Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - With a Troubled Man

Episode Date: November 29, 2023

The real Jesus believed in demons. The real Jesus believed in the devil. Most of us say, “They didn’t understand then what we understand now about diseases and mental illnesses. They attributed them to demons.” But in Matthew 4:24, you see something that explodes that whole idea.  In Matthew 4:24, it says they brought all manner of sick people to him, and then they have a list: they say there were demon-possessed people, paralyzed people, and people with madness. Both the gospel writers and Jesus understood there were illnesses that had a demonical base and illnesses that did not. In other words, Jesus did not believe in demon possession out of ignorance, but out of conviction. If you screen that out, you’ll miss important insights for living your life.  Mark 5 teaches us at least three things about evil: 1) the power of evil, 2) the patterns of evil, and 3) the pattern for the healing. This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on February 2, 1997. Series: The Real Jesus Part 2; His Life. Scripture: Mark 5:1-20. Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

Welcome to Gospel in Life. For many of us, trusting Jesus with our lives is challenging. How can we trust Him in light of so much suffering and pain? How can we know He is the one who will make things right, both in our lives and in the world? Today on Gospel in Life, Tim Keller continues looking at the gospels to show us who the real Jesus is and what that means for our lives. 3.

Read with me, if you please. Mark 5 verses 1 to 20. They went across the lake to the region of the Garacines. When Jesus got out of the boat, a man with an evil spirit came from the tombs to meet him. This man lived in the tombs, and no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain. For he had often been chained hand in foot, but he tore the chains apart, and broke the irons on his feet.

No one was strong enough to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and in the hills he would cry out and cut himself with stones. When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and fell on his knees in front of him. He shouted at the top of his voice, what do you want with me, Jesus, son of the most high? Swear to God that you won't torture me. For Jesus had said to him, come out of this man, you evil spirit.

When Jesus asked him, what is your name? My name is Legion, he replied, for we are many. And he begged Jesus again and again not to send them out of the area. My name is Legion," he replied, for we are many. And he begged Jesus again and again not to send them out of the area. A large herd of pigs was feeding on the nearby hillside. The demons begged Jesus, sent us among the pigs, allow us to go with them. He gave them permission, and the evil spirits came out and went into the pigs. They heard about 2,000 a number rushed down the steep bank into the lake and were drowned.

Those tending the pigs ran off and reported this in the town and countryside and the people went out to see what had happened. When they came to Jesus, they saw the man who had been possessed by the legion of demons, sitting there, dressed, and in his right mind, and they were afraid. Those who had seen it told the people what had happened to the demon possessed man and told about the pigs as well,

and then the people began to plead with Jesus to leave their region. As Jesus was getting into the boat, the man who had been demon possessed begged to go with him. Jesus did not let him, but 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. So the man went away and began to tell in the decapolis how much

Jesus had done for him and all the people were amazed. This is God's Word. Unfortunately for us, if you know anything about the book of Mark, you know that Mark is a remarkably pithy writer, he never puts a single word in that's not a way and important. He's incredibly brief, and this is a very long passage, which means it's actually chuckful of things to comment on, but we can't look at it all. Let me just remind you of a couple things that I usually remind you of at the very end of the service. There are always some premises, there are always some questions and some issues that I don't raise in a sermon, but which you can tell I'm assuming. And then there are always a lot of questions that a sermon raises, which need to be worked out.

And that's the reason we have our classes after both the morning and our evening service. Like today, starting at 12, we've got classes. Some of the classes are very, very directly related to the premises. For example, the credibility of Christianity, overview of theology. These are classes that talk about how do you know there is the Bible's to be trusted? How do you know Jesus is who he said he is? Overview of theology talks about what do we actually believe are the basic tenants of Christianity? What do we have to believe to be a Christian? What

don't we have to believe? Where are we free to believe something else? And those things are premises. And you need, if you come here and you want to say, yeah, I wish you'd answered that question, it seems to assume it. It's because you can't do that every time in every sermon. And you really need to go to classes like that. On the other hand, this brings up issues that have to be worked out.

