Power over the supernatural
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2012 · 1 July 2012
Let us look at Matthew 8:28-34, " When He had come to the other side, to the country of the Gergesenes, there met Him two demon-possessed men, coming out of the tombs, exceedingly fierce, so that no one could pass that way. 29 And suddenly they cried out, saying, “What have we to do with You, Jesus, You Son of God? Have You come here to torment us before the time?” 30 Now a good way off from them there was a herd of many swine feeding. 31 So the demons begged Him, saying, “If You cast us out, permit us to go away into the herd of swine.”
“32 And He said to them, “Go.” So when they had come out, they went into the herd of swine. And suddenly the whole herd of swine ran violently down the steep place into the sea, and perished in the water. 33 Then those who kept them fled; and they went away into the city and told everything, including what had happened to the demon-possessed men. 34 And behold, the whole city came out to meet Jesus. And when they saw Him, they begged Him to depart from their region.”
When Jesus Christ came for the first time He came to redeem man, the second time He will come to redeem the earth and the whole universe. So Matthew wants us to understand that Jesus Christ is the Messiah, the king of the earth, the Son of God in human flesh. In other words, it is deity that we must see in the Lord Jesus Christ.
1 John 3:8, "For this purpose the Son of man was manifest that He might destroy the works of the devil.” He will incarcerate Satan and all his demon hosts for a thousand year millennium at the end of which He will gather them up to be eternally tormented. And in casting out demons throughout His ministry He was giving samples of that great power.
Now let me add some thoughts before we look specifically at the text. In Matthew 17:19, even though the Lord had commissioned the disciples to cast out demons, they came back and said, "We can't cast out these demons." So they knew this is not an easy thing to do, and we shouldn't assume that we also can do it because the Lord did it with such ease.
Further, the Jews themselves were involved in efforts to cast out demons. According to the Luke 11, Jesus even said to them, "By whom do your sons cast out demons?" We meet some in the book of Acts who went around trying to cast out demons. Now they did it with fear and they always failed, and so when Jesus came along they literally marveled that He could cast out demons in such a fashion.
For example, in Mark 1:27, "Then they were all amazed, so that they questioned among themselves, saying, “What is this? What new doctrine is this? For with authority He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey Him.” You see it wasn't just that He cast them out, it was the ease with which He did it.
In fact they concluded in Luke 11 that He really cast out demons by the power of Beelzebub, the ruler of demons. So it was that He did it instantaneously with absolute and total authority that was far beyond anything they had ever seen in their own human experience, and it amazed them and astonished them.
Now let's look at this passage in particular. Three key things: possession by the demons, power by Christ, and the perspective of the people. These are the three things we need to understand. Now as Jesus has crossed the Lake of Galilee in a little boat with some disciples and had calmed the storm it is the dawning of the new day. So they come to shore and immediately are confronted by an incredible situation.
Let's look again at Matthew 8:28, they were received by demons, “When He had come to the other side, to the country of the Gergesenes, there met Him two demon-possessed men, coming out of the tombs, exceedingly fierce, so that no one could pass by that way.”
What does it mean to be demon possessed? To be demonized means to be under the control of demons, whether they are inside you or outside your or moving through you back and forth, the point is they control you.
Now demons can do a lot of things to people. They can tempt you mentally, and they've got to get into our minds to lure our thoughts. They can bring about disease. Paul called the disorder he had in 2 Corinthians 12, a thorn in the flesh; a messenger of Satan sent to buffet me. So demons can attack the physical, and they can attack the spiritual, because the Bible tells us that doctrines of demons are sent out as perversions of the truth.
Further they can attack you spiritually. They corrupt the truth which brings about false religions, occult practices and all kinds of immoral behaviors. They always produce evil consequences. And if you try to understand this completely you're wasting your time, because this is super-natural and we're not able to go further than what is in the Bible.
Demon possession is a condition in which one or more demons inhabit the body of a human being, and they can at will control that being. Now there may be different degrees and different manifestations. And by the way the word demonized is used 12 times in the New Testament and our Lord acknowledges it as a reality.
