“What Great Things God has Done for Us!”
Luke 8:26-39
6/24/07
Last week we celebrated Fathers’ Day. It
was a day in which we were given the opportunity to rejoice and give
thanks to our earthly fathers for the great things they have done for
us over the years. Those great things include providing a place
for us to live, buying us food and clothes, protecting and defending us
from danger, as well as teaching us, disciplining us, and bringing us
up in the Christian faith. There are many things for which we can
give thanks to our fathers - too many to count. The trouble
is that we don’t recount those things, and so we
don’t remember most of them and we forget to give our fathers the
thanks they deserve.
Today’s Gospel text would remind us of the
great things our heavenly Father has done for us in Jesus Christ, so
that we might recount them, give thanks to God for them, and tell
others about the great things which He has done for us. We see
what these great things are as we hear about what Jesus does for this
demon-possessed man. It is with this man that you and I must
identify ourselves, so that we may see that the great things that Jesus
does for him He has also done for us. And so, the first way in
which we must identify with this man is in the very simple fact that he
was human. We notice in this Gospel account that Jesus is the
Savior of human beings. Though angels, too, are creatures of God,
for those who rebelled against Him there is no redemption, no
salvation, no forgiveness, just a certain expectation of eternal
judgment, of which the demons are very much aware, as they reveal in
their request here that Jesus not cast them into the abyss.
Consider, then, how much God loves you, whom He made in His image, that
He sent His only-begotten Son to become man, in order to redeem your
flesh with the sacrifice of His flesh on the cross. He did this
not for angels or even animals, but for human beings.
He did this for us, because of another way in which
you and I identify with this demon-possessed man, and that is that we
are all sinful human beings, held captive under the devil in his
kingdom of darkness to do his will. Created originally in the
image of God, originally holy, righteous, and blameless, we lost that
image by our sin. In doing so, we put ourselves under the power
of the devil and were his allies, even though most of us weren’t
demon-possessed in the way in which this man was. But we belonged
to the devil nonetheless. In fact, in our baptismal rite, we ask
a baby by way of the parents if the child renounces the devil, along
with all his works and all his ways, and Luther even included a small
exorcism in the rite to show that we come into this world on the side
of the devil and under his control. We, like the demons, also
rebelled against God, making ourselves our own gods, and like the
demons we too deserve to be cast into the abyss. But God had
mercy on us, sending His Son, Jesus Christ, to deliver us from our
bondage to sin, death, and the power of the devil, transferring us from
the kingdom of darkness into our Lord’s kingdom of grace.
And Jesus does this for you and me the same way He
did it for this demon-possessed man - by way of His Word. We are
told that many times people had tried to subdue this man and keep him
under control by binding him with chains and shackles. However,
no human means or instruments can keep demonic forces under
control. The man would break these bonds and then be driven by
the demon into the desert. Here we learn that all attempts at
delivering ourselves or others from the power of the devil fail.
The devil always breaks the bonds with which we try to bind him and he
drives us back into the desert. No amount of positive thinking,
meditation, religious observances, or life changes can deliver us from
the power of the devil. We would still be wandering in a
spiritual desert without the food and water of God’s Word, if
Jesus hadn’t come and spoken His words of deliverance.
And notice who He speaks those words to? The
demons! In the case of this man Jesus commanded the demons to
come out of him, and they could not but obey since (as they themselves
knew) Jesus was the Son of the Most High God, in fact, God Himself in
the flesh. They pleaded with Him that He might cast them into a
heard of swine, and surprisingly, out of His mercy even for these
demons, He did not cast them into the abyss but allowed them to do what
they asked. But He would not allow them to inhabit this man, made
in the image of God, any longer. The only proper inhabitant of a
man is man’s creator - God Himself.
And this is the case also with you. With His
Word spoken at your Baptism Jesus drove out of you the devil who
illegitimately possessed you, and in his place the Lord has put Himself
into you, making your body His temple. You no longer belong to
the devil, but to God. The fact that you bear His Name which He
placed upon you at your Baptism is the sign that this is so.
