God wants to protect us from evil. He wants to protect us from danger at every moment. The problem begins when we take our attention off God. When we pay attention to the devil and evil, we can’t even see God trying to protect us. The story of the man with legion demons teaches us that no matter how much we have allowed the demons to enter us, we can still approach God and then He will protect us.
Transcript:
I want you to imagine with me for a moment the story of Eve in the Garden. Eve had just finished receiving instructions from God and along comes the serpent and the serpent begins having a conversation with Eve. He asks her a question. Now, the reason I want you to imagine this story is because I want you to imagine God at this time. We know that God walked with Adam and Eve in the Garden. They knew Him personally. And suddenly, Eve was in the middle of this conversation with the serpent. Now, it doesn’t say this in the Bible, but I want you to imagine that Eve is over there talking to the serpent and God is over here saying, “Eve, Eve, don’t do it. Don’t talk to him. He’s trouble.” And because she’s not paying attention to God, instead she’s paying attention to the serpent, we know what happens.
It wasn’t that God did not want to protect Eve, but Eve was ignoring God’s protection. You see, my brothers and sisters, God’s protection for us is very real, but it requires our participation. It requires our willingness to involve God in our life in every moment. And it also requires our willingness to not engage with the devil or his demons or any of the darkness of the world. You see, my brothers and sisters, if we take our attention off of God and place it on the demons, then God is calling to us, but we’re not hearing Him. And this is what happens when evil enters into our life because we’ve given it the chance. You see, the devil has no power over us. The devil couldn’t even enter the pigs without God’s permission.
Do we really think he can enter into our lives without permission, either God’s permission or our permission? And the assurance from God, my brothers and sisters, that He’s not going to give the devil permission in ways that we cannot handle, in ways that our faith is not strong enough. It is up to us to tell the demon, “Go away.” Or as in the Greek tradition, “Οπίσω μου σατανά. Get behind me, Satan.” And the devil is required to obey because God is protecting us. This is the story of this morning’s gospel. This man who had been playing with the demons for so many years, the demons, so many of them, their name was Legion, had taken over his life. He lived in the wilderness as an outcast, ruining his life.
And still, this man had just enough strength to turn to God. He walks to God and the demons say, “What have you to do with us? Our time has not yet come.” The demons knew who he was, not knowing just how powerful. “Let us go into the pigs.” “Go ahead. It’s just a few pigs. Go.” But you see, even the pigs, under the control of the demons, had no choice but to throw themselves off the cliff. My brothers and sisters, if we do not chase the demons away, we’ll find ourselves in the same place as this man, tormented, outcast. But thankfully, we can turn to God. Thankfully, we can turn to Him and He can protect us and He can send the demons away and then we can rest at his feet and we can glorify Him and He can glorify us. It’s up to us, my brothers. It’s up to us. Glory to God for all things.
