All right, so we're in Mark chapter 5 tonight, if you want to go ahead and turn to Mark 5. And we're going to be reading verses 1 through 20. Eventually, we're in a new series on Wednesday nights we've called Encounters with Jesus. And we're looking at some of the one-on-one encounters that Jesus had with various peoples in the Gospels. And we've said these one-on-one encounters are windows into who Jesus is and why he came. And tonight, we'll be looking at Jesus and a man who was dominated by demons. And we're gonna see Jesus's power over evil. So last week, we looked at Jesus and the paralytic, and we saw the authority that Jesus has to forgive sins. And the major theme tonight will be Jesus and His power over evil. As you're turning to Mark 5 and finding that in your Bibles, just a couple of things by means of introduction. We recognize as Christians that there is a spiritual realm. So the realm that we see with our eyes and experiences with our five senses, the physical realm is real, but the Bible also says there's a realm behind the physical realm that is also real, a realm of real spiritual realities. There are angels, there are demons, and we'll be interacting with that a little bit tonight. J.C. Ryle says this about the spiritual realm. He says, let us beware of a skeptical and incredulous spirit in all matters relating to the devil. No doubt there is much in the subject of satanic possession that we do not understand and cannot explain. But let us not, therefore, refuse to believe it. The eastern king, who would not believe in the possibility of ice because he lived in a hot country and had never seen it, was not more foolish than the man who refuses to believe in satanic possession. because he never saw a case himself and cannot understand it. We may be sure that upon the subject of the devil and his power, we are far more likely to believe too little than too much. Unbelief about the existence and personality of Satan has often proved the first step in unbelief about God. So what J.C. Ryle is saying is, you know, when people stop believing in the devil, they also often stop believing in God as well. Obviously, there's two ditches. One ditch is to see a demon behind every bush. The other ditch is to be just mere rationalism where you deny the existence of the supernatural. But what we'll be looking at tonight is just this reality of evil and also the power that Jesus has over evil. And so let's start by praying and asking for God to give us wisdom as we think about these things. And we'll jump right into our passage. Let's pray together. Father in heaven, as we turn our attention to your word, we pray that you would be our teacher, that you would help us to see that Jesus is the one who came into the world to destroy the works of the devil. We thank you that our savior is the ultimate slayer of demons, that he has power over the evil one and his forces of darkness. And we thank you that in a world with devils filled that threaten to undo us, we do not fear for you have willed your truth to triumph through us. And we pray that your Holy Spirit would give us a greater understanding tonight as we study the power of Jesus and the mercy of Jesus. And we ask that you would help us to see how relevant this is for the world in which we live today. We still live in a world full of evil. We still live in a world where possession takes place. We still live in a world where we need to know that Christ has greater power and greater mercy than the forces of darkness. We pray that you'd bless us with your truth and encourage us tonight. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Let's start by, if you found Mark 5, just reading those first five verses. And what we're gonna see just in these first five verses is how the power of evil is real. And we're gonna be thinking about this power of evil. Mark 5, verse 1. They came to the other side of the sea, it's the Sea of Galilee, 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 strength to subdue him. Night and day, among the tombs and on the mountains, he was always crying out and cutting himself with stones. So give an idea of the context here, as we did last week. At the end of Mark chapter 4, that's where we read about Jesus with his disciples on the Sea of Galilee, and there's a storm. And remember, the disciples are afraid, and Jesus stands up on the boat, and he says, peace be still. And they're amazed because even the wind and the waves obey him. And so as you come into Mark chapter five, that's the last thing Jesus has done. He's proven that he's in control of nature and that he is God in the flesh indeed. And so at the end of chapter four, he calms a storm. And it has been well said that as you come into chapter five, he's about to calm a man, a man who is driven about by the spirits of evil. And we're told that he comes, Jesus goes southeast, on the southeast side of the Sea of Galilee to the country of the Gerasenes. Some translations say Gergesenes or Gadarenes. There's a manuscript difference there. We don't know exactly where he was, other than that he was southeast of the Sea of Galilee. And he was in an area of that region that was dominated by Gentiles. And so later on, this will be significant because you see that the people who lived in this region kept pigs. And you know, according to the law, pigs were an unclean animal. And so the region was dominated by Gentiles. And when Jesus arrives, we see his initial interaction with this man who is just full of dirt, of demons and he's dominated by the powers of evil. And there are certain characteristics that we can see by looking at this man just about the nature of the reality of evil itself. So