Matthew 8:27
There is a demon world. Many people do not believe it. According to the Bible, the devil was an archangel who was cast out of heaven when he rebelled against God. He took a significant number of angels with him. These fallen angels are what are referred to as demons. Some of these spirits can become aggressively active in dark areas of disobedience and corruption where people make it easy for them to function. But where truth, righteousness, and purity exist, the demons have no desire to remain. Apparently, they liked this region of the Gadarenes and did not want to leave. That talks about the nature of the place.
Demon possession is a condition in which one or more demons inhabit the body of a human being, and they can, at will, control that being. That’s demon-possession. There may be many different degrees and manifestations. The Bible acknowledges it as a reality.
The Bible calls demons many things: they are evil spirits, deceiving spirits. Their work is to deceive people with lies and make them believe in lies that are against the truth of the Bible. Many supernatural events that happen against biblical truth are their work. For example, the belief that dead people do not leave this world, as the Bible says, but instead roam graveyards or inhabit tamarind trees. All their work in remote villages, like the notion that a god has entered someone, making them roll their head and shake their body to predict the future, is their doing. They give power to false prophets. When false teachings are preached, they get their power from these deceiving spirits. They have doctrines of demons. As 1 Timothy 4:1 says, “But the Spirit expressly states that in later times some will depart from the faith, giving heed to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons…”
The drama of casting out demons, where a person acts as if they are possessed, then pretends to be freed by the prophet’s command, only to come back and tell lies, is their work. They ask questions like, “What is your name?” and a person might speak in a different voice, and then people fall down when hands are laid on them. These demons can perform signs and wonders, according to 2 Thessalonians, chapter 2. James 2:19 says they know all truth: “You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.” They are active in creating false beliefs and working to create false repentance and faith. In Matthew 12:45, a person might think they have repented temporarily, and one spirit goes out, and seven worse ones return. According to 1 Corinthians, pagans offer sacrifices to demons. In Revelation, they are very active in the world in different ways. Revelation 9:3 says, “And out of the smoke locusts came down on the earth and were given power like that of scorpions of the earth.” They harm only those people who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads. People who do not abide in truth by regularly reading and living in truth give room to evil spirits. They will make us worldly and tempt us and make us sin.
In Revelation 9:5, it says, “They were not allowed to kill them but only to torture them. And the agony they suffered was like that of the sting of a scorpion when it strikes.” In verse 7, it says, “The locusts looked like horses prepared for battle. On their heads they wore something like crowns of gold, and their faces resembled human faces. Their hair was like women’s hair, and their teeth were like lions’ teeth,” all of which alludes to their deceptive and cruel intentions. But they will not look like that; they will look very attractive.
Now, demons can do a lot of things to people. They can tempt, and this is what they do. In a sense, to tempt, they have to get into our minds to lure our thoughts. They can bring about disease. Paul called the disorder he had, the “thorn in the flesh,” a “messenger of Satan sent to buffet me.” So demons can attack the physical, the spiritual, and the mental because the Bible tells us that doctrines of demons, perversions of the truth, are sent out to distract people into idolatry and error. They corrupt the truth, bring about false religion, occult practices, and all kinds of immoral behaviors. They always produce evil, vile consequences.
Full possession is generally seen in rural communities with many idols, fear, blind faith, and occult practices. When you misuse or do not use God’s given ability in his image to guard yourself, you invite demons. For example, by shutting off your thinking, which is a problem with deep yoga or certain Pentecostal experiences, and by chanting repeatedly to hypnotize yourself, you invite them in. I have seen it happen, even to those who call themselves believers, who get demon-possessed and then are chased. Can a true believer be demon-possessed? The Bible teaches that they cannot. They might be attacked and caused a great deal of trouble in the spiritual battles of life, but if the Holy Spirit is indwelling the Christian, as the Bible affirms, then demons cannot. And the Bible tells Christians to resist the devil, and he will flee from them. They resist the devil by submitting to God (James 4:7). But here, people who call themselves believers are sometimes possessed. All that drama will go on. You will never find such things in places where truth is preached, where the light of truth is regularly shining. In such places, demons run away like cockroaches. How to drive demons out of our midst? 2 Timothy 2:24 provides guidance.
