Possession: Satan’s Goals 2

The Heavenly Father we are very thankful to be able to be together whether it be

in person or whether it be virtually God that we were able to have these moments

of worship together. Lord for every person that's in this room that came

today to to make sure that we had a service to worship in Lord I pray that

you would be with them and bless their families for the time that was taken away

from them. Lord I pray right now for every person who's going to be watching this

tuning in to this at some point in time and God I pray that you would speak

intently into their heart wherever they may be. Whether we're in the living room

watching this with our family, whether we're watching this on our phone later

on sometime this week or maybe we're going down the road and just listening

to the podcast. God I pray that your Holy Spirit would be very present and

powerful with us wherever we are in an amazing and unusual way. Father we are at

your mercy Lord as we found out this past week that whenever you decide to turn

loose and allow things to happen Lord we're just we're at your mercy and so

Lord we humbly submit before you we pray that you would be with our people God

that you would work and move in a mighty way as we have so many who have

physical needs but Lord more importantly we have a lot of people who

have spiritual needs. So God we pray for our family our friends our loved ones

or so many people that are around us that need to know who you are and we

pray that you would speak powerfully but gently to their hearts to draw them

to you and Lord we pray that you would use us as tools to gently guide them to

you to show them who you are. Father we love you and we thank you for the

and all that is said and done that God we would be pleasing and honoring to you

Jesus this is all for you it's for your glory it's for your honor and all this

is in your precious and holy name that we pray for it's in his name we pray

Amen. Well guys I just want to reiterate what Pastor Timmy said at the very

beginning announcements just make sure that if you have any needs in your

family with the winter weather or anything else that comes up this week

please let us know we do have a lot of men in the church who've been texting

and calling asking how they can help this past week and so so far I've told

them I have no news nobody has has texted or called or sent any messages

that they had any needs and so we're very much willing to help just please

let us know. So we're in week four of talking about possession and so our

first week we talked about how God created us to be possessed by him to be

possessed by the Holy Spirit. Week two we talked about the unexpected possessions

how most people who are possessed go unnoticed until the presence of God

actually shows up and interferes in that message that's from Mark chapter

Mark 1 · chapter mention

1 and last week we begin to talk about Satan's goals as he possesses people

what is he trying to accomplish and today's sermon is going to piggyback off

of that message so we had three points last week and we will continue with

those points today but let's go back and review point number one from last week

we talked about confusion and disorientation now I got corrected last

week after the sermon we had a few nerdy people who did not like the fact

that I talked about disorientate during the message which is not a proper

American English term but I did look it up it is a proper British term so in your

face old chaps I was told that I could use it if I use the English accent so

there you go but Satan loves to confuse and disorient us he wants to trick us he

wants to remove us from the presence of God point number two he wants dominion

over our lives he wants to rule he wants to put us in bondage and take

control now this is the opposite of what God wants to do God wants to set us free

God wants to possess us but he wants to set us free so that we can do his will

and share in the inheritance that he has for us now point three is he wants

it he wants to go unnoticed he doesn't have to come in guns blazing he

doesn't necessarily need for everyone to know that he is present as long as

his will and his goals are being accomplished he comes in under the

radar and he very much wants to possess us in this most efficient way to hurt God