look at some of the things that we can see about that. Notice how this shows us that the power of evil is personal. It says there that he was possessed with an unclean spirit. Now, an unclean spirit is basically a sentient being created by God, an invisible spirit, but has fallen, rebelled against God, It could also be called a demon. Sometimes in the Bible they're called unclean spirits, sometimes they're called demons, but they're real sentient beings that exist. Obviously, these were celestial spirits that were created good initially, but they've rebelled against God and now they're evil and they're corrupt. And what is bringing this evil in this man's life is the presence of this spirit. It's called one spirit in verse two. Later on, we find out that this man was full of actually many spirits. And this account is told in Matthew and in Luke. And in those versions, it uses the word that's often translated demon possessed, but it uses the word demonized. This man is demonized. He's full of these demonic powers and forces. And so we won't go into a deep understanding of demonology tonight, but just suffice it to say is that we tend, in the 21st century in America, we tend to think of evil in the abstract. Evil is a concept. You have good and then you have evil. But biblically, evil is always personal. Evil came into the world through persons, through volition, through sentient beings. And so evil is never just a concept, right? We tend to demythologize evil, but it's very personal. There's a face behind evil, ultimately the devil, who's a fallen angel, but also what Matthew 25 calls his angels, that is demons or unclean spirits. They are all throughout the world. And in this case, they are possessing this man. And so evil has a personal side. Notice also here that evil has an isolating side. We're told that this man had an unclean spirit, but also we're told in verse 3 that he lived among the tombs. Now the tomb, so this man who has this unclean spirit is living in an area where he would have been seen as unclean, in contact with the dead. This was not a place where people wanted to live. This is not a place where people wanted to be. In fact, if you wanted to flee society, if you wanted to be left alone, you would be among the tombs. It was a place of death. It was a place where people, generally speaking, avoided unless they were putting a body there. And this man was left all alone. And we see that evil always does that. It isolates us. It isolates us from community. It isolates us from society. And we see that was certainly true for this man. So it's personal. It's isolating. We also see that it's very powerful. There's a power that this man has. How do we see that? Same verse, verse 3. No one could bind him. So that implies people have tried. They've tried to bind him with a chain and no one could because when they put the chains around him, he would wrench them apart. He would break them apart. So he has supernatural strength. This is not just a man who's naturally strong, but because he's possessed by these evil forces, he actually has greater strength. So evil is a real power. It gave this man power. It was a dark power, but he had a kind of power, you might say, a raw strength that no one could tame. Notice also that this power of evil was also a depressing power. Verse 5, what did it say about him? It said, night and day, among the tombs and on the mountains, he was always crying. He was always crying. So this is a man who has seen, you know, the dark night of the soul. The presence of these demons in his life have not given him joy, they've not made him happy, they've not made him feel like he's living a great life, but he's always crying. Sadness has followed him. Misery always follows where the devil goes, just like misery always follows sin. And so this man is just depressed, he's in anguish, he's very a miserable man, a menace to himself, and he's a menace to society. You could also say that this power of evil is very self-destructive, isn't it? And you can see this and that it says, he has broken apart the chains and shackles, he's crying out night and day, but also it went on to say, he was cutting himself with stones. He was cutting himself with stones. He was destroying himself. And so basically you see that that's the way evil works. God created us in his image, and there is a healthy sense of self-love. Think about how Paul talks about how husbands should love their wives, and he talks about no man hates his own flesh, but he nourishes it and cherishes it. That's how there's a healthy sense of self-love. But there's an evil that can make you destructive, of course, of others, but also even of yourself. I think maybe in another context, I've told you the story that when I served church in St. Louis as a youth pastor, we would go on a camp every year, Camp Penuel in Ironton, Missouri, and we would have kids from our church go, and we would also have kids from the inner city go, and it was a large ministry that we had for the week to these kids. And during the night time, teaching time, it was always around the campfire, and various leaders would get up and present the gospel or a Bible lesson or something. And I'll never forget one year, I was about to do that, and one of the moms who was there visiting the camp pulled me aside and she said, you know, my daughter's so-and-so, and she's here with a friend, and she's a cutter. And basically what she wanted to describe is that this is a girl who cuts herself, and she harms herself. And we realize there's an evil there that we tend to psychologize, or we try to find some kind of natural explanation for. But we also recognize that those things have