I ask that you open your Bibles this morning to the Gospel of Mark chapter 5. We begin Mark 5 as we continue our journey through the Gospel according to Mark this morning. Mark chapter 5 and we will be looking at verses 1 through 13. But before we read the Word of God, let's do go to the Lord in prayer. Father, we come to you about to read this Holy Gospel. And Lord, we just ask you to, Lord, send the Holy Spirit to convict our hearts of our sins, of our shortcomings, Lord, and speak to us today Lord, and that we will look to our Lord Jesus Christ and His mighty power to save and to deliver us from our sins and from the dark forces that battle against us. Oh Lord, speak to us today through your word. I ask you in the name of Jesus, I pray. Amen. Mark chapter 5, beginning in verse 1. And they came over unto the other side of the sea into the country of the Gadarenes. And when he was come out of the ship, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit, who had his dwelling among the tombs. And no man could bind him, no knot with chains. Because what he had been often bound with fetters and chains, and the chains had been plucked asunder by him, and the fetters broken in pieces, neither could any man tame him. And always, night and day, he was in the mountains and in the tombs, crying and cutting himself with stones. And when he saw Jesus afar off, he ran and worshipped him, and cried with a loud voice and said, What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thy son? of the Most High God. I adjure thee by God that thou torment me not. For he said unto him, Come out of the man, thou unclean spirit. And he asked him, What is thy name? And he answered, saying, My name is Legion, for we are many. And he besought him much that he would not send them away out of the country. Now there was there nigh unto the mountains a great herd of swine feeding. And all the devils besought him, saying, Send us into the swine, that we may enter into them. And forthwith Jesus gave them leave. And the unclean spirits went out, and entered into the swine. And the herd ran violently down a steep place into the sea. They were about two thousand, and were choked in the sea. In the last 50 years, Hollywood has made many movies about demonic possession, the most famous, of course, being The Exorcist, way back in the 1970s, and recently, The Conjuring series of movies. And there's an entire genre of entertainment and movies devoted to this religious horotype. The problem is these types of movies can make the subject of demon possession be like the subject of vampires, werewolves, and zombies, kind of a fantasy fiction or science fiction like. The reality, however, is that while vampires and werewolves and zombies are fiction, Demons are definitely not fiction, but are real, and we must always remember that. In our text, we read of the most famous case, I would say, of demon possession in the entire Bible. Now, Jesus had crossed the Sea of Galilee, and we read in our Lice, in Chapter 4, where he had calmed the sea there. And he crosses over into the area of the Gadarenes. Now interestingly, this is a majority Gentile area according to many archaeology. And he is immediately confronted by a man, as we see in this text, not with just one demon, but with a multitude of demons. They even referred themselves as Legion, for we are many. And if you read this whole text, you see they had to be numbered into the thousands. That's a lot of demons. I mean, this is, when you think of that, man, man, that's a lot of demons in one place. And we see this man that Mark describes here is he is possessed with these demons. Now, before we go any farther with Mark's description, I want to add a little clarity. The three synoptic gospels, and I use that term synoptic. We were talking about Matthew, Mark, and Luke. They follow a similar plan. If you read the four gospels, you'll see that Matthew, Mark, and Luke Their pattern of storytelling is basically the same in telling the story of Jesus, while John, the youngest of the four Gospels, tells it differently. But Mark and Luke both describe this story basically the same. I mean, it's one man. But if you go to Matthew, and I wanted to address this because people will often say there's contradictions here in the Bible. In Matthew chapter 8 and verse 28, Matthew's gospel actually is not as detailed in this, in telling of this incident, but he does add a detail that Mark and Luke don't have. And you'll notice it in verse 28. It says, And when he was come to the other side of the country of the Gergesenes, there met him two possessed with devils, coming out of the tombs exceedingly fierce, so that no man might pass by the way. So we see that in Matthew's Gospel, he says there were two of them, while Mark and Luke says there's one. Now is there a contradiction? Well, no. Matthew just adds on one other there, that he saw that there were two there. Well, Mark and Luke focus on just one demon-possessed man, who most Bible scholars believe this guy was the more dominant or the leader of the two. And by the way, this is something you'll see in the Gospels that there will be details missing in one Gospel that another one covers. It's not a contradiction. There's a reason there's four Gospels and not one Gospel. It's to show it from different perspectives. A good example is the two thieves on the cross. If you read In Matthew and Mark's gospel, it shows these two thieves were both mocking Jesus as He is dying on the cross, period. And that's the way it