Deliverance (Mark 5:1-20)

My friend Sean Demars is in his late 30s.

He's married to Amber. He has two school age daughters,

Patients and Bella. He's a pastor of a church in

Decatur, AL. Some of you may remember I took

a day trip to Alabama a few months ago.

It was to hang out with Sean, teach a group of pastors he

gathers, record a couple podcast interviews.

Sean has a large and colorful personality.

He has a weightlifter's physique.

He has tattoos. Just from looking at him, you

might be able to guess that he spent time in the army, but you

would not at all be able to guess what his life was like

growing up or the kind of person he was before he became a

Christian. Sean tells the story in a book

called Rebel to Your Will. He grew up with a single mom who

was addicted to drugs for his whole childhood.

For most of his childhood, he was homeless, living in their

car or in hotel rooms. His mom abused him constantly

and viciously. By his teens, he began doing

drugs, then selling drugs. He quickly got into trouble with

the law and he was placed in a juvenile detention facility in

Paint Rock Valley, AL. That's when he was 15.

It's a prison, but on the side of a mountain.

It's far from any town. While he was imprisoned in Paint

Rock Valley, Sean frequently cut his forearms, leaving them

zigzagged with scars. 1 morning, he tried to repeatedly bash his

head against a brick wall. The third time he did it, he did

it so hard that he fell flat to the ground and immediately 2

counselors came over to restrain him.

It was 9:00 AM. It was the third time he'd had

to be restrained that morning. How did Sean get from who he was

then to who he is now? What or who brought about such a

radical change? This morning we continue our

series in Mark's Gospel with chapter 5, verses 1 to 20.

If you don't have a Bible, please raise your hand and

someone will bring one to you. Feel free to put up a hand.

Dawson is already on the way. Just lookout for the man in a

blazer with the Bible. In this passage we meet a man

who lived alone, you might say, in a kind of solitary

confinement. He lived on the side of a

mountain in a kind of de facto imprisonment.

Verse five of our passage tells us that much like my friend Sean

when he was 15 years old, this man was always crying out and

cutting himself with stones. But then something happened to

him. Someone did for him what he

could never do for himself. Please listen as I read the

whole passage. Mark 5, verses 1 to 20.

Mark 5:1–20

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 there met him out of the tombs, a man

with an unclean spirit. 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 in

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 cutting himself with stones, and

when he saw Jesus 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, son of the Most high God, I adjure you by God,

do not torment me. For he that is Jesus was saying

to him, Come out of the man, you unclean spirit.

And Jesus asked him, What is your name?

He replied, My name is legion, for we are many.

And he begged him earnestly not to send them out of the country.

Now a great herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside,

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 2000, rushed down the steep bank

into the sea and drowned in the sea.

The herdsmen fled and told it in the city and in the country.

And people came to see what it was that it happened.

And they came to Jesus and saw the demon possessed man, the one

who had had the legion, sitting there clothed and in his right

mind. And they were afraid.

And those who had seen it described to them what had

happened to the demon possessed man and to the pigs.

And they began to beg Jesus to depart from their region.

And as he was getting into the boat, the man who had been

possessed with demons begged him that he might be with him.

And he did not permit him, but said to him, Go home to your

friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and

how he has had mercy on you. And he went away and began to

proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him.

And everyone marvelled. The Gospel of Mark records

several exorcisms, several times when Jesus drives a demon out of

somebody. But this one is the most

dramatic and detailed, and the passage raises very many

questions. Many of the questions that most

naturally occur to us, I would submit, are questions the

passage simply doesn't answer. To help us not be distracted by

them, I'm going to list several Why do the demons not want to

leave the region? Why do the demons want to enter

the pigs? Why does the herd of pigs rush

into the sea once the demons enter them?

Did the demons do that on purpose or by accident?

When the pigs drowned, what happened to the demons?

And what are we to make of Jesus permitting such vast destruction

of animal life? From another angle, what are we

to make of Jesus permitting such vast destruction of people's

livelihood and wealth? Our passage does not provide any

clear or explicit answer to any of those questions.

But I don't think we need to answer any of those questions to

understand the main point of the passage.

And I do think there's one crucial question that the

passage does answer, at least implicitly.

It's probably a question that occurred to many of yous.

