Well, hello, everyone, and welcome back. This is our Daily Devotional for Tuesday, November 25th, 2025. And I hope that it finds all of you doing very well and making your way through this holiday kind of week. I hope your planning for Thanksgiving is going well. And no, I don't mean that your turkey is brining and that sort of thing, though. I got to start mine tonight. It's pre-brined. I don't want it to be too salty. Anyway. It's a big deal this week. Got a lot of family coming in, and maybe you do too. But the important side of Thanksgiving is not the food. It's the giving thanks part. But nevertheless, it's good to be with y'all. As I said, not going to be here Thursday and Friday this week. Instead, just Monday through Wednesday. And we are not having our regular Wednesday night service. So you can come. I think there's some crackers in there, that sort of thing. but we're not eating, okay? We're not having a worship service Wednesday due to the holiday on Thursday. So keep that in mind. Now, gotta start with a mea culpa, right? I messed something up yesterday. I got ahead of myself, and when I was talking about all the different things that the disciples had seen leading up to Jesus calming the wind in the waves, I included something that I should not have included. I got things kind of twisted around. Maybe you caught me on that. If you did, well done. If not, it just goes to show y'all, I said this actually last Wednesday when I used an example from Genesis chapter 12 of how it's very easy to add things to God's Word and to make it look like, oh, okay, yeah, that's exactly what it is, and it's not. You know, adding the name Israel to the blessing that Abraham received. We know from Galatians 3, it was to Abraham and to his seed, not seeds. In other words, not all of his physical descendants, but that's a different sermon, Wednesday night devotional, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. you know, for another time. My point is this, it's very easy to add things to God's word, and sometimes it's easy to mix things up, and that's why you always need to evaluate everything you hear. I told you last week what I'm saying to you. Now, that being said, I want to steer you right, I want to shoot you straight, but from time to time, I mean, I'm a human being, and I mess up. I messed up yesterday. So, I'm very sorry about that. I included something in the list that I shouldn't have, something that in fact we come to today that is really fascinating, not only in terms of what's going on in the text, but also how this squares away with what we find in other Gospels. Remember me saying that Matthew, Mark, and Luke are referred to as the synoptic gospels, right? They are those that hold to liberal scholarship, that believe, and no, that's not Democrat or Republican. That means how you view God's word. They believe that Matthew, Mark, and Luke were not written when we know they were written early on. They believe they were written later, that they all use the same type of source document, which is just ludicrous. But also there are errors between them. And y'all, you hear this, you know, pretty frequently, at least in the circles I've been around. How are you gonna believe the Bible? The Bible has errors. Very rarely is anybody ever actually able to bring one out. But today, we come to something that they point to and say, aha, what do you do about that? And it also happens to be the thing that I got out of order yesterday. What am I talking about? Let's pray, and then we'll dig in. God and our Father, we thank you for this time that you've given to us. Please be with us, guide us by your Holy Spirit so that we would be captive to your word, so that we would understand that which you would have us do, and so that we would see that your word is trustworthy. Father, without you, we're not gonna see any of these things, and certainly we won't care about why they matter. So please, guide us now by your Holy Spirit, and we pray it in Jesus' name, amen. All right, y'all, so what... What am I talking about here? What's this thing? Well, remember yesterday, we got to Matthew chapter eight, beginning in verse 23, where Jesus calms the wind and the waves and how, yeah, the devotional application is Jesus can calm the wind and the waves, the storms of your life too. But it's at this point that his disciples, for the first time, look at each other and they're like, who is this guy? even the wind and the waves obey Him, they start realizing they're not dealing with a prophet here. They're not just dealing with a wise teacher, that this is God, the Son of God. This is God the Son in the flesh amongst us. So, very powerful thing. But what I messed up with yesterday, is I started talking about all the different things the disciples had seen Jesus do. It's true, they had seen him drive out demons, but what I lumped into that was where we come to today in Matthew chapter 8. Now, what I want to do is I want to start reading it, and then I want to bring out what critics of God's Word point to and say, aha, there you go, there's your contradiction in the Bible. So we're in Matthew chapter eight, beginning in verse 28. It says, when he arrived at the other side in the region of the Gadarenes. Now, pause, time out. Remember what's going on here. Verse 23, where we got to yesterday. After all the crowds mounted up, then he got into the boat and his disciples followed with him without warning a furious storm. So they're crossing the Sea of Galilee. The