Can't Shut Up ...

My silence is more terrifying to me, than my words.  I know there are times when we are supposed to be quiet, or reverent (whatever that is), and I am not talking about those times.  I am talking about those times when the touch of the Savior is kept locked up behind my tongue like the gold at Fort Knox.  This world aches for an end to pain, an end to suffering.  Yet for fear, for embarrassment, or perhaps worse, because we do not really know the touch of the Savior personally; when the opportunity presents itself to share our testimony – we keep silent.  It is then that our silence speaks volumes.  Who is Jesus anyway?  How real is Jesus anyway, at least how real is He to you?  My mom would have plenty to say.  She has her entire life.  It’s like you can’t shut her up.  Is she right all the time, no, far from it.  But if you even show the slightest hint you want to talk about Jesus; you might as well sit back, put your seatbelt on, and prepare for a long flight; because she has no intention of letting you out of this conversation, until she has shared just what Jesus has done for her.  The answer, to how real Jesus is for her, will be definitively answered.

A lot of our parents feel this way and talk this way.  And we know they are not always right.  But mistaken words can be corrected.  We can be taught over time by Jesus if we just let Him.  So even when the words come out wrong in our earlier life and seem to get better over time: it is not an excuse, not to speak at all.  It is just a little humiliating that our earlier certainties, were so wholly undone, by the Lord of Love over time.  What I say then might be wrong.  This is perhaps particularly true when I try to tell you about the Bible.  But where it comes to what Jesus has done for me personally, that is another matter.  Because it is truly personal.  It happened to me.  Jesus did what He did, for me.  After those kinds of encounters, it is hard not to share them.  Even when the “before” picture looks so horrible to me, as compared with the “after” picture my Lord has created for me.  When that touch becomes real to you, when it becomes personal to you – it will break you.  It will break the pride in you, the apathy.  It will turn you into my mom who just can’t shut up.  It will make us all simply too eager to share what is real to us.  This does not negate the power of the Word.  But it does amplify it through the lens of Jesus Christ when He touches your life and makes it so wonderfully better.

This leads me to wonder, does the cat have my tongue?  It’s a silly expression I know, but the sentiment is just as silly.  What on earth could keep me from talking, from sharing, when the opportunity presents itself?  You don’t need to be some sort of angry Christian, carrying an angry placard, marching at a mall and pushing your views into someone else’s face, in order to really share your testimony.  If that is your testimony, it is a poor one.  Demanding the reform of others while you still sit comfortably in your own sins, is not the mark of a true Christian, it is the slogan of the enemy of Christ.  Transformation of the heart does not happen on the demands of others.  It only happens as we submit ourselves to Jesus and allow Him to remake who we are from the inside out.  That pathway to transformation leads to personal testimony, a method I have personal experience with, though have not perfected yet.  But it takes me back to the “cat / tongue” question.  Perhaps better stated by Luke, the “pig / tongue” question.  For there is another reason one might keep silent, that is far more terrifying than kitties with tongues, more akin to pork over tongues.

Luke writes to his friend Theophilus of a certain man unable to speak his testimony.  Not because he was mute, or physically disabled, but because he was possessed of demons and no longer in control of his tongue or his faculties.  And this poor man was not afflicted of only one demon but of many.  I begin to wonder did this poor man even know this process was taking place?  Did it begin with silence in the face of opportunity?  Did one particular sin drive him down this path, perhaps serially addicted to it, like so many men of our generation as they face the proliferation of porn over the internet.  Did the repeated indulgence of this one pet sin, refusing to yield it to God to transform and take away, lead to the introduction of a demon in the body of the man.  This would only compound the problem, and perhaps lead to the introduction of other demons looking for a human host home.  Was he aware, and chose to be powerless to it?  Or was it a gradual surprise, that robbed him of control, long before he knew it was missing.  In either case, silence was one terrifying outcome of these events.  No more could this man express his own belief in God, as now hope was gone as well.