You're studying the passage. Why does Jesus grant the demons

request to enter the herd of pigs?

I don't think the passage tells us explicitly, but I think we

can gather from the whole narrative.

I think the answer is that the demons treatment of the pigs

served to dramatically demonstrate Jesus's power.

Jesus's power was dramatically displayed and expelling the

demons from the man and restoring him to wholeness and

sanity. It was further displayed.

It was confirmed, attested, blown up and put on a billboard

by what the demons did to the pigs.

It made the invisible reality of that deliverance even more

visible. It was visible in the man

himself, but what it made visible was the magnitude of the

powers that were tormenting that man.

Hey, what was wrong with that guy who used to live out by the

tombs? Do you hear about that?

That weird guy Jesus came in. He seemed to be better after the

what? What was with that guy?

It wasn't mental illness, it was 2000 evil spirits tormenting

him. Jesus is granting the demons

request, showed the magnitude of the forces that were tormenting

the man, and thereby showed the magnitude of Jesus's power that

overcame them. It showed everybody around how

powerful Jesus is. You see, this passage is about

what Jesus did to this man and for this man.

But it isn't only about what Jesus did to and for this man.

It's about how the man himself responded and how his neighbors

responded. And it's ultimately about how

you will respond. Jesus won a decisive spiritual

battle against the whole legion of demons that day.

But Jesus confrontation with the legion wasn't the only front in

the battle. Instead, our passage reports a

multi front spiritual battle. Here's the main point of the

passage. Only Jesus can deliver you from

all of Satan's tyranny, including unbelief.

Only Jesus can deliver you from all of Satan's tyranny,

including unbelief. We see that theme unfold in our

passages reports of this multi front spiritual battle.

We'll walk through the passage into five points .1 torment.

We see the demons torment of this man in verses one to five.

Look again with me at those verses.

They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the

garrison's, and when Jesus had stepped out of the boat,

immediately there met him out of the tombs, a man with an unclean

spirit. 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 in

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

cutting himself with stones. First one tells us that Jesus

and the disciples crossed by sea and came to a new territory.

It's on the southeast side of the Sea of Galilee.

The place name Garrisons refers to the whole region. 1 notable

fact about this area is that in Jesus's day it was not inhabited

by Jews, but by non Jews, Gentiles.

That holds for the whole region mentioned in verse 20, the

Decapolis. That just means the 10 cities.

Each of those 10 cities were predominantly populated by

Gentiles. So this is Jesus's first foray

into Gentile territory and as soon as he arrives, this man

comes to meet him. We're told that he has an

unclean spirit, meaning he's possessed by a demon.

We will soon learn that there is more than one demon, but the

point here is that the source of his problems is evil, hostile,

powerful spiritual beings. This is not a mental delusion or

psychological disorder. This man lives under the

dominion of evil spirits. His whole life consists in being

tormented by evil spirits. He comes out of the tombs

because that's where he lived, among bones and the decomposing

remains of human beings. How could he live among tombs?

It's because tombs in that time and place were like big rooms or

chambers cut out of the side of a rock.

It can be big enough to stand up in, so he can make a shelter

that you can sort of camp out in.

This man lived in the tombs because he could not live

anywhere else. He had to live far away from the

living. He could only live among the

dead. His life was a kind of living

death. No human contact, no healing, no

relief, no pleasure, no enjoyment, no prospects for

change, only isolation and suffering and pain.

We learned that people often tried to restrain him with

shackles and chains. Whether they were trying to

restrain him from harming himself or harming others or

both, the text doesn't say. But it does tell us that however

often people tried to restrain him, he would break free with

superhuman strength, and so he suffered.

Verse 5 tells us that continually, night and day,

among the tombs and on the mountains, he cried out and cut

himself with stones. Meeting this man is like meeting

a zombie in a horror movie. He is the living dead, and all

this suffering turns himself destructive.

It seems like his only possible relief is in harming himself.

He's in torment. Neither he nor anyone else can

do anything about it. Now, on the one hand, this man's

suffering is extreme and extraordinary.

That's why the passage narrates it at such length.

You don't meet someone like this every day.

But on the other hand, this man's suffering is not unique.

