Carter Conlon from the historic Times Square Church in New York City. How do we restrain the anger of this young generation? How do we stop these young people from going in and committing these crimes of violence? Everyone will ask the questions, and everyone will come up with solutions, except for the one solution that will make a difference. Welcome to another compelling message from Carter Conlon on this week's edition of A Call to the Nation. In Luke chapter 8, Jesus meets a demon-possessed man who lived nearby. The man struggled to cope because of the many demonic voices that tormented him. But when Jesus spoke to him, the man was able to hear only the voice of Jesus. This same power is available to those who live in America in this present age.
We need to silence the constant barrage of harmful talk and noise that surrounds us, and listen solely to the one voice that rises above them all. Here now is Carter. Verse 26 of Luke chapter 8 says, Then they sailed to the country of the Gadarenes, which is opposite Galilee. And when he stepped out on the land, there met him a certain man from the city, who had demons for a long time. And he wore no clothes, nor did he live in a house, but in the tombs.
In other words, here is a man, part of this society, a man that many people in this particular city were probably really aware of, maybe a type of a certain kinds of person that persons that we become aware of in our generation too as well. His first thing he says about him is he wore no clothes. So he's obviously unconcerned about his appearance. He dwelled in no house. He didn't live in a house. His family structure, whatever had been, was now broken down.
He was nurtured. There was no security in his life. And he dwelt in the place of tombs. He lived in a place of death. Romans chapter 6 and verse 23, the Word of God says that wages of sin is death. If people choose to live in sin, if sin becomes the dominant force in a society, then death starts like a tsunami. Death starts to come in and swallow that particular society. Elsewhere in the scriptures, it tells us that he was cutting himself with stones in this place. We live in a time when there's an epidemic.
There has been for a couple of decades of young people cutting themselves. And the warning signs were there. This is what was happening to this man. He's dwelling in a place of death. He's got no family structure. There's no security in his life.
He's got nobody to tell him the difference maybe at certain points in his life between right and wrong. We don't know if he was abandoned or what happened that brought about this myriad of demonic oppression in his life. But we do know that he was cutting himself and living in a place of death. But when he saw Jesus, verse 28 of Luke chapter 8, he fell down before him and with a loud voice, he said, What have I to do with you, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?
I beg you, do not torment me. Now, he knew about the reality of God in some measure, but he felt that he didn't want God to add to his torment. He had such a myriad of torment going on in his mind.
And some people are like that. In America today, there's a lot of people who have a knowledge of God, but they don't want the voice of God to be added to the multiples of voices that are now in their hearts and in their minds. But there's something interesting in chapter 8, verse 28. And the interesting thought is, no matter how many voices had gotten a hold of him, there is one voice that is above them all. There's one voice that has absolute authority. And we know from Scripture that he had over probably over a thousand voices going on in his head at one time, hundreds for sure, and potentially thousands of demonic voices speaking to him, leading him here, leading him there, causing him to have grief and causing him to do harm to himself and giving him the desire perhaps to do harm to others as well. But suddenly, the voice that created the universe moves into the situation. Even though it's a place of death, the voice that has the power to calm the storm and the wind and the waves, the voice that can call dead people out of graves and cause them to listen again or to live again, that voice is standing there. And it's interesting to know, because James says, you believe there is one God, you do well. The demons also believe and tremble. And no matter how many voices, no matter how many demonic powers were active inside this man's life, having dominion in a sense, there is another voice that came into that place of death. And every voice had to bow. That's what the Scripture says.
Every knee shall bow, and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. Verse 29 says he had commanded, that's Jesus, the unclean spirit to come out of the man. For it had often seized him, and he was kept under guard, bound with chains and shackles.
