Luke 8:22-39

Discussion Questions

• At the start of a new year, let’s take a moment to reflect, reorient, reprioritize, recommit and ask ourselves some important questions:
  – Are you who God wants you to be? Are you living in away that brings joy and glory to him?
  – What are ways that you can nurture and increase your enjoyment of, and delight in, God?
  – What areas of your life need transformation?
  – How can you take steps to grow in grace and cultivate a rugged faith throughout the year ahead?
• On what or who are you placing your ultimate trust and faith? Are you looking to people and props that can’t bear
  the weight? Is Jesus truly at your center? Are you fully trusting that you are right where he wants you to be and that he will deliver you safely through any storm?
• Your testimony is about what God has done in your life – less about your story and all about his glory. Do you share what God is doing in your life with those around you? If not, what hinders and hangs us up from doing so? How can we look for opportunities to point others to and proclaim the goodness and sufficiency of God?

Transcript

We study through books of the Bible here at The Village Chapel. If you need a copy, raise your hand. You’re going to want to follow along in the text. It’s really important today, as it is, really, every week, but if you need a copy, just raise your hand. Somebody will drop one off at your row, your aisle, and that way, you can indeed follow along. Special thanks to our guests who have joined us online over the last week. We have some very special guests from Jeffersonville, Indiana. They used to come here and belong here all the time. Everybody wave to the cameras to Jeffersonville, Indiana. That’s good. Greensboro, North Carolina. Plano, Texas. Yucaipa, is that right? California, Yucaipa. Anybody? A couple of people from there. I think it’s San Bernardino area. Scottsdale, Arizona, so glad all of you have joined us over the past week.

Before we read the text, I want to read this little article from December 28th, 1935. One of my favorite writers and authors over the years has been G.K. Chesterton, had a big impact on a lot of people, including C.S Lewis in his conversion. Chesterton was writing an article for The Illustrated London Times, in which he stated his intentions to write about Christmas beyond the highly commercialized date of December 25 in order to explore its true meaning and lasting impact. Since different streams of the church will say Epiphany or the 12th day of Christmas is either today or tomorrow, I’m going to just jump off of this little three paragraphs that Chesterton wrote.

He said to the folks at Illustrated London Times or London News, those who read his article, “I take a grim and gloomy pleasure in reminding my fellow hacks and higher drudges in the dreadful trade of journalism that Christmas, which is now over, ought to go on for the remainder of the 12 days. It ought to end on the 12th night, on which occasion Shakespeare has, himself, assured us that we ought to be doing what you will,” and that’s the 12th night play, “But one of the queerest things about our own topsy-turvy time is that we all hear such a vast amount about Christmas just before it comes, and suddenly hear nothing at all about it afterwards. My own trade, the tragic guild to which I have already alluded, is trained to begin prophesying Christmas somewhere about the beginning of autumn and the about it are all like prophecies about the golden age and the day of judgment, all combined…”

“… Everybody writes about what a glorious Christmas we are going to have. Nobody, or next to nobody, ever writes about the Christmas we have just had. I’m going to make myself an exasperating exception in this matter. I’m going to plead for a longer period in which to find out what was really meant by Christmas, and a fuller consideration of what we have really found.” I might even amend it and say, what has found us. I think that’s really interesting that he’s talking like that about Christmas and about thinking about the implications of the incarnation, not just the commercial holiday, but the incarnation, the implications of it in an ongoing way, and I actually love and appreciate that. I think for us, as we go through a holiday like we’ve just done and as we get into what we call New Year, and we are wishing each other a happy new year and all that sort of thing, it’s a great time to ask ourselves some of those kinds of questions.

Are you who you really want to be? Just quoting Switchfoot, for those of you that know who that is, but I think it’s a great question. I really do. Are you who you really want to be, and for you who call yourselves Christians, which I think is probably most of us in this room and most of those who are watching online, are you who God really wants you to be, and what might you want to do as we begin a new year? This is the first Sunday. As we begin a new year, what might you want to do? How might you want to increase your enjoyment and delight in God this year? Not just how can you be more religious, not just how can you follow the rules better, but how could you see yourself perhaps delighting in the Lord Jesus a little bit more, and in what ways do you want Him to transform you this year? Don’t settle back into a bah humbug.

