Human Again, The Demon Possessed Man

Well, good morning again and thanks for being here. For those that don't know me, my name is Aaron. I'm one of the elders here at Hope Heights, and I'll be taking us into our scripture today. I'm sorry, I'm having a multitude of issues here. There we go. I think we're set. If I have to pull my phone out, it's because my computer crashed again, so hopefully not. It's not even an old computer. All right, well, we, as Drew mentioned, we're restarting our series in the Book of Mark. After our little break, we took over Christmas here to do a Christmas series. And I'm really excited to get us started back in. It's a really fun passage this morning. A great encouragement, hopefully, to all of us. So just to kind of catch you up on the Book of Mark, I'm not going to cover all the series. Those are available online if you want to go back and listen. But the Book of Mark really moves along at a fast pace as we've been reading. Just kind of jumps from one scene to the next to the next. Mark uses the word immediately a lot to kind of transition from one scene to the next, conversation to the next thing. It really moves at a quick pace that makes really, for a compelling story, a lot of great details that really make the passages come alive. And so through the first few chapters of Mark, we've seen Jesus burst on the scene. He's been teaching, he's been preaching. And people watch him and they're amazed. He's someone who's teaching with authority. They see him healing, casting out demons, doing all these things that are reminders really of what Mark tells us. In the very first verse of the chapter or of the book, it says that this is the gospel of Jesus, the Son of God. And so we've seen all these demonstrations of that in these first few chapters. And today we're going to be picking things back up in Mark chapter five. But before we do that, I want to give us a quick review of what just happened at the end of Mark chapter 4. And so in Mark 4, we see Jesus is teaching. There's a number of different parables, different things he's presenting to people. People are amazed at the authority he speaks with. And at the end of chapter four, there's crowds gathered and he's kind of pressed up alongside the Sea of Galilee and he says to his disciples, let's turn and go. I need to go across the lake. And so this ever growing crowd is kind of pressing them and they get in the boats. And that's how chapter four ends, with Jesus and disciples in a boat, and they're crossing. And if you remember, this is where they're crossing the sea. And this storm comes up on that day. Oops. I'm two slides behind. Also, I don't like my height. You're looking at the largest man, tallest man ever, to struggle with the Napoleon complex. I'm the shortest one in my family. I'm the runt of the litter at 6 foot 3, 230 pounds. I'm the little guy. And so I was the last one to, like, hit puberty. So even my younger brother was always, like, as big or bigger than me. And so I don't like my height. Thanks, Drew, for bringing it up. I actually didn't realize how giant I was until two or three years out of college. I played football, and so I was always in locker rooms, and I was kind of undersized there as well. And a couple years out of college, it's like I'm bigger than everyone. Like, I'm a giant. So I have come. I do like my height now, but not for the first 25 years of my life, anyways. Mark five. No, mark four. On that day, when evening had come, Jesus says to the disciples, let us go across to the other side. And leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat just as he was, and other boats were with him. And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, and so that the boat was already filling, but he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. And they woke him and said to him, teacher, do you not care that we are perishing? And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. He said to them, why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith? And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, who then is this that even the wind and the sea obey him? So as we turn to Mark five, I have just a couple of things I want us to keep in mind from chapter four. They're important things that kind of hang over our passage for today. The first one is again to see the astounding demonstration of power that we see from Jesus. The sea and the storms, the winds that were blowing, it wasn't just a very real thing, physical thing that they were dealing with in that moment. It wasn't just impending death and destruction. To ancient Jewish minds, the sea was chaos. It was unknown. It was a terror. That couldn't be controlled as something beyond control. And so when Jesus stands up in that boat and he orders it to be quiet, he's demonstrating a power over something that was believed to be beyond any mere human right. He's demonstrating power over chaos and terror in the natural world. And then the second thing from this Mark 4 passage is the response of the disciples, right? They just have been rescued from what seemed like certain death, right? Like they are terrified. They're bailing the boat, trying to just stay alive. Jesus, don't you care? And they've been rescued from that. And you'd think there'd be a lot of emotions that would come out in that passage. Relief, joy, gratitude, shock, wonder, awe. But what Mark reports and other gospel accounts report is the most prevalent feeling that comes out. The one that Mark wants us to know about is the disciples are afraid. They were terrified of the sea. They were terrified of the storms. But after getting what they hoped for, this great rescue, their fear is something even greater of the Lord, of Jesus. And so this question that chapter four ends with hangs over our passage today as we look at chapter five. Who then is this? He has control even over the wind and the seas, right? Who then is this? Now, I want you to remember that just the power, the authority that Jesus has over the chaos and the terror of the natural world. And then this fear. Who then is this, this lingering question? So we're going to turn now to mark 5, and this is verses 1 through 20. They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes. 