"An Unfair Fight:Jesus and Legion" - Mark 5:1-20

It's an interesting thing when you talk about power. What is power? What does it mean?

Who has it? Who should have it? Right? I've never met anyone who doesn't think they should have it.

Very few people will admit that, you know what, maybe I shouldn't have a lot of power.

We spend most of our time going, you know, if I was in charge,

I would do whatever you want. I don't know. Do your thing.

I know every kid in the room has moments of like, if I was in charge,

we could get this thing figured out real quick.

It would not be hard. I would just give everyone a billion dollars.

It would solve everybody's problems, right?

I could just give everybody, if everybody had money, everything would go well

because that's been great.

Or if everyone just gave me all their money, then I could figure out how to

make everything go great.

Especially in our culture, especially a postmodern culture, we're a little leery of power.

You know, we don't like to give it away too easy. We don't like the people to have it.

I know multiple people who won't stop, won't shop at places like Walmart because

they're like, you know, so you shouldn't be able to buy groceries,

get in Subway and get your tires rotated at the same place.

It's like, there's something going on there that they need to investigate.

And I'm like, dude, have you ever heard of Costco? Cause that's going to blow

your mind. That's going to blow your mind.

Subway, hot dogs and pizza and churros. It's life changing. Okay.

I remember finding out that you can buy caskets at Costco. And I was like,

there's no end. there's no end to what you can do at Costco.

I know we have a Sam's here and I'm not opposed to Sam's. I'm just saying it's not Costco. All right.

It's so true. It's so true. Yeah. Yeah. It's like Brookshire's is great, but have you been to?

All of God's people said, amen. All right, good. I like where we're going, but it is.

And there's a Christian tension with power as well, because we love that Jesus

is gentle, lowly, meek, and mild, right?

Every Christmas, we're going to sing songs about Jesus coming as a baby and

him being the servant of all.

And all those are great things, but it's not all that he is.

He's not just meek and mild. He's not just giving over his authority and his power at times.

He is still God of very gods. He is, as Colossians says, the beginning and the end of all things.

All things were created through him and by him and for him. That's who Jesus

is. He is both. He is both.

Even in the Bible, we see that authority and power is not always a bad thing.

You have people like King Josiah, who rules in an incredibly healthy way.

You have Peter and Paul, there's all the apostles, but mainly these two that

we see in the New Testament that wield a lot of authority in the early church.

They write letters and they're at different places and they rule over different things.

In fact, Paul shows his authority at times by confronting Peter to his face.

So authority and power are not necessarily bad things, but who wields those

things and to what extent they willed those things is really important.

In Mark chapters two and three, really, it was all about authority, right?

Jesus has authority to heal. He has authority to forgive sins.

He has authority to help a man on the Sabbath.

It's a Mark is setting up a presidency here. He has authority.

He has authority. He has authority.

And then chapters four and five, where we've been, you could argue it's all

about power. It's a Greek word dunamis.

Dunamis is used over and over and over again in these chapters.

Jesus has authority and Jesus has power.

What does Jesus have the power to do in chapters four and five? Well, he calms storms.

He's growing mustard seeds. We're going to see later on in chapter five,

I won't give it away, but he heals all kinds of diseases. He heals diseases he's not even near.

And so Mark is laying this foundation in chapters two, three,

four, and five before he goes into some of Jesus' life to say,

hey, this is who he is. He has all authority and he has all power.

That's who we're talking about. Again, if you were reading this story for the

first time, you didn't grow up in East Texas, you've never read a Bible and

you're reading Mark like many people would have been reading it in the first century.

As this gospel goes out and they don't know who Jesus is, they're like,

hey, read the gospel, find out who Jesus is.

If you're reading this, you're going, man, this guy's life must explode.

Like he must have the most blessed life. He must be a king of kings.

How have I not heard of this guy? And by the end of the gospel,

you realize like, oh, this guy gets crucified.

This guy lays down his life for his friends.

Again, Mark's setting all of these things up as he talks about who Jesus is.

This morning, we've got, again, a popular story like last week.

If you remember last week, we talked about Jesus calming the storm.

And I wanted you guys to know that I don't think the main point of that story

is that Jesus calms your storms.

Because there's certain storms that Jesus doesn't calm, even in the lives of

the people that are in this storm.

