46 Why Jesus Sent 2,000 Pigs Into the Sea (Matthew 8:28-34)

Krisan Marotta: Welcome to the Wednesday in the Word podcast. I'm Krisan Marotta, and this is my podcast about what the Bible means and how we know. Today we'll study Matthew chapter 8, verses 28 through 34. This is the 46th talk in my series on the Gospel of Matthew. The lecture notes for today's talk are on the link below this podcast, or you can go directly to them by going to wednesdayintheword.com slash Matthew 4 6. Thanks so much for joining me today. We're going to finish Matthew chapter 8 today. Matthew has been describing a number of miracles that Jesus has performed, and I have been arguing that a key theme throughout these miracles is the authority of Jesus. Matthew intends to show us that Jesus not only speaks with the authority of God, but Jesus acts with the authority of God. And we've talked about how we see a response of faith before the miracle in the person who's seeking Jesus, and then the miracles call on everyone who sees them or hears about them to respond with faith. In the last podcast, we looked at the passage where Jesus calms the storm. In that story, the disciples faced a situation that was out of their control. The external circumstances they faced threatened to overwhelm them. The issue today concerns not external terrifying circumstances, but terrible inward conditions as Jesus heals two men who are possessed by demons. Mark gives us quite a bit more detail in his account, which you can find in Mark chapter 5, verses 1 through 20, and I'm going to be bringing in a lot of the details that he gives us. Piecing the details together for Mark's account, we know that Jesus had taught all day long. At the end of the day, he's exhausted. He says, Let's go over to the other side of the lake, and they get in the boat probably around dusk or sometime late in the day. Then they faced the experience with the storm that we talked about in the last podcast. Now the storm and the journey are over, it's probably very late at night or early morning. They've crossed the Sea of Galilee to the region of the Garacines, and immediately they're confronted by two men possessed by demons. Let me read Matthew chapter eight, verses twenty eight through thirty four. And when he came to the other side, to the country of the Gadarenes, two demon possessed men met him, coming out of the tombs, so fierce that no one could pass that way. And behold, they cried out, What have you to do with us, O Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time? Now a herd of many pigs was feeding at some distance from them, and the demons begged him, saying, If you cast us out, send us away into the herd of pigs. And he said to them, Go. So they came out and went into the pigs, and behold, the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea and drowned in the waters. The herdsmen fled, and going into the city they told everything, especially what had happened to the demon possessed men. And behold, all the city came out to meet Jesus, and when they saw him, they begged him to leave their region. Now there are some textual and detail issues about where this event takes place. There are some name issues and geography issues about where these places are in relation to the Sea of Galilee. And I'm not going to go through all that information. You can find that in most of the commentaries. The general situation is that the territory we're in now is largely Gentile. And this is supported by the fact that there is a herd of pigs nearby, as a typical Jewish farmer would not be raising pigs as they were unclean animals. Jesus has been teaching and preaching in the territories on the Jewish side of the Sea of Galilee, and now he's crossed over into Gentile territory. The second issue is the number of men involved. Mark 5 and Luke 8 speak of one man, and Matthew speaks of two men with unclean spirits. And again, there's a lot we could say about this issue. People write about it a lot. I don't really want to get into the full debate about what's going on with the number. Briefly, I just want to tell you how I approach this kind of issue, and this is going to be really brief. When authors tell stories, they are free to pick and choose which details to include. You're probably familiar with this. You've probably had the experience where there's a family story that gets told and retold and retold, but it gets changed depending on which family member is doing the telling. No one's lying, no one's making things up or making mistakes. They're just telling the story and the way they want to tell it to make the point that they want to make. Well, biblical authors do the same things. I approach these situations with the assumption that the authors are reliable and trustworthy. They are free to give us only the details they want to give us, that doesn't mean they're wrong or they're lying. In that sense, it doesn't really matter how many men were involved so much as it matters what kind of book we think the Bible is. Now generally speaking, there are two broad ways to approach this difference in number. Now there are a lot of nuances and differences, but broadly speaking, we can categorize the approaches into two main lines of thought. One way sees Matthew as changing