their place, but also there's a spiritual element to these as well that we tend to discount. Evil is dehumanizing. Satan hates the image of God and man, and he wants to deface it. Satan hates the image of God and man, and he wants to deface it. And this man was a man who was totally dominated, totally overcome, totally overwhelmed by the powers of evil. And it's just a picture of what evil can do. Now, what relevance does that have for our lives before we move on? One of the things I think is that we should respect the power of evil. I didn't say love it, appreciate it, adore it, but we should respect that it is a real power and we should discern it. Sometimes when we think about the evil in the world today, I think we don't consider the supernatural explanations for some of it. So think about when there's a shooting. What are the talking points when there is a shooting? There are things like, well, we need to talk about guns and responsible gun laws, right? There are conversations about mental illness. We need to have a conversation about mental illness. There's conversation about violent movies and video games and the influence they're having on our children. But very rarely do you have someone who's taken with great seriousness or respect say, it's demonic. There's a demonic element to this. And I'm not discounting the other elements. I'm not taking away from those that we have the multiple explanations for the evil we see in the world. But how often do we actually seriously consider the satanic things that happen to people's lives and families? We really, we really don't. In 1995, there was a, a man named Andrew Delbanco who wrote a famous book called The Death of Satan, How Americans Have Lost the Sense of Evil. And it's not a great book, really, in talking about what the solution is to the problem, but the book does do a good job of placing its finger on the pulse of what's happened in our culture. And basically, what Andrew Delbanco says is, we've lost our ability to find language to describe evil. It's not because we don't see evil, we just now use different vocabulary for it. We don't talk about Satan, we don't talk about original sin, we don't talk about evil and corruption, but we have all these other categories for things. mental illness, and so on. And he was saying, he was not arguing that we need to return to our Christian worldview and start using biblical categories for evil, but he was saying, you know, we need to come up with a new way of seeing things. But the reality is that we understand that, that we've kind of taken out this reality from our understanding of the world. Now, this account shows us what evil does to humanity, and so therefore it also should help us to hate evil. So when you see this, you're not supposed to hate the man, but you're supposed to hate the evil that's doing this to the man, right? There's supposed to be a reaction here when we see this. Romans 12, 9 says, let love be genuine, abhor what is evil, hold fast to what is good. We're supposed to hold fast to what is good and hate evil. And don't you hate evil when you see it ruining the lives of people you may love or know? Maybe you've never seen a situation quite this dramatic, but we must keep in mind that even the smallest seeds of evil is really, in essence, the same thing. You may see a smaller example of evil destroying someone's life, and you realize that it causes you to hate it all the more. So here is a man, if there was ever a man who was a candidate for Jesus, who needed Jesus, this was the man. And so a man dominated by evil, well, what happens? Well, let's pick up in verse 6, this man who's a madman, a menace to himself and society, cutting himself with stones. People have separated themselves from him. What happens when Jesus shows up in verse 6? 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, 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 him, 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. So we essentially see that as Jesus comes face to face, there's a collision of the purity of Jesus and the impurity of these unclean spirits, that Jesus reveals his power over evil. A couple of ways we see that. Look here how the evil spirits in this man recognize who Jesus is. So when Jesus arrives, the man comes up and he throws himself down. We are told he throws himself down, and he immediately recognized that Jesus is, verse 7, the Son of the Most High. So he confesses that Jesus is the Son of God. Most High God was a common way that the Gentiles would refer to the one true and living God. And not only does he bow before Jesus and acknowledge Jesus to be the Most High God, he also recognizes that he's deserving of punishment. Because he says, I adjure you, do not torment me. That is, he knows Jesus has the authority to judge him, that they're subject to him. So obviously this is not saying that demons have saving faith. We recognize James chapter 2 says that even demons believe that there is a God and they shudder. But demons know their Bibles and they know who Jesus is. And they recognize him, and you can see they know that they are inferior. I mean, all these demons that cause this man, in some cases, to cut himself or to break chains, at this point, fall face down when Jesus shows up. And then Jesus shows his power over this man and these demons. When he addresses them, he's saying, come out, come out, you unclean spirit. And then Jesus asked him, what is your name? And then isn't this chilling? He says, my name is Legion, for we are many. And so the question comes up, what is Jesus doing when he says, what is your name? And there's actually a difference of opinion among commentators, and