Jesus Delivers Us From Evil (Morning)
Download MP3I invite you, if you have a bible, to turn to Mark chapter 5. It's also there in your worship guide as we are continuing our study in the gospel of Mark. And, this morning, we are going to see how Jesus leaves one storm behind, only to enter into another one. Last week, we saw how Jesus and His disciples had got in a boat to cross over to the other side, and this is not only the first time that Jesus ever crosses the Sea of Galilee, it's the first time He ever goes to the Gentiles. He specifically goes to unreached Gentile territory.
Joel Brooks:And He does so in order to reach 1 man, to help this demoniac man. Satan obviously doesn't want that to happen, and so we looked at last week, how, just like in the book of Job in which you had Satan, he was given permission, to throw a storm at Job's family and to take them away. It seems like Satan threw a storm at Jesus, doing anything he could to stop Jesus from reaching the other shore. Jesus just wakes up from a nap. He calmly rebukes the wind.
Joel Brooks:We read he he muzzles the waves. His disciples are filled with fear. And they ask, who is this? Well, ironically, though, the disciples of Jesus don't know who Jesus is. The man who is waiting on the shore does.
Joel Brooks:And that's who we're gonna look at this morning. We're gonna read about his encounter with Jesus. So Mark chapter 5, we'll begin reading in verse 1. 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.
Joel Brooks:He lived among the tombs, and no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain. For he had often been bound 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 he 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?
Joel Brooks: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.
Joel Brooks:And he begged him earnestly not to send him out of the country. 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.
Joel Brooks:Herd, numbering about 2,000, rushed down the steep bank into the sea and drowned in the sea. 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 the legion, sitting there, clothed and in his right mind. And they were afraid. And those who had seen it described to them what had happened to the demon possessed man and to the pigs, and they began to beg Jesus to depart from their region.
Joel Brooks:As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed with 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 Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him, and everyone marveled. This is the word of the Lord. Would you pray with me?
Joel Brooks:Father, I pray that you would reveal yourself to us through your word, by your spirit, and that we would marvel. I pray that the the picture we have of you would would get so much bigger, so much more beautiful and glorious, and that would lead us to worship. So I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore, but, lord, may your words remain, and may they change us. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen.
Joel Brooks:So this is a pretty bizarre story, isn't it? Let's just go ahead and acknowledge that at the start. I don't know about you, but I've got questions. My my kids all the time, they they say, dad, we've got questions. And and I have got questions about a story like this.
Joel Brooks:Questions about demon possession in general. I don't fully understand it. The the word is actually demonized. What does that really look like? And not only how can one man be demonized, but how can one man have apparently thousands of demons in him?
Joel Brooks:Not sure how that works. I'm not sure how it works that these demons can then go into pigs, and then I don't know why they wanna go into the pigs only to drown themselves. Then what happens to the demons after they no longer have the pigs? Don't know. I mean, there are a lot of questions here.
Joel Brooks:You probably have these questions too. And, I'm imagining the disciples had these questions as well, because this was not a normal day for them. This didn't this wasn't like, you know, just every afternoon in ancient Palestine, things like this happened. This was as unusual to them 2000 years ago as it was to us is to us. And that's why, why my Mark here, he probably had those questions, and he doesn't even attempt to answer them.
Joel Brooks:He probably doesn't know the answers. He's just as puzzled as us. He can only report what happened. And he does give us a very detailed description of what happened. The gospel of Matthew and the gospel of Luke, they also record this event.
Joel Brooks:But interestingly, Mark actually gives us the longest account. And this is rare. So rare, I actually think it's the only time in which there's a shared story with other gospels that Mark gives the longest account. I mean, we've been looking at Mark. So Mark gives very few details.
Joel Brooks:It's it's the shortest of all the gospels. He writes in this kind of short, punchy style, But here, he actually slows down for us, and he really takes time to paint quite a vivid picture. So he obviously sees this as a really important event, and he he he wants to teach us something about what's happening here. And I think we see at least 3 things that that Mark wants to teach us. And we're gonna look at each of these three things.
Joel Brooks:He wants to show us the destructive power of evil. Then he wants to show us how Jesus has power over that evil. And then he wants to show us what our response to Jesus should look like. And wanna look at each of these three things. So first, let's look at the destructive power of evil.
Joel Brooks:I cannot imagine a a man in a more wretched state than this man. His life is an absolute horror. We read that he's possessed by a legion of unclean demons. A a legion is the largest unit of troops in the Roman army. It's 6000.
