn't say, oh, we'll go run back and tell them and then come find me. No. He says, you go and you stay and you be a witness.

to the power of God in this country. And you realize Jesus left, right? He's not there anymore, so the people don't get to see what he did anymore. So Jesus has shown up, this thing has happened, and then he leaves. And so all the people are left going, well, there's this thing that happened. And at some point, they're going to be willing to go, why and who and how? Who is this man who did this? And Jesus in his wisdom left his people there, this man, to testify to who he was. And it wasn't what the man wanted to do. He wanted to go with Jesus and be with him. And Jesus said, no, you stay there. Return to your house and describe what great things God has done to you. So he went on his way, proclaiming throughout the whole city what great things Jesus had done for him. So the man did what he was told. Isn't that beautiful? That God saved this man and was merciful to him. And not only merciful to him, but merciful to the people who asked him to leave.

By leaving them a witness to testify to the goodness of God. And when that man went through the town proclaiming what great things Jesus had done for him, he didn't go through saying, oh, and it wasn't that big of a deal and Jesus isn't really going to change your life. There's not going to really be a cost to discipleship. No. That man would have spent his time testifying to the goodness and the kindness and the power of God all working together for his glory in saving men. calling them to believe this same thing. So does this account have anything to do with you? Yes, it has lots to do with you and me. There are three things that I want to close with. The first is that you must prefer the love of God over money. Jesus says if you have a conflict in your mind about money or your well-being or your financial stability or however you conceive of it, And serving God, meaning I'll serve God if it doesn't affect my money, my job, my retirement, my kid's school, my whatever. Then what you need to realize about your heart is that you're behaving like the Gerasenes. You're more concerned about your comfort here in this world and your stability here in this world and your progress here in this world, earthly speaking.

than you are about bearing fruit for the kingdom. That doesn't mean that to be a Christian means you're taking a vow of poverty. That's not true either. God gives some Christians plenty of money and plenty of financial stability. And he takes that away from others. And they don't have that. And they're no less Christians because of it. And so you can't love money more than you love God. You can't serve two masters. And that was what the Gerasenes were faced with. This man is a threat to our livelihood. We want our livelihood. Jesus doesn't guarantee you'll be able to keep your livelihood. The second thing is, you have to count the cost of being Jesus' disciple. And you have to do what he requires of you, even if it's not what you want to do. And you think, well, fine, I'll... You kind of sink into this sort of sullen, dejected...

You know how kids get when you tell them to do something they don't want to do, but they know they have to do it because if they don't do it, it's not going to go well for them. And so they're just like, fine. And then they go do it. And instead of being cheerful about doing it, they're like, yes, mom. Okay, mom. What can I do for you, mom? But their heart's not, they're not doing what they want to do. They've got some other thing they want to do, and you're telling them to do something else, and they've learned, oh, I've got to do it, you know.

And you know what? I will say that may be a step of faith for your children, depending on who they are, actually. It's not sufficient for them to respond that way, but that's better than them saying, ignoring you or saying, I'm not going to do that. It's better for them to make effort and to say, okay, I will. But their whole heart's not there yet. That's better. But it's not sufficient. You want your kids to delight in doing what you tell them to do. And the reason you're allowed to want that as a parent, It's because God wants that of us, demands that of us. That not only would we do what he says, but that we would desire to do what he says. Even if it doesn't immediately line up with our own desires. And you think of how this guy would have gone through the city proclaiming the gospel and compare it to how Jonah went through. You can envision how Jonah went through Nineveh, right? I mean, I think he was probably excited about going through Nineveh because he was saying, God's going to destroy you guys. And that's what he wanted.

So I think he probably had some joy in proclaiming that message. But Jonah knew that God was going to be merciful to the Ninevites. And so there was this internal conflict that he would have had. God's going to destroy you. I hope, I hope, I hope. But in the back of his mind, he knew that God was merciful. And so you get the impression that Jonah kind of went and did his work begrudgingly. Well, I guess I'll have to. I don't have much of a choice about it. After all, I guess you did get me out of the belly of a fish. Even though you put me in there, I suppose I'll go do what you said. But that's not how this man would have done his work. Even though the work that he was given by the Lord wasn't what he wanted to do. He was glad to be of service to his master, to his Lord, to his king. And he was willing to do what was required of him. And that has to be the thing we're aiming at in our Christian life. We have to be moving towards cheerful.

obedience to Jesus Christ. And if you just put on a happy face and a grin, oh yeah, I know, and it's fine, and I like it, and I don't trust you. John was just smiling at me, and I looked at him, because I expect that it wouldn't be just easy for you. And the only thing you can combat the difficulty of obeying God with is the kindness and the goodness of his mercy towards you. That's where you'll find strength and joy to live by faith. You have to count the cost of being his disciple. And then you have to do what he requires of you. And you have to do it cheerfully. That's what we're heading towards. The final thing is when you look at this man and you think what kind of man he was, he's very hard to identify with because he's demon-possessed after all. And have any of you wondered if other people are demon-possessed? Have you wondered if you're demon-possessed? Well, no. You haven't wondered that, now have you?

