The Lord wants us to know the majesty and the supremacy of the power of Jesus Christ. His power as the servant of the Lord extends over every realm, material and immaterial. There's absolutely no limit to the authority that belongs to Jesus. He is supreme over disease. He is supreme over death. He is supreme over nature. And now once again in today's text, Mark's narrative shows that Jesus has authority over the realm of evil spirits.
The text we have before us records an encounter the likes of which most of us have never had. It is dramatic. It is a confrontation between Jesus and evil. It is a confrontation between the realm of light and the realm of shadowy, dark forces. And the result of the confrontation is a powerfully changed life. The event seems to be the reason that Jesus crossed the Sea of Galilee.
And perhaps, perhaps even most likely, it was this encounter that was behind the storm on the sea that we studied last time. For that storm was a devilish attempt to elude what transpires in our text. On the screen before you is a map of the area of Galilee. The region of the Gerasenes that we will read about is on the east side of the Sea of Galilee, where the arrow is pointing. The arrow roughly gives you the journey that Jesus and his disciples would have been on in the boat.
The area of the Gerasenes was a holding or perhaps a farming community that seems to have been associated with the city of Gerasa or Jerash, where some of us visited last spring. It was an area that was part of what was known as the Decapolis. This is a large area, mostly to the east of the Jordan River and the Sea of Galilee, that was Gentile for the most part. A number of cities comprised the area of the Decapolis.
In fact, as the name implies, there was the city of Sinthopolis, also known as Bet-Shon. There was the city of Philadelphia, as it was known in that day, but today it is known as Amman, Jordan. There was the city of Damascus, still today known as Damascus, Syria. All of these are ancient cities. The next picture on the slide is that of the Golan Heights to the far east there of the Sea of Galilee. A little faint in the slide, I'm afraid, but they are there.
It is that area that you see before you that is mentioned in our text as the area of the Gerasenes. You notice the sharp cliffs that characterize that shore of the Sea of Galilee. Now let's look at the Word of God. It is on page 994. If you want to use a pew Bible, if you don't have a Bible this morning with you, of course if you're a part of our church, we hope you always bring your Bibles to the service. Mark chapter 5, I'll begin reading in verse 1.
They, Jesus and his disciples, went across the lake to the region of the Gerasenes. When Jesus got out of the boat, a man with an evil spirit came from the tombs to meet him. This man lived in the tombs and no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain, for he had often been chained hand and foot, but he tore the chains apart and broke the irons on his feet. No one was strong enough to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and in the hills he would cry out and cut himself with stones.
When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and fell at his knees in front of him. He shouted at the top of his voice, what do you want with me, Jesus, son of the most high God? Swear to God that you won't torment me. For Jesus had said to him, come out of this man, you evil spirit. Then Jesus asked him, what is your name? My name is Legion, he replied, for we are many. He begged Jesus again and again not to send them out of the area. A large herd of pigs was feeding on the nearby hillside.
The demons begged Jesus, send us among the pigs, allow us to go into them. He gave them permission and the evil spirits came out and went into the pigs. The herd, about 2,000 in number, rushed down the steep bank into the lake and were drowned. Most tending the pigs ran off and reported this in the town and countryside. The people went out to see what had happened. They came to Jesus. They saw the man who had been possessed by the legion of demons sitting there, dressed and in his right mind.
They were afraid. Those who had seen it told the people what had happened to the demon-possessed man and told about the pigs as well. The people began to plead with Jesus to leave their region. As Jesus was getting into the boat, the man who had been demon-possessed begged to go with him. Jesus did not let him, but said, go home to your family and tell them how much the Lord has done for you and how he has had mercy on you.
So the man went away and began to tell in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him and all the people were amazed. This power encounter between Jesus and the devil underscores the authority of Christ to deal with the evil one then and now. I want us to think about the encounter itself. So let's see how Mark sets it up for us in verses 1 through 5. As I've already noted, it immediately follows in Mark's account and the other gospels, the stilling of the storm on the Sea of Galilee.