historical details without regard for what actually happened. In this view, people would say Mark wrote first and said there was one man. Matthew read Mark and for whatever reason decided to change it to two men and so he did. In fact, some scholars claim that Matthew does this again. Mark and Luke tell us the story of one blind man who was healed, but when Matthew tells us there are two blind men who are healed, and scholars sometimes call this Matthew's doubling tendency. They argue that for various reasons Matthew exaggerates. I reject any approach that goes this direction because it casts doubt on Matthew's credibility, and I think Matthew is very credible and we can trust him. The other way to approach these kinds of issues says all the gospel writers care about what actually happened and they have different levels of knowledge about the event. As one of the twelve, Matthew was an eyewitness to these events. Mark and Luke got their information by interviewing those who were eyewitnesses. They offer different levels of details in how they report the events. All the accounts agree that Jesus cast demons out of a man, only Matthew includes the detail that there were actually two men. The story has been retold and told and told again, and Matthew as the eyewitness says, let me fill you in on one minor detail, there were actually two men. Again, when authors tell stories, they are free to pick and choose which details to include to make the points that they want to make. If Matthew is right, and I suspect he is, it doesn't mean Mark and Luke made a mistake, it means Mark and Luke weren't as precise as Matthew, and that's okay because precision is not their goal. For example, when they say that Jesus miraculously fed the 5,000, what if someone was able to prove, well, in reality there were 5,000 ten, or there were only 4,995 people fed that day? That's not a problem. That's not the truth of the story the author meant to proclaim. His point was not about the actual number of people fed, but the fact that Jesus miraculously fed a very large group of people. I think we can say that Mark, Matthew, and Luke are telling the truth with different levels of details. The point is not how many men were there, the point is the actions of Jesus. And notice that we can't settle this issue by looking at the text themselves. Either explanation fits the facts presented in the text as we have them. My perspective is that Jesus teaches us to have great confidence in the truth the Bible proclaims. When the Bible says something is true, it is true. So I reject any explanation that says Matthew exaggerates or makes things up. It makes perfect sense to me that different authors give different levels of detail in their stories. But to say that Matthew is making things up that didn't happen is a problem. Now we could spend a lot of time talking about the reliability of Scripture, but we won't go there today. I just want you to know where I'm coming from. I believe the scriptures are reliable and trustworthy, and I don't find any problem with the fact that Matthew says there were two men and Mark and Luke say there was one. All right, let's look at the story. The story itself is fairly straightforward. When Jesus got out of the boat on the other side of the lake, two men possessed by demons came from the tombs to meet him. Now Matthew tells us these men were so fierce no one could pass that way. Mark tells us the men were so violent no one could bind them with chains anymore. When they were chained hand and foot, they tore the chains apart and broke the irons on their feet, and no one was strong enough to subdue them, and that night and day among the tombs and in the hills they would cry out and cut themselves with stones. Matthew tells us when these men saw Jesus from a distance, they shouted, What have you to do with us, O son of God? Have you come to torment us before the time? Mark says one of the men says, What do you want with me, Jesus, son of the most high God? Swear to God that you won't torture me. And Mark and Luke also tell us that prior to this Jesus had already said to them, Come out, you evil spirit. Mark additionally tells us that Jesus asked the man, What is your name? And the demons replied, My name is Legion, for we are many. And then the demons begged Jesus not to send them out of the area. There's a large herd of pigs feeding on a nearby hillside, and the demons begged Jesus to allow them to go into the pigs. Well, Jesus gave them permission, and the evil spirits came out and went into the pigs, and then the herd, which Mark tells us is about two thousand in number, rushed down the steep bank into the lake and drowned. The people who were tending the pigs ran off and reported what happened in the town, and then the town people rush out to see what's happened. When they find Jesus, they see the men who had been possessed by the Legion of Demons sitting there dressed and in their right mind, and they're afraid, so they plead with Jesus to leave. Mark adds that as Jesus was getting into the boat, one of the men who had been demon possessed begged to go with him, and Jesus refused. He said, Go home to your family and tell them how much the Lord has done for you and how he has had mercy on you. And then the man went