Luke 8:26 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Luke 8:26

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We see here an illustration of the way in which Christ works. We see how he can take hold of us and he can deal with us and liberate us from the power which keeps us away from God: this power which focuses all our attention on our own earthly life. This was a tragic situation. It is quite remarkable because the Lord Jesus goes to this territory, he lands, he goes ashore, and delivers this man, and the end result is that there is only one person who wants him to stay. The rest of that neighbourhood reject him, and after a while the ship up-anchors and it is away again. He seemed to come to this country for this one man. As it happened, that one man, when he was left behind, spread the story about, and we can well believe that a body of believers came into existence even afterwards. But on the face of it, Christ went there for that one man, and he is the first man down to meet the ship.Putting the Gospel accounts together we learn that this man had been possessed for a long time by many forces which he could not control. He had evidently become so violent that they had chained him like an animal. In the Gospel of Matthew we are told that he was exceeding fierce, and because of this fierceness, everyone was terrified to go to those tombs where he lived, for fear that he would run out on them and assault them. Evidently from time to time there had been groups of people sent out to go and subdue him, and they had tried whatever procedures were known in those days to calm him down and perhaps to express some kindness to him. But somehow he always got away. He was so powerful, especially in this frenzied state, and he would break his fetters. Whether he smashed them against the stones, regardless of the effect upon himself, we cannot tell, but he always managed to break free. The poor man must have lived like a savage, and had to remain away from society. His condition was a terrible one and he'd been like this a long time, a number of years at least. One can imagine what he must have looked like: unkempt, filthy, perhaps suffering from some form of malnutrition, his skin perhaps scaling. He must have looked wretched and hideous, and here he comes and throws himself at the feet of the Saviour. He was irrational, and in spite of the nights being cold in that part of the world, he wore no clothes, and obviously the description is of him going about like this whatever the season, summer and winter. His crazed spirit cannot stand being enclosed even in the things that are protective to him, and which keep him warm and comfortable. In his half-troubled state he has got to get rid of them. He lives in no house, no home, and yet here in the Gospel of Luke the record tells us that the Lord Jesus Christ send him back at the end of all this to his house. He did have a home it appears. We can probably read into this the fact that he had a family. If he had had a house and no family, they would surely have sold him up while he was in this demented state. So this man has got all the comforts of a home and a wife, and it seems they still must have some affection for him otherwise the all-knowing Lord Jesus Christ would not have sent him back to them; they must have been prepared to receive him. In the Gospel of Mark we are told that the Lord Jesus Christ sent him back to his friends. This man had friends; he still had people who remembered him when he had been in his right mind, and who felt sorry for him in this wretched condition. Not only that, but he lives in the tombs. Why did he have this strange attraction to the tombs? It was the effect of demon possession. There was no life there, there was nobody to care for him there, nobody to nurse him back to health, only the dead, but that's where he wanted to be. We read in the Gospel of Mark that he was going about crying out in anguish, night and day. Insomnia is one thing, but this man is living compulsively, rushing about full of anguish and activity night and day. Doesn't he realise he has got to rest? That he needs peace? If you were up out there at night, you would have heard his shrill screams and cries, and sensed the anguish. You would have heard him hitting things, rushing about like a mad thing, night and day. Then we read that he was not only crying – he knew nothing of laughter – but we read in the Gospel of Mark that he was cutting himself. Perhaps this was one reason why they chained him up: for his own protection. But he had been doing this for a long time. The demons were tormenting him, causing him to hurt himself. He had been at this for a long time, cutting himself with stones.

Application

If you don't know the Lord Jesus Christ you may have been saying to yourself what's this got to do with me, I don't regard myself either as mentally sick or as demon possessed, I don't behave in this mad way. The reason why this is recorded in the Bible is to teach us, and to shock us into understanding that none of us are as whole and as free as we think we are. We are pictured here by the demoniac. Here is this man and he wears no clothes. They are the instruments of warmth and protection and comfort to him but he doesn't want them. He is frightened of them; they're an encumbrance to him. If you are not a Christian it is the same with you as far as the clothing of righteousness is concerned. We preach that man is made in the image of God and he needs God in his life. He needs to produce fruits of character for God; he must turn to God for pardon and forgiveness so that God can come down and enter his life, make him a Christian, bless him, and produce fruits of righteousness. But the unbeliever doesn't want it. He is as irrational as this man. The very clothes that God has designed for him, the clothing of character and depth, the clothing of righteousness and decency and strength and dignity; he throws them off. Why? Go and ask this demon possessed man. Ask him, ‘Are your clothes uncomfortable? Do they hurt you?’ You won't get an intelligent answer. No, he hasn't thought about it. The clothes are not uncomfortable, they don't hurt him, he just doesn't want them, he's frightened of them, he hates them. We are as mad as this poor man and we want to throw off these restraints. We want no talk of holiness. Where are your roots in this short and uncertain earthly life? To whom do you belong? Where is your home? You will be here today and gone tomorrow; life is over very quickly. What are you living it for? Just to be tossed to and fro by the fashions of this world? Just to have your mind programmed by the teachings of this world? Is that all you are: flesh and blood, with no life in the spirit, no meaning, no purpose, no home in heaven, no foundation?

