TEXT: Luke 8:26-39

SUBJECT: Luke #31: The Demons’ Lord

When Jesus Christ came into the world, He brought the power, wisdom, and goodness of heaven with Him. But that’s not all He did: He also awoke the rage, cunning, and malice of hell.

One of the striking things you find in reading the Bible is how little you see of Satan in the Old Testament and how prominent he is in the New Testament—especially in the Gospels.

In the Old Testament, he came to Eve in the Garden and made a few cameo appearances here and there, but he’s very much in the background. He provokes David to sin; he opposes the vision of Daniel; he’s seen as the power behind the throne of Babylon, and so on.

But when you come to the Gospels, Satan plays a much more visible part. He challenges the Lord in the wilderness; he interrupts His sermon in the synagogue; and how cruelly he abused the people under his power: a woman bent double for eighteen years, a boy jumping into the fire, an Apostle selling the Lord for thirty pieces of silver—all the handiwork of Satan.

How do we explain the difference? Why is the devil--so quiet in the Old Testament--roused to hyper-activity in the days of our Lord? It seems very simple: he was being contested as he never was before. When a nation is at peace, its military is on low alert. But if it’s invaded by a foreign power, the soldiers wake up and go to war.

That is precisely what happened with the coming of Christ. Before this time, Satan had it pretty easy: oh, there was a good king to oppose now and then and a noisy prophet to shut up once in a while. There was a good Law, but hardly anyone took it seriously and there was still the conscience thing, but it could be kept quiet most of the time.

With the coming of our Lord, however, Satan had his hands full! Here was a Man whom all the prophets said would redeem His people from their sins. And what’s worse, He was living up to the Promise. He couldn’t be corrupted, He spoke the truth only, and He kept on exposing the devil’s dirty tricks.

So the devil got busy opposing Him. He did it morally and religiously, politically, physically, and in other ways too. That’s what he’s doing in today’s story: in the body of this poor tortured man, Satan is confronting the Lord Jesus Christ and daring Him to do something about it.

But as the former President Bush used to say,

The story takes place in Gadara, which is on the east side of the Sea of Galilee. Just hours before, the Lord had preached on the other side, and after the sermon, He and the disciples boarded a ship, he took a nap, they nearly died, and He stilled a storm by His Almighty Word.

Now on the other side, they are welcomed ashore by a Greeting Committee. If you looked at it, you’d see one man only, but if you listened to it, you know that, in fact, thousands have come with him.

The man is a terror to himself and everyone else. He’s naked; he cannot be held down by ropes or chains; he haunts the cemetary, and he goes around day and night screaming his head off. What’s wrong with the man? He is possessed by a legion of unclean spirits. How they got into him, we don’t know but we know they had been there a very long time.

The man (and his demons) confront the Lord with a scream of anguish and fear.

The devil who had terrorized everyone in Gadara is now seen for the sniveling creature that he is. He’s a bully to those weaker than himself, but standing before the Lord of Glory, he can only whine. He fears pain and he hopes the Lord will put it off for a while. Matthew has him saying,

Because the Lord did not become an angel, Satan knows there is no salvation for him. So he pleads for a stay of execution. And he get it.

The Lord spots a herd of pigs nearby and sends the Legion into them. The pigs are so horrified that they rush down the bank and drown themselves in the Sea. It’s the only known example of animal suicide. (Here the pigs have something to teach us: even they know that sin is worse than death and it’s better to be a corpse than a servant of Satan. Most men think otherwise.)

When the people of Gadara saw all this, they were terrified at the power of the Lord Jesus Christ. Later that day, they came to the Lord, very politely no doubt, and begged Him to go somewhere else.

Preachers often compare their response to sinners who prefer their pigs of sin to Jesus Christ. That is certainly a true doctrine—sinners do choose sin over Christ and hell over heaven. They do it all the time. But that is not quite fair to the Gadarenes. They wanted the Lord to leave because they were out of their minds with fear.

We’ve read the Bible stories so often that we forget these things really happened. And that demonstrations of Divine power are terrifying in their effect. The Gadarenes didn’t hate the Lord or love their pigs more than they loved Him, but they were scared. And scared people often say and do really foolish things.

