Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the Fifth Ward Baptist Church.
Great to see you all here for our Sunday morning service.
If you all please have a seat, grab a handle, and open up that handle.
We'll begin the service by singing the song number 167.
All hail the power of Jesus.
Song 167.
All hail the power of Jesus.
Hallelujah.
Jesus.
Hallelujah.
And the land of the free and the home of the brave
And the home of the brave
And the home of the free and the home of the brave
And the home of the brave
We will follow the stream
And we will give the heart
To the land of the free
And the home of the brave
Song number 43, we're marching with eyes.
Stand up, stand up, stand up,
Stand up, stand up, stand up
And the home of the brave
And the home
And the home of the brave
is that we don't major on the minors of scripture.
Don't major on the minors. Yeah, it's an interesting story.
It's exciting. There's some things we can learn about it
but people like to extrapolate a little too much. They like to
put a little too much conjecture into the story. Well, if demons can go into pigs
therefore all animals must be able to get possessed like that.
Is that what the story says? If a demon
could just go into an animal, why'd they have to ask Jesus?
Now, I've been out soul winning and sometimes
I've been convinced that animals can be possessed with devils.
Because it's like we go through some of these neighborhoods and it's just we're being barked at from
every angle. But then you just realize that dogs just
do that. That dogs just bark at anything and everything
all the time. We don't want to major
on the minors of scripture. I've kind of been trying
to emphasize this lately in my preaching. When we come across stories like this
is that when people start to major on the minors they miss the broader
point. They miss the greater truth that's in the passage.
Because they get so focused sometimes on demonology.
And then there's going to be a whole
subculture of Christendom out there on YouTube
and other places that's just going to feed you a bunch of stuff on demonology
and go deep on demons. The Bible doesn't talk a lot about it.
It acknowledges them. It tells us it's there. It tells us what's going to happen to them.
Things that they've done. But the Bible doesn't give us a prescription for
exercising demons. That's why we're not going to start
sprinkling oil on people. Don't ever call me up and ask me to come over to your house
and draw crosses on the doorways of your house
with holy oil that's been anointed or prayed over.
That stuff's out there. You go to some of these churches, these charismatic
churches, they get into this stuff. They want to do
a battle with the forces of darkness.
They want to call everything a demon, cast out demons.
That's how you have guys like Benny Henn and others that are going to get up and start
slapping people with their sports jacket and trying to chase the demons out.
And they put on a good show and people get into it.
Because they're fighting demons. That's why you have Kenneth Copeland trying to
with his own breath blow COVID out of
certain parts of the United States.
Rebuking COVID. COVID I rebuke you.
You're laughing at me but that guy gets up and does just that.
Just that.
I rebuke the devil of COVID.
Someone needs to rebuke the
devil out of that guy. Right? And you say
why are you bringing it up? That guy's a multi-millionaire. How? Because people eat that stuff
up with fork and spoon. They love that stuff. Oh, he's casting out the
demon of COVID. Then they get into the whole
hereditary demons. You inherited a
demon from grandpa. You got the demon of alcohol. You got the demon of
pornography. You got the demon of adultery.
You got all these different demons in you that are responsible
for all your sin. It just opens up a door for a bunch of just nonsense.
Well I can't help it. It's the demon I have.
It's stupid. And the Bible doesn't talk about it.
It gives us a glimpse here that Jesus permitted the
demons to go into swine.
But we can't just hop, skip, and jump to
therefore, ipso facto, any animal can be possessed by a demon.
And people get too superstitious about some of this stuff.
You have to stick to what the Bible's actually saying.
I had you go to Colossians too, right?
I want to look at verse 18.
Let no man beguile you in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels.
Right? Which is the thing that's out there, angel worship.
But what I want to focus on is that this guy beguiles
people by what? Intruding into those things which he hath not seen
vainly puffed up in his fleshly mind.
A lot of people want to talk about angels and demons.
They're talking about things that they have not seen. And it's
vanity and it's being puffed up and it's prideful to sit there
and lift yourself up and make yourself into some kind of expert
on demons and things like that. And look, it's out there.
People do it. They'll start naming demons.
They know the names of demons and they'll tell you that he's responding to this circle of hells
where this demon reigns. Even the Bible says that there are no devils
in hell right now. Don't you know that? Satan's not in hell.