ends, nothing more. But if you read Luke's gospel, he adds on that one of those thieves repented during that time of crucifixion. So we get a greater clarity when we see that. Another one is the Roman centurion at the cross. And all three of the synoptic Gospels show a different perspective. In Luke's Gospel, the centurion, when seeing Jesus die, says, certainly this was a righteous man. Now Luke is, I believe, is showing that here is one of the crucifiers of Jesus saying that this man who just died was a righteous man. He was not a guilty man. He was righteous. But then you come to Mark's Gospel and he has the centurion say truly this man was the Son of God. So he records the Roman centurion saying something else. Well, is it a contradiction there? No. I believe he's saying two different things. I believe if you combine the two, he was saying this was a righteous man, the son of God. But Mark records what I believe is Peter's account that he gave to Mark. This man was the son of God, and Mark strongly emphasizes, and we see this today, Jesus' deity. This is God himself. God in the flesh dying on the cross. That's the great emphasis. If you go to Matthew's gospel, It's similar to Mark's gospel in the Roman centurion, but he adds even more. He states that the centurion and those with him, those other Roman soldiers say, truly this was the Son of God. So it wasn't just the Roman centurion, it was also the soldiers around him saying this. So it's not a contradiction, just more details, just as we often, if we saw an event, we will give details that somebody else doesn't give. And so we see in this gospel account of this demon-possessed man here in the Gadarenes, that Matthew says there were two of them, and I believe him. But Mark and Luke focus only on this one. And so we're going to follow in our message today. We're going to stick with Mark's account of this, because Mark actually gives much more details of this event than even Matthew does, even though Matthew mentions there were two. And the man that Mark focuses on here in the land of the Gadarenes. He says the man, they met him immediately, you'll notice in verse 2. He came out of the tombs, the place of the dead. We'd say today a graveyard. A man with an unclean spirit. And notice, that was his dwelling. This man lived among the tombs. He lived in the graveyard, we'd say today. Notice also, amazingly, no man could bind him, not with chains. He had been bound with fetters and chains, but notice it says he's chained. He plucked them asunder. The fetters he broke in pieces. I mean, he was like the Incredible Hook or Superman. I mean, they could chain him up and he could bust loose like Samson in the Old Testament. He had superhuman strength. And this strength was not something of his own. It was from being possessed. But he was far from happy, as you see here. This guy was in torment. It says he was crying day and night, and he was cutting himself with stones. He tormented his own self, cutting himself with stones. This was a man who was out of his mind, with supernatural strength and self-destructive to his own self. full of demonic power and tormented by these demons. It reminds us there is evil in this world today, my friends. Evil exists. There is a devil and there are demons. This is, I was counting, I believe this is Jesus' fifth encounter with demons in the Gospel of Mark. Mark emphasizes this quite a lot. Jesus' encounter with the dark forces. In the Lord's Prayer, the final petition of the Lord's Prayer is, if you remember, deliver us from evil. Jesus says we're to pray, deliver us from evil, and literally in the New Testament Greek, it is deliver us from THE evil. It's the definite article there. The evil, or as many translations put it, it's not, evil is not abstract. Deliver us from the evil one. Deliver us from the devil. He is on the prowl. Peter tells us in 1 Peter 5, 8. In Ephesians chapter 6, Ephesians chapter 6, in verse 11, We're told by the Apostle Paul to put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. The word wiles means the strategies of the devil. I know a lot of you watched college football yesterday. And what do these college football coaches do? They have a strategy to win against the other. Believe me, the devil has a strategy to use against you. The devil's real, is what I'm trying to get to. The devil is real. Demons are real. James chapter 4 and verse 7, and I love this real short verse because James does us a great service here by giving us a simple formula or a simple menu to win against the devil every day. Now, it's simple, but it's not easy to follow, believe me. What does he say? How do you defeat the devil in our daily lives? Submit yourselves, therefore, to God, number one. Number two, and by the way, you've got to get number one right first. Submit yourselves, therefore, to God. And secondly, resist the devil. And thirdly, and he will flee from you. Again, James tells us, just like Paul tells us, the devil's real. Demons are real. You're in a battle with them. There is a tendency in our day and time to go to two extremes in Christianity. One is to see the devil behind every tree and corner and every sin. I mean you come up with with things, some of these modern day deliverance ministries. And we got ministries today that are devoted to nothing but performing exorcisms. And they call themselves deliverance ministries. And if you're struggling with lust, what's the problem? Well, you got a demon of lust. You got a lust demon that needs to be cast