Legion

chapter 5, and if you don't have a Bible, you can just follow along in your order of worship. We're going to look at verses 1 through 20. I'm just going to read for now verses 1 through 5. So I say to you, hear the word of God. They came to the other side of the sea to the country of the garrisons, and when Jesus had stepped out of the boat immediately, they met him out of the tombs, a man with an unclean spirit. He lived among the tombs, and no one combined him anymore, not even with a chain, where he'd often been bound with shackles and chains, but he wrenched the chains apart, and he broke the shackles and pieces. No one had the strength to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs, and on the mountains, he was always crying out and bruising himself with stones. Let us pray. While I pray now that you come and open the eyes of the blind and the ears of the death, I pray that you teach us the gospel. I pray that you be in my head and in my thinking, in my heart, in my understanding, in my mouth, in my speaking. In Christ's name, we pray these things, amen, amen. Well, up to this point, we've been looking at the gospel of Mark, and a few weeks ago, we sort of ended in chapter 3 and 4. Jesus, we'd learned why Jesus taught imperables, and then last week, we began another section in the gospel of Mark, in which Mark is showing us different episodes in the life of Jesus that show us his authority over various different things. Last week, we looked at Jesus' authority over nature as he calmed the wind and the waves. Remember, he was sort of like the dog whisperer. Everything was out of control, and he just went, and it's done. This week, we're going to look at Jesus' authority in the spiritual realm, and then in the future, we'll look at Jesus' authority over disease, and even his authority over death. Today, as we look at this encounter that Jesus has with a man who's commonly known as the garrison demoniac, it's one of my favorite stories in the whole Bible. It is recorded in all the gospels, but Mark gives it more detail. Mark is really into the demon thing, or at least Jesus conquering the demons. We have much more detail here in this story, and as I was thinking about it this week, I thought, you know, it'd probably be good to just talk for a second about what is demon possession in the first place. Most of us probably don't think that much about it, unless you're working with toddlers every now and then, but you know, they're sweet children nonetheless. But in reality, in the New Testament, and this is going to shock some of you, there actually is no such thing as demon possession. It says it in my Bible, but that's the best they could do as far as their translation of it. If you look even in the footnotes, if you have the ESB, at least, it'll have a footnote by demon possession, and it'll have the Greek word below it, which says something like demon, let me read it, just demon isomai, which basically is our equivalent of demonized. So it doesn't necessarily mean possessed. It means something more like an alien occupation. In other words, they don't possess someone else's soul. They just sort of take up extra space inside that person and seek to do them harm. You see why, the other question I have to ask yourself is why do demons possess or why do demons demonize? And as I was thinking about that, it reminded me of my training time when I was with Eli Lilly. And I worked with Lilly, and I got a job selling a drug called Ziprexa, which is the best drug in the world. It was at the time, I'm not sure now, for schizophrenia. And schizophrenia, most people was very misunderstood disease. It's not split personalities. It's when you hear, among other things, you hear audible voices in your head, and you see hallucinations, but the thing is that's different between what you see in the movies and what you see in reality is amazing. In other words, I remember when I was at training, you know, you do two weeks of training, they basically send you a bunch of encyclopedias, you have to memorize, and if you get them right, then you get to go to Indianapolis, and then it's more give and take and discussion. And at one point in the class, someone asked the instructors, about 30 of us in the class, is there a spiritual aspect, this gets a frenion? And for some reason, all heads turned and looked at me. And I said, what? And instructor said, Tommy, what do you think? And I said, you know, I'm not sure, but I can tell you this. I suddenly asked you a question. I said, why do the voices always? 100% of the time seek to do the person harm. Why 100% of the time are they negative? In other words, have you seen the movie A Beautiful Mind? That movie is bogus. People never hear a chummy English chat telling them how good they are and helping them out. Never 100% of the time people with schizophrenia either hear voices or have visual hallucinations that tell them how bad they are. They tell them that they're worthless. I've never seen in thousands of schizophrenia patients that I've met one person who said, you know, I hear these voices that just tell me how loved and accepted I am. I hear voices that tell me how good I am and how I'm made in God's image. And because of that, nothing can separate me from his love. Never. In other words, I said the point is, I can't tell you for sure if there is a link between the spiritual world and schizophrenia, but what I do know is that the goal of the demonic realm and the goal of schizophrenia seems to be the same. And that is to demolish and crush and deface the image of God in any particular human being. In other words, if you think about it, if you're a demon or demon and you wanted to hurt God, what would you go after? If it was me, I would go after not his creation, but I would