We have the third impact of this
saving of a soul. The third audience and that audience
is these unclean spirits. So at first it began with the
salvation of a soul and as we saw it was passive. The Lord
comes and the Lord saves. He doesn't need man's help and
we have no help to give him. He was captive to spirits which
no man could tame, and Christ freed him. In the second impact, we had
the rejection, the blindness of natural man, blinded in Genesis
3, and blinded every single time they come in contact with God. And now the third, and in some
ways the biggest and most important of all, and yet from Genesis
3, we ourselves are naturally ignorant regarding these things. You see, the unclean spirits
operate much like the Holy Spirit in John 3, like the wind. We can't see them. but we do
experience their presence. And while it's often subtle and
undetected, it's always dangerous. See, men speculate about these
things, but they grossly, grossly underestimate it. the power that these demons have
over man, if the Lord allows. Some of you know I like diving,
and it's interesting, you can stand right on the edge of the
shore and look down in the water and you'll see a bit going on
down there, and the clearer the water is, the more interesting
it is, but you put a mask on and stick your head underwater,
and it'll just blow your mind. It never ceases to amaze me,
that first look when you put your head underwater, and it's
very similar to the spiritual world. We can't see it, and if
we can, it's only dimly, and it's only a bit of a blurred
idea, and we put the lens of the gospel on, and we see amazing
things. And another similarity is, Sometimes
you don't know what's right there in front of you and you stick
your head underwater and there's something much bigger and much,
much, much more dangerous and much out of our depth. So I guess
I can relate it that way a little bit, but there is a whole spiritual
world around us that we naturally don't understand and we naturally
can't combat. The only true and faithful information
that we have about these things is in the Scriptures. And even
then, the Holy Spirit must open our understanding. So how about we just pray and
we might sing and then come back and finish this last one off.
Heavenly Father, again, we're just asking for you to feed your
sheep, to do what you promised. We pray that you would just cause
us cause us to see just how overwhelming salvation really is to a sibling
father and how desperately, desperately, desperately, we need you to be
able to do anything. Please help us today, Father,
when we leave here, just leave here him, have our eyes turned back
on him, away from this world and away from the difficulties
and the obstacles. Our God does all things right.
Help us to feel secure in that again today. you This is just a short one, so
we might just read this. And you'll notice it's a radically
different account. So just reading from 28. And when he was come to the other
side, into the country of Gerzenes, They met him too possessed with
devils, coming out of the tombs exceeding fierce, so that no
man might pass by that way. And behold, they cried out, saying,
What have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God? Art thou
come hither to torment us before the time? And there was a good
way off from them and heard of many swine feeding. So the devils
besought him saying, if thou cast us out, suffer us to go
away into the herd of swine. And he said unto them, go, and
they went, and sorry, and when they would come out, they went
into the herd of swine, and behold, the whole herd of swine ran violently
down a steep place into the sea and perished in the waters. And
they that kept them fled and went their ways into the city
and told everything that was, and what was befallen to the
possessed of the devils. And behold, the whole city came
out to meet Jesus, So it is radically different,
isn't it? It is the same event, but it's directly targeted at
a different audience again. So there is a variation in the
story and There's clearly a different emphasis. There is one thing
I wanted to speak about in 28. Now it's two men. And I can't
help but think that this again represents a state that's common
to all Adam's children. And I think that's thus the plural
here. So we have more of a description
of these unclean spirits. Notice there that they're exceedingly
fierce. They were powerful. They were
dangerous. They were overwhelming. So much
so that no man could pass. And again, another spiritual
picture. Too powerful for natural man's wisdom and strength. What chance And in 29 there's a time coming,
and it'll be soon. There'll be a time when this
world will be wrapped up like a coat, and there'll be a judgment. And it'll include judgment of
these unclean spirits. But until then, some of these
spirits, at times, by the power of God, are still allowed to
operate in this world, And sometimes in our lives, this is a lesson
for us about what's going on now. It's a lesson because of
the natural blindness of our flesh. It's a lesson to warn
us and to cause us to have faith. See, because no matter how fierce
they are, They're only ever, and mark this,
they're only ever doing the bidding of our sovereign God and always
for the spiritual benefit of his children. You see these powerful, dangerous,
overwhelming enemies still need to beg permission
from a sovereign God, don't they? They still have to grovel before
him. Now, we don't have a lot of time,
but I would encourage you to read Job 1 and 2, because even
Satan needs permission. And you'll notice there in Job
1 that it's actually God that introduces Job to the conversation
or the situation. and then allows Satan, but again,
Satan has to beg God to do anything. Again, these swine, they depict
unbelievers. They represent the people that
are outside the eternal covenant. And these people are hosts for
these unclean spirits. They're captives to them. They're
overwhelmed with evil, and they're as blind as bats, and especially
when they're doing well in their religion. In Matthew 8.32, the Lord just
says, go. He gives them permission to inhabit
another vessel, and while we don't often see this sort of
thing going on because of our natural blindness, It is a reality,
because our God has said it here, and He cannot lie. And these demons, if you notice,
they too met God in this. So what's the result of the influence,
I suppose, of these unclean spirits? And you can see clearly it's
self-destruction. Self-destruction in this man,
self-destruction in the swine. We're told they perished in the
waters. In the scriptures, often the world is related to a sea,
a turbulent sea, because of the consequences of sin, the cause
and effect of our sins in this world. These unclean spirits, we're given what they are. And
these people that rejected Christ were given what they wanted. And they perished and will eventually
perish in the world that they wanted. Matthew 8.34 says again, I'm sorry, and again the town
meets Jesus and they reject the only hope of their salvation
from this position and they destroy themselves with their worldly
indulgences until that time of verse 29. Much like the slime
and these people and these evil spirits, they all got what they wanted.