Joel Brooks:So he's got an army of 1,000 of demons in him. And basically what this means is his life is hell. I don't know exactly all that it means, but it at least means that his life is hell. He he can no longer live in normal society. He's he's been cast out even by, maybe by others or by himself, but he now lives outside of the city.
Joel Brooks:He lives in the tombs, which is appropriate because he's probably more dead than he is alive. Now there were times in the past that people tried to help him. And maybe some of his calmer moments, they would approach him, maybe try to reason with him. And when they realized that couldn't happen, they would try to bind him to keep him from hurting others, to keep him from hurting himself. Essentially, they put him in a straight jacket.
Joel Brooks:And then in these moments of demonic rage, he would be given supernatural strength, and he could just break through those things. So then they would try chains, and he could actually break through the chains and the shackles. It's act It's incredible, the strength that he would be given by this legion of demons. And so what we have here is a picture of a man in which can't be helped. No matter what anyone has tried, no matter what they've tried to do, they can't help him.
Joel Brooks:They're they're powerless. All they could do is listen to his cries, and this man cried out night and day in agony. He he was in such agony, he had such self loathing, Mark says he would cut himself. He would he'd find whatever sharp objects he could, sharp stones, and he would cut himself. Likely, he's trying to end his life.
Joel Brooks:But if chains cannot bind him, sharp stones cannot kill him. There's no freedom for this man. He he's a picture here of the destructive power of evil. The best word that I could use to describe this man is the word tormented. He's tormented.
Joel Brooks:We don't know how he got to be in this state, but I'm pretty sure it didn't happen overnight. After Jesus heals him, we read that, you know, he's supposed to go home. He's supposed to tell his friends. So at least we know at one point he had a home. At one point he had friends.
Joel Brooks:And then somewhere along the line, evil took hold. He gave himself maybe a little into something, and it began to grab more and
Cole Ragsdale:more and more of him. Eventually this evil
Joel Brooks:took over his entire life, and it has now consumed him. Describing his condition is because he wants us to take a good hard look at the destructive power of evil, because he knows we need to be reminded of it. We need to be reminded of the of this because let's admit it, there are times where evil doesn't actually seem to look
Cole Ragsdale:all that evil, does it? A matter of fact, you you you
Joel Brooks:especially find that in our culture now, in which the highest ethic, tell me if I'm wrong, but the highest ethic that our culture has is one of tolerance, in which you look at something evil but you can't call it evil. And actually, you begin to call good things evil, and evil things good. In Mark here, he's reminding us of what evil is, and evil wants one thing, to destroy you, and we need to be reminded of this. And even if we don't believe, you know, that some good things are evil or some evil things are good, there's a lot of times we look at evil and we make the mistake of thinking it's actually just harmless. And Mark says don't fool yourself, evil is not harmless.
Joel Brooks:Gossip is not just spilling the tea. It's not just, you know, harmless fun. You slandering a fellow human being created in the image of God, that's not just you speaking truth. It's not just politics. Slander.
Joel Brooks:Abortion is not family planning. It's the ending of a life. Sexual immorality is not just you exploring, having fun, or living out your truth. It's evil. It's sin.
Joel Brooks:Actually, what what I find is that the more dangerous evils that we have in our life are usually the ones we see as harmless. And because we seem see them as harmless, we invite them in, and they take a foothold, and they grow and they grow. And soon, evil will take us to such a point where we hate even our very life. Don't take the clickbait of evil. I think that's just something harmless that you could just dabble in.
Joel Brooks:Its goal is to destroy you. So how do you destroy evil before it destroys you? Well, I think one thing that Mark wants to show us here is you can't do it by trying to restrain it. Not by external restraints. This man, he didn't need the townspeople to come in and, you know, remove all the sharp rocks so he couldn't hurt himself.
Joel Brooks:He didn't need the townspeople to come in and close-up all the tombs so he couldn't live in them. He didn't need the townspeople to come in and give even stronger chains to try and bind Him, because none of those things would work. No laws, no rules will ever stop evil. What this man needs is a deliverer. He needs someone stronger than the evil in him, someone stronger than that evil to come and to deliver him, to give him a new heart, a new spirit, and to free him.
Joel Brooks:He needs to be reborn, but you can't do that yourself. To be reborn is something only Jesus can do. You guys have all, you all have heard the stories. You know the statistics better than I do probably. About how kids who grow up in Christian homes going to church, for some reason when they go off to college, they abandon it all.
Joel Brooks:They go wild. They give up the faith. Why is that? It it I mean, it happened to my college roommate my freshman year. We were at the University of Georgia, which you would think was a safe, holy sanctuary.