He allows storms. He allows them to go on. The point is you need to know Jesus

is in the boat with you and you need to know who Jesus is. Everything else doesn't matter.

Doesn't matter if there's winds and waves. Doesn't matter what's going on.

Doesn't matter what's going on in your life. If you know that Jesus is with

you and you know who Jesus is, that he has the ability, he rules over creation.

That's all you need to know. Everything else can go wrong as it does for the apostles, right?

And they would remember, like when Paul is shipwrecked on an island,

he could remember, hey, I remember the apostles telling me about this guy,

Calman Storms. It's gonna be all right.

This week we transitioned to Jesus healing a demon-possessed man, a demon-possessed man.

Jesus has the power to command these demons. He has the power to change the

people that were with these demons.

And he has the power to provoke a response in the people who see that happen.

So let me just read Mark 5, 1 through 20. I may stop at 13 and we'll come back to it.

But this is the story. It says, they came to the other side of the sea,

to the country of the Gerasenes.

Again, this country of the Gerasenes, there's a lot of debate on exactly where

this is, where exactly this happened. It was probably just a region of the Gerasenes,

a large region that housed multiple cities.

Because if you go to specific towns, this doesn't make sense.

Anyway, it's not a geography lesson, but even Matthew will quote this a little differently.

But I think the idea that they're all saying is this is the region of the Gerasenes.

Verse 2, 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 himself in mountains, he was always crying

out and cutting himself with stones.

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 was saying to him,

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.

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.

The unclean spirits came out and entered the pigs.

And the herd, numbering about 2,000, rushed down the steep bank into the sea and drowned in the sea.

Let's stop there. We'll pick up at 14 towards the end here.

But this is a pretty insane story again. Again, if you grew up in church and

you've heard this story, we tend to read things like this and go,

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've heard the story.

Guy's got demons. Jesus comes, throws him into the pigs. We've heard this story.

It's one of those you need to slow down and read and realize this is an incredible

story. An insane thing is going on here.

Jesus goes across the water and the second he gets off the boat,

he's met with this demon possessed man.

It's interesting when you read

this narrative, you don't really know when Jesus is talking to this man.

It's like, is he talking to the man? Is he talking to the demon?

And Mark tends to paint this picture of, is he talking to this man?

Is he talking to the demon? Yes, yes.

He's talking to the man who is demon possessed.

And so is he talking to the man? Yeah. But is he talking to the demon?

Yeah, that's who's talking.

This man is so eaten up with these demons. He's so...

I don't even know the word to use. Like there's really nothing left of him.

There's nothing left of this man. This demon has in such a way taken over his

life that when he speaks, Mark says, the demon is speaking, he's speaking. There is no difference.

Much like last week though, I want to be clear. I don't think the reason this

text exists is to give us a demonology 101 class.

But I do not think what Mark is trying to do is trying to give us an idea of,

well, this is how demons work and this is what they do. and this is how you

deal with them and this is where they go. That's not the point, not the point.

The point is not to psychoanalyze why he sent all of these demons into pigs, right?

The point is not to try and figure out why Jesus did it that way and why didn't

he go there and how can you go cast out demons and cast them into pigs?

Again, completely misses the point, right? Why does Mark write his gospel?

He tells us multiple times.

He doesn't write his gospel so that we might understand every single thing that

Jesus did, that we might understand exactly how the spiritual world works and

demons works or wind and waves, how they work. That's not the point.

Mark writes his gospel so that you might know who Jesus Christ is.

That's the point of the gospel. And when he gives us these stories,

some of the worst things that I think we can do is take all of them apart and

try and figure out all these little pieces Because when we do that,

what we end up doing is going, well, now I figured it out. I don't really need Jesus.

Now I know how demons work. So, you know, thanks, Jesus, for doing that.

But I can take it from here.

Mark is trying to put Jesus on display.

And so that's what we're going to do this morning. As Jesus gets out of the

boat, verse 8, Jesus recognizes immediately this man is inhabited by demons, right?

He was saying to him, it's almost like before Jesus even gets out of the boat,

he's like talking to this guy.

You know, Jesus pulls up and he's like, I can see what's going on here. I know how this goes.

His disciples are tying off the boat and Jesus is yelling at this guy,

hey, time to go, time to go.