When my friend Sean was near rock bottom, his life strikingly

resembled this man's story. But the point of Mark's

narrating this man's experiences is not merely to show us this

one man's suffering. It's actually to show us that

this man is more like all of us than any of us would want to

admit. This man is fully captive to the

powers of evil and beyond human help.

That's not only true of him, spiritually speaking, that also

is true or was true of every single one of us.

The spiritual condition we are born into is that of being

captive to powers of evil and beyond human help.

Hear how the Apostle Paul describes all of our condition

in Ephesians 2 verses 1:00 to 3:00.

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you

once walked, following the course of this world, following

the Prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at

work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all

once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the

desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature

children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

What this man is, we all were, and some of us still are.

Spiritually speaking, the condition we're born into is a

living death. Spiritually speaking, by fallen

nature, each of us is a zombie. We're all the living dead.

My guess is if you're not a believer in Jesus, that

description sounds extreme or bizarre.

We in the modern West like to view ourselves as competent,

powerful, able, self-sufficient. We live by a myth of

self-sufficiency. We live by a myth of all

powerful individual agency. You can accomplish whatever you

set your mind to do, but there are powers that work in this

world that are stronger than you.

There are individual, individual, excuse me, there are

invisible powers at work in this world that are too strong for

you to do anything about. This world is a spiritual

battlefield. It's one thing to be in a battle

after training for it, preparing for it, and entering it with

eyes wide open. It's another thing all together

to be on a battlefield and not know it.

Notice how the effect of Satan's dominion in this man's life is

degrading and dehumanizing. Satan's torment aims to make

this man's life into a less than human one.

One element of that dehumanization is that the man

is driven to seek relief in harming himself, cutting himself

with stones. You bear the image of God, and

so does every human being you will ever made.

Just as you should treat others with respect and dignity because

they bear God's image, so you should treat yourself with

respect and dignity because you bear God's image.

Brothers and sisters, a passage like this, a statement like this

in verse 5, should stir us to compassion.

When someone is in such torment that hurting themselves feels

like their only form of relief, we should compassionately care

for them and do whatever we can to help them, support them,

protect them, and try to help get to the root of their

suffering. If you are ever tempted to harm

yourself as relief from suffering, reach out to other

believers. Reach out to people who know

you, people you can trust. Talk to me or Michael.

We'll be glad to meet with you, pray with you, offer you

whatever help we can, and connect you with counselors who

can help care for you over a longer term.

Satan hates image bearers and works to destroy them.

Jesus loves image bearers and works to restore them.

We begin to see how he does that in .2 confrontation,

confrontation. We see Jesus confront the

spiritual beings tormenting this man in verses 6 to 8.

And when he saw Jesus 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, son of the Most high God,

I adore you by God, do not torment me.

For he was saying to him, come out of the man, you unclean

spirit. In these verses, Mark begins to

recount the meeting between Jesus and this demon possessed

man in more detail. That the man fell down before

Jesus shows that the demons controlling him recognize

Jesus's superior power and authority.

Now it's difficult to even talk about the man's actions because

he's controlled by the demons. It's the man's mouth moving, but

it's the demons talking. Now the phrase what have you to

do with me is basically a plea to be left alone.

And the demons confess that Jesus is the Son of God.

There is a sense in which the demons answer the disciples

question. From the very end of last week's

passage in 441, the disciples asked who is this that even the

winds and the waves obey him? The demons answer rightly the

Son of the Most High God. Now that is a true answer, but

that does not tell us anything good about the demons spiritual

condition. You can believe and confess that

Jesus is the Son of God and still be a demon.

Genuine saving faith in Christ is much more than

acknowledgement of the truth about who He is.

Now the demon then speaking through the man, says I adjure

you by God, do not torment me. The statement is ironic on

multiple levels. It's ironic that the demon would

invoke God's name and power as if he expects God to be on his

side. It's ironic in that it echoes

language that exorcists in Jesus's day would use to bind or

cast out demons. They would adjure them in God's

name to come out that that kind of verbal formula is an effort

to verbally bind the behavior of a demon.

And so here the demon tries to verbally bind Jesus's behavior

as if he's the demon who needs to come under control.

This man cannot be bound by humans.

The demons who bind him try to bind Jesus.

It's also ironic because the demons ask not to be tormented,

which is exactly what they're doing to this man.