and have consumed them. In Romans 9, Paul tells us that
there are vessels of dishonor. And as overwhelming as they can
often seem, and I'm not just talking about evil spirits, I'm
talking about powers and rulers of this world in one way or another,
people above us in different ways, people that intimidate
us, people that take advantage of us. We have a great many enemies
in this world, far more than what we know, but in Romans 9
we're told that even these vessels of dishonor can only ever, as
much as they hate it, as much as they oppose it, they can only
ever bring forth the glory of God. You see, the greater enemy means
the greater victory. And the greater captivity means
the greater salvation, doesn't it? In Genesis 2.17, we're warned
that if we ate of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil, we would surely die. And while our flesh began
to die straight away, we also died spiritually and were blinded
to the realities of the spiritual realm. We became captives to
Satan. And according to Ephesians 2,
we were walking according to the prince of the power of the
air, the spirit that now works in the children of disobedience. Turning your Bibles to Ephesians
6. We'll just finish here. See, this is why in Colossians
1 we need to be delivered. It's passive. We need to be delivered
from the power of darkness and translated into the kingdom of
God. It's a complete work of grace
that saves us and nothing else. This is a work of God alone,
every single part of it. Okay, we'll just look in Ephesians
for a minute. I just want to read 6 verses, sorry, Ephesians 6, 10
to 12. Verse 10. Finally, my brethren,
be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might, not our
might. Put on the whole armor of God
that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For or because We wrestle not
against flesh and blood, and listen to this, this is operating
in our lives right now, but against principalities, against powers,
against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness,
in high places. So I just want to talk about
this verse for a little bit. If you read on, and I would encourage
you to read on, it describes the armour of God and every part
of that description is rooted and grounded in faith. But you notice in verse 12 it
says, for or because we wrestle not against flesh and blood. And while no doubt this is speaking
of fleshly enemies, it's actually speaking of all fleshly enemies. Okay, so in some ways, our own
flesh is the greatest enemy, especially with such strong influences
at foot. And legalism, progressive sanctification,
any sort of working for salvation in any facet of salvation is
just as much wrestling against flesh and blood And yet even
in our fleshly religion, it's these spiritual, unclean enemies
that are our real opposition. What chance do we have of doing
anything that's good and anything that's right? Their principalities,
their powers, their rules of darkness, What chance do we have? We desperately need the grace
of our God every single moment of our lives. We have three accounts here before
us. We have three different groups
represented here. You know what the common denominator
is in all this? Every single group represented
here, they met God in the salvation of one of his lost children.
May our gracious God remind us that he and he alone is the first
cause of all things in this world. May he remind us that no matter
how great that opposition is, Our God reigneth, and may He
continue to keep retrieving His lost feet by the faithful preaching
of the gospel. Let's pray. Heavenly Father,
it's too big for us. We need you desperately, desperately,
desperately, every single moment of our lives. And I just pray,
Heavenly Father, that you would use the circumstances of our
lives to bring us back to you again and again and again, because
we stray. We're easily influenced. We're
hopeless and helpless. And up against much bigger foes
than what we realize, Heavenly Father. But if you're willing,
please keep your eyes fixed firmly on our Saviour, and let this
world do what it does around us, Heavenly Father, and just
keep us gazing on our great King and Saviour, looking at Him in
His finished work, looking at what He's done on our behalf,
how He's continuously presenting us before you, how we're accepted
in and beloved Father, keep all our attention here. Please keep
our eyes fixed on our King. We pray that as we go away this
week that you would just cause us to make much of him in this
world. and that you would continue to leave evidence of your gospel
wherever we go. Pray your mercy on Angus's travels
and his witnessing, and we just again think of Owen and anyone
else who's ailing and not here, and we just pray your mercy upon
us, Heavenly Father, and thank you. Thank you for your grace
in our lives. We pray in the name of our King
and Saviour, our Lord Jesus Christ, and always