Jesus Delivers Us From Evil (Afternoon)
Download MP3Like Jeff mentioned earlier, my name is Cole Ragsdale, and I have the privilege of getting to serve as the college ministry director here at Redeemer. And, before we even dive into Mark 5, I just need to say thank you, to the women and men that call Redeemer home. That for the past year and a half as we have transitioned to Birmingham for, my wife's work that this place has made Birmingham feel like home. And so I just want to say thank you to the elders of this church for standing so faithfully on the word of God each and every week. I need to thank Eric and Christian Swope and their awesome home group for, making this church feel like such a safe and a special place, for my family.
Cole Ragsdale:So just thank you for that. Another thing I need to say thank you for my first sermon at Redeemer is a real softball. I'm gonna get to talk to you guys about demons and pigs tonight. So really looking forward to that. So if you've got a copy of God's word, I invite you to open it with me to Mark chapter 5.
Cole Ragsdale:It also the text will also be found in your worship guide. Mark chapter 5 starting in verse 1. The Holy Spirit says this through Mark, They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes. And when Jesus had stepped out of the boat, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit. He lived among the tombs, and no one could bind him anymore.
Cole Ragsdale:Not even with a chain. For he had often been bound with chain with shackles and chains, but he wrenched the chains apart, and he broke the shackles in pieces. No one had the strength to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains, He was always crying out and cutting Himself with stones. And when he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and fell down before him, and crying out with a loud voice he said, what have you to do with me Jesus, son of the most high God?
Cole Ragsdale:I adjure you by God, do not torment me. For he was saying to him, come out of the man, you unclean spirit. And Jesus asked him, what is your name? He replied, my name is Legion, for we are many. And he begged him earnestly not to send them out of the country.
Cole Ragsdale:Now a great herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside. And they begged him saying, send us to the pigs. Let us enter them. So he gave them permission. And the unclean spirits came out and entered the pigs.
Cole Ragsdale:And the herd numbering about 2,000 rushed down a steep bank into the sea and drowned in the sea. The herdsmen fled and told it in the city and in the country. And the people came to see what it was that had happened. And they came to Jesus and saw the demon possessed man, the one who had the legion, Sitting there, clothed and in his right mind. And they were afraid.
Cole Ragsdale:And those who had seen it described to them what had happened to the demon possessed man and the pigs, and they began to beg Jesus to depart from their region. And he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed with the demons begged him that he might be with him. And he did not permit him, but said to him, go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you. And he went away and began to proclaim in the decapulists how much Jesus had done for him, and everyone marveled. This is the word of the Lord.
Cole Ragsdale:Would you pray with me? Our Father, we thank you for moments like this, that we gather around Your word as a family, and we ask Holy Spirit that as your word is taught, that you would speak to us collectively as a church family, and that you would speak to us individually as daughters and as sons? And if you would in your own seat, would you pray? Would you ask for God to speak to you through his word this afternoon? And, if you'd be willing, would you pray for me?
Cole Ragsdale:That I would be helpful to you this afternoon. And so, father, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be pleasing to you, our rock and our redeemer. We pray these things father through the son and by the spirit. Amen. So this is a difficult passage that is filled with lots of questions.
Cole Ragsdale:A lot of them that I will not be able, to answer tonight, but what we do see here is the most graphic, most detailed explanation of demonic activity in the entire Bible. That in this passage evil abounds. And whether or not you find yourself here tonight as a follower of Jesus, or maybe not a follower of Jesus, I think we can all agree that evil is something that is a lived reality in our world. That we see evil externally all the time. That whether or not it's human trafficking, we would say that is evil.
Cole Ragsdale:That when we hear another about another school shooting, we say that is evil. That when we see any sort of oppression we say that is evil. That child abuse is evil. And it is abounding in the world around us. But maybe we understand it externally, but lots of times we don't like to have to talk about the conversation of evil being internal.
Cole Ragsdale:It's that lingering lust. It's that gangrene gossip. It's that harboring of hatred. It's that evil stuff that is still inside of us. And gratefully this text is not just going to speak to a man possessed by demons, but it can speak to us tonight as well.
Cole Ragsdale:So if I was to title it tonight, it would be that Jesus delivers us from evil and as we make our way through Mark 5:1 through 20, I think Mark kind of gives us 3 moves, as we make our way through the text that we're gonna really consider this man. We're gonna consider his existence as a demoniac, and then as we after we consider that we're gonna behold this master. We're gonna behold this Jesus, and then from there we get to see how we can celebrate the miracle. So we've got a man, a master, and a miracle. I hate 3 m's but it just was there.