Typical bullies. They dish it out, but they can't

take it. These demons who show no mercy

are begging for mercy, and it's important to recognize that

they're begging. Now, First Eight gives us

background information that tells us what Jesus said before

the demons responded. Here, it's that he commanded

them to leave the man. Now, this interaction between

Jesus and a demon is different from what we've typically seen

so far in Mark's gospel. Typically, when Jesus casts out

a demon, he just says the command and the demon instantly

obeys. Here Jesus commands and then the

demon begs for mercy. Presumably, had Jesus chosen to,

he could have effectively removed the demon, or the 2000

demons by a word. But here it seems he allows the

demon to beg out these terms of surrender so that we would learn

and profit from the exchange. So there are two armies squaring

off here, Jesus on one side and, as we will soon learn, a whole

legion of Satan's army on the other.

But the outcome of the conflict is not in doubt.

It is not as if Jesus is going to lose.

It is not as if Jesus even has to fight.

As soon as Jesus opens his mouth, the demons start begging

for mercy. The demons are defeated as soon

as Jesus speaks. It's just a question of whether

they can obtain any favorable terms of surrender.

One lesson from this passage. Demons are real.

Demons exist. Demons harm people.

They're really at work in the world today.

But all of us who trust in Christ need have No Fear of

them, because next to him they're powerless.

Jesus is infinitely more powerful than any and every

demon. He is the stronger man who has

come to bind Satan and deliver Satan's captives.

That's why this confrontation quickly results in .3

deliverance. Deliverance.

Verses 9 to 13 report the somewhat surprising way in which

Jesus delivers the man from his demonic tormentors.

Look first with me at verses 9 and 10.

And Jesus asked him, What is your name?

He replied, my name is legion, for we are many.

And he begged him earnestly not to send them out of the country.

A legion was a unit in the Roman army.

It's exact numbers varied, but it was typically about 6000

soldiers. Now the point here is not that

there were exactly 6000 demons inhabiting this man.

The point is just there was a whole lot.

They constituted a kind of unit of Satan's army.

The the fact that the demon is called legion makes crystal

clear what's going on here. This man's life is a spiritual

battleground between God and the armies of Satan.

And it's not just him. What's true of him is true in

one way or another of each of us.

Your life is a spiritual battlefield with eternal

consequences riding on the outcome of the battle.

Again, in verse 10, the text does not specify or imply a

clear reason as to why the demons don't want to be sent out

of the country or the region. And I've got better things to do

in this sermon than speculate. So we move on to verses 11 to

13. Now a great herd of pigs was

feeding there on the hillside, 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 2000, rushed

down the steep bank into the sea and drowned in the sea.

One element of the passage that is not as obvious today because

of our kind of cultural background is purity.

This man was the epitome of unclean.

He's a Gentile, unclean, possessed by a demon, unclean,

dwelling in tombs, unclean. And then Jesus drives the demons

out into pigs. Which two Jews were unclean?

Now, despite all the questions about this part of the passage,

the main point is clear. The man is delivered and the

demons are defeated. Whatever the demons were hoping

for by being sent into the pigs, drowning is not exactly a

triumph. In fact, that this is an army of

demons who are in some sense drowning in the sea sets up an

echo of the Exodus. God parted the Red Sea so that

the people of Israel could come through, and then he closed it

up on Pharaoh's army so as to drown the Egyptian army.

Israel was delivered, the army of Egypt drowned.

Here this man is delivered, and the army of Satan is drowned.

As I mentioned at the beginning, Jesus's choice to allow the

demons to enter the pigs, presumably knowing what would

happen when they did, created a larger, louder demonstration of

His power. It created a standing witness to

what He had done. Every time somebody would walk

by that big old hillside where that massive herd of pigs used

to graze, it would prompt a series of questions. 2000 pigs

was a massive herd in those days.

Massive. Everybody would know about it.

Poof. They disappear whenever anyone

walks past for a long time afterward.

What? What happened to that enormous

herd of pigs? Where did they go?

Who did that? How?

Why? Whenever anyone saw it, it wood

forest A reckoning, It wood forest an accounting.

I grew up in California, and I heard a lot about seismographs.