away and began to tell everyone how much Jesus had done for him, and all the people were amazed. Well, that's the basic story. Before we get into the significance of it, let's talk about demons for a minute. The references to demons in the New Testament is often a stumbling block for us modern people. Many people think that our modern civilization and education dispels all these superstitious fears of the ancients. They think that there's no such thing as demons, they're only human fears that got called by these names. They claim that now we're enlightened, we're educated, we're beyond such superstitions. After all, we have horoscopes and crystals and channelers and auras and inner balance and cosmic resonance, and a host of other fuzzy philosophies. It is amazing that we can fall prey to every new age philosophy that blows in on the wind and then deny the existence of basic principles like good and evil. Now we modern Americans deny the existence of both demons and God, I think in part, because we cling to naturalism. Naturalism is the insistence that all phenomena can be explained by natural causes, that there are no unseen persons or forces that influence the world we live in. Naturalism has had the terrible effect of ignoring the God who made everything. But there's another problem that flows from the insistence that everything can be explained by natural causes, and that is darkness is not understood either. Our world is dominated by the dangerous notion that we are on track to understand every single mystery and fix every problem. The mind of man, they think, will eventually remove all obstacles to human greatness, remove evil, remove the forces of darkness and everything else, so we're told. So naturalism denies the existence of both God and the devil, and both denials have serious consequences. I believe that the Bible claims demons exist and that God has limited their authority. Now, Scripture doesn't say a lot about demons. Many think that demons are fallen angels, that they're finite in number, and that God has placed limits on their capacity to do evil. Jesus said of the devil, and by implication of all fallen angels, that he could be summed up as having two priorities, two passions, and that is murder and lies. That's in John 8 48. It seems to me that with the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, the power and authority of demons has been severely limited. Before Pentecost, they seem to have much more free reign in the world, and people recognize them. Luke in particular is very careful to point out when some illness is caused by a demon and when some illness is caused by disease. He was a doctor, he seems to know these things. They were part of his everyday experience, and so they can tell us this is a demon and this isn't, whereas we've lost that knowledge today. What makes the most sense to me as I read through scripture is that with the coming of the Holy Spirit, things changed dramatically. God put limits on the demons and what they can do and how they can influence the world and people. But those prior to Pentecost had a lot more knowledge about demons. So with that in mind, let's look at the passage. Now picture a scary movie landscape, and you have the setting for the story. Imagine the kind of eerie, frightening sort of landscape you've seen in a movie. Jesus and the disciples land their boat on the shore. In the moonlight, they see caves and tombs. There may have been some evidence of the recent storm, maybe branches and storm debris tossed around. There's a large herd of pigs moving around restlessly on an adjacent hillside, probably upset by the recent storm. And suddenly these two naked men come running down the hills screaming at them. The disciples must have been terrified, thinking, what in the world is going to happen now? What have we gotten ourselves into? This night has already been terrible. How can things get worse? And consider what life was like for the demonized men. What was their life like before this night? We know they were isolated, they were violent, and they were living alone among the dead instead of living in community among the living. They remained nameless in the story. The people of the town had last approached them with chains to try to subdue them, but they tore the chains apart. They can't stop themselves from being violent to others and to themselves. They must have hated themselves. They were tormented and self-destructive, slashing themselves with stones and going about unclothed. It's interesting that the demons know exactly who Jesus is. Matthew says they address him as the Son of God. Mark and Luke say they call him the Son of the Most High God, and they're right. They know who they're dealing with. The demons know exactly who Jesus is, and they fear he is there to torment them. And those two sentences spoken together are a doctrine of hell. To have such clear knowledge of the person and status of Jesus and yet believe and know that his purpose is to condemn you is the worst condition to be in. The demons are facing judgment with the certain knowledge that they're condemned. Now Matthew gives us the interesting little detail that they say, Have you come to torment us before the time? Presumably they recognize that a time is