Joel Brooks:And so, we're there, and I picked for my college roommate the only other kid who was in the youth group I had growing up. He was a great kid. He was he was a friend. He probably never made a b in his life. Not made my c's.
Joel Brooks:He made all a's. Probably should clarify that. He was he was brilliant. He knew his bible backward and forward. When we did sword drills.
Joel Brooks:Any of y'all do sword drills growing up in the church? Yeah. He would destroy me. You probably could. I'm dyslexic.
Joel Brooks:I still don't know the minor prophets. They're just all a jumbled mess in my mind. But he would, church every Sunday, good, moral, young man. And we we go off to Georgia, and within just a few weeks, he's almost unrecognizable. And he would be coming into the dorm just wasted, early in the morning, while I would be leaving out to go, to work out or then to go to class.
Joel Brooks:He abandoned his faith completely. How did that happen? And you guys, you could probably share many stories like that. How does that happen? How did a good moral man within just a few weeks get that way?
Joel Brooks:Well, hear me. I don't believe it's because this person, my friend, had a sudden heart change. Not at all.
Cole Ragsdale:I don't think he had
Joel Brooks:a heart change and became an evil person. No. I believe he actually always was that way. The restraints just came off. And that's what happens when we go to college.
Joel Brooks:The restraints come off. No longer are there the rules from home, the rules of the parents kind of guarding you and
Cole Ragsdale:restraining you. Those things are no longer there
Joel Brooks:to keep you in My My friend's heart had never actually been changed as a youth. It had only been restrained as a youth. And at some point, the restraints will always come off. You can't keep the evil caged. The only one for anyone to get rid of evil in their life is to be delivered from it.
Joel Brooks:Someone more powerful than the evil has to come and deliver them from the evil. You have to be given a new heart. You have to be reborn. Let's look at Jesus's power to deliver now. His power over evil.
Joel Brooks:When Jesus steps out of the boat, we read he is immediately met by this demon possessed man. This man actually seems to have been looking for Jesus. You you read later in verse 6 how he saw Jesus from afar, meaning he's looking. And when he sees him from afar, he beelines it there and runs as fast as he can. Why was he looking for Jesus?
Joel Brooks:Because the storm was silent. Remember, there's there was that huge, fierce, possibly supernatural storm that was hitting, and I'm sure this man was taking shelter from the storm. He's he's likely in a tomb, and picture it dark outside. The wind is just howling, and then all of a sudden, the wind stops. The light comes out in a moment.
Joel Brooks:And He knows in that moment something supernatural has happened. He knows that whatever defenses Satan has put out there have just been broken through. And so he runs outside to look and to see what has happened, and he sees a boat gently, peacefully coming to the shore. And he beelines it to this boat. And I am sure, in this man, there is a mixture of a bunch of things happening here.
Joel Brooks:Fear, excitement. I'm sure he is both hating and hoping for deliverance. When the boat arrives, we we read only that Jesus gets out of the boat. All the gospels, say this that, just Jesus gets out. Maybe the disciples got out as well, but they are never mentioned as getting out.
Joel Brooks:They're not mentioned anywhere in the story. What's likely happening is as this boat is gently coming to the shore, you see this demon possessed crazed man screaming and yelling and coming towards them, and Jesus is like, why don't you guys just stay in the boat? I've got this. And they're like, sounds like a good plan. We're just, we're just gonna stay right here.
Joel Brooks:And Jesus, he gets out of the boat. And we read that this man's screaming. He comes, and he falls down, and then he cries out, What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? So interestingly the interestingly, the disciples did not know who Jesus was, but the demons do. The demons here, the this man, he asked Jesus the same question as the demons did back in chapter 2.
Joel Brooks:What have you to do with me? This is a way of saying, why are you here bothering me? Or why are you bringing this conflict to me? The demon knows that this is an assault. He rightly sees Jesus's presence here as an invasion.
Joel Brooks:And so he begs Jesus. I know you've come here. Why are you here? Just don't torment me. Notice Jesus does not answer the demon's questions.
Joel Brooks:Jesus is the one who will do the asking. He's beholden to no one. He asked for the demon's name. The man responds, my name is Legion, for we are many. The way this man speaks is a little confusing.
Joel Brooks:It's kinda like I'll I'll do a Lord of the Rings reference. It's kinda like Gollum in Lord of the Rings. Half the time, it's a personal pronoun. Half the times, it's a we. And and he goes back and forth in this.
Joel Brooks:He says, my name is Legion, for we are many. It's a little confusing here. Once again, I don't understand demonic possession, how it works, but it certainly seems like there's thousands of demons within this guy. An army of demons. Once again, he's a stronghold of Satan.