If you don't know what a seismograph is, it's a

scientific instrument that measures the force of an

earthquake. It measures how much power the

Earth releases when tectonic plates slip past each other or

smash against each other. It tells you how powerful those

forces were. In our passage, the grisly death

of a huge herd of pigs functions like a seismograph.

It measures the impact of Jesus's deliverance of this man.

It shows us how much power it took to save him.

Only the kind of power that could drive out 2000 demons was

enough to make this manhole that also is a picture of our

salvation. Only the kind of power that

would enable Jesus to give his life and death on a cross and

pay for sins, and then rise again from the grave, triumphing

over death forever. Only that kind of power, only

that much power is enough to save you and enough to save me.

We might not have the precise spiritual form of bondage that

this man had, but each of us by fallen nature are subject to

evil powers beyond our control, are hopelessly enslaved, and are

beyond human health. Not to mention the massive debt

of sin we've all racked up by the way we've rebelled against

God. What kind of power does it take

to deliver from that? The Gospel of Mark's answer is

the cross and resurrection of Christ.

That's how He pays for all the sins of all those who will turn

from sin and trust in Him. That's how He releases us from

death's dominion. That's how He guarantees us an

eternal welcome in His Kingdom by His death and resurrection.

And all you need to do to receive that infinite merciful

power is turned from sin and trust in Him.

All you need to do to be released from sin as completely

as this man was released from 2000 demons is turned from sin

and trust in Jesus. If you're not a believer in

Jesus, I would urge you come to Him in faith today.

He can make you as sound and sane and whole and happy as He

made this man. And that's what he promises to

do for all who believe. And yet we know that not

everyone will believe. This very passage shows us that

even the majority of the people who saw what had happened didn't

believe in Jesus, didn't accept it .4 Unbelief, Unbelief.

We see widespread unbelief in response to this miracle in

verses 14 to 17. Look first at verses 14 and 15.

The herdsmen fled and told it in the city and in the country, and

people came to see what it was that it happened.

And they came to Jesus and saw the demon possessed man, the one

who had had the Legion, sitting there clothed and in his right

mind. And they were afraid.

Naturally the news spread quickly.

When people came to see what had happened, they saw a man who was

previously The Walking Dead, now clothed well, sound of mind,

sitting there listening to Jesus's teaching.

The fact that he was clothed implies that he was previously

unclothed. Jesus has restored this man's

humanity. Jesus has restored this man's

sanity. Whereas previously chains

couldn't restrain him, now he's sitting there willingly,

peacefully, quietly listening to Jesus teach.

This is a perfect calm after the raging storm of demon possession

last week. In the passage we studied, Jesus

calms an outer storm. Here he calms an inner storm.

And the result, the peace that follows, is just as perfect,

just as instant, just as complete.

Just as the man's demonic torment is a picture of all of

our fallen condition by nature, so also his restoration is a

picture of what it means to become a follower of Jesus.

To be converted to Christ is to be transformed by his grace.

To be converted to Christ is to be rehumanized after being

dehumanized by Satan. To come to Christ is to be

restored, made well, made whole. To come to faith in Him is to

have both your humanity and your sanity restored.

To come to faith in Jesus is now to experience an inner, peaceful

compulsion to listen to him and follow Him.

If you're a believer in Jesus, does anyone in your life think

you're crazy for being a Christian?

This passage shows the shoes on the other foot.

Jesus restores your sanity. But not everyone who saw the

evidence embraced Christ for themselves.

Look at verses 16 and 17. And those who had seen it

described to them what had happened to the demon possessed

man and to the pigs, and they began to beg Jesus to depart

from their region. Sometimes people think that the

townspeople asked Jesus to leave because they were mad about the

financial loss they'd incurred through the death of this

enormous herd of pigs. But actually the text rules out

that interpretation. And not only do I think that is

not the case, but I think it cannot be the case.

Here's why. It's not the herdsmen who begged

Jesus to leave. It's the people the herdsmen

told it to, who then came and saw what had happened.

It wasn't the owners of the pigs who asked Jesus to depart.

It was simply people who came face to face with Jesus's power

and they were unnerved by it. They didn't want anything to do

with it. The key is right there at the

end of verse 15. They saw the man sitting there

clothed and in his right mind and they were afraid.

Their right to be afraid. Jesus power is infinitely

greater than anything they can comprehend.