He's in the earth and even his access to heaven at this point.
We see that in Job and other passages.
He appeared before the Lord with the sons of God
and God asks him, where have you been? What have you been doing? I've been walking to
and fro in the earth. He's the prince of the power of the air, the god of this
present world. He's not in hell. The devil
doesn't want to go to hell. But then you'll have the book, Five Minutes in Hell.
How many people have spent ten minutes on Hell these days?
Best seller. Who's seen it? I'm sure there's
programs on television too. This guy's giving his testimony.
I went to hell. I was there for ten minutes before the doctor revived me.
And when I was there, I was in a cell and I heard all the people
moaning and crying and being tortured and my cell opened and this minotaur came in
and he dragged me out and he whipped me for five minutes and this is what
he looked like. And then he put me back in my cell and said this is what it's going to be
like for eternity. Chapter and verse on that.
But he ain't there. Very little scripture being quoted.
Because they're vainly puffed up in their fleshly mind.
Are you saying a guy didn't have experience? Are we going to trust the word
of somebody who was dead? Who knows what goes on in your brain when you're
dead? Who knows if he really died?
It follows up on this stuff. They just believe it.
Maybe it was just some drug he was on.
Maybe he was dead because he got a bad batch of pot.
He was laced with something. Who knows?
The Bible tells us everything we need to know about it and it's
not much. And we should not look into those things
that we have no knowledge of and get vainly puffed up in our fleshly mind over
this stuff. Don't major on the minors in Scripture.
Because people want to focus on that and forget about the fact that Jesus is giving us
an example of going the distance and having compassion on people.
That's the point of the story. That's what it's telling us. That's the message
that we need to receive this morning. Not get all worked up about demons.
Because the Bible doesn't talk a lot about demons. Now let's move on
through the story here. I do want to finish this morning. It says in verse 13,
And the unclean spirits went out and entered into the swine and the herd ran violently
down a place into the sea. There were about 2,000 and were choked
in the sea. Now if the
plight of the demoniac of Gadara doesn't get you, this should. Because this is a sad
story. All those pork chops, all that bacon, tenderloin
just wasted. 2,000
swine. That's a lot of food. And really this is the people's
livelihood of that town. Those people that are living in that region are probably
reliant. That's a lot of money. 2,000 swine, a herd of cattle
running. Somebody's
just lost a lot of money. And Jesus said, yeah
go for it. And didn't even care. It's not like Jesus
went, oops. Didn't know they were going to do
that. It's like he's God. He knew it was going to happen.
I don't know that the demons understood. You say did the demons
make them do that or is that just how the swine reacted?
I don't know. But to me it seems like why would the demon want to go into the swine and then
do that? They're trying to not. You know what I mean?
It's like the swine just flipped out and
ran in there. And Jesus knew it was going to happen. I don't know that the demons knew.
But he did it anyway. And
the people that lived there didn't take it lightly.
Verse 14,
and they that fed the swine fled and told it in the city and in the country
and they went out to see what it was that was done. Hey guys,
guess what? We're going to be eating a lot of vegetables
this winter. There's not going to be any salted pork to get us through
the tough times. Verse 15,
and they come to Jesus and see him that was possessed with the devil and had the legion
sitting and clothed, so telling us
that he previously was unclothed and in his right mind
and they were afraid. They were like, oh great,
that guy we're binding with fetters is healed.
They're glad that this guy is in his right mind
and clothed. They've been trying to deal with this dude it seems like.
But they see at what cost it came and it frightened them.
And what cost was it? Their precious swine.
It cost them something for this to happen. And they were afraid.
And they that saw it told them how it befell to him
that was possessed with the devil and also concerning the swine.
So they get the full story. And when they hear what just took place
that the reason why this guy is in his right mind is because of the devil
and the reason why this guy is in his right mind is because they lost their herd of swine
because there wasn't going to be any bacon tomorrow.
Tomorrow there will not be bacon. They began
to pray him to depart out of their coasts.
Now look, I like pork and bacon as much as the next guy.
In fact, there's some validity to the argument that pork might be
the superior meat of all meats because so much can be done
with it when you think about it. I'm not going to get into a cooking show here.