Joel Brooks:He begs for Jesus to not force them to leave this region. I think, actually, the ESV at one point says a juror at some point. Has anybody said a juror lately? I don't know why it's translated this way. But he's he's begging throughout this.
Joel Brooks:He begs, he said, don't don't make me depart from this region. Send me to the pigs. I don't know why they want to stay in this gentile region, why it's so important to them, and then only to be asked to go to a herd of pigs, which will then go and run into the sea and drown once again. I don't know the answer to those questions. Mark doesn't seem interested in telling us.
Joel Brooks:It's not the point of the story. That they were pigs there though, that is significant. Pigs were unclean. Jews cannot eat pigs because they were considered unclean. The whole story is about uncleanliness here.
Joel Brooks:The pigs were unclean, the man lived among the tombs, which will made him unclean because anybody who touches anything dead is unclean. He was filled with a unclean spirit, and he lived in gentile territory, which was unclean. You actually could not have a more unclean place on earth than this spot. It's why Jesus went there. He is taking on the powers of evil, and he's gonna make the unclean clean.
Joel Brooks:Notice he did it with a mere word. Kinda like, you know, when he calms the storm, you know, he doesn't roll up his sleeves, do some incantation, doesn't get out his wand. He doesn't do any of that stuff. Just a mere word. He he takes on an army of demons by just telling them to leave.
Joel Brooks:There's there's not even a fight. He says go, and they all go. It reminds me how later, when Jesus is arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane, if you remember the story, Peter gets out his sword and he wants to attack the people, and Jesus looks at them and is like, what are you doing? Put the sword away. Said, do you not know that, like, with a mere word, I can call down 12 legion of angels to help me?
Joel Brooks:Jesus could command an entire army, legions of angels, and He also could command demons. Like, they all have to obey Jesus here. His power is astonishing. Remember, Jesus had already said that he came to this world to bind the strong man, and now he takes whatever he wants, and that's what he's doing here. He's gone to the shore, he has bound the strong man, and now he is taking whatever he wants, and what he wants is this man to be freed.
Joel Brooks:And the demons are powerless to stop him. Now let's look at what a life freed by Jesus looks like and and how we are to respond to him. After Jesus delivers this man, we find him looking sane, like human. He's sitting down. He's clothed.
Joel Brooks:The gospel of Luke, we read that he would have been unclothed for years. He's in his right mind. The darkness, the self loathing, gone. Just like Jesus had calmed the storm, Jesus had calmed the storm that had been raging in this man for so long. So how do you think the townspeople will respond?
Joel Brooks:I mean, the townspeople have been listening to this man's screams every night for years. You think they'd rejoice over this. But but it's just like the story of the prodigal son. Again, this time, it's it's it's not a parable. It's actually being played out in real life here.
Joel Brooks:Here, you see the lost person returning, Jesus healing them. And it's the elder brothers who refuse to rejoice. They want nothing to do with this. All they could think of is the cost. How much did this cost us?
Joel Brooks:So instead of, like, the celebrations, the parties, the music, the dancing, the feasting that you would expect, not one person rejoices. Not one. Instead, the townspeople were afraid when they saw that this man had been healed, and they begged Jesus to leave. Let that sink in. They would rather have an army of demons living in the land than the savior of the world.
Joel Brooks:Before being too harsh on them, though, we might just want to ask a question, why is that? Well, they they knew what we sometimes forget. And that is to ask somebody with power like that to come and stay, and to be around you, is gonna completely disrupt your life. Jesus would completely disrupt every aspect of their lives. He had already crashed their entire economy.
Joel Brooks:2,000 pigs gone like that. That's a lot of bacon. I mean, it's a lot of money there. And he did it unapologetically. 2,000 unapologetically just to save 1 man.
Joel Brooks:What might He do in saving more? What else might it cost them? What else might they lose if He were to stay? These people rightly understood something about Jesus that we we so often forget, is that if you want Jesus to be around, he is going to disrupt things. Life as you know it will not be the same.
Joel Brooks:And if it is the same, it might be because Jesus hasn't really been around. Make no mistake, if you want Jesus around, he's gonna disrupt your finances. He's gonna disrupt the way you use your time. He's gonna disrupt your opinions as to what you believe to be right or wrong. He's gonna disrupt your sports idolatry, and how all of your life has to revolve around sports, or he's gonna, he's gonna disrupt your child idolatry and how your entire lives revolve around your kids.