go after the creature that was made in his own image. It would be like hurting one of his children. Wouldn't that be the thing that hurt you the most, if someone went after one of your kids? And so of course, if the spiritual realm, the demonic realm, if they're going to hurt something and they want to get back at God, they would attack his image in us. That's what's going on here. We're going to look at three things this morning. That's not the biggest problem by the way. We're going to look at three things. We're going to look at the extent of the problem. We're going to look at the fairness of the fight that goes on between Jesus and the demon. Also, we're going to look at a mission's mandate of all things. And so what's the extent of the problem here? As Jesus gets off of the boat and meets, I'm going to call him Legion throughout my talking this morning. I mean, first of all, just as a side note, I had to laugh when I read this because it just reminded me of, you know, here's Jesus. He's just sort of gone through the ringer with people accusing him on the west side of the lake. He's crossing the lake. He's trying to get a little shut eye. And of course, the disciples wake him up and say, don't you care that we're perishing any. Calm so whole thing. He probably went back to sleep as soon as he gets up and as soon as his foot touches the ground, there's this demon who wants some action. It sort of never ends. He never gets to rest. And yet, it doesn't seem to face him. What's the extent of the problem here? Because only when you see the extent of the problem, can you see the extent of grace? I mean, on one hand, let me read to you again the extent, because Mark takes a side note and tells us, he tells us about Legion. He says he lived among the tombs and no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain. For he had often been bound with shackles and chains, but he wrenched the chains apart and he broke the shackles and pieces. No one had the strength to subdue him. Night and day, he was among the tombs and on the mountains, he was always crying out and bruising himself with stones. Okay. Now, just as a side note, he might have just been from a Jewish perspective. If we didn't have the information that he had an unclean spirit, they probably just thought he was insane. Because, believe it or not, in the ancient Near East, they didn't attribute everything to sort of demons or gods or superstitions. The rabbis had a formula to see if someone was just crazy. And that included, they run around naked at night. Pretty crazy, I would imagine. They live in the tombs, they tear their clothes and at their own self and they destroy other people's property. Legion fits that description. He may be crazy. And also they would bind people like that in order to protect not the person but themselves. Because they figured if they can tie him up and just get rid of him, they would be safe. And they would start with ropes. And if he was able to break the ropes, they'd move on to heavier things. This guy was so bad off that he could even break shackles. And apparently he was sort of banished to live in the tombs. And that's where we begin to see more of the extent of the problem here, at least from a religious perspective. From a religious perspective, this is unbelievable because first thing you have to realize is we see that here's a man who has an unclean spirit. The word unclean keeps coming up. So he's unclean. He has an unclean spirit. But bigger than that, he lives in an unclean place. Even in the book of Leviticus it says, if you touch a tomb, if you go on a graveyard, you are unclean. So here's a man who has an unclean spirit who lives in an unclean place in this graveyard. And worse than that, the graveyard is in an unclean area. In other words, on the east side of the Sea of Galilee, it was Gentile territory. The decaples, the Romans had occupied it and given it over to the Gentiles. And Jews would have seen that whole area is just unclean. In other words, it was the other side of the tracks. And then on top of all that, not only is it man with an unclean spirit who lives in an unclean place in an unclean area, but did you notice you're going to find out later on what kind of animals happen to be swarming around the place apparently? Pigs, swine, thousands of them. So if an unclean spirit living in an unclean place, an unclean area surrounded by unclean animals completely nasty from a Jewish perspective. And that's not as big as problem. You know what his biggest problem is? His biggest problem is on top of everything else in the world, he's a sinner. And that's the problem that he shares with you and with me. You know, you can deal with pigs, you could deal even maybe with a demon, you could deal with all these other things, but the only thing you can't deal with is sin. And what's interesting here is do you see what Jesus did? I mean, if we, most of us were in Jesus shoes, would we even have gotten off the boat on the other side of the tracks? Would we've made it a point to go there? And when we got there, what would we do? You see the beauty of the gospel that you see in this particular passage is that Jesus is not afraid of the demoniac. Jesus is not afraid of uncleanness and bigger than that. He's not afraid of your sin. In fact, the only place you ever see Jesus, even evidencing what seems to be fear is when he cries out to his father and says, Father, if there's any way they let the cross, let maybe pass from this, that I don't have to drink this cup, let it be. But the only reason he was afraid is because he'd be bearing the wrath for our sin. And the question you have to ask yourself, if Jesus isn't afraid to go to the other side of the tracks, why are you and I so afraid to go to the other side of the tracks?