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 was saying to him. 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 2,000, 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. And people came to see what it was that had happened. And they came to Jesus and they 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. As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed with demons was. 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 marveled. If you remember from many weeks ago, when we started this series, the Sea of Galilee is about a third the size of Malle Lacks. I think Drew and I were talking, like, in my mind, it feels so much bigger, but when you look at maps and, like, it's about a third the size of Mille Lacs. And so the disciples had been in chapter four, up on the kind of northwest corner, and they're heading across the lake as this storm rises. And they kind of ended up their best guesses, as they've looked at archeology and other stuff, that the place they landed was kind of to the southeast of where they were. So it's more or less the route they took across the Sea of Galilee. And there were a number of little towns there, cities there. And what's important about this movement across the lake is they're going from a very Jewish place to a very gentile place. In that area there are a number of little towns is very much a gentile population. There are Roman garrisons, a lot of other things that signified this is not a Jewish place. And so as they're moving here, they're entering into a foreign land, into a very different place. And that's important. It would have been considered unclean and unclean people or people to be avoided. A place you didn't want to go. It'd be a bit like Heading east from Woodbury over into the Hudson. Over to Hudson. Is it too soon, Drew? But it really was a different place, a different territory, a different people, people that they wouldn't have wanted to associate with, right? And so they're entering this foreign territory. And as you get details of the more immediate context, there's further things that highlight that Jesus and the disciples are entering a very sketchy location. The disciples and Mark's earliest readers would have had a very heightened sense of things being ceremonially clean or unclean. That's a hard word. I'm going to grab a drink. Ceremonially. Here we go. But their spiritual, their religious background, they had a very, very clear sense of this is unclean, unsafe? This is not good. We don't want this in our lives. We don't want to be around that. And as you read the local, the very specific details of the place they land, it's filled with all sorts of red flags for a Jewish person. Not only are they in this foreign place with these foreign people, but they're in a place where there's pigs, which is an unclean animal, herds of pigs. They're actually pigs kept for, for slaughter, for eating amongst that gentile population. And further, they're in a place where there's graves, where there's tombs. And the Old Testament laws, all these things would have signified unclean, unholy, unredeemable. This is not a place you want to be. You'd have had to purify and cleanse yourself in ancient Israel for even being around these things. And so this is the context that we find the disciples, we find Jesus in. All of a sudden from this Jewish place to this very sketchy place, right? This unclean, unsafe place. And it's in that context that this demon possessed man shows up. And so they're in unclean place. And scripture tells us this man has an unclean spirit. On top of all the physical, all the cultural, ethnic, geographical uncleanliness that tombs the pigs, we find a man who's completely ravaged by the torments of a host of demons. The word legion was a military term. It meant around 6,000 or so troops. It kind of. You can do studies on what the breakdown of officers and people on horse and all that stuff. But the way it's used here, though, is really just to signify, like a vast host, a large number, many, many demons were present in this man. And for the disciples, for Jesus, in this moment, for those first readers of the Gospel of Mark, they would have seen this man and he would have seemed beyond hope. He would have. The way they talk about him in this passage, he barely even seems human. The language they use about him, the language to tame him, to control him, that's language that was used for beasts of burden. That's not a human being. You don't tame and subdue and control a human being. This man was beyond hope. And so what Jesus is confronting here isn't just a need for an exorcism or a healing. This is a man who's had his dignity stripped. This is a man who the demons are actually attacking, the very image of God in him. The work of Satan in this man's life was to make him unhuman. And so in this moment, it's the image of God in this man that's at stake. And Satan and his demons, they're not able to mount a direct attack on God. So anytime they're working, they're doing things to dehumanize, to mar that image of God, to strip that image of God. And so you see this man. He's running around, he's naked, he's unclothed, he's in tattered clothes. He's unpresentable, dirty, filthy, he's living in tombs. He's cutting himself, he's crying out, he's screaming. He's terrorizing his community. And he's living in terror