And he broke the bonds and was driven by the demon into the wilderness. He had a tendency to violence, and nobody knew how to restrain his anger. It's interesting that we're seeing in the news, in our generation now, there's this endless discussion of how do we restrain the anger of all these young people, young men in particular, that are growing up without the security of a home, without true guidance, with no knowledge of God, and suddenly raised on demonic videos and seeing endless scenes of violence on television and in movies, and suddenly we're so surprised when they begin to do what we taught them to do. And there's this discussion now that says, how do we restrain the anger of this young generation? How do we stop these young people from going in and committing these crimes of violence in our schools or shopping malls or churches or wherever it is, or just in public gatherings? Now, nowhere seems to be safe in society anymore.
Isn't it amazing that everyone will ask the questions and everyone will come up with solutions except for the one solution that will make a difference. We have, as a nation, turned from God and we need to turn back to God. We need to humble ourselves and pray again.
We need to turn from our wicked ways. The Bible says, if my people are called by my name will humble themselves and pray, seek my face, turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven. I will forgive their sin, and I will heal their land.
That's the promise of God, once spoken to the nation of Israel, that has an application, of course, to all of us today. Now, he was driven into the wilderness, no matter what kind of restraint that the people of that time tried to place upon him, he broke the restraints. And he was driven by this demonic power into this empty, dry, purposeless place.
And Jesus asked him in verse 30 and said, what is your name? And he said, Legion, because many demons had entered into him, many voices. We're living in a generation where there's so many voices, voices on the internet, voices in the schools, voices on the radio, voices on television.
Everybody has an opinion about almost anything. Angry voices are being raised up, voices of vengeance, voices that demonize anybody that has an alternate opinion to their own. And all these voices had entered into him and drove this man into this place of death and drove him into the place where he couldn't be restrained. And verse 31 says, they begged him that he would not command them to go out into the abyss.
I love that scene. That means that, let's say, a lot of people say that there was about a thousand demons in this man, or a thousand demonic voices speaking to him. Could be anything from the commentaries taken from 300 to 6,000.
So you determine. It's hundreds, if not thousands of voices. But the wonderful thing is that when Jesus comes on the scene, suddenly all of these voices have bent their knee and they're begging, they're literally begging the Son of God to have mercy on them because they knew they had no power in the presence of God.
Hallelujah. Now the devil can take years to infuse in society all of these voices that cause all this bitterness and division and anger and action and all these things that are going on in our generation. But when Jesus comes, every knee bow, every voice confesses that he is the Son of God. Every demonic voice starts literally begging for mercy.
Can Jesus come back to America again? In verse 32 it says, now they begged him not to command them to go out into the abyss. Now a herd of swine was feeding there on the mountain. So they begged him that he would permit them to enter them and he permitted them.
Now he's about to teach something to the people of this town. It's not that he was unkind to the pigs as it is. It's not that anything in the natural was going to be, the demons were not going to escape their fate because obviously the pigs ran down over the cliff and into the sea and drowned. So they lost their temporary abode.
So what is the lesson here? Verse 33 says, then the demons went out of the man and entered the swine and the herd ran violently down the steep place into the lake and drowned. Then those who fed them saw what had happened. They fled and told it in the city and in the country. Then they went out to see what had happened and came to Jesus and found the man from whom the demons had departed sitting at the feet of Jesus clothed and in his right mind. And they were afraid. They also had seen it told them by what means you had been demon possessed was healed. And when you go back into the gospel of Mark of the same story, the scripture says they also told them what had happened to the pigs.
Now you would think that the people would be excited about this. You would think that they would say, oh God, thank you for coming to us because we didn't know how to control this man. We were afraid of this man. We sent people, we sent emissaries into the cemetery to try to bind him, but he would always break the shackles and he was cutting himself. And we lived in fear because we never knew what he was going to do next.
It was so unpredictable. But here he is sitting at the feet of Jesus. He's now clothed.
That means he's presentable. He's got a sense of wholeness about him. And the scripture says he's in his right mind. He's actually thinking right thoughts about himself, about God, about the future, about the people. The myriad of voices were now gone out of him. And only one voice had remained.