But I can sympathize with the loss of some good swine.
But not to the point where I'm going to
ask Jesus to leave. Because this isn't like the beginning
of Jesus' ministry. Who's this guy?
He did what? Jesus is on a roll.
He's healing people, preaching. He's tearing it up.
Jesus came about and has gone round about throughout all the country.
This is Jesus. Jesus wants to come up
into my town and destroy my swine and do whatever
and start doing miracles. I'd be like, come on in. Whatever you want.
You want to throw something out? You want to trash something?
If it's going to cost something for you to see you do miracles and work, so be it.
Not these people.
This is the mentality of the human mind. This is how some people look at
serving God. They would love for the demoniac
to be put in his right mind because he's kind of a nuisance.
They would love to see him clothed and in his right mind
and sound and healthy and living a good life
unless, of course, it's going to cost us something. This is the mentality
that people bring to Jesus.
Not if it's going to cost them something. Not if it's going to come at the
expense of something dear and precious to them.
Look, if we serve God in sincerity and truth,
it will cost you something. At a minimum, it's going to cost you time.
At a minimum, it's going to cost you time to show up at church.
It's going to cost you time to go out and preach the gospel.
It's going to cost you time to read your Bible and pray and live a godly life.
It's going to cost you to implement standards in your life.
It's going to cost you. We don't want to be like these people,
these Gadarenes. Get away from us.
We don't want anything to do with Jesus. Cost us too much.
What a missed opportunity. People just miss out
on God working in their lives because they don't want to pay the price.
They're more concerned about a bunch of dirty pigs in their life.
You can replace pigs.
Pigs come and go.
The other part of this is that God is showing us in the story that people
have greater value than animals.
This is probably not a news flash to anybody in this room, but in this society that we're
living in, there's people that would disagree with me. Think about that.
Let that sink in. That would be considered a controversial
statement. People are of more value than animals.
There's people out there that would argue at that point.
This shouldn't be a surprise because when Romans 1 tells us
that as people get away from God, they begin to worship the
creature more than the creator who is blessed forever. Amen.
They start to worship animals and things.
That is the world we're living in. How do you explain all the environmentalism?
I'm not pro, let's go pour motor oil down the drain.
Recycle your batteries.
Let's be stewards. Let's recycle. Or don't recycle. I don't care.
People hear me say things like that
and they think I'm just for deforesting and
killing all the animals. It's like, no. What I'm not for
is people valuing the environment
and animals above humans. Look, if I had to
poison some lake to save human life, and I'm not saying that we
ever have to, I would poison the lake. If I had to just
wipe a species off the face of the earth in order to save somebody
to spare their life and their well-being, I would do it. Because humans
are made in the image of God. There are more
value than an animal. And people are so
backwards today. That's why you see these stupid bumper stickers that are out there.
Dog mom. All my kids have paws.
And look, I'm not against people having a dog. We have a dog.
And believe it or not, I have feelings for that dog.
I express affection towards
that animal. And he does me, up to a point.
And he's even rejected me at times.
I've been sitting on the couch, and I would love to have
the dog curl up next to my leg, and he won't come.
He's like, no. He doesn't feel that way.
But here's the thing. I
understand also that that's a very one-sided relationship.
That the feelings I have for that dog, it's pretty
one-sided. Say, no, my dog, my animals, my pets, they express
love. No, they don't. You take that same dog that shows
you all the love that it's showing you, and you put it with another family, it'll do the exact same.
It's not going to pull out its wallet or phone and scroll
through all the photos it has with you, and just think fondly of the past that it had
and its former life and that other family. It will forget
about you, because a dog's just a pack animal. It just identifies
the alpha and just does everything it can to please it.
By the way, I'm the alpha in my home. I'm the head of the pack.
When I come home from work, that's why he's right there with the kids
jumping up, greeting me, letting him know, acknowledging
my presence and trying to please me and play with me,
because he's a pack animal.
You probably weren't expecting this this morning when you came to church
to get talking to about dogs, but I'm making a point.
If you take that same dog and you put him with another animal, he'd do the same thing. He'd behave the exact same way.
Yes, he would. That's a fact. Yes, he would.
Because animals are programmed.
They're just animated objects. That's all they are.
They don't have a soul. I'll just read to you Ecclesiastes 3.
Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward and the spirit of the
beast that goeth downward to the earth? The spirit that
animates man goes back to God and the spirit of an animal that animates
an animal goes back to the earth. There's a difference there.
There's a very distinct difference. Animals are just, they're no different
than this pulpit. Ooh, nobody liked that.
They aren't. Your cat,
your dog, your parakeet, your salamander, your gerbil, whatever
you got at home is no different than this wood. Except that
this wood doesn't have organs and a brain and eyes and
a respiratory system and a nervous system and a circulatory system.
That's the only difference. It's just an object that's been animated
and programmed. That's why animals just do things instinctively.
Animals do not have a soul.
Therefore, they can't even be compared to the value
of a human. That's why I'm taking the time to emphasize this point. Because we're living in a
backward society where there's people out there that put stupid bumper
stickers and promote stupid ideologies, dogs,
because people suck. You know the person who sucks
is the person who put that bumper sticker on their car.
When I see that bumper sticker, I start to tend to agree with them. I think, yeah,
I know of at least one person that would probably prefer the company of a dog
over is the person driving that car with that kind of a stinking attitude.
But this is the society we live in, where people are
devaluing human life and lifting up human life.
The rise of veganism.
Look, if people want to be vegans, vegetarian, whatever, for supposed health
purposes, let's not breach that subject again,
go ahead. But when they start doing it for ethical reasons,
it's bizarre to me. I'm not going to eat anything that
has a face. I don't want to inflict cruelty on an animal.
So what does that say about God?
Because if you've read your Old Testament, you know God just had animals slain
by the millions in worship of Him.
Slit their throat, let their blood out, bleed them out,
skin them, quarter them, gut them, burn them, eat them.
That's the Old Testament, folks.
And in the New Testament, 1 Timothy, every creature of God is good.
And nothing to be refused is to be received with
thanksgiving. Right? You know, all things are, we can eat it.
Eat the swine. Eat it all.
But people had this backwards idea today when they lift up human life. But what did we see Jesus do?
A herd of swine, 2,000 swine, right into the sea for one guy.
That's an important point, folks. Don't miss it.
It's important. Because people, we start to get brainwashed by this out there.
And people can lose perspective. People can start to think, well, you know, maybe
you know, maybe some animals are worth more
than a human being. How else do you explain how
just, you know, how people just advocate
for abortion? What do they say about that unborn child
in the womb? The Bible says in Isaiah, you know, you compare Isaiah 7
and Luke, in Luke 2, the story of Christ, the birth
of Christ, Luke 1, rather,
that when Mary was with child, and it quotes
Isaiah, it says that she conceived.
It's vice versa. Conceiving and being with child
is what the Bible says. That when you conceive a seed in the mother's womb,
that you are with child at that instance. Life begins
at conception. That's biblical. That's what I believe.
You know, not like some weird ruckmanite out there who thinks, oh, it's
not until that child draws its first breath
after it's born. Then it becomes a human being. What a bizarre teaching.
Right? Oh, it's just a blob
of tissue. You know, it's just a single-celled organism.
Yeah, for like a second, until that cell splits and becomes two cells, and then four
and then eight and sixteen and onward, right?
And we all know that thing, that tissue, whatever you want to call it, that cell, that organism,
that fetus, is going to turn into a human being.
Okay? So, how do you get to the place where people are just like
wholesale slaughtering the young in the womb,
the innocent and the unborn, who have a nervous system?
You know, if you have a nervous system, you feel things.
They, you know, I'm not going to go into all the grotesque details
of what takes place during abortion, but it's, you know,
it's inflicting pain on a human being. How do you get there as
a society? You devalue human life.
You know, that's just one aspect of it, of what happens in society
when you devalue human life. Abortion. I mean, that's a big issue this year
in the political landscape, isn't it? Isn't that what Biden's running on?
Isn't that one of his points? Women's rights to
murder their children in the womb?
That's a major, you know, talking point in this political cycle.
That's one aspect of it, when you devalue human life.
How about, you know, foreign wars of aggression? You know, let's just go bomb
countries. Let's just give billions of dollars in aid to just go bomb other countries.