Last week, we saw two demon-possessed men in our story. We met them in a terrible state. They were not ordinary. They had a “legion” of demons; there were many. They lived in tombs and were not able to be controlled. They had so much strength that they were shouting in mountains and caves, cutting themselves, and were naked. It was a hopeless condition. So Jesus comes there, and we see the reception he got. They came and recognized him. In Mark 5:6, it says, “When they saw Jesus, they worshiped Him. Proskuneo; they prostrated themselves, they fell down, they worshiped.” It is incredible that they should worship Jesus. No one could come near them, yet they came and fell at his feet. They did! It showed great respect. Proskuneo means to bow before a great emperor, not even lifting one’s head, to kiss his feet, to show reverence on one’s knees with the head to the ground. It is a word of profound awe, reverence, respect, and worship. You might say, “What are they doing that for?” Because they know exactly who he is. They were once holy angels before they went into Satan’s rebellion, and they were involved with God, and they know the second person of the Trinity. He is the King of heaven, the treasure of heaven, and the center of heaven. They fall at his feet.
We find not only the reception by the demons but the recognition by them. Verse 29: “Behold, they cried out, ‘What have we to do with Thee, Jesus, Thou Son of God?'”
They recognized the Son of God so much so that they could not flee his power but were forced to bow before him (Mark 5:6). The demoniacs’ question is more literally, “What is to us and to you?” The Hebrew idiom suggests that Jesus and the demons have nothing in common. Everything about them is opposite: “We are evil, you are good; we are unholy, you are holy; we destroy, you save; we deceive, you preach the truth and save from deception.” They transform men into the image of Satan and destroy the image of God, while he transforms them into the image of God. They have nothing in common. They are interested in torturing the men they possess and destroying all that comes their way. Christ brings peace to troubled, sinful lives and wholeness out of destruction. The demons leave their victims in mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual shambles. The poor men lived among the tombs, had no friends, and cried day and night in their misery, rejected by all. But Jesus Christ transforms so that the whole person is affected by the power of the Gospel. The man will become so whole and saintly. He will bring the light of the Gospel to that whole town of Decapolis. The demons were right; they had nothing in common with Christ.
So they asked, “Why are you bothering us? Why are you here?” They knew that he was their judge, that judgment was given to him, and that he was their destroyer. And they said, “Why are you here to bother us? Have you come to torment us before the time?” They even had the right eschatology. They said, “You’re here too soon.” “Are you here to torment us before the time?” Think of it: these beings are damned for all eternity, and they know it. They despise Jesus, they loathe him, they hate him, and yet they worship him because they are forced to by his power. They can’t resist it. You see, they know Philippians 2:10, that he is to be worshiped, and every knee is to bow, not only of things above the earth and on the earth but things under the earth. They knew intuitively that they were standing in the presence of the second member of the Trinity. This is Christ, the Son of the living God, the Holy One of God who had the power to destroy them, and they said, “This can’t be. The timing is wrong.” They even know the redemptive plan and timing. They knew. And they knew what the eschatological plan was, and they knew that they were to be doomed and damned forever.
And so they bow the knee to Christ, their judge. How fascinating that is to me. It may also account for the fact that sometimes demons, through mediums and others, seem to be able to predict the future. It may be that somehow they’ve already been made aware of the divine plan, and at some points they can anticipate what’s going to happen. They are way ahead of even the Lord’s disciples. The disciples’ confession comes in Matthew 16, but here in chapter 8, the demons know him. The book of Revelation hasn’t been written, and the disciples weren’t too sure when all this stuff was going to come to pass, but the demons knew. They knew he was the Son of God and the Messiah. In Luke 4:41, it says, “And demons also came out of many, crying out, [and here’s what the demons said] ‘Thou art Messiah, Son of God,’ for they knew that He was Christ.”