Cole Ragsdale:I'm sorry, alright? I'm sorry it was there. So let's look again at the text. So if you've got your Bible verses 1 through 5, we see that this is a man of calamity. That Mark very specifically here in these first five verses, the text lingers over the details that that Mark is typically speaking in this very punchy, very quick type of dialogue with his audience, but it's here that he slows down, that he hits the slow mo button and we really linger on the text.
Cole Ragsdale:Like I mentioned, this is the longest account of any demonic activity we have in the entire Bible. And we see that this man, that first and foremost he has an unclean spirit. That he has a demon living inside of him, or we'll actually learn verse 9, multiple demons, but not only that, is that this man is living among the tombs. That he's been isolated from his community, that he's he's more like the dead than he is the alive, that this man is with the tombs, that verses 34 tell us that he has chains and shackles. So you can imagine there's chains around his wrists, shackles around his feet, but he's got this sort of strength that's allowed for him to rip these apart.
Cole Ragsdale:So you can imagine these dangling chains from his wrists and his ankles, but not only that it tells us in verse 45 that that night and day, that his condition is ongoing, there is no breather, there is no time out, that night and day he is shrieking, that the Greek would literally say he is shouting, he is screaming of his torment. But not only that is that he's shouting and screaming but in fact he's cutting himself with the sharp rocks among the tomb. Do you see him? Do you hear the the chains that are rattling from his wrists and his ankles? That this is a person created in the image of God who was meant to be in perfect relationship with God, but instead he's possessed by demons.
Cole Ragsdale:That this is an image bearer created in the image of God who is designed to live in community with people, but his community is a graveyard. He's alone. That this is a person created in the image of God, who is meant to be experiencing the freedom of life with Christ. But instead he's chained. That this is supposed to be a man who's created in the image of God, who is at peace with himself, but instead his torment is so extreme that he is cutting himself.
Cole Ragsdale:Do you see him? We see this evil is uncontrolled, that it's unchained, that the people have in fact tried to subdue him. It says twice in the text they want to subdue this man, they want to restrain this man and Mark is shouting at us this evil cannot be subdued. That in fact verses 34, I don't see if you see the repetition here, if you're reading through your Bible one thing you can always look at is what is what followed the verbs and follow what is repeated. In verses 3 and 4 we see that no one could bind him anymore, not with a chain, no one.
Cole Ragsdale:If you would allow me for 2 seconds to be a Greek nerd, the there's like these four words that all start with o u, and it's, ude, udes, ukete, ude. And it's like back to back to back to back. And what Mark's doing is saying, hey, no one can stop this man. That evil is uncontained. That evil cannot be controlled.
Cole Ragsdale:And so what does that mean for us? For that evil in our hearts, if we were to think about those lingering lusts and that harboring of hatred, what are we to do with that? And if you're anything like me, I know that I have a bad tendency of trying to domesticate my sin. What I mean by that is that man I love golden retrievers. We've got a 15 year old golden retriever living at my mom's house, grace still kicking it.
Cole Ragsdale:And like grace is a domesticated animal. But for some reason in our culture, we have got a great habit of trying to domesticate exotic animals. I mean Tiger King, I know it's a meme, but it's like this idea of I'm going to domesticate, I'm gonna put on a leash this thing that is powerful and dangerous that can destroy me, and those tigers end up destroying those people. Or it makes me think about, Shamu at SeaWorld. They're like, man we're gonna we're gonna train these guys, we're gonna do a show with these guys, but then like Shamu, there are 3 dead humans in the path of that, because it's called a killer whale.
Cole Ragsdale:A killer whale. And friends, I know it's silly but truly putting our sin on a leash will never work. That that trying to contain our evil, trying to contain our pet sins on our own strength, is foolishness. Because this sort of evil cannot be contained. I'm not saying tonight that that you are possessed by a demon necessarily, but there may be some spiritual warfare at play, and our feeble attempts are like trying to for me to to protect myself from Shamu.
Cole Ragsdale:It's not gonna work. CS Lewis, says it this way, he says, for the first time I examined myself seriously with a practical purpose and there I found what appalled me. A zoo of lusts, a bedlam of ambitions, a nursery of fears, a Harlem of fondled hatreds, my name was Legion. That this man who is possessed by these demons would say that his name is legion, and so the first thing I want us to do tonight is to consider the man, but as we consider the man I want to challenge you to consider your own heart. Are there any zoo of lusts as CS would say?
Cole Ragsdale:Are there any bedlam of ambitions? Any nursery of fears? Are there any Harlem of fondled hatreds? Is there any evil that has crept into any corners of your marriage or your life? And what are you doing about them?
Cole Ragsdale:Because if we if this man was to stand before us today, what does he need? Does he need stronger chains? Or does he need for us to push him further off into isolation, further back into the tombs? Do we need to actually go there and actually remove all of the sharp rocks? No, this man, he needs a deliverer.
