Transcript

If you have your Bibles please turn with me to Mark 5.

Paul teaches the Body of Christ in Ephesians 6:10 to “be strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might.” In the spiritual battle, we need spiritual strength. And as we are on the Lord’s side, Paul points to the Lord for where we are to get our strength.

Here in Mark 5, we see our Lord’s authority over demons. So we know that as we are strong in the Lord and in the power of His might, He will give us the victory we need in our lives over the wiles of the devil and give us the power to stand as a testimony for Him.

Mark 5:1-5 reads, “And they came over unto the other side of the sea, into the country of the Gadarenes. And when He was come out of the ship, immediately there met Him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit,

“Who had his dwelling among the tombs; and no man could bind him, no, not with chains: Because that he had been often bound with fetters and chains, and the chains had been plucked asunder by him, and the fetters broken in pieces: neither could any man tame him.

“And always, night and day, he was in the mountains, and in the tombs, crying, and cutting himself with stones.”

Traveling from Capernaum on the NW side of the Sea of Galilee, the Lord and the disciples travel across the sea through the storm, with the Lord calming the Sea, and they then arrive on the SE side on “the other side…into the country of the Gadarenes.”

The country of the Gadarenes refers to a region also known as the Decapolis.

The disciples’ boat beaches near a graveyard, and a herd of pigs. Both are ritually and culturally unclean for the Jews. As Christ steps off the boat, a crazy man storms out of the caves. Wild hair. Bloody wrists. Scratched skin. Arms flailing, voice screeching. Furious and naked. I imagine the disciples putting a foot back in the boat.

This is not the best local Chamber of Commerce representative. This is not the kind of Welcome Wagon you want to welcome you to Gadara. This is your worst nightmare! The disciples were horrified, but Christ isn’t. Christ had no sooner stepped off the boat that immediately at the water’s edge this man from the tombs with an unclean spirit met Him.

He is defined as having an “unclean spirit,” which is synonymous with a demon, a fallen angel. Demons are spirit beings, and they are all unclean, filthy, evil, and wicked.

Satan’s ultimate purpose is to destroy and steal. He is like a roaring lion, seeking who he may devour, I Peter 5:8,9 says.

And he had devoured and stole from this man as he had lost everything: his identity, his home, family, and friends. Luke 8:27 says that he “had devils a long time” as he’d been in his condition for years and years.

It says he came from the tombs to meet the Lord, which was unusual. Jews normally wouldn’t go near a tomb for fear of being contaminated by a dead body. But not only did he go near the tombs, this man lived in them. He was a tomb dweller.

The Jews buried their dead in natural caves or rock areas that were carved out to make a cave for burying the dead. And so this man lived in these caves, living where corpses were buried rather than in houses among the living.

He was more comfortable and at home with the dead than he was with the living, and the living were more comfortable that he was with the dead.

Matthew 8 says he was “exceeding fierce, so that no man might pass by that way.” He was violent, and wickedly aggressive, frighteningly so. And for fear of this man, and because he was such a serious threat, no one passed “by that way,” where he lived.

He was characterized by supernatural strength verse 3 says. It tells us that no one was able to bind or restrain him, which tells us that they had been trying to do it.

They used chains for his arms and “fetters” and shackles for his feet, and it still didn’t do any good, as he’d pull apart and break in pieces the chains & fetters. He had super-human strength, the demons giving him the strength to break the chains.

Luke 8:27 adds, just to make matters worse, that he wore “no clothes” as he was completely naked. The demons compelled the man to do unnatural things. He lost all decency as he ran around these caves and tombs and in the mountains naked.

Verse 5 sadly says that constantly, night and day, he was screaming and shrieking among the tombs and in the mountains and gashing himself with stones.

He was sleepless. He was restless. He was wandering in and out of the tombs, in and out of the mountains, completely tormented, completely consumed by demonic power and presence, experiencing nothing good, no escape, no rest, no sleep, a living hell.

He was totally out of control; he was like a wild animal.

