Introduction
Why do we like to be scared? Why are we fascinated with evil? I mean real evil. Our adventure movies today don’t simply feature good guys battling bad guys; they take on the forces of evil – demons, vampires, spiritual forces of wickedness. Moviemakers do their best, with all their special effects, to convey the terror of evil beings. Whatever the reason, they are certainly cashing in on our attraction to terror. So are the theme parks. They spend millions coming up with rides that will terrify the riders and make them want to come back again. Terror is fun.
If so, the characters in our passage were having a lot of fun. We have the townspeople terrified of the demon possessed man; the man himself is in terror of his demons; the demons are terrified of Jesus; the pigs are terrified of the demons; and, finally, the townspeople become terrified of Jesus. Maybe the moviemakers ought to film this scene. Why is it so charged with fear? Let’s take a look.
The Scene
First, consider the man:
3 This man lived in the tombs, and no one could bind him any more, not even with a chain. 4 For he had often been chained hand and foot, but he tore the chains apart and broke the irons on his feet. No one was strong enough to subdue him. 5 Night and day among the tombs and in the hills he would cry out and cut himself with stones.
He is a violently disturbed man. The tombs were caves in the hillside and he no doubt lived among them because he could not be tolerated in a town, or, rather, could not tolerate living peacefully among people. They had tried to bind him for protection from his wild fits. But the impression we are given is not that he attacked other people, but instead, he harmed himself. He is not filled with hate; he is filled with agony, and the suffering is so great that he screams and cuts himself. Indeed, the agony is so awful that it fills him with a superhuman strength to break iron chains and manacles, a phenomenon that has been seen in people whose body systems are charged with fear. This is the terror with which his possessors have inflicted him.
Next, consider his possessors, the demons. 9 Then Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” “My name is Legion,” he replied, “for we are many.” The man is literally possessed by inner demons, and they are many, thus the name Legion. Jesus made mention of this phenomena in Matthew 12:45 where he spoke of eight evil spirits inhabiting a man.
What are they doing to the man? Is the infliction a game for them, like bullies who think it is fun to pick on the defenseless? Do they enter their victims for the purpose of torture?
Just what is the torture?
We certainly must be careful trying to analyze the motives and minds of demons, but scripture and this passage give us some glimpse of the evil world. Note, again, the response to Jesus’ question: “My name is Legion,” he replied, “for we are many.” Who is talking: the man or the demon, or demons? Is it the demon? Then where is the man? Where is he in that physical body? What have they done with him?
Somehow they have taken over his very mind, that part of him that makes him a unique individual. (By the way, don’t try to apply my remark to ethical issues about what constitutes a human being. I’m not that smart enough to delineate precisely all my terms. The point I’m making is that these demons have somehow taken over this man and suppressed his identity.) Why? Because they are bad and they like doing bad things? They are bad, all right; but we get the impression that they somehow need this man.
Look at their reaction to Jesus and their plea:
6 When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and fell on his knees in front of him. 7 He shouted at the top of his voice, “What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? Swear to God that you won’t torture me!” 8 For Jesus had said to him, “Come out of this man, you evil spirit!”
10 And he begged Jesus again and again not to send them out of the area.
11 A large herd of pigs was feeding on the nearby hillside. 12 The demons begged Jesus, “Send us among the pigs; allow us to go into them.”
Stopping with verse 6, we would think that the man has come to Jesus in hope that he would rescue him from his demons. He is emotionally moved by the sight of Jesus and recognizes him to be someone to pay homage to. But if we were present, no doubt the hairs on the backs of our necks would have risen and our whole bodies quiver at the sound of the man who gives an agonizing cry at the top of his voice in front of Jesus. But it is not the man who is filled with terror; the cry is that of a demon within. The demons are filled with fear.
The whole scene is quite puzzling. Listen again to the demons: “What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? Swear to God that you won’t torture me!” What is that Jesus had said or done? 8 For Jesus had said to him, “Come out of this man, you evil spirit!” Those are not exactly the scariest words we’ve ever heard. What did they think Jesus was going to do when they came out? Now that we think about it, what did Jesus ever do to any evil spirit that he had commanded to leave a body? The pattern is he speaks, they come out screaming, and then that’s it. There is no record of Jesus inflicting pain or destroying a demon. So, what’s the big deal?