By the time Jesus and his disciples arrived at the eastern shore after the stilling of the storm, it was most likely completely dark. It was nighttime. This pitiful demonized man is introduced to us. By the way, Matthew inserts the note that there were actually two men. Mark and Luke tell us about the one who apparently did all of the talking. Mark tells us that this man was chained hand and foot frequently by the village population. Now why did they do this?
Well the answer is that he was viewed as a danger to himself, but also to them. He was a scary man, but even the chains that they put on him, the irons on his feet, were unable to hold him. He was able to break these metal chains and irons on his feet. Society you see had no answer for a man like this. In those days they could not even control him. He manifested supernatural strength by escaping these bonds. No one could subdue him. What we see here is far more than a manic psychosis.
What we see here is something that is paranormal. It is bizarre. It is demonic. He lived, Mark tells us, in an isolated existence. Alone, there in the hills with this other man, among the tombs. Tombs were very common in those hillsides that you saw because of the limestone that characterizes them. But people in general who were poor and homeless would go to the tombs and would live there. This man was undoubtedly driven away from the village.
He was the area monster that was the stuff of legends. He lived out there in the tombs. We notice that he was self-destructive. Satan hates God. Thus he hates whatever is in the image of God, which includes every human being. He seeks to subvert and pervert, to spoil and to break down and to destroy the image of God in human beings. Are people like this around today? Yes, they are. They are. Some of them are medicated and they live in society.
But there are some of them who are so violent, as violent as this person, who are institutionalized. I had an occasion to visit in the Federal Medical Center in Rochester, Minnesota several times during my ministry there. Please note this was a federal prison and I only visited. But I'll tell you when those doors clang behind you, you feel incarcerated. I was there to visit a man who had come to Christ. Met some interesting people there.
Lyndon LaRouche, if you've ever heard that name, who once ran for President of the United States. A man named Jimmy Baker, who was there. Man who was the head of the Chicago Crime Syndicate, he was there. I did not meet the persons though who were locked in confined cells, isolated cells. People who in that medical center were drugged. That's how they were chained. They are drugged 24 hours a day because they are so criminally violent. Society does not know what to do with people like this.
That's what the United States does with many of them. Because they commit crimes, they're put into prisons. But because they are so dangerous, so superhuman in strength, and so violently evil, the only thing that society knows to do with them is to drug them up. Do demonized people always behave in such eerie blood-curdling ways? The answer to that of course is no. In fact, only a few of them do. Demonic spirits are very deceptive. That is their very nature to deceive.
Even Satan himself can appear as an angel of light. There are some demonized people who are in high places of authority. Indeed, one is someday going to be the ruler of the world. But the true nature of demons inevitably and always comes through in perhaps subtle ways. It is always evil even if there is somehow a beautiful side to that evil. It's always crippling to the individual and to those around him. It's always devastating to them as people, as human beings.
I called this man a pitiful man, and he was. I don't know how the demons got there. The Gospels don't tell us. Could be any number of ways. Perhaps there was sin in his life that he allowed to fester, and he invited by that demons to come into him. We don't know, but he is a pitiful man. Now Mark narrates the encounter for us in the next few verses. The first move is made by the demonized man himself. He sees Jesus.
Now if my theory is correct that it was night, probably there were torches that were used to light the way as Jesus and his disciples got to shore. And these torches caught the interest of this man living up in the hills there in the caves. And he came running to Jesus from a distance, Mark says. And of course the storm itself would have instigated some interest in who was out there on the lake. Perhaps he was looking. He runs to Jesus where Jesus is, which is still presumably near the shore.
He falls on his knees in front of Jesus, not to worship him, but because he must. He is forced to respect one who is far superior to himself. And he speaks to Jesus. Notice at the top of his voice, not in a humble or respectful way at all, but shouting at Jesus, kneeling before him, he confronts Jesus. What do you want with me? That phrase means, what do we have in common?
You see, this man, or rather the demons in him speaking out of his voice, they knew that Jesus posed a threat to their existence, to their control in this man, to the ground that they claimed in his personality. He then correctly identifies Jesus, of course. Jesus, he says, son of the most high God. They knew exactly who this one was. Chapter 1 verse 24, you remember the demons said, you're the holy one of God. They know. Listen, friends, demons know more than some professing Christians.