The older we get. I think we can do that quite easily, but we’re going to, today, take a look at some things from the life of Jesus, and it’s going to tie together really well with next week, because we’re going to do, basically, four miracles of Jesus. Today we’re going to look at “A Savior in the Storm and a Deliverer from the Darkness,” so that’s the title of the sermon. You see it up on the screen, but I’ll remind you, before we read the text, that the miracles of Jesus are not just bits of supernatural or sensational entertainment. No, they actually serve purposes way beyond just the act that happens in that moment. They display the power and authority of Jesus. That’s right. They talk about His power and authority, and we’ll see this today, over disasters, natural disasters, over demons. We’ll see that today.

Next week, Tom Yarbrough is going to lead us through the next passage, and he’ll be talking about how the miracles of Jesus also display power and authority over disease and over death itself. The miracles of Jesus also arouse curiosity about Jesus. Look at the thousands of people, as we go through Luke’s gospel, that are following Him, and the crowds are just massive, and all of this without digital marketing or anything. I mean, it’s just amazing how all of that could happen, just word of mouth, from village to village, person to person. They reveal the compassion of Jesus, affirm the identity of Jesus. That is, if He’s claiming to be the Son of God, which He is; if He’s claiming to be Messiah, which He does boldly and clearly throughout the gospels, if He’s claiming that He and the Father are one, which He does boldly and clearly; His self-understanding is that He indeed was the Son of God.

If that’s true, the miracles certainly affirm that He is that person. Who else can walk on water? Who else can calm the storm? Who else has control over things like demons? And then, they inspire discipleship and worship, which is what we were all created for. That’s what you’re created for, I’m created for. It’s your purpose and mission in life, according to God, anyway, not just to get a job, find a career, find somebody to marry, et cetera, et cetera. All that’s part of it, I’m sure, but your primary function and purpose, the way He designed each and every one of us, is that we might bear the image of God in a world that has turned away from God, that we might bear the likeness of our God, and that He might be glorified in all of our lives.

Now, before I read the text, pray with me, if you will, this prayer from our older brother, St. Augustine: Almighty Father, enter our hearts. So fill us with your love, that forsaking all evil desires, we may embrace You, our only good. Show to us, for Your mercy’s sake, O Lord, our God, what You are unto us. Say to our souls, “I am Your salvation.” So speak that we may hear. Our hearts are before You. Open our ears. Let us hasten after Your voice and take hold of You. In Jesus’ name, we pray this. Amen and amen.

Let’s look at the text then. We came off the parable of the four soils, the parable of the lamp, and we move right into a time where Jesus, along with His disciples, they’re all with thousands of people that have been following Him, and they’re down by the seashore. This account that we’re going to read is in all the synoptics, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and it’s a great read and I encourage you to go and read the other, the Matthean and the Markan accounts as well.

You’ll pick up other details, each writer adding in their own perspective and some of the things that hit them as they go along. So, verse 22 of Luke, Chapter 8. “Now it came about on one of those days, [and Mark tells us it was in the evening] that He and His disciples got into a boat, and He said to them, [Jesus talking to the disciples] ‘Let us go to the other side of the lake.’” The lake is the lake of Gennesaret. It’s also called the Sea of Galilee. It’s called the Sea of Tiberias. It depends on where you are, what you call it. We do the same thing here. We do that with our football team. Tennessee Titans, but we also think of it as the Nashville team, the team that plays here, so we do that all the time. We’re always sort of in our perspective from where we’re at, and they do that with the Sea of Galilee as well.

Jesus wants to go to the other side of the lake. They launched out, and by the way, He’s in Capernaum, probably on the northwest shore there, and looking across to Decapolis, the region of 10 cities, the Greek cities. This would be a pagan area, so would not be a Jewish area at all, so it’s kind of strange, in a way, that a Jew would want to do that, would want to go over there, but He’s got a mission and purpose in mind. They launched out, so it’s nighttime. He’s got these professional fishermen with their boat. They know the Sea of Galilee, and they’re going to carry Him like He asked them to. They’re going to carry Him across to their side. “As they were sailing along, He fell asleep; and a fierce gale of wind descended upon the lake, and they began to be swamped and to be in danger.” The Sea of Galilee sits about 680 feet below sea level, almost 700-feet below sea level.

To the north is Mount Hermon, 25 miles, snow-capped most of the time throughout the year, so you have water sitting deep down in the well of the Earth. You have cold winds coming down from the top of Mount Hermon, it hits the cold winds. If they’re blowing good and hard enough, they’re going to hit that Sea of Galilee surface, so that warm water and natural recipe for storms. To this day, that’s the kind of thing. Sudden storms come up on the sea of Galilee all the time. This one’s timed perfectly though. They’re in the boat. “They came to him and woke Him up, saying, ‘Master, master. We are perishing!’ And being [awakened] aroused, He rebuked the wind and the surging waves, and they stopped.” In Greek, the word is pauó. It’s like pow.