Now, before the Lord delivered this man, he used to
wander about naked and out of his mind in the wilderness. After
Jesus cast the demons out of him he was found clothed, in his right
mind, and sitting at the feet of Jesus. Now, most of us
can’t identify with this man’s personal experience of
demon-possession before Jesus had mercy upon him. I don’t
know of any one of you who literally ran about crazy and naked in a
wilderness somewhere. But spiritually speaking, we were, in fact,
out of our minds wandering about in a spiritual desert in that we did
not know the truth. The devil had blinded us with the veil of his
lies, so that, as Luther says, we could not believe in Jesus Christ our
Lord or come to Him by our own reason or strength. We
weren’t being fed with the Word of God, and we lived among the
dead. But the Holy Spirit called us by the Gospel, enlightened us
with His gifts, and sanctifies and keeps us in the one true
faith. The funny thing is that when the world sees that
you’ve come to believe in Jesus and confess Him as your Savior,
they say that you’re out of your mind, when in reality it is they
who are still out of their mind and you in Christ are in your right
mind, for as the Apostle Paul says, “We [Christians] have the
mind of Christ.”
So, before Jesus saved us, we were out of our minds
wandering in a wilderness, unaware of our bondage to sin, death, and
the devil, unaware of Christ our Savior. Not only were we
spiritually crazy, but we were also spiritually naked.
You’ll remember that when Adam and Eve sinned in the garden they
suddenly realized that they were naked and went and tried to hide their
nakedness themselves by sewing together some fig leaves. But God
saw that this was an inadequate covering and made for them garments of
animals skins and clothed them with these instead. Spiritually
speaking, however, you are still naked when you come into this world,
because you stand before God covered in the guilt of Adam’s sin
and your own sin. Though you try to cover yourself with your own
self-chosen means - your good works, your religious observances, your
sacrifices, fasts, and prayers - these cannot cover the shame of your
nakedness before God. And so, He Himself must provide the
garments for you. This He does, not by clothing you with garments
made out of animal skins, but with the garment of His Son, Jesus
Christ. According to the Apostle Paul, this clothing of you with
Christ happened at your Baptism. As he writes to the Galatians,
“As many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on
Christ.” Now as you stand before God your nakedness is
covered. God does not see your sin any longer; He sees His Son,
His perfect righteousness, and His blood sprinkled upon you.
And you too, like this formerly demon-possessed man,
may now sit at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in your right mind.
To sit at the feet of Jesus is to be His disciple, a hearer and doer of
His Word. On one occasion a woman named Martha invited Jesus into
her home. But while she was “distracted with much
serving,” as the text says, her sister Mary sat at the
Lord’s feet and listened to His teaching. Martha was upset
about this and told Jesus to tell her sister to come and help
her. But Jesus answered and said to her, “Martha, Martha,
you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is
necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be
taken away from her.” Was Jesus telling Martha that her
work of service was unacceptable or that it was sinful? No.
But there’s a time for serving and a time for sitting at the feet
of Jesus to listen to His Word. While Jesus was present to teach,
that was not the time for serving but the time for listening.
There’s always time for serving, but there’s not always
time for listening to the Word.
Here and now in this place is the time for sitting
at the feet of Jesus and listening to His Word. Here you are on
the receiving end of the Lord’s gifts to you through His Word and
Sacraments. You are hearing your sins forgiven and you are being
fed with the body and blood of Christ in His holy Supper. You are
not serving the Lord; He is serving you. When you leave today and
go back to your homes and to your various vocations, then you will
return to serving - serving the Lord by serving your neighbor.
And one of the greatest ways in which we can serve
our neighbor is by telling others what great things God has done for us
in Christ. That’s what Jesus told this man to do after He
had saved him. The man wanted to continue to sit at the feet of
Jesus and listen to Him. But Jesus had work for him to do, and
that was to go back to his home and declare to those around him how
much God had done for him. And the man did just that... He
went away, proclaiming throughout the whole city how much Jesus had
done for him. And notice that to tell how much Jesus has done for
you is the same thing as telling how much God has done for you.
So, what has God done for you? He has released
you from your captivity to sin, death, and the power of the devil by
way of His Son, Jesus - His work and His words. Jesus fulfilled
God’s commandments for you, paid for your sins with His blood
shed on the cross, and rose again from the dead. As a result,
your enemies have been defeated and cannot hold you any longer.
By the Word of the Gospel they have been cast out of you, God Himself
has taken up residence in you, and you have been placed under His
gracious rule in His kingdom. You have been delivered from your
wanderings among the dead in the wilderness, have been given a right
mind, and have been clothed with Christ in your Baptism. And you
are sitting at the feet of Jesus, hearing His Word and being fed with
His very body and blood for the forgiveness of your sins. What
great things (and much more) our God has done for us! Recount
them, give God thanks for them, and tell others about them.
Splash around in the waters of your Baptism and get everyone else wet,
as another pastor once told me. Rejoice in your heavenly
Father’s works in your Savior, Jesus Christ, for He has done
great things for you. Amen.