Darkness

[00:00:00] Let us approach him, seeking his help once more in prayer. [00:00:06] Our God and Father in Heaven, we come to hear your word. [00:00:11] But we confess that our hearts are clouded by many things. [00:00:18] Our sin, the troubles of this life, the things around us, they come into your presence with us, weighing our hearts down and making it difficult for us to see and to understand the glory of Christ. [00:00:36] O Lord Jesus, we ask that by your word and by the power of your spirit, you would shine your light into our hearts, driving out the mists and the clouds that darken them. Show us clearly not just our sin, but show us oh, so clearly, you, Lord Jesus, and that in your face we might behold the glory of God shining brightly. And being drawn to you, we might have the grace that we need for healing, restoration and for eternal life. [00:01:12] Hear us, O God, for Jesus sake. Amen. Amen. [00:01:18] Now we turn to hear from God in his word. We're going to read From Luke chapter 8, the gospel of Luke in the New Testament, Luke chapter 8, beginning in verse 26 and reading through verse 39. [00:01:40] This is God's word for you and for me. Listen accordingly. [00:01:46] Then they sailed to the country of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee. [00:01:53] When Jesus had stepped out on the land, there met him a man from the city who had demons. [00:02:01] For a long time he had worn no clothes, and he had not lived in a house but among tombs. [00:02:11] When he saw Jesus, he cried out and fell down before him. [00:02:16] And he said with a loud voice, what have you to do with me, Jesus, son of the most High God, I beg you, do not torment me. [00:02:30] For he had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. For many a time it had seized him. [00:02:37] He was kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles. [00:02:43] But he would break the bonds and be driven by the demon into the desert. [00:02:50] Jesus then asked him, what is your name? [00:02:54] And he said, legion. For many demons had entered him. [00:02:59] They begged him not to command them to depart into the abyss. [00:03:04] Now a large herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside, and they begged him to let them enter these. [00:03:13] So he gave them permission. [00:03:17] Then the demons came out of the man and entered. The pigs and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and were drowned. [00:03:25] When the herdsmen saw what had happened, they fled and told it in the city and in the country. [00:03:32] Then the people went out to see what had happened. And they came to Jesus and found the man from whom the demons had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind. [00:03:47] And they were afraid and Those who had seen it told them how the demon possessed man had been healed. [00:03:56] Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes asked him to depart from them, for they were seized with great fear. [00:04:07] So he got into the boat and returned. [00:04:10] The man from whom the demons had gone begged that he might be with him. [00:04:17] But Jesus sent him away, saying, return to your home and declare how much God has done for you. [00:04:27] And he went away proclaiming throughout the whole city how much Jesus had done for him thus far. The reading of God's word. [00:04:36] Please be seated. [00:04:50] From the time we're little, most of us have a little bit of a fear of the dark, don't we? [00:04:58] I can remember as a child coming home after being away as a family in the evening and being the first one into the house and all the lights are shut off and being afraid to go in. [00:05:11] What's in the dark? Is there something there? That childhood terror, some of us, it clings to us till we're older. Most of us begin to grow out of it. But there's something about the dark that bothers us. [00:05:26] The Bible uses that imagery throughout, from pretty much from beginning to end, that imagery of the darkness to describe Satan and his kingdom. [00:05:40] We read in Colossians chapter one that God delivered us the church from the domain of darkness, the power, the authority, the rule of darkness, a kingdom of darkness, and transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, the kingdom of Jesus. [00:06:01] That is God, through Jesus His Son, came and brought us all out of this terrifying, terrible condition of darkness and into a kingdom of light, a place of joy, peace and so forth. A place of freedom. We want to look this morning at how Jesus frees this man from the darkness. [00:06:26] Freedom from the darkness. That'll be our theme this morning. [00:06:30] We'll look at it under three headings. First, we'll look at the slavery of the darkness. What is it like to be in the kingdom of darkness? Secondly, we'll look at how Jesus breaks the darkness, the breaking of the darkness. And finally we'll look at the slavery or the service