Lake of Tiberias, sea, lake, it doesn't matter which terminology you use. It's all the same thing. Remember yesterday, I showed you the picture of where they crossed? Oh, what did I do with it? It doesn't matter. Showed you the picture, oh, here we go. Here we go, of where they crossed. Now, what I didn't talk about yesterday is a tale of two shorelines. Right here, all these rocks and things that you can see, this is all Jewish community, okay? It's Capernaum. It's a Jewish city when you see those hills back there. you get into what they call Galilee of the Gentiles. We know that there's a Roman province region there. It's called the Decapolis, and it's called that because of 10 different cities that are there. The term Gadarenes, Gerasenes, it's all a similar term. It's synonymous with the same exact place. Kind of like you heard me say, the Sea of Tiberias and the Sea of Galilee are all the same. It depends on who's calling it what. Okay, obviously. You know, we have that here, right? There are those right here at this church, oh yeah, Old Providence is in Steeles Tavern. No, no, no, it's in Spotswood. And that's not a great comparison, because Spotswood is a community, Steeles Tavern is the larger town, the postal code is Steeles Tavern, it's still Spotswood by community, but the post office doesn't exist anymore, and so on a letter it can be Spotswood or Steeles Tavern. Kinda, sorta the same thing going on here. They are those that referred to this region that they sailed to across the lake as the Gadarenes. They are those that referred to it as the Gerasenes. What you see is Mark and Luke refer to it as the Gerasenes, Matthew referring to it as the Gadarenes. Is that because Matthew's writing to a Jewish audience? They would have understood that term as opposed to Gerasenes? Most likely so. There is no contradiction there, okay? It's the same place, just like the Sea of Galilee and the Lake of Tiberias are the same exact thing, or the Sea of Tiberias for that matter. So, cool your jets, all right? Know that up front. That's not so much what people point to as the contradiction. What they point to instead is what we read next. So again, starting in verse 28, when he, Jesus, talking about Jesus, arrived at the other side in the region of the Gadarenes, two demon-possessed men came from the tombs, excuse me, two demon-possessed men coming from the tombs met him. They were so violent that no one could pass that way. Now, you see a problem with this. at all, any problem whatsoever. Well, if you turn to Mark chapter five, it says, they went across the lake to the region of the Gerasenes, right? Where 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 can bind him anymore, not even with a chain. All right, so who's right and who's wrong? You know, the whole gathering, garrison thing, eh, you know, people can get over that. But what critics do is they point to this and they say, okay. You say there's no contradictions in the Bible. Matthew says there's two men. Mark and Luke say there's only one man. So what are you gonna do with that? How do you square that away, preacher man, or whatever, you know, faithful follower of Jesus? Don't you see the Bible's full of contradictions? Well, y'all, this comes back to the point of the writing. to the emphasis of the writer, to the audience that's trying to be reached, and to the real focus of the passage. Realize this, okay? Number one, when someone comes up with stuff like this to you, don't automatically go to, well, you just need to believe. These things are very important. And they're very important because when you flesh them out, you see, number one, you're not asking somebody to deny reason and logic and to just be a blind follower, et cetera, et cetera. Somebody that's already hostile to God's word, they're not gonna believe anyway. Not by that means. But second off, when you dig in and when you look at what's really going on in the texts that supposedly contradict each other, what you find is that the Bible is actually even more supportive. Why do I say that? Well, it comes down to scope. It comes down to purpose of writing. Remember what Matthew is doing here. His primary audience is Jewish people. Some of them have converted, some of them have not. And so the emphasis that Matthew places here is very different from the emphasis that Mark and Luke are trying to achieve. Luke especially is writing for Theophilus, for the Greeks. Mark, writing for a much broader Roman audience. And in both Mark and Luke, it's fascinating. Matthew is longer, especially than Mark, but Mark really slows down and focuses in on the demoniac of the Gerasenes. Okay, everything down to the whole chains that couldn't bind him. What do we get from Matthew? Well, all we get is the end of verse 28. They were so violent that no one could pass that way. He doesn't get into all the details and he doesn't have to because he's focusing instead of Mark and Luke. Mark and Luke are focusing really hard on the individual and Mark and Luke also include that the individual not only was saved by Jesus, but that the individual wanted to become a follower of Jesus and Jesus sends him back to the Decapolis and this man goes all throughout his region. So you got two things going on here, or two different emphases that are being placed. Matthew is looking at Jesus's dominion over the demonic realm. So he mentions two. The fact that Mark and Luke only mention one, it doesn't mean that there wasn't more than one demon-possessed