it's hard to know exactly who's right. Some say that Jesus, when he asked, what is your name, was actually asking for the man's name. He was talking to the man and he was asking for the man's name because he was trying to draw out his humanity. He was trying to draw out that he's a different person from these demons who are inside of him. And there's some good commentators think that Jesus is essentially humanizing this man and trying to distinguish his identity from these demons. However, I tend to think that rather this is showing Jesus' sovereignty over these demons, and He's basically saying, give me your name. These forces that are dominating this man's life, tell me who you are. Because if you think about the way name is used in the Bible, to have someone's name is to show power over them. So God names Adam. Remember, Adam names the animals in the garden, has authority, dominion over the animals. And so for Jesus to say, what's your name? And he has to have it. And the demons have to respond to give it to him, shows his sovereignty over these evil forces. And isn't this crazy? He says, my name is Legion. for we are many. So it's one man speaking. And of course that man is speaking, but he's speaking under the influence. You know how we say when someone, maybe they've been drinking too much alcohol and we just say, that's just the booze talking, right? Well, the person is talking, but it's, you know, they're under the influence. This man is under the influence of demons and the demons are speaking through him, identifying themselves as legion for we are many. So there's a, there's a multiplicity of demons in this man. And also, there's a unity. They're all referring to themselves as this one named legion. The name legion, you may know, refers to a Roman legion, which consisted of 5,000 to 6,000 men. Now, it doesn't necessarily mean that these demons are trying to be mathematically precise to say that there's actually 5,000 of us. We know that when Jesus cast them out, they go into 2,000 pigs, so there's enough to fill 2,000 pigs, right? So there's a lot of them. The point is, Jesus is greatly, greatly, greatly outnumbered. But, does it matter? It doesn't matter, because Jesus has absolute authority over the power of these demons. And He actually, when He has conversations with them, and they want to not just be banished to the abyss or sent away out of this country, they want to go into a herd of pigs. And by the permissive will of Christ, He allows these unclean spirits to leave the man, And they go into the pigs. And then imagine seeing this. I mean, just you got to visualize two thousand pigs all of a sudden just peacefully up there, you know, doing their thing. And then all of a sudden they all go down in the water and they drown themselves. It would have been something you would never forget, never forget. And so people ask, why? Why did Jesus grant this request? Why did Jesus allow these spirits to go into the pigs? Well, we've got to be careful because the text doesn't tell us, so we've got to be careful about speculating, but one thing that does stand out here is that at every point Jesus is clearly in control. I mean, these demons are not controlling things. They're asking, but Jesus is giving them permission to do what they do. You think about God on his throne in the beginning of the book of Job, and all the sons of God, all the angels come and appear before God in heaven. And the only thing that Satan can do to Job is what? what God gives him the permission to do. And so essentially you see something like the permissive will of God through Jesus here as well. But why, if Jesus is so much in control and everything Jesus does has purpose, why would he do this? Why kill all these pigs? Well, a couple of different explanations have been offered. Some people would say maybe he just wanted to give another example of the destructive power of evil. You see the destruction in this man, and then the spirits leave and they go to the pigs, and you see another example of evil is self-destructive. It rejects God. It's interesting in the English language, you spell live backwards and what do you get? Evil. You spell lived backwards and you get devil. And it's just weird that it works out that way, but it's true. Evil is the opposite of life. It is the opposite of God. And so that's not without significance, I don't think. But it shows the destructive power of evil. And then another possibility here that I read, I thought was pretty good, is that Jesus may be foreshadowing. the ultimate demise of all the evil forces against him, because ultimately, he's gonna rush all of them headlong into the lake of fire one day, and there's gonna be a final judgment. And the appeal of that interpretation is also that you find places when Jesus confronts these evil spirits, and they say things like, why are you here to torment us before the appointed time? They know there's a judgment day. They want as much time as they can to do as much destruction as they can. We saw in our study of Revelation that Satan is doing all this evil because he knows what? That his time is short. And so it may be that Jesus is trying to dramatize that. It's also possible, and this kind of leads us into the next section, is that maybe Jesus deliberately did this because he wanted to spread the news to others of what had happened. Because look what happens in verse 14 when this scene happens that you wouldn't miss and no one would forget of all these pigs going down and drowning themselves in the sea. Immediately the herdsmen run and they, verse 14, they fled and they tell it to the city and the country. And people came to see what it was that had happened. And