The one who says I'm the way, the truth, and the life, and no man comes to the father except through me. But the scripture says they were afraid. So the question is what were they afraid of? I mean, they obviously had been afraid of this man in this garden, but suddenly there's a new kind of fear came upon them. And then verse 37 says, then the whole multitude of the surrounding region of the Gadarenes asked him, that's Jesus, to depart from them. And they were seized with great fear.
And he got into the boat and returned to Galilee, or he got into the boat and left. The whole multitude, what were they afraid of? I'm going to tell you what they were afraid of.
They were afraid of the loss of their pigs. They were afraid of having a God in their midst that was going to bring about some kind of a personal cost to the freedom that was going to come to others. They didn't want this kind of a religion. They wanted a God that would prosper them. They wanted a God that would make them eternally healthy and happy, and everyone would be wealthy, and there would be no more troubles, no more trials, no more sighing, no more groaning. They wanted it all here. They wanted it all now. But they did not want a Jesus in their midst that was going to cost them their livelihood or cost them something personally for the sake of other people getting free. That's what they were afraid of.
Realistically, they chose pigs over people. You have to wonder at what point in America did we do the same. At what point did we say, we don't want a Christ that demands that we follow him. We don't want a Christ that calls us to take up our cross and follow the will of our Father, which is always for the betterment of other people. We don't want the Spirit of God to call us to the mission field to have to sell off what we have and perhaps give to others. We want a Christ. You see, they didn't abandon religion.
They just abandoned Jesus. They wanted a religion that just let them come to whatever temple they went to and sit for an hour and hear nice songs and clap their hands and leave feeling happy. They didn't want anything that was going to cost them their comfort, their security, their livelihood, their money, the lifestyle that they wanted. You know, in America, in the Constitution, there's this undeniable right or inalienable right as it says, to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
And so basically what the church in America did at large, not ever were, thank God, but by and large, much of the church in America took that constitutional value system and brought it into the theology of the church. And so people coming into the house of God, it was about my life, my liberty, and the pursuit of my happiness. And this is the kind of a God I wanted to serve. I wanted a God who gave me a sense of well-being now. I wanted to be free, and I wanted to be happy, and I want money to go along with all of this.
And I don't want any kind of a relationship with God that's going to cost me anything. And so they begged him to leave. I don't know when America asked Jesus to leave, but I know he did go.
I don't know when the whole of society said, we don't want the kind of a Jesus that might cost us our pigs and our income and our livelihood, even if it results in a demonic man being set free. So they asked him to depart, and they were seized with great fear. And he got into the boat, and he left. Now the man, verse 38, from whom the demons had departed, begged him that he might be with him. But Jesus sent him away, saying, return to your own house and tell what great things God has done for you. And he went his way and proclaimed through the whole city what great things that Jesus had done for him. And so it was, verse 40, when Jesus returned, he actually did come back, that the multitude welcomed him, for they were all waiting for him.
Isn't that amazing? One man. Now I want you to think about this for a moment. This man didn't have a Bible. This man couldn't quote John 3.16 because it didn't exist back then. This man didn't even probably have an Old Testament.
This man had only one thing. He had had an encounter with Jesus, and he was now free. And Jesus said, now I want you just to go, and I want you to start speaking about what I've done in your life. Could it be that simple in this generation? Could it be that simple that we, as the people of God, who have had an experience with God, it's just time to start not quoting Scripture at people, but just say, hey, can I tell you what Jesus did for me?
Can I tell you? In Psalm 107, the psalmist begins in verse one by saying, oh, give thanks to the Lord for his good and his mercy endures forever. Oh, that we would give thanks to God. Oh, that our hearts would explode again with gratitude.
Oh, that we would be like this man in the Scriptures that we're reading about today, that we could go to our friends and our family and even our enemies and say, I've got to tell you what God has done in my life. And lastly, verse 23 says, those who go down to the sea in ships, they do business on great waters. Remember, they asked Jesus to leave because they didn't want their prosperity affected. They thought that financial gain was going to bring them security. The Lord is about to take that all away, folks. I think you're aware of it now. It's about to all be gone.