man. What have we been reading about all along? It's all about how there were people brought to him that were possessed by demons. It only makes sense that there would be more than one there, but Mark and Luke are focusing on that one because the way their gospel develops follows the individual. Mark and Luke are very individualistic, okay? Very devotion-centric in terms of the individual relationship with Jesus. Matthew is writing to the Jews, okay? Luke is writing to Theopolis, one guy. It's four Greeks. Mark is writing to a larger Roman. But Matthew is really focusing on Israel as a nation. So the emphasis he places on things is going to be very different. And y'all, isn't that how it always works? I've given you the illustration before. If I'm out here with Jim and Mary and we see a wreck at the corner of Spotswood and Old Providence, what we tell the police officers that show up to interview us is going to be different because we're emphasizing different things, because we pick up on different things. It doesn't mean that we're contradicting each other. It just means that that's the way we're telling the story. true story. And it's fascinating, y'all, what Matthew chooses to focus on as opposed to what Mark and Luke choose to focus on. One thing that none of them really bring out that the reader would have understood in terms of geography is, like I said before, on the one side, you're in Jewish Israel. On the other side, where those hills are, you're in Gentile Israel. So you put these two things together, Jesus is crossed over to Galilee of the Gentiles, and so this is really where his ministry to the Gentiles begins. And when you take into account what's going on with Mark and Luke, how the man that was delivered wants to become Jesus' follower, the idea that we get is that this man, and we don't even know his name, He's the first evangelist to the Gentiles. It's really remarkable stuff. I don't know if I would go so far as first evangelist. I think that the wise men are probably the first evangelist, right? Because they return after seeing the Christ child, that sort of thing. But in terms of his public ministry starting, this is where his ministry to the Gentiles begins. And that's a really important thing because it shows that he didn't just come into his own. He came into his own, but his own would not receive him. It's fascinating here. It wasn't too long ago that he deals with a Centurion, a Gentile, and he says, I haven't met a man in all of Israel like this one. Nobody has faith like him. And when it comes time for the great feast, there's gonna be people brought in from the east and from the west, but the subjects of the kingdom will be thrown out. Now, for that reason, partially, I believe Jesus crosses the lake. He goes to the Galilee of the Gentiles and he begins a ministry there. And it's also important about that because if you talk to Jewish scholars, Jewish opinion, they think that this happened in the Jewish side. They don't believe that the pigs were domesticated. They believe they were wild pigs, but I'm getting ahead of myself. What happens? All right, so, again, verse 28. When he arrived at the other side in the region of the Gadarenes, two demon-possessed men came from the tombs, or coming from the tombs, met him. They were so violent that no one could pass that way. What do you want with us, son of God? They shouted. Have you come here to torture us before the appointed time? Can't just breeze over this. Y'all, it's amazing. that demons often have better theology than people do. I say that recently, I had some interaction with some people that wanted to fight. It reminded me of being in college when I was the only Presbyterian at my Southern Baptist school. And Calvinism, though I wouldn't call it Calvinism, I just believe it's belief in the sovereignty of God, predestination, all that kind of stuff came up. And boy, was that a hot topic. I mean, people wanted to argue every day over that sort of thing. And I don't have any interest in arguing or a debate. Know what God's Word says and I'm nevertheless the argument that this man wanted to have but it was a discussion and it was over predestination if God chooses who's going to go to hell and who's going to go to heaven and and Y'all it's fascinating here what this demon says Have you come to torture us before the appointed time number one? These demons know what hell is really all about and that hell is not about demons being down there torturing people. Satan is not ruling in hell. What awful theology Milton had. And Dante, the idea that Satan is in charge of hell. Satan's not in charge of hell, God is. And it functions perfectly, just like everything else he has created. And it's going to do what it was designed to do. And demons go there not to have a good time. Sorry, Bon Scott, ACDC. We don't have a good time in hell. Nobody does. It is a place of absolute torment. As we read about wailing, darkness, gnashing of teeth. And these demons are pointing out the fact that they know how the story ends. Sometimes we forget that. And people do this thing where they think it's some holy war, and maybe God will win, and maybe Satan will win, as if they're equals. Look, y'all, there's a reason why when this appointed time that the demons are talking about comes, that it's not Jesus that throws Satan into hell, into the lake of fire. He sends Michael to do it. Why? Because though Satan is powerful, and though we should be very careful, all of those sorts of things, we