I Am

Alright. So last week we left Jesus on the disciple on the boat. Right. They were on the boat. He'd said, wind calm down. It calmed down. And we know all of that happened. And they were crossing over to the other side. Jesus had said, hey, hey guys, let's go over to the other side. And I want to take a moment to remind everybody. And I said this already, but I want to, want to remember that everything that happened after Luke, chapter eight, verse one, was the good news. Everything that we see was the Gospels. Okay? And here's the truth that we have to understand, Jesus is the gospel. Jesus is the good news. So everything we see Jesus do and say we know, can be applied to the Good News or applied to the gospel. Wherever he is, whatever he's doing, is the gospel in action. Okay, why does that matter to us? Because we can take it and we can have a principle that applies to our life. Okay, so whatever's going on in the Scripture, we can say, okay, how can I learn something from this and make it work in my life? Like we don't want to just read the Bible or sit here on a Sunday and and then just leave and not have anything to take home, but we want to learn something and be able to, like, have it matter on Monday. That's the goal, okay? And so and so, everything we see Jesus doing, we want to be able to apply it into our life. And so we're going to start in, Luke, chapter eight, verse 26 and we're going to read quite a bit of Scripture. You guys ready? But I feel like we really need to, because this account is pretty crazy. Okay, you don't know it yet, but it is okay. Okay, so we're going to be and I'm going to start with verse 26 it says, so they arrived in the region of the gerasenes, across from the lake of Galilee. Across the lake from Galilee. We're going to pause, and I want you to remember that Jesus set out across the lake. He was teaching the disciples about the storm, but he had another goal in mind, and he was very specifically, going to the region of the garrisons. This was a Gentile region. What does that mean? Jesus was a Jew. Okay? The Jews avoided the Gentiles. They didn't go near them. To them. They were unclean to them. They were like separate. They didn't want to be around them. They went out of their way to avoid being anywhere near them. But Jesus set out on course to go to this region, specifically, which was a Gentile region, not a place normally sought out by Jewish people. It was the destination. Jesus went there on purpose. That's going to be important. Okay, let's keep reading. As Jesus was climbing out of the boat, a man who was possessed by demons came out to meet him. For a long time, he had been homeless and naked, living in the tombs outside the town. As soon as he saw Jesus, he shrieked and fell down in front of him. Then he screamed, Why are you interfering with me? Jesus, Son of the Most High God, please, I beg you Don't torture me, for Jesus had already commanded the evil spirit to come out of him. This evil spirit had often taken control of the man, even when he was placed under guard and put in chairs and chains and shackles, he simply broke them and rushed out into the wilderness completely under the demons power. Jesus demanded, what is your name? Legion? He replied, for he was filled with many demons. Verse 31 the demons kept begging Jesus not to send them into the bottomless pit. There happened to be a large herd of pigs feeding on the hillside nearby, and the demons begged him to let them enter into the pigs. So Jesus gave them permission. Then the demons came out of the man and entered the pigs, and the entire herd plunged down the steep hillside into the lake and drowned. Can you imagine? I told you, this was crazy. Okay? Verse 34 when the herdsmen saw it, they fled to the nearby town and the surrounding countryside, spreading the news as they ran, people rushed out to see what had happened. A crowd soon gathered around Jesus, and they saw the man who had been freed from the demons. He was sitting at Jesus's feet, fully clothed and perfectly sane, and they were all afraid. Then those who had seen what happened told the others how the demon possessed man had been healed, and all the people in the region of the gerasenes begged Jesus to go away and leave them alone, for a great wave of fear swept over them for Jesus. So Jesus returned to the boat and left crossing back to the other side of the lake. Something else we need to know about the region of the garrisons. I looked it up trying to find out some like, was there any other reason Jesus would have been trying to go there? Like, what? What was going on? But the two things we know about this region is that there was a herd of pigs and a cemetery, two more things that the Jews avoided. You. Dead people and pigs. So this was literally not the place that he would try to go. He went there on purpose. It's such an interesting account, but we see the power of the gospel in action. Remember, Jesus is the gospel. And so Jesus was going and doing something. And some things happen when the gospel shows up on the scene, right? Like, this was pretty