The man recognizes Jesus immediately too. Verse six says, when he saw Jesus

from afar, he ran and fell down before him.

It's almost like a prodigal son image. It's like the antithesis of that.

I think it's actually a good picture of what we see in Revelation.

Every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.

Whether you're a prodigal son, an older son, right?

Whether you're a Gentile or a Jew or a man possessed by a legion of demons,

when Jesus shows up, you hit your face, right?

What happened last week when Jesus revealed more of who he was to his disciple,

they worshiped him and they feared him. Who is this man?

The difference between the disciples and the demon-possessed man at this point

is they don't know who he is, but the demon does.

So the disciples don't worship him just yet. They don't hit their face just

yet because they're not sure who this guy is.

But the demons do know who he is.

We've seen this again throughout Mark. The first place Jesus is actually recognized is by his father.

Remember at his baptism, he says, you are my beloved son.

The only other people in the book of Mark to this point who recognizes who Jesus

is are unclean spirits, right?

The crowds love him, but they don't know him.

They love that he heals diseases and they love that he can feed people with a little bit of food.

And they love that he can preach the way he preaches. They love that he kind

of stands up to the religious establishment, but they don't know who Jesus is,

right? There's still people who love Jesus for those exact reasons.

They'll go to church and they'll sing songs because they're thinking,

listen, I don't really know who Jesus is, but everybody keeps telling me he

can solve all my problems and he can fix me up.

He can find me a wife or a husband. He can fix my financial problems.

He can fix my wife or like he can do all these things.

And listen, it's not that Jesus can't do those things. It's just that you can

think that Jesus can do those things and not know Jesus. That's the crowds.

What about his own family? Surely his own family knows who he is.

No, they think he's crazy, right? They literally are trying to go grab him and

pull him out because, man, what are people going to think of our family?

This is our son who we thought was doing really well. And now he's out here

saying he can forgive sins.

All right. They obviously don't understand who Jesus is or what he came to do.

And then of course, there's his disciples who walk around with him every single

day. They don't know who he is.

That's literally how chapter four ends. And when they were filled with great

fear and said to one another, who then is this?

The crowds don't know. His family doesn't know. His disciples at this time don't

know. But the demons know.

The demons know who Jesus is. So they hit their knees. They hit their knees.

They ask him a question, these demons. What have you to do with us?

What a question. What have you to do with us?

They know that there is an end in sight for them.

They know who Jesus is. They know he is son of the most high God.

And they know that he has the authority to do with them whatever they want.

Jesus doesn't treat demons like his kids.

What I mean by that is when we tell our kids to do something, they might listen.

They might not, right? They might do 80% of what we said. They might not.

And if we're not there and we're not looking, there's a good chance they will do whatever they want.

And that's sometimes the way we think about Jesus and how he deals with things.

Like there's this spiritual battle going on and he's fighting evil.

And man, it's just this boxing match. And I don't know how this is going to go.

This is not the picture we get.

Jesus has no issue with the demons. The demons know immediately,

whatever this guy says, we're going to have to do.

We don't have any authority or power to do anything that he tells us not to

do. And this contest between Jesus and the demons is really a no contest contest.

So when you go to court, it can be an interplay of innocent,

guilty, or what? No contest.

No contest is like, I'm probably guilty, right? But I'm not going to contest it.

And you throw yourself at the mercy of the courts, right? And for the demons,

we don't see repentance.

We don't see them admitting a wrongdoing, right? They're not admitting their

guilt, but they know they're not innocent. So what do they do?

They throw their, they throw themselves at the feet of Jesus. They ask for mercy.

This really is like a boxing match. I can almost see, you know,

the guy that comes out, I don't know his name, the let's get ready to rumble guy.

He's like, in this corner, you know, Jesus Christ, son of the most high God,

in this corner. Now, think about the battlefield that Jesus is on.

This is no longer Jewish territory.

This is no longer his home court in any way, shape, or form.

Not that that worked out for him.

His own religious leaders wanted to kill him. But consider what's going on where he's at.

He is in an unclean place. He's in the Gentile region of the Decapolis.

The Decapolis literally means deca, 10, 10 city, 10 cities all rolled around

this ocean. And he's in one of those places.

So Jesus is in an unclean place.