out. You're struggling with pornography. Well, it's a pornography demon that you're struggling with. It's got to be cast out. And I'm being serious. They go in all details. You're struggling with alcoholism, alcoholic, and struggling with it. You've got an alcohol demon that's been tormenting you, maybe your whole family. It needs to be cast out. You have problems with anger. We need to cast out that anger demon. The problem is what they're describing is the works of the flesh. And one thing I can tell you that can't be cast out is your flesh. Your flesh is going to stay with you. Now, by the way, I do believe, as I'm going to say here in a minute, there is a demonic aspect of that. But if you're struggling with those things, you need to repent. You need to repent toward God, the Holy Spirit. will help you in your battle with the flesh. And if you're lost, you need Christ. And that brings me to the second extreme. Sometimes even us in the Reformed or Calvinist camp, we can diminish the demonic aspect and focus totally on the flesh, despite the fact that the Bible speaks not just of a fleshly battle, but also of a spiritual battle. That even though we're struggling with the flesh, Satan uses that flesh and tempts that flesh and attacks it. So it's always a balance. Balance here. Now, what we're dealing with in Mark chapter 5 goes even farther. It deals with demon possession or one being demonized. Is demon possession real? Absolutely. Does it still happen? Yes. I believe there's people who are so controlled by demons. And you say, I've never seen one. Well, maybe I think you haven't seen one. Maybe you have been around one. Folks, it's not always going to be evident like this guy here. This, what you see in Mark 5, is an unusual display of demonic activity. It's not the norm. But I have no doubts it's people who have demon possession. It goes beyond just mental illness. Now there are some people who have just mental illness. They struggle with that. Or it's their medicine. But there's also a spiritual aspect to many who are so filled with evil in their hearts. where they are controlled by demons just as this man was in Mark chapter 5. I remember years ago the TV show Criminal Minds. If you're not familiar with that TV show, it was about a group of FBI agents who track down and hunt serial killers. One of the agents is, he's basically a believer. He's a believer in God. Rossi, kind of the older of the agents. And I remember one of the episodes, and I looked this quote up because it stuck with me. One of the other agents said to him, don't tell me you believe in evil. And Ralsei says back to him, says, don't tell me you do this job, and don't. We hunt down serial killers. You've got to believe in it. Evil. And folks, there's evil around us. It's not just illness. And we often treat those people are crazy, acting like that. Well, they may be acting crazy just like this guy was, but it's often a spiritual aspect to it, a demonic aspect. Now, when the man sees Jesus from afar, it states here in the King James Version, he ran and worshipped Him. Both the King James Version and the New King James Version translate this, he worshipped Him. But it's not worship like we're doing here today, where we're giving praises and honor to God. The worship is more like fear of Jesus. It's bowing down. The Bible tells us someday that every knee shall bow and confess that Jesus is Lord. This is what we're seeing here. The Amplified Bible states He bowed down before Him, or ESV, He fell down before Him. It's the kneeling and bowing is what the word worship here means. When He saw Jesus, He ran to Him not to attack Him, but in fear, acknowledging who Jesus is, God in the flesh. One thing these demons did do that humans don't do is they acknowledged who Jesus was. They recognized Jesus. And you'll notice they protest to Him. What have I to do with you? Or what do you want with me? The NIV translates this. Have you come to tarment us, Jesus? It says how could they know Jesus? Remember that angels, I mean demons are fallen angels. They know who God the Son is. They knew who He was. James tells us, you know, There's no such thing as atheist demons. They believe in Him in fear, tremble at Him. And so they're terrified of Jesus the moment they see Him. Though they're inhabiting this man, they're terrified of the presence of Jesus Christ. And you torment me not, they say in verse 7. For He said to them, Come out of the man, thou unclean spirit." The demons, you will notice, begged Him not to send them out of the country. Now, they were not resisting Jesus. They knew their fate was sealed. They knew that they weren't going to be in this man any longer. They knew it. Because they didn't have the power to face Him. But you'll notice that Jesus asks them, what is their name? And He says, My name is Legion for we are many, many. And then Jesus permitted them to go into the pigs. In all of this, Jesus demonstrated His power and authority over demons. You'll also notice there was no big struggle between Jesus and the demons. Not like a Hollywood movie where it's, you know, you're throwing holy water and holding up a cross and, you know, I adjure you and your glass is flying and there being the exorcist is pushed against the wall, stuff like that. No. You don't even see that with Jesus or the apostles. It's always instant. They leave at the command of Jesus. Now, many will see this and say, well, since demon possession is real, and Jesus and the apostles cast out demons, and what's wrong with these