Their right to be disturbed. But that disturbance, that being

shaken up should have resolved itself into being drawn to

Jesus, trusting in Jesus instead, that disturbing, that

being shaken up resolved into opposition.

Get away from us, get out of here.

We don't want you anywhere around us.

They recognize Jesus's power, but they viewed that power as

being kind of like the reactor core of a nuclear bomb.

Yes, I recognize that is a very powerful device.

No, I don't want to touch it, thank you.

No, I don't want it living next to me, thanks very much.

I want it sent away as far from me as it can possibly get.

They got the power, but they rejected it.

A lot of people claim they would believe in God if God showed

them more evidence. A lot of people claim that they

believe in Jesus if they saw Jesus do a miracle.

Here, as so often in the Gospels, you have people who

come face to face with hard evidence of a miracle as

dramatic as you could ask for. 2000 pigs drowning in the sea.

What on earth just happened? And yet they do not believe.

They reject Jesus. They don't want anything to do

with Him. The fundamental reason people

don't believe in God through Christ is not lack of

information, but the condition of the heart.

It's that we want the wrong thing.

Control is a deep heart idol. A guy like this who can do this,

you cannot control. We prefer control to submission,

and Christ's power is uncontrollable.

You cannot set limits to the demands he puts on you.

You cannot draw a boundary that Jesus has to respect.

Hey, Jesus, you don't get to do that.

I've set up a boundary. Thank you.

No boundaries will contain Jesus.

To come to faith in Christ is to give up control.

Sin, you think is controllable. I've got it under control.

I know what I'm doing. I can keep it limited over here.

I've got this sin you think is under control, but the way Jesus

will transform you is not controllable.

Sin makes us prefer control to health.

Sin makes us prefer control to sanity.

Kids in the congregation, do you ever think somewhere deep down

in your mind and heart, that your life would be better if

Jesus would just go away? Do you ever think that your life

would be happier, smoother, easier, better if you could ask

Jesus to leave and he would? That's what the people who saw

this miracle wanted. They wanted him gone.

But it's not what the man himself wanted.

We see what he wanted from Jesus and what Jesus wanted for him.

And .5 proclamation. 5th and final point .5 Proclamation.

This is the last stage in this spiritual battle.

For now. This is the outcome of Jesus

victory in this man's life. Proclamation.

That's the theme of verses 18 to 20.

Look with me first at verses 18 and 19.

As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed

with demons begged him that he might be with him.

And he did not permit him, but said to him, Go home to your

friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you and

how he has had mercy on you. Now in these verses, Jesus

grants the townspeople's request.

They ask. And the next thing we learn is

he's getting into a boat to leave.

And the man he has marvelously delivered wants to come with

him. He wants to get into that boat.

The phrase that he might be with him exactly echoes chapter 3

verse 14, which speaks of Jesus calling the 12 apostles that

they might be with him. Now, I don't think this means

that the man is asking to become an apostle.

Like, hey Jesus, could you take the 12 and make it 13 for me?

I don't think that's what he's asking.

Instead, I think what he's asking is that he wants to be

with Jesus as much as the apostles get to be with Jesus.

He wants to stay with him, go with him, see all that he does,

be with him. That's a good desire.

A desire to be in Christ's presence is a mark of genuine

faith in him. Faith is not a bare mental

transaction. Real faith gives birth to a

desire to have intimate fellowship with Christ.

So the man wants something good, but Jesus has in mind something

better. Why does he refuse the man's

request? Because in this instance, he

wants the man to be not merely a disciple, but a missionary.

This first Gentile convert is going to become, in some sense,

the first apostle to the Gentiles.

Jesus wants this man to go among those who know him and bear

testimony to what Jesus has done for him.

More on that soon. But now we need to ask another

question. Why does Jesus command

proclamation here when elsewhere he forbids it?

We've seen often in Mark's gospel that when he heals

someone or drives out a demon, when the demons confess who he

is, he tells them not to tell anybody.

And he's going to do that again later in Mark's gospel.

So why the change here? The key is that he's in Gentile

territory. When he's in Jewish territory,

he's among his own people. That's where he's living.

That's where he's carrying out his whole mission.

If the crowds swell up too fast, if they kind of swarm him, well,

that, that that'll cramp his agenda, it'll cramp his

timeline, it'll threaten all kinds of danger.