intense. Can you imagine if this happened today? Like, just imagine you guys. Can't when's the last time you were around a herd of pigs? That's why you're having a hard time. Okay, so we're going to talk about what happens when the gospel shows up? Okay, that's what we're going to talk about today. What happens when the gospel shows up. The first thing that happens when the gospel shows up is it brings freedom from the enemy. When the gospel shows up on the scene, it brings freedom from the enemy. The enemy had no power when Jesus showed up, immediately, this man possessed by a legion of demons, which means more than 20, up to 200 that's what my study notes said. Up to 200 demons came out of this man, and what happened? What did they do when Jesus came? Let's just read this again. As Jesus was climbing out of the boat, not even fully out of the boat, a man who was possessed by demons came out to meet him. For a long time, he had been homeless and naked, living in the tombs. Oops. I don't know what happened, living in the tombs outside the town as soon, as soon as he saw Jesus, he shrieked and did what, fell down in front of him. Fell down in front of him. I looked up this phrase, possessed by demons, because this is creepy. Okay, I'm I'm sure some of you are like, what is happening right now, where are we? If this is your first week, okay? But here's what I want to say, you're at church, okay? And so if you're at church, you probably have some awareness, or like you're open to the idea of God, okay? And we believe that God is spirit. God's not sitting in this chair. Like we believe that there's a spiritual realm that God exists. And so if we believe that there's a spiritual realm, that God exists, it's not that far away to also believe that there are evil spirits that also exist within the spiritual realm. Okay, so that's what this is talking about. Okay? And I looked up what this possessed by demons. What does it mean? It means a spirit being inferior to God, superior to men. Evil spirits are messengers, ministers of the devil, devil. And so I want, I want to encourage you. This is all scriptural, okay? And so what I did, because I don't have time to get into it, is I found some scriptures that talk about this, and we put them in the app. So there's a bunch of scriptures that you can go to in the Notes app that I that we put in there, so that I encourage you to go and read it, okay? And, and I didn't just put anyone I put about how we have authority over them, okay, that's the scriptures that you're going to find that are in the app. Okay? And so I want you to understand these demons knew immediately when Jesus stepped off the boat that they had no power and they fell at Jesus's feet. They were like, Oh, we are inferior to him. The Bible says in Philippians that every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord. And we are seeing that happen in this account, they were inferior to God. Think about that the enemy knew immediately to bow down at the feet of Jesus. Whenever Jesus comes on the scene, the enemy has to bow. Just let that sin. Jesus chose to get in that boat and go to the other side, didn't he? He chose it.He chose to get in the boat and he go to the other side intentionally to find this man. There was one reason he went to this Garrison, one reason, and it was to find this man. He knew there's somebody over there and he needs me. He's a mess. He's naked, he's chained to the tombs. He's a hot mess, right? And we're going to go talk to him. We're going to go find him. He went and met this man in his lowest place, in his place of brokenness. He was alone, he was disregarded. He was isolated. He didn't go to judge him. He didn't go to ridicule him. He went to bring him freedom. The Gospel brings freedom. Think about that for a minute. It brings you freedom. It comes looking for you with freedom. It chases you down. Sometimes. To offer you freedom. So many times, people hide and isolate because they feel like they're not good enough to receive the freedom God offers. And all the time Jesus is chasing you down the street being like, No, I've just got it for you. Stop running. Stop running, stop hiding. The freedom's here for you. I'm coming to bring it to you. I'm going across to the other side. I'm enduring a storm. I'm doing all these things. I'm in the boat. You don't have to get cleaned up before you come and receive it. In fact, you can't clean yourself up. You need what I have to offer. Because the the enemy is inferior to me, not you. The enemy at work in your life is superior to you. Did you catch that? But it's inferior to God. And last week, I told you that Jesus gave us authority through him to overcome the devil. So that means that it's only through the power of Jesus, bringing us freedom that we can overcome the enemy. We don't have to do it alone. The Gospel brings us freedom, which brings us healing. This man was hardly recognizable. Immediately, he was set, set free from his place of bondage. Immediately, immediately. How did it happen? He just got in God's presence. It says Jesus stepped off the