Yes, demons have a faith. It's not a saving faith, but the demons believe that there is one God, for example, James tells us. Demons are not capable of repenting. They're not capable of being saved. Christ didn't die for them. They are damned. But demons believe certain things. Here we see that this man, or this demon, rather, believed that Jesus was God. He had no question about that. There are people today who question that. They know less than demons.
They believe that Jesus had authority over them. They believe that their judgment is coming because of another gospel, and even here it intimates the fact that they know that someday they're going to be tormented because of their rebellion against God. And so we see here that this demon knows more than some church members. And he fears Jesus' authority. He begs Jesus not to torture him. Isn't that interesting? He torments the man, but he doesn't want to be tormented.
He is perhaps, again, I say, referring to the future judgment when Jesus will indeed bring these fallen angels to their just end. Well, the next move is that of Jesus. Jesus had already apparently seen the man coming toward him and had begun ordering the demon out of the man. This is not spoken as much as we know. And the demon within him knows that he must go. He must obey the command of Jesus, and that's why he is so agitated. And so Jesus, you see the demon knew him.
And Jesus now asks for his identity. He says, what's your name? And the demon replies, my name is Legion, for we are many. You see, he was speaking for the group. That is what occasionally happens when there are multiple demons. One of them is forced to the front, as it were, to be the spokesman. And usually it's not the top dog. Whether this Legion was or wasn't, I don't know. Perhaps he was. But one of them comes forward to speak for the rest of them. He says, we are Legion. My name is Legion.
And the word Legion, of course, relates to the Roman army and the fact that there were 6,000 soldiers in a Legion suggests, at least, that there may have been thousands of demons in this man. The demon begs repeatedly not to be ordered out of the region. Luke adds the note. They said, we don't want to be cast into the abyss. That is the place of their eventual confinement. They don't want to go there yet. And so the demons beg Jesus to allow them to go into the swine.
They do not want to be dispossessed of some physical or material or tangible instrument that they might use. So Jesus grants the request and delivers the man entirely. That brings us to the third part of this text, and that is the culmination of it, culminating it beginning in verse 13, the middle of the verse. The demonized pigs, you see the demons have left the man now. They have entered into the pigs. 2,000 of them. This is no small herd of pigs.
I mean, this is an Iowa kind of pig farm, right? 2,000 pigs. And well, I'm not going to go there. A lot of pigs, and there's a lot of detail with that many pigs being together, believe me. And these pigs rushed down the nearby steep slope and out into the sea, and it destroyed the whole herd. Now what a commotion. What a sound that must have been. The squealing of these terrified pigs. Their snorting and the sound of their hooves and the splash into the water. It must have been an amazing sound.
The question comes, why did Jesus allow this? Well perhaps it was to give some tangible proof that in fact the man had been delivered of actual demonic presence. It also may have been to illustrate to him and to everybody the destructive nature of these demons. Demons have disdain for human beings. They hate human beings, even though they deceive human beings into thinking that they're their friends or that somehow they have powers that they can use, that demons will give to them.
But they hate human beings. Warren Wiersbe says, to Satan a pig is as good as a man. In fact Satan will make a man into a pig. Interesting thought, and we see it here. Now the pig farmers who were perhaps up to this point oblivious of the whole thing saw what had happened now, and they ran fearfully to tell the news of the herd's demise. The death of 2,000 pigs today would be a huge loss. It was even more so then, I mean a financial loss. It was an economic blow to that community.
So the population came to investigate. We're probably now into morning hours we would think. They found this well known monster man who was with Jesus. Notice he was at peace. He was sitting there. He was not restlessly roaming about. He was clothed. He was no longer naked. He was in his right mind. What had happened? Well this man became a new creature in Jesus Christ. And it seems that seeing this man that way really frightened them.