All the security on finance. And it's a mercy moment. Trust me, some say, well, it's irrevocable judgment. I don't agree with that. I say it's the mercy of God.
I'd rather go to heaven hungry than hell full, wouldn't you? Praise be to God. They go down to the sea in ships. They do business in great waters. They see the works of the Lord and his wonders in the deep. He commands and raises the stormy wind.
Think about the stock market for a moment, which lifts up the waves of the sea. They mount up to the heavens. Then they go down again to the depths and their soul melts because of trouble.
They reel to and fro and stagger like a drunken man and are at their wits end. Then they cry out to the Lord in their trouble and he brings them out of their distresses. He calms the storm so that its waves are still. Then they're glad because they're quiet and he guides them to their desired heaven. Oh, that men would praise the Lord and give thanks for his goodness and his wonderful works to the children of men. Let them exalt him also in the assembly of the people and praise him in the company of the elders. All it took is one man, one man.
All it takes in your neighborhood is one woman, one person, somebody somewhere. Maybe you see a group of listless kids on the sidewalk somewhere on a corner and you just say, can I just tell you what Jesus did for me? You don't have to quote a wagon load of scripture.
You don't have to give the Hebrew meanings of any words to these kids. The Gadarene man just had an experience with God and he went through 10 towns. Historians say it was a great revival when Jesus returned because he had told his story and the people were stirred by his story and said, and even though maybe they didn't admit it, maybe because he was the worst of the worst, perhaps some of them thought maybe the same Jesus can help my kids. Maybe the same Jesus can help my marriage. Maybe the same Jesus can help me with the voices that are tormenting my mind every night, waking me up in a sweat in the middle of the night. Maybe the same Jesus can help me.
And so when he did come back, they heard about it and word began to spread everywhere. Can you imagine in America if Jesus comes back in power again into our nation and word begins to spread from town to town and church to church and place to place. I'm going next week to preach in a little town, only 2,200 people in this town, but they've had seven teenage suicides this last winter and the whole community is shaken. What a privilege to go there and just tell them what Jesus has done so that when he comes to them they might be willing and ready to be able to hear what God is willing to do for each of them. You know, Jesus stood in the temple one day and he said, the Spirit of the Lord is upon me because I've been anointed to preach the gospel to the poor.
In other words, I've been anointed to go to those who have no resource. They don't know how they're going to get out of where they are. They can't buy their way out. Their security is gone. Their false security is all gone. But I've come to them with the good news that they can be forgiven.
They can be free. They can have a new, meaningful, eternal, and purpose-filled life. I've come to them. And that's another thing he said in Luke 4-18, I've come to give sight to those who can't see a way forward. Oh, God.
Oh, God. There is no other hope for the nation now. Folks, do you hear me? There's no other hope. We've come to a dead end. We're about to go bankrupt as a nation. We are already morally bankrupt. We're spiritually bankrupt. It's time for you and I simply to call out to him again and say, Jesus, come back.
Come back. Remember he said to his own people in Jerusalem, you won't see me again until you say, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. He said that to his own people. How much more to us as a nation if we could just collectively say, Jesus, Jesus, we believe. Now the word blessed means indwelt by God and fully satisfied.
It's really a type of a people that say, God, we believe that your presence is what we need. Your life becoming our lives is what we've always longed for. Your future is the future we want. And God, forgive us. Forgive us, Lord, for placing our trust in our retirement plans and the stock market and our jobs and our homes and furniture and all the rest of the things that we've looked to for security. God almighty, forgive us, Lord, for trying to create in this country a costless gospel where we just come in to see what God can do for us today, not what God can do through us for other people. God, forgive us for living this kind of a self-serving Christianity. And like the prodigal son who just came to himself in the midst of a famine, in the midst of a society that was so selfish and self-centered, he got tired of it himself and said, in my father's house, it's different. In my father's house, there's bread for everyone. Yet here it's become so selfish. It's so divided. It's so bitter.