What does it mean to live the Christian life? What does it mean to work this out in my life? And there's a whole other set of classes, most of all the rest, are listed out here in every two months, basically, every seven weeks we changed many of them. The basic premise classes we always hold, the other ones, they're kind of working at your Christianity into your life, we're continually changing, though they come around every so often. And you know, today, for example, somebody's going to certainly ask me, do you believe

demons can still possess people? I'm not going to talk about that in the next 20 to 25 minutes, but I have a question and answer time afterwards, and I'm already for you. I figure some, you know, about 100 people usually show up at that, and they say, what about this? What about that? And if you want to do that, I'm very happy to meet you at 12 o'clock, under the clock, right there in the middle of our auditorium. We're looking at the events in the life of Jesus, and what we're really trying to find is who's the real Jesus? The real Jesus believed in demons.

The real Jesus believed in the devil. In Matthew chapter 424, for example, we've got a verse that really helped me understand this some years ago. See, most of us, when we read these passages about Jesus casting out demons, we say, ah, yes, the gospel writers, and even Jesus himself, there were men of their time. And they didn't understand what we understand now, and that is we understand that there's viruses that are the basis for disease, maybe, or they didn't understand the whole idea of mental illness.

They didn't understand these things, and they attributed them to devils and demons. That was a pre-scientific worldview. And when you get to Matthew 424, you see something that explodes that whole idea. That's a place where it says, they brought all manner of sick people to him, and then they have a list. It says, they brought all manner of sick people to him.

Demon possessed people, paralyzed people, and then literally Matthew says, those touched by the moon. And that was just a Greek word that had to do with madness. And the point is that both Matthew and Jesus, both the gospel writers and Jesus, understood that there was paralysis, madness, disease, that had a demonical base, and that kind of paralysis and disease

that did not. They understood that. In other words, Jesus Christ did not believe, indeed, in possession out of ignorance, but out of conviction. And if you screen that out, you won't understand who the real Jesus is. But even beyond that, if you screen it out, you'll miss very important, very important, profound insights and teaching. This passage gives you for living your life.

And here's what it is. This passage teaches us at least three things about evil. The first thing it teaches us is the power of evil. Specifically, the first lesson is that evil in this world cannot be understood, is simply in human terms and it cannot be dealt with simply through human resources. The power of evil, the complexity of evil, the Bible teaches, is such that if you try to understand it, simply in human natural terms such that if you try to understand it, simply in human natural terms, and if you try to deal with it simply in human natural terms,

you will be defeated. I mean everybody knows if you underestimate it, enemy, you're gonna be defeated. And that's what this is teaching us. This is actually saying that there is more to evil than the human. There is more to evil than the human. There is more to evil than the natural. The Bible teaches that there's evil in us and outside of us and above us. The Bible teaches us that there's both natural

and supernatural evil. The Bible teaches us that evil has a transcendent dimension and that if you don't admit that or don't see that, you run into tremendous problems. Now, you see, look here in verse 2 and 3. We're told the man was in a tomb and he was experiencing a living death. And Mark is the only one of the gospel writers that keeps saying, no one. No one could bind him. No one could help him. No one could restrain him.

And look what it says in verse 3. No one is help him. No one could restrain him. Look what it says in verse 3, no one is strong enough. Now that's the first lesson. Just let me develop this for a little bit. This is extremely practical. Let me show you that at both the corporate level and at the individual level, we have a tendency, especially we modern people in the West. We have a tendency to radically underestimate evil.

We want to believe it's strictly a human phenomenon. And as a result, we're continually being defeated about it. Now, for example, corporately, for the last hundred or 150 years, the intelligent people in the West have said, all evil, whether we're talking about selfishness or violence, you know, on an individual level, if we're talking about war or crime or poverty or racism on a corporate level, all evil can be reduced, analyzed, understood, and dealt with because it's got human roots.

Now some people say, if you get rid of the transcendent, if you get rid of the idea of God and the devil, then you say, well, why do we do these things to each other? Now, some people would take more of a psychological approach. They would say the reason there's violence and selfishness in people is that we've got psychological problems. We weren't loved properly. We had an adequate family background and so forth.

