From Maniac To Missionary (Then Jesus Came #6) Matthew 8:28-34, Mark 5:1-20, Luke 8:26-39

Is this satanic? Is this demonically influenced thing going on in this person's life? Or is this a mental illness? And sometimes it truly is hard to distinguish. I often wonder how much of the really crazy stuff we're seeing in our world today that is diagnosed as mental illness or misdiagnosed is actually not mental illness, but demonically influenced. Well, there are many passages that would fit well into our The Jesus Came series. They were going to break to a close. And I kind of had planned, oh, we could go a long, long time with it. And I thought, ah, six is good to get us thinking hopefully, to get us kind of in this mindset that, and during this series I hope you have been able to see these passages in a little different way. Maybe a way you haven't thought of before. Not just to review the account again, because sometimes that's what we do. We tell the story, we look at the events, we look at the people, and we move on. But to focus on the nature and characteristics and attributes of Christ, God in the flesh. And I hope that as you come across these familiar passages in the future, as you read them, as you study the narrative, the events, and the people of the account, and that's important to do as well. There's nothing wrong with doing that. I encourage you to do that. But that you also take time to see the attributes and characteristics of God displayed through the mighty works that he has done. Excuse me. Today we're going to consider this one last passage again in the series. And again it's recorded in three Gospels. And they are Matthew chapter 8, verses 28-34. Mark chapter 5, verses 1-20. And Luke chapter 8, verses 26-39. We're going to center our thoughts in Luke today, or around Luke. We're going to refer to Mark a little bit. And I did not go back to Matthew at all. So if you want to take a marker, there's the verses, you can mark them. You can go back and study them again later. They're called parallel accounts. A parallel account is a count in the three Gospels. And they all give a little different aspect, a little different view on that particular passage. It's interesting that the Matthew account, when it begins, says there were two demonics. And you'll understand what we're talking about, the gathering of the demonic today. But it says there were two. So you have to kind of go and dig through the commentaries and see if you can find an explanation for that. That'll be some homework. I've got lots of homework for you today, for the sake of time. But there are some reasonable answers for that. What seems to be a discrepancy. And so again, I'll let you do that research on your own. As we consider the nature of God in the account of the gathering of the demonic, we will discover Jesus' first of all power. Secondly, we're going to see Jesus' pupil. And third, we're going to see Jesus' purpose. Before we go any further, let's stop and have a word of prayer. Father, we thank you for this great day. We thank you for those who are gathered here today to study your word, to sing praises to you, to fellowship together. And I thank you for the fellowship that we've had, the opportunity we've had to sing those praises and worship you in and through music. And now, Father, as we come and worship you around the study of your word, I pray you would bless our time, that you would encourage us, that you would challenge us. Father, if need be, convict us today of something in our lives. Help us to take care of that, whatever it is in our lives, that you're speaking to us about. May we leave here stronger and more couraged and ready to go on. May we leave here looking to see you in all that we do, especially as we read your word. We start looking at and thinking about your nature, your characteristics, your attributes, in every part of the scripture, so we can know more and more about you. And in fact, Father, become more and more like you as we study those things. And we thank you and we praise you in Jesus' name. Amen. First point this morning is power. Luke chapter 8, verses 26-33. We're going to center our thoughts really in Luke. Read a really large portion right now. I didn't read the whole thing. We'll pretty much read the whole thing as we study through it. So Luke, first of all, chapter 8, we're going to start with verse 26. Then they sailed to the country of the Gadarenes, which is opposite Galilee. And when he had 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. When he saw Jesus, he cried out and fell down before him. And with a loud voice said, What have I to do with you, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me. For he had commanded 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. Jesus asked him, saying, What is your name? And he said, Legion, because many demons had entered him. And they begged him that he would not command them to go out into the abyss. Now a herd of many swine was feeding there on the mountain. So they begged him that he would permit them to enter them. And he permitted them. Then the demons went out of the man and entered the swine. And the herd ran violently down a steep place into the lake. And Brown will stop right there. Now, we could springboard from here and actually spend the whole rest of our time considering demons just from this passage. While we won't do that and spend the rest of our time here talking about demons, I do want to stop for a moment and consider a few things. Just some things I want to throw out there that I think is important. First of all, I find that Satan and his host of demons are