Running With The Pigs

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Pastor James May

Running with the Pigs

Matthew 8:28-34

Matthew 8:28 And when he was come to the other side into the country of the Gergesenes, there met him two possessed with devils, coming out of the tombs, exceeding fierce, so that no man might pass by that way.

Matthew 8:29 And, behold, they cried out, saying, What have we to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God? art thou come hither to torment us before the time?

Matthew 8:30 And there was a good way off from them a herd of many swine feeding.

Matthew 8:31 So the devils besought him, saying, If thou cast us out, suffer us to go away into the herd of swine.

Matthew 8:32 And he said unto them, Go. And when they were come out, they went into the herd of swine: and, behold, the whole herd of swine ran violently down a steep place into the sea, and perished in the waters.

Matthew 8:33 And they that kept them fled, and went their ways into the city, and told every thing, and what was befallen to the possessed of the devils.

Matthew 8:34 And, behold, the whole city came out to meet Jesus: and when they saw him, they besought him that he would depart out of their coasts.

In this passage of scripture there are two demoniacs mentioned as confronting Jesus when He landed on the shores of the Gadarenes. Luke and Mark each only mention one demoniac on this occasion probably focusing their attention only on the worst of the two who was possessed of a legion of demons.

In examining this story, I want us to focus on several things. Why did Jesus go there?

Who benefited from His coming, and what happened to those who would not receive Him?

Why did Jesus go to the Gadarenes?

There could be many reasons for Jesus to come to this place. I don’t think that anything that He ever did was by accident, but that everywhere He went and everything He did had a purpose.

Jesus went to the Gadarenes to invade Satan’s Fortress.

His mission on this earth was to give His life for the salvation of mankind. He knew that there were souls in this land who needed Him desperately and who could not deliver themselves from the hand of Satan and his demons.

Satan had done his best to keep anyone from invading his territory. The scriptures say that no man could pass that way because of the fierceness of the demoniacs.

Many times, according to Mark and Luke, these demoniacs had been trapped, bound in chains in hopes of clearing the road of their menace to society, and every time these demoniacs had broken the chains under the power of Satan and no man could tame them.

We should never underestimate the power of the devil over the hearts of those who don’t know Jesus.

When we look around us, at those who do not know Jesus as Savior and Lord of their lives, they seem to be doing well for the most part. It is hard to imagine the chains that hold their soul in the bondage of sin. If we would only take the time to look back to the time before Jesus set us free, we could begin to understand how powerful those chains are.

I am certain that these demoniacs did not want to be possessed by demons. It is written in Mark 5:5, "And always, night and day, he was in the mountains, and in the tombs, crying, and cutting himself with stones." It is reasonable to believe that this man was under constant torment of the demons within. Screaming with mental anguish at the voices which constantly spoke in his mind and in his ear the vile talk of hell, even trying the only things that he could to get the demons to leave by slicing his own body to try to bleed the demons out, and maybe even attempting to commit suicide in an effort to get free from the feelings of dread, darkness, foreboding and cold evil that engulfed him.