boat and the enemy went running. Just got himself in God's presence. Just got with Jesus. And I love this so much, because the way that we can get in the presence of Jesus now is so easy. We've got it easier, I think, than any other generation ever. We've got YouTube, we've got Spotify, we've got Apple Music. Back in the day, you had to hit rewind on your cassette tape to find the song you wanted. Anybody remember that? And you're like, Oh, I went too far. And then you'd fast forward. Come on. There's a few of you. Okay, thanks, Jeff. We've got it so easy. We can turn on worship music anywhere we go. We can open our mouth and invite Jesus in anywhere we are, and say, Jesus, I need your presence. And he is there in a moment. He said, Why? Because of the good news, because of the gospel, because he came, because he died, because he was resurrected, and he went to be at the right hand of the Father, and He sent us the Holy Spirit who is with us every single day within us, so that we all have access to his power. We all have access to his presence, then we can have access to the freedom that he provides at every moment of every single day. That's how the enemy flees every single day. Jesus can make us new day by day, when we get in God's presence. Now, you might be like, I've been getting God's presence, and it wasn't immediate. Just keep going every day. You know, there, there were seasons of my life where I was navigating things and and it wasn't immediate, but I just kept doing it. I just kept showing up, I just kept praying, I just kept reading the Bible, I just kept doing the things. I kept showing up to church, I kept going to my city group, I kept doing all the things I knew to do, and then all of a sudden it was, like, six months later, and I was like, Oh, I'm different. And people started to see, oh, she's different, like, I'm free from that. I don't think like that anymore. I don't do that anymore, because I just kept doing the one thing that I knew to do, and it was getting with Jesus, and eventually everything changed. Here's the truth about the gospel, when it shows up, brings rejection. Now this isn't that nice, and you might be mad, but I want, I want to encourage you. You did hear that, right? And we're going to look at this okay. As I was reading the Scripture, I just love this passage, the word that kept sticking out to me was crowd. I kept seeing it. I kept seeing it. And, you know, if you read the gospels, you know, everywhere Jesus went there, there was a crowd, right? Like the crowd was following him. The crowd chased him down, the crowd, the crowd, the crowd. And everybody loves a crowd, right? I love a crowd. The more the merrier, right? Like, it's more fun when more people are around. Pastor Matt and I got to go to the game yesterday, and we were like, with the crowd, yeah, it was awesome, but it wouldn't have been as fun if it was just the two of us. Like, can you imagine pastor Matt and I in the Memorial Stadium, just the two of us watching the game? Not as exciting, right? Like, it's more fun, but it also brings more opinions, and the crowd also brings more attitudes, and the crowd also brings more voices trying to be heard, whether the crowd is five or 500 or 5000 The truth is that we can never actually please everyone, and for those of us who are. Are struggling or recovering from being people pleasers. Thank you. Jeff. Gotcha? Anybody else? Okay, thank you. Thank you so much. Those of us that want to please me by raising your hand, I appreciate that we understand something if we live only to please the crowd. Here's the truth. We'll get to the end of our life, and we'll realize that we won a race on the wrong track. We just won something and we were never even meant to be running that race. I love what Paul says in Galatians. He says, Am I now trying to win the approval of human beings, or of God, am I trying to please people? If I were still trying to please people, I would not be a servant of Christ. We've gotta live our lives to please Jesus and and and when the people saw this man, fully set free, fully clothed, fully, amazingly healed, sitting at the feet of Jesus. They were afraid. Isn't that crazy? They were afraid. And, and I looked this up, it means fear. They were actually afraid. And I began to think about this, and I began to think about how this rejection took shape, and what it looked like. And I thought about people that we get around that are so comfortable with our dysfunction that when we get healed, they don't like it, they don't know how to handle it. So what do they do? They criticize it, and they complain about it, and they try to make you doubt what God's doing in your life, and they try to make you doubt the new things that God's doing and the new decisions that you're making. And, whoa, whoa, whoa, I don't know about making all these changes. Seem to be at church a lot, you know. Like, who are these new friends that you have? Like, what's going on? Like, why did you stop cussing? You're not going to go drink with me tonight. Like, wait a minute, you think you're better than