in the kingdom of light. What is it like to become Jesus slave or his servant once he's freed us? So first, the slavery of darkness. Secondly, breaking the darkness. And thirdly, the slavery of light. [00:07:09] First, the slavery of darkness. [00:07:12] As you read the story, it would was probably obvious to you that this man is clearly in darkness, this sort of shadow. [00:07:25] He's a part of Satan's kingdom. [00:07:28] He's even controlled by demons. [00:07:36] He's a subject, a slave, and it's obvious that he's in terrible shape and has been so for a long time, probably many years. [00:07:49] But we immediately encounter a very strange phenomenon, something that even in the Bible, as you read it, from beginning to end, we don't see a whole lot of. Pretty much just in the Gospels and a couple times in the book of Acts. [00:08:04] What is demon possession? I'm not going to give you a full study of this, but we need to begin to look at this question of demon possession to begin to understand this man's condition and something of our own. [00:08:21] Demon possession. It's strange, it's foreign. What is this? [00:08:27] What's going on? How does a person become demon possessed? I won't answer all the questions, but let's consider this kingdom of darkness that we've been talking about. Satan and his demons, evil spirits that we can't see that seem to have control over the whole world. [00:08:49] The apostle John says the end of John 1, John, the whole world lies in the power of the evil one. [00:08:57] Paul calls him the God, ironically, the God of this world. Who's deluded, who controls this world? [00:09:10] Satan clearly has a kingdom, a kingdom of darkness. How did that come about? He was originally made good, an angel of light, but he rebelled against God. God cast him out of heaven, cast him down to earth, and here on earth, God allowed him to set up a kingdom where he controlled fallen, sinful mankind. That's right. When Adam fell to that temptation to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he fell into sin. And when he fell into sin, that is the moment when he and mankind with him fell under the sway of the kingdom of darkness. [00:09:51] It's our sin, mankind's sin, that gives Satan some kind of sway or power over us. [00:10:00] It's our sin. [00:10:03] It's because we are open to temptation, we're given to it. And we are especially bound in bondage to sin. That's why Satan has sway over sinners. [00:10:18] That's the heart of the matter. Whatever else is going on in demon possession, it's an extension of the problem of sin and the fact that we are vulnerable to temptation, to sin, not just vulnerable to it, but in our fallen state, we have to sin, we must sin. Therefore, Satan has power over us and can influence us. [00:10:43] Now, this man in this story has given himself over to sin. [00:10:47] And at some point in his life of sin, he came directly under the influence of a demon. Actually not just one, but many demons. [00:10:58] And what happens there? Well, clearly the demon took control of the man as he does other People in the stories and the Gospels. [00:11:07] And the person who is demon possessed is under the sway or power of the demon, such that his actions and even his very words are at the command or control of the demon. [00:11:20] Clearly a slave almost in an absolute sense of the demons. The very things he says, controlled by the demons. What do demon possessed people do? If you look through the Gospels, you look through the stories, the one thing that you see clearly over and over again is that these people sin. [00:11:44] And that under the demons influence, they sin more and more. They blaspheme God, they hurt themselves, they hurt others. [00:11:55] The demons take that sin that's in the person and they magnify it. They make it greater. [00:12:03] They influence the person in terms especially of their sinful character. [00:12:09] Okay, there's something of demon possession. And the heart of the matter is their sinfulness. [00:12:16] Let's look especially at this man's slavery. And as we look at him at his slavery, let's look at how the kingdom of darkness treats its subjects. [00:12:27] This is a dark subject. It's about to get darker. [00:12:32] This man, you might say he was advanced in the kingdom of Darkness. [00:12:39] You get someone who enters the army as a private, but then he works his way up in the ranks, right? He works hard. He gives himself over to his service. He's promoted, he becomes an officer. He works his way up the chain of command. This man has advanced far in his service to the kingdom of Darkness. [00:13:00] What has he received for his devotion to his overlords? [00:13:08] We don't know exactly what he did. We know that as a Gentile he was an idol worshiper, he served false gods. We know that he was a violent man, hurting others and himself. [00:13:22] Whatever it was that he did to progress in his service, he had progressed to the point