Apparently being out of a body is torment. Look at their plea: 10 And he begged Jesus again and again not to send them out of the area.
11 A large herd of pigs was feeding on the nearby hillside. 12 The demons begged Jesus, “Send us among the pigs; allow us to go into them.”
The man’s voice pleads with Jesus not to be sent out of the area. That is a curious remark. Is there something good about that particular country they are in, or is there some place terrible where they must go? They beg to be sent into nearby pigs. For some reason they want bodies, and they are scared to be out of one.
Let me read the full passage in Matthew 12 that I had picked out a verse from: 43 “When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. 44 Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order. 45 Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there (43-45).
The body is somehow a dwelling place, a house of rest for an evil spirit. It is where the demon finds comfort and security. It seems that it craves possession of another being and fears something “out there.” C. S. Lewis gives his idea of these motives among the demons.
Bad angels, like bad men, are entirely practical. They have two motives. The first is fear of punishment: for as totalitarian countries have their camps for torture, so my Hell contains deeper Hells, its “houses of correction.” Their second motive is a kind of hunger. I feign that devils can, in a spiritual sense, eat one another; and us. Even in human life we have seen the passion to dominate, almost to digest, one’s fellow; to make his whole intellectual and emotional life merely an extension of one’s own – to hate one’s hatreds and resent one’s grievances and indulge one’s egoism through him as well as through oneself. His own little store of passion must of course be suppressed to make room for ours. If he resists this suppression he is being very selfish.
On Earth this desire is often called “love.” In Hell I feign that they recognize it as hunger. But there the hunger is more ravenous, and a fuller satisfaction is possible. There, I suggest, the stronger spirit – there are perhaps no bodies to impede the operation – can really and irrevocably suck the weaker into itself and permanently gorge its own being on the weaker’s outraged individuality. It is (I feign) for this that devils desire human souls and the souls of one another. It is for this that Satan desires all his own followers and all the sons of Eve and all the host of Heaven. His dream is of the day when all shall be inside him and all that says “I” can say it only through him.
We are their food, and, at least for awhile, their refuge from their doom. It is that they fear. They know the day will come when the Son of God comes in judgment and sends them into the Lake of Fire.
And here he is before them, surely before their time. Not now! Is he casting them out of the country of earth altogether and into the country of everlasting torment? This is the terror Jesus inspires in them. Send them into pigs; anything is better than left out in the open.
And so Jesus grants them their request.
13 He gave them permission, and the evil spirits came out and went into the pigs. The herd, about two thousand in number, rushed down the steep bank into the lake and were drowned.
Well, go figure. No, I don’t know why he grants permission. It sure doesn’t seem to do the demons much good. They probably won’t try pigs again. I don’t know why Jesus would allow demons to possess swine, leading to their destruction. If it had happened today, lawsuits would have been coming at him from right and left. I don’t know why he did it, but because he did, we do learn a number of things.
One is the horror that existed inside the poor man. What is enacted through the stampede of 2,000 pigs is what had been taking place inside that one man. No wonder he could break chains. Another is the horror that existed in the demons. For goodness sake, these are supposed powerful spirits. They are scared to death. “Send us into pigs, anything; just don’t make us go “out there.”
We see the reality of evil spirits. From the modern perspective, demon possession as presented in the New Testament is nothing more than mental illness. At least in this case something went out of the man and into the pigs. If Jesus had allowed the spirits to go from one man into another, you could say that the second man psyched himself into believing he was possessed. But this is not the case with the pigs.
We’ve considered the man and the demons. The people of that area also come into the story. 14 Those tending the pigs ran off and reported this in the town and countryside, and the people went out to see what had happened. 15 When they came to Jesus, they saw the man who had been possessed by the legion of demons, sitting there, dressed and in his right mind; and they were afraid. 16 Those who had seen it told the people what had happened to the demon-possessed man—and told about the pigs as well. 17 Then the people began to plead with Jesus to leave their region.
That last sentence is one of the saddest in the scriptures. The people pleaded with Jesus to leave them. They were afraid of him. It is understandable. These are Gentiles who would have heard little of Jesus and certainly would not look upon him as a Messiah. I wouldn’t be surprised if they agreed with the religious leaders’ assessment – that he was in league with the devil. The wild man whom they know to be possessed sits tamely at his feet and their herd of 2,000 pigs float dead in the lake. They ought to be unsettled, and they do what most people do when confronted by something that makes them uneasy. They make it go away.