me, right? Just because the gospel is for everyone doesn't mean it's going to be received by everyone. People are often afraid of what they can't explain and what they don't understand. Look at what happens all the people, not one or two, but all the people in this region begged Jesus to go away and leave them alone. They weren't afraid of this man who was naked, running around like a crazy person. They were afraid when he was quietly clothed, sitting at the feet of Jesus. And they they asked Jesus to leave. So Jesus returned to the boat and he left. Jesus understood rejection. He understood what it felt like to be rejected. And this was actually prophesied about Jesus. Isaiah 53 says this, He was despised and rejected. He is this is talking about Jesus. This is a prophetic word about Jesus, He was despised and rejected, a man of sorrows. Acquainted this means this verse always gets me sorry, one of my faves, known, intimately known with deepest grief. We turned our backs on him, and he looked the other way. He was despised, and we did not care. Jesus knew rejection. Why? So that he could walk with us through it. Jesus came, knowing he would be rejected. He came acknowledging, I'm going to be rejected. People are going to turn away from me. People are going to deny me. People aren't going to like me. I'm not going to be able to please everybody all the time. I'm going to be betrayed by those who know me the most. I'm going to betray be betrayed by those who are closest to me.I'm going to be betrayed when I set people free, and I'm going to be betrayed when I don't, pretty much can't do anything right? Ever been there? That's rejection. He felt it. He knew it. Why? So that he could better minister to us when we're rejected, the gospel will bring rejection. Serving Jesus, following Jesus, it's not going to make everybody happy. It's not going to invite people all the time into understanding your life in in the way that you want them to all the time. Some people aren't going to understand. Some people aren't going to get it. Some people aren't going to like you. Sorry. I hate it, too, believe me, literally hate it. I can't stand it when people don't like me. I don't even understand it. I'm like, how do you not like me? I'm literally so likable you. Know, Like I don't understand it. It's shocking to me whenever it happens. I hate that feeling, but what I love Hebrews 218, I have so much Scripture I know I just keep finding them. It says, since he himself has gone through suffering and testing, he's able to help us when we're being tested. That's why he went through it. It's just to be with you. So let's recap this. He goes out of his way to find this guy so that he can offer freedom, and then experiences the same rejection that he's experienced so that he can be with him in it, so that he can minister to him in it, so that he can love him through it. That's the gospel. That's the good news. And it's not just for this guy, it's for us. Everyone was afraid. Everyone wanted him to leave, except one, the man who'd been freed from the demons, begged to go with him. When you've been set free, when you've experienced true relationship with Jesus, you're like, I'm sticking with this guy, but Jesus sent him home, saying, no, go back to your family and tell them everything God has done for you. So this guy went all through the town proclaiming the great things that God had done for him. When the gospel shows up, it brings a testimony. Remember, this man was not a Jew. This man was a Gentile, this man was unclean. Even if he wasn't demon possessed, he would have been considered unclean. The Gospel came for everyone, no matter where they found themselves, and this is a lesson that we can learn from this once we've received the gospel and it's changed us, we have a mandate from Jesus to share it with others. I've loved the last few, probably months now that we've been talking about inviting, that we've been talking about praying for the lost, that we've been making an extra, extra conversation around this. We've heard so many people sharing about how people they're praying for, people that they wrote their names on those cards, and we've been believing for em. They've been coming to church. They've had opportunities to share their testimony. They've had opportunities to pray for people like God is moving in people's lives. When we have a testimony, we get to share it, and other people's lives are changed. It's our brokenness and our messy places that bring healing to others. It's not the pretty places. This guy didn't go through town and say, Look at my new shirt. Isn't it great? Nobody cared. He went through town and people were like, isn't that that naked guy? And he said, Listen to what Jesus did. Listen to how he set me free. Listen to what happened, and he began to share. And we don't know what happened. We don't know how many lives were impacted, because this one guy got set free, but we know that he had a mandate to share what God had done in him, that God said, Go and tell people of what I did, of how I did it. And so many of us struggle to share