They knew they were not going to escape, but they knew their time had not yet come. There was an appointed time for him to do that. John 5:22 tells us that the Father has given all judgment over to the Son, that the Father judges no one. These spirits knew that the Judge was stepping into their territory, and they were afraid their freedom would now be cut short. What a strange phenomenon, though, to have demons knowing that they will someday be judged but can only think of preserving their wicked little experience for the time being. And that is how they often convince people to think.
See, demons know more than us. Luke 8:31 says that they were afraid of being cast into the abyss. The abyss is a place of confinement until the final judgment. Like God did in earlier times, he chained some demons in the abyss because they were evil. Jude 6 says, “And the angels who did not keep their positions of authority but abandoned their proper dwelling—these he has kept in darkness, bound with everlasting chains for judgment on the great Day.” They know that and may be scared that he will chain them in the abyss for what they have done to this man.
Following their reception and recognition, we come to their request in verse 30. They make a request, and it’s bizarre. “There was a good way off from them a herd of many pigs feeding.”
Matthew 8:31-32: “So the demons besought him saying, ‘If Thou cast us out,’ then let us go into the pigs.” Now, what a strange request! What good does that do? A demon-possessed pig? A pig is a pig, right? How do you tell a demon-possessed pig from any other pig? What’s the point?
This shows that demons desire to be in a body and not in the air. They desire to be in some bodily form, and even a pig is okay. They liked the area and didn’t want to go anywhere far. It was a nice concession: “If you don’t want us harming people, we’ll just be content to go into pigs, but please don’t send us to the pit.” They fear Christ. They’re in awe of him. They didn’t want to go to the abyss. “Just put us somewhere less precious.” And about the least precious thing that they could think of would be pigs. They shouldn’t have been keeping pigs in that part of the country anyway. Pigs were considered an unclean animal by the Jews. The Law of Moses strictly ruled out eating pork. They should not even have raised them in their land. But Gentiles at that time ate pork. It is possible that the Gadarenes were Gentiles, and it is probably possible that Jews had those pigs, that they were Jews who could not eat pork but could sell them to Gentiles. In either case, the raising of pigs in the land of Israel was something that could not be justified by the Law of Moses. Jesus’ use of the pigs in this exorcism attests to that point. It’s very likely or possible that some Jewish people owned those pigs, and that was in disobedience to the law of God. By the way, Mark 5:13 says there were two thousand of them in the herd, so it was a large herd of pigs. So there must have been a lot of demons. “Say, we’ll go into the herd of pigs.” Maybe they made this request to escape the pit and out of fear.
Or, being cunning and deceptive, they knew that these townsfolk loved their pigs and that their livelihood was more important to them than anything. They thought they’d go into the pigs and kill the pigs to make everyone mad at Jesus and then kill Jesus for killing their pigs. But whatever their little plan was, what’s interesting is Jesus’s response, and we move from the possession of the demons to the power of Christ in verse 32.
Now, we take our focus off the demons and onto Christ. “And He said unto them, ‘Go.'” You want to know something? When men try to cast out demons, they have to work hard to get the demons to cooperate. When Christ comes, the demons want to go. All they want to know is where they’re allowed to go, and he said, “Go.” “And when they were gone out, they went into the herd of swine: and, behold, the whole herd of swine ran violently down a steep place and into the sea, and perished in the waters.” They all went right off the cliff, right down to the sea, and all drowned—two thousand pigs. The whole herd committed mass suicide.
