Jesus is Lord (Part 2)

No Compromise Radio Thanks for tuning in to No Compromise Radio with pastor and author,

Dr. Mike Abendroth. Today on No Compromise Radio, we'll be hearing Pastor Mike open the

Word of God in a recent message he preached at Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts.

Now let's join Pastor Mike in progress as he preaches through the scriptures, verse by verse with no compromise.

Back to the passage. Verse 32. Now a large herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside, and these demons, from three thousand to six thousand, they begged him to let them enter these.

And to Peter's chagrin, he gave them permission. One man called this a devilish request.

Mark translates Jesus saying, send us into the swine so that we may enter them.

I have a question for you. Why would demons want to go into pigs? There could be lots of answers.

Some might say, well, they didn't want to go into the ultimate confining place called the abyss.

That's very contextual. Maybe because God had called the pigs unclean back in Mosaic law,

Deuteronomy 14 .8, so we want to continue our uncleanness instead of this unclean man. Let's make it unclean pigs, ceremonially unclean.

Maybe they're thinking, send us into the pigs because the pigs will die, Jesus is going to get in trouble, and then they'll try to kill

Jesus. I know this. I know their motives are not good.

And Jameson, Fawcett, and Brown said, suffer us to continue our work of mischief in another form.

I know what they didn't ask for, forgiveness, cleansing, regeneration, redemption, give us a second opportunity.

We want to be better, cure our demon nature to the core. Verse 33, then the demons came out of the man and entered the pigs and the herd rushed down the steep bank and into the lake and they were drowned.

That's the kind of pace and the pitch of the verbal cues there.

Look at how fast that happened. Let me read you Mark 5 .13, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea, about 2 ,000 of them, and they were drowned in the sea.

Here Jesus the Lord sovereignly, because of his own purpose, says, okay, go into the pigs and off the pigs go to be drowned.

Matthew chapter 8, it's very short words that Jesus said.

He says, go. Very brief. Go. Day one destruction, here it comes, headlong.

And by the way, in Mark, the language is it's one pig after another pig after another pig after another pig.

They didn't all kind of hold hands and jump together, hold feet, exact same time, you know, Red Rover, Red Rover, let's let the pigs go right over.

That's not my notes, by the way, but it's not like it's in unison. Pigs don't travel with herd mentality like sheep do.

You send the Judas sheep out and everyone follows. Here these pigs are now acting like sheep.

They're all following. Off they go, one after another, after another, after another. Stubborn individualistic pigs, over they go.

Herd mentality. And the text says, and they were drowning in the sea in Mark 5.

Literally it wasn't, the word isn't drowning, it's choking. Now just imagine a frenzied pig, each pig containing two, maybe three demons.

If we divide it up with simple math, hitting the water, heavy pigs, still some oxygen in their lungs, choking.

Just imagine the squealing sounds and the choking sounds. You have extraordinary strength if you're demon possessed as a person.

I'm sure these pigs, I'm not saying they could swim, but they have extraordinary zeal in their attempts to be rescued.

The liberals say there were no demons, these pigs were so freaked out at a wild man that the wild man chased the pigs into the water.

I think that requires more faith, by the way. Was this okay for Jesus to do? I mean, after all,

Proverbs, righteous man regards the life of his beast. Of course it was okay for Jesus to do.

You shouldn't even ask the question because Psalm 115 says, our God is in the heavens, he does whatever he pleases.

If he created them, he owns them, he can do whatever he wants. Bertrand Russell wrote a book called

Why I'm Not a Christian, and he was an atheistic philosopher. You should read that book sometime because if that's as good as it gets to argue against Christianity, it's pretty bad.

But he said, I cannot be a Christian and follow Jesus for many reasons, including his horrible treatment of the pigs.

We laugh because we're around here, but there is a huge movement in Christianity that says if you want to be godly, you've got to eat a certain kind of way.

If you have a preference, if you want to waste your money on organic, it's your money. I mean, you can do whatever you want. But this lead article on Christianity today, would

Jesus come to our potlucks and eat chicken tenders because they're made with beaks and made with, you know, toenails of the chickens and all that stuff?

Would he eat the lime Jell -O that has the pretzel floating in it because he knows how bad the gelatin is from the lime

Jell -O? I mean, it is just crazy. That's a way easier way to be godly.

Just don't eat the right things. Don't eat the wrong things. Eat the right things. And then godliness is set.

But that's not godliness. 1 Timothy 4, by the way, says if you say thank you,

Lord, you eat whatever you want. If your conscience won't let you, educate your conscience with the

Bible and eat what you want. Why would Jesus do this?