So we deal with evil through counseling. Some people like more of a sociological view. They say, well, racism, for example, and poverty is a result of unjust social system. And therefore, it can be dealt with through education and social policy and programs. Other people would say, no, a lot of the problems we have are only physiological. They're the results of evolutionary biology of natural selection. They're survival of the fittest. And we have to deal with it really

through chemicals, chemistry. It's chemistry that makes us aggressive. It's chemistry that does this sort of thing. So we deal with it through drugs. But you see, when I said, for the last 100 to 150 years, we've been looking at evil as strictly human, something that we can manage, something we can control, something we can analyze, something we can prescribe, something we can deal

with. That period is ending. We are being trounced by evil. We are giving up all those kinds of sanguine ideas. We have been working at doing this. We've been working at the council and we've been working at the council, and we've been working at the social programs. We've been working at these things. Things are not getting better.

Some of you know, if you were here last year, and there's always a significant turnover from you to year, but last year, during this time of the year, I did a series on sin and the faces of sin. And I read two books as a background. And one of them, some of you remember I used to quote from it, because it really had an impact on me. It was a man written by Columbia University professor named

Andrew Del Bonco, and he wrote a book called The Death of Satan. And I heard an interview with him on a talk show, a WNYC, that was pretty intriguing. When I put that together with a book, and he was asked, why are you saying it's bad for society that we've lost the sense of transcendent evil? That's what he says. He says it's bad for us, that we've lost Satan

and the whole idea of God's Satan and transcendent dimension of evil. And when he was asked on the talk show, why he did that? He said, in fact, somebody said, why would a guy like you, a secular liberal person by your own definition? Why would you write a book like this? This is what he said. A paraphrase, of course, and summarize.

He says, I am the child or the grandchildren of Eastern European Jews and therefore people in my family went through the Holocaust. And my relative died in the Holocaust. He says, now, if you get rid of the idea, if you get it the rid of the idea of the transcendent, if you say when it comes right down to it, evil is only the result of human frailty, human mistakes, human problems.

He says, we've got a problem. In fact, this is a quote from his book. He says, and I'll just show you why he says it here in a second. He says, a gulf is opened up in our culture between the visibility of evil and the intellectual resources available for coping with it. A gulf has opened up, and he says, the holocaust is where it started. He says, we don't have the intellectual resources. He says, let me ask you a question.

Why did the Holocaust happen? How do you explain that? If you get rid of the idea of God and the transcendent and of the devil, he says psychologically, are we gonna say that the Nazis just lack love in their life? That they weren't parented right, they had low self-esteem. He says, that trivializes it.

But do you say, as some people are saying, it was a product of the racism of northern European culture. At the reason that they did it, was because northern European culture is more racist than other kinds of cultures. But then you have the same kind of dehumanizing, you see, racist approach to that that was the cause of the problem to begin with.

He says, are you going to say, in fact, he says, if you get rid of the idea of God and He says, are you going to say, in fact, if you get rid of the idea of God in the devil, are you going to say that really all of our aggression is just the product of evolutionary biology, natural selection survival of the fittest? He says in that case, if that's where it comes from, you have no right to be upset. It's natural. Look at nature. the strong of always eating the weak. He says, a gulf is opened up in our culture between the visibility of evil and our intellectual resources for dealing with it. And that's all this passage is saying. It is trying to say, if you decide that we can deal with evil because it's us and it's

only us, it's just human. It's psychological or sociological or physiological. If you think so, you'll be defeated. No one could help him. No one was strong enough. No one. If you say, I can deal with the problems of my life if I just suck it up and really do what I know I'm capable of doing.

If you go to little classes where you tell people in elementary school, you can be anything you want to be. If you see that the slogan is safe, we just all pull together, we can make this world a better place. This passage says, no, you need a savior. No, you need intervention. Look at your own lives individually. You don't have to be demon-possessed to understand

this. You look at yourselves, you know you're out of control, you've got habits that you can't fix, you've got your driven in ways that you don't know what to do with. You're scared, there's things that scare you. Some of you just cannot, you know, we can make fun of commitment phobia. Some of you just can't do it. And so you've gone to therapy. And the therapy very often shows you the psychological way in which all this has come about. But then you turn to this therapist and say, okay, great, I understand. What do I do about it? And the therapist, most any reputable therapist will say, well, what do you think? Most any reputable therapist will say, well, what do you think? And on and on and on.

