[Propertalk] Fwd: Sermon Resources for June 20 - Part 2

[Joe Parrish]

Return Home and Tell How Much God Has Done for You
 
As Ted Peters once pointed out, in the English language, it’s curious that the word evil is “live” spelled backwards. And indeed, evil always destroys. Life is diminished if not wiped out where the demons rule. The death of the pigs reflects that. What’s more, in the Ancient Near East, the sea represented one of the forces of chaos that people feared. So it’s a double-whammy: first there is death but second there is death by drowning in the sea, thus piling up and compounding the sense of chaos and evil in this story.
 
But the sad spectacle of those hapless pigs rushing headlong into the sea also reminds us that the expelling of evil from our world always involves sacrifice. For whatever the reason, God does not simply wave a magic wand to eliminate evil. Rooting out evil takes time, takes effort, and takes above all sacrifice. This should hardly come as any surprise, however, to people who live their lives in the shadow of a cross.
 
One final point, however: Jesus was chased away by the townsfolk but the healed man remained and according to verse 39, he kept on talking about what Jesus had done. Something about his ongoing witness reminds us that this is also our role: lots of people in this world try to chase Jesus away. Our task is to hang around anyway and to just keep talking, just keep witnessing to Jesus’ work, and just keep hoping that at the end of the day, that witness will bring people back to the very Jesus they once chased away. “Return home and tell how much God has done for you,” Jesus told this man.
 
He tells the rest of us the exact same thing.
 
Scott Hoezee, Comments and Observations 
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Speaking to Our Day
 
Does the story of the Gerasene demoniac speak to OUR day as it did its own? Absolutely! To the church which battles the demons of social evil, the message is there is hope in Jesus. To individuals for whom there is an everyday battle ongoing with the demon of depression, the message is there is hope in Jesus. To those who battle the demon of fear, the message is there is hope in Jesus. Those who fight the demon of addiction, the message is there is hope in Jesus. And to those who have so many battles going on against so many demons that their name is LEGION, the message is there is hope in Jesus. 

 
David E. Leininger, Collected Sermons, www.Sermons.com
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What Have You to Do with Me?
 
“What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the most high God?” the demented man cries out.  Again we have a standard question in the demonology of the time.  In the Gospels the demons are pictured as being scared stiff of the power of Jesus Christ.  They try to get away from Him as fast as they can!  This may sound quaint to us, but I would suggest this morning that in a deeper sense it is a question that has been put to Jesus by individuals and societies again and again.  “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?” “Leave us alone.  Mind your own business.  Keep your hands off my life.” “What have you to do with me?” the demented man asked.  The answer is that Jesus has everything to do with him.  Jesus had come to cure him and restore him to his right mind.  He has authority over even the demonic: “Come out of him, you unclean spiri t!” (Mark 5 v.8) He says.  And it is done.  Just so Jesus has cast unclean spirits out of men and women down through the ages - spirits of greed, lust, hypocrisy, aggression.  That is not theory, it is history.   
 
Donald B. Strobe, Collected Works, www.Sermons.com
 
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Luther's Demons
 
Martin Luther, believed in demons but he believed in God more. In that great Hymn "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God" he writes:
 
And though this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo us, We will not fear, for God hath willed His truth to triumph through us:
The Prince of Darkness grim, we tremble not for him; His rage we can endure, for lo, his doom is sure, One little word shall fell him.
 
That hymn, first published in 1529, has been called "the greatest hymn of the greatest man of the greatest period of German history." It has also been dubbed the "Battle Hymn of the Reformation" and with good reason. The Reformation touched off one of the most influential movements in world history. But before this famous Battle Hymn could be written Luther had to battle his personal demons and exorcize them from his own life. Luther felt utterly worthless and incapable of carrying the burdens of priesthood. On occasion Luther even flogged himself in an attempt to keep himself from sin.
He was often, he felt, pursued and tormented by Satan and his cohorts. Until one day, while reading Paul's letter to the Romans, he suddenly understood the meaning of God's grace and how it is appropriated by faith. In that moment he came to understand that he was justified before God through faith and not by his works.
 