shouldn't be haughty, we should know that the devil's gonna attack, that he's roaming to and fro. Y'all, at the end of the day, he's just an angel, and he's not even the strongest angel. Michael will be sent to throw Satan into hell. Michael the archangel. So these demons have it right, and they ask Jesus these things, and as soon as they see him, you'll know what they call him. They call him the son of God. He's been referring to himself as the son of man. Verse 30, some distance from them, a large herd of pigs was feeding. The demons begged Jesus, if you drive us out, send us into the herd of pigs. He said to them, one word, he said to them, go. So they came out and went into the pigs and the whole herd rushed headlong. down the steep bank into the lake and died in the water. It's fascinating. We actually drove by the place. You can see where the water used to be right there. It's called Corsi, right? and it's a national park, it's an archeological dig, but it's, I think it's pronounced Corsi, Corsi, excuse me, K-U-R-S-I. That's the cliff where they say that this happened. They rushed headlong down into the Sea of Galilee and they drowned. Now, as I said, if you talk to a Jewish person, they'll say, oh no, no, no, they were wild pigs, they weren't domesticated pigs. But remember where they are. Yes, it's Israel, but, It's Galilee of the Gentiles. These would have been, most likely, domesticated pigs, especially given what's going on here, though I will note this. I will note this. Archaeological digs, when it comes to Jewish settlements around the world, they've never found one swine owned. Okay, Jews take that very, very seriously. That's why it's repugnant, the idea that there were pigs in Israel. Well, this is the region of the Gerasenes, the Gadarenes. It's where the Decapolis is, the 10 cities. These are Gentile cities. Now, all that being said, verse 33, those tending the pigs ran off, they're pig shepherds, went into the town and reported all this, including what had happened to the demon-possessed men. Then the whole town went out to meet Jesus. And when they saw him, they pleaded with him to leave their region. Now, there's a few things going on here. Number one, what gives? What's going on with that? Shouldn't they be delighted? After all, as it said, in verse 28, talking about the demon-possessed men, they were so violent that no one could pass that way. Seems like they'd be really, really happy that somebody had delivered these men from demonic possession. But at the same time, Jesus is causing trouble. 2,000 pigs have gone missing. That was a lucrative enterprise for those. Maybe that's why they're upset. Also, we find out something as things develop, and that is that there were those that really believed that if you could cast out demons, it's probably because you were a stronger one. Is that what's going on? We're not told. We really don't know. But what we do know is this. We know that it's fascinating that from John 1, he came unto his own, but his own would not receive him. The first spot where Jesus does ministry amongst the Gentiles, he's also rejected. He's pushed away. However, what cannot be denied is Matthew's real point, and it's this. Christ has dominion. I'll say that again. Christ, Jesus has dominion. That means he's in charge. He's all powerful. He's almighty. And when he came to the earth, when he took on flesh and made his dwelling amongst us, he didn't come to be this light in the loafer kind of guy that just says nice things. He came to clean house. We see it here with the demoniacs. We know also that this was not done in vain. Matthew doesn't bring this out, okay? Mark will, Luke will. The idea that one of these demon-possessed men, even the demon's name is revealed, Legion, right? It's this spiritual warfare thing going on. But I'm not going through Mark or Luke, I'm going through Matthew. But Mark and Luke bring out the fact that this trip was not in vain because you see the first domino knocked over. where the man that is healed, he goes out and he starts telling people about Jesus. And therein we find our devotional application for today. Make no mistake about it, Jesus is in charge. You will do one of two things in light of him being in charge. You will be like those that beg him, no, no, no, that's enough. Hey, go on, somebody else, please, somebody else. You'll either be that person or you'll be the one. from Mark, you'll be that man who then, in recognizing Jesus's dominion, goes out and says, hey, I gotta tell you about this guy. Which one are you? Do you realize, and it goes back to yesterday, do you realize that the storms in your life, it doesn't matter what you're facing, Jesus is in control. Do you trust in that? And if you do, not only will you turn things over to him, will you proclaim that to other people? Will you share this miraculous truth of Jesus Christ, this wondrous thing? It is my prayer that you will. Let's pray. Our God and our Father, we thank you for this time that you've given to us, and we pray that you would impress these things upon our hearts, recognizing that you are the sovereign one. Let us submit to you, yes, but let us glorify you by proclaiming your riches. We won't do any of this without you, so please guide us. We pray it in Jesus' name, amen. Well, I'd like to thank you all for being a part of this time. Lord willing, we'll be back tomorrow morning, six o'clock. Until then, I hope you have a pleasant Tuesday or whatever day it happens to be. Take care.