because he knows we are God's most prized possessions his most prized

creations now remember this is something we've been talking about Jesus came to

empty himself of his divine privileges to suffer and to die for us so that he

could possess us and set us free Satan comes so that he can possess us to take

us hostage to keep us in bondage to use us in order to hurt God so we're gonna

continue on today in Mark chapter 5 verses 1 through 20 we're gonna add on a few

Mark 5:1–20

verses that we didn't read last week we're gonna read them today so read

with me this morning as we read together it says so they arrived at the

other side of the lake in the region of the garris scenes and when Jesus

climbed out of the boat a man possessed by an evil spirit came out of the

burial caves and could no longer be restrained even with a chain whenever he

was put into chains and shackles as he often was he snapped the chains from his

wrist and smashed the shackles no one was strong enough to subdue him day and

night he wandered among the burial caves and the hills howling and cutting

himself with sharp stones when Jesus was still some distance away the man

saw him ran to meet him and bowed low before him and with a shriek he screamed

why are you interfering with me Jesus son of the most high God in the name of

God I beg you don't torture me for Jesus had already said to the Spirit come

out of the man you evil spirit then Jesus demanded what is your name as he

and he replied my name is Legion because there are many of us inside this man

then the evil spirits begged him again and again not to send them to some

distant place there happened to be a large herd of pigs feeding on the

hillside nearby send us into those pigs the spirits begged let us enter them so

Jesus gave them permission and the evil spirits came out of the man and

entered into the pigs and the entire herd of about 2,000 pigs plunged down the

steep hillside into the lake and drowned in the water the herdsmen fled

to the nearby town and the surrounding countryside spreading the news as they

ran people rushed out to see what had happened a crowd soon gathered around

Jesus and they saw the man who had been possessed by the Legion of

He was sitting there fully clothed and perfectly sane and they were all afraid

then those who had seen what had happened told the others about the

demon-possessed man and the pigs and the crowd began pleading with Jesus to go

away and leave them alone as Jesus was getting into the boat the man who had

been demon-possessed begged to go with him but Jesus said no go home to your

family and tell them everything the Lord has done for you and how merciful he

has been so the man started off to visit the ten towns of that region and

began to proclaim the great things Jesus had done for him and everyone was

amazed at what he told them so once again we're piggybacking off last week's

sermon so we're continuing on with Satan's goals of possession this is

point number four continuing on our message point number four Satan's goal of

possession is to possess living beings Satan does not care to inhabit a place

now I know there are probably many places around or in this world that

might give you the heebie-jeebies but you can rest assure that the most

demonic presence in this world will always be in living beings as that is

what Satan wants to possess he does not care about physical places he wants to

possess living things and notice that this legion of demons an estimated 2,000

of them are dwelling together inside of this man there's no need for them to

go out and try to inhabit one living being for each one of them they are

perfectly fine with cohabitating inside of a human body rather than being spread

out because that's better than having dominion over a place also notice that

they beg Jesus not to send them to a place but would rather go inside the

pigs then go to a distant place so there is a desire for Satan to enter

inside of living things living things are the most prized of all of God's

creations it is just a miracle to see anything that is living one of the

things that people still cannot explain scientists no matter how smart they are

cannot explain how something just comes to life they do not know where life came

from other than God there is no explanation for that living beings are

the crown of God's creation or the most important of God's creation and human

beings are the crown of that creation and so Satan wants nothing more than to

possess us as living beings point number two Satan's goal in his possession is

the destruction of life and I think that's really important for us to

understand as we're talking about this passage is his goal is to destroy Jesus

said he comes to steal kill and destroy he wants to destroy us and in

possession his goal is to destroy the one in which he possesses and also

those around him and I want you to think about this as this man ran around

through the burial caves he was roaming the hills he was howling he was

naked while he was doing this he was exposed in all of his shame no dignity

whatsoever he was cutting himself with rocks but when Jesus cast the demons out

of him he was calm he was sane and then he was fully clothed there was no

need to restrain the man because the man had been set free and he had control

back over himself because the demons were gone and he was sane and he was

clothed but these demonic spirits Satan they want to destroy us they want to

hold us and keep us in captivity and whenever they're there inside this man

they're making him harm his own body by cutting himself and so you get to see a

little bit of that in this story is this is one of the most extreme examples of

demonic possession that we have in all of scripture and the only thing that's

protecting this man from death from being completely destroyed and consumed by

these demonic spirits is the fact that God is sustaining him and I want you to

think about that as we're talking about this there is something about us that

God absolutely loves he created us in his image and therefore his presence is

supposed to be within us and no matter how much we sin no matter how much we

turn away from God no matter how much we rebel against him there will always be a

