Possession, Oppression, And Grace

Second Sunday after Pentecost

June 22, 2025

Luke 8:26-39

Possession, Oppression, and Grace

The Rev. M. Anthony Seel

Holy Trinity Lutheran Church

Best known for his best seller, The Road Less Traveled, psychiatrist M. Scott Peck also wrote People of the Lie. In this second book, Peck wrote about patients he had worked with who exhibited demonic possession. Before his conversion to Christ, he not believe in demonic possession.

About his best seller, The Road Less Traveled, Peck said, it was “a nice book.” About People of the Lie, he said, “This is not a nice book.” In the Introduction of People of the Lie, Peck says unapologetically that Jesus Christ is his Lord, and mentions his baptism on March 9, 1980, when he was 43.

Through his psychiatric practice and his experiences with exorcisms, Peck came to believe that there is a devil and demonic possession. In another book, Glimpses of the Devil, Peck offers “personal accounts” of his experiences with patients and how he added exorcism to his psychiatric work. In our secular age, M. Scott Peck, and a few others, not many, are willing to say that there is more in life than science alone can explain.

Of course, our Lord Jesus Christ was unencumbered by a purely scientific mindset. The Creator of all that is was not held captive to any human theory of life and the world. After sailing through a storm at sea, Jesus and His disciples land at a place south and east of the Sea of Galilee.

v. 27 When Jesus had stepped out on land, there met him a man from the city who had demons. For a long time he had worn no clothes, and he had not lived in a house but among the tombs.

Many Bible maps identify Gadara as the place where Jesus and His disciples came ashore. On the beach by Gadara, Jesus is met by a demon-possessed man who is naked and homeless. This man lived in a graveyard.

vv. 28-29 When he saw Jesus, he cried out and fell down before him and said with a loud voice, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me.” For he had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. (For many a time it had seized him. He was kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles, but he would break the bonds and be driven by the demon into the desert.)

At the sight of Jesus, the demon-possessed man cries out. The demons recognize that Jesus is the “Son of the Most High God.” The demons confess Christ’s divinity.

Jesus had already commanded one demon to leave the man. However, the demonic spirits in this man gave him power to break out of anything that was intended to bind him.

v. 30 Jesus then asked him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Legion,” for many demons had entered him.

There were more demons in this man than the one Jesus had already cast out.

v. 31 And they begged him not to command them to depart into the abyss.

Demons don’t want to go to hell anymore than people do.

vv. 32-33 Now a large herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside, and they begged him to let them enter these. So he gave them permission. Then the demons came out of the man and entered the pigs, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and drowned.

The destructive power of demons is seen in the pigs plunging into the lake and drowning.

vv. 34-35 When the herdsmen saw what had happened, they fled and told it in the city and in the country. Then people went out to see what had happened, and they came to Jesus and found the man from whom the demons had gone, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind, and they were afraid.

The herdsmen saw it all and fled in fear. They went to town and told the people what happened and the townspeople went to see for themselves. They saw the man whom Jesus healed sitting at Jesus’ feet. The man was “clothed and in his right mind.”

Luk 8:36 And those who had seen it told them how the demon-possessed man had been healed.

The herdsmen filled out their story to the townspeople to include the healing of the demon-possessed man.

At our District Convention Banquet on Friday night, I met a pastor from the Niagara Falls area who is also an Air Force Reserve chaplain. He’s working on a Doctor of Ministry degree at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. His project for his D.Min. is on ministry to airmen and women who suffer from what he describes as spiritual damage.