in his utter devotion to sin and to the kingdom of darkness that he was utterly ruined. [00:13:36] Don't miss the point here. He gave himself over completely and utterly in service to the kingdom of darkness. And what he got as a reward was to be utterly ground into nothing. There is hardly anything left of this man. [00:13:53] That was his reward for serving Satan and the demons. [00:13:59] This man is ruined. It's painful just to read the story. [00:14:03] It's hard to get the words out. [00:14:06] There's nothing of this man left. Let's look at it. [00:14:11] This man was so violent that he lost his family and his home. [00:14:18] He didn't just lose his home, he lost his mind. [00:14:25] We talk about that. One of the scariest things sometimes for us is to think is that perhaps as we age, we might begin to lose our minds. This man wasn't aged yet, but he had lost his mind. The police tried to lock him up to help him, to keep him from hurting himself and others. [00:14:43] But he was so deranged, he broke free. [00:14:46] They couldn't control him. Today we would try to put someone like this in a mental institution. They tried to do something similar. They couldn't help him. [00:14:58] The demons then drove him out into the wilderness and like a madman, he went around raving stark naked. [00:15:08] Lost his home, lost his mind. He's naked with no clothes. [00:15:15] He lost. What's further, he lost his identity. [00:15:19] Now, grownups might understand that. Children. That's kind of a big word. We don't use that very often. What do we mean when we say, your identity? This is who you are? [00:15:30] Look at what Jesus says. [00:15:32] Verse 27. [00:15:39] I'm sorry, verse 30. Verse 30. Jesus asked the man, what is your name? What is your name? That's asking. Your identity or children? That's asking, who are you? Jesus says, who are you? What do you say when someone asks who you are? We say, well, I'm Stephen, or I'm Clara, or I'm Bill. [00:16:06] My name is who I am. When Jesus asks, what is your name? He's asking, who are you? [00:16:17] He no longer knows who he is. [00:16:20] He says, I am Legion. [00:16:25] He now identifies wholly and completely with the demons who indwell him, who possess him. [00:16:34] He lost his home, his family, his mind, his clothes, his identity. Who he is is gone. [00:16:42] It gets worse. I told you this was dark. It gets worse. Look with me at verse 27. [00:16:53] It says, For a long time he had worn no clothes and he had not lived in a house but among the tombs. Luke is very clear for us here, very sort of vivid in describing this. He's saying this. This man had not lived in a house with four walls and a roof. Instead, he lived in tombs. Now we think of tombs and maybe we imagine someone who sleeps at night in the shade of gravestones. That's not what Luke is saying. [00:17:27] They didn't dig graves six feet down, bury the body, and then fill it with sand. [00:17:34] They would dig a hole in the side of a hill, or they would use a cave. They would lay their dead bodies in holes or in caves. What Luke is saying is that instead of living in a house with four walls and a roof, this man, at night slept with dead bodies in caves. [00:17:56] He lived, slept with the dead. [00:18:05] Do you see how the kingdom of darkness treats its subject, especially its most loyal ones? [00:18:14] They serve one purpose. Fallen humanity serves one purpose. For Satan and the demons to be used and abused and ground into nothing. [00:18:27] That's what it's like out there in the world without Jesus Christ. [00:18:33] To torment, to oppress, to mar and to degrade the image of God in man. [00:18:40] I'm not exaggerating. [00:18:42] Consider the Last hundred years. 150 years. [00:18:48] Many nations around the globe used the power that they had to kill millions of their own people. [00:18:59] Millions slaughtered pointlessly. [00:19:07] And it's not just out there. [00:19:09] Here in the United States, for the last 50 years, we have been slaughtering our most helpless unborn children. [00:19:19] And now today, in the last couple decades, we've even begun to slaughter, kill the elderly. [00:19:28] That's demonic. That's the kingdom of darkness at work, make no mistake. [00:19:38] But back to this man. Naked, living with corpses, living alone. [00:19:45] Why? Why do not just Luke, but Matthew, Mark and Luke tell us about this man who is dead while he yet lives. [00:19:59] Because this man is you. [00:20:03] He's your mirror. This morning you look in a mirror, you see a picture of yourself. [00:20:08] This man is your mirror today. [00:20:13] He's a picture of you. And he's a picture of me. He's a picture of every sinner in this world. [00:20:20] All of us have the same capacity as this man. The same fallen human nature that's capable of wicked, terrible things to others and to ourselves. [00:20:33] We, like him, are dead, though we appear to be alive. Jesus says in John, chapter six that