- Text: Mark 5:1-20, NKJV
- Series: Mark (2021-2023), No. 19
- Date: Sunday evening, February 13, 2022
- Venue: Central Baptist Church — Lawton, Oklahoma
- Audio Download: https://archive.org/download/rejoicingintruthpodcast_202011/2021-s09-n19z-casting-out-demons.mp3
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Transcript:
I know that I say I know, I’m pretty sure the story that I’m going to tell you, I’ve probably already told you, but I’ll probably tell you a few more times before the Lord calls me home. Because if I was keeping a list of the weirdest things that have ever happened to me, this is somewhere in the top 10. All right, Charla and I were in Santa Fe on our honeymoon, and we had, and no, it’s not a weird story about Charla.
We had gotten to town and so we, first thing we did was go to Walmart as one does, you know, that’s pretty much the law. And we, we headed to Walmart. Santa Fe has a good Walmart and a scary Walmart, but at that time they only had the scary Walmart.
So we went to scary Walmart and we were just walking around, having a good time, picking out snacks and, and, and things like that. And we’re walking toward the checkout counters. And we were talking about the story again today, making sure I remembered the details correctly.
And she reminded me, you know, Walmart’s used to have at each checkout stand, there’d be like an aisle between the main aisle and the checkout stand. There’d be this little kiosk with every cashier line and, you know, where they’d have batteries or sodas or whatever. And so we’re walking down the main aisle toward the checkouts, and we get no further out from this lady than I am from Rodney right now.
And we’re just walking along talking, and I’d seen her already. She’s walking with her head down, dressed all in black. She’s just walking with her head down.
We get about this far apart, and she just stops. And her head snaps up like this, and she just looks at us. Well, we stopped too, because the reaction was kind of startling.
She just stares at us and she starts to glare, starts to give us the big eyes, as we say with our kids. And she just kind of does this at us and backs up about two steps and then sidesteps down the aisle like she couldn’t down that little aisle in between the main aisle and the cash registers. Like she could not get away from us fast enough.
And I laid out the setting for you you know, we were not blocking the whole main aisle. I mean, we’re not arm in arm stretched out like this. It gave me shivers, and maybe I’m not telling it right, but the look she gave us and the disgust that came over her face, and she couldn’t get away fast enough.
Charla looked at me and said, what just happened? I said, I get the feeling, and I’m not Mr. Charismatic, but I told her, I got the feeling that something in her didn’t like something in us.
And I’ve heard stories like that. I have a friend who told me he experienced the same thing with his wife in New Orleans. Not that she was the one backing up, but they were walking through Jackson Square, and a man gave them the same kind of look and took off the other direction.
And the look on this woman’s face that we experienced was, the only way I could describe it is demonic. Now, again, I’m not Mr. Charismatic.
I don’t see the devil behind every bush. but we would be foolish not to think that he’s at work somewhere. And I felt like we came face to face with some kind of demon that night that obviously did not care for the Holy Spirit that we carry around with us.
And that sort of thing happens from time to time. There’s an ongoing spiritual struggle in our world that we cannot see because it’s taking place in the spiritual world that we don’t see that’s all within the physical world. And the thing about this spiritual struggle, a lot of people, a lot of times in the culture, you’ll see it portrayed as God and Satan, kind of like the old spy versus spy comics.
You know, they’re evenly matched and trying to get the better of each other. That’s not the case. God and Satan are not equals buying for control.
God is the sovereign and Satan’s just doing what he can with the limited time he has available. See, this battle that’s going on in the spiritual world, God has already won it, and the powers of darkness have already lost. Because God and Jesus, God the Son, have authority over the powers of darkness. And Mark describes an event where this authority was on display.
I think there’s a reason why we didn’t stop and back up. We just kind of, we weren’t intentionally doing spiritual warfare, but we just stood there saying, what is going on here? And that woman hightailed it the other direction.
And I believe it’s because whatever was in her knew it was already defeated by what was ever in us or what we know was in us. But Mark describes an event here where this spiritual authority of Jesus is on display. And so we’re going to go to Mark chapter 5 tonight.
