Last Sunday, I preached the second message in our Everyone, Everywhere series, our series on the Thick Gospel at Victory BGC. Our main text was Luke 8:26–39, the story of the demon-possessed man in the region of the Gerasenes, with Acts 16:16–39 showing how the early church continued the liberating mission of Jesus.

As I prepared for this message, I found myself thinking about captivity in a much more personal way. When we hear the word “captive,” our minds usually go to prisons, bars, chains, and locked doors. But some of the strongest chains in life are invisible. A person can be walking around freely and yet be captive to fear, pride, greed, approval, resentment, addiction, shame, or ambition. We can look successful on the outside and still be deeply enslaved on the inside.

That thought made me reflect on my own life. For many years, I lived and worked in the world of finance, business, investing, and the marketplace. Much of my identity was tied to what I could achieve, what I could build, what I knew, and how people perceived me. There is nothing wrong with working hard or pursuing excellence, but I have also learned that good things can easily become controlling things. Success can become a master, recognition can become a master, money can become a master, and even ministry can become a master if I begin to find my identity in what I do for God rather than in what God has already done for me.

The more I follow Jesus, the more I realize that freedom is not merely being delivered from obviously destructive things. Sometimes Jesus needs to free us from subtle forms of bondage that look respectable on the outside.

The story in Luke 8 speaks so powerfully to me. The man Jesus encountered had lost almost everything that made life recognizably human. He wore no clothes, lived among the tombs, had been separated from his community, and was controlled by forces he could not overcome. The people around him knew there was something terribly wrong, but all they could do was restrain him, guard him, and keep him away.

Society could restrain him, but society could not restore him. Then Jesus arrived.

There are things in our lives that discipline can manage but cannot ultimately heal. There are patterns we can suppress, habits we can hide, emotions we can control, and appearances we can maintain. But deep restoration comes only when Jesus enters the places we cannot fix ourselves.

Luke places this story immediately after Jesus calms the storm. The disciples had just asked, “Who then is this, that he commands even winds and water, and they obey him?” That question continues into the story of the demonized man. Who is this Jesus? The wind obeys Him. The waves obey Him. The powers of darkness bow before Him.

Theologian N.T. Wright has helped me appreciate more deeply that Luke is not simply presenting Jesus as a teacher of spiritual principles. Luke is announcing that in Jesus, God is becoming King and confronting everything that has distorted and corrupted His good creation. That changes the way I read the Gospel: Jesus did not come merely to improve my life, He came to rule it.

That is much more challenging as it is easy to want Jesus as Savior but it is much harder to surrender to Jesus as King. I can ask Him to forgive me and still resist Him when He begins touching the areas of my life I want to control, including my money, my plans, my reputation, my comfort, my ambitions, my relationships, and my future. But if Jesus is truly King, there is no part of my life that is outside His lordship.

In Luke 8, the demon identifies himself as “Legion.” The image is striking because this man had been occupied and controlled by something stronger than himself, yet those powers were not stronger than Jesus. That is good news because, if I am being truthful with myself, there are moments when I become painfully aware of how limited my own strength really is. There are attitudes I thought I had already overcome, there are insecurities that still surface, there are places where pride still tries to take control, and there are moments when ego still becomes louder than I would like to admit.

The older I get, the more aware I become that spiritual maturity is not about becoming increasingly impressed with myself. In many ways, it is the opposite. The closer I walk with Jesus, the more I see how dependent I am on His grace.

This is one of the things I appreciate about reading and studying scripture. It keeps bringing us back to the truth that the Bible is ultimately not a collection of stories about people we should imitate. It is a story about Jesus and what He has done for people who cannot save themselves. The hero of Luke 8 is not the demonized man… he cannot save himself, the people around him cannot save him and the chains cannot save him. Jesus saves him.

In a way, that is my story too. I am not a Christian because I became disciplined enough, wise enough, religious enough, or moral enough. I am a Christian because Jesus rescued me. And I still need Him to rescue me from myself more often than I care to admit.

What moved me most in the passage was what happened after the demons were gone. Luke tells us that the man was “sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind.” Before Jesus, he was restless, exposed, tormented, isolated, and living among the tombs. After meeting Jesus, he was sitting peacefully, clothed, restored to his right mind, and sitting at the feet of Jesus.

Jesus did not merely remove his bondage, Jesus restored his humanity. His dignity was restored, his mind was restored, his relationship with God was restored, his community was restored and eventually, his purpose was restored.

That challenged the way I think about freedom. Sometimes I want Jesus to simply remove a problem, take away the difficulty, take away the temptation, or take away the pressure. But Jesus often wants to do something deeper. He wants to restore us, He wants to rebuild the parts of us that bondage damaged, He wants to restore our identity, our relationships, our thinking, our purpose, and our ability to love and trust again.

The man wanted to follow Jesus physically, but Jesus told him, “Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.” That line also made me think about my own journey. For decades, my mission field was primarily the marketplace. Then God began redirecting my life into full-time ministry. But I am increasingly realizing that these two worlds are not as separate as I once thought. There is no sacred world and secular world, there is simply the kingdom of God, and Jesus is Lord over all of it.

