All right. We’re going to start in verse 23; two more events in the life of Christ. One is the calming of the storm and the other one is the dealing with the Gadarenes demoniac.
When He got into the boat, His disciples followed Him. And behold, there arose a great storm on the sea, so that the boat was being covered with the waves; but Jesus Himself was asleep. And they came to Him and woke Him, saying, “Save us, Lord; we are perishing!” He said to them, “Why are you afraid, you men of little faith?” Then He got up and rebuked the winds and the sea, and it became perfectly calm. The men were amazed, and said, “What kind of a man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey Him?”
When He came to the other side into the country of the Gadarenes, two men who were demon-possessed met Him as they were coming out of the tombs. They were so extremely violent that no one could pass by that way. And they cried out, saying, “What business do we have with each other, Son of God? Have You come here to torment us before the time?” Now there was a herd of many swine feeding at a distance from them. The demons began to entreat Him, saying, “If You are going to cast us out, send us into the herd of swine.” And He said to them, “Go!” And they came out and went into the swine, and the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea and perished in the waters. The herdsmen ran away, and went to the city and reported everything, including what had happened to the demoniacs. And behold, the whole city came out to meet Jesus; and when they saw Him, they implored Him to leave their region.
In the book of Matthew, after the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus - up to this point in time - has healed a leper, the centurion’s servant, Peter’s mother-in-law, and then of course numerous other healings that aren’t recorded specifically. And now Jesus is going to deal with two other issues:
1. He’s going to show His authority over the weather itself.
2. He’s going to show His authority over the demonic entities of the world.
The Sea of Galilee is the lowest fresh-water lake in the world, at 686 feet below sea level. It is 64 square miles, which is probably about one-eighth larger than Lake McConaughy, as far as the lake area. A huge lake. At the deepest point it is 141 feet, and averages 84 feet, so it’s a very deep lake. It has 33 miles of shore line; and there are numerous events that happen in the Scripture around the Sea of Galilee. The Sermon on the Mount was spoken, mostly likely, overlooking the Sea of Galilee. When Jesus actually went and called His first four disciples, they were fishermen on that Sea. Somebody said that during the time of Jesus you could probably find more than 230 fishing boats on the Sea at any given time. It was here where He calmed the storm and walked on the waters; here where the miracle of catching the fish took place, and of course this was also the place where the 5,000 were fed. So, the Sea of Galilee was a common place where Jesus would gather. I’ve never been to that part of the world, but it must be quite a lake. And because it sits so far below sea level, there are all kinds of mountainous regions that run into it, and the winds that would come upon it would basically come roaring through the mountain passages and crevices and hit that water and change that lake into a very dangerous situation.
You know, I could say that I kind of understand; having been caught on the lake at Awahee in South Dakota in a bad storm before. But when you’re in a 21-foot deep-welled boat, it’s not quite the same as what these guys experienced. As a matter of fact, not anything near what they experienced, because they were afraid for their lives. And remember that these were fishermen who had spent their lives fishing on these waters. They had experienced all kinds of things on these waters. Some people speculate that because Jesus “gave orders to depart to the other side,” and the only way to do that was by boat, maybe the disciples decided to follow blindly even though they knew there was a storm coming; maybe it was obvious, since they had been on the water such a long time. Or, maybe they got out in the middle and this thing actually did catch them by surprise. Some people even go so far as to say that the fact that it caught them by surprise (or seemingly did) was an indication that it was demonic, because they would have understood the weather patterns and known for sure when something like this was going to happen. But regardless of how we look at it; the fact is that a massive amount of wind hit the water and caused all kinds of grief. If you’ve ever driven over Lake McConaughy in a bad windstorm you can maybe understand what kind of experience they would have had, as you see those high waves crashing into the dam there at McConaughy. And if you were in a basic jon boat (which is in essence what they were in: a flat bottomed boat that they could fish out of) you could understand how dangerous that situation would be. So they got into the boat as Jesus asked and this great storm came down and the Bible describes it like this: “The boat was being covered with the waves, but Jesus Himself was asleep.”
Whenever I read that, it blesses me; the idea that Jesus was sound asleep in the boat while it is being tossed and turned and kicked about all over. In this story in the gospel of Mark (chapter 4), the Darby translation says they took Jesus “as He was” and got in the boat. And it’s believed what that means is He was hungry and He was tired. He had been ministering through the course of the day and the idea of “taking Him as He was” would indicate they maybe even carried Him part of the way. Who knows? He was spent— just spent after what was taking place as he ministered to and healed people, and dealt with the mental aspect of dealing with the Pharisees and arguing with them. We see Jesus, of course, as fully divine; but we don’t understand that His humanity was true humanity. Sinless; but true. He required sleep, and if He spent large amounts of time talking to people there would be mental anguish, His body would have slowed down in need of rest. This Jesus was fully human, and He experienced all of those “tired” things that we, as human beings, experience. And He was in this condition when they took Him to the boat. As they started out, He just fell asleep in the stern.