himself. He's got this unhuman strength even. Nothing about him screams image of God. This man bears image of God. This is someone that is just torn apart. They're not just terrorizing him, these demons, but they're terrorizing that community as well. People have tried and failed repeatedly to subdue him, to chain him, to get him held down to some way, get him under control. He is chaos and evil personified in this community. And these demons are just absolutely tearing him apart. And this man looks nothing like what we are meant to be. Actually, if you go back to Genesis, you can remember that humans are created in the image of God, in the image of God. He created them, right? And part of that creation story, part of our image bearing, is actually to subdue and create tame creation. We're given that responsibility and that authority as humans to tend to creation, to subdue it. And in this scene, you see an image bearer of God being subjected to the very thing that he was called to do over creation. This man in God's image is receiving this treatment that was his right to exercise over creation. And it's about as debased and ungodlike a presentation of A person you can imagine, this man is tormented and terrorized by and absolutely debased and dejected. It's terrible. And there's a weightiness to this. I want us to feel this dehumanization. Because what happens next is incredible. It's a power struggle, right? And it isn't super clear. In the passages we read through, it says the man runs and comes before Jesus and he starts talking. It's not clear if it's the man somehow having a moment of clarity, coming to Jesus in mercy, or if it's the demons that are bringing him before God. But what becomes immediately apparent is that it's actually the demons that are in control of the conversation. This isn't the man speaking in his right mind, as we see later. This is the demons and Jesus Christ locking horns. And as this possessed man, he falls before Jesus and he addresses him by name. It's curious, right? Very curious. Especially as we think back to chapter four, we're left with that question, who is this man? And here, just a couple verses later, we see this demon possessed man who's unclean, unholy, in a foreign place. He's the one that provides the answer to that question, who is this then? Jesus Christ, son of the Most High God. That's really a shocking sequence of events. And for a reader, and especially a Jewish reader, that should jump off the page. The disciples who are with him, who know him, who have seen his power, they're asking, who is this? And this demon possessed man, these demons they recognize and see, they actually answer that question that's left hanging over it. We get a clear answer, who is this man? And it's from someone you never would expect. Scripture loves to do that. Jesus left behind these Jewish crowds that were clamoring for his attention, for his healing, for his teaching. And he went to a place and to a people that had zero cultural or religious, spiritual context for understanding who Jesus is. But it's this man that, through the demons, with the demons, recognizes Jesus. As I was reading in different commentaries this week, one of the passages that they feel this passage actually alludes to is from Isaiah, chapter 55 and or 65. And we read about promises of Messiah, coming servant, that kind of thing. And in Isaiah it talks about here I was ready to be sought by those who did not seek for me. I was ready to be found by those who did not seek, asked for me. Sorry, I got that wrong. I said, here I am, here I am to a nation that was not called by my name. I spread out my Hands all the day to a rebellious people who walk in a way that is not good, following their own devices. A people who provoke me to my face, continually sacrificing in the gardens and making offerings on bricks, who sit in tombs and spend the night in secret places, who eat pig's flesh and broth of tainted meat in their vessels, who say, keep to yourself. Do not come near me, for I am too holy for you. We see Jesus doing this passage, living out this passage from Isaiah, going to a people and going to a place they're not looking for God, they're not looking for Jesus. They actually are living a life that screams, get away. We want nothing to do with you. The demon possessed man clearly fits the bill, who has no reason to be looking for Jesus. Everything about him showed that he was as far from God as the ancient Jewish mind could have imagined, right? But it's this man and the demon's confession regarding who Jesus is that shatters ideas about who God's love and grace is actually for this was an unclean man, an unclean place with thousands, thousand thousands of unclean spirits, and yet we see Jesus going to him with the miracle of grace. Now, the conversation between Jesus and the demons is pretty interesting here, Like a previous encounter in Mark with the demon. The demons recognize Jesus for who he is, and they're actually shockingly forward with him. Very direct, like they're negotiating. They're sitting down at the negotiating table. Jesus like, hey, we want this to go this way and not that way. And it's very surprising to us. But the demons, they recognize Jesus for who he is and the authority he has. They know that Jesus can do what he wants with them. He can do as he pleases. But these demons, they don't want to go quietly. And so they're bargaining with him. Don't send us out of this country. Don't make us leave. They know they're on borrowed time. They know that judgment is coming. They're knowing that condemnation will happen. But they're delaying the moment here with Jesus. They're trying to cast someplace else besides destruction. They don't want to have to leave that area. And so they ask to go into this herd of pigs. And surprisingly, Jesus