coming when the Messiah will deal with them in a final, decisive way. They believe the day of judgment is coming, and when they face that judgment, it is Jesus who will deliver it. Their fate is ultimately in his hands, but they know that's not supposed to happen yet. So these men are a graphic picture of rebellion to God. These men are experiencing on the outside what all of us sinners experience on the inside. And in that sense, these men are no different from us. They experience the same kind of darkness we all experience from sin, only for them it's multiplied to an impossible degree and it's visible for all to see. But if you stop and think about it, we have a lot in common with them. We know what it's like to rebel against God. We know what it's like to feel unclean, unworthy of association with good people, to feel as if our lives contaminate others. We know what it's like to be isolated, to try to have relationships with other people, but they reject us. We know what it's like to be out of control, to have habits and pressures and thoughts that make us want to do what we hate doing, and whatever chains we use to stop ourselves are just inadequate. So we know what it's like to be tormented and self-destructive. The demoniacs here experience in the extreme what all of us experience to some degree due to our sin. As with many of Jesus' healings and miracles, there's a symbolism here we don't want to miss. The demons make visible on the outside the destructive power of sin that all of us have on the inside. We have two men who are the ultimate picture of living hell and rebellion to God. They know who Jesus is, they recognize his authority, and they know they will be condemned. Now we've just seen Jesus still an external physical storm. Now he's faced with this internal storm of evil and rebellion that's manifesting itself visibly on the outside. And this new enemy also falls at Jesus' feet under his authority. Now that ought to give us hope because evil and rebellion to God is our real enemy. The Jews thought Rome was their enemy. They hoped to drive the Romans out of their land and into the sea, which is exactly what Jesus does to the pigs. The disciples, a few hours earlier, thought the external storm was the real problem that threatened them, but Jesus calmed the storm. But the real enemy is not Rome nor the storm. The real enemy is the evil within, the evil and rebellion to God represented by the legion of demons who are terrorizing these men. When the demons come begging Jesus for a reprieve, Mark and Luke tell us that Jesus asked them, What is your name? Now when he asks them what's your name, he's asking not just who are you? He's not just asking, What are you called? He's asking, What's your identity? What's your reputation? We use this phrase to Day when we talk about asking in the name of Jesus. When we pray and we say we pray in Jesus' name, it's not like putting the magic words of please or thank you on our prayers. It's asking based on who Jesus is. To ask God for something in Jesus' name is to ask based on the fact that Jesus is the Messiah, the Savior who died for my sins. His name is His identity. And I think that's what's going on here. When Jesus says, What's your name? He's saying, What identity is going to finally remain? When it becomes clear who you are, by what name will you be known? What father characterizes you? What father do you obey and follow? And that's a question we all face at some point. Who am I and what is inside me? The internal storm faced by these nameless outcasts is a graphic picture of the battle in our souls today. The sin in our hearts is of the same evil. The sin inside binds us and holds us prisoner just as the demons held these men. The real enemy we face is not external circumstances. It's not the other guy who annoys us, it's not bad luck, it's not even outside us. The real enemy is the sin and evil within. To ask what is your name is to ask what is your identity? Who is your father? What's inside you? That's the real enemy, and that's precisely the enemy Jesus has come to conquer. Now the demons answer legion, which is a technical name for a Roman military company consisting of several thousand troops. Matthew leaves vague how many demons there are. He just uses the plural. Mark and Luke give us this question and the answer legion. And legion gives us the picture of an enemy too numerous to count, an enemy of overwhelming force and strength and odds, the enemy that prompted Mark's gripping description of the man's dark and tragic lifestyle, an enemy so strong that no chains could bind him. No shackle was strong enough to hold him, and there was nothing that could be done. Yet, even with an enemy that strong, Jesus banishes this enemy with only a word. This terrible enemy falls at the feet of Jesus and begs for mercy. The picture here is there is no sin or no evil so great that Jesus cannot overcome it. There is no evil beyond his authority to heal and rescue and redeem. There's nothing inside you or me that he cannot heal and redeem. Now why the pigs? The demons begged Jesus not to make them leave the area, and Jesus gives in. Now, why did he do that? I don't think Jesus had a soft spot for demons. He didn't answer in effect, well, you know, I'm sorry