as he preaches the gospel, he's preaching the gospel to dead men, calling them to life. [00:20:48] Paul says in Ephesians 2, we were dead in our trespasses and sins in which we formerly walked. [00:20:58] If we, like this man, give ourselves over to our passions, whether it's violence, lust, greed, anger, whatever our passions are, if we give ourselves over to them, we can very easily end up just like this man. [00:21:15] Naked, homeless and without our loved ones, perhaps even losing our minds. [00:21:25] No. You don't think so? [00:21:27] You think this man could never be me? [00:21:33] This happens all the time, this kind of a thing. [00:21:37] I've driven enough around Tucson. Here, I know you see the people living under bridges and sitting on street corners. [00:21:45] They've lost their homes, they've lost their families. Many of them have lost their minds. [00:21:50] Why? They pursued the sinful passions and desires of their hearts and Satan ground them into nothing. [00:21:59] This is not so far removed from us as you think. [00:22:03] You say, oh, no. I was raised in the church. [00:22:07] I'm a Christian. I'm baptized. This couldn't be me. [00:22:13] I hope not. [00:22:15] But remember that as you read the gospels, most of the demons that Jesus cast out of people, where were they? [00:22:23] They were possessing Jewish. Jewish people, people in the Old Testament Church. [00:22:31] There's a case of a man sitting in a synagogue pew, that is in the worship service at God's church, that Jesus had to cast a demon out of. [00:22:45] This man is you. This man is me in our sin. [00:22:50] And we have to see ourselves in him. [00:22:53] We have to see that, like him, we are full of sinful passions and we need Jesus to break us free from this darkness. Let's look secondly now at how Jesus breaks the darkness. [00:23:19] This story is the story of an invasion. [00:23:24] Jesus came to invade enemy territory, the Gentile nations where Jesus went to. He crossed the Sea of Galilee coming from where God's people were in Galilee, the place where there was the light of God's word, where people worshiped God. He came from where God's people were into Gentile territory, the nations that were under the control of Satan. [00:23:55] Jesus left Israel and went on a mission, a military expedition. [00:24:04] Jesus and his 12 commandos get in the boat and they make an amphibious landing in enemy territory. That's the imagery. Luke is getting us here, to use modern terms. [00:24:17] And as he and his 12 commandos land and get out of the boat, who comes out to meet him? [00:24:24] But a whole battalion of enemies, full strength, A legion of demons. [00:24:34] Don't miss the imagery. This is war. [00:24:39] Now, perhaps you begin to see here where the apostle Paul gets his language. In Ephesians, chapter six, he says, we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against spiritual forces, against rulers, against powers, against world forces of this darkness in the heavenly places. [00:25:03] Paul gets his cue from Jesus. [00:25:07] We aren't fighting the people that we see with our eyes. We're fighting the demons who control them. [00:25:16] Jesus came to defeat the spiritual forces of darkness and to set men free. [00:25:23] And we need to get Jesus distinction here for ourselves. [00:25:27] It's a very important one. He came to fight the powers of darkness that gives us great hope because we know we struggle with them. [00:25:36] But he didn't come to fight the slaves. He came to set the slaves free. That gives us great hope and great comfort because we were slaves to that kingdom of darkness. And Jesus came to set us free. But remember this distinction as you go out into the world, dear Christian, see Jesus compassion for you, and remember that compassion for others. [00:26:06] When you're on the aisle in the grocery store and you see someone bound over to the delusion of transgenderism, it's delusion. [00:26:14] That's what it is. [00:26:16] When you see someone living in that terrible delusion, do you want to hide your children from it? Do you want to walk back around the corner and go away? [00:26:28] I have sympathy with that. But don't forget Jesus. Compassion here. [00:26:35] He looks beyond the person, the flesh and blood, and he sees who's controlling that person. And he has compassion on the person. And he fights the demons. [00:26:48] Who are you fighting against? The slave or his overlords? Jesus came to fight the powers of darkness and he defeated them for this poor man, as he does for everyone who comes to him. [00:27:02] The invasion, now the defeat. Now there's not much of a fight here, is there? [00:27:07] The battle is extremely short. [00:27:10] A legion comes out to fight against 13 men. [00:27:15] These men are no match for the demon, the demons and the demon possessed man. [00:27:21] No one has been able to stop him. His family who loved him, tried to help him. When they couldn't help