As for the man himself? He was

He was so grateful to Christ that he wanted to go with Him, to serve Him, and just to thank him over and over again. But that’s not what the Lord wanted from him. He told him to

Which the man was happy to do. Only he wouldn’t keep it in the family, but

One little note at the end of the story: You notice how the man saw no difference between telling others what great things God did for him and what great things Jesus did for him? And Luke didn’t correct him—for he saw none himself. Do you know why? Because there is no difference between God and Christ. Of course there are Three Persons in the Trinity, but each one of them is

That’s the story.

And here’s the message: the coming of Christ provokes the devil and destroys his work.

This is true in a big, cosmic sense. The Bible teaches that there are two comings of our Lord Jesus Christ—first and second, one in the past, the other still future.

In His First Coming, our Lord was viciously and constantly opposed by Satan and his servants. Think of Herod’s massacre of the little boys of Bethlehem; think of the mob who tried to push Him off a cliff; think of the cunning Pharisees and Sadducees with their trick questions; think of the beating He took from Annas, Caiaphas, Herod, and Pontius Pilate. Think, most of all, of the crucifixion which He called

The devil never let up, but little did he know that his own wicked designs would be the very things our Lord would use to destroy him and his works. Paul says the cross was not Satan’s great victory, but his bitterest defeat. Colossians 2:15 says by His death, our Lord

Satan had men in bondage because of their guilt. As long as they were unforgiven, they could not become godly—no matter how much they wanted to be or how hard they tried. Yet what must happen for guilty men to become not guilty? Only one thing: Someone must die in their place under the curse of the Law.

Which is just what our Lord did on the cross that Satan prepared for Him.

In His first advent, our Lord was viciously opposed by Satan and his servants. Anyone who has read the Gospel knows that. Think of Herod’s massacre of the little boys of Bethlehem; think of the devil tempting Him in the wilderness, when He was exhausted and nearly starved; think of the religious leaders who quarreled with Him all the time and tried to trap Him with cunning questions; think of the mob who tried to push Him off a cliff; think of His own brothers trying to commit Him; the disciples who let Him down so often; the traitor who sold Him with a kiss; think of Peter denying Him three times

What happened long ago will—in a certain way—happen again some day. According to Revelation 19,20, Satan will one day gather all his forces against the Lord and a handful of His servants. What looks like a party for the devil, will, in fact, be a banquet for the birds,

So overwhelming is the Lord’s power and justice that there’s no fight at all—

The comings of Christ provoke the devil to a frenzy of wrath, but it does him no good. Even his knee must bow and his tongue confess that,

This is what the Bible teaches. I John 3:8 is a fine summary,

What’s true in the big picture is also true in the small picture of everyday life.

Being a Christian does not exempt you from the wrath of Satan. In fact, it has the opposite effect: it exposes you to his rage and cunning. Why would the devil persecute his own people? That would make it less attractive to serve him, it seems to me. No, he abuses his enemies who are the disciples of Christ and the children of God.

Why wouldn’t he? Though he hates all men, he has a special hatred for those who most resemble his great enemy, the Lord Jesus Christ. By tempting us or by getting us to compromise under pressure, he gains a triple victory: he makes the enemies of God mock the Lord, he makes others less open to the Gospel, and he scares us into keeping quiet about our faith.

Our Lord wasn’t joking when He said,

Paul wasn’t just filling space when He wrote,

The coming of Christ doesn’t bring peace between a believer and Satan. No, it brings a sword. Whatever your stamina is, you can be sure that there’s no quit in the devil. That’s why you’ve got to be

But in stirring up the devil’s hatred against us, the Lord does not leave us to fight him on our own or to run the risk of loss. No, He stands with us, fighting shoulder-to-shoulder against the powers of hell. And with Christ at our sides, victory is sure. The martyrs in Revelation

Note, beating the devil isn’t the same as living. No, they died under persecution, but their death in the faith won them a crown of life.

If you’re a Christian, you can resist the devil. It won’t be easy, but you can do it because Jesus Christ will never forsake you and will always give you what you need and when you need it.

So fight him tooth and nail. Fight the power of your secret lust; fight the desire to fit in with the ungodly; fight the fear of witnessing; fight the love of money; fight the craving for privacy or ease; fight the temptation of despair. Get up and fight—fight like men, men of God whose consciences are clean by the death of our Savior and whose hope of heaven is sure.

We’re all weak, we’re all scared, we’re all ignorant. In other words, we’re just the sort of people the Lord wants in His army. Because if He can win with us, the glory can only be His.