Let's pick sides in some war that, you know, doesn't concern us
at all, and pick a side and aid them and just blow up innocent
people. Let's just have women and children and others just
maimed and murdered, because after all, they're flying the wrong flag.
I mean, it's ridiculous. But that's
how you get to these places in society, where people can just slaughter human beings.
But oh, oh, oh, Jesus sends 2,000 herd into
a swine into an ocean, a bunch of filthy pigs, a bunch of just dirty
animals, and people, ah, I can't believe it, get out of our coasts.
I can't believe you'd say that animals have no value.
Well, we were going through Genesis. We just read about the flood.
You know, God saved a few animals so that they could,
you wouldn't, you'd have to create them all again, but he
drowned the rest of them, along with the other human beings.
I mean, read your Bible. God doesn't really seem to care that much about animals.
Not anywhere near as much as
human beings. You know, the Bible, and again,
people will twist my words and say, you're saying it's okay to be cruel to animals.
That's not one thing at all.
You know, I don't kick the dog first thing when I get home. Well, it's just a dog.
Might as well kick it, right? That's just an expression I use from
the pulpit, okay?
I'm not saying that. The Bible says a righteous man regardeth the life of his beast
and the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel.
You know, just because I'm lifting up human life above animal life doesn't
say I'm promoting that we just be cruel to animals.
And look, if you talk to my wife, she could tell you stories about times where
this big, mean preacher showed his
soft spot for animals, okay? Because I do.
I remember, you know, in Michigan driving down
a side of a four-lane boulevard, one of the busiest streets in the city where I lived in,
and the snow would come out and this little rabbit
was running down the side of the road and he couldn't get up, was trying to hop up the bank.
And I had to stop myself from pulling over in the dark
during a snowstorm to rescue a rabbit from getting run over.
Did you know the rabbit? No, I didn't even know him.
You know, it was just a wild hare, you know?
I've been out on the side of a steep embankment behind my
house on a windy night on a rickety old ladder
trying to get a kitten out of a tree. On the top rung,
like, and if I had fallen it would have gone like 20, 30 feet and probably broke my
neck, holding a laundry basket because the ladder wasn't
tall enough to try and coax the cat to jump into it.
This guy, I did that. And at the time I'm doing that, why am I doing this?
Because all I could hear in the night was meow, meow.
And it just, oh, it just pulled on my heartstrings. And it was my cat,
it was Mr. Winx, who was a runt that I
took in out of a litter who had an infected eye.
And so like the first several weeks, I don't know, every time I looked at him it was like this.
Right, so I called him Mr. Winx, and he's always winking.
And I ended up giving that cat away, and he went and lived a happy life on a
farm where the lady literally grew catnip in like
cooking, like commercial cooking trays. She had, like she brought me a picture of
him where the cat is like crouched between two trays of catnip.
Like just growing up around him, he's got that crazed look in his eye.
Right? This is me though. I've taken in,
taken in, you know, wild animals out of this, you know.
I love animals. I'm not trying to be cruel. But what I'm trying
to get across is that, you know, we don't give them
more value than the Bible does, which, and what I'm saying is that in terms of value,
they don't even hold a candle to human life.
And it's an important message because of the world we're living in,
where it's completely backwards today. And where people have this mentality
that animals are better than humans. They prefer the
company of animals. Like, I get it. People can be mean
and nasty, but you know what? They still have value in the
eyes of God. I mean, they might be living in tombs
and cutting themselves and crying out and beating people up and wreaking
havoc and being no good to society, but they still
have enough value for Jesus, the Son of God, to cross a sea
with all his disciples and give up his precious time to heal.
I mean, what did the demoniac of Gadara have to offer?
Nothing. He was, you know, he was probably,
I mean, I've been around some cantankerous people. I've been around some people
that, you know, just have a bad attitude. But I've never been around somebody that I felt like,
well, we need to bind this guy with chains. You know, we need to tie this guy
down. Send him to the tombs. Don't even have him around us.
You know,
your pets are not
your children, okay? They're not kids.
Pets are just pets.
That's it. And they're pack animals. They'll behave
with you like the same way with anybody else as they do with you.
Let's move on. I think I made my point. I'm trying not to tell
any more stories about animals.
In verse 18, and when he was coming to the ship, he that had been possessed
with the devil prayed him that he might be with him. So they're
getting ready to leave and the man formerly known
as the demoniac of Gadara is saying, hey, let me go with you.