I’m not sure how many miles exactly, but we can assume they were a mile or two out; they were going from one point to the other point. They were out far enough, though, that when the storm came down they were worried about the possibility of not making it to shore. They come to Jesus at this point and each gospel has this recorded a little differently, but Matthew has the most dramatic version: “And they came to Him and woke Him, saying, ‘Save us, Lord; we are perishing!’” They’re seeing the boat take water, and considering the possibility that it will sink. And if that happens in a storm like this, the chances of any of them making it to shore are almost nil. So these seasoned fishermen, who have been on the water their whole lives, turn to a carpenter for help. And I’m sure even when they said, “Save us Lord,” they didn’t comprehended what He was going to do. We know they didn’t, because of their amazed reaction. They might have thought, ‘This guy is super wise; maybe he knows some things we can do.’ I’m not sure what they thought He would do, but I don’t think they comprehended what He could do. They had seen amazing things happen during the course of that day, so they turned to the only person in the boat who actually could help them: this carpenter from Galilee.
Edersheim makes a point here that is kind of interesting. We can see this is many of the stories we read of Jesus, but this particular one is a great example. Edersheim says that the church has two stages in its history. The first stage is the one between the time that Christ began His ministry and the time of the cross; and the second stage is what happened when the Holy Spirit came. Or rather, between the cross and the time that Jesus ascended into heaven and the Holy Spirit came. And Edersheim says there is a first group, which is made up of those who “come to knowledge of who Jesus is by experience of what He did.” And the second group (of which we are a part) is “those who come to experience of who He is and what He does by knowledge of who He is.”
So the disciples experienced Him and all He did and they came to grips with who He was; in our lives it’s almost always reversed. We come to Jesus Christ and we learn who He is and then we come to an experience and a knowledge of the full force of Jesus Christ on the earth.
But in their case, they got to experience this Christ in a unique way as this Man stood up in the boat and responded do their plea: “Save us Lord, we are perishing!” It says He stood up and “rebuked the winds and the sea and it became perfectly calm.” In Matthew, Jesus first says, “Why are you afraid, you men of little faith?” and both Mark and Luke have this reversed; first He stands and rebukes the winds and the sea, and then rebukes His disciples. Why Matthew’s account is different, we don’t know. Maybe that’s the way he remembered hearing it. But nonetheless, Jesus stood and rebuked the winds and the sea and everything became calm. And in my opinion, when I think about it, that must be when he turned to His disciples. Because I believe He dealt with their fears first, and then rebuked them for their unbelief.
There are so many things that can come out of this story that should give us a lot of hope. One is that we can recognize this story as a parable of our life in the sense of the storms that assail us. Some of them maybe not so bad, but some feel as though we are adrift with no hope of survival. Many people experience those kinds of issues; usually related to sin or to someone else’s sin. Or life just being horrendous to us, with sickness and other things that come about and make us feel there is no hope. So there’s a great message in here about Jesus coming with a rebuke that calms everything down.
And if that’s the case, then I understand why Matthew’s account starts with the rebuking of the men first. We oftentimes don’t put faith in Christ like we should; we put faith in Him after the fact. And instead of actually trusting that Jesus is going to get us through to the other side of this storm, we do all kinds of things to try to wrestle ourselves out of the situation, to no avail, and finally the storm is calmed. So with that in mind, I get why Jesus would say, ‘You need to trust me in this.’ We can see in that picture that Jesus was actually saying more, theologically and about the future, than He was, necessarily, about that moment; though He used it for sure as a teaching tool to His disciples, because He rebuked them for their lack of faith: “Why are you afraid, you men of little faith?”
And the one thing that Jesus actually can’t help is your unbelief. I don’t mean the kind of unbelief that says, “I believe. Help my unbelief.” [Mark 9:24] Jesus helped that man’s unbelief by doing a miracle, but then there was a choice the man had: to believe the miracle or not. I think we sometimes think that if we don’t have faith, Jesus is going to infuse us with it; like a shot of faith. But in actuality, if you don’t have faith, Jesus is going to do things to build your faith up. He’s going to let you experience things that give you the opportunity to say, “This truly is the Son of God.” That is how it is for all of us. And in this case, like Edersheim says, the fact is Jesus couldn’t help their faith. They had to believe Him or not believe Him.