Isn't he who is in you greater than he who is in the world? Why are we so afraid? Most Christians, I know are afraid of people who are different than them. You know, it was beautiful yesterday. If you weren't here, you missed one of the most beautiful sites that I've seen since I've been at this church. And that was 540 Harley-Davidson motorcycles filing past the front of the narthex. And every person there looked different than everyone in here looks today. Some guys even look a little scary, especially the guy that I touch his jacket. You're not supposed to do that. I learned. But you know, they're afraid of religious people, too. That's why people, that's why people who are different than Christians, all of them don't go to church. Reason they don't go to church, they're afraid of you. Isn't that a joke?

So they don't come to church because they're afraid of you and you don't invite them because you're afraid of them. And you know what the problem is? Neither one of you and I, we don't believe the gospel. And the gospel says that Jesus is not afraid of any of us. And that if the gospel's true, nothing can harm us. And so if you're here and you're thinking, gosh, oh, you know, my neighbors are pretty creepy. I don't know. Jesus doesn't think that. Jesus isn't afraid. And if Jesus isn't afraid, you don't need to be afraid. And if you're here for some reason, thinking man, if Jesus only knew who I was, he'd be afraid. Look at Legion. You don't get much worse than Legion. And we'll see in a minute, it's real. It's worse than even I'm explaining now. So the question, the extent of the problem is that you and I are utterly sinful. And if that's the case, it levels the playing field whether you wear a suit to work or whether you wear coveralls to work. The question is, is Jesus big enough to take care of that sin? And I think the answer is yes. In fact, when it comes to a fight between Jesus and sin, Jesus and the demonic world, it's not even a fair fight. In fact, that's what's pretty interesting about this passage. Let's look next at the fairness of the fight. In verse 6, it says, when he saw Jesus, that's Legion from afar, he ran and fell down before him. And crying out with a loud voice, he said, what have you to do with me? Jesus, the son of the most high God. I adjure you by God. Do not torment me for he was saying, come out of the man, you unclean spirit. Now what you see with with Jesus and Legion here, the interaction is pretty amazing because Legion, this man who is possessed by demons, we'll find out. He's simultaneously drawn to Jesus and repelled by him. He simultaneously has to submit to him and he simultaneously wants to dominate him. And what's interesting is the man comes running out at Jesus and any person in the world would be creeped out. But instead of falling upon Jesus and harming him, he falls down in front of Jesus. And he says, Jesus, son of the most high God, what do you have to do with us? With me. And the title he uses there is what the only place I think it's used in the New Testament, at least in Mark's Gospel. That's the title that that pagans in the Old Testament used to use for Israel's God. And it's even more amazing, is he calls Jesus the son of the most high God and then the very next sentence, he basically swears by that same God to ask Jesus to keep from tormenting him. You see how conflicted he is on one hand, he's saying you're the son of the most high God and then on the other hand, he calls upon the name of that same God to sort of help him. The demon is trying to stop Jesus by using the name of God. He says, I've drew you in the name of God, not to torment us. He cannot help but submit. Did you notice what Jesus has done here so far? He hasn't done anything. Right. He just showed up. There's not a battle. In the ancient Near East there were lots of exorcisms apparently going on and people had very complex formulas and incantations and magic potions and spells. And you know how Jesus gets rid of demons? It just shows up. He's there. I mean, I said this morning, I'll probably give a letter for this. You know, I don't, Jesus, I'm sure, didn't smoke but I just have this vision of him. You know, like when I was in the army, I've just sort of lighten up and saying, whenever you're done, I had all day. And he probably, a lot of people think he tried to use Jesus' name to control him, like in the Old Testament. When Jacob asked the angel's name, what is your name? Didn't work and so now he says, don't torment us. And then you see, then it takes a little bit more of a creepy step. You see, if we can pull this off, notice what he says next. It says for Jesus, have been saying, come out of the man, you unclean spirit. And Jesus asked him, what is your name? And he replied, my name is Legion. For we are many. In other words, the demon medaid him. So on one hand, it's cool. What's your name? Legion. For we are many, right? Jesus doesn't flinch. But it's important to know what the demon was doing here because it shows us the extent of the problem even