This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Welcome to our last day, day five of our look through Matthew chapter eight.
We've been watching Jesus heal and work and minister in people's lives this
week. And as we come to the end of this chapter, we see a very unusual healing
experience in the life of Jesus.

I think it's best if I just read this story first of what happened and then we
talk about it together. It begins in verse 28 and goes through verse 34. Listen
to what happened.

"When he arrived at the other side of the region of the Gadarenes, two
demon-possessed men coming from the tombs met him. They were so violent that no
one could pass that way. 'What do you want with us, son of God?

' they shouted. 'Have you come here to torture us before the appointed time? '
Some distance from them a very large herd of pigs was feeding.

The demons begged Jesus, 'If you drive us out, send us into the herd of pigs. '
He said to them, 'Go. ' So they came out and they went into the pigs.

And the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and died in the
water. Those tending the pigs ran off, went into the town and reported all this,
including what had happened to the demon-possessed men. Then the whole town went
out to meet Jesus.

When they saw him, they pleaded with him to leave their region. " Now before we
look closely at what happened here with Jesus and the pigs and the
demon-possessed men, there is a question that I want to answer, and that is,
what about this thing of demon possession? We're going to come up against this
many times as we walk through the book of Matthew.

So a very brief look at that. Demons you may know are angels who joined with
Satan in his prideful revolt against God and who fell from heaven. They are
spiritual beings who are used by Satan to resist us as believers and to draw the
world towards evil.

We see many examples of people being possessed by demons in the ministry of
Jesus. Being possessed by a demon is not the same as being tempted by evil or
even influenced by evil. We're all tempted.

Even Jesus was tempted. He was obviously never possessed by a demon. This idea
of being possessed means to be completely controlled by.

Now the Bible doesn't say much about how a person could become demon-possessed,
but a close look shows that those who become possessed are those who so open
themselves up to the influence of Satan that they eventually become personally
controlled by a demon. It starts with selfishness, self-centeredness, and it
leads to this possession. This is a person who just can't say no to evil.

But it's important to realize that there's more to possession than someone who
needs an exorcist. That's our picture today because we've seen it in movies. The
truth is I see those movies as Satan's strategy to make us think we're all right
as long as our head isn't spinning around or we're not talking in otherworldly
voices.

A demon is this evil, satanic, personal force outside of yourself that controls
yourself. My personal belief is that people become possessed by demons only
after they've made a life habit of being controlled by self. And my conviction
from the teaching of the scripture is that a demon can't possess a true believer
in Jesus because our owner is Jesus.

How could a demon live in the same place as Jesus lives? That's obvious. So as
you look at the reality of this and Jesus' healing of this, one word of
encouragement, we as believers can live a life of confidence because we know
that we're victorious over Satan.

This is not something to worry about. Yes, we're still in a battle, but never
forget that God's power is immeasurably greater than Satan's strength. Greater
is he that is in you than he that is in the world.

I don't know why it seems that we see more demon possession in New Testament
times than we see now, but I do know that it's something that Jesus had to deal
with. And I do know that we should not somehow glamorize demon possession. You
don't want to glamorize Satan, make him seem more important than he is.

Satan works in this world in a lot of different ways. He works through
temptation and people falling to temptation. He works through evil and evil that
people do to other people, and he works through possession sometimes.

The truth is we need to be healed of it all. And it's the same answer, is Jesus,
because Jesus is more powerful. And with that in mind, look with me at these two
men who were possessed by confusion.

We actually get more information on one of them from Luke chapter 8 verses 26 to
39 and what happened in his life. You see these men and they have an identity
crisis of the deepest kind. They're possessed by evil, they're deeply confused.

Although our battle with evil, your battle might not be as dramatic, might not
be as apparent. We all face evil. Now for them, they were facing three questions
that we all face that keep us in confusion until we find the grace of God.

Who am I? Why am I doing what I'm doing and who can I trust? Who am I?

In Luke 8, one of these men calls himself legion, like I've got this whole
legion of demons in me. The truth of the matter is you can tell they don't know
who they are. They're not connected to their families any longer.

They've lost their identity. I don't know who I am. There's a lot of people in
this world today who, although you'd say they're not possessed by a demon,
they're controlled by money, they're controlled by sex, they're controlled by
pleasure, controlled by some desire for power.

And you look at them and think, and they don't know who they are, but even more
telling, they look at themselves in the mirror and say, "I don't know who I am.
" That's an identity crisis. That's a deep soul confusion.

They also have this confusion of the question, "Why do I do that? " For a long
time, these men, they'd not worn clothes or lived in a house. They're living in
the tombs.

If you'd asked these men as boys, "What do you want to be when you grow up? "
They would not have said, "A destitute man who runs around graveyards naked. "
But that's what they're doing.