real. They are created beings. They are angels who followed Satan in his rebellion against God. We see in Revelation 12, starting with verse 3, it says, And seven diadems on his heads. His tail threw a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was ready to give birth, to devour her child as soon as it was born. He jumped on it first time. So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world. And he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. And so we see that they were originally good angels. They were originally angels created by God and Satan. And his pride, and we're not going to, again, not spend a lot of time on this, but wanted to be like God. And so God cast him out of heaven to the earth. And in his casting out, he took a third of the angels with him. These demons are a third of the angels that followed him in that rebellion. Now, again, we could look at more things. I also read in Jude that some of those demons are reserved in the abyss, or reserved, chained and reserved and not loose right now. But that tells me that they are powerful and they can empower physical creatures with great strength and power. You think back to the Garden of Eden and the serpent, Satan used the serpent and spoke to Eve through the serpent. And even in our text today in Mark chapter 5, and again I'm going to jump back to Mark now, verses 3 and 4, it says, No one could bind him, this is the gathering demonic, not even with chains, because he had often been bound with shackles and chains. And the chains had been pulled apart by him, and the shackles broken in pieces, neither could anyone tame him. And so these demons gave this man great power with not even chains and shackles could hang on to him. There was nothing anyone could do with him. This thing of demons and the power that they have is not to be toyed with, it's not to be taken lightly. There are far too many people who play with demonic things, with the occultic things, and not realizing that they think they're just playing games. They're just messing around and really inviting, inviting and opening the door to demonic oppression, demonic possession, and they would deny that, oh, we're just messing around. Well, mess will get you really in some deep hot water very fast when it comes to Satan and his host of demons. Demons can, will, and do possess people today. Now having said that, I want to make clear, I want everybody to understand that I don't see demons on every corner and in every situation. I do believe, and I know for a fact, there is mental illness caused by chemical imbalances in the brain. These mental illnesses might be influenced by other issues, such as drug misuse, by alcohol abuse, and more. And so we have those things as well. And sometimes I look at things like, what is really going on here? Is this satanic? Is this demonically influenced thing going on in this person's life? Or is this a mental illness? And sometimes it truly is hard to distinguish. And I often wonder how much of the really crazy stuff we're seeing in our world today that is diagnosed as mental illness or misdiagnosed as mental illness is actually not mental illness, but demonically influenced. Or is it demonic, or is it demon possession in a person's life? Again, I don't have the answer to being able to distinguish that. There was a lady one time, said her mom told her, if you want to know the difference, you look in their eyes. Now that was her mom. That was a long, long time ago. But she said, if a person has a demon, their eyes are dead. I've only met one person personally like that. And I wondered if that wasn't true. I don't know. That was just one thing that she said. But sometimes it's hard to distinguish. I'm not real quick to just, and there are some, there used to be some anyway that would be really quick, and you'd think it was offbeat. It was a demon. They have a demon in them. Well, not always. Sometimes it is a mental illness. But then, I don't want to write out mental illness and just say, oh, well, they're imbalanced, when they actually have been dabbling in demonic things, and these demons are influencing their behavior. And so, again, it's a balance in there, and you have to be very careful, and be really close in contact with God and allow him to show us the truth. So now let's go back to Luke. The first characteristic of Jesus, I want to point out in this text, is that he had power over the demons. I see, first of all, in Luke 8, 28, that the demons knew who Jesus were. When he saw Jesus, he cried out and fell down before him, and with a loud voice said, What have I to do with you, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me. James 2, 19 says, You believe that there is one God, you do well. Even the demons believe and tremble. The demons know Jesus. They know who he is. They know his power over them, and they are afraid of him. They tremble at his presence, according to James. We find that the man, secondly, had many demons. So not only did Jesus have power over the demons, the man had many of these demons within him. Again, there was a lot of things that we can mention and we can look at in all of this, but time forbids it. We need to keep moving on. I did want to turn it into a sermon on demonology this morning. Jesus asked their name, and one of the demons responded to him, according to Mark, again, Mark 8, 9, My name is Legion, for we are many. A Legion is a group of soldiers that numbered from 4,200 to 6,000, depending on who you looked at, what you read. That's a lot of people. Commentator David Guzik, and most people don't believe he really had 5,000 or 6,000 demons living inside