Joel Brooks:But you cannot be close to someone with this type of power and not have your life disrupted. I say this because I'm sure, as I'm looking around this room, I'm sure that there are some of you here who might feel that currently, you're kinda distant from Jesus, and you can't figure out why. The like, maybe the intimacy you used to enjoy is just it's not there anymore. I mean, you're still Christian. You're still here.
Joel Brooks:You're going to church. You're hearing the word of God, but but the intimacy is not there, and you're wondering why. And I just wanna put this out there as a possibility. It might just be because you have actually begged Jesus to leave certain parts of your life alone. Jesus, you can have these areas, but this here, depart.
Joel Brooks:Because you know if he stays there, it's gonna cost you. You know it's gonna disrupt things. I know that's true in my life over and over. There's certain things I'll You really You want me to confess that to others? Oh.
Joel Brooks:You want me to give that away? You want me to get up and speak and share about that? You you want me to do these things? Temptation is to say, would you just depart? Don't do that.
Joel Brooks:Unlike the townspeople here who begged Jesus to leave, the man who'd just been delivered begged Jesus to stay. You could actually understand this entire story just by looking at the begs. There's a number of begs that are throughout the story. The demons begged to stay in the region and to go to the pigs. The townspeople begged Jesus to leave.
Joel Brooks:This man now begs to go with Jesus and to be with him. And interestingly, Jesus grants the request of the demons. He grants the request of the townspeople, and He denies the request of the man He just freed. Like, go figure. It's it's Jesus being Jesus.
Joel Brooks:I mean, once again, you can't control him. He he does what he wants to do. It's like, seriously? You're gonna listen to to these evil people, the the evil demons, and you're gonna give them what they want, but you're gonna deny me who just wants to be with you? Jesus says yes.
Joel Brooks:You can't control him. And then Shh, be quiet. Don't tell anyone. That's what He's been doing all along. But now He's here in this Gentile territory, He heals a person, and He says, you know what?
Joel Brooks:I want you to tell everybody what I did for you. This man becomes the 1st missionary to the Gentiles. 1st missionary to the Gentiles. I mean, think of that. Jesus entrusted to this man a fresh, brand spankin' new convert, who had just been demon possessed for years, an enormous ministry task, without any support group, and without any instructions.
Joel Brooks:I mean, when Jesus sends out his disciples later, he at least sends them out 2 by 2. This man's got nobody. He's only armed with a message. I've been delivered. Jesus did it for me, and that message is enough.
Joel Brooks:Remember, the power is not in the one who scatters the seed. The power is in the seed. We saw that weeks ago. It's not in the one who scatters. The power is in the gospel itself.
Joel Brooks:And can I just say we will see? I don't wanna get too far ahead, but you will see the fruit of that seed weeks ahead from now. Because when Jesus comes back to the same region, he will not be greeted by another demoniac man. He will be greeted by 1,000 wanting to hear his every word. Where did those 1,000 come from?
Joel Brooks:Well, you're seeing the 1st missionary to the Gentiles right here. So so why didn't Mark record this story for us? I think it's simply he wants you to see the power and the relentless pursuit of Jesus to come and deliver you. Hell itself cannot stop Jesus from coming to deliver you. And Mark wants you to know that if Jesus can heal and deliver a man like that, he can heal and deliver anyone.
Joel Brooks:And so I don't care who you are, what you think you've done, how bound you think you are to sin, all those things. Jesus can 100% deliver you. No one is beyond his reach. And we'll look later, and when we get to the gospel of Mark, how Jesus is gonna take the ultimate fight to Satan, how he's gonna win our ultimate deliverance. He's gonna do this by essentially swapping places with this demoniac because a day is gonna come where Jesus is gonna be the one who's cut.
Joel Brooks:Jesus is gonna be the one who's bound, who's spread out naked. Jesus is the one who where the powers of evil are gonna come and lash out and oppress him, and he's gonna take it all on so that we might never ever experience that again. Jesus is our savior, our deliverer. Cry out to him. Pray with me.
Joel Brooks:Jesus, thank you for your relentless, passionate pursuit of us. You see us in our miserable state, and you are not content to leave us there, but you come and you free us. For those in this room who are bound to the powers of evil, I pray that right now, you would break those powers and you would breathe into them new life, give them a new heart and a new spirit. And for those of us here in which there's areas of our life in which we have said, Jesus, would he leave? Would we repent of that?
Joel Brooks:And say, Jesus, there's not a single room of my heart that you are not lord over. Come and stay, and would he be so kind to do so? We pray this in the sweet name of Jesus, our present and our future King. Amen.