more, right? The Romans had occupied this area of Galilee or the beside the eastern sea of Galilee. And a Roman Legion was about 6,000 men. It was huge and oppressive. And it meant battle. And when a Roman Legion came into your area, you pretty much knew that the gig was up and that you were going to lose. And this demon says, my name is Legion for we are many. What does Jesus say to him? Nothing. It's interesting to see here. Jesus does not cast out 6,000 demons. Here's how powerful Jesus is. They begged him to let them go. Notice what he says. Says, they begged him in verse 11. Now, great herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside in verse 12. And they begged him, saying, send us to the pigs. Let us enter them. So he gave them permission. And the unclean spirits came out and entered the pigs. And the herd numbering about 2,000 rushed down in the steep bank in the sea and were drowned in the sea. This is one of those places. Jesus does not cast out these demons. He is so powerful. Just in their presence, they beg him. Give us permission to go into those pigs over there. And Jesus gives them permission. So in other words, he doesn't cast them out. They simply scram. When he gives them permission, they flee as quickly as they can. They go into herd of pigs off the edge of the cliff and all the pigs die. Now the point, you know, a lot of people, you know, provide written dissertations about these pigs. In other words, there's a moral question as opposed here. Didn't Jesus care about the pigs? You know, didn't he care about people's livelihoods and this and that? You know, Mark never really worries about answering that question. You could speculate a little bit. Mark's readers were under occupation of Rome themselves and were being oppressed by Rome's. Rome, those pigs were undoubtedly being raised in order to feed the Roman soldiers that were pressing people of Jesus' day. And so you can almost, I'm guessing here, you can almost guess, Mark, there's a wink in his eye when he sort of writes, Jesus killed all their pigs. He stuck it to the Romans. I don't know. What's more important about the story is the result of it. And the result of it is that people ran and began telling people about it. And that's where we're going to find a mission mandate in here, not from the people who ratted Jesus out about the pigs, but about legion. In other words, the people went and told you're going to find that the land of this passage is a huge contrast between the people that accept Jesus and the people who don't accept Jesus. Namely one person has accepted him. Let's read that. Verse 14, it says, the herdsman fled and told it in the city and country and the people came to see what it was that had happened. And they came to Jesus and saw that the demon possessed man, the one who had the legion sitting there, clothed and in his right mind. Everyone knew legion. Everyone knew this guy. They may be participated in his binding and putting him in the cemetery and leaving him there and hearing him scream out at night and watching him cut himself. Everyone was afraid of this guy. They come to see what had happened to the pigs and they find something even more frightening. Legion, sitting there clothed and in his right mind. And what was the response to Legion's complete healing? It says they rejoiced and were overjoyed with great joy, not. They see that Jesus has completely changed and transformed this person and they are afraid. It should sound familiar. It's remember when Jesus calmed the storm, the disciples were more afraid after the storm was calmed than they were before the storm was calmed because at that point you have to say who then is this man? And if he can heal, if he can heal Legion, who then is he? What does that mean for me? I mean when I remember when I became a Christian, I got quite a bit of trouble growing up. And when I became a Christian, it was a pretty radical transformation and people were freaking out. They didn't know what to do. My own godmother, she swooned. I think I told you that. I told her I became a Christian and she swooned and fell back and said oh my god, he's become a holy rollo. Because if I could be changed by Jesus that meant one of two things either they had to then deal with Jesus or they had to diminish what it happened to me but you can't just be neutral. So what do they do? It says the people begged Jesus to leave. Now it says backwards, is anything as you ever heard? Someone who is powerful enough to fix Legion. Certainly has to be powerful enough to heal you. Someone powerful enough to cast out 6,000 demons from one person. Certainly it's powerful enough to minister to you. And so what do you do? I don't know. Get out of here. They begged him to leave. If it was me, I'd be begging him to stay. You know why? That's because I'm more like Legion than I am like those shepherds. And that's exactly what Legion does there. Notice what he says. For 17, they begged Jesus to depart from the region and he was getting into the boat. The man who had