Full Transcript

Welcome to Share the Word. We’re in chapter 5 of the Gospel of Mark. This chapter not only showcases Jesus’ authority over the evil spirits, but it also reminds us that Christ is clearly recognized by those in the spiritual realm. So there is so much more to come in this chapter. Let’s get started. Mark chapter 5: The Greatest Testimony Ever.

You’ve no doubt noticed, if you’ve been listening to our podcast for a while, that I usually try to introduce a chapter of the New Testament and the big idea I’m going to explain that day with some kind of story or related illustration, some way to try and pique your interest and curiosity, to make you think, Hmm, maybe this guy is worth listening to for a little bit. Those who’ve studied communication and public speaking realize the average listener decides in the first minute or two, maybe less these days with shrinking attention spans, whether they think someone is worth listening to or not. But I don’t even need that approach today because I think the text itself will interest you all by itself. The narrative at the outset of chapter 5 in Mark is so bizarre, so strange, that I don’t know how you would not want to follow it and see where it goes.

And then I hope you’ll stick around for the applications because we’re not just here to tell stories, but to let the Word of God affect our hearts and minds. With that said, listen to the Gospel of Mark chapter 5, verses 1 through 20. I’m reading from the New Living Translation. One crazy story. So they arrived at the other side of the lake in the region of the Gerasenes. When Jesus climbed out of the boat, a man possessed by an evil spirit came out of the tombs to meet him.

The man lived in the burial caves and could no longer be restrained, even with chains. Whenever he was put into chains and shackles, as he often had been, he snapped the chains from his wrists and smashed the shackles. No one was strong enough to subdue him. Day and night he wandered among the burial caves and in the hills, howling, cutting himself with sharp stones. When Jesus was still some distance away, the man saw him and ran to him and bowed low before him. With a shriek he screamed, Why are you interfering with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?

In the name of God, I beg you, don’t torture me. For Jesus had already been saying to the spirit, Come out of this man, you evil spirit. Then Jesus demanded, What is your name? And he replied, My name is Legion, because there are many of us inside this man. Then the evil spirit begged him again and again not to send him to some distant place. There happened to be a large herd of pigs feeding on the hillside nearby.

Send us into those pigs, the spirits begged. Let us enter into them. So Jesus gave them permission. The evil spirits came out of the man, entered into the pigs, and the entire herd of two thousand pigs ran down the steep hillside into the lake and drowned in the water. The herdsmen fled to the nearby town and the surrounding countryside, spreading the news of what they saw. People rushed out to see what happened.

A crowd soon gathered around Jesus, and they saw the man who had been possessed by a legion of demons, and he was sitting there, fully clothed, perfectly sane-looking, and they were all afraid. Then those who had seen what had happened told the others about the demon-possessed man and the pigs. And the crowd began pleading with Jesus to go away and leave them all alone. As Jesus was getting back into the boat again, the man who had been demon-possessed begged to go with them. But Jesus said, No, go home to your family and tell them everything the Lord has done for you and how merciful he has been to you. So the man started off to visit the ten towns, the Decapolis, and began to proclaim the great things Jesus had done for him.

Everyone was amazed at what he told them. This was quite an eventful twelve hours, don’t you think? Jesus and the disciples had crossed the Sea of Galilee the evening before, barely, because remember Jesus had to save them from a violent storm. And I’m sure the disciples were all still trying to process that because they were literally scared when Jesus exhibited authority over the forces of nature with just a few words. Now upon reaching the eastern shore of the lake early the next morning, as they were just tying up their boat and disembarking, a screaming wild man comes running down the hills toward them. He’s naked, he seems out of his mind, and he’s coming right for them.

We learn presently that this tortured soul was possessed by unclean spirits, that is, demons. He could no longer live among society. He was a danger to everyone and even to himself. In that time, in fact until pretty recently actually, people, anything like this had to be physically restrained somehow. But this man couldn’t be controlled any longer. His family had tried to subdue him with chains, with shackles, but he was able to break them off in demonstrations of supernatural strength.

People were terrified of him, so he lived now out among the tombs, probably in caves cut into these hills overlooking the Sea of Galilee. What a tragic and tormented existence. It says people living in the surrounding countryside could hear him howling off and on throughout the night, screaming as he cut himself in self-hatred and despair. He had to have looked extremely scary, running down the hill toward Jesus and his disciples. The guys were thinking, Wow, is that a man? But once at the shore, he did something unexpected.

He prostrated himself on the ground before Jesus, and a voice from inside him shrieked, What business do you have with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you in the name of God, don’t torture me. These were the demons speaking out. Notice, as we’ve already seen in Mark’s Gospel, whenever Jesus came into the presence of a possessed person, the demons knew who he was and were fully aware that he had authority over them. Why was that? I can only think of two answers.