We finally made it to chapter 5 after all these months. Mark chapter 5, and we’re going to look at the first 20 verses of Mark chapter 5. If you would stand with me once you find it in your Bibles, or if you’re using a device, you can get it through our bulletin or it’ll be on the screen for you.
But Mark chapter 5, starting in verse 1, it says, Then they came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gadarenes. By the way, I’ll get to some of these details in a minute. They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gadarenes.
And when he had come out of the boat, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit, who had his dwelling among the tombs, and no one could bind him, not even with chains, because he had been bound with shackles and chains. and the chains had been pulled apart by him and the shackles broken in pieces. Neither could anyone tame him.
And always night and day he was in the mountains and in the tombs crying out and cutting himself with stones. When he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and worshipped him and cried out with a loud voice and said, What have I to do with you, Jesus, son of the most high God? I implore you by God that you do not torment me.
For he said to him, Come out of the man unclean spirit. and then he asked, What is your name? Then he answered saying, My name is Legion, for we are many.
And he begged him earnestly that he would not send them out of the country. Now a large herd of swine was feeding there near the mountains, so all the demons begged him saying, Send us to the swine that we may enter them. And at once Jesus gave them permission.
Then the unclean spirits went out and entered the swine, and there were about two thousand. And the herd ran violently down the steep place into the sea and drowned in the sea. so those who fed the swine so those who fed the swine and they told it in the city and the country oh I’m sorry no wonder it wasn’t making sense to me I missed a word in there all right back up to the beginning of verse 14 so those who fed the swine fled and they told it in the city and in the country and they went out to see what it was that had happened then they came to Jesus and saw one who had been demon possessed and had the legion sitting and clothed and in his right mind, and they were afraid.
And those who saw it told them how it happened to him who had been demon-possessed and about the swine. Then they began to plead with him to depart from their region. And when he got into the boat, he that had been demon-possessed begged him that he might be with him.
However, Jesus did not permit him, but said to him, Go home to your friends and tell them what great things the Lord has done for you and how he has had compassion on you. And he departed and began to proclaim in Decapolis all that Jesus had done for him and all marveled. And you may be seated.
Now, I want to get into some things about the authority of Jesus over the spirits of darkness here, but there’s some things I want to go through and explain to you to help us understand a little better and also help us understand what’s not just what’s going on here, but what is not going on, because there are some things in this story that skeptics like to point to and as evidence of what they say, the Bible being untrustworthy. But there are answers for these things. And even if you haven’t heard them, I want to give them to you preemptively so you’re kind of prepared if they ever come up.
But one thing that comes up almost immediately, it says they came up to the other side of the sea. This is probably late the same night of all the things we’ve been talking about for the last several weeks. The blasphemy of the Holy Spirit, the parable of the sower.
All of this stuff takes place within about a day. And it says there at the evening, they got onto the boat and went across the sea. That’s what we talked about last time with the storm on the Sea of Galilee.
They had gotten on the boat that same night. Here they’ve made it over to the other side. So it’s probably very late that next, very late that same night or early the next morning.
We’re still pretty close after all this has just happened. They come out of the boat into the country of the Gadarenes. Now, the other Gospels, I think Matthew and Luke, tell this story also.
One of them uses the term Gadarenes. One of them uses the term Gergesenes. I can’t remember off the top of my head which is which.
But some people will point to that and say, see, the Gospel writers couldn’t even get their story straight about where it happened. Because this is the same story. I don’t know why I’m tongue-tied tonight.
Just excited, I guess. The Gadarenes, the Gergesenes, there’s a couple of possible explanations. As a matter of fact, they may both be true.
One of these terms was evidently the name for a village, and one of these was the term for a district, has been one of the suggestions made about this, that it’s not a contradiction. It would be like saying, if something happened at my house, somebody might describe it as Lawton, or they might describe it as Comanche County. Neither one of those is inaccurate.