him, they went and got the police who tried to lock him up to help him. [00:27:33] Nobody could help him. These 13 men, they stand no chance. [00:27:38] And yet by the time the legion reaches Jesus, the battle is over. [00:27:46] Look at verse 28. Seeing Jesus, the man cried out and he fell at Jesus feet. That's it. He saw Jesus. He saw who he was. And that was it. It was over. [00:28:02] And it's not just a white flag, you know, when you're fighting a war, if each side is relatively honorable, you get to the point where you realize you're probably going to lose. [00:28:13] You wave a white flag and you go out and the two generals try to negotiate terms of surrender. Let's put an end to this battle. Let's stop the bleeding and the casualties. Let's find a way to negotiate peace. [00:28:30] There is no negotiating here. The terms of surrender, it's not a negotiation here. The legion of demons is cowering, sniveling and groveling at the feet of Jesus. [00:28:50] This is utter disgrace and defeat. [00:28:54] The legion that tormented the man with no mercy now pleads with Jesus for mercy. Don't torment us. [00:29:05] Don't send us to the abyss. [00:29:09] The what? The abyss. [00:29:13] The pit. [00:29:15] Hell. [00:29:17] The place of God's eternal judgment, prepared for sinful mankind and for fallen rebellious angels. The demons. [00:29:28] Just like this legion. [00:29:30] Jesus, don't send us to our eternal judgment. [00:29:35] You see, the demons know exactly who they're facing. [00:29:39] Jesus is the master of the universe, their Creator and their judge. [00:29:47] They are terrified at the feet of Jesus because they know that the one who has the power to judge them and to send them to their eternal destruction and torment stands before them. And they grovel and they snivel. [00:30:06] That's your Jesus? [00:30:08] That's my Jesus. [00:30:11] The demons who torment us cower at his feet. [00:30:17] Look to Jesus, the demons fall before him. [00:30:24] Now we come to one of the more curious things in scripture. The pigs. [00:30:32] We wonder what's going on here. The demons beg to be allowed to go somewhere, somewhere other than the abyss, anywhere, even that herd of pigs over there let us go into them. [00:30:47] Have you wondered, I'm sure you've wondered if you've read this before, why does Jesus allow them to go into the herd of pigs? [00:30:57] And why does Jesus let them, it seems to us, let them kill the herd of pigs. [00:31:05] That might be how we tend to read this. Jesus lets them go into the pigs and he allows them to kill the pigs. And of course, there was a bacon shortage in that area, right? You know, nobody missed this, but that seems to be the point. Nobody missed what happened. [00:31:24] They saw it. Everybody heard it, felt it. [00:31:28] It was obvious. It was a clear sign. [00:31:34] Jesus didn't just allow them to go into the pigs, he sent them into the pigs. [00:31:41] Why? Because Jesus was showing both the demons and us that he had come to destroy the kingdom of darkness. [00:31:51] He sent the demon possessed pigs, just like Pharaoh's army into the bottom of the Red Sea. He sent the demon possessed pigs into the ocean to drown and be destroyed. [00:32:05] To show a clear sign of his victory over the kingdom of darkness. [00:32:11] Make no mistake. Jesus is master. [00:32:15] He's in control. [00:32:18] And he's sending them and us a message. [00:32:21] I've defeated you. [00:32:26] Now that legion of demons that tormented this man is probably still out there somewhere today tormenting someone else. [00:32:35] But Jesus showed His complete and utter control over them. [00:32:40] And what is more, you have his clear promise through this sign. One day he will take that legion of demons and every other demon that tormented you or your family members and your loved ones. He's going to send them all into the abyss because he has complete control and mastery over them. [00:33:04] Dear Christian, do you struggle with sin like I do? Do you wrestle with lusts? [00:33:12] Do you wrestle with selfishness, with anger, with whatever else it is, whatever your vices, whatever your weakness is, do Satan and his demons come at you again and again and again and again? You fall into sin, you say, how many times, Lord? [00:33:32] You find yourself confessing that sin. Week after week it drags you down. [00:33:41] Your Jesus came to break the darkness and to break you free from it. Don't look to yourself. Don't look to your sin. Don't look to the powers of darkness. Look to Jesus and He will set you free. [00:33:58] We want to look thirdly and finally at the slavery of light. [00:34:04] Jesus sets us free from the kingdom of darkness, but he makes us his servants, his slaves. [00:34:12] Jesus set this man free. [00:34:15] How does Jesus treat his servants? Take a look once more at this man. This man was a mirror of our sinfulness, of our own capacity for self destruction. [00:34:28] Let's see how