They stopped, literally, just suddenly. Now, if you were walking across your living room with a bowl of water, which most of you never do, but imagine it if you were and the waves were going up in the bowl like this quite a bit, and you stopped suddenly, does the water stop right away? No, it continues to slosh back and forth because you’ve been walking, and it takes a while for that to happen. But this calm happens immediately. “And He said to them, ‘Where is your faith?’” They’re all guffawing at this, of course. The ship has been going down. If you read Matthew and Mark, you get the impression they’re literally seeing their life flash before their eyes, just pass before their eyes.

They have done, since they’ve been professionals out there in that boat, and as fishermen and all that sort of thing, they were in an area, they knew what to do. They knew how to navigate stuff out there, and yet this was far beyond their ability. So, they’re fearful, and they finally turn to Jesus and said, one version was, “Don’t you care? We’re perishing.” And He wakes up, and He basically says to them, “Where’s your faith?” Notice, by the way, the four things Jesus says as we go through this passage, “Let’s go to the other side of the lake. Where’s your faith?” I like this. This is really good. “They were fearful and amazed.” Another way to say that is they were even more afraid, and they said to one another, it’s beautiful, underline this even in the pew Bible, “Who then is this, that He commands even the winds and the waters, and they obey Him?” That’s brilliant. I mean, we’re all pretty leery, I would say is a good way to say it, about the weather reports that we hear on television, that sort of thing.

Some of the time, you get the sense that they’re kind of pumping it up too much so that we’ll stay dialed into the TV station or follow that person on Twitter or whatever it is. And some of the times though they’re right, and they’re predicting what’s about to happen, and we’ve gotten better. I think science has gotten better at predicting movements of weather, but to my knowledge there isn’t anyone that I know of that commands the storms, and then the storms obey. That’s still timelessly true of Jesus alone. That’s important to note, and I think that’s why it’s in all three of the gospel accounts of this event. Who, then, is this, that even the wind and the waves obey Him? Let’s keep going. “They sailed to the country of the Gerasenes.” It’s just, again, the Decapolis region. Various English translations might say Gadarenes.

These are just various spellings and different ways of saying a similar area, and it’s opposite Galilee. Galilee is a northern third of Israel, so this is opposite the lake or opposite the sea over there on the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee. “When He had come out onto the land, He was met by a certain 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.” You need to read Mark 5. The account there is just a little detail. This is a horrific encounter. This man is screaming and yelling, and he’s hurting himself. He’s cut himself. He’s got all kinds of scars, and he’s just a mess, self-destructive in every way. At the same time, you have just come through a really violent storm. Your boat pushes up, because the sea of Galilee is only 7 or 8 miles across from west to east and maybe 13 miles, 15 miles at the most from north to south. So, they’ve gotten through a really rough night.

I don’t know if this ever happened to you. You got through a really rough night, and then you push up on the shore, and all of a sudden, “Rawr.” Somebody’s yelling at you, screaming at you, and coming after you like this, and that’s what happens. “And seeing Jesus, he cried out and fell before Him, and said in a loud voice, [this is fascinating, that a demon-possessed person would get this] ‘What do I have to do with you, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg You, do not torment me.’” What you may or may not know about verse 28 is that it shows us that this demon-possessed man, these demons that are inside of this man, actually have some level of accurate Christology and eschatology, both. Christology, the study of the person of Christ. Some understanding of who Jesus is. Remember, the religious leaders on the other side, back in the Jewish side, they wouldn’t even acknowledge Jesus as the son of God or as the Messiah. You don’t find faith in them.

But all of a sudden, and I’m not saying this is faith, I’m just saying this is academic acknowledgement of who Jesus is, okay? So, “What do we have to do with You?” and “Are You here to torment?” is a very eschatological understanding that demons understand that their day is coming. They’re on a leash, and their day is coming, and Jesus will have the final word. See, these guys understand that. I believe that’s true. So, they’re screaming out in horror, and they are tormented, and they are tormenting this man. And in their torment, they’re concerned about what Jesus is going to do. They recognize who He is, they recognize His authority and power over them, and even that He will have the last word over them, okay? And so, that’s their reason for saying, “Why are You here to torment me?” Like, at the end of time. “He had been commanding the unclean spirit to come out of the man. It seized him many times. He was bound with chains and shackles and kept under guard; and yet the man would burst his fetters and be driven by the demon into the desert.” So again, isolation, torment, physical harm, all of that is happening, and here’s Jesus speaking in verse 30, “What is your name?” Let’s go to the other side. Where’s your faith? What’s your name? “’What is your name?’ He said, [this is the many demons that are in this guy, this one spokes demon says] ‘Legion,’ for many demons had entered him.”