They’re just a different way of categorizing the place. Another has been to suggest it’s in an area between different villages. Maybe Gergesa and Gadara, the two names that are given here.
At my house, we don’t know exactly where we live. I mean, I know how to find my way home, but we don’t know exactly what to call it. Because we have a lot and address, but the closest town is Medicine Park.
we have a medicine park phone number we’re in the elgin school district I don’t even know where we live right if somebody asks where we live you know somebody here asks well we’re up close to to medicine park somebody from the city asks well we live in lawton somebody from that I know from arkansas well we live in the southwest part of oklahoma it’s all ways of of saying the same thing and it’s possible that they were not in the middle of any village but there I mean since the guy couldn’t live in the village anyway, that they’re out there in sort of a no-man’s land, and one gospel writer says, well, it was near Gadara, and another one says it was near Gargesa, and nobody’s wrong, because it was near both of those things and in neither one.
So there’s a couple of options there, and I’m telling you that because that’s one of those things that skeptics will pull out and say, see, they can’t even agree on where it happened. Well, they’re not contradicting each other. These able to be bound with chains.
And people will say, skeptics will say, well, that doesn’t make sense. That doesn’t seem humanly possible that they would be able to tear chains. Now, number one, I’ve seen enough episodes of cops and live PD to know that if somebody’s on something, you don’t know what’s possible, right?
But number two, I don’t think, maybe I’m wrong here, but I don’t think first century peasants living in Israel had access to iron chains. As a matter of fact, the Greek words here don’t necessarily mean iron chains. They mean bindings.
These could have been rope bindings. And you could use even a really strong, sturdy rope to bind somebody up. But if he’s possessed by a demon, if he’s out of his mind, he can get out of those.
So it doesn’t mean necessarily that he’s breaking iron chains, which people have looked at and said, no, the story doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t necessarily mean iron chains. The Greek there just means binding, even with the shackles, nor could anyone tame him.
There’s another place in here where we see he’s got the demon. And in one moment, it says in verse six, he cries out to Jesus from afar and ran out and worshiped him. And then in the very next breath in verse seven, it says, and he cried out with a loud voice and said, what have I to do with you, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?
I implore you by God that you do not torment me. So we see in verse 6, he’s worshiping Jesus. And in verse 7, he’s calling out to Jesus saying, leave me alone.
And skeptics have every once in a while pointed to this and said, which is it? What’s going on here? Does he worship Jesus or does he want him to be left alone?
Mark makes no distinction between what the man is saying of his own free of his mouth and what the demon is saying against the man’s free will out of the man’s mouth. We see this ongoing struggle here that really points to the powerlessness of the man. You know, we tend to think we’re tough, we’re invincible, we’re not scared of anything.
Sometimes we’ll think that. And then we have to admit we really are scared of things. We are not more powerful than these forces on our own.
He’s dealing with forces that are more powerful than him. And yet, far less powerful than Jesus. There’s this ongoing struggle where the man in his will recognizes that he is under bondage and oppression, bondage and oppression from this demonic entity that’s within him.
And he, in a moment of sanity, it seems like, cries out to Jesus and worships him. And then the demon begins to speak again and says, leave us alone. It’s all coming out of the man’s mouth though, but it doesn’t, there’s not a contradiction here.
And then I just, it gives me goosebumps even to read that statement, I am legion, because we used to, when we were little, we used to watch these animated Bible videos, sometimes in children’s church. And I remember you’d get to the one about this story, and I remember the creepy voice that came out of that demon on the show. And even reading that, it just makes my skin crawl.
But we need to understand some these things because it helps us understand the story. And also I’ve heard preachers preach this. And my question is, why did a Jewish town, why were they raising pigs?
Yeah, that’s really not the issue here. As a matter of fact, historically speaking, people on that side of the Sea of Galilee were probably Gentiles, which also explains why Jesus doesn’t tell the man to keep quiet about what he’d seen. He wasn’t worried about the Gentiles thinking he was the Messiah because they weren’t really worried about the Messiah.