actually grants their request. They're negotiating, and, you know, we don't negotiate with terrorists. Apparently Jesus was okay with that in this moment. He's like, all right, you can do that. I give you permission. He grants permission, and the demons get their wish. The demons probably did not forecast what would happen. The pigs, as they're inhabited by these demons. They go into this chaotic frenzy. They dive off into the sea. And this is the same sea that just a couple verses before the disciples are worried is going to consume them. That same sea is now consuming the evil and the terror of these demons. It's an amazing reversal of the power of nature and God's power over demons kind of coming together to sweep up these demons, these pigs. And it really is a shocking thing, this moment of deliverance for this possessed man. It really comes out of nowhere. And as I studied it this week, it reminded me of another deliverance that was brought about by the Red Sea. If you remember the Exodus, Israel. They're newly released from Egypt, right? They've been enslaved, They've been suffering hardship. And now that they're out of Israel, out of Egypt, the army is pursuing them, and they're bound up against the edge of the sea, and they're filled with dread, with fear, with terror. They know death is coming. It's right behind them. And Jesus provides a miracle. He opens the seas, and they walk across on dry land. And the waves, they crash down on top of all of Pharaoh's army. The chariots, the horses, the soldiers, they're all just consumed in the waves of the sea. And as you see these pigs diving into the ocean, as you see the water roiling and boiling and bubbling with all these bodies, all these pigs drowning, it doesn't take a lot of imagination to be reminded of that moment when the waves came crashing over Egypt, came crashing over the chariots, as they looked up the army and they saw those waves coming down in God's final judgment upon them. It's a people without hope, on the brink, cornered with no options. And. And God steps in and provides deliverance. And that contrast, really, the response to that miracle of the demon and of Israel really stuck out in my mind this week. If you remember, to the Red Sea, Israel had a party when they got across, right? They. They were praising and worshiping the Lord. They were celebrating. It was a raucous time. They couldn't believe God's deliverance for them. What we see in our passage today, the locals respond with fear and suspicion. They see a man delivered. They see these demons driven from their area, and their response is fear. Exact opposite of what you saw with Israel's deliverance. And there's a couple interesting things in the last few verses here as we finish our passage. First off is in the beauty of the deliverance that the possessed man experienced. Every time this week, I read through every time I came across and they saw him sitting in his right mind. I had this wave of peace come over me. The terror, the fear, the torment, the absolute anguish of the soul this man lived with washed away. And you can just feel the peace of that moment, can't you? And they saw him sitting in his right mind. It just washes me with this wave of relief God delivers in that way. In the midst of the worst of the worst, the greatest of all terrors, God can come in and wash that away and deliver. It's just beautiful. I got goosebumps even now just kind of thinking about that. He was presented as being nearly unhuman in his appearance, in his location, his background with these demons. His mind is torn apart and ravaged. He was a tortured soul and he's been subjected to these demonic powers. They're hell bent on destroying the image of God in him. And now he's in his right mind and he's clothed. And you just see this sense of wholeness, this beautiful sense of cleanliness as God has delivered him. And I want us to just kind of rest in that. As you think of your own hardships and fears and terrors and struggles and your own internal battles, your own external terrors you might have, and just feel the beauty and the magnitude of this man's deliverance here. He was clothed and in his right mind. It's beautiful, it's powerful, and it gives us great hope. So when the locals, the herdsmen, the others, they see this miracle, they don't respond as you might think. We know that they've been trying to subdue this man. They've been trying to control him, they've been trying to somehow bind him so he's not causing damage, he's not bringing terror, he's not causing chaos. They're trying to do this. And then Jesus does this for them, and their response is a little confusing. They wanted this. They wanted this man subdued. You would have thought they would have rejoiced and seen that moment, but they don't. It would have been an economic loss for them for sure, the herdsmen at least, to lose these pigs. But you'd think when you see him sitting in his right mind, they would have at least had some curiosity, a sense of praise, a sense of wonder. But when they see the man who had previously terrorized their community healed, they respond to Jesus with fear. And as you look back through our passage, as you look through the verses, there's some interesting wordplay going on. The demons, when they're confronting Jesus, when they're at the bargaining table, they ask, don't send us away. Do not force us to leave this region. And now Jesus, who's delivered this man and he's delivered this community from the presence of these demons. He's the one that's actually asked to leave this region. They're apparently more comfortable with the presence of these demons than they were with the confrontation with Jesus, than the presence of Jesus. It's a powerful contrast what was in their hearts. They were more comfortable with this thing they