It’s got to be one or the other of these. Evil spirits, demons, are explained in the Bible to be fallen angels, spirit beings who joined Lucifer, that is Satan, in rebellion against God in the distant past and had been cast out of heaven. The Bible says their doom has already been sealed, that ultimately it will be the lake of fire. I wish I knew more about this whole subject, and I’m not going to speculate too much beyond what we’re told in the Bible. But some of those fallen angels who were cast out of heaven with Satan have already been confined to a place called the abyss, we’re told. And others apparently are still free to roam the earth for a time.

We see in the Gospels Jesus frequently encountering them. You and I don’t have the entree into the spirit world that Jesus had, and I’m pretty sure most demons in our world opposing God’s work are not as obvious as the possessed man that we read about in this chapter. In fact, in our world, I think they’re more about lying and misleading people and turning people away from the truth of God. As Paul wrote once, Satan can masquerade as an angel of light. And what else could he mean when he wrote to Timothy? The Spirit explicitly says that in the last days some will fall away from the faith, paying attention to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons.

It’s much harder to imagine the well-groomed, smooth-talking false teachers around today as being indwelt by demons than a wild naked man, isn’t it? But in our sophisticated culture, which would be more effective for Satan’s objectives? I do believe, however, that still in more primitive places in the world, as in Jesus’ day, demon activity is far more out there in the open, and evil spirits keep people bound in fear and superstitions. I had a friend who worked for many years in Haiti, often in rural areas where voodoo was prominent and demonic power undeniable. He saw it firsthand many times. But this question I pondered over as I thought about this chapter: How did the demons in this man we read about here immediately recognize Jesus, even as he and the others were just getting out of their boat?

This character was running down the hillside at them. Well, maybe the most obvious reason is that Jesus had been for some time now exercising demons as part of his ministry in Galilee. The forces of the spirit world would certainly know that. Word spread, we would say. But also, remember, these evil spirits were at one time angels in God’s presence before the fall. So they knew who Jesus was.

They had at one time in the past, in heaven, been servants of his. It wasn’t a physical recognition. It was, I think, recognizing him spiritually. They recognized Jesus as God the Son, they said, whom they had served and known. And they called him the Son of the Most High God. That’s El Elyon in the Old Testament.

That’s one of the names that is used of God in contexts against false gods. This is a little aside, but those who have studied the religions and cultures around the world, not just current ones, but going back in time, have found they always had multiple gods, usually many. You know, the god of the storms, the god of the sea, the god of the sun, and so on and so on and so on. But even in those societies with many gods, they recognized there was a Most High God, a God above all other gods. If you could trace this back far enough, I’m convinced, there was always an awareness that there is a Most High God. These demons in this tortured man who fell prostrate before Jesus that day knew who he was and knew he was of the same nature, that is, the Son of the Most High God, and knew that he had absolute authority over them.

It’s important to Mark to tell his readers this because the purpose of his writing, according to chapter 1, verse 1, is to persuade us of the good news that Jesus is the Son of God who has come into our world. Returning to the narrative, speaking out of the man, the evil spirits asked what business Jesus had with them. Are you here to torture us? they wanted to know. By the way, this isn’t just an off-the-wall story Peter told Mark. The other synoptic Gospels, Matthew and Luke, each tell about this event.

Matthew’s Gospel adds that the demons in this man asked, Have you come to torment us before the time? Wow, I find that pretty interesting. It tells me that Satan and his demons know their fate is certain, that there is a time already set when God is going to bind them in the abyss and then consign them to the lake of fire. What else could he have meant by torment us before the time, which Matthew remembers hearing the demons say that day? There’s lots more questions than answers for me in this episode described in Mark 5. I wish I knew more, but I definitely don’t want to find out by experience.

The things that we can see for sure, though, and are told us beyond this passage, are that there are real spiritual struggles going on between light and darkness in the spiritual dimension, and that Satan and his forces are always looking for ways to thwart the purposes of God, hurt people. This plays out everywhere, from between influence over nations and rulers to influences in individual human hearts. When Paul writes in Ephesians that we don’t wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of darkness, he’s describing the unseen spiritual forces that produced conflicts and difficulties in his ministry. They’re real. And he tells us in that same passage, So take up the shield of faith so you can extinguish the fiery darts of the evil one.

I don’t assume that every problem I have, every obstacle I encounter, every illness I come down with is a demonic attack. But neither should we discount the possibility, especially if we, like Paul, are in the business of taking ground back from the enemy in this ongoing spiritual battle. A second thing we know from the New Testament is that this is not a contest whose results are up in the air. The end, as I said a moment ago, is already determined. The demons and the man Jesus met that day knew what was ahead for them. They were only entreating Jesus not to send them to the abyss before that appointed time.