With a Jewish audience, he had to tell everybody, keep it quiet. We’re not to that point yet. But if he’s dealing with a Gentile audience, that makes complete sense why he says, go and tell everybody what the Lord has done here.
So some things to give you some background that’ll help make sense of what’s going on here. But what we need to understand is when he got off the boat, the demon recognized him and the demon recognized Jesus’ authority right away. We don’t see that Jesus, you know, it wasn’t Jesus Christ demon hunter going out there looking for what demons he could find.
They noticed him. I’m sure he knew the demon was there, but he didn’t go looking for the demon. The demon found him.
And the demon recognized from far away, this is going to be a problem. Because he recognized Jesus’ authority. He cried out.
I mean, as soon as the man came near, he cried out in verse 7, What have I to do with you, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? That phrase, what have I to do with you, a lot has been written about that phrase. What have we to do with each other?
It basically means, leave me alone. We don’t need to. .
. There’s no reason for us to be interacting. It’s a plea for mercy, basically.
Because that demon knows that he can throw. . .
Jesus can throw that demon out of there at any time. He’s already recognized the authority. But he’s trying his best to call out and say, Please just leave me alone here.
And he calls him Jesus, son of the most high God. Now, I mentioned to you in a previous passage in Mark where Jesus cast out a demon, it did something like this as well. It recognized him by a similar title.
And there was a superstition at that time that knowing somebody’s name and calling them by name gave you some kind of authority over them. And so some commentators have said, Well, this might be the demon trying to exert authority over Jesus. That’s possible, but if so, it’s incredibly misguided because he knew he was correct in what he was calling him.
You are the son of the most high God. Try to pin down the son of the most high God and try to get over some advantage on him. Good luck with that.
That’s possible, and that’s possible that people might have understood it that way. But I like the straightforward reading of this. He knew who he was dealing with.
He knew his goose was cooked. He recognized his authority right away. And he says, I implore you by God that you do not torment me.
He says, he’s begging. He’s begging for mercy. We don’t do that when we have the upper hand, do we?
No, we like to negotiate from a position of strength. And when we have the upper hand, we like to dictate terms. It’s when we know we’re losing that we want to beg for mercy. And for him to say, I implore you, he’s begging.
please, please, don’t torment me. And I don’t think that means just annoy him fiercely. I think also Satan is not stupid.
He knows how the book ends and he knows at the appointed time, God is going to throw him and all his little minions into the abyss. And if when you understand that, it sounds like he’s asking him, don’t, don’t send me to my deserved judgment today. All throughout this, he’s recognizing Jesus’s authority.
And then we see in the following verses that the demons had to leave because Jesus said so. It says, starting in verse 8, for he said to them, come out of the man unclean spirit. Then he asked him, what is your name?
Don’t misinterpret this as he tells him to come out and there’s a lull. And so he, you know, asked him, Hey, what’s your name? Where are you from?
Anybody from out of town? You know, he’s not, he’s not doing the comedy routine stick. Come out of him.
And Mark says the very next thing he says is, what is your name? I don’t think it’s a lull. I don’t think he’s giving the demon an opportunity to negotiate.
I think he’s telling him, you are going to come out of the man, but I want to know your name. I want to know who I’m dealing with. And so don’t think for a minute that it’s the demon thinking he gets to resist. And he said, my name is Legion, for we are many.
Now, if memory serves, a legion of the Roman army was something like 10,000 soldiers. I don’t know that this man had 10,000 demons in him, but there was something on. This man had a serious demon problem, and it seems to have been more than one.
He says, my name is Legion, for we are many. And he begged him. There’s that word again.
There’s that terminology again. He’s begging him. I know the word was implore before, but it means the same thing.
He begged him earnestly that he would not send him out of the country, send them out of the country. Jesus could have at any time sent them out of the man, could have sent them out of the country, could have sent them into oblivion. And these demons are begging for Jesus, not to send them out of the country.
They’re begging Jesus not to exert his power in full because they recognize they have to leave. He’s already told them, this is just the way it’s going to be. You’re coming out of that man.