of him. He might have, but most people don't think that. According to David Guzik, and this is one of the kind of sightings that I found as I was studying this, he pointed out the Legion isn't a name. Okay, what's your name? Legion, because we're many. That demon was evading the question, and part of that, if we understood the cultural, some of the traditional beliefs of that name, that would make sense. Supposedly, from what I could study, if you used the person's name, you had some kind of control over them when it comes to this sort of thing. Anyway, again, I don't want to go way into that, but this Legion wasn't a name. It was a form of evasion of the question. Perhaps it was to try and intimidate Jesus by claiming to be more in number than he actually was. We are a Legion. We are, like, there's 6,000 of us in here. You can't conquer us. Okay? They would appear to unify together. They would try to make Jesus feel like he was less powerful than they were altogether, and it didn't work, but they tried. And they tried. Satan himself also tried a similar tactic when he brought three temptations to Jesus, if you remember. You know, if you're tired, you're hungry, hey, if you just bow down and worship me, I'll give you the kingdom of all this world. You know, he used those same kind of things. He tried. It didn't work. In every case, we find that Jesus was more powerful and wiser than the demons. The third thing I want to point out is that Jesus had reigns of control over the demons. Jesus was in charge. Luke 8, 29 says, For he had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. It's interesting that the spirit didn't immediately come out and argue with him. It resisted, or the spirits didn't come out. The one argued with him. They were resisting Jesus' command, and again, we're not going to go way into that, but ultimately, they had to obey Jesus' command to come out, and they came out. We find that they begged for mercy as they asked Jesus not to cast them into the abyss. They begged Jesus, don't throw us into the abyss, don't throw us into that place. Let's go to the beach. Let's go to the swamp, and go back and read Charles Spurgeon. He has some funny comments about that. Not funny, but what happened was funny. Comments about that. Again, a lot of homework here I can give you. Notice that Jesus permitted them to go. Jesus allowed them to go into the swamp. They could not go unless God allowed it. Jesus held the reins. He could have said, forget it, I'll cast you into the abyss. As they permitted them, he allowed them to go into this perfect abyss. In our personal lives, we do not have control over the demons as Jesus did. There are some who might edge kind of toward that teaching. We don't have control over the demons. However, there is a battle within the demonic realm that we are in the midst of. Ephesians 6-12 says, we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. The scripture lists the defenses that we can have, wherein we can have victory in this battle. We realize there is a spiritual battle. We fight against these things. But back to Ephesians 6-10-11 says, Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. James 4-7 gives us another defense. It says, therefore, submit to God. I think that's the key. Submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. And there are other places we can look. There are other things we can talk about when we talk about prayer and praying for each other and, again, a number of things. But we need to move on. We must fight the good fight, doing all we can to resist and stop Satan and his forces of evil. And depending on the power of God to help us in the battle, knowing that he controls the reins, excuse me, and has the final say. Excuse me. So we fight and the demons left the man. Okay? They were given permission to go into the hog, but they left the hog. They went to the hog. And the man became, and we come to our second point, Jesus' pupil. Look at Luke chapter 8, verse 135. When those who fed them saw what 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. What a great change took place in this man's life. Excuse me. When Jesus came, what a change. He was once demon-possessed and he was now free. He at one time acted like a maniac. He cut himself with stones. He cried out and screamed and yelled. He seized and was thrown down. He was running naked through the tombs and in the mountains, breaking any chains and shackles of superhuman strength that anyone tried to restrain him with. And he was doing this all hours of the night and day. It's interesting, as I was reading through this list again, my mind went back to, again, it's hard sometimes to tell the mental illness from demon possession. And my mom worked in an accounting home. And this was, I mean, we're talking 50 years now. Things have changed. Medication and so on is not quite as spooky to go into. But there were times when you'd go in there and you would hear people in their rooms and they were dementia. They were mentally just not there. But they would be screaming and moaning and crying out and it was the creepiest sound. Can you imagine this guy with a loud voice crying out and screaming and running around naked and just completely out of control? Stronger than anything you can imagine how scary he would have been. Who would have wanted to be around him? They tried to put guards on him even to keep him from hurting himself or hurting anybody else. And he'd just break loose and go into the wilderness. So at once he acted like a maniac. And now he was sitting calmly at the feet of Jesus. He was properly dressed and acting like a normal