they came to Jesus and saw the demon-possessed man, the one who 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. So notice here's a beautiful picture and an ugly picture, side by side, right? The beautiful picture is here you have this man who's been delivered by Jesus. His humanity has been restored. He's clothed in his right mind. This is something to be celebrated. It's something, what should make you afraid is the way he was before, not the way he is now. But the people respond and they're afraid. And it's a fear of, you know, I'm sure it was frightening to see. Well, okay, here's demons come out of this man. They went to our pigs. And then also our pigs all into the sea. And that was their livelihood. They made money off these pigs, right? And so they see a man healed and in his right mind, but they're not happy necessarily, or they don't celebrate what Jesus has done for this man. Why? Well, these people care more about pigs than people. It's essentially worldliness. J.C. Ryle, I think, put his finger on the pulse of what was wrong with these people, these herdsmen and others. They ignorantly regarded Jesus as the one who stood between them and their prophets, and they only wished to be rid of him. So essentially, I think that Jesus is showing us another kind of evil. There's the dramatic kind of evil that's really easy to see. There's a madman. He's possessed. He's cutting himself. He's overwhelmed by evil. He's breaking chains. Clearly, that's what you think, like the exorcist or something, you know? It's like you think of someone demon-possessed. They're someone demonized. But then there's another one. There's another kind of evil that's far more common, and it's more subtle, and it is no less real. And that kind of evil is the love of the money and the love of the world. That's right. We care about our pigs. You just wasted our pigs. Imagine, they're begging the Savior of the world to leave. They want Him out of town. To use a phrase from another part of Scripture, their hope of gain was gone. Think about when Paul goes to Ephesus, and he's preaching the gospel, and many people are coming to Christ and repenting, and then there's a silversmith guild there that made little temple, little statues to Artemis, or Diana, depending on your translation, and you know, there was a big massive, one of the wonders of the ancient world, a temple to Artemis there, and they realized, well, if too many people become Christians now, people are gonna stop worshiping Artemis, and we're gonna be out of a job. And so they stir up this riot and they start saying, great is Artemis of the Ephesians, great is Artemis of the Ephesians. And they essentially run Paul and his friends out of town because of love of money, worldliness. Pigs are more important than people. And we recognize that is a real side of evil, to be concerned with worldly things that you don't care about others who need help. Sin disorders are priorities so that we could actually value pigs more than people. Think about maybe an illustration of this when you look at some of the animal rights people. Do we love animals and care for animals? Of course we do. But why is it that some of the people who are the most militant people for animal rights are also the most pro-abortion? So we can murder the babies, but we gotta save the dolphins. Pigs are more important than people. There's an evil that can skew your perspective. And it's not that we shouldn't care for animals, of course, right? Or that we shouldn't care for the pigs, but it's missing the point. We know that Jesus teaches us that people are more important than animals. Jesus says, you're more valuable than the birds of the air. And if God feeds them, he'll feed you, right? The value factor, because we're made in the image of God and evil dehumanizes people. People have great value, we know Jesus says. Evil dehumanized the man. Jesus humanized him. Evil dehumanized the man in the eyes of the people who love money more than people. So you see a reversal attack there. Satan tried this very kind of dramatic, obvious attack against the image of God in man with the possession of the man. But then he tries a more subversive move with these who want Jesus to leave. It should be a caution to us to be aware that you look at someone like that and you say, well, I'm not evil. Like that, there's a more subtle form, so we have to be discerning. But look at the man who's been delivered in verse 18. Look what happens with him, because he does the opposite. They beg Jesus to leave, verse 17, the contrast is sharp. They beg Jesus to leave, but in verse 18, As he was getting to the boat, the man who had been possessed with demons begged Jesus that he might be with him. So they begged him to leave, but this man begged Jesus to stay. But Jesus didn't 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. Often commentators will point out here is Jesus knows where you should be better than you know where you should be. This man thought the best thing was I need to go join Jesus followers and go off with him. And Jesus said, no, actually you need to stay and you need to go home and you need to be a monument of my grace to your family and friends. who will know what you once were and now be able to see who you now are by the grace of God. Now why does Jesus tell this man to go tell others? It's very jarring if you go through Mark's gospel and read, most of the time Jesus says don't tell a soul when he heals them. He heals people. He heals someone. A man with a withered hand, don't tell a soul. A leper heals him, don't tell a soul. Most of the time, scholars call it the Messianic secret. It's like Jesus concealing his