It was okay for him to do it. But the next question is, why would he do it? At the risk of making this too full of levity, one commentator did say,

I didn't say it, but he did. He did it not to send them to hog heaven. I think he did it because he wanted to show his power and his authority.

I think he wanted to expose the demons to a little bit of temporal confinement because real confinement in the abyss was going to be coming.

And I think he was giving an object lesson to the people watching, including his disciples, including us.

Jesus is Lord. A graphic display of his lordship. Don't cry for the pigs.

How many people, how many pigs would be of equal value?

We get all the pigs together and we say, you know, I'll exchange one human being made in the likeness and ministry of God for how many pigs?

1 ,000, 2 ,000, 50 ,000. By the way, every one of those pigs was going to die anyway.

Yes, every one of those pigs is dead. And many times we use animals in the Old Testament for sacrifice.

Every time you eat an animal, you kill an animal because you're hungry. Maybe you don't kill it, but the butcher does.

A liberal scholar even said, there is a cheap sentimentalism which will languish in grief over the pain of an animal and will never turn a hair at the wretched state of millions of God's men.

Isn't that true? We even do it sometimes. You see a dog suffer versus a person suffer. Animals aren't image bearers.

This is exactly what Jesus should do. Sovereign over demons. Well, what's the response?

There's a couple different responses, even for you today. You see all this and what do you say? No big deal. I don't care.

Oh, I love him. I praise him. Let's see what the responses are here in the text. Luke 8, 34.

What's the first response? Get out of here, Jesus. You're wrecking our economy. When the herdsmen saw what had happened, they fled and told it.

They announced it in the city and in the country. When Jesus is in town, there's lots of talk that's going to be energized.

Mark 5 says, the herdmen ran away and reported in the city and out in the country. And the people came to see what it was that had happened.

You've got to see this. Come follow me. And I would imagine when they went over by the cliff, what would you see there?

Probably the bloated pigs washing up on shore dead, the carcasses strewn all over.

Verse 35. Then people went out to see what had happened. They came to Jesus and found the man, the man, from whom the, plural, demons had gone.

Everything's the opposite. It's all right side up now. Crazy? Now sound mind learning. Sitting at the feet of Jesus.

Clothed. He was naked and in his right mind. And they were afraid.

Here's this man making all these sounds, doing all these things, naked, running around.

And now he's sitting at the feet of the rabbi learning. And they realize this man,

Jesus, is supernatural. He's the Lord. The man is seated at the feet of Jesus.

Clothed in his right mind. Mark says he's self -controlled. Isn't that interesting? From demon -controlled to self -controlled.

In his right mind. And just like the Sea of Galilee, which is totally calm and peaceful after Jesus was done with it, same too with this man.

Verse 36. And those who had seen it told them how the demon -possessed man had been healed. Then all the people of the surrounding country and the

Gerizim asked him for repentance, for forgiveness of sins, for restoration.

No. Ask him to depart from them, for they were seized with great fear.

And sadly, sometimes Jesus gives the people what they ask for. And so he got into the boat and returned.

Side note. You can see signs and wonders and healings and people raised from the dead.

And that does not cause saving faith. Just like here. Get out of here,

Jesus. We're afraid. Maybe you're disrupting our normal routine. Maybe we're Jewish people trying to get away from Judaism, and now we're over here on the other side of the

Sea of Galilee where the Gentiles are. And we're not supposed to have all these pigs, but we have these pigs, and now you're hurting business. Maybe they're frightened by the great display of Christ's power.

Joseph Odell has a poem. Rabbi, be gone. Thy powers bring loss to us and ours.

Our ways are not as thine. Thou lovest men, we swine.

Oh, get thee hence, omnipotence. But there's another response to this.

Verse 38. Here's the good response. It's the response of the man. When you see the lordship of Christ, this should be your response.

And the man from whom the demons had gone begged that he might be with him.

Wherever you go, Jesus, I want to go. But Jesus sent him away saying, return to your home.

Declare how much God has done for you. People say, well, Jesus never said he's God. Well, you just need to read this passage.

Jesus is calling himself God. Declare how much God has done for you. And he went away proclaiming throughout the whole city how much

Jesus had done for him. He knew that Jesus was God because go tell everybody what

God did. He goes and tells everybody what Jesus did. The other people,

Jesus, get as far away as you can. This man says what? I want to get as close to you,

Jesus, as I can. I want to follow you. He didn't say, did you notice what it didn't say?

I haven't seen my family for all these years since I've been demon possessed. I'd like to go back and say hello to my wife, my kids, my mom, my dad.