deliverance ministries who devote themselves to exorcism? And can't we do that? Well, first of all, let me say this. I think it's very unhealthy for a ministry to devote itself solely to the devil. I mean, that is dangerous. I mean, it really is. I mean, there was a guy, and you can ask me his name after church, but he used to be real popular in the back 1980s and 1990s on Christian radio. He was kind of like the Rush Limbaugh Christian radio you couldn't get away from him and he got fascinated with this this subject of deliverance, and he went farther and farther and farther into it until finally he lost all his audience. He's still around today, but now when you see a promo of him, he looks like, I mentioned the Exorcist, he looks like he's dressed there with a cross, you know, and he's got his deliverance. He looks like he's cosplaying for the Exorcist or one of these horror movies. He went crazy on this stuff, and he's in his probably his mid-70s or late 70s. I think that's dangerous. The Bible doesn't have people who focus their ministry on casting out demons, and they're also missing the point, I'm going to show you here in a moment, of what Mark is trying to show us. The point of these power encounters that Jesus has with demons, this is his fifth one, was not to give us a blueprint for us to go around doing it. It was to demonstrate to people that He is the Son of God and He has power over the dark forces of this world. We see this in the book of Acts with the apostles. Where they did, you see this with Paul, you see this with the apostles doing this. And so we see this in the apostolic age and in Jesus' ministry. Interestingly, we never read of any exorcism in the Old Testament. Not a single one. And this was a sign gift very similar to what you see with healing. that you read of. And I think it's tied in with the same thing. And there's nothing, by the way, in any of the New Testament epistles that give us an exorcism manual for the church. This is what you are to do as a church. No. Matter of fact, when you read the epistles of Paul and the other New Testament writers, you'll notice that their focus is on the internal battles, let's say. Let's go back to Ephesians 6, where we read earlier, 6, and this is probably the most famous of the spiritual warfare chapters, and there's no mention here, by the way, of of casting out demons out of people here. Notice, I read verse 11 about putting on the whole armor of God that we may stand against the wiles of the devil, but notice verse 12. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against power, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness and high places." Paul speaks of a great number of demons that we face. And he says in verse 13, "...wherefore, taking you the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand." Stand therefore, having your loins girt about with truth, and having on the breastplate of righteousness, and your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace, above all taking the shield of faith, wherewith you shall be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked, and take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God, praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints." The key word I see here is stand against the devil. This is, you know, that we are facing a spiritual battle with the devil. Nothing about going and casting out devils out of people. This is not something that's mentioned in the New Testament epistles. Then do I believe there's nothing we can do for people who are demon possessed? I didn't say that. Just like I didn't say there's nothing we can do about people who are sick, there is something we can do. If you go to Mark chapter 9, and we'll look at this in a lot more detail, probably in a few months, or several months, depending on when we get to Mark chapter 9. But in Mark chapter 9, this is another confrontation that Jesus has with the demon. Notice verse 25. It says, When Jesus saw that the people came running together, He rebuked the foul spirit, saying unto him, Thou dumb and deaf spirit, I charge thee, come out of him, and enter no more into him. And the spirit cried, and rent him sore, and came out of him. And he was as one dead, insomuch that many said, He is dead. But Jesus took him by the hand, and lifted him up, and he arose. And when he was coming to the house, the disciples asked him privately, why could not we cast him out? And he said unto them, this kind can come forth by nothing but by prayer and fasting. The apostles who had been casting out demons failed to cast out this one. And Jesus, of course Jesus does it immediately, and they want to know why did we fail. He says, this can come nothing but by prayer and fasting. And I found John MacArthur's commentary on this to be interesting. Because in his commentary on this, it says, in all the cases of the expulsion of demons in the New Testament, were on the basis of authoritative statements rather than a ritual. In other words, it wasn't some ritual or ceremony where they spent hours casting out demons. And he states that what you see with that statement, that this kind cometh forth by nothing but prayer and fasting, that he believes that what we see here is Jesus is referring back to the Old Testament pattern for release of demons. He says like healing or any other trouble that anybody has, we were to pray and fast and beseech God in behalf of that individual. So what do we do with people? who are struggling, who we may believe, look, all