Why? Because you see what therapy can do is it can show you how you got into this condition. It cannot get you out. It doesn't get you out. Don't you know? You see it? No one can break the chains. The power of evil. If you think of it in merely human terms, if you

deal with it in merely human resources, we're going to be defeated and we are. Corporately we're defeated. Individually we're defeated. Okay. Second. The second thing that shows us is not just the power and complexity. Oh, how awful to say to you, New Yorkers and New Yorkers love to believe in complexity. They love to believe in sophistication. They're not simplistic. They're sophisticated. And when I say to you, if you don't believe in the devil, if you don't believe in transcendence of evil, you are looking at your problems too simplistically. You don't see the multi-dimensionality to them. You don't see the complexity of them. It's evil inside and evil outside and evil above.

You don't want to be naive. I mean, you know, New Yorkers don't mind being wrong as long as they're not naive. They don't mind being messed up as long as they're not naive. You think you're deep and complicated some of you, but you're more deep and complicated than you know. We'd like to help you prepare your heart for the Christmas season with our free Advent devotional series. Each day of Advent, you'll receive a devotional with a daily meditation on a Bible passage that points you to the meaning of Christmas, that Jesus came into this world to reconcile us to our Heavenly Father. It's our prayer that these daily devotionals will help you focus on the hope, joy, peace,

and love we have through our Savior's birth. To sign up, just visit gospelonlife.com-advent to receive a daily email from December 3rd through December 24th. That's gospelonlife.com slash advent. In addition to the daily emails, you'll also receive a previously recorded video every Sunday with an Advent Meditation from Tim Keller, followed by a brief discussion with Tim and Kathy. Again, to sign up, visit GospelOnLife.com slash advent. May the hope of Christ's birth be a source of joy and encouragement to you this

Advent season. Now the second point is that not only teaches about the power of evil, but it actually teaches us about the patterns of evil. It teaches us how evil actually operates in your life and actually teaches you way too much, but let me give you some basics. Just two. Two operational principles. The first one is that the more power evil gives you, the more takes away. Evil seems to give you strength. Evil seems to give you power, but at the same time it pulls it away. Look at verse two. He was Superman. He was the incredible Hulk. It says in verse 2, by the way, he was not only physically strong, but he was growing stronger. Notice, it says, this man lives

in the tombs and no one could bind him any more. In other words, he had been growing in strength. He had been growing in power, but he cried out all night and he cut himself with stones. The stronger he got, the weaker he got, the stronger he got, the more ceilings he broke through, the more he hated himself, he cuts himself. Now, this is the way evil always works. Now you can talk about it in the most basic ways and in all the old stories about the devil. Talk like that. Remember Faust, you remember Dam Yankees? Lola. Whenever somebody bargains with a devil, the devil gives them a power with one hand but takes away twice as much with the other.

The devil says, I'll give you success, I'll give you ability, I'll give you what you want, but through it I will enslave you. And that's what this guy's got. Increasing strength, but decreasing strength. At least, strengthen increasing the areas that don't count and strengthen decreasing the areas that don't count and strengthen decreasing the areas that do, which means that that's the way to evil operates. Well, somebody says, well, okay, you know,

but neither I nor any of my friends live naked in a cemetery and cut themselves. But I would like to suggest to you that the parallels go beyond that. One of the quotes, a quote from a book by Becky Pippert, out of the Salt Shaker, is one of the quotes that's informative in my way of thinking. If you've been around here, you've heard it before,

but you've probably never heard it in this context. Becky Pippert in her book, out of the Salt Shaker, says this. She says, no one is in control of themselves. And she puts it this way, I have to just find it. She says this. She says, no one is in control of themselves. And she puts it this way, you know, I have to just find it. She says, whatever you seek most in life becomes your Lord. It is unavoidable. The person who seeks power is controlled by power.

The person who seeks acceptance is controlled by the people he or she wants to please. We do not control ourselves. We're controlled by the Lord of our lives. Now, what is she saying? Whatever you seek is your Lord. Nobody is in control. She says, everybody's got to have a bottom line. Everybody's got to have something that you seek as your old and in value. Everybody's got to have one thing you say, if I get that, then I've got it. And everybody's got one thing that you say, that's the non-negotiable. I'd like to do many things, but when push comes to shove, I've got to have that. Everybody's got that. But you know what she's saying?

