Mark (5:1-20)

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Introduction

The evangelical christian world can be very cheesy
Google cheesy church
Some of the cringiest
“The Best Vitamin for a Christian is B1”
“Adam and Eve, the first people to not read apple terms and conditions”
“Whoever stole our AC units keep one its gonna be hot where you are going”
One that I always see and hear is the come back to anything “Sundays Coming”
For so many of us we simply knew a Christian message that meant sundays.
But what about a Tuesday when i have shame and regret and distress.
What if what I’ve done or what life has done seems to give me no option but to give in more and more than i did before to something to numb the distress.
What If I am waking up again with unfulfilled longings for love and community after compromising myself
What hope do we have on a dark Thursday.
This passage is all about the hope we should have on a Wednesdaynot just on Sunday
it is squirely but for some reason it is the longest of these recoeded events Mark made sure we know

The Hero’s Fight (5:1-5)

Mark 5:1–5 CSB
They came to the other side of the sea, to the region of the Gerasenes. As soon as he got out of the boat, a man with an unclean spirit came out of the tombs and met him. He lived in the tombs, and no one was able to restrain him anymore—not even with a chain—because he often had been bound with shackles and chains, but had torn the chains apart and smashed the shackles. No one was strong enough to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains, he was always crying out and cutting himself with stones.
At first glance this is a 2 Kings type passage where Elisha is calling out she bears from the woods
It seems fantastical made up mythical
So why would Mark tell this real life event he witnessed?
Because it is one of the clearest passages in the Bible of Jesus’ coming to crush evil
Beneath what seems strange is the hero and his war to conquer the bad guy and win
There are a couple things that evidence I am getting into middle age
One: I make a grizzly sigh everytime I sit down
I get hurt sneezing
And I prefer to take 4 hours longer to get somewhere to avoid interstates and see scenery
My pulling up directions on my phone and hitting go without Morgan seeing gives her anxiety and immediately I am asked “Where are we going?”
If you were in this boat you would be asking Jesus where are we going?
Are you serious we are taking this way?
These are jewish guys beaten down generationally by military powers occupying the promised land
Babylon, The Persions, The Greeks, and now the horrific Romans
Jews hated the Romans and awaited the long prophesied Messiah to kick them all out and take back the land
The king surely would cross the sea with a sword … these guys are thinking they are the special ops squad and the keep failing to see the real Jesus throughout the Gospels
They expected the king to keep healing and deteating their darkness
But here he is sailing over the the enemy
Not a jew to be seen
They didn’t get that this is why he came
Christ came as the King to take back every inch of a world that isnt how its supposed to be
Not just the Jewish bubble
Isreal, Rome, London, Toronto, Brazil, and Unlocked Coffee are His and he has bound the evil prince where we are chained to kill the dragon and get the girl
Don’t you see why Mark has this in such lengthy detail?
He is telling the world this Jesus is unlike any other
He is the Hero the world needs and has
This was always God’s plan from the beginning
Genesis 1:28 CSB
God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. Rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and every creature that crawls on the earth.”
Fill the earth with the flourishing only found in God and His way to live
The first adam failed to fill the earth and instead let the villain in to steal and plunder
The second Adam is on cosmic display right here as the hero we need and his hand to hand war to take back every inch
It seems slow in coming and impossible some days but urban combat is slow it is door to door and he came for us all not just 1st century Israel
That is His war and He would let nothing stop Him
Not even being nailed to a tree and tortured
thats how much he loves you
You are the reason He came to wage a war
I graduated from DARE in elementary school
If you know my story that will seem kinda ironic
But if you remember it they always said to stay away from gateway drugs
I don’t believe in gateway drugs I believe in gateway choices where the ends are always the same
Total destruction
like cancer, sin kills because it reproduces and progresses
This man knows this
it details in Mark 5:3
Mark 5:3 CSB
He lived in the tombs, and no one was able to restrain him anymore—not even with a chain—
Anymore…his darkness progressed
The enemy he came to fight hates everyone..he hates you as much as he hated this man and his desire to destroy us
He rarely comes face on like the Devil went down to Georgia
Compromise here, long for something else as ulimate and you will disintegrate over a long time
Evil is patient and tenacious
The big book of NA says of the evil of alcoholism
“it is cunning, powerful, baffling, and Patient”
through gateway choices we disintegrate
Cornelius Plantinga says: Divided worship destroys worshipers. Divided love destroys lovers. To split the truly important longings and loyalties is to crack one’s own foundations and to invite the crumbling and, finally, the disintegration of life itself. A divided house cannot stand
The Hero came to fight the enemy that disintegrated this man....and unchecked disintegrates us
He is fighting a complicated enemy