identity as the Messiah in Israel. So this stands out in Mark's gospel that here Jesus basically sends this man off to be an evangelist to his family. And again, the text doesn't explicitly say why did Jesus do that here as opposed to most of what most of the time what he does in the other places in Mark's gospel. But the most reasonable explanation is that when mostly when Jesus is performing miracles elsewhere, he's in Israel. And he didn't want those people sharing that he was the Messiah because the Jews at that time had an understanding of Messiah as a political deliverer. And there would have been great misunderstanding about why Jesus came. But here, remember, Jesus is in a Gentile area, and there's not really the likelihood of that kind of misunderstanding by this guy going back, you see there's this Decapolis, it's a term that means 10 cities, and they were Gentile city-states there, outside of, southeast of the Sea of Galilee. And so Jesus is sending this guy to go and proclaim how much God has done for him. But notice a couple of things here. that would be easy to miss. Jesus says, go home to your friends and tell them, verse 19, how much the Lord, underline the word Lord, has done for you. And then in verse 20, when he goes off and he proclaims how much the Lord has done for you, look what it says in verse 20, he went throughout the Decapolis and told how much Jesus had done for him. And so, in other words, Jesus refers to the Lord, and then this other passage refers to Jesus. Jesus is the Lord, is the point. He is the Lord of glory. He is the God of Israel who has come near to set captives free. And so, he's going out proclaiming that. And then notice also this. In verse 19, Jesus says, go home to your friends. and tell them how much the Lord has done for you and how he has had mercy on you. Most of the theme that you see as you're looking through this is the power of Jesus. The demons fall. before him, they know who he is. Jesus is able to send them wherever he wants to send them. This man, even though he was filled with a legion of demons, was no match for Jesus, a single man who with a word cast out these demons and banished them from this man and made him in his right mind and healed. What's the point? The point is that the message that we've reclaimed to the world, the message that this man was supposed to go proclaim was not just the raw power of Jesus, but was the power of Jesus exercised in showing mercy. Jesus had mercy on this man who was fit for hell in every way. I mean, it was almost like he was inhabited by hell. Talk about a man who was far from God, a man who was far from society, a man who was hurting himself, who was a menace to others and a menace to himself, this man who was a hopeless case. If there ever was a hopeless case, I think we all could agree, it was this man. And yet, Jesus made this man whole. And so one of the lessons here is that You've never met a man or a woman or a boy or a girl who so dominated the powers of sin and evil that Jesus cannot rescue them. And so throughout the history of the church and throughout the history of Christian missions and ministry, there's always been a conviction that we should go to hard places. where I go to hard people and proclaim to them the power of Jesus and the mercy of Jesus who can rescue the chief of sinners. That's what Paul said. The Son of God came into the world to save sinners of whom I am chief. Later, Jesus would say the Son of Man was sent to seek and to save the lost. And so you can go into a prison, you can go a place where you might experience a palpable presence of evil and you could proclaim Christ and Jesus may save some and set them free. And you can go to hard places of foreign mission fields, places dominated by superstition and by pagan worship and animism or whatever it may be, and you can proclaim Jesus and people can be set free. The Scripture tells us that He has delivered us in Christ from the domain of darkness, and He's transferred us into the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. In a sense, what Jesus did for this demonized man is what He does for us. The prince of the power of the air was at work in us when we were sons of disobedience, Ephesians 2 tells us, and yet God made us alive together with Christ, by grace we've been saved, and he's forgiven us our sins, and he's called us to take the message of the gospel even to hard places. So we do see in our world today, in our culture, we see evil, we see the personal side of it, we see the destructive side of it, but we need to be encouraged that we are with Christ, Christ is our king. and He is the one who slays the forces of darkness, and so we can be triumphant in Him. Let's pray together, and we'll go to our discussion groups. Father, we thank You for the study of Your Word. We thank You that Jesus has crushed the serpent's head. And we thank You that Jesus has power that is far greater than the destructive powers of evil. And we pray that whether it's a a very dramatic and obvious manifestation of evil like the demon-possessed man, or it's a more subtle form like the one that the herdsmen had in their hearts. We pray that you would banish the evil from us, that you would deliver us fully from anything that would keep us from living for your glory and displaying your image in this world to reflecting your knowledge and your righteousness and your holiness and your goodness and love. And we thank you that Jesus is the one who puts us in our right mind and restores our true humanity so that we might reflect his glory. Bless us, Lord, as we have these discussions. May we be encouraged by conversations tonight in Jesus name we pray. Amen.