desire in God's heart to bring us back to himself and even though this man

is consumed by what we understand to be thousands of demonic spirits living

within him controlling him taking his life away from him and destroying who he

is God is sustaining him through this process in order to bring glory and

honor to himself but most importantly to bring this man back to himself now this

is really important because what happens when Jesus gives the demons permission

to enter into the pigs we see this fast-forwarded version of the goals that

Satan has for the living things that he possesses because as soon as he

enters into the pigs the pigs immediately run down the hill off the

embankment into the lake and they drown and they die like that it happens that

fast and the only difference is is that God is sustaining many of us as people

even though we're living in sin even though we're rebelling against him God is

sustaining us because he's being patient with us because he loves us and he's

giving us the opportunity to turn away from our sins to call on the name of

Jesus and to come back to himself and that's why he sustains us and doesn't

allow us to be consumed more than what we're able to handle because these pigs

they're not able to do that they don't have the spirit of God sustaining them

in this moment and you see this fast-forwarded version of what Satan

intends to do to destroy all life that they come in contact with they have

come to destroy the very creation of God they are facing destruction they are

facing torture and they're wanting to drag everything and everyone with them

that they possibly can and you finally get to see this little fast-forwarded

picture of that in this passage I'm gonna read to you from Matthew chapter

Matthew 12:43–45

12 verses 43 through 45 and this is just a little extra verse to kind of

go on top as we're talking about demonic possession and kind of what Satan's

goals are and the fact that sometimes even though we may be freed from demonic

possession and Satan may or whenever Jesus casts out an evil spirit that

something like this can happen so in verse 43 it says when an evil spirit

leaves a person it goes into the desert seeking rest but finding none this is

why a demon does not want to go to a place he wants to inhabit a person

there's something about a human being that he finds rest and solitude and

strength from so that's why he always wants to be in someone in verse 44 it

says then it says I will return to the person I came from so it returns and it

finds the former home empty swept and in order then the spirit finds seven

other spirits more evil than itself and they all enter the person and live

there and so that person is worse off than before that will be the experience

of this evil generation so as we talk about this today let me remind you of

what happens a lot of times whenever the Lord works and moves in our life Jesus

comes in to our hearts and lives and he saves us and he delivers us from many

things I don't know about you guys but whenever I got saved and God worked and

moved in my life there were many many sins that I was struggling with and

dealing with that I were not I was not aware that were sins before but God

revealed that to me freed me from those things and cleanse them out of my life

in those moments early on in salvation and so God comes and works and moves

and in the midst of that we're filled with joy and thanks and all and we're so

excited because God is working and moving in powerful ways and we've

experienced that firsthand and it's so hard to explain to other people but

then as time goes on the new wears off and a lot of times if we're not

intentionally pursuing the Lord with all of our lives we can find ourselves

waning away from following God we don't pray as much as we did in the

beginning we don't read scripture as much as we did in the beginning

sometimes we may not go to church and we may limit our interaction with other

Christians and before we know it we we begin to wane away from the very Savior

who saved us and cleansed us and what you find is is a lot of times there are

people who will claim Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior they will get saved they

will begin living a life for Jesus but a lot of times many of those people

will go back to their former ways and what you find is is that whenever they

return to their former ways a lot of times they'll be worse off than what they

were before whatever they were struggling with before they do it even

more than what they did before and I think this passage of scripture can

easily be applied to that that if we do not intentionally seek the presence of

God and pursue the presence of God in our lives what we can do is is that we

can find ourselves opening the door back up for Satan to come back in and not

only just come back in with one demonic spirit but even multiple spirits not to

come back in with one sin but multiple sins and we can set ourselves up to

fall back into temptation to fall back away from the Lord if we're not

careful in pursuing the Lord and guys this is not something that I'm just

preaching I mean scripture talks about this constantly throughout the New

Testament the entire book of Hebrews the whole book of Galatians Ephesians

Ephesians 5 · chapter mention

chapter 5 Romans 11 22 1st Corinthians 9 27 all talk about the need for us to

pursue God to continue to run the race to not be disqualified in our faith and

not be disqualified in our race as we're seeking Christ and salvation in eternal

life in him Satan wants to destroy us and we have to be very aware of that

point number six normalcy one of Satan's goals of possession is normalcy

Satan wants the extent of his evil to be normalized and understand this the

people weren't too crazy about the man that they were having to deal and put

up with they didn't know what to do with him they tried to chain him he kept

breaking the chains I can't imagine what it would be like trying to plan a funeral

