Luke 8:26-29 - Demon possessed

8:26,27

Some manuscripts  have Gadarenes, and others Geresenes, The best attested is Gerasenes. It was an area inhabited by Gentiles. Here Jesus met a demon-possessed man. In Matthew there is reference to two demon-possessed men, Mark, like Luke, has just one. The most likely explanation is that Luke and Mark are just focused on the healing of the single man who was most severely affected, while Matthew learnt that there was another one there as well.

Whatever the case, we have a very sorry man here. The demons had such an effect on him that he tormented himself and others. He lived among the tombs and wore no clothes. No one would want anything to do with him. Now in cases like this there are some who would criticise the townspeople for such an attitude, just as most of us can be criticised today for not treating homeless people properly. But we need to look at this a little more closely. Why didn’t the people want anything to do with the demoniac? Probably largely because they didn’t know what to do with him. Likewise, the reason that we often do not care for the homeless, or addicts, or mentally ill, or seek to try and forget about them isn’t that we don’t care enough (though we probably don’t), but that we don’t know how to care and are afraid. So the “lack of care” is actually a defence mechanism. The difference between Jesus and everyone else here isn’t just that He cared, but He knew how to care.

8:28,29

We also see again the importance and the reality of demon possession. In New Testament times there were travelling “exorcists” who used various devices to cast demons out (today you could maybe say the same about parts of the charismatic church!). Jesus was different. He gave a simple command, and the demons had to obey. We need to confront the reality of demons, and we need to learn the Jesus way, not the showman way.

In this incident the man begs Jesus not to torture him. It is possible that it is the demon speaking through him, or maybe he is so used to the demons torturing him that he expects Jesus to do the same. Verse 29 gives us examples of some of the things the demons had done to him.