knew than with a Jesus who would upend their lives, who would confront their sin and idolatry, and who could offer forgiveness and hope. Powerful contrasts. As we close our scene here, we find a beautiful request. This man is newly delivered. He's in his right mind. You can feel the peace he's experiencing. And having experienced that love and that mercy of Jesus, his request, he simply wants to be with him. Can I go with. I want to be with you, Jesus. It's just this tender moment of humility, of recognition, of worship, of adoration towards Jesus. I just want to be with you. This sweet sense of devotion and awe reminded me this week of the old hymn, Just a Closer Walk with Thee. I've been kind of humming it, and I'm not going to sing it because you don't want that. There's not enough water for me to drink to make my voice sound good. But maybe the band can come up. I am weak but thou art strong, Jesus Keep me from all wrong I'll be satisfied I'll be in my right mind I'll be at rest I'll be at peace as long as I walk Let me walk close to thee Just a closer walk with thee Granted, Jesus, is my plea Daily walking close to Thee Let it be, dear Lord, let it be I just want to be with Jesus. In a very surprising move in our passage here, Jesus doesn't grant the man's request. When the demons sat down to negotiate, he granted their request that they could enter the pigs. When the locals ask him to leave, he grants their request and he's heading out of there. This man who's got this sense of reverence and awe and devotion to the Lord, asks, can I be with you? And Jesus says, no. It's really odd. It really kind of struck me as very odd this week. A little unsettling, even. He's just granted the request to the demons and to the crowd. But what we see happen here with this man, he's redirecting him, saying, you have experienced something, you have seen something. You have tasted the goodness of the Lord. And there's other people that need to hear about it. This man is from a place that's unclean, Gentile population, far away from God. No cultural, no religious, no spiritual context for understanding the grace of God that would come to them through Jesus Christ. So Jesus sends them back. He says, go back to the people you know. Go back to the places you know. Go into the city and tell them what's happened. Be a herald of God's grace. Let this people know that there's a good God, full of mercy who can heal. And so the man does that. He tells them to go back to this place that are familiar. Family and friends that would have rejoiced in seeing him, neighbors that would have remembered him, aunts and uncles that would have said, there he is again, I recognize him. After all these years of torment, of looking not himself, he's himself. And they would have said, what happened? And the man would say, jesus. He'd say, jesus. And there's one last little kind of bit of wordplay here at the end. In the last two lines here, Jesus tells them, tell them what the Lord has done. Go back to these places, to these people, tell them what the Lord has done. And Mark tells us he does. He goes off and he shares, but he says he tells them what Jesus has done. Those two lines back to back are really important. Jesus is saying, tell them what the Lord, the Lord, God has done. And the man takes that. Recognize Jesus, you are Lord. I'm going to tell them what you have done. I'm going to tell them about Jesus. That switch between Lord, that Jesus commands, tell them what the Lord has done. And this man saying, this is what Jesus has done. It's an important declaration that Mark wants us to hear. It's a declaration that Jesus is Lord. The question again of Mark 4, who is this man? Jesus is Lord. So twice today in this passage, it's this demon possessed man in this faraway place who recognized God's authority, his power, his justice, his mercy, and declares Jesus is Lord. The fact that it was this man to answer that question from chapter four is really poignant, right? This man was as far from God as anyone could have imagined, as far away as anyone could imagine. He didn't know God. He had no reason to think a Messiah was coming. He didn't know God's promises. He was not holding out hope for deliverance. And yet he's the one that brings clarity to this question, who is this man? And this is something we'll continue to see play out through the Gospel of Mark. There's this rising tension around the question of who Jesus really is. Who is this? The average Jewish person in the Book of Mark, the religious leaders and even the disciples, they struggle with this question, right? Even though Mark keeps dropping in these declarations, Jesus is Lord, Jesus is Lord, Jesus is Lord. And that's the question that goes with Jesus to the cross. Who is this man? Chapter four. We see this act of power over the wind and the waves, the chaos and the terror of the seas and the natural world. And now we've seen Jesus power and authority over the satanic forces at play in this world, the forces of evil. And he's declared to be Lord and he's seen to be merciful, even to a people beyond reach. And this passage holds out hope and promise to all of us. And eventually we know Jesus is going to go on to even greater demonstration of his power. He goes to the cross and he demonstrates a love that's beyond imagination. And when he raises from that tomb, he leaves an empty tomb, he shows that he has power not just over wind and waves, the terror of the natural world. He has power not just over the demon, the forces of darkness, the sin, the pain, the brokenness of this world. He has power over sin and death itself. And this story today is a little foretaste of that. Jesus is Lord. And the extent of his reign, the limit of his power doesn't exist limitless. His ability to forgive, to redeem, to reach, to bring