Legion is, certainly, a reference to the Roman armies. The legion would be somewhere between 4,000 and 6,000 soldiers. I mean, this guy had serious company. This is difficult. This is very complex and very difficult, very dark. Verse 31, “They were entreating Him not to command them to depart into the abyss.” Again, they are recognizing His authority over them. “Don’t say this to us. Don’t push us out over there into the abyss.” Another sort of eschatological allusion, in a way, that they’re referring to the utter darkness that they would ultimately be sent into if you read on to the book of Revelation. “Now, there was a herd of many swine feeding there in the mountain.” Mark tells us there were 2000 of them, “And the demons entreated Him to permit them to enter the swine. And He gave them permission.” This is just as odd as it is fascinating. I mean, isn’t that strange?

The jokes that attend this are this is the first case of deviled ham. This is the first case of mass sooey-cide. Those are the jokes that attend. Now we got those out of the way, let’s get back to what this really is here. There was this herd of swine there, and they were entreating Him to permit them to enter the swine. They don’t want to be cast into the emptiness. They don’t want to have some final judgment cast upon them. They want to go, “How about if we just possessed those swine over there? You seem to care about this man. How about if we just send us over there to the pigs? The demons came out from the man. “He gave them permission. The demons came out from the man and entered the swine; and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and were drowned. When those who tended them saw what had happened,” those who tended to who? Those who tended the pigs, the herdsmen, the pigsmen. I think there’s another term for, what’s it called? Swineherd? Okay, there you go. That’s good.

So, the swineherdsmen, they ran out. “They ran away and reported to the city and out into the country, and 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.” See, they kind of recognized this guy. How do I know that? Well, because Matthew and Mark tell us that this guy had been out there for a long time in the caves. As people walked by on some of the travel routes, he would be coming out screaming and yelling at them. In other words, this guy was known, “Avoid that road because so-and-so is there.” Now here he is in his right mind, coming back into the village.

It’s kind of like little kids are running, hiding, and trying to find parents, “Uncle Eddie’s back,” or whatever. It’s the strangest of all kinds of things that you could possibly imagine, and the townspeople hear about the whole thing, and they run out there to see how the man who had been demon-possessed was made well. Verse 37, “All the people of the country, the Gerasenes in the surrounding district, asked Him,” meaning Jesus, “To depart from them; for they were gripped with fear; and He got into a boat and returned. But the man from whom the demons had gone out was begging him that he might accompany him.” In other words, the formerly demon-possessed man wanted to go with Jesus in the boat wherever Jesus was going. He wanted to go with Him, because for the first time in a long time, this man’s humanity had been cared for and set free.

He had been trapped in darkness. These people from the town, they want to know how he was set free, but I think their main concern in telling Jesus to leave is that they don’t want to lose any more pigs. This wouldn’t have happened on the Jewish side, because pigs, swine, are unclean to Jews, so they’re not in the business of herding pigs. Over on the Gentile side, over on the Greek side, the Decapolis region, this is money, this is commerce, and Jesus just hurt their local commerce, in their view, and they cared more about money than they did people. They didn’t really care about this guy being set free, and they didn’t want any more of whatever it was Jesus was doing to people to be done. And so, this man though, he’s begging, “Let me go with you.”

Here’s what Jesus says, verse 39, “Return to your house and describe what great things God has done for you.” Isn’t that amazing? “Return to your house.” You know why? Because this guy is a living, walking, talking, visible, irrefutable testimony to the power of God. They all had probably heard about this man if they hadn’t seen him, and to see him in his right mind, clothed, and his scars and all that, and to see him in his right mind and to wonder, “What happened?” Now he can talk about the great things God has done in his life and how, through Jesus, he had been set free, delivered. Verse 39, “And he departed, proclaiming throughout the whole city what great things Jesus had done for him.” This guy just had to go tell everybody, and he didn’t have to go tell everybody just his story. He had to go tell everybody his testimony, and there’s a difference.

My story is about me, my career, my job, what’s happening for me, what I got going on. My testimony is about what God has done in my life, and my testimony is about giving glory to God. Right there is a whole different way of thinking for 2025. I could be thinking less and less about my story and more and more about His glory. Wouldn’t that be a different way to live for a lot of us? If we were trying to find ways to, even in our story, maybe just tell of His glory and speak of the wonderful things that He has done. All right. Again, we are calling this “A Savior from the Storm and A Deliverer from the Darkness.” First point I want to make today is that following Jesus doesn’t mean we’ll always have smooth sailing. Whose idea was it to get in the boat that day? Somebody? It’s not a trick question. It’s pretty obvious. It was Jesus’ idea to get in the boat that day.