it's so hard for you. I know you don't want to leave. Let's find an alternative. That's not the issue. I think this horde of demons longed to stay in the region because it was a place of death. It was filled with caves and tombs. It was a place of unclean animals and of horrible, fearful circumstances. It was a place where violence was accomplished and lives were ended or ruined. So it's a stronghold of evil, and I think that's why they want to stay. But Jesus knew in order for anybody else to be sure that the demons had been banished, he had to do something dramatic. If he did something invisible, no onlooker would ever know for sure whether these demons were gone. They could never be certain whether the place had been cleansed or whether evil still remained. So Jesus gives the demons what they want, but probably not what they intended. He gave them permission to go into the pigs, and then the pigs proceed to drown themselves in the lake. Now everyone would know that not only had the demons left the men, that they were banished and gone and defeated. Additionally, the Canaanites sacrificed pigs to their idols. They needed these pigs for an economic system built around idolatry. The loss of such a large herd is going to hurt their system of idolatry. Healing the men made clear that they were free from their inward evil and rebellion. Drowning the pigs made it clear that this place was no longer inhabited by the demons. The stronghold of death and destruction has been taken by one who was stronger, who banishes not only the demons, but the things they need for their idols. You can imagine what seeing approximately two thousand pigs flying off a cliff into oblivion must have looked like. That sight was obviously intended to drive home the point that not only are the men healed, the whole region is clean. For these two men, that must have been the equivalent of an alcoholic seeing every bottle he ever touched, every bar stool he ever occupied, and every beer commercial that ever enticed him all gathered together and smashed into oblivion, leaving him free and clear. Matthew tells us that the townspeople asked Jesus to leave. Mark tells us the townspeople are afraid of Jesus. Well, you can understand why. It's presumably morning by the time the pig herders had run away to the town and then come back and gathered everybody to see what had happened. During the night a storm had suddenly stopped. Two howling demoniacs had been made well, and a herd of pigs had been destroyed. What would all these events lead to? They don't know what Jesus is going to do next or what uproar he might cause. He frightens them and so they ask him to leave. Jesus agrees to leave, but he leaves behind a witness or two. Mark tells us that one of the men asked to go with Jesus, but Jesus told the man to go back to the people in the area and tell them what happened. And they did. Later the gospel flourished in this region. We know from the book of Acts that there was a strong church in Damascus, one of the cities of the Decapolis. That's where Paul went when he was first converted, and he was welcomed and discipled there. This region became a fertile field for evangelism, and it seems to have started with the testimony of these two men. Now Matthew doesn't include as much information in this story as Mark and Luke do. Matthew seems to have one purpose to demonstrate the authority of Jesus. This powerful legion of demons recognized the day is coming when Jesus will ultimately defeat and imprison them. This powerful legion of demons had no choice but to obey everything Jesus said. We have powerful physical evidence. Not only are the men healed, but the herd of swine hurl themselves into the sea. And once again, this miracle is bringing merciful deliverance through the power of God. Last week we saw that Jesus had God given authority over the power and the forces of nature. This story tells us that Jesus has God given authority over the powers of darkness and evil. And together they build the case that Jesus is the Messiah, the deliverer who is sent from God. The storm looked overwhelming, and yet Jesus calmed it with a word. The men were violent and powerful and out of control and completely at the mercy of evil, and yet Jesus banishes their demons with a word. Thank you for listening to Wednesday in the Word, the podcast that explains not only what a passage means, but also seeks to show you how to figure that out. You can hear all previous episodes in this series on my website, wednesdayintheword.com. There are also many other series and tons of Bible study information. There's no charge, no spam, and no ads. It's all free to help you improve your study skills and understanding of scripture. If you've been blessed by this podcast, I have a favor to ask. Please subscribe to the podcast. Leave a positive rating or review wherever you listen. That really does help other people find the podcast. But most importantly, tell a friend what you learned and where you learned it. Our theme music is graciously provided by my favorite musician, Reggie Coates. You can listen to more of Reggie's music and find his CDs at heartfeltmusic.org. Thank you so much for listening today. I'm Krisan Marotta, and I'll see you next week at Wednesday in the Word.