There was a power at work here which they could not comprehend. They had heard the report of what had happened and they confirmed the economic loss to their community and because of all of these things and their fear they begged Jesus get out of here. Just leave. Leave. Do you know that there are some people still today who prefer prosperity and stability so called in their lives along with the devil's harassment and his destruction.
They prefer that rather than even material loss and spiritual freedom that Jesus Christ can give. They have in essence sold their souls to the devil. And Jesus does not stay where he is not wanted. When they say leave Jesus goes. But he commands the man who wanted to stay with Jesus and who can blame him for that right? He commands the man who had been delivered go home and tell your family how much the Lord has done for you and how he has had mercy on you.
You see Jesus doesn't stop the man from talking over here on this side of the sea. This is Gentile territory. So he's not afraid of too much Messianic fever getting out of hand too soon among the Jews. He's in Gentile territory and he wants them to hear what the God of Israel has done for this man who was most probably Gentile. And so he becomes the first evangelist, the first apostle if you will, the first missionary.
And he goes to the Gentile cities of the Decapolis including some of the areas where some of us walked last spring. And there he tells them how much Jesus has done for him. And my friend that's all witnessing really is. It's not being a professional theologian. It's not trying to answer every conceivable question somebody might come up with. Nobody can do that. Being a witness for Jesus is simply telling somebody else what he's done for you. And let the Lord take it from there.
That is the most effective witness you can possibly have is simply to share this is what Christ has done in my life. Nobody's going to argue with you about that and it will intrigue them. People were amazed at his testimony and perhaps there were people saved as a result of it. Well that's the story of the encounter between Jesus and this demon possessed man. But I want us to close this morning by thinking about the question, how do you deal with your own encounter with the devil?
And you do have those encounters. You realize that don't you? Now of course most of them are far less dramatic than what we have seen in this text. But in some ways the encounters that we have are even more dangerous to the soul because we don't recognize them. You see the devil is very crafty. He is subtle. He has had thousands of years to perfect his schemes. He has developed ways to influence you, to entice you, to deceive you, to gain ground in your life which you will hardly notice.
And you will not unless you are spiritually discerning. Demons today are as present as they were 2,000 years ago. They are as present in our nation as they are in the mission fields of the world. They are especially dangerous to you when you are vulnerable to them. And especially when you are in denial about them. How foolish. Peter tells us be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Against him standing firm in the faith.
Paul says in Ephesians 6, our struggle is not against flesh and blood but against the rulers, the authorities, the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. In the spiritual realms. My friend, the only way to combat the devil in your encounters with him successfully is through the authority of Jesus Christ. You see it's not what you know but it's who you know that counts. How do you deal with the devil?
I'm going to give you three actions that are vital. Number one, know whose you are and who you are in Jesus Christ. If you do not know that, you are as vulnerable as can possibly be. Know whose you are and who you are. Now if you're not a follower of Jesus Christ, if you're not a Christian yet, I have no words for you because there is nothing that you can do to protect yourself against the devil. You are already walking according to the way of this world, the way that he designs.
You're already in bondage to him. The only thing I can say to you is to come to Jesus Christ and find in him forgiveness for your sins and deliverance from the powers of darkness. If you are a child of God, know, number one, know whose you are and who you are. First John 4 says, you are from God, which is an abbreviated way of saying you are born of God, little children. Who are you? You are a child of God. That's who you are. You are no longer a child of Satan. You are a child of God.
You have been born again into God's family out of the realm of darkness. John goes on to say you have overcome them. Who? The false spirits that are out in the world. Then he says because greater is he who is what? In you than he who is in the world. Who's that? The devil? The devil. Greater is he who is in you, little children of God, know whose you are and who you are, number one. Number two, submit to God and resist the devil.
James 4 verses 4 through 8 warns us about being adulterers and adulteresses with the world. It says don't become friends with the world. Now it's not talking about lost people, it's talking about the system out there, the culture. Beware of spiritual adultery because that opens you up then to demonic influence when you make friends with the culture, with the world. He goes on to say submit yourselves to God. That's the first step. Take the choice. I submit myself.