She's saying, whatever you love so much that it galvanizes you to achieve. At the very same time, it takes away, it takes away your freedom. And therefore, she says, if you decide to live for power, you will have to have that. If you decide to live for career, then you'll be absolutely bound to get it. And therefore, now here's the context. Some of you heard this before, and we put it to you this way. What Becky Pippert saying, what the Bible says, is that if you're not dealing with Christ, you are dealing with the devil. That if Christ is not the most important thing in your life, the devil has you. He has given you something that you have sold your soul to and though it galvanizes

you toward it at the very same time it pulls you away, it pulls away your freedom and bit by bit by bit. You will find that even if you achieve that place in your in your professional life, even if you achieve that relationship, you will find that you're cutting yourself underneath, there's an anxiety, underneath there's a fear, underneath there's a drivenness. That's what it's saying. If you don't deal with Christ, you are dealing with a devil. Unless Christ is first in your life,

you are foused, you are low-low, you are this guy. Oh, he's a lot further down the line than you. Don't you see? But notice it says any more. That scares me. It says he used to be like us. It was gradual. It grew. It moved on. Everybody is seeking something. Whatever you seek is your Lord. And anything but Jesus Christ gives you power takes it away.

And that means what are you living for? Some of you are living for independent, some for dependent, some for trampling on people, some for helping everybody. If you live to help people, you will need to help people. You will be controlled by it, no matter what it is, you're dealing with the devil. Do you see how it works? Do you see how it operates?

And do you see how gradual it is? That little, those little words anymore, tell me a lot, and what do they tell me? What they tell me is that the more power I get through serving something but Jesus, the less joy I I have and that goes on and on and on You know the implications are that means that this guy is not a different category from you and make me He is just at the end of a spectrum that we're on he's at the end of a continuum He's at the end of a road that we're on and the implications are this what is hell? Is hella place where a mean God throws people and turns up the burner?

Or is hell a place where God lets you do what you chose to do in this world and just let's it go on forever? It... It evil gives power and then takes away, evil grows and it splits you. Now there's really no time for that, but I'll just mention it this way. When he says, who are you, the man says, I'm Legion. And there's one thing that you're going to find is that if you serve any master but Jesus, you will find that it will split you. It will split you into pieces, it will split you into selves. There'll always be a self that seems to want to do good,

and there'll always be a self that says, no, I can't do it in that way, and it will split you. And I better just leave it at that. Evil in slaves. Evil grows. Evil vacuums not your joy. Evil splits you. But now last of all, how is the healed? This shows us the power of evil. This shows us the presence and the patterns of evil, but it also shows us last of all the pattern for the healing. And look at it this way. How does this man get healed? Step one, the first step is he comes running to Jesus and he sees Jesus for who he is. Notice this? This man is on his way to healing because unlike the Pharisees or even unlike a lot of the

crowds that thought Jesus was wonderful, but they didn't see who he was. This man looked carefully. First of all, this man is attracted to Jesus. He runs to him. It says, when Jesus got out of the boat, a man with an evil spirit came from the tombs to meet him. The man lived in the tombs and no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain. Okay? But he comes out to meet Jesus, and then it says,

when he saw Jesus from his distance, he ran. He didn't just walk. He didn't say, this is interesting. What's this guy? He runs to Jesus, and he fell on his knees in front of him, which is the posture of worship. But then it says,

he shouted at the top of his voice, what do you want with me? Jesus, son of the most high, swear to God that you won't torture me. This is a mark of somebody who actually sees the real Jesus. This is the first step to healing. If you see the real Jesus, you're attracted to him.

I don't know how many people have come here and over the years have told me this. They said, I don't believe in Christianity, I don't believe at all, but I can't stop coming because when you talk about Jesus, I'm attracted to Him. I don't believe in Him. I can't believe in Him. I'm an intelligent person, but I'm attracted to Him. That shows that you're at least looking. Anybody, regardless of your intellectual position, if you actually expose yourself to the narratives about him, you will see him unique, you will be amazed, you will be attracted to him, but at the same time, he kneels down and he says,

I think you're going to kill me. Because when you get near Jesus, you also sense what he sense, and that is, he is absolute and absolute authority, he's the most high. And therefore, I can tell, when I see somebody who's attracted to Christ, but who says, I don't want this. I don't want this. This will ruin my life.