for a man who's living in the burial caves and you have to not only is it

difficult to plan a funeral in general but have to plan around some crazy man

who's running around naked and and causing issues within the community and

so the people in in that area just accepted what was and they begin to

put up with this man and it became normal and they avoided probably avoided

the caves and they just lived accordingly to just know that this man

is just part of life and now we got to deal with it it became normal but when

the people of the town heard what had happened and they saw the man sane and

they saw the man who had been running around naked and cutting himself fully

clothed and saying they were afraid and they begged Jesus to leave them

alone because what was normal was now abnormal what was frustrating what they

had tried to bind and change themselves now that it was free and now

that it was done it had caused more fear now than what it had before craziness

and violence were normal to these people the destruction of Satan was more

normal than what it was for the Spirit of God to work and move and when the

Spirit of God showed up and worked and moved they were terrified and they begged

Jesus to leave they saw the power of God with their own eyes they saw this

problem solved that they couldn't solve themselves and their first reaction was

to reject it because everything that had been going on was normalized and that's

exactly what Satan wanted to do and I think we live in a day in time where

it's very easy to look at our culture and to look at everything around us and

realize that Satan's agenda is very much to normalize evil to make it normal to

make it okay to make it acceptable in every way possible that is one of his

greatest goals and it's amazing what people can get used to you know when I

was over Eden doing youth ministry across town several years ago we used

to minister to this these two elderly ladies they were sisters and they lived

together and they were pitiful whenever our church started ministering to these

women they did not have running water in their home they didn't have a toilet

they did not have insulation they did not have many of the things that you and I

take for granted and so one of the men of our church really took these ladies

under his wing and begin to minister and help them and help get their house

up to us the ability to be able to live in a little more comfortably but what was

amazing is is that these ladies lived in a home filled full of animals I can't

tell you how many cats and dogs lived in the house with these women because

there were so many we couldn't count them and they came in and out pretty

freely and as we ministered to these women and we helped them and we would do

things around their place for them going inside of their home was almost

impossible we had to wear masks we had to shove Vicks vapor of up inside of our

nose because the smell was so bad and most people who went couldn't even go

in after that because they would start gagging and they weren't able to go

inside but it didn't bother these two women they had lived in it for so long

there there was no stink to them there was no smell they had gotten completely

used to what they were living in and the truth is is that many of us this

morning are probably living in sin probably have just come to accept

certain things in our lives that should not be there because they have

become normal and it's just part of who we are and we just accept it as this

normalcy they shouldn't be there and God can see it and probably other Christians

can see that it should not be there but we've accepted it as normal and guys

that is one of the greatest tactics and goals of Satan is to make sin and his

presence feel normal point number seven last one Satan's goal is to avoid the

presence of God you know the greatest thing about this story is that Jesus

shows up he shows up his presence is there the presence of the Holy Spirit

within him is there and now that the presence of God is there it's messing

up their mojo once again you hear them say why are you interfering with us

have you come to torture us they very much know that God has a plan for them

and has power and authority over them and therefore they want to avoid the

presence of God and they know that if they can keep us from the presence of

God and they can have free reign in our lives and these demons they can operate

freely absent of the presence of God and while they may not possess you

personally they very much know whether or not the presence of God's dwells

within you I want to read another little passage of scripture to you today

this is Acts chapter 19 verses 13 through 16 and it's talking about a

Acts 19:13–16

group of Jews was traveling from town to town casting out evil spirits if you

didn't know this casting out demons was actually a pretty regular thing during

New Testament times the Jewish people were already practicing this there were

groups of Jewish people doing this but Jesus came and did this with much greater

authority much greater effectiveness than anybody had ever seen before but there's