Luke picks up the story in chapter eight of his letter, beginning in verse 26 saying … “And they arrived at the country of the Gadarenes, which is over against Galilee. [verse 27] And when he went forth to land, there met him out of the city a certain man, which had devils long time, and ware no clothes, neither abode in any house, but in the tombs.”  Here is the picture of depravity that Satan and his hoard would lead us all to.  This man was naked, the remnants of broken chains still mark his hands and feet.  He lives in no home, for his demonic fury and depravity has driven him to live only in the tombs awaiting the dead and graveyards where they are found.  The human mind fears the dead, so finding a monster near where the dead are gathered is a no-brainer for Satan.  Any person passing this sight would quickly find themselves the victim of a naked man bent on doing perversions upon them.  A demonically strengthened man able to break the chains the entire nearby townsmen set upon him.  After their failure to restrain this monster, the townspeople simply gave up, and kept away from where he resides.  But for some unexplainable reason this man seeks out Jesus, the demons were unable to prevent that.

Luke continues in verse 28 saying … “When he saw Jesus, he cried out, and fell down before him, and with a loud voice said, What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God most high? I beseech thee, torment me not. [verse 29] (For he had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. For oftentimes it had caught him: and he was kept bound with chains and in fetters; and he brake the bands, and was driven of the devil into the wilderness.)”  The demons knew immediately who this was.  They recognized Jesus as the Son of the Most High God.  Jesus was real to them.  In addition, this was not to be a fight between themselves and Jesus.  If they for a minute thought they had a chance against Jesus, they would have immediately ganged up on Jesus and tried to overpower Him with their numbers and with all their satanic fury.  But demons are only fallen angels that chose to listen to Lucifer instead of to trust God.  And all creation knows its Creator.  It would have been as if ants try to overpower the elephant’s foot.  No contest.  With a mere thought, Jesus could have wiped out all of them.  They lived in terror of that kind of power.

But it was worse for them.  Jesus is also the personification of Love itself.  For a creature so consumed by evil to stand so close to the source of all love, was itself a level of torture the demons could not stand a minute against.  This too, is where the path of Satan leads.  To the total absence of love of any kind (other than for self, if you can call that love).  To see the True Love of the universe, and remind them of their years standing in bliss, in His presence, eager to serve, and made fulfilled by that service, was overwhelming the demon’s minds.  They begged not to have to be there, or be tortured by their own memories of a perfect love they now despised.  They knew their time with this human host was at an end.  They had no idea where they might be sent.  And they did not want to come out of this man and be forced to lay dormant, perhaps for years, before the next willing participant would cross their paths.

Luke continues in verse 30 saying … “And Jesus asked him, saying, What is thy name? And he said, Legion: because many devils were entered into him. [verse 31] And they besought him that he would not command them to go out into the deep. [verse 32] And there was there an herd of many swine feeding on the mountain: and they besought him that he would suffer them to enter into them. And he suffered them. [verse 33] Then went the devils out of the man, and entered into the swine: and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the lake, and were choked.”  Legion for they were many.  Yet many demons had no power in the slightest against Jesus.  They did not want to be sent to the deep, perhaps the bottom of the ocean six or seven miles down.  Instead they preferred to go into the a herd of many swine feeding nearby.  Pigs will eat pretty much anything.  They are unclean as meat goes.  So it is interesting that in the heart of a Jewish nation, a herd of many swine would be found nearby.  Traditionally Jewish believers would not so much as touch a pig, let alone tend to them, and keep them.  But Jesus suffered these demons to go to the pigs, and they took the silence of this poor man’s tongue with them when they went.  But all of these events did not go unnoticed.

Luke continues in verse 34 saying … “When they that fed them saw what was done, they fled, and went and told it in the city and in the country. [verse 35] Then they went out to see what was done; and came to Jesus, and found the man, out of whom the devils were departed, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed, and in his right mind: and they were afraid.”  The keepers of the pigs freaked out, and went and told the entire town and nearby countryside what they saw.  This man was a monster who had plagued their area for a long time, so everyone had heard of him, and knew which area to avoid him.  But they all come to see if what the pig keepers had said was true.  And it was.  Jesus was real.  He was really there.  And this now former demoniac was sitting clothed mind you, at the feet of Jesus, and in his right mind.  No chains needed.  What kind of power over a legion of demons could do this?