You might think, I think I might be crazy, but you haven't thought, I think I have a demon. I mean, seriously. And so when you read about a demon-possessed guy, you just go, I don't know how to connect with him. And I say, he was demon-possessed. But beyond that, that wasn't his only problem. He wasn't just, you know, if we think, oh, well, demon-possessed people are really, they're really messed up, but people who aren't demon-possessed now, they're okay. I say, no, he had demons, and that was a real compounding of the problem. But even once the demons were gone, he was still an awful sinner. And so are you and I. If you want to bear the fruit, you think, okay, he was demon-possessed, but then he went and did all this good stuff. And so I struggle to do the good stuff, and I'm not demon-possessed, and so I don't know how to plug in and sync with this guy. I say, well, he's sinful, and he bore the fruit of repentance. Are you sinful, and do you want to bear the fruit of repentance? If you do, you have to first see your own corruption.

your own failures, your own sins. And you have to realize that just like him, the only hope that that man had, the only hope that there was for him, was that God would be merciful and gracious to him. That was the only hope for him, and that's the only hope for you. You may not have lived the life that this man lived. I'd venture to bet that none of you have. But apart from the grace and mercy of God, you're no different than him in the Lord's eyes. You're not better than him. You're not more deserving of God's kindness than he was. And he was glad when he knew the love of God. He rejoiced in it. And he lived a life of fruitfulness. And that's what we get from this passage, is that you can't do that if you love money. You can't do that if you love stability. You can't do that if you're only willing to obey God when he tells you to do what you want to do anyway. Sometimes he does tell you to do things you want to do. Sometimes parents say, why don't you eat some ice cream, honey? And the kid says, yes, sure, I'll be glad to obey.

Can I obey extra with two scoops? What we have in this text is we have a demonstration of the power of God, but it joins together with the mercy of God and the kindness of God. And you can't separate those things. If you separate those things, you'll end up like the Gerasenes wanting Jesus away from you, not wanting to be near him. I mean, it's completely opposite. They say, we want you to go away from us. The demon-possessed man says, I want to come be with you where you go. And so the miracle here is that he healed this man. He restored him. He removed the demons, the miracles that he gave this man a new heart. Because there's plenty of people in the Gospels that Jesus heals who don't respond the way this man does. And so the only miracle that happened here, you say, well, the miracle is that he healed him. And I say, that's right. But the more beneficial and miracle with eternal consequences that he saved this man from the

from the grip of his sin, and gave him faith. And so if we want to live the life that this man led afterward, we have to come to God the same way he did. And so you remember I asked you at the beginning, do you believe in, you know, these demons, you know, demons are weird. How would a kid respond to me saying, this is what you need to do? Would they be sitting there mulling over in their brains going, well, I'm not sure that's going to, I mean. That might have consequences. If I do that, then this is going to happen. If that happens, then I don't know if I... I don't know that I can't manage all of that. I don't know if that's for me. Is that what kids do? That's not how kids reason and think. That's not how they process life. If a parent tells his child to do something, the child doesn't process.

Well, I'm supposed to, and he was good to me, and if I don't, I'm going to get in trouble. And kids are just more simple. They're just either going to do it or they're not. If they're not going to do it, you just know right away they're not going to do it. And if they are going to do it, you can see that they're going to do it, that they're going to obey, that they're going to come along. And it's a sweet thing that kids are so simple. They learn to be complex. twisted in part by watching you and me. Our kids watch us kind of, well, you know, they watch us get asked questions about sin and kind of like not answer the question, kind of talk for a while, but not answer the simple question that was asked of us. They see us do it and they go, but I saw what you did that they're asking you about. And now you're talking over here. They learn that from us. We need to learn from them.

We need to come to Jesus Christ the way the kids would have come to this text. They wouldn't have had problems with demons. They would have said, huh, demons, those things sound awful. And they would have said, oh, look, this man, Jesus healed him and made him new, and this man wanted to be with Jesus. That's so awesome. And then Jesus told them to do something, and he was happy to do it. Okay, I'm going to try that. They wouldn't be all bollocked up about, well, but what if I fail? And so learn from children. When you read scripture, I want you to read it and think, what would a five-year-old understand? What would an eight-year-old understand if they were reading this? You know, I was talking about this with my kids at dinner. I don't remember, it was Friday night. I was telling them about the passage, and it was really helpful to hear the questions my kids had because I just thought, well, of course everyone knows that and thinks that. But they had the most simple questions about how and why, and then that's neat. We've got to be like children.

We've got to come to the word of God like children. Receiving it by faith. Loving his son, not being afraid of the power of God. Because he's promised to be good to us and merciful to everyone who calls on his name. So call on his name and trust that he'll be good to you. As he's healed this man, he can heal you of whatever infirmities you've got. Would you dare to say that the things that are wrong with you are worse than what were wrong with this man? Do you live in a way that says, I'm beyond the pale, but he's not? Well, it's absurd when we put words to it. So trust God and come to him by faith. And then seek to do what he tells you to do with a cheerful heart. And trust that he'll meet you in the process and he'll bless you in it. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you that you don't keep your power to save, to judge, to redeem, to destroy. Father, you have power to do anything you want.

And we thank you that you don't keep it bottled up, but that you have demonstrated your power, your love toward us in sending your son, just like he went across the lake to save this man. You sent him to this world to save your people. And we pray, Father, that you would number us among your people. And not only us, but our children. And not only our children, but our loved ones. And not only them, but our coworkers and our neighbors and our bankers and our... coffee servers and our waitresses, Father, would you help us to love you as this man loved you and to proclaim what you have done throughout all of the city and all of the country. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.