I subject my mind, my emotions, my body, all of me to God. I present myself to God as a living sacrifice is another way to say it. And then he says resist the devil. Stand up against him and he will flee from you. He will flee from you. That's the promise. Not the devil will be concerned and may think about leaving. No. It says he will flee from you. He may argue, but he will flee if you stand firm and resist him.
Having submitted yourself to God, never in your own strength, never in your own strength, but submitting yourself to God, resist the devil. And then number three, use the armor that God has given you. Ephesians chapter 6, put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. What are the schemes of the devil? What does he mean?
Well, his schemes include lying to you in your thoughts, getting you to accept lies about yourself, getting you to wear masks to cover up your sin rather than being open and confessing it. Getting you to lie to other people and to, in essence, become a deceiver. That's one of his schemes. For that, you and I have what Paul calls the belt of truth to protect us. Another scheme of the devil is reminding you of your past sins. Stirring up guilt and memories of what you've done in the past.
What God has already forgiven you for and causing you to feel unworthy and pressed down and loaded with guilt. For that, God has given us the breastplate of righteousness in Jesus Christ. Oh yes, there's a lot in our past, every one of us. There's no one here who can brag about his righteousness, but we can put on the righteousness of Jesus Christ when we come to him.
And because we know who we are, we have that breastplate of righteousness on when he tries to make us feel guilty about things God's already forgiven and set aside. His schemes include creating anxiety and worry in your life, causing you to be frustrated with your situation, unhappy, dissatisfied, creating uncertainty and turmoil about God's care for you, perhaps even causing you to doubt your salvation. What has God given us for this scheme of the devil? Shoes.
The preparation of the gospel of peace. The good news that I am at peace with God and God is at peace with me. And because there is peace, God is for me, not against me, in everything. One of the schemes of the devil is to cause you to doubt the promises of God. He began with that in the garden, didn't he? He has God said, what has God given us for this? It is the shield of faith. This is the promise of God and I stand upon it. I believe God, devil, not you.
The devil generates thoughts of hopelessness and depression. He causes you to want to give up. He causes you to want to quit it all and just throw in the towel on your marriage or upon that hard thing in your life, whatever it is. What has God given us against these kinds of thoughts? He's given us the helmet of salvation. God is my savior. I need not be pressed down and discouraged. I need not be frustrated and give up. I need not be hopeless. I'm saved. The helmet of salvation.
The devil raises up ideas and philosophies that are against God. Thought patterns and ideas that your friends tell you that the world sells to you. Patterns that deny God. What has God given us? The sword of the spirit. The word of God, the spoken word of God that cuts away those lies and false ideas. Oh, the world says this, but God's word says this and we cut it away. Arm yourself with the armor of God.
I want to tell you, if you will do those three things, if you will be on the alert, you will never fall prey to the kind of thing we've looked at in this chapter. You will stand against the evil one and having done all in the day of evil, you will stand. You need not be afraid of the devil, but you do need to beware of him and his shrewdness and his schemes because he hates you and he resents you and he will do everything in his crafty scheming power to destroy you. If you let him, he will.
Your spiritual journey is out of darkness into light. It is away from the bondage of the evil one into the freedom of the Son of God. In Jesus Christ, you are resourced with everything you need to powerfully represent him in your world and just like this man who had been delivered from such terrible bondage to the legion, God can use you wherever he's assigned you in your decapolis. And you can go out and tell people how much the Lord has done for you. And when you do that, God will bless you.
He will use you to trample upon the enemy. And that word from you will fell him. The prince of darkness, Graham, we tremble not for him because in Jesus Christ we have the victory. Let's pray together. Father, may there not be one of us who would be so foolish as to be vulnerable to such an evil, crafty enemy. And wherein we may have already done that, we ask your forgiveness. We desire today to be alert and armed and strong and to stand. Fill us with the Holy Spirit.
Fill us with great compassion for those who are still lost. And like this man who went obediently back to his family and back to his cities, may we go back out into our world where you have called us to live and there tell about the mercies of the Lord and how much you can do for anyone who will trust in you. And I pray this in Christ's name. Amen.