been possessed with demons begged him that he might be with him. In other words, the man who had been cleaned, he wanted to become a disciple. If you remember when Jesus called the disciples, he called them so that they might quote be with him. Legion was saying, let me be with you. Let me be one of your disciples. Maybe one of your gang. I'm going to be with you the whole time. And what does Jesus say? It had to be shocking to Legion. He says no. And then he says something that had to be shocking to the disciples because every time up to this point, when Jesus had cast out a demon, what does he tell the people? Don't tell anyone. Keep this to yourself. Go and tell the priest. Don't tell anyone what you have seen and heard today. Keep it to yourself. And what does he tell Legion? Tells him the exact opposite thing. He gives him a mandate. He says go home and tell your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you and how he has had mercy on you. Why does he tell Legion to go and he tells other people not to go in the answer? On one hand, it's probably pretty simple. Pretty simple because Jesus, remember, Legion is no doubt a Gentile and a Gentile region. And there was no worry that if he started spreading the news of Jesus that the Gentiles would gather to make Jesus the King of Israel, the fore's time had come. Every time Jesus tells people not to say anything, he's in Jewish territory because he doesn't want his secret to get out until he can be in control of it and go to the cross on God's timing, not people's timing. The other reason I'm guessing is because Legion was particularly effective. Did you notice what Legion did when Jesus told him go home and tell everyone what the Lord has done for you? Two things you need to notice and we're going to close with this. The first thing he does, it says, verse 20, it says, and he went away and he began to proclaim the decapitalist, how much Jesus had done for him and everyone marveled. So the first thing he did is he went away and Jesus had go to your home and tell people how much the Lord has done for you and we guess he went home, but verse 20 says he went to the decapitalist and the decapitalist was 10 cities and he proclaimed and that's the same word as preaching. He proclaimed what Jesus had done for him. So he didn't just go to his own household. He went everywhere and told what Jesus had done. But remember Jesus said go tell people what the Lord has done for you and Legion goes and tells people what Jesus has done for him because in his mind apparently they're the same thing. The last thing I want to point out to you here is what you've just seen Legion do is the only thing you need to know about being an effective evangelist. It's the only thing you need to know about reaching people for Jesus. I can't tell you how many churches I've been in where people say you know we need to have some classes on evangelism in this church and if class on evangelism or how come people they aren't more effective. How come more people aren't coming in? It's because most of the time we use classes and education as a way to avoid evangelism rather than to pursue it. Here's what you need to do evangelism. Here's what you need to see people come to know Jesus. You need to have to know Jesus yourself and you need to simply tell them what marvelous things the Lord has done for you. Can you do that? Can you do that? I remember when Judy and I were we're having children and Judy had them I was just sort of there. And many of you eventually you take classes right? We took classes for the first one, took classes for the second one, took classes for the third one and you know you think gosh without these classes we will not be able to birth this child and without the classes and without a midwife or without the doctor how what in the world is going to happen. Well Judy and I found out. You've heard the story right on our third baby the midwife who was the most smug person I've ever met my life. She said oh I've never missed a baby don't worry about me and I said you don't know my wife. She missed our baby but at the end of the day from my perspective you said the catch. That's it. I didn't need a class for that. I didn't need anything. I said to be there and I had to be able to catch the baby and it's the same with evangelism. Really God's the one who does all the hard work just like Judy did all the hard work without children. My job was just to be a midwife and all it takes to be a midwife when it comes to God's place just can you tell people your story. Can you do that? You can only do it if you've got a story and that's what I ask you leave here with ask yourself has Jesus changed my life? Has he changed my heart? Has he forgiven my sins? Think about that. Let me pray for us. Father I pray now that you are that just come and you would open our eyes to these great truths of the gospel that there's no sin too big no problem that is too wide or deep that Jesus cannot address. We thank you. Praise you for this. Christ's name we pray. Amen. Amen.