person. He was listening to and learning from Jesus. This man became Jesus' disciple. He became Jesus' pupil. This is discipleship in action. This is what discipleship looks like. And I didn't mention salvation really in this. This is what happens when a person gets saved. He's changed from the old self to a brand new creation. And this is just this stark difference in this man's life. From this demon-possessed individual to a godly person when a change had been made. But this is discipleship in action. Jesus not only completely delivered this man, but now he was teaching him. He was building him up in the faith. He was encouraging in the things of God. And the man was sitting at his feet and he was listening. I'm sure he was being taught just great amounts of things. This man obviously wasn't dumb. If we're going to be like Jesus, we have to disciple others as well. We already know the great commission in Matthew chapter 28, 19 and 20. It says, Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you. And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. Amen. Paul said to Timothy in 2 Timothy 2, 1, 2, 3, You therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. You therefore must endure hardship as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. And so the pattern is there. But Timothy, what you've heard from me, you teach to others. Go, teach to others. Keep the faith. Teach the truth. Make disciples, as it were. We have to make disciples, to teach, to help people be pupils of the Scripture. After someone comes to Christ, there are new creations in Christ. They are babes in the faith. They need to be discipled, encouraged, and built up in the faith. Excuse me. I fear we don't do a good job at this. I know I don't do a good job at this. We get excited if someone gets saved, at least I hope we do. Sometimes we don't even do that. I know, okay, they got saved. Okay? But we get excited if someone gets saved and comes to Christ. But we drop the ball when it comes to teaching all things that Christ commanded, as the Great Commission tells us. It takes more than just pointing them to Sunday school and saying, you need to be involved in the Sunday school class. It takes more than just going to church on Sunday morning and hoping to catch honor, or going to family camp, or going to a retreat, or going to whatever, and you pick up bits and pieces. It takes some one-on-one time with them, just like Jesus did with this man. I wonder how much Jesus was able to teach him in that short time he was there. I don't even know how long he was there with the man. You know, the owners of the hogs, it says they went to the city, they went throughout the countryside telling everybody what happened, and they got together and they came out to see. So he might have had a day or two. He might have had a week. I don't think so. He had a little bit of time, but he didn't have a lot of time. How much teaching can you do in that amount of time? Now, granted, God works in great ways, and God can instill a lot of things in a short time in a person's life. But realistically, I'm wondering, you know, I often, I read about Paul, when he went into places and he saw people get saved, and then he had to leave in a short time. It's amazing that the church was able to carry on and keep going. I look at some of the countries overseas, some of the, like you get up to some of the former Soviet countries, and they don't have a lot of formal education. The pastors are just people that God has called. That sounded kind of funny, didn't it? But they're people that God has called and not just people that God has called. There are people that God has called, and yet they've had no formal education, sometimes very little education, except self-study. And so they do the best they can. You get into Africa, you find the same thing. They do the best they can with what they have, and yet the church thrives, and people get saved. And once in a while, there might be a missionary come through and correct something that's in error. But overall, God works in those places and it's magnificent. It's awesome. It's amazing what God does just through the Holy Spirit and the power of studying the scripture. But we still need to be disciple-makers when we can. After someone comes to Christ, we need to teach them and train them and bring them up as much as we can in the faith. And so it takes a lot of time with them, just like Jesus did with this man. Now, I threw this in here twice, and I apologize. I almost took it out and put it back. I took it out and put it back. But as Jesus was teaching, the townspeople came, and in fear, they asked Jesus to leave. In fear, they asked Jesus to leave. And there was, again, if you want to do some homework on it, you can go back and do some studying on your own. They just were terrified of Christ. Because nobody else could do anything else with this man. All of a sudden, he's a completely different person. And what nobody else could do, Jesus was able to do. And now he's sitting at his feet and learning what kind of a person is this. And it might be hard to understand, but again, understanding the culture and traditional beliefs would be a great benefit in understanding possibly their mindset. So for now, we'll just say that Jesus terrified the people so much so that all three writers said that the people came and begged or pleaded with Jesus to leave. It wasn't just, you know, he kind of stood up down the road. They begged him to leave. They pleaded with Jesus to leave. But Jesus didn't just leave the man high and dry. Okay? He didn't say, well, sorry, friend. I did the best I could. I'm