a group of Jews that was traveling around in Acts 19 this is after Jesus

had already died and resurrected and ascended to heaven and it says they tried

to use the name of the Lord Jesus in their incantation saying I command you

in the name of Jesus whom Paul preaches to come out seven sons of Skeva a

leading priests were doing this but one time when they tried it the evil

spirit replied I know Jesus and I know Paul but who are you then the man with

the evil spirit leaped on them overpowered them and attacked them with

such violence that they fled from the house naked and battered the only thing

that has power over Satan and his demons is the presence of God rest

assure that Satan and his demonic spirits are powerful much more powerful

than you and I are and there's nothing that you and I can do in our own

strength to protect ourselves to protect our family our children or even our

church from Satan and his spirits only God has the power to do that and know

this morning that apart from the Spirit of God possessing you Satan will give

you the whipping of your life I don't know about you guys but I've had my

honey whip before and I've seen a lot of other people get their hineys whipped

before but I've never seen anyone whip so bad that they ran away naked fleeing

from the scene we need to realize that there's a spiritual battle that's going

on that a lot of times we aren't even aware of that we do not have the

strength we don't have the tools we do not have the abilities to fight in but

the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives the presence of God gives us the

power through Christ all things are possible the presence of God gives us

every strength and power and ability that we need to combat Satan and

anything that he can throw at us or anyone that he can throw anything that

he can throw anyone that we love you know the demonic spirit said I know

Jesus and I know Paul but I don't know you Paul was a nobody yeah he was one of

the greatest mission he's probably the greatest missionary to ever live but in

reality Paul was a nobody the only reason why the demon knew who Paul was

is because he served Christ he was filled with the Spirit and you and I

this morning but we're sitting here we're nobodies and that that's not to

tear us down or make us feel worse about ourselves it's just reality of

understanding that we are nobody apart from God we are useless there's nothing

that we can offer in an eternal sense to anyone or anything apart from Christ

but in Christ you and I are adopted we're children of God and we get to

share an eternal life and the inheritance that God has for all those

who follow him and submit to him as Lord and Savior and so yes who we are

possessed by matters greatly if we are possessed by Christ we have the power to

combat the enemy who wants to take us away from the very presence of God as

we've said finishing up the past four weeks I understand that a lot of you

might be saying James this is this is a little out there I think you're

overthinking this I think that this is a little overboard and I just say to you

this morning that's exactly what the enemy would want you to think he would

want you to think that this is a little too much a little zealous a little over

the top that we really shouldn't be as worried as James is saying that we

should be and that he's a little out there and he's overthinking it a little

bit that's exactly what he wants you to think because he wants to keep you in

bondage he wants to keep you under his power he wants to keep you in sin he

wants to hold you in your addictions because he knows as long as he does he

will hinder your relationship with Christ and not only your relationship with

Christ but your ability to build the kingdom for Christ because you're never

going to have the confidence to speak the name of Jesus until others as long as

you are stuck and weak in your faith when we're possessed by Satan and sin

we're never going to be confident in our own walk with Christ we're never going

to have the confidence to speak the name of Jesus to those around us Satan

wants to keep you in bondage Jesus wants to set you free we've been talking about

the goals of Satan what did Jesus do for this man when everybody from the town

came after they heard what had happened they found the man fully clothed and

saying and normal when you look back at Adam and Eve after they had sinned even

after they had sinned and they felt nakedness and they felt shame what did

God do for them he killed an animal and he made clothes for them to cover up

their shame Jesus wants to set you free he doesn't want to hold you in

bondage he doesn't want you to keep feeling guilty he doesn't want you to

keep feeling ashamed he wants you to be possessed by his Holy Spirit to receive

power to receive authority to receive confidence and to help him build the

kingdom that he came to build so long ago for us to have so who will you be

possessed by let's pray father in heaven thank you so much for the

opportunity to read your word and to know who you are and Lord I pray today as we

finish up this series Lord that you would remind us that that we should

belong to you and Lord you should dwell within us but father you are not going

to come into a place that you are not welcome and so this morning I pray that

you would speak powerfully into our hearts that you would help us to to beg

for your Holy Spirit to be poured out on us and to come in us and to reign free

and to cleanse these houses to cleanse these temples for your Holy Spirit so

that you can dwell and move and work the way that you've always wanted to

do in our lives set us free give us the confidence to serve you and to

speak your name and to be a witness for you Lord we love you and we thank you

and we ask all this in Jesus precious and holy name thank you guys have a great week