I need to just go back and tell them goodbye. He says, I'm following you. And Jesus said, no, go return to your home.

Remember sometimes Jesus would say like to the lepers who had been healed, don't tell anybody about what I've done for you because they were in Israel and it wasn't time for all the authorities to gang up on Jesus and crucify him because that was ordained to be a later time.

Here he's in the Gentile area. There's no threat of Jewish leadership trying to crucify Jesus. So he says, go tell everybody.

Be a missionary. Mark 5 says this, and he went away and began to proclaim in Decapolis, 10 cities, the

Gentile cities, what great things Jesus had done for him. And everyone marveled.

They were astonished. One man said

Jesus had only told him to go to his friends and tell them what God had done for him, but he was not content to stop there.

He set out for 10 Greek cities and told them the good news. He says yes to the demons and he agrees with their request.

He says no to the man, disagrees with his request. Well, any takeaways?

Let me give you several. One, you must believe that Jesus is Lord. And if you believe

Jesus is Lord, you will believe in submission. Gospel submission. Recognize what the

Lord says about your own sin, your own depravity, your own wickedness. Recognize what the Lord Jesus said about the only way you can have forgiveness, and that is looking to the sin -bearing

Savior, Jesus Christ, who was raised from the dead. Why was he raised from the dead?

Because he was powerful over death. He actually paid for the sins of all those who would look to him.

Just imagine if you were in Jerusalem that Friday night, Jesus is in the tomb. You might be saying to yourself, if you're

Peter or James or John, I wonder if God the Father accepted the payment of Jesus the

Son. I wonder if what he said was really true. We believe it, but we're not really sure. Saturday goes by.

I wonder if Jesus actually paid the sin debt for our sins like he said. If he's dead, that means he only paid for his own sins.

The wages of sin is death. He was a sinner. He died. But if he paid for other people's sins, he's surely going to rise up from the grave to show everyone

God the Father accepted the sacrifice. And on the third day, what happened? He was raised from the dead.

If you believe Jesus is Lord, that means he owns you. It says not, you know,

I'll get my degree and I'll go do this and I'll go do that. And, you know, at 60, when I'm older, I'll dedicate my life to Christ.

I'll take him as my Savior now, but my Lord later. That is a horrible, tragic mistake that you can commit.

Luke 6, Jesus said, Why call me Lord, Lord, and do not do the things that I say? Lord, grant me a heart of submission and obedience to the

Lord Jesus Christ. Takeaway number two. Not all men are demon -possessed, but all unbelievers are ruled by Satan.

Not every person you meet is going to be demon -possessed. Actually, there were lots of people demon -possessed when

Jesus was on the earth because the demons were specially trying to attack Jesus. I think people still can be demon -possessed today, but I don't think there's as many possessions as the news might say.

All men are not demon -possessed, but by nature, unbelievers are ruled by Satan.

And you are going to need the gospel that makes men new. Preach to these people to have them saved because you are not stronger than the devil.

Number three. Don't waste any time worrying about Satan or demons. Don't waste any time worrying about Satan or demons.

Romans 16, the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. I never say, well, what if demons get me?

What if they can oppress me? What if they can possess me? What if they get somebody else? Archon Hughes said that there was a brother and sister fighting, and the mom said, why did you let the devil put it into your heart to pull your brother's hair and kick him in the shins?

Well, maybe the devil put it in my head to pull my brother's hair, but kicking his shins was my own idea.

She was half right. We have a Savior that's conquered Satan, and Satan can only do what

God ordains him to do. Actually, God uses Satan for his program, and he's the hardest working servant in all the universe.

Satan, because God has him do what he sovereignly wills

Satan to do. Number four. Number four, yes, number four. Whatever you do, don't rebuke

Satan and demons. Whatever you do, don't fall for the immature lie that says what's described in the

Bible is prescribed for me. Jesus cast out demons. WWJD, I cast out demons.

Apostles cast out demons. Therefore, I cast out demons. Friends, that is a horrible, hermeneutical, interpretational mistake.

Where in the New Testament are you ever supposed to cast out demons as a New Testament church person? You can't find it.

Why don't I have in the pastoral epistles written to pastors and elders,

Pastor, when someone comes in your office and they're demon possessed and they start throwing around the monitor in your office, this is what you do.

A, do this. B, do that. C, do that. Why don't I have any of that? Because we're not to have some kind of magic formulas.

I'm not Jesus. I'm not an apostle. But it's flashy. I cast out demons. I bind him.

I double bind them. I tie up the demon of Boylston who's going to get involved in the city selectmen there who are not going to let us get the town, and they're going to overdo that, and I cast them all the way out to the place where you always cast demons if you're a charismatic

Fitchburg. I cast them out there. I mean, where are you going to cast them?