He's probably encountering an unclean man, even without the demons, a Gentile man.

More than that, he's stranded by what? Pigs.

I don't know if you know this, Jews and pigs, not cool.

They are not friends. And that's not a new development. We see in Leviticus

11, Deuteronomy 14, you can't even touch pigs.

If you've been to a place where pigs are and you walk where pigs had been,

you have to go ritually cleanse yourself.

So we're in an unclean place with an unclean man, with unclean animals, surrounded by demons.

Not only that, this man is living where? In the tombs.

According to Numbers chapter 19, anyone who touches the dead shall be unclean

Numbers 19 · chapter mention

for seven days. And if you fail to cleanse yourselves, you shall be cut off from among your people.

The Pharisees took that law even further. They said, if you even touch something

that had touched a dead body, you have to ritually cleanse yourself.

So Jesus is about to do battle in an unclean place, surrounded by unclean animals

in the midst of unclean graves, face to face with an unclean man inhabited by

thousands of unclean spirits.

You don't get more of a home field advantage than this one.

It's like Jewish Bordor. I had to work in the Lord of the Rings here.

Okay. If you don't watch Lord of the Rings, that's totally fine.

Obviously, Bowen does. Cool.

But it is this picture that Mark is painting of, hey, this is the most evil,

unclean place you could possibly imagine.

A graveyard with pigs and demons. It's just, now what does Jesus bring to the table?

He's got no sword, right? He's got no army. He's got 12 disciples,

but at this point, they're more of a liability, right?

It's like the demons look at the disciples and go like, do you know who this

is? They're like, we have no idea, man. We were just out in the lake.

There was oceans. We don't know. We're kind of scared of them at this point.

We're keeping our distance,

Judas obviously is going to betray him. Like Jesus has every disadvantage,

no political power, no Samson-like muscles.

Again, you got to imagine he looks at the disciples. He's like,

hey, why don't you guys just sit this one out? I don't really want you to say something stupid.

And he's going up against this

demon-possessed man who has been put in shackles and can't be held down.

You got to imagine the townspeople have signs up, almost warning people like, hey, heads up.

You're in a graveyard. We're not worried about ghosts, but there's this demon-possessed

man that runs around here.

We've tried to put chains on him. They don't hold him. He's cutting himself.

There's nothing positive about this man, not one redeeming quality about this demon-possessed man.

But I want you to see what Jesus does.

Jesus doesn't cower from this.

This doesn't scare him. He's not taken aback. Like he doesn't get off the boat

and take a minute to go, whoa, whoa, whoa, what's going on?

What do you mean there's this guy possessed by possibly thousands and thousands

of demons? That's what the word legion means.

And he doesn't go to the town first and gather information and go,

hey, can you tell me kind of what's going on here? Like this guy's kind of crazy.

We literally got off our boat. He came running out of the tomb, screaming at us.

Said it before, but Jesus is not a first responder.

He doesn't walk into a scene and gather information to figure out what kind

of treatment he needs to put out there.

No, Jesus is truly the son of the most high God.

And not only does he come to this man's aid, but he's the one that got in the boat to go see him.

And I think we need to remind ourselves at times that this is the heart that

Christ has, not just for you and for me, but for anyone that he is going to draw to himself.

That there is no situation. There is nothing that happens.

There's nothing you can look at. No person you can nail down to say,

there's just no way that Christ could use that situation.

There's just no way that he could redeem it. There's nothing he could do because

what Jesus is doing here is making sure people know, I am the son of the most

high God, and I can save whoever I want to save. It doesn't matter who they are.

It's literally almost as though Jesus got in a boat, and as he got in the boat,

he looked at his disciples, and without saying it out loud, looked at them and

said, I'm going to make it so clear to you who I am in the next couple days.

I'm going to put a storm at bay, and I'm going to walk you into the most evil

thing you could possibly imagine.

And in both situations, I want to show you who I am. I am the son of the most high God.

And so what do the demons ask of him? Man, can we just go into the pigs?

We said that Jesus doesn't bring anything to this fight, but that's not really true.

What Jesus brings to the fight is his word, his word.

Really been the theme of the last couple of chapters, if you think about it.

This is exactly what Jesus has been doing.

We started in chapter four, the parable of the sower.

What does the seed represent? God's word. It goes out. It's planted. It always does its work.