lost people are under the control of the devil in some way. And then there's extreme forms that we see of demonic possession. We don't always know. But just as we pray for people's healing today, we don't go up to them here in our church and say, I cast that, you know, that arthritis out of you. We don't do that. We see that as something that was done in the time of the apostles and with Jesus, we pray for them. And Jesus has us pray and fast, some of them. We pray and fast for people. Look, you may say, that person's beyond help. And I'm kind of getting into my next sermon in Mark, because we're not through with this guy, what happened here. In the next message, we're going to look at the aftermath of this, of Jesus casting out this demon. But you may think there's people, they're so evil that nothing can deliver them. Jesus can. Pray for them. If they're really on your heart, pray and fast. We don't talk about fasting a whole lot. The Bible does. Pray for them. But don't do silly stuff. I saw this movie, it's a Christian movie, War Room. few years ago. Now, the only positive thing I'll say about that Christian movie is the idea of having a special place to pray is good. After that, not. Don't do like they did. If you've seen that movie, don't do like they said and talk to the devil saying, devil, I'm taking authority over you. I'm binding you. Don't say that. That's silly. You're praying to the devil. Pray to God. You don't have that type of authority. Jesus did have that authority. Even these apostles had limited authority here we see because Jesus cast out one that they couldn't. We see in Mark chapter 9. The point of Mark 5 that we're looking at today is not a pattern for us to follow. You're missing what Mark is trying to show you. You're missing the Mark and this is what so many people miss. Remember what happened at the end of Mark chapter 4 that we looked at last. How did it conclude? There was a storm there and Jesus rebuked the storm and it stopped. No human can do that. And they were amazed, his disciples were, because he had authority over nature itself to even stop a storm. Mark was showing this is more than just a man and a prophet. This is God Almighty who's able to stop a storm. And here we see in Mark chapter 5 where Jesus manhandles As it states here, well, Jesus cast out these demons and they went into about 2,000 pigs. He cast them into these pigs. And by the way, they would have did this to this man if they could have. They would have killed him. That was their purpose. That's the purpose of Satan, to destroy. Jesus cast them into these pigs. So it was about 2,000 of them. That's a lot of demons. Mark chapter 5 shows that this Jesus can manhandle 2,000 demons, a legion of demons, easily, just like that. That's what the point is. He's shown this over and over again in the first five chapters where Jesus has authority over sickness and disease. He has authority over demons. He has authority over nature itself. This is who Jesus is. He is God in the flesh. Matthew Henry states in his commentary on Mark 5 says, The design of Christ's gospel is to expel unclean spirits out of the souls of people. The expulsions of these demons showed their nature to kill as they killed these pigs, My friends, they want to do the same to all of us. That's what Satan comes to do. But 1 John chapter 3, and I'm going to close with this, tells us why Jesus came. And we see this here in Mark chapter 5. 1 John chapter 3 and verse 8. It says, He that commit a sin is of the devil, for the devil sent us from the beginning. And why did Jesus come? Well, John tells us here. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil. Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil. The devil is no match for Jesus Christ. And we should always remember that. My friends, if you're here today and know not Christ, I pray that you will be delivered from your bondage. You're in bondage to the devil. You may not be in bondage like this guy, but you are in bondage to him. And you need salvation in Jesus Christ. And by his death upon the cross, for all who believe, you can be freed. And we as Christians, let's remember that we face attacks from the devil daily, internal battles every day. As well as there are people around us who we may get under our skin because of their attitude. My friends, it could be that, well, most likely they're under some sort of control of their flesh and the devil's using it against them at their loss. They may not be possessed by the devil, but they need your prayer. and that they may be enlightened to the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ. Let's pray. Oh, Lord God, we thank you that, God, we often see so much darkness around us in this world. There really is evil in this world. We're surrounded by it, Lord God. Oh, but we're reminded here in the gospel of Mark that we who are believers who have Jesus Christ, that greater is he that's in us than he that's in the world. That if we are Christ, he is our defender. And there are many, we know, who are under bondage to the devil today. Maybe not as bad as this fellow, but they're in bondage. Oh, we pray, Lord God, all those of our loved ones and friends and co-workers and people we know who know not Christ, that the Holy Spirit will enlighten them, will give them a new heart and deliver them from the devil, that they may believe upon Jesus Christ. Oh, we give glory to you, Father, with our Lord Jesus and the Holy Spirit. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.