Step into Freedom

[coughing] Now let's look at Matthew chapter eight, beginning at verse twenty-eight.

Now what's happened here, just before I start, Jesus fed the five thousand.

Then he sends his disciples ahead of him to this area on the other side of the Lake of Galilee, which is not populated by Jewish people.

They are not Jews.

They are other kind of people.

And There's a storm that s- comes up, and Jesus walks on the water and scares his disciples half to death, and then he calms the storm, and that's where we pick up the story.

All right? And when he came to the other side, to the country of the Gadarenes, two demon-possessed men met him.

Now, I just wanna stick in here, the actual Greek text doesn't use the word possessed.

It just means demonized.

These are men afflicted by Je-- by demons.

They didn't actually belong to the demons.

[chuckles] They don't belong to them, they're just afflicted by them, all right? But, you know, when your king, James I, had the translation of the Bible done in 1605, they put in possessed, and every English translation since has just followed the same mistake that they made.

Anyway, that's kind of a freebie.

So two demon-possessed met him coming out of the tombs, so fierce 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.

And the herdsmen fled, and going into the city they told everything, especially what had happened to the demon-possessed men, the demonized men.

And behold, all the city came out to meet Jesus, and when they saw him, they begged him to leave their region.