Also in Jewish territory there's a whole wide mix of expectations

about who the Messiah is going to be and what's he going to do.

Here in Gentile territory, this is not where Jesus is going to

stay. He's going to return maybe once

in his earthly ministry. It's also there's no

pre-existing expectations for what the Messiah is going to be

like. So yeah, he's fine with not

preaching here and leaving this healed man in his place.

Jesus is not going to come back except maybe once.

So he leaves this man. He sends this man home.

And in this case, sending him home means sending him to the

mission fields of the man obeys Jesus.

Verse 20. And he went away and began to

proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him.

And everyone marveled. Verse 19, Jesus tells the man to

tell everybody how much the Lord has done for you.

Verse 20, he tells how much Jesus had done for him.

It's not a mistake. That's not a slip.

That's sound theology. All we hear about the effect of

the man's preaching is that people were amazed.

But later in Chapter 7, Jesus is going to return to the region

and people come to him expecting healing.

So clearly word has gotten around.

We don't know the exact outcome of the man's preaching, but we

do know that he sowed some gospel seed.

We do know that it made some impact.

We do know that Jesus name and fame spread at least somewhat in

that region. Now, to help us apply these

concluding verses and the whole passage, I want to focus our

application on four points. Mercy, prayer, missions, and

testimony. Little bit of application,

reflections, some short, some a little longer.

Mercy, prayer, missions and testimony.

First, mercy. Note what Jesus commands the man

to proclaim in verse 19. Tell them how much the Lord has

done for you and how he has had mercy on you.

Jesus's exorcism was an act of mercy.

How much mercy? Infinite mercy?

What kind of mercy? Omnipotent mercy?

Jesus is omnipotently merciful and mercifully omnipotent.

Omnipotence without mercy is scary.

Mercy without omnipotence might not be strong enough for your

problems. Jesus has both.

What mercy do you need from the Lord?

Whatever it is, ask Him for it, beg Him for it, plead with Him

for it, and don't give up until He blesses you with His mercy.

Second application. Prayer.

In our whole passage, Jesus grants 3 requests and denies

one. A couple of you noticed this and

commented on it and emailed me about it.

I appreciate that. It's a good observation.

The pattern is surprising, maybe even shocking.

Verse 10 the demons beg not to be sent out of the country and

Jesus grants that. Verse 12 the demons beg to be

sent into the pigs and Jesus grants that.

Verse 17 sounds, people beg Jesus to leave and he grants

that. Verse 18 The healed man begs to

go with Jesus and he denies him. Where's the logic in that?

A request granted is not necessarily a sign of grace or

approval. A request denied is not

necessarily a sign of judgement or disapproval.

Jesus might refuse your request for some very good thing because

He has something that he knows is better.

Third Point missions. Later in Mark's Gospel in

chapter 13 verse 10, Jesus is going to say that before his

return the gospel must first be proclaimed to all nations.

Here in our passage we see in a sense the very first

anticipation of this world widespread of the gospel.

This is the first time the gospel crosses a cultural or

ethnic boundary. In Mark's Gospel, this first

instance of the gospel spreading to Gentiles and among Gentiles

is something like the birth of cross cultural missions.

Now in all four gospels and the book of Acts after his

resurrection, Jesus commands his disciples to bring the gospel to

every tribe, tongue and nation. One of the reasons this local

church, Trinity Baptist Church, exists is to continue the spread

of the gospel to the ends of the earth.

A friend of mine, Brooks Buser, runs a missions training school

called Radius International. The goal of Radius is to provide

a year long intensive training program to help equip people who

mean to bring the gospel to utterly unreached people groups,

people who have never heard the name of Jesus.

In an article for 9 marks from a few months ago, Brooks hopefully

lays out four different lanes of what faithful missions work can

look like. I'm going to lay out those four

lanes and tweak them slightly. In a sense, these progress from

the easiest to support or do to the hardest lane one training

national pastors in many regions of the world.

There are decent number of local churches, maybe a large number

of Christians, but not much theologically rich pastoral

training. There's one reason Michael and I

are proposing that we support the work of Mike Crist at the

Nairobi Institute of Reformed Theology.