I don't want to live here anymore. And he got up and started heading home. And he was such a long way off. But the scripture says his father saw him and ran towards him and fell on his neck and kissed him, covered him, empowered him, invited him on this incredible journey.
That's what the shoes on his feet were all about. What do you think the journey was? Son, just go tell people who I am. Go tell people what I've done for you. Go tell people that in spite of the mess that they've made, in spite of the distance they've been from me, in spite of how they've lived and taken the life I gave them and consumed it on themselves, I am still willing to embrace my people. I'm still willing to be kind for the mercy of God endures forever. That's what the Psalmist says.
The mercy of God endures forever. My challenge to you today, my challenge to everybody listening online, start telling people what Jesus Christ has done for you, for this society is hungry for truth. People are starving for direction. They're starving for a reason to live.
They're starving for hope. The only hope for the future that's ahead of us is Christ visiting us again in power, visiting our churches in glory, visiting our schools with truth, visiting us in the places we least expected him to be in. I want to remind you that when Jesus came to the Gadarenes, he didn't go to the Gadarene Bible school.
He went to the cemetery because there was a man there that needed to be set free. That's where the son of God will be. That's what the son of God will do.
That's how the kingdom of God will advance. He will go where nobody else will go and speak to those that nobody else will speak to. And now he has a body on the earth. That body is you.
That body is me. He said once to his own disciples, you will do greater works than I do because I go to the father. Well, he wasn't necessarily saying that we were all going to raise the dead. What he was saying is that he was confined to one body, one physical body in one place. He said, but basically he was saying I'm going to have a body now that's going to be all over the world. And the testimony of life in God through Jesus Christ won't be confined to one place, one geographic location anymore.
It will be all over the world. And we are now the place where God dwells. We're the temple of the Holy Spirit. And a great revival happened in that generation because one man started to tell his story. Can you imagine if the 1,500 people maybe in the sanctuary today started telling your story? Can you imagine if each one of us started telling our story to somebody somewhere, a stranger? We just kind of broke through the barrier, and we just started saying God has been so merciful to me. Let me tell you what He's done for me. Give me five minutes to tell you my story. I've found that the most effective way to communicate the truth of Christ to people all around is just tell them your story.
You don't have to argue Scripture with anybody because it's your own experience. Just tell them what Jesus has done for you. Now, if you don't have a story, I want to challenge you to get one.
How do you get a story? As Pastor Tim always says, it's as easy as ABC. It's really easy. Just admit you can't save yourself. Admit your condition. Stop hiding.
Stop hiding. My prayer in the last little while has been, God, you have deposited a lot into this physical body in the last 44 years, and so I'm asking you to spend it wisely now. This last tenth or whatever I've got, spend it wisely for your glory. It's not up to me to spend it, Lord. It's up to you.
So whatever you want me to do, make it clear. Whatever you require of me, give me the grace to give it to you for the sake of people who need to be set free. And confess Him as Lord.
If you're willing to do that, you'll have a story. The giftings of God, not just the forgiveness, the first thing that happens is your mind gets set in order. Your priorities come back into order. You suddenly have a reason to live. The hate, the self-loathing and cutting and anger, it all goes away. And it's replaced by something that only God can give. And He takes you now into places that only He can and gives you a story that belongs to Him. He's loaned it to you because of grace, because of His mercy.
If you've never done that, that's the reason why you don't have a story to tell anybody. At the moment you do. He promises through the Old Testament. He says, I'll give you a new mind. I'll give you a new heart and a new spirit. That's the promise of God. I will wash you clean. I will put my spirit upon you and you will become the person that you were intended to be when you were conceived in your mother's womb. I'm telling you what God has done for me, He can do for you. you