Luke continues in verse 36 saying … “They also which saw it told them by what means he that was possessed of the devils was healed. [verse 37] Then the whole multitude of the country of the Gadarenes round about besought him to depart from them; for they were taken with great fear: and he went up into the ship, and returned back again.”  The people knew Jesus was real, but then took Jesus for something worse than a legion of demons, they took him for Satan.  The people of this town had priests.  Their priests of God had failed where it came to this man.  So the people figured God would not help the man.  That only leaves one power sufficient enough to order around a legion of demons.  Jesus was real.  But perhaps Jesus was a dark power none of these people ever wanted to be in contact with.  So in great fear, they beg Jesus to leave and sail away.  Jesus does not go where He is forbidden to go with respect to human hearts, so he prepares to leave.

Luke continues in verse 38 saying … “Now the man out of whom the devils were departed besought him that he might be with him: but Jesus sent him away, saying, [verse 39] Return to thine own house, and shew how great things God hath done unto thee. And he went his way, and published throughout the whole city how great things Jesus had done unto him.”  The now former demoniac wanted above all else to be the next disciple of Christ.  He would have followed Jesus anywhere, with a faith forged in the freedom from horror no human hand could ever have freed him from.  Jesus was real.  This poor man knew that above anyone else.  This poor man saw what it was like to have your mind made free from the devil and his overwhelming control of who you are.  What was torture for demons, was life and light itself to this man.  He wanted nothing more than to be with Jesus and follow Him anywhere.  But Jesus had something greater in mind for the newly minted disciple.  Jesus wanted him to evangelize the entire area with … a great doctorial thesis on the interpretation of Old Testament scriptures … no … how about an angry placard that reads “this could have been you” … no … instead with the personal testimony of what Jesus did for him personally.  It would be the personal testimony that would work.  A lecture on Old Testament scriptures, this man was likely unqualified to give.  Nor would that have made the impact of what his own personal testimony did instead.  This did nothing to negate the word.  It simply amplified it through the lens of Jesus Christ.

Think about it.  How does salvation work?  That is, how are you to be made free from your sins?  Not just forgiven mind you, but made free from ever being controlled by them again.  That is something this now former demoniac had personal experience with.  He came to Jesus.  Jesus drove the sin out of his mind and body and heart.  Jesus freed him from his sins, otherwise he would still be naked, and out of control.  He had no power to free himself.  Nor did any of the local priests and rabbis.  But one encounter with Jesus, and demons go running to the pigs, and then to their doom.  This man was made free from Satan himself, from the very hoards of Satan, by simple words from the mouth of Jesus Christ; who the demons recognized as the Son of the Most High God.  If Jesus were just a “good” man, or a mere prophet as Islam would allege, that demon army would have torn him up.  If Jesus were just another angel like themselves, they would have taken the odds and let the warring commence.  But against God?  There was no contest to be made.  The demons were defeated.  This is how salvation works.  By turning to Jesus and submitting the whole of who we are to Him to be remade by Him however he sees fit.

And after this; the pigs no longer held this man’s tongue.  You could not shut him up.  Jesus was real, He still is.  This encounter was real.  His testimony was real.  And so he went around the entire region testifying as to the power of God, and the Love of the Son of the Most High God.  Can’t shut him up.  No one could.  No one tried.  His testimony was personal, powerful, and blessed by the Holy Spirit.  And his evangelism was very effective, so that the next time Jesus would pass this way, things would be different for his reception in the region.  My silence offers little.  My preaching may offer even less.  But I hope my testimony carries with it, the power of Jesus Christ made real to me.  In this I hope my words carry His love, even if I sometimes jumble them up, or state them poorly.  Each day, I find some new aspect of His love for me.  That is something I believe is quickly turning me into my mother, becoming harder and harder to shut me up.  And maybe that is a good thing.