Where were the disciples when the storm came up? Well, they were right where they were supposed to be. As a matter of fact, they were doing exactly what they were supposed to do, accompanying Jesus to the other side. This isn’t karma. This isn’t, “You get what you deserve.” No. I think this storm, so perfectly timed, was actually Jesus’ idea. I think we read, throughout the scriptures, of how the Lord uses these kinds of things in our lives. It’s important for us to know that Jesus will sometimes lead us into situations that we would not have chosen for ourselves, or sometimes, like with these guys, He takes us into situations where we think we’ve got it all figured out. We’ve already got it sorted. We’re the professional boat guy; we’re the professional fisherman.

We understand this context. We have control here, and then He shakes it up, and we’ve no longer got control. Anybody remember that from 2024? At any point in your life, did that ever happen where you just lost it? By it, I just mean you lost control of something you thought you had control of. He’s reminding us, over and over again, that we actually don’t have control, and that’s actually a good thing. C.S Lewis says in the problem of pain, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but he shouts in our pains.” It’s His megaphone to rouse a deaf world. How so? How’s that possible, you say? I mean, storms. Come on, really. I know that this is a literal storm here, but a lot of us, we have heard Bible teaching on this particular passage, we’ve been told that it also applies to metaphoric situations, storms that are sort of metaphors for your life and things aren’t going well.

I know it’s true that we see some storms coming. Other storms are rather sudden, like this one’s rather sudden I think, but again, it’s unavoidable, and the storm that’s coming is unavoidable. There’s a storm rolling in. None of us are going to be able to stop it. What’s the purpose? What could possibly be the purpose? We see, throughout Scripture, that the Lord uses storms, physical storms, as storms of correction and storms of perfection. The situation with Jonah, a storm of correction, God says, “Jonah, go preach in Nineveh.” Jonah goes exactly the opposite direction and gets on board a ship for Tarshish. God sends a storm and corrects the direction of Jonah, literally thrown overboard in that storm, swallowed by the big fish, burped up on the back east, back toward Nineveh where he’s supposed to go and preach. He doesn’t want to.

He’s racist, and he’s a religious bigot, and he does not want to go and preach to those people. He’s afraid they might actually repent, and God will have none of it, so He corrects his direction. But in this particular case with the disciples, you say, “Well, what’s this one about?” I mean, they were right where they were supposed to be. They were doing what Jesus told them what to do. That’s right, and that’s why we would call this a storm of perfection. He’s perfecting their faith, and the secret to the perfection and maturing of their faith is in the last verse of the story of the storm, verse 25. They say, “Who then is this, that even the waves and the wind obey Him?” and that’s the whole point of that particular experience for them. Who is Jesus? What’s your understanding of Jesus?

This comes about in a very beautiful way, in a very powerful way because it’s not a metaphor, and so all of our metaphors have meaning, because they point to something real. See, I started this week, as I was meditating on this whole thing, I started thinking about all the people in our church that are going through storms or are about to. And some of us don’t even know what’s right around the corner, that there’s some storm we may face; but as we talk about, we prepare for these things. We learn from a passage like this, that Jesus has gone through the greater storm. The guy that can control the weather, that’s the guy I want to trust in. The guy that can control demons, disasters, and next week you’ll see disease and death itself; that’s the guy I want to put my hope and confidence in when I face all these metaphors for storms that we all talk about.

Alistair Begg says, “The center of God’s will may be for us the very eye of the storm.” Right in the middle of it, you come through the hardest part at the front end, and it gets calm all of a sudden. These guys, they go through that night, and then their boat pushes up on the sand on the other side, and they’re probably thinking themselves, “Oh, great. Man, let’s find a coffee shop and quick. Let’s get us a bagel and some coffee and whatever,” and there’s just no break, because right then, all of a sudden, after the calm of pushing up on the shore, after that calm, here comes the demon-possessed guy screaming and hollering at them. And here’s Jesus, who controls not only disasters, but can also control the demons. Secondly, “Following Jesus doesn’t mean we’ll have smooth sailing,” but it does mean, rather, that we will always have a Savior to turn to.