hope, to restore, has no limits. And the story points us to that beauty, to that full scope of the Gospel. It's leading us in Mark the readers to kind of start to get a little bit, little bigger picture, a little bigger picture of what God is able to do, who Jesus really is. A couple questions for us as we close today. There we go. First one is, have you bowed before Jesus? Have you recognized his power to deliver and his right to be the authority in your life? I struggled a little bit this week. Initially. I don't identify super well with the man possessed by thousands of demons. I have issues. I have struggles. I've said it up here before. I've struggled with mental health, anxiety, depression and other things. I know what a tortured mind feels like. I don't know what a possessed mind feels like. So I had a little bit of a hard time. Like my story doesn't look like that story. I'm not that person that seems as far from God as possible. My testimony feels kind of boring, right? I grew up in a churchy family, you know, there's no massive exciting like my story kind of feels bland, but it feels that way because I'm not comparing to the right thing. I can look at that demon possessed man, say, I'm not him. I don't have that kind of story right. But what happens when we compare? When we kind of might try to, oh, I don't understand this guy. He's way different place than I ever was. We sell our own story shorts. When we compare ourselves, we rob ourselves of the joy of our own deliverance. When we're looking at this demon possessed man saying, well, that's not my story, we're looking at the wrong thing. That is your story. This man was beyond hope. He was crushed and dead and by everyone around him, assumed to be beyond hope, beyond restoration, beyond healing. And then he came before God. He bowed before him and recognized his authority. Have he bowed before Jesus? No one could have been further from God than that man. And yet through Jesus, he is delivered the next one. Do you long to be with Jesus? Have you rejoiced in your deliverance? Have you responded with this man's similar desire to be with Jesus? Simply be with Jesus? We can complicate things in a lot of ways, but this man's beautiful expression of devotion is so simple and pure. I just want to be with Jesus. And I've had a lot of seasons where I've not had that desire, where I've not felt close to the Lord, where my heart's wandered, my mind has wandered. I've had struggled with X, Y and Z, all the other things and what I've found, as I was reflecting this week, those seasons where my desire is waning, it's because I haven't really reflected on the miracle of my own deliverance. When I see that I am that demon possessed man, when I am that paralytic that's healed, when I am that Lazarus who is dead and without hope, only to be restored by Jesus Christ. My desire to be with Jesus changes when I recognize what an incredible gift he's given me. So do you long to be with Jesus? And if you're not feeling that, if that doesn't sound like you right now, I'd challenge you. Think about the miracle of your deliverance as you read the story of this man who couldn't have been further from God. That's your story too. And don't you want to be with the God who delivered you from that? Then finally, have you shared about Jesus? This man is sent out he's commissioned. Right. Have you shared about Jesus in the places and with the people God has put around you? A lot of times we can think of missions or evangelism as, like, this big, complicated thing, but today's passage shows us it's a lot easier. This man, as far as we know, had no context, no Hebrew background, no Scriptures, no other things. And Jesus sends them out, says, you've met me, and so you're ready to do my work. You've encountered grace and mercy, so you're ready to go tell others. And he doesn't have to go, and he doesn't have to know, like the Romans road or the four laws or, you know, like, all sorts of big scriptural things. He says, go and tell him what the Lord has done. Tell him your story. So as you go back to work, to school, to all those things this week, tell your story. What has God. What has the Lord done? And how has he shown mercy to you? It's simple, it's beautiful, it's powerful, and I just want to encourage you with that. You have a story that reveals the God of the universe entering your life and showing you mercy. And that story, your story can help others experience Jesus. We're gonna pray here now, close sermon. The band can come up. We have communion out back. And so if you've not been here before, I've got crackers and grape juice in the back. And we do this to remember that Jesus has come. The Lord of the universe has entered in. He has shown us mercy. And through his body and through his blood, we can have deliverance. We've got an opportunity to give out there or through the app, if you'd like to do that. We'll have people in the back that can pray for you. And then we'll be singing as well. And I'm just gonna pray for us now. Father, we can turn on our news and see terror and chaos and fear and confusion, A world torn apart by sin. And we can turn into our own homes and often see the same things. We can turn into our own hearts and minds and feel that same sense of dread. And yet you see us, you enter in, you come alongside, you heal and deliver. There is no person, there is no place too far to receive your grace. And so we pray this morning that you'd fill our hearts and minds with that beauty, that we would rejoice in the miracle of our deliverance and. And that we would want to be close with you. We just praise you for this morning, praise you for the power of your gospel and the joy of fellowship with your people and just ask that you be with us now. Amen.

Mark 4 · chapter mention Isaiah 55 · chapter mention