Jesus suffered a lot but saith unto him, go home to thy friends
and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee and
hath had compassion on thee. And he departed and began to
publish into capitalist how great things Jesus had done for him
and all men did marvel. Now I took the time to point out that
we're talking about two references to
geography are given here, right? Because in the beginning it says they went into
the country of the Gadarenes, which is the city, okay?
That country that was round about it. That's where the tombs were, okay?
Because I've heard people falsely accuse this guy of not obeying
Jesus' command to go because it says he went into Decapolis, right?
But he's from the Gadarenes. So why did he go to Decapolis?
Well it's because Decapolis was the region where the Gadarenes or
Gadara is, okay? So anyway, I just wanted to clear
that up. He's being obedient to what he's being told to do.
He's being told, hey, you can't come with me, you need to go back to your
home and tell your friends what great things God has done for you, okay?
You never know whose door
you're going to knock on out so many. You never know what somebody is going to be
capable of in the long run. Now
people would take at first glance, you look at the demoniac of Gadara,
you're going to go, this guy can't do anything for God.
This guy can't, look at him, look at what kind of condition he's in.
But you know what, people can get saved and get their lives turned around and do great
things for God. In fact, God likes to use people like this.
God likes to use the base things, the foolish things, the weak things of this world
to confound the wise and the mighty things of this world.
So that no flesh would glory in his presence.
So that God gets all the glory. God will use
the basest thing among us because that person who knows where they came
from and knows how weak they are and frail they are and incapable they are
knows that anything they do for God
has been done through God by the power of God and therefore they give glory
to God.
And that's what we see with this guy. That's why
I like to refer to him not as the demoniac of Gadara but as the Christian
of Decapolis because that's how he ended up.
Maybe we can turn the tide on that. Maybe we can make that change.
Maybe people will start to refer to this chapter that way
by focusing on this great thing that's done for this guy.
And I love how Jesus, you know, it's a perfect
picture of how we ought to be in the Christian life. Look, you might
not have been bound with chains. You might not have been living in some graveyard
somewhere cutting yourself with stones. But you know what, every single person in here
that got saved was on their way to hell at one point.
You might not have been possessed with demons but you were going to end up in the same place they're going to end up.
God made hell for the devil and his angels.
That's where they're going. You might not have a lot
of association with demons in this world but if you hadn't gotten
saved you would have spent a lot of time with them in the lake of fire.
In hell. That's where every single person, and if you don't believe that then you're not saved.
If you don't believe that you weren't on your way to hell
then you're not saved. What did you get saved from? Nothing.
Right? So trust everybody understands that everybody's
saved that I'm talking to in the room.
You might not have been this guy but you know what, we were all
people of low estate. We were all on our way to hell and God
saved us by his mercy and his grace. He crossed a literal
sea for this guy but you know what, we are as much
enough value for God to leave the throne of glory, to leave
heaven, to leave his Father's right side and come down here and be manifest
in the flesh and to be tempted at all points like as we are.
He crossed that great sea from heaven to earth. He condescended to
man of low estate and made himself of no reputation and made himself
as a servant. He took on the form of man and made himself in the likeness of man
for me and for you.
He crossed a greater gulf for us than he did for
the demoniac of Gadara. And he delivered us
from a bondage that's far worse than anything we see this man
in the clutches of in this story.
And all I'm trying to get across in the closing is we need to make sure
that we do the exact same thing that this guy did. That we obey the command
to go and tell. Go and
tell. That's what he told this guy. After he delivered him
he said go and tell. That's what we need to do.
We need to go publish in Decapolis. We need to publish
the glad tidings of peace to Tucson and the
regions beyond. Well why should I? Because
you're indebted. Because someone came and told you.
Because Jesus spanned the gulf for you. He crossed
that sea for you. He tells us to do the same thing today.
Go and preach. Verse 21,
and when he passed over again by his ship under the other side much people gathered
unto him and he was nigh unto the sea. Jesus went from one side of that sea to the other for
one man and went back. And when he left, he left
a reminder. They might have rejected him. They might have said depart
out of our coasts, but those people were going to be left with a reminder
that Christ had come nigh unto them and they rejected him in the Christian of
Decapolis. I mean think about that. And the guy that says he went and began
to publish these things. And all men
did marvel. And there's probably people going,
wait Jesus was here? How did you get put and sounded in your right mind?