My family will laugh at me. This will probably change everything. I don't want this. You see, until you see, not only the attractiveness of Jesus, but the utter demands that intimidate you and scare you to death, you haven't really come to grips with the real Jesus. Now, if you're in this condition, and some of you say, you know, that's me.

I'm attractive. I'm scared to death. I don't want to do it. I am much more sanguine about your condition, and much happier about your state and your trajectory, than the people who have never struggled or wrestled. People who say, well, of course, I've always believed. I've always believed, but I don't believe you need to get fanatical about religion.

You haven't seen the real Jesus. But here's what happens. By the way, you know Kenneth Clark. Kenneth Clark was the, used to be the director of the National Museum at the National Gallery in Britain. And he was the years ago on BBC, he did, he hosted a show called Civilization. Do you remember that? He wrote an autobiography and in the second volume of that autobiography, he says something really remarkable. And this shows exactly what happens when you come to grips. He says, I was in a villa in France some years ago,

and a curious episode happened to me. I had a religious experience. It took place in the church of Saint Lorenzo, but I did not seem to be connected with the beauty of the architecture. I can only say that for a few minutes, my whole being was radiated with heavenly joy, more intense than anything I had ever experienced before.

But wonderful as it was, it caused an awkward problem in terms of action. My life was far from blameless. I would have to reform. My family would think I was going mad, and perhaps, it was a delusion. For on moral terms, I seemed to be completely unworthy of such a flood of grace. So gradually effect wore off, and I made no effort to retain it and I think that was right. I was too deeply embedded in the world to change course but I felt the finger of God I'm sure and though the memory fades it still helps me now to understand the

joys of the saints. He got near, he felt the joy, he realized it would mean to change. And he says, now. And you see, this is the first step, to feel that tug. But here's the second step. When he says to Jesus, don't hurt me. He has, he's showing what the devil always does to you. The devil will show you the sovereignty of Jesus. He'll let you see the power of Jesus.

He'll let you say yes, you need to obey this one, but he'll never let you see the mercy of Jesus. He'll never let you see the grace of Jesus, never. This is what he did to Adam and Eve. He says, if you obey, and if you refuse to eat that tree, if you obey God, you'll miss out. That was the first law and here it is again. The devil will let you see the power of Jesus, the holiness of Jesus in that sense, but he'll say that will destroy you. If you give yourself to him, it will destroy you. That's what Kenneth Clark said. He says, if I come in, he felt the joy, he realized something

about the glory of God. But he says, if I give myself all the way, I'd have to give up this, I'd have to give up that, I've got family, my family, what would they think of it? Absolutely not. And at that point, Jesus shows in mercy. Because if you look carefully, you look very carefully,

we're told that Jesus had said, come out of this man, and then the man said, don't torment me. And then Jesus says, what is your name? Now, I don't believe Jesus would stop for a demon. He stopped the exorcism.

He slowed it down. He got sensitive. I don't think he'd stop for the exorcism. He slowed it down. He got censored. I don't think he stopped for the exorcism. You see at some points, in some places it says the man said, other places it says the demon said, if you did you look carefully. It says he begged Jesus again and again not to send them out of the area. And then over in verse 12 it says the demons begged Jesus, sent us among the pigs. The is, Jesus stopped the exorcism, slowed it down for the man because the man believed what the demons said, which is, if you give yourself utterly to Jesus Christ, he'll destroy you. You won't have a happy life.

You'll miss out on so much. You cannot be holy and happy. That's what the devil says. Holiness is over here, happiness is over here. Never the twain shall meet. And Jesus Christ shows him mercy, because in the very last verse, when he sums up what he's done,

he says, go home to your family and tell them how much the Lord is done for you and how he's had mercy on you. The devil will always hide grace. The devil will make you say, well, if you're really going to be a Christian, that means you're gonna have to clean up your act, and it means you're gonna have to get everything together, and it means you're gonna have to be very very good, and you'll never satisfy him, and you'll never be able to have a happy life, and you'll always have to say no to everything all the time. That's what the man was saying. He was down. He said, you're going to torment me. He comes before the Lord of grace, the Lord of love.