And doing another unnatural thing, he grabbed stones and would hack and cut at his own flesh with stones, and inflict wounds and pain on himself on purpose.

Mark 5:6-10 says, “But when he saw Jesus afar off, he ran and worshipped Him, And cried with a loud voice, and said, What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of the most high God? I adjure thee by God, that thou torment me not.

“For He said unto him, Come out of the man, thou unclean spirit. And He asked him, What is thy name? And he answered, saying, My name is Legion: for we are many. And he besought him much that he would not send them away out of the country.”

This crazed man up on the hill in one of the tombs sees boats coming ashore and realizes he’s got some new victims, some people who aren’t from around here. They don’t know you’re not supposed to be there.

He comes flying down the hill screaming with his demonic shriek, ready to attack and then, all of a sudden, when he gets to where he can see who is there, v. 6 says, “when he say Jesus afar off.” Whoa! He sees Somebody he had known for thousands of years.

Luke adds when he saw Christ, he “cried out,” he shrieked, screamed in horror.

The demon-possessed man then does an amazing thing. It says, “He worshipped Him.” Luke says he “fell down before Him.” The man collapses. He doesn’t know what’s going on. But the demons dropped him to his knees.

The demons cause the man to run up to Christ not to try to do the Lord harm, but to bow and fall down before Him. The word for “worship” here means “to demonstrate submission, to show respect to One greater than yourself.”

In the past, no one could make him bow. No one could restrain him, or control him. No one could make him submit, but the presence of Christ cuts him to his knees. The man goes down because the demons go down, and the man goes down under their power.

The demonic force in that man is subdued by the presence of Christ, who they recognize as the Son of God, Lord over all principalities, all powers, all rulers of this present world, all rulers of darkness. They know that He is the sovereign One, who has the authority to control them, sentence them, eternally incarcerate them in the Lake of Fire.

The demons speak through the man, using his vocal chords as though the man were a puppet. And they scream and cry out with a loud voice. One demon representative speaks on behalf of the multitude of demons in the man.

And he says, “What have I to do with Thee, Jesus, thou Son of the most high God?” In Mark 4:41 the disciples asked in fear and astonishment, “What manner of man is this…? after Christ stilled the storm on the Sea of Galilee, wondering who He was. The demons had no difficulty whatever in recognizing who He is: Son of the Most High God.

For a few moments here the invisible conflict in the spiritual warfare between good and evil, light & darkness, becomes visible. And we see which side we need to be on: the Lord’s side.

“What have we to do with Thee?” denotes entire separation of interests. You and we have nothing in common.

The demon was aware that they and Christ belonged to 2 completely different kingdoms, light and darkness, and they wonder at the reason for His presence there.

The reason for Christ’s presence in Gadara was love, as He came even through a storm to rescue this man, as nothing could’ve stopped the Lord from coming to that graveyard and bringing deliverance to this man.

And the reason He came to this world was love for you. And nothing stopped the Lord from coming to this world of sin, death, and evil to bring deliverance to us either.

The demons correctly identify Jesus as Son of the Most High God. The Most High means God Sovereign, supreme above all others, higher than anything and everything.

Demons believe that Jesus is the Son of God and has authority over them. They believe in the reality of eternal judgment. This is more than many believe today!

Then they have the nerve to say “I adjure thee by God, that thou torment me not.” They sure didn’t mind tormenting this poor guy for years! Luke 8:31 says the demon asked the Lord not to command them to go into the “deep” or the abyss, the bottomless pit.

In 2 Peter 2:4 we learn how in the past, God had bound demons in chains in the bottomless pit, and they are being held there now awaiting final judgment when they will be cast into the Lake of Fire. Unlike the chains they can break here on earth, they cannot break these chains.

Demons don’t want to be locked in that pit in torment. They want to be able to do their evil in the world. They want the freedom to roam and create their havoc.

But this group of demons through their spokesman begged Christ not to send them into the pit or even “out of the country” v. 10 says. They were very happy where they were.

And so, as Christ begins to command them, all they can do is plead with Him not to send them into torment or out of the country, because they know with His power and authority as God and their Creator that He can send them any place He wants to.