To your neighbors? They're going to go somewhere. I say

Jesus is Lord over demons. Why do I care what demons do? Because Jesus has conquered sin and Satan and death and hell, and they can't do anything to me.

If you're a Christian, no one can possess you. The Spirit of God is not going to say, Well, you know, let's kind of have a renter here for a while.

Satan, it is the sole prerogative of Jesus to cast out demons. Show me someone who casts out demons, and I'll show you someone either ignorant of the faith or immature or satanic themselves.

Listen, how do you spot a false prophet? 2 Peter 2. Especially those who indulge in the flesh and its corrupt desires and despise authority.

Daring these false prophets are self -willed. They do not tremble when they revile angelic majesties.

Whereas angels who are greater in might and power do not bring a reviling judgment against them before the

Lord. Show me someone that casts out demons, and I'll show you someone who, again, is either ignorant or they're a false prophet.

False prophets do that. We don't do that. Jude 10. These men revile the things which they do not understand.

The things which they know by instinct, like unreasoning animals. But by these things they are destroyed.

Michael, the archangel, when he disputed with the devil and argued about the body of Moses, did not dare pronounce against him a railing judgment.

He said, the Lord rebuke you. You say, see, there it is, the Lord rebuke you. Well, I'm not an angel either, so I never run around.

If you come to me and say you're demon -possessed, what do I do? I think people can be demon -possessed today. If you meet a demon -possessed person, what do you do?

You don't have to call the pastors. You don't have to get the incense. You don't have to get the oil. You don't have to get the formula. You don't have to get the lectionary.

You don't have to get the vestments. You don't have to get anything. What do you do? How do demons go out of people? Well, you preach the gospel to them, and if you're a saved person, you're 10 years old and saved, you know the gospel to preach to them.

And if God uses the power of the gospel, the spirit of God then dwells in them, where does the demon go? Gone. But, friends, it's so much easier if you say, well,

I've got the demon of pornography. I've got the demon of, as MacArthur says, post -nasal drip. I've got the demon of addiction.

I've got the demon of drunkenness. I've got the demon of swearing. I've got the demon of the real demon possession, Boston Red Sox worship.

I've got all these problems. If you're going to worship something, you might as well worship something that gives you good dividends every year.

But when we blame what James says, each one is carried away by his own what?

Personal demon. No, his own flesh, his own lusts. I learned in 1966 with Philip Wilson, the devil did not make me do it.

The devil doesn't make you do anything. He can entice. He can lay snares. He can try to egg on, but we make ourselves do things.

Nobody else. Don't bind demons. Don't cast out Satan. Submit and trust to the one who's

Lord over all these supernatural beings. It's so much easier.

Implication number five. Two more and we're done. Implication five. If you're really saved from all your sins and have forgiveness, shouldn't you be prepared to go anywhere or do anything for Jesus the

Lord? That's what happened to that man, didn't he? Didn't it? I'll go anywhere.

I'll do anything. I don't want you all to leave because then we don't need the new building, right? But I want you to be missionaries where you are.

You say, I'll do anything. I'll go anywhere. You've been bought with a price.

Therefore, 1 Corinthians 6, glorify God in your body. And lastly, number six, show compassion to image bearers.

Show compassion to image bearers. It's okay to like pets. It's okay to ascribe to them anthropomorphic and anthropopathic things.

But they reason not. They're brute beasts. They live by instinct.

And they don't bear God's image. And when they die, they're dead. But there are people around you lost and dying.

And every person you know, every person that's ever been born, and the 70 ,000 people who die every day across this world are all going straight to hell without the gospel.

And the problem is, Jonathan Edwards is right. Almost every natural man that hears of hell flatters himself that he shall escape it.

He depends upon himself for his own security. He flatters himself in what he has done and what he is now doing, what he intends to do.

Everyone lays out matters in his own mind how he should avoid damnation. And flatters himself that he contrives well for himself.

And that his schemes will not fail. Your scheme better include, be perfect for your

Heavenly Father's perfect. Your scheme better figure out a way to have your sins forgiven. But you can't forgive your own sins because you're sinful.

So look to the one who is the sin bearer, who forgives sins. When he says, look to me, believe on the

Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved. Lord, help me not to look to myself, my own works, my own righteousness.

Help me to look to you. Help me to say like the tax gatherer, Lord, have mercy upon me, what?

A sinner. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.

But Jesus said, I came that they might have life and have it more abundantly. I am the good shepherd.

The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. Jesus is Lord. And I'm glad.

I'm glad.