because we're ashamed. We're ashamed of who we used to be, aren't we? We're ashamed of the divorce, we're ashamed of the drug addiction, we're ashamed ashamed of the the sex addiction. We're we're ashamed of all of the things that we've been through. But can I encourage you? God, set you free. You need to tell somebody, don't be ashamed of that God's done a work in you. That's amazing. It's hard to share that truth for the first time. But then when you see how it connects with someone. When you see how God can use your biggest mistake to bring somebody else closer to Him, we want to tell everybody. And you're like, I'm telling everybody about that. I can't believe how good God is. That's the gospel. It takes our worst mess, the lowest place that we've ever been. It takes the worst of it and God turns it around for His glory, not for your glory, not so your name can be great, but so that people can come to know Him, so that people can experience Him. When people ask you, what's different about you? It's not Well, I'm just really great. It's God's done a work in me. We're all going to have opportunities, especially this week, as we start our holidays, as we as we go into places where we are familiar with people sometimes. It's our families that are the hardest places to be a new person, isn't it? They want to hold you hostage to who you used to be, and it's hard to go into those places, but we've gotta be confident in the work that God's done in us. We've gotta be confident in the message that God's given us. And many of us today have have been given something significant to share, and God wants us to move forward in that place of testimony. But I also felt this encouragement specifically for this service in all of our locations, specifically for this service, in order to have a testimony you've gotta first, let God set you free. In order to have the testimony, you've gotta meet Jesus in that place of rejection. You've gotta let him meet you there and minister to you there. You've gotta let him find you there and say, Hey, I've been rejected. Rejection brings isolation. Feeling rejected opens the door to the enemy. Feeling rejected brings depression, it brings anxiety, it brings fear, it brings doubt. Feeling rejected opens the door to anger. Maybe you've been really, really angry, and you don't know why. It might be rejection that's for somebody. It's not anger, it's rejection. And Jesus knows that feeling. He was a man who was deeply acquainted, deeply acquainted with grief. He was deeply acquainted. He knew rejection, he knew sorrow, he knew it well. Why? So that he can meet you in it, and when God heals you from it, there's so much freedom on the other side of it, and you're going to be able to share that. It's going to be a testimony. But in order to get to that place of sharing and testimony, you've gotta let God heal. You've gotta be open to letting God heal you. And I believe God wants to do that in us today. I believe that God has freedom for us today. I believe that there is, there are people in this room who we want to let go of that spirit of rejection. There are people in here who have been living under it since you were a child, and today, in the moment, in the presence of Jesus, that thing has to go. It is inferior to him. Would you stand on your feet with me? Today we're going to worship, and our prayer teams are going to come forward. But before they do, I just man, I really feel that in this service, that before we can have a testimony, we've gotta let God heal us. And so I'm just going to ask you to close your eyes. And every in every space and every place that you can hear my voice, I want you to close your eyes. And if that's you, if you know that there's a place that you need healing, would you just raise your hand if it's rejection? Thank you so much. Maybe it's a different place. Maybe there's just a darkness in your heart, and you know it needs to be in Jesus's presence. Thank you. I'm going to pray, and as we worship, our prayer teams are going to come forward, and if you need somebody to stand with you, they're going to be here to pray with you. They'll stay as long as we need. I believe God wants to do something significant, Father, I just pray right now, as we enter into your presence, every enemy has to go. They are inferior to you. Jesus, rejection has to go, fear has to go. Everything that's been oppressive in our lives. God, the things that have been stronghold. God, they have to go and I pray God, that as we enter into your presence, God, that we would be free to worship you, that we would be free to have access to that place of testimony to your goodness of the gospel, to be free God to have access to all that you have to offer. God, I thank you that Your word is good, that you offer mercy, that you offer forgiveness, that you offer praise, and so Lord, right now, each and every person under the sound of my voice, I pray that we would be open to your word, open to your Spirit, God, I pray that You would help us to step forward into that place of knowing you in a deeper way in Jesus, mighty Name. Amen.