They laced a whole region of people with fear, but now they tremble in fear and beg for mercy before Christ.

The demons muster no challenge, they offer no threat. Even though they did feats of great strength, before Christ He reduced them to sniveling, groveling weaklings.

The Lord then addresses the unclean spirit and with divine authority over the demons He commands the representative spokesman to vacate the tortured man.

And the Lord asks, “What is your name?” The demon-possessed man had a name. He had a name that his mother and father gave him when he was born.

But by now, his human name has been overwhelmed. The man’s personality is so totally dominated that he essentially is virtually out of existence.

And so the name that is given in reply is the name that relates to the force of demons that now live in him. The spokesman demon replied to Christ, “My name is Legion, for we are many.” “Legion” is really not a name, it is a military designation.

It’s referring to a Roman military unit. And in the Roman army a Legion consisted of 6000-7000 soldiers. The man who spoke to the Lord was under the control of a Legion of demons. There were thousands of demons within this man.

Christ draws out the name because He wants to demonstrate the extensiveness of His power over demons. It’s one thing to cast one demon out of a person; it’s another thing to deal with thousands of demons with a simple command.

Mark 5:11-13: “Now there was there nigh unto the mountains a great herd of swine feeding. And all the devils besought him, saying, Send us into the swine, that we may enter into them.

“And forthwith Jesus gave them leave. And the unclean spirits went out, and entered into the swine: and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the sea, (they were about two thousand;) and were choked in the sea.”

The demons make another request. They point out the large herd of pigs feeding nearby. Now this is also something unusual: Jews raising pigs! The Jews shouldn’t have been raising and selling pigs, as they were unclean according to the Law.

And it’s a big operation. Mark calls it a “great herd” and in v. 13 says that there were about 2000 pigs. So it was a significant enterprise. It might even be a village enterprise with that many pigs.

The demons request and implore the Lord to be sent into the swine, that they might enter them. Christ could’ve bound these demons in the bottomless pit, but it wasn’t time for this yet. This is something He’ll do at His 2nd Coming prior to His Kingdom (Rev. 20:1-3).

Matthew 8:31,32 says that the demons said, “If thou cast us out, suffer us to go away into the herd of swine. And He said unto them, Go.” At the word “Go” Christ sent and cast out the thousands of demons from this man, and they went and immediately entered into the swine.

When they hit the pigs it showed that they had left the man. So Christ visibly demonstrated His ability to free a person from the power of darkness, and the supernatural authority He has over all the demonic realm.

And when demons hit those pigs and entered them, the action of the pigs indicates what demons do. They create chaos. They remove normal instinct, and normal restraint that even animals have and create violent and deadly results.

The pigs become violent, chaotic, mad, self-destructive like the possessed man. They become what he was. And they put on display the destructive purposes of demons.

The whole herd then, 2000 squeeling, terrorized pigs, rush down a steep embankment and plunge into the depths, and they were drowned in the sea.

And the theological term for this is sooey-side.

We see the destructive and deadly intent of Satan and his demons in this, and it reminds us of the spiritual battle we are in and how they seek to destroy your life and my life, through sin, worldliness, false doctrine, through broken relationships, through anything and everything and whatever they can do to keep us from Christ.

It reminds us of the need to be vigilant, stay close to the Lord, be strong in Him and put on His armor.

Mark 5:14-20 says: “And they that fed the swine fled, and told it in the city, and in the country. And they went out to see what it was that was done.

“And they come to Jesus, and see him that was possessed with the devil, and had the legion, sitting, and clothed, and in his right mind: and they were afraid.

“And they that saw it told them how it befell to him that was possessed with the devil, and also concerning the swine. And they began to pray Him to depart out of their coasts. And when He was come into the ship, he that had been possessed with the devil prayed Him that he might be with Him.”

“Howbeit Jesus suffered him not, but saith unto him, Go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compassion on thee. And he departed, and began to publish in Decapolis how great things Jesus had done for him: and all men did marvel.”