Now let me just have you think about this for a minute. How did he cast out all these demons? He said, “Go,” that’s all. When he appeared, they wanted to leave, and he commanded them to leave. “Be gone.” One word. Now that is the thing that shocked everybody. It wasn’t that he did it; it was how he did it. Instantaneously and totally! And you have to understand, people, that these demons are powerful, powerful beings. Men cannot deal with them. We can’t deal on the supernatural level. It’s so silly for people to run around thinking they can cast out demons by their cleverness. The demons are way ahead of you on that. In II Peter 2:11, it says, “Angels are greater in power and might than men.” Demons are powerful. One holy angel, in II Kings 19:35, it says, slew 185,000 Assyrians in one shot, so they far surpass men. They have superior intelligence, that’s obvious from Ezekiel 28; they have superior strength, you can see that right with this maniac in Mark 5 who kept breaking the chains; you can see it in Acts 19 and Matthew 17. They have superior power. They have superior experience; they have lived before the creation of man. They have been living through all the annals of human history. They have been around a long time, and they know what they’re about, and they understand how men function and think. They have a superior nature. They are spirit beings; they are not bound by any form. And so, these are incredible creatures. Only the Lord Christ could bruise the serpent’s head, only the Lord Christ can cast them into the pit, in Revelation 20, and only he can deal with them here.
And so, he gives them their request, but not for their sake but for his. He sends them right into that herd of pigs.
In the story of the Gadarene demoniac, the people’s response to Jesus is a stark contrast to the man who was healed. This narrative reveals two very different reactions to Jesus and what they teach us about faith and unbelief.
The Town’s Response: Rejection
The people of the town and the swineherds, after witnessing the miraculous healing of the two demon-possessed men, came out to meet Jesus. Instead of rejoicing and welcoming Him, they begged Him to leave their region. Their response, a fervent “Go away!”, seems shocking, but it reveals a profound spiritual blindness rooted in three main issues:
- Stubborn Covetousness: The townspeople’s primary concern was their material loss—the two thousand pigs that had drowned. They valued their livelihood and financial security more than the spiritual and physical well-being of the two men. They saw the pigs as a tangible asset and Jesus as a threat to their wealth. This highlights how greed can blind people to the glorious work of God.
- Fear of His Holiness: The presence of a holy God made them deeply uncomfortable. Jesus’s power and holiness exposed their sinful, worldly lives. They were filled with “great fear” because they were faced with a being so pure and powerful that He revealed the depravity and inadequacy of their own lives. They would rather run back into their darkness than stand in the light of His perfection.
- Unbelief: They saw Jesus’s raw power, but they failed to see it as a power of grace and mercy. Their unbelief prevented them from recognizing that the One who could heal the demoniacs could also provide for their material needs. They were so focused on what they lost that they couldn’t grasp the greater blessing they were being offered.
The Healed Man’s Response: Devotion
The man who was healed showed a beautiful contrast to the townspeople. His response was one of immediate and complete devotion to Jesus.
- Voluntary Attachment: He was so attached to Jesus that he begged to go with Him. The world that had rejected and cast him out no longer held any appeal. He saw Jesus as his everything and wanted nothing more than to be in His presence. This deep desire to be near Christ is a mark of true faith.
- Simple Obedience: Despite his strong desire to follow Jesus, the Lord told him to go back to his home and tell his friends and family what great things the Lord had done for him. He obeyed immediately, without question or argument. This willingness to obey Jesus, even when it goes against one’s own desires, is a sign of a truly converted heart.
- Open Confession and Mission: He went back to the very place where he was a terror to his community and began to “publish” or preach about what Jesus had done. He became a missionary, a living testament to the transforming power of Christ. His open confession was a powerful contrast to the town’s secret fears and worldly values.
The Lesson for Us
The story is a powerful lesson for us today. The world often chooses its “pigs”—money, comfort, reputation, or sin—over the Savior. The townspeople’s rejection of Jesus is a terrifying example of how humanity can spit in the face of God’s grace and choose temporary gain over eternal life.
On the other hand, the demoniac’s response shows us what it means to be a true disciple. He was so completely conquered and transformed by Christ’s grace that he desired nothing more than to be with Him and serve Him. The authority of Christ can subdue even the most hardened hearts and set us free from our sins.
Where do you stand in this story? Are you with the townspeople, more concerned with your earthly possessions than with Jesus? Or are you with the healed man, ready to give up everything for a life of faith, obedience, and service?
Grace Reformed Baptist Church, Bangalore 