Then there is Jesus. Everyone sure seems to be afraid of him. Who is he? The wild man whom no one could subdue runs to him at first sight and bows before him. The demons speak to him as one with authority to make them do whatever he wants. They plea with him as war captives plea with a conqueror not to be ruthless with them. Whatever he commands these powerful demons must obey.
He is terrifying and, at the same time, a gentle shepherd. The now freed man desires to follow him everywhere. Jesus’ response reveals his loving heart: Go home to your family and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you. Mercy is what this terrifying Jesus is about, and if the people had pleaded with him to stay instead of leave, they would have learned and experienced that mercy.
Lessons
So, what strikes a chord with you? There are many lessons and applications we can draw from this story. Consider a few.
Consider the destructive nature of evil. We see it in the destructive nature of these evil spirits. Whether they intend to destroy or not, that is their nature. They are poisonous parasites sucking life and self out of their victims. That’s what evil does in all of its forms. Evil, whether it comes in the form of demons or not, destroys the soul. The greatest lie is that it somehow liberates man. Isn’t that what Satan told Eve? She would not be under God’s dominance? Evil tells us that if we yield to the carnal desires within us, we will experience real freedom. That’s like a doctor telling a cancer patient that he will know real vibrant health, if he would just let the cancerous cells multiply freely.
What a lie that evil brings out the real self. We have all bought into that lie. We have all made the remark, “I’m just being human,” to justify our sins, as though to be really human is to be sinful. We associate morality with hypocrisy and being rigid; we might commend those who are loving, but we regard them as either naïve or superhuman. A real person is defined by his faults. “If you want to know the real person,” we will say, and then speak of something that is shameful.
But it is the evil within us that eats away at being our real selves. We were not created to be selfish, greedy, impatient, lustful, resentful, and the host of other vices we identify as “just being me.” We are a generation trying to find ourselves by casting off the very restraints that mold us into our real selves.
We crave individuality, to be known for ourselves. We don’t want to be under anyone’s shadow or be regarded as being in someone’s debt for who we are. That’s why many reject Christianity and religion in general. “I don’t need the crutch of religion.” That’s why we exalt the loner, the person who is his own man despite the adversity he must face.
For what is a man, what has he got?
If not himself, then he has naught.
To say the things he truly feels;
And not the words of one who kneels.
The record shows I took the blows -
And did it my way!
The truth is we all kneel. We either kneel to the Evil One, who for the moment is quite happy for us to think we are “being our own self”; or we kneel before the one who created us to reflect (not be absorbed into) his glorious image.
Some people believe that it is God that wants to absorb us and blot out our identities. T. H. White, in The Once and Future King, a novel about King Arthur gives this curious description of the “godly view.”
God had told people that they would have to cease to live as individuals. They would have to go into the force of life, like a drop falling into a river. God had said that it was only the men who could give up their jealous selves, their futile individualities of happiness and sorrow, who would die peacefully and enter the ring. He that would save his life was asked to lose it.
That’s Hinduism, not Christianity. Our hope is not that we will lose our individuality; on the contrary, it is that we will become true individuals God had intended for us to be. Sin eats away at our character, as these demons ate away at their poor victim. The purpose of Christ’s redemption was to reverse that process, so that we grow in grace until our final redemption and we, individually, become glorified.
Then consider the reaction of the people to Jesus. Theirs is a common reaction to him today. The real Jesus makes people uneasy and thus do what comes naturally: send him away. Some people are upfront about it. They will say that he cramps their style and they want nothing to do with him. Others, including us Christians, make him adapt to what we are comfortable with. NonChristians make him into a good person who just wants everybody to be happy and nice like he is. We Christians try to tame him. He is Lord, yes, but one who only asks of us what we already accept as reasonable. The tragedy of this pushing the real Jesus away is that we miss out on the real joys and wonders of living for him.
The only one who discovered peace with Jesus in our story is the man who was most tormented. By falling at the feet of the real Jesus he experienced the true mercy of God and came to his right mind. May we all know such mercy and turn to him no matter how much we may tremble to do so. For those who know what it is to tremble before him are those who learn what it is to know the real peace that he gives.