In the accounts of this miracle, in Matthew, Mark, Luke, the owners of the pigs never say anything about their dead pigs. They never complain about it. They just had a premature pork sale.

Instead the pig herders run away and report it abroad in the city and in the country, all over the place, and the bizarre story spread rapidly: that the maniac was subdued and pigs diving into the sea. This led to people from all around coming to see for themselves.

When they arrive they find the Lord there, they find that the man was different, and they find that the pigs had acted like that man, and were dead floating in the sea.

They saw the man the legion of demons once tormented had found freedom from bondage. He was no longer naked, but clothed. No longer uncontrollable, but calm. No longer shrieking, but quiet. No longer in the tombs, but in his right mind. No longer running around like a mad man, but sitting.

And so as Christ had calmed the sea, and brought a perfect peace and stillness to it, so we see Him bringing this same calm and peace to a person. And He brings that to us when we trust Him as our Savior, and He takes our sins away, and gives us His peace.

But nobody is joyful over the maniac being subdued. Instead, they became frightened. They used to be frightened of the violent demon-possessed man, but now he was clothed, seated, harmless, quiet, and peaceful, and now they’re even more frightened.

They were frightened of Christ. The disciples had just had a similar experience. When they were in that storm on the Sea of Galilee they were scared to death of the storm, but after Christ stilled the storm, they were even more frightened of Him.

And so similarly the people from this region, seeing that the man was unquestionably freed of the demons, were frightened because they knew they were in the presence of One who had massive supernatural power.

Instead of asking the Lord who He is, or asking Him to stay and perform similar acts of compassion for others in need, the people ask Christ to leave.

There’s not a word of thanks. There’s not an expression of joy. There’s not a query about who He is and where His power comes from. There’s not a request to know His transforming power and change in the way this man experienced this change.

We would like to think that a miracle on this scale and magnitude and clarity would cause the people to want Him to stay, and to know Him more.

Instead as Luke 8:37 says, “The whole multitude of the country of the Gadarenes round about besought Him, to depart from them; for they were taken with great fear.”

It was not the pig herd owners who asked Christ to depart, but all the people from the territory that had come asked the Lord to leave, to go away. And this is often the cry and attitude of individuals, and of nations, toward the Lord Jesus Christ: Go away.

And we see how the Lord does not stay where He is not wanted. The Lord didn’t try to convince them otherwise. And He responded to their request. And He got back in the boat to leave.

But there was one man who didn’t want Him to go: the formerly demon-possessed man. He doesn’t want to go another day and take another step unless it’s with the Lord. He became an instant follower of Christ.

The man begged the Lord to allow him to join His followers. He was committed to following Christ with all he knows, and with all his heart because of his deliverance and freedom from his bondage. Do we have this kind of commitment because of our deliverance?

This man had been living with the dead in the tombs, but now he wants to be with the living and with the one who is Himself, “the Life.”

Christ doesn’t reject the man; He just had other plans for him. The Lord said “Go home to your friends and people and tell them what great things the Lord has done for you and how He had compassion and mercy on you.”

“Go home,” and the man “departed,” and did as the Lord instructed and when he gave a testimony, it was something like, “I don’t how to tell you this but I used to be a naked maniac, living in tombs, screaming all day, but then one day, Christ entered my life and He delivered me, set me free, and made me whole.” Not much different than some.

This man knew nothing but a testimony that would be only possible to explain by the power of God in Christ. And Christ sent him to share this with others. We don’t have to be armed with a large grasp of Scripture and doctrine to share Christ with others.

Our testimony is often all we need to share, of simply what Christ has done in my life in saving me and making me whole. As it’s been said, “If we know enough to be saved, we know enough to tell somebody else how to be saved.”

We also see a principle here also in prioritizing sharing Christ with those at home, with our loved ones and friends first.

And when we share with others we too tell them the great things the Lord has done for me, and how He had compassion and mercy on me by His Cross and resurrection.

As we are strong in the Lord and depend on Him by faith, His authority and power over the devil can and will give us the victory over sin and strength to stand for Him in the spiritual battle.