Cole Ragsdale:He needs rescue. He doesn't need more bondage. He needs freedom. And friends, there is nothing that he could do to get that for himself, and the same is for you and me. That the bondage we may experience, we need a deliverer, not more effort.
Cole Ragsdale:We need a deliverer, not perfect church attendance. We need a deliverer, not trying harder. So let's look at this deliverer, let's look at this master starting in verse 6. It says, and when he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and fell down before him. And crying out with a loud voice he said, what have you to do with me Jesus, son of the most high God, I adjure you by God, do not torment me.
Cole Ragsdale:So Jesus has made his way onto the scene. But before we go any further, I wanna answer or ask this question, why is Jesus there? That we'll we'll learn here in a little bit, he's in the land of the Gerasenes, on the other side of the Sea of Galilee. This is this is gentile land. Why is Jesus here?
Cole Ragsdale:We see in verse or chapter 4 verse 35 that Jesus says to the disciples, hey let's go to the other side. So Jesus is initiating this this trek to the Gerasenes and that's when we meet the storm like Joel walked us through last week and Jesus muzzles the storm, but then it's after our account in Mark 5 21. It says, and when Jesus had crossed again the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered around him. That the sole reason for Jesus making the trek to this other side was to meet with this man. That this is a picture of Jesus leaving the 99 to go for the 1.
Cole Ragsdale:That he wants to meet this man, he wants to deliver this man, but y'all there is some wild facts about Jesus, about how crazy it is that Jesus is making his way to this man. That for a Jewish Messiah to head here would make no sense to a first audience, or 1st century audience. That being a Jewish Messiah, that he's heading into gentile land. That means that this place is unclean. Not only is it gentile land, but it has demons.
Cole Ragsdale:It's literally referred to as an unclean spirit. But not only is that Gentile land an unclean spirit, but it's in a graveyard. That Levitical law would say that you could not touch a dead body, you couldn't be around a dead body that it's including tombs. Dead bodies. And then lastly, we're gonna see here it's gonna have to do with pigs, which once again, according to this Levitical law, this is an unclean place that Mark is again painting the picture of if there is an unclean messy situation this is it.
Cole Ragsdale:This is the grossest of the gross. This is the nastiest of the nastiness. Jews, you must stay away. And what does our savior go? There, into the mess.
Cole Ragsdale:Jesus is not afraid of your mess. In fact, he's heading right towards it. That what you feel like would make Jesus untouchable to you, is the very thing that He wants to step into. That this master over evil is incredibly personal. I even love in verse 9 it says, and that Jesus asked him, what is your name?
Cole Ragsdale:That there is this personal aspect to Jesus that he'll step into the mess and he's willing to ask their name. But not only is this master over sin death and evil personal, but my goodness he is powerful. That in verse 6 here it says that he ran and he fell down before him. That this is the Greek word proskuneo which all throughout the New Testament is the word that's used to describe worship. See the contrast here.
Cole Ragsdale:That all of the people of this town have tried to bind this man, they have tried to keep this man down, but no one could do it. And the presence of Jesus cuts him to his knees. That he is not bound by a chain, he is bound by the presence of God. That this man cannot move. He is prostrate before the Lord.
Cole Ragsdale:That no chain, no person could, but Jesus's presence does. It cuts him to his knees. Our Jesus is powerful. And then do you see the language that Mark uses throughout this this story? That it's the it's it is the language of authority.
Cole Ragsdale:It is the language of superiority that that after he falls down it says I plead with you God, I adjure you, and then 4 different times in this passage the demon and the people are begging Jesus. I'm sorry, you don't beg someone who doesn't have authority. You beg someone who does have authority. That Jesus is personal. He knows your name.
Cole Ragsdale:He wants to walk into the mess, but he's not just a fist bump buddy. He is powerful. He is Lord of all. The creator of the heavens and the earth in which demons fall before him and say, what would you do with me Lord God most high? So the words that church history has used to describe this this interplay between powerful and personal are the words transcendence and imminence.
Cole Ragsdale:That this idea of transcendence is that God is above, that he's outside of space time and matter, that he is unlike us, that he is above. But then this idea of imminence isn't that he is above, but that he's with. That he's unavoidable, that he is everywhere, that we believe that that he is with us in this room at this moment. And I feel like this story embodies this. Now I've been looking forward to this illustration all day because I'm gonna about to get so many eye rolls.
Cole Ragsdale:So Nick Saban. I think it's wild that he is the greatest college football coach of all time. I'm a Georgia guy. Like he drives me nuts, but he is the greatest of all time, and so for so many, Nick Saban is transcendent. That he is he's untouchable.