You think about the Israelites crossing the Red Sea; Moses literally holding his staff over the Red Sea and the waters holding up on the sides while the Israelites walked through. And then within days, they are back to being non-believer; forgetting almost instantly what they had just witnessed. In my mind I can’t imagine anybody ever being able to escape from that event and saying it was anything else but the hand of God; but almost immediately they began to cry and whine about things, wanting to go back to Egypt. This after they had just seen their God deliver them in a miraculous way! That’s human nature. It’s human nature. People can be healed from things and their wives, husbands, fathers, kids, mothers just simply write it off as a coincidence. No big deal; no need for faith here. “This is just a coincidence.” “Nature is amazing.” “Your body is a great human instrument that takes care of things.” We do all kinds of things to rationalize out the fact that Jesus is constantly working on our behalf to do the miraculous things that we can’t do on our own. And in this case the disciples could not be saved because they had no way to stop the wind and that was the thing that could do it. So Jesus stands and rebukes the wind and the sea, and the Bible goes on to record them saying, “What kind of man is this that even the winds and the sea obey Him?” What kind of man, indeed?
And that brings me to the second thing I want to say about this. Romans 8:20 shows us something else that I think this story is telling us about Christ. He is giving His disciples grounds for understanding that He is the second Adam. "For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” Creation itself, the Bible tells us, is actually responding and reacting to what the first Adam did when he sinned against God and went out on his own, so to speak. And not only has that forever mangled mankind, but creation itself has been hurt by this. You think about creation and how the world was at that point in time. Had Adam and Eve not sinned, we would not have had hurricanes and tornadoes; no disease, sickness, floods, or anything that could damage mankind; because God was in control and man, too, was given control of the earth to make sure that it functioned the way it was supposed to function. But everything is out of order now. So not only is the earth in decay, but it is in rebellion just like we are. It’s in rebellion. In this case the rebellion is against mankind. Its rebellion is against us, and rightly so, because of the way we’ve treated it. But nonetheless, Christ in His great mercy, assured them that not only was He going to take care of man’s sickness and sin but also all of the effects of that. And we get to witness the deposit of the Holy Spirit; an understanding that this is being taken care of. And likewise, to creation itself, there is a deposit for when Jesus comes. So a second Adam comes – as the Bible calls Jesus – and He takes dominion over creation. He stands up and He looks at a storm and He says, ‘No.’ As a matter of fact, where my Bible says, “He got up and rebuked the winds and the sea,” the Greek translation of that could easily be read: “He said to the wind and the sea, ‘Knock it off and do not start again.’” By the tenses in the Greek, that’s what He’s saying. So we read it as a simple rebuke, but Jesus is literally talking to His creation and saying, ‘Stop. And do not do this again.’ Christ is powerful, not just over disease and sickness, but against the wind itself and what it can possibly do.
When I was a young believer, there was a man who brought a tent to McCook and set it up over just south of where the Pepsi bottling company was. I guess it’s where Pizza Hut is now. And it was a tent almost as big as this room; it could seat a couple hundred people— a huge tent. He was an evangelist and a friend, and I helped him set it up; it was a lot of fun to experience all that stuff. The night before we actually started, the musicians were practicing in the tent and our church was helping out with that, and I looked out to the north where I could see a storm coming. In the summertime that’s not uncommon, but sometimes they can be nasty when they come from that direction.
I could see the lightning and I thought to myself, ‘You should rebuke that storm.’
Of course, I quickly thought, ‘There’s no way I could stop a storm.’
My faith wasn’t anywhere near that kind of place; and maybe not even today. But nonetheless, everybody is sitting around chatting and the musicians are practicing and all of a sudden that wind hit. And it just ripped up that tent. This foster kid and me were chatting and I grabbed him and we got behind a truck. In hindsight I realized that wasn’t a wise thing to do, but it seemed safe at the time. And this wind just tore that tent to the ground. It was incredible. The people inside layed themselves down on the stage; some jumped off the stage before tent hit it. And they said they could feel the canvas just rolling across their body as it pulled across and disappeared down the road a little ways. I mean, you think about it: this is a huge tent with all kinds of metal poles and supporting structures. Thankfully, no one got hurt. By the way, (I’m confident this is why the Lord sent that wind) that same night there was a rock concert at the fairgrounds. (I’m kidding about that, by the way) And of course that wind did the same thing to them. They said it just ruined the equipment; threw speakers off the stage. It wasn’t a tornado, just a huge gust of wind; must have been 100, 120 miles an hour, blowing through McCook. Especially on that side of town. But it just ruined that night for all those people; ruined their equipment and tore down our tent. But we got the tent back up and we proceeded forth, decided not to let the setback stop us. And everything went along, as unplanned.