A lamp under a basket. What's the lamp under a basket? Jesus Christ.

His word going forth. His gospel. The parable of the seed growing,

right? What does the word do? It grows.

Last week, Jesus calming a storm. How does Jesus calm the storm?

Does he get out and do some sort of incantation? Does he get out and pray for an hour?

Does he get out and do some special thing with his hands? Does he ask his disciples

for some money so that he can do something for them?

Or does he just stand up and say to the storm, peace be still,

as though the storm had ears?

No, Jesus's word goes forth. This is his only weapon This is his only need And

so when he deals with the demons What does he do to deal with them?

Again, nothing out of the ordinary for him He just talks to them like he would

any other piece of creation that he has control over.

Includes you and me. When he calls, when he calls, it is irrevocable.

That is what Paul says. The calling of God is irrevocable.

We talked about it this morning. If you are in here and you know who Christ

is, you have been called by him. His word has gone out to you.

The same word that calmed the seas, the same word that casts out demons is the

same word that called to your heart and gave you a new one.

The same word is the word that gave you new ears to hear it,

new eyes to see Christ for who he is. This is how you became a Christian.

And we often read this story and think, man, how awful would it have been to

have been that demon-possessed man without realizing you have so much more in

common with him than you care to realize.

Paul say of us in Ephesians 2, that we are dead in our trespasses following

the prince of the power of the air. That's what Paul says.

So you go, man, what could I ever have in common with this guy from chapter five?

Well, you may not have been demon possessed, but you were following after the king of the demons.

You may not have lived in a graveyard, but you were dead. And God called out

to you through his son, Jesus Christ, and his word awakened you to who it is

you were supposed to be, right?

Jesus's power changes people.

Jesus's word changes people. Again, there is no situation that Jesus can't speak

into and it begin to get better, that it doesn't instantly improve.

Now, what's the issue? You could say, well, why don't people change then when they go to church?

Why don't people change when they say they want to? Have you ever been around somebody like that?

Man, I really want to read the word. I really want to pray. I really want to

get better. I really want to work on that.

And then a year passes and two years passes, five years pass, 10 years pass.

And every year they have a moment where they talk to you. They say,

man, I'm really going to do it this year. I'm going to get better.

I'm really going to work. I'm going to get better.

Why doesn't that happen? Why doesn't it change? Well, it goes back to what we

started with. Authority and power. Authority and power.

Jesus Christ comes to take over a life, he does not do it in a meek and mild

way. He does not do it that way.

He does it the same way he calms a storm, the same way he heals a man with a bunch of demons.

He speaks and there is power and authority that goes out.

And if you want to be someone who follows Christ,

the biggest issue that I would say modern American Christians have is they neglect

that Jesus has all power and authority over their lives,

that he gets to make the rules, that he gets to tell you how this is going to go.

He gets to decide how you live and how you talk and how you spend your money

and how you treat people and how you go places and what you do and where you go.

He gets to decide all those things. He has all power and authority, and we do not like that.

What we like is Jesus' lowly, meek and mild, oh, just love me for who I am,

love me for all of my faults, and we stay in that, and we sit in that, and we go,

you know, it's better for me to be a sinner and to have all these faults and

to never really fix them because Jesus loves me just the way I am.

That is not how Jesus comes to do things.

Jesus didn't call out to the storm and make it less of a storm.

Jesus doesn't call out to the demon-possessed man and go, hey,

half of you guys go get the picks.

No, Jesus calls out to those things and they are immediately made new.

Why? Because he has authority.

I would encourage you if you are that person and I was that person for a long

time, or if you know someone like that and you go, man, I've been listening

to you say you want to change for five years, 10 years.

I think a good question to ask someone like that is Who's actually in charge

of your life? Who's actually in charge?

You ceded your own power and authority over your life to Jesus Christ?

Or are you just hoping he loves you?

Are you just hoping he's going to be nice?

Look at the picture that's painted here at the end. We'll close here quickly.

I read the rest of this passage starting in verse 14.

It says, the herdsmen fled and told it in the city and in the country.

So these herdsmen are like, Like, listen, we had 2,000 pigs and now we don't.

They're upset for probably a lot of reasons, right?

They're probably looking at Jesus like, number one, like the disciples,

who is this guy? That's crazy.