I think that’s so very important for us to understand. When you encounter storms in this life, and you will and I will, if you have not already. Notice that in this story, Jesus doesn’t turn to the disciples and say, “Row harder. Hold the rudder harder.” No. “Pull the sail this way.” No, He doesn’t do any of that. He literally says, “Where is your faith?” That’s a good question to ask. “Where are you placing your faith?” Great question to always be asking. A little self-evaluation is good for us. Let’s go to the other side. Do you want to go with Jesus? Where’s your faith? What are you trusting in? Trusting in yourself? Trusting in your career? Trusting in the human person of any? It could be good people. It could be wonderful people. Trusting in your kids, trusting in your parents, trusting in your spouse, trusting your co-workers, but are they the center? Are they supposed to be the center for you?

Trusting in any form of money, sex and power. In our day and age, people wrap their identity around those things. Is that good for us or bad for us? I think Jesus’ question is a good one. Where’s your faith? Yeah, and it, in some part, answers the third question of Jesus, “What’s your name?” Because your name is really, especially throughout Bible times, we see it over and over again, how it’s sort of connected to who you really are. It means somebody didn’t just pick a name that was the popular name. By golly, let’s go with John, and John was a popular name back then, but that isn’t just the reason people would pick names. Jesus calls Simon Peter, his name is Simon, he calls him Peter, it means rock, stone, right? And then, asked him to walk out on the water with Him. That’s such a great idea for anybody named Rock, and yet Jesus wanted to show him he could do with a rock, right?

And so, here we see the name comes into play, the identity is involved, and I think it’s important for us to know we always have Jesus to turn to. He’s the one that I belong to. He’s the one that names me. I don’t name myself. I belong to Him. I’m not my own. I belong to Him completely. Elizabeth Elliott said, “If your faith rests in your idea of how God is supposed to answer your prayers, your idea of heaven here on earth or pie in the sky or whatever, then that kind of faith is shaky. It’s bound to be demolished when the storms of life hit it.” I think she’s right. “But if your faith rests on the character of Him who is the eternal I AM, then that kind of faith is rugged and will endure.” The eternal “I AM” is a reference to the Book of Exodus when God calls Moses to go set the children of Israel free. Moses is just hesitant. He can’t speak very well. He’s not articulate and all that sort of thing. “Who shall I say sent them?” he asked the burning bush. God, out of the burning bush says, “Tell them I AM sent you.”

Then, Jesus says, seven different times in the Gospel of John, “I am the bread of life. I am the good shepherd. I am the door,” over and over and over again using that same combination of words. We need to turn to the great “I AM” in 2025, and trust and hope in Him. Thirdly, following Jesus means we trust the one who has the power to calm storms and to liberate or deliver captives from the darkness. I think that’s so important. And I realize your storms, if I were to ask you to raise your hand if you’ve been through a storm lately or at all, or if I were to ask you to raise your hand if you were in a storm right now, there may be some hands go up, none of us know about the ones that are around the corner that we can’t predict. I understand that, but I do know this, after being around the planet, as long as I have, literally every one of us is going to go through some kind of storm, something we would call a storm, like something uncontrollable and unavoidable. The question is, who will you put your faith in? Who will you turn to? I think that’s so important.

Mark tells us there were other boats along with, and see, you miss this stuff if you don’t read all of the synoptics on it, but Mark says, “And there were other boats along with them.” In other words, in this storm that the water’s coming over the edge, and night sky, there’s thunder cracking. In Matthew, I think there’s a Greek word that describes the storm as “seismos,” the Greek word, which means there was an earthquake underneath the sea of Galilee. So, the water’s rockin’ and rollin’, but the wind is rockin’ and rollin’ too and blowin crazy, and it’s just amazing. But there are other boats along, Mark tells us, and I wonder if they’re doing their version of Morse code or something with the candle box or something, trying to say, “Wake up the Savior,” in some kind of some way to communicate, because all the ships are suffering in that same way.

They finally turned to Jesus, and indeed, He’s the one that can do something about it. Professional fishermen, though they were, they had no ability to calm storms, and facing this demon-possessed man, this entire region of people had no answer to this person’s darkness, nothing. As a matter of fact, they had dismissed him, written him off, and the event of his deliverance for them cost them money and upset them. Wow. What kind of a world do we live in when that kind of thing starts to happen? Now an aside: I know there are some that may have questions about both the devils and the pigs. I’ll try to give a stab at the devils and tell you that I think you can surmise from verses 26 to 39 that devils or demons are real, that they’re strategic, and that they are active. They have influence. They have some ability and power.