But I think about that “what if?” What if somebody did have faith to stand and say, “No. You’re not allowed here.” To just stop it completely as it came to the edge of McCook. Imagine! It stops and lifts of the earth and everything is good. And maybe that was one of the moments I missed the nudge, or maybe it wasn’t; but nonetheless I realized that God is able.
That night at the end, while we were standing around, somebody said, “Man, God has power over this. This is what Jesus does. He stops these kinds of things.”
So, Christ in all of His wisdom said, to the church, ‘As the Second Adam, I am taking dominion over all things that are corrupted or in rebellion against who I am. And as the church I’m giving you authority to use that dominion; to make use of it and see what happens.’
So, the disciples are amazed at the guy who can stop the wind, and He is amazed at their unbelief. ‘You guys have been with me now for a little while. You’ve seen amazing things. Don’t you get it? Don’t you understand?’ And I get it; there’s a jump, maybe, from healing people to actually stopping a storm that might kill you in the middle of a big lake. But Jesus is telling them, ‘Why are you afraid, you men of little faith?’ And I’ve heard it said, by the way — before I move on —the fact of the matter is: If we just listen to what Jesus says, we’ll be all right. It says in Matthew 8:18, “Jesus gave orders to depart to the other side.” In the midst of their lack of faith, none of them had the sense to remember that and say, ‘Jesus said we’re going to the other side. So, we’re going to be okay.’ Nobody had the faith to take His words and claim they were theirs for that moment in time.
And why were they going to the other side?
This is the second story; the story of the Gadarenes demoniac. They were on their way to take care of that situation. Jesus gets in this boat, the storm hits and when everything calms down He rebukes the disciples; and then He is on His way, because He knows when He hits the shore on the other side He is going to deal with something. Christ is never put in a position were He doesn’t know what to do. In everything He encounters, He does whatever He sees God doing. He is aware of everything that might be coming His way.
So, Jesus gets to the other side. In the gospel of Matthew it says, “…two men who were demon-possessed met Him as they were coming out of the tombs. They were so extremely violent that no one could pass by that way. And they cried out, saying, ‘What business do we have with each other, Son of God?’” Mark and Luke both record only one demon-possessed guy, and I found it interesting that one of the commentaries I looked at explained very simply that there was only one man who was dominant. There was no reason to write about both, because there was one in the foreground and one in the background. And though Matthew does mention both, only one was the “force” of the thing. That very well could be. Could be. What a way to set that argument aside; because so many people try so hard to find reasons to disregard the Scripture.
But anyway, they met Jesus, who had just calmed the storm. Edersheim places this event as happening right after dusk, so it’s that kind of a twilight hour, which makes it more eerie. The believed location in which this took place had a large cliff that Jesus came up to; where the swine would run off, ultimately. That whole area then, was “burrowed with limestone caverns and rock chambers for the dead.” So Jesus enters into this area “amongst the tombs,” which had all kinds of limestone caverns and holes and things and people would go and bury their dead; whole families—for ages—would be buried in big caverns and things like that. And this man lived among these tombs and was very strong. We don’t know if he was strong his whole life, but he was at that point. We know he was homicidal. He was a violent human being.
Think about somebody like that in our day and age. We would rarely think of somebody like that as being demonized. We’d call him crazy; we’d institutionalize him, and give him drugs to calm him down. That’s how we deal with everybody like this. And I’m not into the theology that says all crazy people are demon possessed. I would never go there, because I think there are a lot of factors that come into play, but what I would say is that we need to take that into consideration. If you run across somebody that is crazy, he may be crazy because he’s demon-possessed. He actually needs spiritual help. Physical and mental help with never free him from what is taking place inside of him. We also need to understand that because of the way the demon replies (in a different gospel) to Jesus: “my name is Legion,” we automatically go to the idea of a Roman legion and assume he has 1,000 demons in him and that’s how people oftentimes teach it. But this man, who very possibly could be a Jew, most likely doesn’t mean that. He probably is referring to something that can be found in Jewish tradition in which there was a whole legion of demons looking to take out man. So when he said, “My name is Legion,” it was the man most likely saying, ‘I’m full of stuff that I don’t want. Something has come to take me out.’ And I would not say this emphatically, but I think it’s a very good possibility. And then Jesus responds and deals with Him in the way Jesus almost always does: graciously, and in this case, firmly. We don’t want to deduce doctrine from this, necessarily, in terms of how we should deal with people who are crazy or seem to have mental issues; but what we do want to do is be aware that the Holy Spirit dwells inside of us and we are actually able to discern the difference, if we’re willing to go down that road and be bold enough to say what we believe at that moment.
