He Does Great Things (Luke 8:26–39) from South Woods Baptist Church on Vimeo.

Jesus saves those we may think un-savable. Conjuring barriers too high for the grace of God to scale or too hard for the power of God to penetrate, we satisfy ourselves that some are just not saving material. When we do that, of course, we’re nudging toward works or behavior or lifestyle as prerequisite to the saving work of Christ. We’re also putting shackles on the reach of God’s grace and the power of the gospel. In all likelihood, we wouldn’t do that intentionally. But it may slip into our thoughts to the point that it cripples our prayer and witness.

We might unwittingly imbibe the mind of Charles Kingsley, an Anglican partner with Charles Darwin, who wrote of such people, they “Cannot take in the Gospel . . . All attempts to bring them to the knowledge of the true God have as yet failed utterly . . . Poor brutes in human shape . . . they must perish off the face of the earth like brute beasts” [cited 06/29/18, https://creation.com/charles-darwins-quisling-charles-kingsley].

Yet the history of Christian witness through the centuries teaches us otherwise.

John Patton, a Scottish missionary in the 19th century, served some remote, unevangelized islands north of New Zealand. He faced conditions unlike anything that we can fathom. Islanders walked naked, wildly shrieking and quarreling and killing, even offering women as sacrifices to bring their chieftan to health. Paton lived among these vicious, murderous cannibals in order to proclaim to them the good news of Christ [Owen Milton, Christian Missionaries, 135–144].

Early on in his work, he barely survived disease that took the life of his wife and son. He literally had to stay by their graves to keep the cannibals from digging up their bodies for their barbaric rituals and feasts. But the gospel broke through. Men who lived by the tip of the spear, who had no hesitation to kill for revenge or sport, and who dined on human flesh came to feel the weight of their sin. The Holy Spirit brought many of them to repentance and faith in Christ. He eventually reported thousands of former cannibals following after Christ.

But we don’t live among cannibals. Yet we may have no different attitude than that of Charles Kingsley when it comes to some in our community and families. We observe their flint-like hearts and wonder: are they savable?

Luke records the story of a man that most would think—‘No way! No way that this man will ever gain sanity and live in the life of joy found in Christ!’ But it happened. The story hammers home to us this truth: However hardened the heart, only Jesus delivers sinners from darkness. Do we believe in the power of Christ to save? Let’s think about it under four movements in this passage.

1. Darkness meets light

Anytime an unbeliever encounters Christ and the gospel, darkness meets light. Jesus is the True Light that “coming into the world, enlightens every man” (John 1:9). Jesus declared, “This is the judgment, that Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed” (John 3:19–20). The epitome of darkness lived among the tombs along the coast of the Sea of Galilee in the predominantly Gentile region of Gerasene.

Jesus displayed power when He calmed the wind and sea as they crossed the Galilee. But one note at the start helps us to see what His mission was in crossing the sea: “Let us go over to the other side of the lake” (9:22). He had a mission to bring Light to a man enslaved to darkness. Arriving at land, “He was met by a man from the city who was possessed with demons; and who had not put on any clothing for a long time, and was not living in a house, but in the tombs.” Further, the demons “had seized him many times; and he was bound with chains and shackles and kept under guard, and yet he would b[...]