Number two, we just lost all of our profit right over the edge, right?

Pete is calling, they're upset, they're really mad, right? They're like,

how could you do that to these pigs?

And you know, there's probably like some kid who had raised one of those pigs.

He's like, that was my pet pig, right? There's a lot of things going on here

that make them upset, but the herdsmen realizing, hey, we're not going to fight this guy on our own.

He did just fix this guy who we've been seeing our whole life.

Where do they go? They go into town. They go to get the mob and the people come

to see what it was that had happened and they show up.

You got to remember, this is an incredible mess, right? There's 2000 floating dead pigs.

There's a lot going on here. And there's this man who they've been trying to

shackle up for years. and now he's sitting there with Jesus all in his right

mind. It's a lot to take in.

It says verse 15, they came to Jesus and saw the demon possessed man,

the one who had the legion sitting there clothed in his right mind. And what is it?

They were afraid.

They were afraid. Again, like the disciples last week, they realized this guy's different.

Who had seen it described to them what had happened to the demon for this man and to the pigs.

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

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

begged him that he might be with him.

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 to the Decapolis just how much Jesus

had done for him and everyone marveled.

Two responses, real quick, two responses.

The townspeople come and they see what has happened, right? And they know who this guy was.

Many of these people are the ones who had physically put the chains on this guy, right?

Many of these people were the ones that were telling their kids,

hey, can't go over there. They're going, why not?

Bill's over there. Bill's got 2,000 demons. it's a rough case,

but you cannot go over there because Bill might hurt you.

They've grown up around this guy. There's certain people who may have grown

up with this guy who were going, man, you remember Bill?

He was such a nice guy. And then something happened to him. Now he lives in the tombs down there.

He's cutting himself. Man, it's a sad story. Sad story.

The point is they had become so accustomed to this guy being the way he was

that there was never an expectation of him getting better.

They had brought the doctors. That didn't work. They had brought the chains.

That didn't work. Nothing was working. And so it's like, hey, you know what?

He's just going to live in the tombs. We'll just have to wait on him to die.

And then Jesus shows up and everything gets better.

He heals this man and then they show up. And so what is it? What are they?

They're afraid. Why are they afraid?

Because nothing they ever tried worked.

What is different about Jesus? What is it about this man that shows up in a

boat all of a sudden? What is it that makes it work? They don't understand that.

What do they want him to do? They want him to leave.

They want him to leave.

Well, what does the man he saved want to do? He wants to go with him.

Realize this transformation that happens in about 10 verses.

This man possessed by demons, who is one and the same, really a demon at this

point, his initial reaction with Jesus is what?

Go away. go away. What have you to do with me, Jesus?

Just get us out of here. Would you just go away?

I really don't want anything to do with you to minutes later,

looking at Jesus and saying, please don't leave.

Please don't leave. I will go anywhere with you.

I do not want you to go anywhere else. I want to go with you.

That is what conversion looks like. That is a picture of salvation.

Again, you can create a picture of Jesus that everybody likes.

And I think a lot of times that's what happens where whatever lifestyle you

want to live, however you want to act, however you want to spend your money,

again, however you want to do things, you can create a Jesus that everyone loves

and that loves everybody the same.

But when you truly come in contact with Jesus, who has all authority and all

power and can do anything he wants to do whenever he wants to do it and who

makes you honestly a little fearful of what he's capable of.

When you come in contact with that, the only people that want to come near that

person are people that know that he loves them.

That's the difference. The people that want to get near to Christ,

the true Christ of the Bible,

the true son of the most high God, the people that want to get near that Christ

are simply people that know he is more holy than me. He is more powerful than me.

He has more authority than me. And he can do whatever with me that he would choose to do.

He can treat me just like the demons and cast me out. He can treat me just like

the winds and the waves and calm me down.

He can do whatever he wants, but I know that he loves me.

That's the difference between this man and the crowd. And I would argue even

at this point, this man and Jesus' disciples.

Jesus' disciples do not realize that he loves them yet. They don't. They don't get it.

They're hoping they've hitched their wagon to the right guy,

but they don't think this guy loves them.

Do you know that Jesus loves you?

I've heard this before. I think it's a good illustration.

You can tell when people understand the gospel by how they respond to their

own sins and the sins of the people around them.