Missionaries will come back and tell about these common cases of demon-possession in many parts of the world, where here in the USA it is rather uncommon. Surely the founding fathers’ Christian belief of our country had something to do with this. For example where there is pagan religion there is fear, because all the gods of the unbelievers are demons who have an evil nature and therefore have to be appeased.
Now look further at these two demon possessed men. Let me just add this one thought. In demon-possession the personality of the demon eclipses the personality of the one possessed. In the Mark account when Jesus says to this person, "What's your name?" The demon answers, "My name is legion." In other words, there are many of us. The person himself can't even speak.
Look where they were living, in verse 28, these men were, “coming out of the tombs." Can you imagine living in tombs? To the Jew the greatest defilement is to touch a dead body. In that area where the cliffs are high on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee, there were manmade chambers hewn out of the rocks for use as tombs and there they were living. And it says, "They were exceedingly fierce." That means uncontrollable.
In Luke 8:27 it says, "And he ( Luke focused only on the one who speaks) wore no clothes," stark naked. In the Bible the only people who went around naked were maniacs. They had no sense of social balance and modesty. In Mark 5:4 it says, "They tried to bind them with chains and no matter how strong the chains were they broke the chains." They had tremendous strength.
In Mark 5:5, it says, "And always, night and day, he was in the mountains and in the tombs, crying out and cutting himself with stones.” Now you get kind of a picture, don't you? Stark naked, hacking themselves with stones, shrieking, racing down the hillside with incredible strength and as a result, it says, that no one could pass by that way.
Well then they saw these little boats and they were ready to do their number. Out of the caves they came, screaming down the hill, and all of a sudden something happened and we find not only the reception by the demons, but the recognition of Jesus by the demons, Matthew 8:29, “And suddenly they cried out, saying, “What have we to do with You, Jesus, You Son of God?”
Why are you here? You know in Mark 5:6 it says, "When they saw Jesus from afar, they ran and worshiped Him.” They fell down and they worshipped Him. Wow, isn’t that incredible that they should worship Jesus? It describes profound awe, reverence and worship. You might say, "What are they doing that for?"
Because they know exactly who He is, listen demons are fallen angels. Once they were holy angels before they went into Satan's rebellion, and they were involved with God, and they know the second person of the Trinity. Nobody needs to help them with their Christology. They know that He is their judge and He is their destroyer.
And then they said, “Have You come here to torment us before the time?” They even had the right eschatology (the end-time theology). They said, "You are here too soon." This is not the time. Think of it, these beings are damned for all eternity and they know it, and they despise Jesus, they hate Him.
And yet they worship Him because they are forced to by His power. They can't resist it. You see, they know Philippians 2:9-11, “Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name, 10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, 11 and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
Look at verse 29 again, how they address Jesus, “You Son of God.” Wow, what an important statement, because when they said, "You are the Son of God,” they were saying, “You are the Messiah, you're the anointed one, you are the Christ.” James 2:19 says, "Even the demons believe, and they tremble,” because they know the result. They know what is going to happen.
Following this in the next verses these demons make a request and it's a bizarre one. Verse 30, "Now a good way off from them there was a herd of many swine feeding. 31 So the demons begged Him, saying, “If You cast us out, permit us to go away into the herd of swine.”
Now wasn’t that a strange request? I mean what good does that to be a demon-possessed pig? Well you say maybe demons need to be in something. Well that's probably true. But then again we don't really know why they requested that.
Now let’s focus on Christ, verse 32, "And He said to them, “Go.” So when they had come out, they went into the herd of swine. And suddenly the whole herd of swine ran violently down the steep place into the sea, and perished in the water.” Two thousand pigs drowned.
Now how did He cast out all these demons? He said, "Go," that's all. Now that is what shocked everybody. It wasn't that He did it, it was how He did it. And you have to understand that these demons are powerful beings. Men cannot deal with them. It's so silly for people to run around thinking they can cast out demons by their cleverness. No way.
In 2 Peter 2:11 it says, "Angels are greater in power and might than men." In Psalm 103, it says, "The angels excel in strength." You might ask, "Well are demons as powerful as holy angels?" Well we know from Daniel 10, that a holy angel came with a message from God to Daniel, but a demon held him up for three weeks and God had to send Michael to let him go.