They didn't plan this life. They're completely confused. They don't know what to
do with themselves, to do with life.

And at not such a dramatic level, but at a very real level, there are many
people that are living with that confusion today. And then they had the
confusion of, "Who can I trust? " Jesus comes, and the demons within them say,
"Are you coming to torture us, Jesus?

" Notice before the appointed time, these demons know that one day they're going
to be separated from God, tortured away from God's presence for all eternity.
But the truth of the matter is, Jesus came to free these men. Who can I trust?

I don't know where to turn. That feeling that they must have had as they
wandered through these graveyards day after day. I don't know who I am.

I don't know where to turn. That's being possessed by confusion, soul confusion.
How do you escape that kind of confusion?

Well, you discover who you really are, what you were made to do, and who you can
truly trust. You see, we want to make this story a dramatic story about
demon-possessed men in the New Testament times, but the truth is there's more of
our own story in this than any of us would want to admit. We all face soul
confusion.

We all face these moments of life where we have to understand who we really are,
what we were really made to do, who we can truly trust. And the key to that is
recognizing your true Creator and Lord, recognizing your real owner. These men
had the wrong owner.

And confusion ends when you decide to drive out the wrong owner that you've been
driven by. Everyone is possessed by confusion until they recognize their real
owner. Jesus Christ is our rightful owner.

Why? Well, he has the right of creation. He made you.

He's got the right of purchase. He paid for you. He died for you on the cross.

And so to regain control of your life, this is one of the great paradoxes of
life, you have to release control back to him, your rightful owner. Now, when we
talk about soul confusion and the things that can get us caught up and keep us
from God in our lives, I want you to watch what happens next. We just read it.

Jesus drives out these demons into some pigs. The pigs go and destroy
themselves. And then look at how the town reacts.

They come out and, Matthew, make sure to note, they knew that these men had been
healed, that the demons had been released from these men. But they come out and
they say to Jesus, "Get away from us. " This is a huge lesson that people are
possessed by other things besides demons, by habits, by relationships, by money.

Anything that keeps you from God's best in your life is just as destructive for
your life as any demon could be. In almost every instance when Jesus healed, all
the people in the town rejoiced. They brought more people to be healed.

So what's the difference here? The difference is the pigs. They're afraid they
want to chase Jesus away because the pigs had drowned.

You see, it cost them something for these men's lives to be changed. They had to
pay a price. In essence, they've got this big pig farm.

A lot of people in this town had staked their future on pork bellies. And you
might say that the market in pork bellies had just taken a sudden and unexpected
dive into the lake to be drowned. They're now floating pork bellies.

And so they come and they say, "Jesus, get away from us. " Why do we live with
confusion, identity crisis, not knowing who we are, not knowing what to do, not
knowing where to turn? There's a great truth in this passage.

We live with confusion, soul confusion, because we're afraid to pay the price to
change. We start to think, what's it going to cost me instead of what does God
want to give me? We start to think, what am I going to lose instead of what am I
going to gain?

Fear does strange things to us. Instead of seeing what God is offering, we start
to sweat about what we might lose. And these people, they chase the answer to
all of their problems out of town rather than face their fear.

But this isn't about these people. It's about you and it's about me. And it's a
question of life here as we talk about soul confusion and identity and allowing
Jesus into every place in our lives.

What's the place of fear in your life? How can you invite Jesus into that place
of fear in your life, that place where it's going to cost me, going to cost me
to give up that habit, going to cost me to become unselfish, it's just going to
cost me to have integrity, it's going to cost me to spend more time with God,
it's going to cost me to admit that about myself. How can you invite Jesus into
that place of fear in your life?

Something you're afraid to let go of and so because of that it's controlling
you. How can you invite him into that place of fear in your life? Because when
you invite him in, the fear will leave.

When you invite him in, he will, he will deal with that thing that is trying to
control your life. Let's talk to him about it for a moment. Jesus, we come and
we trust you with this.

This is deep stuff about us that we're talking about, but Lord, you understand
it all. You know us better than we know ourselves. You know our fears.

You know what we can't let go of. You know what we're struggling with. So speak
to our hearts right now through your spirit and Lord, let us right now, like we
never have before, invite you into that place of fear.

Not keep you at arm's length any longer. Get you into that place. Trust you into
that place so that Lord, you can drive out what we've been driven by.

You can replace our confusion with your peace. Instead of me asking, what am I,
what am I doing with my life, I begin to see what you want to do with my life. I
pray for this in Jesus' name, amen.

Make sure to join us next week. We're going to look at Matthew chapter 9, which
includes the call of Matthew, the tax collector who became a disciple of Jesus
and who wrote this book that we're walking through right now. We'll see you next
week.