out of here. Right? He left him with a purpose. He left him, and that's my third point, purpose. Luke 8, 38, 39. Now the man 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 throughout the whole city what great things Jesus had done for him. This man wanted to go with Jesus. And it's interesting, I keep saying this, man, we're never told his name. None of the three gospel accounts give us any kind of indication of who he was. Just a certain man. It was full of demons. And what a miracle took place in his life as Jesus came. But he wanted to continue on with Jesus. He wanted to go with Jesus. And he begged him, and he pleaded Jesus, God, please go with you. And Jesus said, well, I have a purpose to be able to do the job for you. He had a ministry for the man to accomplish. You see, because the townspeople were so terrified of Christ, they were so afraid of Christ, that he would not be able to stay and work with or reach anybody. That fear of him would have been so out in front that no matter what happened, I don't think Jesus could have ever overcome that. And he would have no hearing among them. They weren't going to listen because they had the terror of him already. And yet Jesus said in Luke 19, 10, For the Son of Man has come to seek you to save that which was lost. And the same was true for this man as it was with Nicodemus when Jesus said, For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. And it's this same compassion, and Mark mentions the compassion. We'll look at that in a few minutes. But it's the same compassion Jesus had for this man that he also had for the entire country of the Gadarenes. Jesus came to seek and save those of the country of the Gadarenes. In the cities and the towns around. Jesus died, or will be, he hasn't died yet, but looking forward, he would be dying for them as well as for anyone else. So instead of allowing this man to come back with him or to go with him, he gave him a purpose, he gave him a mission, he gave him a job. Mark records that Jesus told him to go home to your friends and tell them what great things the Lord has done for you and how he had compassion on you. You see, he was a maniac, but now Jesus told him to go be a missionary. Instead of, he told him to go proclaim the gospel of the great things, proclaim to everyone the great things Jesus did. To share the good news of Jesus with all his neighbors, with all his friends, with all his relatives. To go home and tell them what Christ had done. And I find that when he did what Jesus asked him to do, when he did the works that Jesus gave him to do, the results were absolutely amazing. Again, in Mark, it says that he departed and began to proclaim in Decapolis all that Jesus had done for him and all marveled. They were amazed. They marveled. It doesn't say that everybody can flock to faith, but the seeds were being planted. And the man, you know, he probably, I don't know, maybe he did. Maybe he was raised in a good Jewish home and knew the Old Testament Scriptures very well. I don't know. It doesn't say it that way. But he could do one thing. He could tell what glorious things God did in his life. And it was undeniable to those who lived in the town and in the country and all that area around. Because guess what? They had seen him. They had heard the rumors. They had witnessed his craziness out there in the tombs. And now this maniac, this man who is just completely wild, is now tame. He's talking about a man who came and cured him, so to speak, who removed the demons. They had the testimony of the herdsmen, of the pigs, who went into town and said, oh, you've got to believe this. The pigs just jumped off the cliff. Here's what happened. We saw it all. They couldn't deny his testimony. You know, God didn't save us to put us on a shelf to sit and be pretty, especially me. You know, he'd have to do a lot of work to make me pretty sitting on a shelf. He didn't save us to sit on a shelf and be pretty. He saved us with and gave us, he saved us for a purpose. He gave us a purpose. He saved us with a purpose in mind. Ephesians 2 says, for we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared before he knew that we should walk in them. It is amazing to me how very often new believers are really eager to jump up and serve. As compared to us old fogeys who kind of said, ah, been here and done that, or I'm tired. And I'll tell you the truth this morning, I did not want to get out of bed. I went to bed early last night. I woke up a little bit early and I woke up, I should get up. No, I shouldn't. And I laid there for 30 minutes and argued with myself and finally at 7 o'clock I thought, I have to get up. Now it's time. I need to get up. 12 after 7, I finally crawled out of bed. I didn't want to move. I was just, I'm an old fogey, right? It's like, you know, I'm excited about the day but I'll be more excited in an hour when I really want to get out of bed. And so, you know, but you get somebody that's just a baby in Christ that just got saved. They are so excited and that's one way you can tell that they really are saved. They're eager to learn. They're eager to do. They're eager to get involved. They're eager just to go for it. They're ready to jump up and jump in and do anything you ask them to do. And often they're disappointed and they don't understand they can't totally get immersed in our ministries. No, they want to do it. They want to do it. They're not ready for it. Oh, I am. I think of the Apostle Paul did the same thing after he got saved. You know, he's going to run into time and he's going to preach and everybody's like, oh, we don't trust him. It's a