Well you're telling me Jesus showed up and delivered you? Yeah. Well where is he?
Everyone ran him off. I mean what a thing.
It's kind of going to be a thorn in their side. It's going to be a bit of a testimony
against them that hey, God came nigh and you rejected him.
And that's a whole other sermon right there.
Is that people need to understand that when a man of God shows up,
that's an opportunity for you. That when you have somebody that's going to show up
and preach and give you the gospel, preach to you the way you want to preach,
and give you the gospel, preach to you the word of God, that's a blessing to you.
And if you reject that, if you refuse that,
you get an attitude about it, get bitter,
get angry, you're the one that's missing out.
Right? I mean how would you like that? How would you like to be the
people that ran Jesus off?
Because you're swine. Because you're pigs.
And now every time you see this guy,
this demoniac, this guy that's been delivered,
every time you see him, it's going to remind you, man, I wonder what else Jesus could have done.
I wonder what else could have been accomplished if we had just embraced him
and asked him to just spend a couple days in our towns to go through our regions.
I wonder how many more people could have been delivered. Maybe he could have gotten to my family member,
my friend, my neighbor. Maybe he could have done more. Maybe we could have done
more together. Maybe he would have worked in my life.
It's the same way for us today. When the Bible's being preached,
when there's someone that's on fire ready to do the work, show up and get involved.
Do your part.
That's an opportunity. Last thing I want to do is look back at my life and think,
well, what could have been if I hadn't
gotten bitter and angry and resentful?
If I had understood that, you know, and look, I'm not trying to compare
myself to Jesus, obviously.
But you know what? In Ezekiel, and I don't have time to go there, God told
Ezekiel to go and preach and to
preach the word of God to a rebellious people
and at the very least, when they rejected him, that they would know a prophet
had been among them. That there was one thing those people
would not be able to deny in Ezekiel's day is that a man of God,
a prophet, had showed up and said it like it is.
Not everybody gets that.
There's a lot of people that would love to have a man of God show up and preach to them.
Don't take it for granted. I mean, that's a whole other sermon
right there. This guy, you know,
goes around and tells everybody what Jesus did for him and it's like,
so who told Jesus to leave? Well, they did.
Now your reputation is the guy who rejected Jesus
and told him to leave. It's like, thanks a lot.
We don't want to be that. We want to be people that, you know,
welcome the preaching of the word of God, let it transform our lives,
and then do those things which are bidden of us. To go and tell other people
and to condescend to men of low estate and to go out there
and reach them with the gospel and see God do great works.
I believe that. You know, the preaching
of the cross has power. The gospel has
power, supernatural power. You want to get all
worked up about demonology and the supernatural?
You know, well, have fun on YouTube at 2 a.m.
I guess. You want to see some real
supernatural power work in front of your very eyes? You want to behold
something miraculous in your life?
Go and tell. Go and preach the gospel. Be faithful and watch God
work in the hearts of people in your very presence.
It's a real thing. Let's go ahead and close in a word of prayer. Dear Lord, again, thank you for the opportunity that we have
to be here this morning for the preaching of your word. And Lord, I pray
that it would be edifying to us, Lord, that we would take heed to the things that are
spoken. And Lord, that we would understand that there are people
in this world like this man. Lord, maybe not to the exact
description, but Lord, they are desperate. They are in need.
Someone must go to them and preach the
gospel to them so that they can be delivered maybe not from physical chains, Lord,
but from the chains of sin that bind. And Lord,
from a life, maybe not a life of possession, Lord, but a life that will
end in the presence of devils, Lord, in hell.
And Lord, we have the opportunity to go out and to do a great
work. And Lord, we thank you for that. Help us to see the importance of it.
And Lord, we praise you for the work that you've done in our midst thus far
and all the work that you will continue to do through the years through this ministry
and through the preaching of your word. Pray you bless it now in Jesus' name. Amen.
Alright, we'll go ahead and sing one more song before we go.
Let's open up our handles to song number 41.
Song number 41,
Sweet Bye Bye.
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