You sin or when the people around you sin, is your response to run to Christ or away from him?

And when the people around you sin, is your response to give them the gospel or to give them law?

I'll give you examples real quick.

In your own life, when you sin, when you know you've sinned,

you've looked at something you shouldn't, you said something you shouldn't,

you act in a way you shouldn't.

Is your first response to run to Jesus Christ, hit your face before him and

just ask for mercy because, you know, he loves you.

He will forgive you. He has redeemed you.

He will forgive your sins. He's making intercession for you right now.

Or is your response to run, to run, man, I just can't read my Bible today because of what I did.

I can't go to church with a good conscience because of what I did.

How could I ever go to church?

How could I ever look those people now I know that I've committed that sin, right?

If that's you, I don't know that you know that Jesus loves you. You need to know that.

Secondarily, and we'll close here, when people sin around you, what do you give them?

Do you give them gospel or law, right? What's that look like?

When your kids sin, when your coworkers sin against you, when your friends sin

against you, when whoever it is that's near you sins against you or just sins in general,

is your first reaction to give them gospel, hey, Jesus Christ died for that.

Hey, you need to repent and believe. Hey, you need to repent from that.

You need to come home, right? You need to do these things that God has called

you to do because he loves you.

Or is your first response to give them law? Don't you know that's wrong?

Know Jesus said not to do that? God's going to be mad at you for doing that.

Don't you know how upset he's going to be when he finds out you did that? That's law. That's law.

Do you give people the gospel? I'm not saying we don't need both. Of course we need both.

But if someone knows they've already messed up, if someone knows they've already

fallen short, you know what they need? They need the gospel.

When you know that you've already fallen short, when you know that you've already

messed up. You know what you need? You need the gospel.

You need to hear that this Jesus, who has the power over wind and waves,

who has the power over demons, who has authority to forgive sins,

who has the authority to teach in the synagogues, who has authority to do whatever he wants,

whenever he wants, however he wants, you need to know that that Jesus has said, come to me.

Come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

You need to know that. You need to know that Jesus, and that is Mark's point.

Mark's point is you can know that Jesus. You can know him. And you may not ever

understand everything there is to know about demons.

You won't, you won't. You may not ever understand every theological term that you hear.

And you may not ever understand exactly how Jesus did what he did or exactly

how some of these things work, exactly how some of these mysteries work themselves out. Guess what?

That's okay. You just have to know this Jesus.

All right, let's pray. Father, again, thank you for this morning.

Thank you for the chance to be here. Thank you for the people in the room.

God, for those out that are traveling or sick this morning, I pray that you'd be with them.

I pray that again, this story, like last week, is a reminder to us that Jesus

is truly the Son of the Most High God, that He is the one and only Savior of the world.

Jesus has authority to forgive sins, and he has the power to do whatever it is he would like to do.

God, so many of us have been given power and authority in our lives,

and we've never chosen to use it to do the thing that your son chose to do when

he was given all power and all authority,

which is to lay it down, to lay it down,

to give himself up as a sacrifice for his people.

God, will we be a people that are under your authority? If there's anyone here

that is in a terrible cycle of saying things like, you know,

I really want to follow Jesus. I really want to figure this out. I really want to do it.

You know, this year's the year. This day's the day. This week's the week.

God, that you would break them of that quiet rebellion and that they would come

under your authority, that they would do the things that you have called them to do.

Would stop fighting against what it is you have told us clearly in your word.

Live the lives that you've called them to live. And God, there's anyone in here

who doesn't truly know you.

They've heard stories about you. They've heard that you can help them out.

They've heard that you can help save different parts of their lives,

help them in different areas of their lives.

They've heard stories about you, Jesus, but they don't know who you are and

you don't know who they are.

Now, would you open their eyes to who it is you are? That's the purpose of Mark.

That's why we're studying it.

Not so that we might learn a few life lessons or figure out how to live a better

life or how to get to a better place, a higher plane in our lives,

but God, so that you would make more clearly who Jesus Christ is,

that we would see him for who he is, that we would know him for who he is,

that we would know not only that he is sovereign,

powerful, has authority, but that we would know that that sovereign Lord of

the universe has loved us.

He has laid down his life for our sins so that we might be called sons and daughters of God.