Cole Ragsdale:He's unlike anybody else, but when coach Saban goes home, he's dad. He's Nick. Transcendent, above, imminent, with, and this is our Jesus, and DA Carson, a theologian, thinker, he says it this way, he's the God of love. He's the God of transcendence. That is, he's above space, time, and history.
Cole Ragsdale:Yet he is the imminent God. That is he is so much with us that we cannot possibly escape from him. He is everywhere. He is unchangeable. He is truthful.
Cole Ragsdale:He is reliable. He is personal. That the master over sin, death and evil, he is transcendent and he is imminent, and so our second thing I really just want to like challenge you with tonight is would you behold this master? Would you behold Jesus, the one who is powerful and the one who is personal? The one who is not shocked or surprised by your sin and your mess and your evil.
Cole Ragsdale:The one who is the deliverer from this sin, death and evil. That Jesus is bigger, more powerful, more transcendent than anything that you may be walking through. That Jesus was not He knew what he was purchasing that day on the cross. He knew the mess that you and I would walk through willingly. And he said, I'll die for that.
Cole Ragsdale:He he went to the cross with a list of names. It's your name. So would you behold this master? But Jesus doesn't just interact with someone, but instead he leaves them changed, and we see in verses 14 through 20 a changed person. Said the herdsmen fled and told it in the city and in the country and people came to see what it was that had happened, And they came to Jesus and saw the demon possessed man, the one who had had the legion, sitting there clothed and in his right mind.
Cole Ragsdale:Do you see the contrast between the man of calamity in verses 1 through 5, and this transformed man in verses 14 and 15? That he was restless, he was uncontrollable, and now he's sitting. That that he was in fact like ripping his clothes, he was naked and now he is clothed. That he was possessed by thousands of demons and now he is in his right mind. That that this is the picture of 2nd Corinthians 5:17, if anyone is in new in Christ, they are a new creation.
Cole Ragsdale:That he has not been tamed but he has been set free. He has not been subdued, he has been released. He has not tried harder, he's experienced a deliverer. I mean if there's ever a a a guy who could sing and could could declare Romans 8, who would say, for I am sure that neither death nor life nor angels nor rulers nor things present nor things to come nor powers no height nor depth nor anything in all creation will be able to separate me, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our lord. I believe it was this man.
Cole Ragsdale:That he could say those things with confidence. That he has been delivered. I think it's wonderful that we see that this man, man that like Jesus has transformed him, because in verse 17 it says, and he began to beg that he might be with Jesus. That he wants to go with Jesus, he wants to join the crew, he wants to go on his way. And then Jesus very surprisingly in verse 19, doesn't permit him to go.
Cole Ragsdale:But instead he says, go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you. That instead of coming with us, I want you to go back to your friends, and I want I want you to tell them of the mercy. I think that mercy and grace, are different sides of the same coin. I heard it explained to me once that mercy is the pulling back of of what is on someone, whether or not it is the wrath of God or if it's a burden or if it's in this sense, this oppression that it's the the moment that God and his mercy pulls back and it's as God pulls back that his grace enters in. And it's this man experiencing and the mercy of God, the lifting of this oppression, these these demons being released from me and I may experience the love of God.
Cole Ragsdale:I'm experiencing the grace of God. I even have it written in my Bible, or written in my Bible, of when I was knee deep, in like just a horrendous anxiety and it was like I'm praying that God would have this mercy, that he would he would lift this back so that I could experience his grace afresh. And maybe that's what you need today, is you need a fresh experience of the mercy and the grace of God, of him pulling back that burden so you can experience his grace. That's what this man experienced. And it's so interesting that in verse 20 it says that this man went away and he began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him.
Cole Ragsdale:So Decapolis, deca 10, polis, City. That this is the the 10 cities, the the Gentile cities. And it's this demon possessed man who becomes the 1st gentile missionary. The first one sent out by Jesus himself. The first one commissioned to go into this gentile world.
Cole Ragsdale:To tell his friends of the mercy and of the grace of God, and so here we see that how do we celebrate the miracle? How do we celebrate what God has done in and through us is that we go and tell. Because this Jesus has the power to turn what is a man filled with legion back into a person. That turns graveyards into communities. That turns distress into mercy and turns a god awful, hellish situation into mission.
Cole Ragsdale:What is it today that Jesus wants to transform in you? What aspect of your life? Where is the nook and cranny that he wants to transform, because our master has the power to do it? Let's pray together. Father, we thank you that You are the master over all that is supernatural, that there is nothing that we stand against, that you have not and will not conquer.
Cole Ragsdale:So I just pray for my sisters and brothers today, that if whatever moment of this text that they need to experience and live into, that they would. And Father we pray these things through the son and by the spirit, amen.