The years I spent in banking, investments, insurance, financial planning, business, and speaking were not wasted years before “real ministry” began. God was forming me there. Perhaps part of what He is asking me to do now is to go back, in a sense, to the world I came from and say, “Let me tell you what Jesus has done for me.”

That is exactly what the man in Luke 8 did. His former place of bondage became his place of mission. The place where people once knew him for his brokenness became the place where he proclaimed the goodness of Jesus. Our testimony is never primarily about how impressive our transformation is. It is about how gracious Jesus has been. The message is never, “Look at me.” It is always, “Look at Him.”

There is another detail in this story that stayed with me. Jesus found the man living among the tombs. He was literally living in the place of death, and yet Jesus went there. Jesus is not afraid of the places in our lives that we are ashamed of. He does not keep His distance from the parts of our stories we would rather hide. He enters them.

Eventually, Jesus Himself would enter a tomb, and unlike every other person before Him, He walked out. That is the foundation of our hope. Our faith is not built on positive thinking. It is built on resurrection. The grave could not hold Him. Sin could not defeat Him. Death could not defeat Him. Because Jesus is alive, no captivity has the final word.

Acts 16 takes this theme of liberation even further. Paul encounters a slave girl with a spirit of divination. She is captive spiritually, but she is also captive economically. Other people own her, and they are profiting from her bondage. When Paul commands the spirit to leave in the name of Jesus, she is set free. You would think her owners would celebrate, but instead they became angry because their source of income disappeared.

That part of the passage made me uncomfortable, and perhaps it should. For most of my adult life, I have worked in and around business and finance. I believe deeply in enterprise, entrepreneurship, productivity, investment, and wealth creation. These can all be powerful forces for human flourishing. But Acts 16 reminds me that profit is never morally neutral. The question cannot simply be, “Is this profitable?” We also need to ask, “What is this doing to people?” Does my work help people flourish? Does it restore dignity? Does it create opportunities? Does it serve people? Or does it profit from weakness, desperation, addiction, misinformation, or exploitation?

We cannot proclaim liberty on Sunday and profit from bondage during the week.

That thought is especially sobering for me because I have spent much of my life teaching about money. It reminds me again that money is never just about money. It reveals what we value. It reveals what we trust. It reveals who or what has captured our hearts.

This is one reason the Thick Gospel has become so meaningful to me. A thin gospel can easily become a message about personal forgiveness and life after death, and both of those are wonderfully true… but the gospel is bigger. If Jesus is King, then the gospel must eventually touch everything. It must touch the way I handle money, the way I lead, the way I treat people, the way I respond to injustice, the way I think about the poor, the way I use influence, the way I view success, and the way I live when nobody is watching.

The Thick Gospel forces me to ask a more uncomfortable question: If Jesus is really King, what part of my life still resists His rule?

I do not ask that question as someone who has already figured everything out. I ask it as a disciple who is still being formed. After decades of working, teaching, writing, leading, and now serving in full-time ministry, I am increasingly convinced that discipleship is not something we graduate from. We keep surrendering, we keep unlearning, we keep repenting, and we keep discovering areas where Jesus is inviting us into deeper freedom.

Acts 16 then shows Paul and Silas themselves being imprisoned. They are beaten and thrown into stocks, yet at midnight they are praying and singing. That scene challenges me because I often think freedom means having circumstances work in my favor. Paul and Silas remind me that there is a deeper kind of freedom. Their bodies were confined, but their worship was free. Their feet were chained, but their faith was free.

That makes me ask myself how much of my peace depends on circumstances going according to plan, how much of my joy depends on people approving of me, and how much of my security depends on things being under my control. Perhaps one mark of true freedom is being able to worship even when the doors have not opened yet.

Then the earthquake comes. The prison doors open and the chains fall, but Paul and Silas do not simply run away. They stay because the jailer needs saving. Their freedom was not merely for themselves. Their freedom became the means through which someone else encountered Jesus.

That may be one of the most important lessons I am learning in this season of my life. God does not free us simply so we can become comfortable. He frees us so we can become useful to His kingdom. He restores us so we can participate in His work of restoration. He heals us so we can walk with others who are hurting. He gives us grace so we can extend grace. He gives us resources so we can steward them for others. He gives us a story so we can point people to Jesus.

Freedom is not only being delivered from something. It is being restored for something. We are restored to God, restored to community, restored to purpose, and restored to mission.

Ultimately, all of this takes me back to Jesus. The man in Luke 8 was bound. The slave girl in Acts 16 was bound. Paul and Silas were bound. Eventually, Jesus Himself was bound. He was arrested, falsely accused, beaten, handed over to unjust rulers, treated like a criminal, and crucified.

The One who came to proclaim liberty to the captives became a captive Himself. He entered our prison. He carried our sin. He took our judgment. He entered death itself. On the third day, the prison of death could not hold Him. Jesus rose, and that is why we have hope.

This is the gospel we proclaim to everyone, everywhere. It is the good news that Jesus is King, that He enters our places of bondage, that He sets captives free, and that He restores broken lives for His purposes.

The more I preach this gospel, the more I realize that I need to keep hearing it myself.