The Complicated Villain (5:6-17)

Mark 5:6–17 CSB
When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and knelt down before him. And he cried out with a loud voice, “What do you have to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you before God, don’t torment me!” For he had told him, “Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!” “What is your name?” he asked him. “My name is Legion,” he answered him, “because we are many.” And he begged him earnestly not to send them out of the region. A large herd of pigs was there, feeding on the hillside. The demons begged him, “Send us to the pigs, so that we may enter them.” So he gave them permission, and the unclean spirits came out and entered the pigs. The herd of about two thousand rushed down the steep bank into the sea and drowned there. The men who tended them ran off and reported it in the town and the countryside, and people went to see what had happened. They came to Jesus and saw the man who had been demon-possessed, sitting there, dressed and in his right mind; and they were afraid. Those who had seen it described to them what had happened to the demon-possessed man and told about the pigs. Then they began to beg him to leave their region.
We have a very arrogant tendency to dismiss this story
we say this was simply without modern medicine it was epilepsy or some mental illness…they just weren’t smart enough…health is more complex but they were simplicitic
False, even in the first century the bible has the most nuanced complex and least simplisctic view of reality that exists
Matthew 4:24 CSB
Then the news about him spread throughout Syria. So they brought to him all those who were afflicted, those suffering from various diseases and intense pains, the demon-possessed, the epileptics, and the paralytics. And he healed them.
They knew the complexity and the differences
this can’t be dismissed as made up....So this is real life…either Mark is a liar or this happened
I have the mic and I believe it happened so lets go with that view
you think this guy is simply psychotic…all of our sin is psychotic
We have a complex enemy
Sin and evil are complex
Part of the complexity is because evil twists good
Plantinga says: good and evil grow together, intertwine around each other, and grow out of each other in remarkable and complicated ways.
We long to be loved and wanted
We were made that way its good
But to fill it we give ourselves away to hook up culture and in the vaccum of compromise we give ourselves more and more to numb or hide shame
Ever lived that with your sin? Whatever it is
We are victims of and active participants in this crazy mess
And we have an enemy who feeds off of the complexities of the human experience
And we have the enemy himself who seeks to scare us like an older brother at a campfire
There is complexity to a world that isnt how its supposed to be
This man in Mark 5 knew it
He was a little kid once he had hopes and dreams life wasnt what he dreamt it would be
Somewhere his story sought something else in a world that isnt how its supposed to be
Maybe he was left by a parent, had a girl break his heart, suffered injsutice at work, it began small with pain
That’s why david is clear in Psalm 23 The Lord is not shepherd He is MY shepherd, His Rod and Staff comfort who? ME
This man knew the cycle and the vaccuum and in rushed over 1000 demons to the hollowed out core of who he was
It is even more complicated when you are religious
Mark 5:6–7 CSB
When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and knelt down before him. And he cried out with a loud voice, “What do you have to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you before God, don’t torment me!”
In the build a bear Jesus religious world we still don’t love him for who He is out of Love
You can study theology for 40 years and never see Jesus as all beautiful all satisfying all you have ever wanted and needed
You can know good theology and be lost as a baseball in tall grass
The enemy has right theology
Created being - Check
Awareness of subjugation- Check
Right View of Christ as Son of The only God - check
But falling down to manipulate him for what you want
Want a get out of hell free card jesus ?
Want liberal LGBTQ Jesus
Want Trump Jesus
never once seeing Him as the Hero we need and falling before Him
We cannot beat the twisted enemy outside of us or the psycho mess inside of us
We long for a hero and it isnt us because we aren’t whole
What you put your hope in to make you whole is your God
If you long for power power is your god
that is why you will be ruthless in your job
You will outwork everyone not to pursue excellence but because you need it
You long for pleasure you will give yourself away to anyone but always wake up regret filled until you dont feel anymore
And here stands Jesus in the face of it all
Giving it all to set us free and take us to the good life He made in how things are supposed to bed
He is the one he would call so just come on out
He came to take back all that is his
He came to do hand to hand combat with every complex human heart no matter how far we have fallen
What incredible hope
There is no greater threat then the grave
We all have a funeral waiting on us at some point
Unconquerable by ourselves....But He came to kill it and DID
That is what makes us fall down at His feet because we are in awe and love him and want nothing but more and more of Him and His power
He is King and He took His throne
That is why Mark has this in here
There is someone bigger than the boogyman under the bed
His name is Jesus
But He did it in a way we never saw coming and calls us to follow that way