And so what they’re doing here is trying to find the best landing place they can, but they know they have to leave. And we also see that the demons could not act without Jesus’s permission. When we get to verse 11, they notice there’s the large herd of swine feeding there near the mountains.
The demons begged him. There’s that word again. They begged saying, send us into the swine that we may enter them.
And honestly, there’s still so much about this that puzzles me. Why go into the pigs? I don’t have an answer for you why they wanted to do that.
A lot of people have written a lot on this, but I haven’t found anything that’s convinced me yet. Don’t misunderstand. I’m convinced it happened.
Nobody’s convinced me yet of their explanation for why the demons wanted to go into the pigs. But Jesus gave them permission. And so the unclean spirits went out, they entered the swine, so there were about 2,000 swine.
So it’s possible that there were 2,000 demons in the man. Maybe one for each pig. The herd ran violently down the steep place into the sea and drowned in the sea.
Now again, why did Jesus let them? Why did He give them permission? I don’t know.
Kind of like I don’t know why they wanted to go into the pigs. Why did Jesus give them permission to go into the pigs? probably the best explanation that I have seen and I’m still not sure I’m 100% convinced that this is the reason but then again he’s Jesus he doesn’t have to explain the reason to me I just accept that it is maybe one day I’ll get to know but he doesn’t owe me the explanation the best explanation I’ve seen up to this point is that it was for the people around to see the power that these demons had and he was able to cast them into the swine and here’s the here’s the effect that Satan will have on you as these pigs go careening down into the sea.
But then again, the problem I have with that explanation is they’d already seen the power and the destructive power that these demons had on the man as he’s out there cutting himself and screeching and living among the tombs. And I think it’s Matthew adds the detail that nobody could even walk near there because he would attack them.
And so it may be just that the explanation is he’s Jesus and he can do what he wants and I don’t have to understand I just go on but for whatever reason he allowed them to go into the swine but notice this no matter what they wanted to do they couldn’t make a move without Jesus’s permission because they recognized if Jesus is here he’s in charge and we have to answer to him and so the overall picture that we get of this or get from this is that Jesus’s power over the supernatural world is just as complete as his power over the natural world if you recall back Last week when I talked about the storm on the Sea of Galilee, Mark there was presenting a picture for us, showing us the power of Jesus over the natural world, that there’s nothing in creation, there’s nothing in nature as powerful as it is that can withstand when he says, do this or don’t do this.
But now Mark takes it a step further and makes sure we understand by this story that happened later that day or within the same 24-hour period that as powerful as Jesus is over nature, Jesus is just as powerful over the supernatural. Because it’s said here, He had His dwelling among the tombs. No one could bind Him, not even with the chains, not even with these tough bindings, the shackles. He’d ripped them apart.
He’d broken them in pieces. Nobody could tame Him. Day and night, He was in the mountains and in the tombs crying, cutting Himself with stones.
He was unclothed. He was probably covered in blood and scars. I’m sure Unkempt looked like a crazy person, was attacking people, and there was nothing that they could do.
It is Matthew that said they couldn’t even walk nearby. I didn’t realize I’d put that in my notes. Matthew chapter 8, he says they could not even walk by for fear of this man attacking them.
There was nobody in the villages, nobody in the region who could control, could exert any kind of control over this man who could civilize him at all, and all it took was a command from Jesus for them to come out. And it shows the incredible power of Jesus over the supernatural world. That the mere presence of Jesus broke through that wall of spiritual oppression that nobody else could break through.
Even the man himself, in spite of those moments of resistance, like when he ran to Jesus and threw himself down at Jesus’ feet and began to worship, even in spite of those moments of resistance, he could not overcome the spiritual oppression that he was under. The only one who could do anything to remedy this man’s situation was Jesus himself. And as a result of Jesus’ command, the man was set free.
So they came to Jesus. The people from the surrounding areas, verse 15, they came to Jesus and saw the one who had been demon-possessed and had the legion. They saw him sitting and clothed and in his right mind.