he is a mirror for what Jesus does to us in the new creation. [00:34:35] He makes the man whole again, doesn't he? [00:34:38] The people heard the report of the pigs and of the man who was possessed by Legion being set free. And they came to see what's going on. Who is this man and what has he done to the crazy demon possessed man? [00:34:56] And it says that they found the crazy man, the wicked man, whole again, complete sound, healed in every part, almost point for point. Luke shows us how Jesus healed the man and restored him. He was naked, but Jesus clothed him. He was possessed by a demon. [00:35:22] And Jesus restored him to his right mind. [00:35:25] He was living in tombs among the dead. Jesus sends him home to his family to live again amongst the living. [00:35:37] He was violent towards everyone and yet he calmly sits at Jesus feet, soaking up the good news of the Gospel. [00:35:48] Every single thing that was wrong with this man, Jesus heals. [00:35:54] Here Jesus is pouring his life giving Gospel, the bread of life into the man. [00:36:01] And the man is completely changed. [00:36:05] No one else could do this. [00:36:07] And you know that, don't you? And you wrestle with your sin. No one else can heal. You can change, you can mend, you can make you whole again. Only Jesus, the man's family couldn't help him. The authorities tried, they couldn't help him. But Jesus, who set him free, can also heal him and make him whole. [00:36:30] You see again, not just the slavery, the chains of sin, those are no match for Jesus, but the wounds, the tears of sin, the destructiveness of sin, it too is no match for Jesus and his healing, restorative power. [00:36:50] Jesus takes what he set free and he makes it whole. [00:36:56] This is what Jesus does for sinners like you and me. [00:36:59] Everything the devil has done to us, everything we have done to ourselves, everything we've done to our families, all sorts of things, right? Wounded hearts, deeply ingrained patterns of sin that we can't seem to set ourselves free from or to correct and to right the wrongs that we've done, all of it, Jesus has the power to heal it. Now. There are some things that we don't experience full healing in this life, but we will in the next when we receive our glorified resurrected bodies. Even the scars on our bodies that we have given ourselves in our sin. Even those will be healed and we will be restored, body and soul, completely. [00:37:48] Jesus picks us up and he heals it all. [00:37:54] There's one more thing I want you to see in this man. He's our mirror for Jesus healing power, but he's our mirror for one more thing. If that's what Jesus does for us, that should change us, right? [00:38:10] Look once more into this man's eyes and see his love for Jesus. It's one little phrase, one little verse, but it's there. [00:38:22] There's a dramatic change in this man. The man under the demons hated Jesus. With the demons under their influence, he rushed out to meet Jesus in battle. [00:38:34] I don't know exactly what he saw. Perhaps he saw another master, more powerful and worse than the demons. [00:38:42] Please don't torment me. Don't send me to the abyss, the demons said through this man. I don't know what he saw. I don't know what he thought. [00:38:52] But he was hostile, violent, driving everyone away, it would appear, including Jesus. [00:39:01] But now he sits at Jesus feet, listening to him. And when Jesus turns to go, he begs Jesus, please let me be with you. [00:39:16] And the ESV gets the translation just right here. Most English translations say, please let me follow you. [00:39:26] And the impression you get, and maybe even as we read this, the impression you got, was that he's asking, like the disciples, to follow along after Jesus. [00:39:37] But the words there are very simple, and they simply say, let me be with you, Jesus. [00:39:46] This is the man's love and tenderness and desire for Jesus. His plea, his begging, is simply to be with his Savior. [00:39:57] Whether you're here or whether you're somewhere else, wherever you are, wherever you go, I want to be with you. [00:40:07] The one who has shown me kindness and love and compassion and tenderness, who did for me what no one else could do. Dear Jesus, I want to be with you. [00:40:18] I don't want to be apart from you. [00:40:23] That's what he wants, more of Jesus. [00:40:28] Now, of course, Jesus calls him to go, to go to his family, to his loved ones, to his city, and tell them all about him. And we could give you another sermon on how we ought to, out of this heart of compassion and love, tell everyone about the Jesus who changed us. [00:40:46] But I want to leave you with this. [00:40:49] Where is your heart, dear Christian, now that Jesus has transformed you, does it pine for Jesus, your Savior? Do you wake up longing for him? During the day, as you're busy about your work? Does your heart tug for Jesus? [00:41:11] Or have you forgotten how