Lord willing, we'll be hearing from Mike in our evening service

2 Sundays from now on the 26th. Have a kind of extended time of

Q&A, getting to know him, hearing about that ministry with

a view to potentially supporting it as a Church Lane 2, planting

English speaking or other trade language churches in cross

cultural contexts. That's what Michael was helping

to do in Dubai for the past several years before moving

here. And over the past several months

we've heard from Andy Johnson and John Pentecost about this

type of work. If I'm not mistaken, we have

former members of each of those churches visiting with us this

morning. You can hunt them down, try to

figure out who they are. Andy and John are both serving

English speaking churches in large cities in Central Asia.

One of the great advantages of that type of church is it can

provide access to nearby believers who might be in much

less reached places or among much less reached peoples.

Friends of mine and Michaels who pastor at different churches in

the United Arab Emirates have trained pastors from Egypt,

Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and other places like that.

Lane 3 planting indigenous language churches in places

where there are hardly any Christians.

This work is much closer to the frontline of global gospel

expansion. If you're working to plant an

Arabic speaking church in Cairo, Egypt, or a Kurdish speaking

church in the Kurdistan regions of Iraq or Turkey or Syria,

you're working in a place that has hardly any Christians and

among a people that has hardly any churches.

Or considered Japan, which has had some access to the gospel

for hundreds of years, and yet we're professing Christians

remain a teeny tiny minority. Lane 4 Planting churches among

people groups that have no gospel access.

These are cultural and linguistic groups to whom no one

has yet brought the gospel. In his article, Brooks reports

there are roughly 3100 language groups who still have yet to

hear the name of Christ. Brooks goes on.

Church planting in this category is often slow, hard work due to

the lack of translated materials, the need for language

acquisition, harsh living circumstances, and governments

hostile to Christianity. As we pray for opportunities to

advance the gospel globally, even as a young, small church,

pray that we will find ways over time to support work in each of

these lanes. Some of those might come easier

than others. Pray especially that the Lord

will raise up people from among our membership who will work in

lane four, who will bring the gospel to places and language

groups where Christ has never been named, just like this man

did when Jesus sent him home. For all of us, remember that we

will not all go, but we all must tell.

Telling is required. Whether you tell other people

about Jesus here or on the far side of the globe is ultimately

up to Him. Whether you stay or you go, you

must tell. 4th and finally, testimony, testimony.

What is the what is Jesus commanded man to do in verse 19?

Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done

for you and how he has had mercy on you.

If you're a believer in Jesus, even a brand new one, tell your

friends and family and neighbors how much the Lord has done for

you. Tell them how He has had mercy

on you. Tell them your testimony.

And by testimony I mean how the Lord saved you, how He brought

you to faith in Jesus. While sharing your testimony is

not in itself evangelism, sharing your testimony can be a

part of evangelism. It can spark evangelism.

It can confirm and help your evangelism.

It can help people see the personal difference that

trusting in Jesus makes. Sharing your testimony can often

help to put Christ saving work into categories that people can

resonate with and more easily understand.

This is one reason why we regularly interview members on

Sunday nights to hear their testimony.

What does that do? As we hear dozens of testimonies

of how people have come to know the Lord, it shows us the varied

means He uses to bring people to faith.

It reminds us that He has power to give sight to the blind and

life to the dead. It's a reminder that the gospel

is his power to save. You should also share

testimonies of how the Lord has continued to work in your life.

Bear witness to how God's grace has continued to transform you.

Tell your Co workers, tell your neighbors, tell your parents how

much the Lord has done for you and how He's had mercy on you.

Only Jesus can deliver you from all of Satan's tyranny,

including unbelief. Only Jesus can supernaturally

restore your sanity. Only Jesus can deliver you from

slavery to sin. Only Jesus can give you a new

heart. Only Jesus can give you His own

spotless record of righteousness before God.

Only Jesus can sink all your sins in the depth of the sea

like a herd of 2000 pigs rushing down off a Cliff and drowning.

How much has the Lord done for you?

He's sure done a lot for my friend Sean.

He's sure done a lot for me. And Jesus has plenty more where

that came from. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we praise you for the power of your mercy in

and through our Lord Jesus Christ.

We praise you for the deliverance you alone are able

to bring about. We pray you'd work that

deliverance in each of us. In Jesus name, Amen.