We are not, in and of ourselves, able to do anything other than resist and to trust in the one who is in charge. Just like the one who can calm the storms, we trust in Him. Same thing. Let’s trust in the one who can deliver us from darkness. If you’re trying to consider all that the Bible might teach about devil and demons, it’s not all right here in this particular passage, but it does at least suggest to us that devil and demons are real, strategic, and active, and that Satan’s goal for your life is separation from God, from others, and even from your true self in Christ. I would say that’s true here. This person was isolated in caves, not living in the town. How long since this person had hugged his wife, held his children, gone to work, sat down with some friends in the restaurant? How long had it been? Long enough that all of those people had given up on him completely.

And so, he’s quite isolated and separated in every way, and that no one’s beyond the reach of God’s amazing grace is quite evident here as well. It’s liberating. It’s transforming, isn’t it? Jesus sees the humanity where everyone else has written this person off. Jesus sees the human being. Jesus has compassion on the human being. Jesus displays His power and authority over what? That darkness that was holding this man back. That’s amazing. He’s gentle and lowly, but He’s also powerful, and He can shatter the darkness. He can pierce it, He can shatter it, He can push it back. And following Jesus means obeying Him and walking in the light of His will. We see that at the end of the story. “I want to go with you,” the man says. “Jesus, I see you’re leaving. I want to go with you.” I was kind of surprised at this response of Jesus. Why not bring him on? Why not bring him along?

What a great testimony he would be anywhere he goes. Jesus’ strategy is now, the best testimony place for you right now is right where everybody knows how dark you are, or they think they know the you that used to be. Now they need to see the you that I’ve turned you into. And so, Jesus sends him back as a living, breathing, speaking, irrefutable testimony to the power of God. Let’s go to the other side of last year to this year. We’re going with Jesus. Let’s go to the other side. Where’s your faith? Good question. Great time to evaluate that. Great time to establish some habits, as we move into the new year, which will nurture your delight in God, your love for God. Where’s your faith? The statistics are staggering about how much time we give to these things; how many hours we give to these.

Sometimes, on Sunday mornings, you probably get the same notification I do that says, “Last week you spent X amount of time on your devices,” right? And it’s so easy to get drawn into all of that. We’re addicts for either the affirmation we think we’re going to find here or just curious about what’s going on and want to be in the know. There’s so many different ways that these things rule us, and they’re not evil in and of themselves. We just need to not let them own us and define us. So, what is your name? What is your name? Who do you belong to? Who has the power to name you? Yeah, very good question. Then, this last little bit, Jesus basically saying, “I’m in charge of the mission and the goal and the direction of the mission, and I want you right here where you’ve been telling people about the glory of God in your life.”

See, a lot of people say, “I’ll share my faith, because I don’t have a seminary degree. I don’t know all the answers.” Well, none of the disciples had a seminary degree and none of the disciples knew all the answers. They just knew to point to Jesus. You can point to Jesus and what He’s done in your life, and that’s a great way, I think, for all of us to begin the new year. Storms are going to come. Darkness is going to sort of be on the horizon, but as Ortberg says, peace doesn’t come from finding a lake with no storms. It comes from having Jesus in your boat. I think that’s so true, and I’ll share this one, last. I think I’ve got enough time. Yeah, I do. It’s 10:03. I love this. I was so inspired by the humanity of the man in the caves, and Jesus seeing his humanity and not just discarding him like the rest of the whole region of people had done. What a broken individual in such bondage and all of that.

It reminded me of this story of Keith Jarrett. I know if some of you know who Keith Jarrett is. He’s a jazz pianist. In January of 1975, he was supposed to play at the Opera House in Köln, Germany for a sold-out concert. It was the biggest show of his life at that point. He was running late, and he wanted to make sure everything was in order before going to dinner, so he stopped at the venue. He couldn’t believe what he found. Rather than the Bösendorfer 290 Imperial concert grand piano that he had specified, stage-hands had found an old, baby grand rehearsal piano and dragged it out of a closet and pulled it out onto the stage for him. Not only was it too small to be heard in the upper balcony, but it was also in terrible shape. It was out of tune, upper register sounded tinny, several of the keys were broken, and the sustain pedal didn’t even work.

There wasn’t time to get another piano or fix this one, so his first inclination was to cancel the concert altogether. His 17-year-old concert producer begged him to stay. This young fellow begged him to stay and said he’d find someone to work on the piano. After his manager reminded him, they had already paid for equipment and an engineer to record the concert, Jared reluctantly agreed to play through the concert. Maybe somebody there could laugh at the awful recording, was his thought. Playing to the sold-out audience that night was a nightmare. Though the piano was now in reasonable tune, all of the other challenges were still there. Jarrett avoided the upper register altogether, stayed off the broken keys. He played a rolling bass to make up for the lost resonance of the sustain pedal. He stood for parts of the concert, banging the keys hard enough to be heard in the cheap seats.