Living inside pigs was preferable. In Colossians chapter 2, Paul writes, and he’s describing there things Jesus accomplished on the cross. He disarmed the spiritual rulers and authorities. He shamed them publicly by his victory over them on the cross. I like that. I’ve often wondered if Satan thought he could thwart the plan of God for our salvation by preventing Jesus from going to the cross, or whether he imagined if he motivated those around Jesus who had control at that time and could put Jesus on the cross, if that would somehow notch a major victory for him.

I think you could argue that either way. But through his death and resurrection, Paul is saying, Jesus completely triumphed over the spiritual forces of wickedness. God is, for his own reasons, allowing Satan and his demons to go on causing trouble for a while. And will even allow that to greatly increase during the tribulation time, but their ultimate doom is certain. Jesus, the Son of God’s authority over them is very clearly demonstrated in this account. Even when a legion of demons was in his presence, they cowered before him.

I think Mark and the other gospel writers all include this event for that very reason, that scene of that demon-possessed man and the voices coming out of him saying, We are legion, bowing before Christ. One other comment I will make: demonic activity is certainly real. It seems like it’s growing too, but I don’t think it’s something to seek out and to engage with unless you’re forced to. Nowhere that I know of in the New Testament are we told to go out demon hunting. Remember the guys we saw in Ephesus who presumed they could take on demons in a man thereby using the magic formula, In Jesus’ name, only got their behinds beat. There’s another fascinating anecdote referred to in the brief epistle of Jude.

It says there, These people who claim authority from their dreams, who live immoral lives, who defy God’s authority and scoff at supernatural beings, even Michael, one of the mightiest of angels, did not dare accuse the devil of blasphemy, but he would only say, The Lord rebuke you. Jude was writing about false teachers in his day who claimed to have authority over spiritual entities, authority over dark supernatural beings. Jude says even the archangel Michael, a general, as we would say in God’s spiritual army, does not presume to speak rudely or scoff at these beings, but only denounces them in the Lord’s name. All I’m suggesting here is to be careful imagining you can engage with demonic forces.

If you come up against a situation you feel might be caused by demon oppression or possession, I would gather around myself the most spiritual people I know and deal with it very carefully and through a lot of prayer for God’s protection and power. Now, here’s one very positive thing we can take away from this account in Mark 5. Even the most fargone individuals everyone is given up on are not beyond the power of Christ to cleanse and heal. Doesn’t it show us that? 1 John 3:8 says, Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil. The man here is described as unclean, and he was in every way a person could be physically, morally, and spiritually, yet he was cleansed, healed, and restored by Christ.

As Mark concludes this account, he writes that as word spread about what happened there at the seaside, people rushed out to sea for themselves, and a crowd gathered around Jesus after they saw the man who had been possessed by the demons sitting there fully clothed and now perfectly sane, and they were all afraid. Does that seem like an odd ending? Mark has shown us in this situation once again Jesus’ exousia, as we were talking about a couple episodes ago, his absolute authority, this time over the demons from hell and a legion of them. But just like disciples on the boat after Jesus calmed the storm were frightened, realizing Jesus had such awesome power, here the people who had witnessed the demonic control over this man cast out by only a few words were again frightened in the presence of Jesus. That kind of power, that kind of authority frightened them.

They were actually so afraid they asked Jesus to leave their area, get out of our area, and Jesus complied. He was not going to stay where he was not welcomed. As they returned to their boat to move on, the healed demoniac begged to go with them, but Jesus said, Nope. I want you to go back to your family and to your friends, those who’ve seen what happened to you, and tell them what the Lord has done for you. And that’s what the man did. I really like to read about or hear about Christ’s power changing people’s lives.

I’ve told you some contemporary examples in the past of people who’ve been in the public eye who’ve been well known for their evil, like Cat Von D or Chuck Colson or even Jeffrey Dahmer, because nothing is quite as compelling as when followers of Christ share their faith with others who have a clear and powerful conversion story. The best testimonies, as we call them, are from those who can clearly convey, Here’s who I was before I met Christ. Here’s how I met Him, and here’s who I am now because of His grace and power in my life. That’s just what this restored man did. And who’s ever had a more compelling testimony to tell than him? Had to be the greatest testimony ever.

I would have loved to have heard him tell it. It’s cool to realize that just as the unlikely woman at the well, known for her immorality, who we met way back in John chapter 3, became the first Christian missionary to the Samaritan people, this transformed man who lived among the dead in the tombs, tormented by demons, after meeting Jesus and being saved and healed, became the first Christian missionary to the Greek cities called here the Decapolis. Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil. And is still in the life-changing business. This is Paul for Share the Word. Thanks, Paul.

The healed demoniac certainly had an amazing story to tell, but so do we. Our own personal testimonies can incite profound spiritual salvation. It’s through our testimonies that Christ is exalted. And I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve witnessed the acceptance of Christ through someone’s testimony. And when that happens, watching their transformation can be an amazing journey. Do you have a testimony?

I challenge you to take some time and write it down, and then share it and see the impact it has. From all of us at Share the Word, our blessings and prayers go out to all of you.