The Battle Plan (5:18-20)

Imagine the freedom he knew in that moment
If you are follower of Christ you know this moment
You see
You taste and see that the lord is good
You see dad rush over and pick you up and carry you
You know he came to kill your regret
You believe your grandpa will be cancer free in glory throwing you baseball he died in this Christ
Nothing like it
Paul says in Colossians 2:15
Colossians 2:15 CSB
He disarmed the rulers and authorities and disgraced them publicly; he triumphed over them in him.
IN this Jesus the very thing that has seemed unbeatable unqonquerable will be paraded before you in a beaten spectacle like the Romans did a conquered army
No one wants to leave it
This man didn’t
Mark 5:18–20 CSB
As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been demon-possessed begged him earnestly that he might remain with him. Jesus did not let him but told him, “Go home to your own people, and report to them how much the Lord has done for you and how he has had mercy on you.” So he went out and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him, and they were all amazed.
Begged Him....I dont want to go back to who I was
But the call to those who make Jesus lord is not to hide and wait for sunday
its to be new right where we live work and do everyday life
It is possible in America to do everything in a christian bubble
You can do upward sports and never meet people in your city with kids
Meg could play kickball with her christian friends but i would never get to show off to morgan my athletic prowess
Sunday may be coming but every person you pass on a random tuesday lives in a world that isnt how its supposed to be
I have no deep clue why the pig thing is in this passage but it does say one thing
To these people a herd of pigs was wealth
Livestock was expensive…to have a herd meant you were ballin
And for one the world cast aside
For the one who made so many mistakes he was sent to die
Christ traded a fortune to get back
That is the way victory we didn’t see coming
Remember how we found this man?
Mark 5:3–5 CSB
He lived in the tombs, and no one was able to restrain him anymore—not even with a chain—because he often had been bound with shackles and chains, but had torn the chains apart and smashed the shackles. No one was strong enough to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains, he was always crying out and cutting himself with stones.
Bound in a graveyard cut battered and bleeding
unrecognizable from who he was
To save this man Christ took His place
Weeks later Christ would be placed in the graveyard
Beaten bleeding and alone
Cast outside the city broken and tortured
To free us from the grave he took our place in it
Don’t you want the hero of the story to be this Jesus Mark holds out ?
I close with this
If he is not Your shepherd not your hero you can repent and believe and bow the knee to Him today and he will save you in an instant
If you are a follower of Christ never get over this Gospel
Immerse yourself in this community of believers learning how the Gospel changes everything and work to take the Gospel everywhere
After sing we will remember through the Lords Supper the body that was broken and the blood that He spilled to take our place in the grave to get us Home
Please stand and sing
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