So, Jesus gets out of the boat and immediately this man (or two men) is standing in front of Him, screaming at Him, “What business do we have with each other, Son of God? Have You come here to torment us before the time?” And I’ve always believed, ever since one of the first times I’ve read this story, that Jesus is starting to deal with what’s coming while He is still in the boat. It’s why the man is waiting there when he lands; why he’s addressing Jesus the way he does. Jesus is already speaking to Him from the boat, saying, ‘I’ve come to deal with you. You have no right to this man’s life.’
When the Bible says, “You believe that God is one. You do well; the demons also believe, and shudder,” [James 2:19] it could be applied to this. These demons don’t know only that, but also that it’s not the time for them to be tormented. They know there will come that time, but they know this isn’t it yet.
There is a herd of swine in the distance and the demons begin to entreat Jesus saying, “If you’re going to cast us out, send us into the herd of swine.” A lot of people say that Jesus sent them into the herd of swine, but He actually didn’t. He just said, “Go!” They could go to hell, could go to the swine, could go someplace else; but they could not stay there, in that man. And it says “they came out and went into the swine, and the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea and perished in the waters.” This story brings about that idea that whenever the Spirit of Christ makes Himself known in a situation, there will be almost always some response. Either of humility and repentance, or a response similar to this story — anguish and hatred and vulgarity and all the ways in which people lash out at Jesus Christ. Christ never leaves a situation without something taking place: The emancipation or the continued bondage some human soul — whatever choice that person makes.
And when the demons hit the swine and caused them to go crazy and drown, it shows that animals, too, can be demonized. Of course they can. Anything can. The herdsmen (non-Jews for sure, because they’re herding swine) run away and report everything and “the whole city came out to meet Jesus; and when they saw Him, they implored Him to leave their region.” That’s an amazing thing to think about. Luke and Mark both say they came and saw the man who had been demonized; this man who had been a thorn in their flesh for a long time. He was violent; the Bible says they tried to chain him up and he would break the chains. And they came and noticed the man; recognized him as being the demon-possessed man. They saw him sitting on the ground in his right mind. And yet they turn to Jesus and say, ‘You’ve got to get out of here.’ And the only thing that possibly does that is fear. As a matter of fact, in the book of Luke, it says plainly, that “great fear came upon them.” They were afraid. Afraid of what Christ would command from them. Anyone who has the ability to cast demons out of a man and then cause those demons to rush pigs into the waters — they don’t want anything to do with. Fear engulfed them and they came and urged Jesus to leave. And of course, He did; because He doesn’t stay where He is not wanted.
Mark and Luke, in this story, both have the next part about the man saying to Jesus, ‘I want to come with you,’ but Jesus says, ‘No, I want you to go back and tell everybody what happened to you.’ And this is one of those rare times in Scripture where Jesus does that. Many times Jesus says to tell no one, but this time He wants the man to tell everybody what transpired with him. Think about this man’s family and friends. I mean, if he had been demon-possessed for a long period of time and his friends and family were gone, that would be one thing. But what if he wasn’t? What if he was a year or two into this demon possession and then Jesus comes and heals him? What must have happened when his family saw him walking up to the door? Imagine the fear that would have got to them until he would say, “Hey! I’m okay! Jesus cast the demons out of me! I’m free; I’m good.” I mean, what an incredible story! And by the way, there are stories like that all over the earth today. People being set free from all kinds of demonic entities and things which have tormented them. But sadly, in America, we just discount all of that, because we have a nice, tidy way in which we deal with people who are not like us. And we make it all medical, all physical, all organic. And if you want to do that, that’s great, but you’ll never have anybody healed. Never have anybody actually set free. And worst of all; you’ll never be able to spiritually see what it’s like when someone is set free from demonic possession.
By the grace of God, in our lifetime, I would pray that all of us would see both of these things. I’d love to see a storm, or something similar to that, stopped by the grace of God. And I have prayed over demon-possessed people in my lifetime. So far, I haven’t seen results. But I want to see it. I want to see people set free.
One brother who we prayed for, years and years ago, did have a demon that manifested in front of us; like a textbook, demonized interaction. The man came back about five years later and thanked me for praying over him. I asked him what happened and he said it wasn’t until later that he got set free, but he was blessed for that moment in time. Because he understood that something was really, really wrong with him.
So, by the grace of God we’re going to get to experience that. As ugly and spooky as that can be; I do pray for all those things to happen.