In another of our series on the Miracles of Jesus, Pastor Clark explores the story of the healing of the demoniac – or demoniacs – and the interpretive principles that help us reconcile the differences between Matthew and Luke’s account and Mark’s.

<p>In another of our series on the Miracles of Jesus, Pastor Clark explores the story of the healing of the demoniac – or demoniacs – and the interpretive principles that help us reconcile the differences between Matthew and Luke’s account and Mark’s.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Dalton SDA Church

Chester Clark

The One Sermon No One Can Argue With

Father in heaven, today we are thankful that you've given us this chance to worship you.

We pray that today we might hear that voice of truth speak to our hearts, that we might be blessed and led closer to our Savior.

If you'll turn with me there, we find the story of the healing of the demoniacs.

Now this is evidently an important story, the Bible has it here, each of the 3 gospels, the synoptic gospels, include the story of the demoniacs.

And as we look at this story together, we're going to start with Matthew 8, and we're going to see Matthew's account of it, because as we study this story, there's something that sort of strikes us that we have to pay attention to, and we're going to look at what that is.

Matthew chapter 8, we find a very concise version of this healing.

Matthew chapter 8 and verse 28 begins, and when he came to the other side, to the country of the Gadarenes, 2 demon-possessed men met him, coming out of the tombs, so fierce that no 1 could pass that way.

And behold, they cried out, What have you to do with us, O son of God?

Have you come down to us, to torment us before the time.

Now a herd of pigs was feeding at that, 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, Go.

So they came out and went into the pigs, and behold, the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea and drowned in the waters.

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

And behold, all the city came out to meet Jesus.

And when they saw him, they begged him to leave their region." Now this is the story, the story of 2 men according to Matthew who met Jesus and his disciples as they crossed over to the sea, as they crossed to the other side of the lake on that night.

Now this is right after the story of the storm, Jesus being asleep in the bottom of the boat, the back of the boat, the disciples giving up hope and finally asking Jesus, Jesus, don't you care that we perish?

And Jesus awoke and He was not afraid of the storm, he simply said, peace be still.

What an amazing story, an amazing miracle.

But immediately after they gathered on the other side of the lake, here they meet these 2 men.

Let's look at the story in Mark, Mark chapter 5 from our scripture was taken today.

I like Mark's account, although there are some differences, there's a little more detail added to it that tells us about what happened as this man met them, or these men met them.

They came to the other side of the sea to the country of the Gerasenes, and when Jesus had stepped out of the boat, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit.

Now, what do you first notice is different about this story?

Okay, so in Mark, in Matthew, there are 2 men, right?

Luke only counts 1 demoniac among this story.

Now, this has been a cause for criticism of the scriptures.

Some people have said the Bible can't be inspired.

It doesn't internally agree with itself, like Christians say, because 1 Bible writer says there's 2 demoniacs.

Another Bible writer says there's 1 demoniac.

Well, there's a couple of answers that we can give.

First of all, There is a possibility, I suppose, that this was a different experience.

Not likely, but that would be 1 possibility, I suppose.

But more than that, we can look at the different Bible accounts and understand better how inspiration occurs.

And so today we're just gonna take a few minutes away from this story, and we're gonna try to understand better how the Bible was written.

We're trying to understand how the Bible was written.

You see, there are some people who will say, well, the Bible was written by God himself.

We remember how those were written, right?

The finger of God on the tables of stone, right?

But the rest of the Bible, in many cases, is not written, dictated word for word, as the Word of God.

The Bible tells us how inspiration takes place.

Holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.

It didn't say they wrote what was dictated to them.

And in fact, critics of the Bible who have reacted to what we call in theological terms verbal inspiration, That is that God dictated every single word and every word must be correct and accurate.

You'll find many proponents of verbal inspiration are particularly convinced that the King James Version is the correct version.

Now, I'm not here to talk anything bad about the King James Version.

It took place in the very first part of the 17th century.

But the reality is that some theologians have reacted to this idea that God dictated the Bible word for word, and they've said, wait a minute, this can't be true, and we'll tell you why it's not true.

When we study the language of the Bible, why is it that they use different vocabularies?

1 writer uses these words, while another writer, some of them, By the way, Paul was a very educated man, right?

He uses very proper syntax when he uses the Greek language.

He wrote in a very eloquent way, a very complex way at times.

It was a very advanced mastery of the language.

Do you realize that some of Paul's writings weren't written by him, but they were dictated to a scribe who actually wrote them.

And scholars who know Greek very well, I'm not counting myself among them, but when you know Greek well enough and you can read 1 writer and read another writer and tell the difference between them, the scholars who read Paul's writing say there's a difference between what he wrote and what his scribes wrote.

Now all of these arguments have been used to say the Bible wasn't really written by God.

I believe, in fact, The Bible was inspired by God.

I don't believe what the critics also don't believe, and that is that God dictated word for word the Bible.

We believe, as Seventh-day Adventists, We do not believe in verbal inspiration of the scriptures.

That is to say that God dictated every single word There's a number of practical reasons why I'm thankful that God inspired the thoughts of the Bible not necessarily the words of the Bible Among them foremost among them is the idea that the Bible can be translated to other languages, and those other languages, the Bible is still equally as inspired in those other languages because the thoughts are translated to the other languages.

If it was the Greek words and the Aramaic words and the Hebrew words that were dictated by God, then we would have to be like Muslims and we would have to all read our scriptures in the exact language that they were written in.

Or else we would not be reading the Word of God.

Most, I believe, most even contemporary, anywhere near conservative Muslims would believe that you do not read the Koran when you read an English translation of it.

You have to read it in the original Arabic language.

And so we believe that God inspired the thoughts that went into the Bible.

I'm going to take a moment to just look at the 3 authors.

Let's look at the 3 authors of these 3 accounts.

Remember, Matthew said there was 2, Mark said there was 1, Luke says there's 1.

Who was Mark who wrote this account that we're looking at today as our main passage.

Sometimes he's referred to as John Mark, sometimes called Mark the Evangelist, right?

And he was a believer in the early church that is mentioned directly in the book of Acts.

Now, his mother's name was Mary, we know that.

His mother's house was used as a place of worship for believers to gather and pray.

Later, Mark is mentioned as a companion to Barnabas and Paul during their travels together in Acts chapter 12.

Remember, Barnabas was the 1 who actually convinced the believers in Jerusalem to allow Paul into their fellowship, and who later traveled with them as missionaries.

So John Mark was a helper on Paul and Barnabas' first missionary journey.

However, Mark did not stay along for the whole trip.

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The One Sermon No One Can Argue With

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