And he says, don't torment me. And Jesus says, I'm not into the tormenting business. Here's how we end. Don't be afraid to give yourself to him utterly. Don't be afraid. Years ago, there was an intervarsity Christian fellowship staff working in Paul Little. He and his son, Paul, Paul Jr.

died in a car crash many years ago. But I'll never forget a talk he gave. I heard the tape of it at a missionary conference many years ago. And this is how he said it. He said, can you imagine if my son came to me, my teenage son came to me and said, Dad, I want you to know I've been stealing some money from you here and there.

And I haven't been listening to you. And I've been sneaking around. I want you to know I want to be totally vulnerable to you. I want to trust you utterly. I want to give my life to you totally. From now on, I'm going to trust you. And I'm to be totally vulnerable to you. I want to trust you utterly. I want to give my life to you totally. From now on, I'm going to trust you and I'm going to open myself to you and I'm going to listen to everything you say.

I'm going to heed everything you say. Now Paul Little says, he says, a lot of you aren't parents, but can you imagine a situation like that? Let me ask you, what is your first response? Can you imagine what your first response would be? Would you say, aha, this is what I've been waiting for, into your room for a week, bread and water, no mercy, finally I have you in my power, he says, would you, would anybody in

this room even think about doing that, and how dare you think, so little of God, that you would imagine if you go to Him and lay out and say, I give myself utterly to you that he's going to do anything like that. Are you going to put them under God under you with all your foibles, with all your weaknesses? And you look around this room and you know that there's probably nobody else in this room that would do that. And yet you are going to put God down there. This man was afraid of the Lord of love. And the Lord of love showed he had nothing to be afraid of.

This man thought that what it meant to be a Christian was to be really good. And Jesus tried to show him that. What it meant to be a Christian is to be really repentant. And he opened up, and he showed him mercy. And there's three participles that were told, are so wonderful. It says that when they came out to see the man who had been demon possessed,

they said he was, they saw him there, three participles sitting at the feet of the master, a new master now, closed, the old master will rip you and strip you. The old master will always make you feel exposed. The old master will always make you feel exposed. The old master will always make you feel like I've naked. The old master will always make you feel like I'm anxious, afraid. I can never live up.

This master closes you. He's sitting, he's closed, and he's sane. He's got a whole new life and a whole new mission in life to tell what Jesus Christ had done for him. Do the same thing for you. You know what this table is? The power of evil mainly blinds your eyes to the fact that Jesus Christ is a God of grace. Some of you may not believe in God at all, but a lot of you may believe in God. But you really believe, when you think of Christianity, it's all a judgeery.

This table, this table shows you that Jesus died for you. He was broken for you. He was poured out for you. And this table shows you that you're wrong, that the devil's wrong, and that the deepest murmurs of your heart are wrong. The reason you don't give yourself to him completely, the reason you don't understand Christianity is the feast that

it is, because you don't see what he's done. Let this work it in. Let's pray. Our father we're about to stand up and confess our faith as we go to your table. And we're going to say, Jesus descended into hell. He did. He went down there, but he broke it a sender. He is one who was chained, but he broke them all the chains. He didn't break them in lunacy. He broke them in love and with power. And because he descended into hell,

and because he rose triumphantly over it, there is nothing that comes into our lives that he can't deal with. It doesn't matter how naked we are, it doesn't matter how self-hating we are, it doesn't matter what's going on in our inner space, it doesn't matter whether we're the Moniacs. Jesus Christ with a word of power, with a word of power, is able to cleanse us. The Lord, we also see that the way He cleanses us is by showing us the grace that we don't believe He's capable of. And we ask now that as we confess that both that power and that grace,

and as we protect of the bread and the wine, that that that lie would be dispersed forever. There are people here today who, because of their worry, because of their fear, need to know that, tell them through your table, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Your partnership helps more people discover the transformative power of Christ's love through this ministry. Just visit gospelandlife.com-slagepartner to learn more. That's gospelandlife.com-slagepartner. This month's sermons were recorded in 1996 and 1997. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast were preached from 1989 to 2017,

while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.