At the end of the evening, he was so exhausted. He’d given everything he had to overcome this unplayable piano. His record label decided, though, to release the recording of the concert later in the year, and something strange happened. The Köln concert recording became the best-selling album of Jarrett’s career, and it remains one of the best-selling instrumental piano records of all time in jazz history. Over 40 years later, actually, it’s longer than that since this article came out, it’s still regarded as one of the greatest instrumental performances ever recorded. Thinking about that man, with Jesus, there are no unplayable pianos. I love this. So, some of you, I don’t know what brokenness, what darkness, what storms have shredded you. I just want you to know there’s no unplayable piano to Jesus. As a matter of fact, he’s way better than Keith Jarrett at this. Now, there could be hardly a piano there at all, and he can bring life where there was once only death. Certainly, light where there was only darkness.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox, “One ship drives east and another drives west, with the selfsame winds that blow; ‘Tis the set of the sails and not the gales Which tells us the way to go.” Would you set your sails toward Jesus? Let’s pray: Lord, thank You for this passage. Thank You for being our Savior in the storm, our Deliverer from the darkness. No matter where any of us are at right now, what we’ve just come through, what we’re about to go through, Holy Spirit, I pray that You would speak to us today through this passage. Remind us of timeless truths we need to know and be reminded of, but also, Lord, prepare us for what may be ahead for us in some time, and equip us even in the present right now to begin to set ourselves up to delight in You more, to know You more, to trust in You, more to hope in You more, Lord. No matter what we’re going through or about to go through, I pray this in Jesus’ name, for His sake, for His glory, amen and amen.

This is the week of the month, the first of each month we come to the table to give thanks to the Lord for the great work He’s done through the cross of Christ. His body broken for us, His blood shed for us, that we might be reconciled to God, that we might be reminded the price for all our sins, past, present, and future has been paid by Jesus. And so, we look back in history, redemption history, and we see that that’s already been done, and we’re reminded of that, and we receive that from the Lord once again as a fresh measure of grace, as the Holy Spirit just reminds us of that and applies that in our lives. Jesus instituted this beautiful sacrament that we might even have a physical reminder of that truth and those truths, that they remain. And so, we’re going to invite you.

If you’re here today, you are a repenting sinner. That is, you’re not a perfect person, but you’re a repenting sinner, and you’ve placed your faith, your hope, your confidence in Jesus, and you want to say thank you to Him. That’s what we come up here to do. Eucharist means thanksgiving, and so that’s what we’re doing. We’re going to invite you to come down the side aisles, go to the cross wall, turn around, come back to the next open station, the first open station. You’ve got the crackers there. You can dip that in the juice and partake of the elements. Please take some time in your chair before you come to confess your sins to God. He’s faithful just to forgive you of your sins and to cleanse you from all unrighteousness. Believe Him; trust Him in that; and then come and tell Him thanks as you partake of the elements today, the Lord bless you. We’re going to put our confession of faith up here on the screen.

I think we have it? Yeah. Will you join me in this, as we prepare to come? Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against You this day in thought, in word, and deed by what we have done and by what we have left undone. We have not loved You with our whole hearts. We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We are truly sorry and we humbly repent. For the sake of Your son, Jesus Christ, have mercy on us and forgive us that we may delight in Your will and walk in Your ways to the glory of Your name. Grant to Your people, pardon and peace, that in your great mercy we may be forgiven all our sins and serve You with a quiet and contrite heart. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, amen, and amen. The Lord bless you as you come.

Songs, Readings & Prayer

Songs

“This Is My Father’s World“ by Maltbie D. Babcock, Mary Crawford Babcock, and Franklin Lawrence Sheppard
“My Jesus I Love Thee“ by William R. Featherston and Adoniram Judson Gordon
“The King In All his Beauty“ by Matt Papa & Matt Boswell, Choir and Orch. Arranged by Rob Stroh
“Hallelujah What A Savior“ by Philip Paul Bliss, alt. verse: Tommy Bailey
“Lord From Sorrows Deep I Call“ by Matt Papa and Matt Boswell
 “Doxology” by Thomas Ken and Louis Bourgeois
All songs are used by Permission. CCLI License #2003690

Call To Worship: Come, Let Us Worship

Classic Prayer: John Baillie, 1886-1960