Miserable this life is. [00:41:15] How awful things were under your old master. [00:41:20] Have you forgotten the devil? [00:41:24] Does the darkness not quite seem as dark to you as it once did many days? That's me, too. [00:41:32] Look once more into this man's eyes, into this man's heart and soul, and be warmed by his love for Jesus. [00:41:41] Cry out to Jesus and say, jesus, oh, how you have loved me. [00:41:47] I love you. [00:41:51] Remember once more this morning the sweetness, the kindness, the tenderness and mercy of Jesus who saw you in sin, in darkness, when you hated him and were hostile to him. He saw you and he loved you. And he came and died for you so that he could set you free and heal you. [00:42:13] Let's pray. [00:42:20] O Lord our God, as we come before your love, your great compassion and tenderness, we come before it shining so brightly in the face of Jesus, our Savior. [00:42:39] And we confess that there is yet sin in our hearts. [00:42:45] There is yet a shadow. [00:42:48] And as we lean into that shadow, the darkness outside of us calls to us. [00:42:56] O Lord Jesus. We hear though this morning your voice calling louder. We hear and see your kindness and mercy brighter and warmer, driving out the darkness in us. [00:43:11] O Holy Spirit, we ask that you would unite us evermore to Christ our Savior, and that you would fill our hearts with love for him. [00:43:20] We ask and plead with you, Lord Jesus, that you would deal with us, for we have need of healing. [00:43:29] We need you to take those sick and cancerous parts of our heart and heal them, cut them out, remove the desires for sin and replace them with desires for love, for kindness, mercy, patience and gentleness. [00:43:46] Help us, like this man, to find healing and to find change. A change for what is new and renewed, that we might please you and that we might love and serve all around us. We ask that, like this man, you would transform our whole lives, both as individuals, as families, and as a congregation. That we might be filled with your love, that we might be like a beehive, abuzz with work and labor that serves one another and that pleases you. [00:44:21] O Lord Jesus, we have many things, many requests to bring to you. [00:44:27] We think first of your kingdom. [00:44:31] We thank you that you have exalted yourself in mercy and in goodness upon the cross, and that even now you reign on high in heaven in new life and that you exalt yourself over your church. And as men and women come to you, more and more people have your name upon their lips and more and more glory comes to you. We then ask for the work of those who preach the gospel and for your missionaries around the world, wherever they are. Lord Jesus, we ask that you would work by your word and spirit, drawing men and women out of darkness and into life. May your kingdom come. [00:45:13] We ask for physical needs too. Lord Jesus, you are king and kings, King of kings and Lord of lords. And we ask that you would work in the government that you have given us at national, state and local levels. That you would use the men and women in our government to work your justice, to reward those who do good and to punish those who do evil. And that you might, through the government, bring about a state in society not only so that evil is restrained, but so that we, as your people, might lead quiet and godly lives pleasing you. And that we might also proclaim the gospel freely to those around us. [00:45:57] Lord Jesus, we ask for needs closer to home. We thank you for the gift of teachers of schools in home schools and in Christian schools and in public schools. And we ask that you would bless both those who teach and those who are students. And that you would use the teaching and the studies to bring glory to yourself and to develop our children and to young men and women who please you and who love to serve you in your world that you have made. [00:46:28] Lord Jesus, we look even closer to our own homes. We ask your blessing on our marriages and on our families as we seek to lead them in a way that pleases you. May our homes be filled with love, with kindness, with words that point each other to Christ, that encourage each other. And we pray that you would put away from us bitterness, anger and frustration, take selfishness away and fill our hearts with your love. [00:47:01] We ask, Lord Jesus, that you would be with all those who are in need. That you would care for and provide for the poor and give work to those who need it. Grant healing to the sick. Be with those who are in their old age and feeble. And we ask that you would be with those especially who whose hearts are troubled. Quiet those who are anxious. Bind up those who are brokenhearted and heal those who are doubting. Strengthen their hearts and give them greater faith. O Lord Jesus, we commit ourselves to you, seeking help from you. Through your Holy Spirit, we lift these things in Jesus name. Amen.