Jesus Makes Sense

There are moments in Scripture when heaven steps across an invisible border, and the entire order of creation trembles.

This is one of them.

The Gospel of Mark says, “They came to the other side of the sea, into the country of the Gadarenes.”

That sentence may sound geographical, but it’s theological.

Because “the other side” wasn’t just the far shore of Galilee; it was the wrong side—Gentile soil, pig country, unclean ground.

And Jesus went there on purpose.

The night before, He had stilled a storm that nearly drowned His disciples.

The waves crashed, the boat filled, and He spoke a single sentence: “Peace, be still.”

And the sea—the ancient symbol of chaos—obeyed.

But the next morning, another storm waited on land.

Not a tempest of wind and wave, but of a human soul without form and void, a man whose mind had become a miniature universe of "uncreation".

I. The Man Among the Tombs

When Jesus stepped ashore, the disciples were probably still wringing seawater from their clothes.

Then—out from the cliffs, through the gray mist—came the sound of chains rattling and a voice crying out.

Mark says, “A man with an unclean spirit met Him, who lived among the tombs.”

No one could restrain him.

Day and night he cried among the mountains, cutting himself with stones.

He lived in a cemetery—a place of death—and yet could not die.

He was what happens when a soul becomes its own graveyard.

He is humanity "de-created", the image of God vandalized by powers it cannot name.

And the first miracle in this story is not the exorcism.

It’s the running.

“When he saw Jesus afar off, he ran and worshiped Him.”

Even beneath the noise, the Legion, the madness—something in him recognized the voice that had once called galaxies into being.

The spark of creation still glimmered inside the ruin.

And when the Creator drew near, the creature ran home.

II. What the Sea Had Heard, the Demons Now Heard

The same authority that silenced the storm now stands before the storm inside a man.

This is Genesis 1 playing out again—not in the cosmos, but in a single human life.

“And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep.”

“And God said, Let there be light.”

Now the “deep” is in this man’s eyes.

The tehom—the chaos—has taken human shape.

And once more the Word speaks into the void.

“Come out of the man, thou unclean spirit.”

The Legion knows that voice.

It is the sound that ordered the waters, set boundaries for the sea, and drew lines between life and death.

They beg not to be sent “into the abyss.”

They know what happens when light speaks to darkness—it collapses.

III. The Pigs and the Abyss

A herd of pigs grazed nearby—two thousand of them.

To the villagers, they were simply good business: food for Roman soldiers, income for local herders.

To a Jewish audience, they were the smell of compromise.

When Jesus permitted the demons to enter the pigs, it was not cruelty—it was revelation.

Everything hidden inside the man became visible in the herd.

What had been one man’s torment became a public spectacle of collective insanity.

And then the pigs did what evil always does when exposed to truth: they self-destructed.

They rushed headlong down the steep bank into the sea—the same sea Jesus had calmed the night before.

Do you see it?

The chaos goes home.

The unclean returns to the deep from which it came.

Creation is being set right.

The Creator has spoken again, and the void has swallowed its own disorder.

IV. Judgment on the System

But the story isn’t finished, because the real confrontation hasn’t even begun.

The man is healed—but the system is about to be exposed.

The people of that region had learned to live with the unclean as long as it paid the bills.

They could tolerate the madman in the tombs; he didn’t interfere with commerce.

But when two thousand pigs drowned, their profit margin went with them.

And they came out to see what had happened.

They found the man sitting, clothed, and in his right mind—and they were afraid.

They weren’t rejoicing; they were terrified.

Because grace had crossed the line.

They could live with demons; they couldn’t live with deliverance.

Evil is tolerable when it’s predictable, but holiness is never safe.

V. The Village That Would Not Sing

They begged Jesus to leave.

They preferred an economy of pigs to a kingdom of peace.

They had learned to define “normal” as long as the chains rattled somewhere else.

And that’s what systems do when confronted by the Gospel:

they push Jesus back into the boat.

They choose stability over salvation.

But here’s the judgment and the mercy intertwined—He goes.