And what’s it say after that? And they were afraid. Kind of like with the sea.
They were terrified when the storm was raging. And then when Jesus said to stop, they were terrified of that. Not because they’re unnerved by calm.
They were terrified of that because they realized they were in the presence of a power even greater than the storm. Well, here they’d been terrorized and terrified by this man for however long. And suddenly they see him sitting and clothed and in his right mind and they’re terrified again.
not because they’re terrified of people wearing clothes and acting sane. They’re terrified because they realize they are in the presence of a power even greater than those demons that the man had been infested by. At Jesus’ command, the man was set free.
Nobody else could do anything. Nobody else could fix this problem. All Jesus had to do was tell the demons to get out, and they got out.
And what we need to understand from this story, as much as we want to look at it as just a story of what happened, and I do believe it happened, as much as we want to look at it as a story of, wow, that’s really amazing how powerful Jesus is, we’re getting closer to the point of the story, but we really need to understand all of these things together and understand the portrait that Mark is painting. And in going along with what I told you last week, the picture Mark is painting here is for us to recognize that Jesus is God.
and that is so important because we it used to be that you had to watch documentaries on the history channel around christmas and easter to hear skeptics be wrong about the bible all right now you can go on facebook in the youtube comment section which why why I ever go to the youtube comment section I don’t know it’s where brain cells go to die I’m convinced but now you can go literally anywhere on the internet and see people be wrong about the scriptures and you are going to run into this in ways you haven’t before. You’re either going to run into it in a discussion with somebody online, a discussion with somebody in person who’s picked up some of these ideas online. Your kids may be persuaded by some of these ideas that are online.
That the deity of Jesus Christ, Him being God, was a later invention. It wasn’t what the earliest Christians believed. It was something made up later as John got to, or whoever wrote the Gospel of John got to that point and it was made up later.
It was embellished over time because Mark was the first gospel written in all likelihood. John was the last. And so they say there’s this spectrum where Mark presents a very low human view of Jesus. And we get to John in the beginning was the word.
And we see this legendary development. It’s all baloney. The idea of this legend developing over time, because yes, John kind of wants to, he smacks you with it between the eyes because he wants to make sure you understand.
He was the last of the apostles left. This is the last shot. He’s writing it down and wanted them to make sure there was no misunderstanding and no mistake.
He’s taken his last shot. But Mark presents Jesus Christ as God every bit as much as John does. And coming from this earliest written gospel, written maybe 20 to 25 years after Jesus walked this earth, we need to understand that even then, those who had walked with him, those who had spent time with him, those who would have known better than anybody, they already believed he was God.
Because the things they saw convinced them that he was God. The things he did, the things he taught, they convinced them that he was God. And Mark wants us to understand that.
And he throws in one more detail just for good measure. He talks about the locals recognizing that Jesus is God and them being terrified, or at least they believed a God, because I don’t think if they were Gentiles, they weren’t to the point of knowing anything much about the God of Israel. But it says in verse 18, when Jesus got into the boat, this man who had been demon-possessed begged to go with him, and Jesus told him, no, you need to go back and tell people what the Lord has done for you.
That word Lord is kurios in Greek. It’s a word that’s often, usually, applied to God. Wait a minute.
If Jesus is saying, go tell people what God did for you. And it’s what Jesus did. What is Jesus claiming to be?
Say it louder for the people in the back. God, alright? And then telling the people, go tell people what God has done for you.
It says in the final verse of the passage we looked at, He departed and began to proclaim in Decapolis, that’s a ten city region, all that Jesus had done for Him. See, even this man was convinced that Jesus was the curios. us, that Jesus was God.
And that’s what Mark wants us to understand too. That Jesus, and I’m repeating myself from week to week, but that’s okay if the Bible repeats itself. It’s because God really, really wants us to get this.
Jesus Christ was no ordinary man. The things he did, the things he taught, they demonstrated for everybody who was paying attention that he was and is God in human flesh.