trick. He's trying to kill us. And how many times did the Apostle Paul get lowered out the windows or stuck out of town because of the trouble that was surrounding him? And then God finally put him back on the cross and brought him back home for a while. And during that time, I don't know how he learned or who taught him or if anybody taught him he was just alone with God, whatever. But during that time he developed his faith as a Christian, as a follower of Christ instead of a follower of the law. And so, a lot of times new Christians they're eager to get involved and they totally want to totally get immersed in these heart of ministries. And that's where the teaching and the training and the discipleship is a big help to prepare them in every way for the heart of ministries. You know, that's where the teaching and training comes into play for their benefit so they can serve God in greater ways. And the one thing we can all do, but the one thing we can all do from the first, okay, the one thing that every new believer can do, even if they don't have a lot of knowledge, from the first day of their salvation is to say what Jesus told this man in Deuteronomy 839, return to your own house and tell what great things God has done for you. Go home and share your testimony. Show them your new life. Tell them what God has done in your life. And as we faithfully do that, and as they faithfully do that, number one, it will help them grow their inner faith. Because as they're sharing, people are going to ask questions, okay, and you're going to answer the questions and be honest with them because you're going to have to do some digging. How does this work? If you can give them the answer accepting Jesus as Savior, what does that mean? So now you're going to have to go back and figure out what does that mean? And you're going to ask questions, and they're going to ask questions, and you're going to be doing some digging, and you're going to begin to grow in your faith. And as you were doing that, it will also help prepare and lead to greater ministry opportunities. As we draw this message and this series to a close, I trust you to challenge that when you read God's Word, not to just read it in various accounts like stories. And we do that. And those are exciting. I love Jonah and Daniel and the Lion's Den. I get to later parts of Daniel and the prophecies. It's like, eh, okay, we'll skip over that. We'll go to one of these exciting stories, right, because they have flow and they have fun and they have people and all of that. But I encourage you, while you read those, and that's not a bad thing to read them like that and use imagination with them, but I want us to do more than that. I don't want us just to read the various accounts like stories, not to just focus on the people and the events of the account, but to try and see the nature and the characteristics and the attributes of God in every part of that account. And you know, I'll be honest with you, thinking about this and I had to start taking the account and listening, what is God doing here and what kind of attribute or characteristic is that and how does this work in our lives, and it got easier and easier as we went, but it was not to look at the big things that are obvious in every account, again, omniscience and all of that, but what about the little things in Jesus that we need to emulate? The fact that Jesus discipled, that was part of his nature, he discipled others. Do we do that? Do we have purpose in our lives? Do we give purpose to other people's lives? So I hope this kind of encourages you to try to see the nature and the characteristics and attributes of God in every part of the account. I also hope that as we see those aspects of God, we will try and make those a part of our life, to be more like Jesus in all that we do. And those that are attributes that only God can possess, we will see how they directly affect and work in our lives. And we talked about two, one that we need to imitate, one that we need to include in our lives, and there are some like all knowing and all powerful we can, but how does that work in our lives? As we think about our passage today, do you depend on God to help you stand against the wiles of the devil? And do you put on the whole armor of God? Do you submit to God and resist the devil? Do you do what you can do to win that battle against Satan and the demonic host? Do you do your part in discipling others as they come to Christ? Do you do the works that God has for you to do? How has God spoken to you today, and how would you respond? Let me ask you to stand please, and let's close in prayer. Father, we thank you for this wonderful day you've given to us. We thank you for the opportunity to be here today. We thank you for all those who have listened, and I pray that we don't just listen passively, Father, that we would listen actively and learn and grow and figure out how can this affect our lives, how can all of this be applied to our lives. Father, we thank you that you've written and told us all about you, that you've given us the Holy Spirit in our lives to teach us and to convict us and to lead us in every part of our lives, but especially as we read and study your word to guide us in that as well. Father, we thank you for a wonderful day you've given to us. I ask that you would give us a great rest of this day, that you would give us a great week as we seek to serve you. May we glorify you in all that we say and do. May we have opportunity to speak for you and be bold when the opportunity arises to do so. We give you the praise, we give you the thanks. In Jesus' name, amen.