Is there somebody of whom it can be said that you might as well be living among the tombs? You are giving the best hours of your working day to fruitlessness. There is no hope beyond the grave, nothing alive, nothing pulsating with energy and meaning. This man he was screaming and shouting with anguish, tormented, running about the tombs at night, hardly ever taking any rest. Don't you understand that as a human being you are made to be related with God, to worship him, to be refreshed by him. You are not made in order to grow old and lose your youth and become haggard and dried up like a shrivelled leaf. You are made to be refreshed by God, you are made to walk at 70 years of age still with a twinkle in your eye and a great heritage, a lifetime behind you of wonderful memories and great usefulness, experiences which are rich and large, and you can only have that if you are a worshiper of God and you walk in communion with him. If you turn your back on that you are like this man who never slept but rushed about screaming and crying. How long will his body take it? Are you going to be as irrational as that, turning your back on refreshment for your soul which comes to you alone from God? Do people cut themselves today spiritually? Yes they do. Every time you hear the invitation of the gospel and you go out stubbornly resisting, turning your back on God to have another week or another year in this world, you are just injuring yourself totally unnecessary.

The gospel offers you life, life abundant; a powerful God who will bless you and convert you. It gives you a new dimension to life, new horizons. Because of the love of the Lord Jesus Christ you can be pardoned, you can be brought in, you can become a child of God, you can have a home in heaven. You can have your eyes opened, and meaning and purpose. You can have all the comforts of home and friends, friends among the Lord's people, the friend in heaven. The Saviour who will bless you, and hear your prayers, and answer you. Watch your reaction. If you are an unbeliever, it frightens you and you don't want it. You would rather be out in the wilderness of this world; you would rather have no security, no friend in heaven.

Questions

There are people who have the idea that whenever you read of demon possession in the New Testament, it is just the way an unsophisticated, ignorant society accounted for mental illness. They pick up this notion from various places, sometimes from their school instruction, sometimes from the media, but that view is just absurd. Some of the cases of demon possessions in the New Testament don’t even involve the mind and the mental aptitudes. The features of demon possession are never found together in any known form of sickness of the mind, and it requires only a small amount of medical knowledge, a small amount of literary acumen to determine that is the case. What we find in the word of God under the heading of demon possession is something quite different, quite distinctive. It teaches that there was a condition which could arise whereby spiritual possession, the powers of darkness, could take hold of a man in a manner that far exceeds merely an inclination to do evil. In a general sense all men and women are demon possessed. Everyone born is under the power, the controlling influence of forces of evil. All of us have had many an experience when conscience spoke against doing something. You didn't want to do it; it hurt you to do it; it was sinful; it made you feel unclean, but you did it anyway as though there was something driving you from within and from without, which was far stronger than you are. In some measure that can only be explained in terms of the spiritual forces that are at work. There is a devilish intelligence about evil and every man is subject to it at some time. But in these New Testament days it was plain that there was a phenomenon of devil possession, far above anything which we have seen since. Now theologically it is easily explained. The word of God teaches us that at the time of Christ there was a considerable manifestation of things like this. What was happening? The Son of God had come down to earth out of the glorious courts of heaven, and he was going to go on Calvary's cross. He was going to suffer and die for the sins of those whom he would save. He was going to finally carry out his purposes and make it possible for men and women to be saved and to know him and be converted. But when Christ came, there was a great flurry of demonic activity. Satan resisted the coming of the Son of God, and God permitted it to happen in a measure and took away some of the usual restraints, because he was going to demonstrate his power over it. It is significant that when this demonic possession occurred, there came the disciples of the Lord or the Lord himself to cast them out, and it is here in the record of Scripture. It was permitted to take place, and it happened in order that there might be a perpetual record of the power of Christ over the powers of darkness. It is undoubtedly one of the great happy side effects of the coming and the ministry of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, that it is no longer involuntary and widespread as it was in olden times. Now there are those who report incidents of demon possession here and there even in modern days. In primitive parts of the world there are missionaries who quite clearly testify to cases of devil demon possession, things which, this is medical missionaries, things which cannot be accounted for by any other means. It is very possible that where man is living in utter degradation and darkness and has spurned the most high God, and sold himself mind and body to evil; it is possible that under such circumstances there can be a high level of demonic possession of men and women even today. But certainly it's something that occurred much more frequently in these days when Christ was on earth. This is not just the mutterings of a primitive society which was unable to account for mental illness. Any student of the Bible can see for himself that the understanding of sickness, mental sickness, the mind and so on, is so profound in the word of God. The psychology of the Book of Proverbs is far higher and broader than any Freudian rationale than you can read today, and men could learn from it with great profit. We are dealing with the profound and inspired word of God here.

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Introduction

Luke 8:26 Commentary and Bible Study