You might say that after this experience Luther was no longer possessed by his demons, he was sitting upright, dressed, and in his right mind.
 
Brett Blair, www.eSermons.com.
 
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Legion
 
When Jesus asked the man his name, he answered, "Legion." A Roman legion was a regiment of 6,000 soldiers. Doubtless this man had seen a Roman legion on the march, and his poor, afflicted mind felt that there was not one demon but a whole regiment inside him. It may well be that the word haunted him because he had seen atrocities carried out by a Roman legion when he was a child.
 
William Barclay, The Gospel of Luke, Philadelphia: Westminster, 1975, p. 108.
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When Jesus Comes To Town
 
In a recent lecture the popular author, Christopher Lasch, wonders about the lack of morality and human values in our society. Many liberals today, says Lasch, see public life as an amoral struggle for profit and power and relegate morality to the shadowy realm of private choice and "lifestyles." What we need, says Lasch, is a new sense of fraternalism, a new sense of brotherhood that is neither self-righteous nor exploitative. To bring more peace and wholeness we need to cast out the demons of greed and exploitation and indifference.
 
When Jesus comes into an area, he not only casts out demons, he changes the economy because he changes people, their goals and values. When Paul preached Christ's gospel in ancient Ephesus, the silversmiths and others, who made religious souvenirs and idols of the goddess, Diana, knew their economy was in trouble if Jesus' religion flourished.
 
John Newton, author of "Amazing Grace," finally stopped his slave trading when Jesus really got hold of his life. Charles Colson, Richard Nixon's hatchet man, was converted and now devotes his life to prison reform. What would happen to our frenetic age of greed if Jesus really got hold of us drove out our demons.
 
Maurice A. Fetty, The Divine Advocacy, CSS Publishing Company.
 
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Is It A Devil or a Disease?
 
In polite society we have not wanted to talk much of demons and the demonic.
In our liberal, educated culture, we have believed that sin was due mostly to ignorance and that evil could be eradicated by education. In our psychologically enlightened times we have avoided the more ancient religious and mythological language of devils and evil. We have instead preferred words like repression, impulses, sublimation, drives, complexes, phobias, regression, neuroses, psychoses, manic-depressive, schizophrenic and schizoid -- to name a few.
 
If we have been suspicious of religious healers and exorcists and spiritual counselors, we have been implicitly trustful of psychiatrists, psychologists, psychoanalysts, counselors and therapy groups. If we have been doubtful of prayer, meditation and conversion, we have been trustful of amphetamines, barbiturates and tranquilizers, not to mention alcohol, cocaine, and marijuana. If in our time witch doctors have disappeared, strangely enough witches have reappeared by the thousands. Even exorcists are making a small comeback after considerable media exposure and hype.
 
Whether demons and the demonic are widely acknowledged in our time may be debated, but that they were common in Jesus' time we can have no doubt. In his time, when most illness was attributable to sin, it was but a short step to attribute all mental illness or epilepsy to demonic powers actually residing in the person and controlling him or her. Thus to cure a person of seizures or dementia or schizophrenia or melancholia, the healer had to have power not only to name the demon, but power to cast him out, to throw him out of the person's life.
 
Maurice A. Fetty, The Divine Advocacy, CSS Publishing Company.
 
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My Real Problem Is That I Don’t Like Myself
 
Some time ago, a young lawyer came to see his pastor. He was down in the dumps, at his wit’s end. He said: “Everything’s gone wrong. I have lost confidence in my professional ability... my wife has left me. I can’t get along with my children. I’m cut off from my parents and my in-laws. I’m having conflicts with my co-workers. I’ve been drinking heavily. Everybody has left me... and I don’t blame them. I’ve been bitter and hostile. I’ve done so many mean and cruel things... and now I have so many problems (and then he literally said this).... “My troubles are Legion!” 

He paused and took a deep breath. Then, he leaned forward and said: “To tell you the truth…
 
The conclusion to this illustration and for many additional illustrations and sermons for the Proper 7 can be accessed at www.Sermons.com.



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