In 2 Kings 19:35, it says, "And it came to pass on a certain night that the angel of the LORD went out, and killed in the camp of the Assyrians one hundred and eighty-five thousand,” so they far surpass men. They have superior intelligence, that's obvious from Ezekiel 28; they have superior strength, you can see that right with this maniac in Mark 5, who kept breaking the chains, you can see it in Acts 19 and Matthew 17.
They can do signs and wonders according to 2 Thessalonians 2, they have a superior range across the heavens, according to Daniel 10. They have superior experience, because they have lived before the creation of man. They have been around a long time and they know how men function and think. They are spirit beings, who are not bound by any form, and so they are incredible creatures.
"Why did Christ do that?" The lesson here is that Jesus can cast out demons. How are you going to prove that they left? Look at a normally peaceful herd of pigs. Pigs don't usually swim and they don't all go somewhere together. Now watch two thousand of them race toward a cliff, go off the edge, and all dive in the water and drown, and the conclusion has to be something supernatural just happened.
And at the same time you turn around and the two demonized individuals are sitting and as Mark says, "Clothed and in their right minds having a wonderful conversation with Jesus," the connection is readily made. What Jesus did was give a living demonstration of the deliverance of those two men that no one would ever forget.
At the same time it did demonstrate the destructive nature of demons, for when demons hit those pigs instantly they were all destroyed. And it gave to the demons a preview of their own coming destruction. And if you're concerned about the pigs you have missed the point. We can sacrifice a few thousand pigs for Jesus to show this demonstration of incredible power.
That leads us to the final point, the perspective of the people. How did they react? Verse 33, "And those that kept them fled." Now they weren't the owners. They're just the people who cared for the pigs out on the hills. Verse 33, “And they went away into the city and told everything, including what had happened to the demon-possessed men.”
Verse 34, "And behold, the whole city came out to meet Jesus.” Isn't that great? The whole city came. Well when they saw Him did they worshipped him? No. "And when they saw Him, they begged Him to depart from their region.” Get out! Why did they say that?
Every commentary says, "Because they were more concerned about their pigs than about Jesus, because they were very materialistic. We want our pigs back, how dare you do this," rather than being happy for the souls of these two demonized men.
But that is not the right answer. It doesn't say word about the owners of the pigs. None of the three gospels says anything about them. These are not the owners of the pigs, this is the whole city and when they saw Him they pleaded with Him to leave. Why? Mark 5:15 says, "They were afraid." They were not angry, they were just scared to death.
In Luke 8:37 says, "They were overcome with panic." Now if you've been with us the last few weeks, you know what this is saying. When unholy men face a holy God they are in terror. We're right back to Isaiah 6. "Woe is me." Isaiah, the best man in the land pronounced cursed himself when he saw God because his un-holiness was exposed.
By the way, this is the first recorded instance of open opposition to the Messiah and it all just mounts from here on. He exposed their sins. They despised Him. He was better than they, greater than they, purer than they, more powerful than they, more holy than they, and they resented that. He was so far beyond them that He unmasked them, that He showed the stupidity of their own lives. That's why they had to kill Him.
People say, Oh if you could just see the miracles you'd believe. Listen, the people who saw the miracles didn't believe. They nailed Him to a cross and they had seen miracle after miracle after miracle. That just made them hate Him more and more. No, because some people when exposed to the awesomeness of God will run because they love their darkness.
The story ends in Mark 5:18, the parallel account. It says this: "And when He got into the boat, he who had been demon-possessed begged Him that he might be with Him. 19 However, Jesus did not permit him, but said to him, “Go home to your friends, and tell them what great things the Lord has done for you, and how He has had compassion on you.” 20 And he departed and began to proclaim in Decapolis all that Jesus had done for him; and all marveled.
You know what Jesus did? Those hating people who wanted Jesus out of their country never did experience Jesus' compassion or mercy for them, so He left them this one lone missionary and his friend, as living proof, in their midst, of His mighty power. How wonderful that the grace of Christ is extended to those who don't even want it. Let's pray.