SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR
4/7/2012 11:10:41 AM
My Worship Time Focus: Victory over Demons
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Mark 5:1-20
Message of the verses: I have been studying for a couple of weeks in order to be able to make known what is happening in these verses from Mark. There is one thing that we need to remember and that is found in the very first verse of Mark’s Gospel: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” We have to remember that what Mark is trying to convey to his Roman audience is that Jesus is the Son of God. Because he is writing to Romans who do not know a lot about the history of Israel he writes a very fast moving account of the life of Jesus Christ to show them that Jesus is indeed who He claims to be. Mark has only two chapters in which we see teaching from the Lord and we just went through the first one of then when we looked at chapter four, where Jesus teaches through parables. The next time we will see His teaching is in the thirteenth chapter where Jesus will teach on the end times. The other parts of the Gospel are to see snap shots of the life of Jesus in order to show that He is God’s Son. I suppose you could say that Mark is like a Readers Digest version of the Gospel as he hits the highlights.
If Mark is to show his readers that Jesus is the Son of God he will have to show things that Jesus did that proved that He is who He says He is. We have already seen that it was the demons who first proclaimed that Jesus was the Son of God in the first chapter of God, but Jesus did not want them to be His advertisement agency so He told them to stop speaking. We have seen His power over illness and the first three chapters so Mark. We have seen His power over nature in chapter four as He told the winds and the waves to stop roaring and immediately they did. In chapter five we will see the awesome power of Jesus over a man who has a many as 6000 demons in him and also His power over a woman who has been sick for twelve years. We will then see a stunning revelation of His power as He raises a twelve year old girl from the dead. All of these are to continue to show the readers of Mark that Jesus is the Son of God, for who but God could do these awesome miracles.
Dr. Wiersbe points out the following about these twenty verses: “We see in this scene three different forces at work: Satan, society, and the Savior. These same three forces are still at work in our world, trying to control the lives of people.”
“1 ¶ They came to the other side of the sea, into the country of the Gerasenes.” (Mark 5:1) We remember from the last post from the book of Mark that Jesus calmed the sea and the wind on their trip across the Sea of Galilee, and not verse on tells us that Jesus and His disciples have come to the other side of the sea in a country called the Gerasenes, which is Gentile country. John MacArthur helps to explain some facts about this country. “Luke and Mark say it is the country of the Gerasenes. Matthew says it’s the country of the Gadarenes. That’s not difficult to understand, it is both. Gerasenes because there was a little town right there called Gerasa, or sometimes pronounced Gergasa, but it is the town, the small, small town of Gerasa that they came near. As I said, it’s about six miles around the curve of the lake, right there on the shore. So it is the land of the Gerasenes.
“However, a little further south and inland is a bigger and more important town and maybe the county seat called Gadarea. So while it was the village of Gerasa, it was the region that associated itself with Gadarea. So it was the land of the Gerasenses, if you look at the village, and the Gadarenes if you look at the larger town that sort of gave its name to the region.”
“2 When He got out of the boat, immediately a man from the tombs with an unclean spirit met Him.” We see Mark’s favorite word “immediately” in this verse as we see a man who is possessed with unclean spirits coming directly toward Jesus. This man as we said earlier had as many as 6000 demons living in him. Luke says that he is running around naked and we can rest assured that the people in this part of the country he lived in were afraid of him, and I suppose that it is hard to say the things that this man has done in his life, but we can be assured because he was possessed with so many evil and unclean spirits that it was not good.
“3 and he had his dwelling among the tombs. And no one was able to bind him anymore, even with a chain; 4 because he had often been bound with shackles and chains, and the chains had been torn apart by him and the shackles broken in pieces, and no one was strong enough to subdue him. 5 Constantly, night and day, he was screaming among the tombs and in the mountains, and gashing himself with stones.” We see here from verse three that this man felt more at home around the dead that he did around the living, and I suppose it would be fair to say that the dead were more comfortable being around him than the living. Verse four tells of how unsuccessful the people of this village were in trying to keep this man locked up. We live in a world today of mind altering drugs, but back then all they could try to do to keep him out of trouble is to lock him up and this did not work. I once heard from a former youth pastor from the church we attended about a very large and strong friend of his who came to help a small woman who was believed to have demons in her and this small woman through this big man to the ground without any trouble. We see from verse five that this man was a nuisance to society as he would run around the tombs screaming.
6 Seeing Jesus from a distance, he ran up and bowed down before Him.” I suppose that this man had done things like this before, that is run down to the lake when boats would approach him and probably would scare the people in the boats away so that they would not return, but this was different for this time the demons in him say the Lord Jesus Christ and they automatically bowed down before the Lord. These demons knew who they were looking at, for it was the Lord who had created them and demons were the only ones so far in the book of Mark who really knew who Jesus was.
7 and shouting with a loud voice, he *said, "What business do we have with each other, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I implore You by God, do not torment me!" 8 For He had been saying to him, "Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!’” Here we see the same reaction from this demon as we saw from the one in the Synagogue found in chapter for he says the very same words to Jesus, “What business do we have with each other.” The demons knew all about the prophecies that told that the Son of God would come to die on the cross on His first visit to planet earth. They knew that He would come again and then put Satan and all the demons into the lake of fire. The demons were frightened of Jesus and did not want to go into the pit where some of the most evil demons were sent as seen in the sixth chapter of Genesis.
“9 And He was asking him, "What is your name?" And he *said to Him, "My name is Legion; for we are many.’” In the Roman army a legion had from 2000 to 6000 men in it and so that is why this man could have had that many demons in him.
“10 And he began to implore Him earnestly not to send them out of the country.” The demons did not want to go into the pit and they did not want to leave this country so they implored Jesus not to send them out of the country. “Implore:” “2) to address, speak to, (call to, call upon), which may be done in the way of exhortation, entreaty, comfort, instruction, etc.
2a) to admonish, exhort
2b) to beg, entreat, beseech
2b1) to strive to appease by entreaty”
“11 Now there was a large herd of swine feeding nearby on the mountain. 12 The demons implored Him, saying, "Send us into the swine so that we may enter them.’” We can tell that this was Gentile country because the raised pigs there and these demons want Jesus to send them into the pigs.
“13 Jesus gave them permission. And coming out, the unclean spirits entered the swine; and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea, about two thousand of them; and they were drowned in the sea.” I want to add a quote from Dr. Wiersbe at this point and then comment on the point he makes: “Mark 5 tells of three requests: the demons requested that Jesus send them into the pigs (Mark 5:12); the citizens request that Jesus leave the area (Mark 5:17); and one of the former demoniacs requested that Jesus allow him to follow Him (Mark 5:18). Our Lord granted the first two requests but not the third one.” Just a comment about what Matthew had reported that there were two men and Luke and Mark only speak of one. It seems that the one that Mark and Luke write about is the main one and so they don’t mention the other one.
Dr. Wiersbe goes on: “Did Jesus have the right to destroy 2000 pigs and possibly put their owners out of business? If these men were Jews, then they had no right to be raising and selling unclean pigs anyway. However, this was Gentile territory, so the owners were probably Gentiles.
“Certainly, Jesus was free to send the demons wherever He desired—into the abyss, into the swine, or to any other place that He chose. The why send them into the swine? For one thing, by doing it that way, Jesus gave proof to all the spectators that a miracle of deliverance had really taken place. The destruction of the pigs also gave assurance to the two men that the unclean spirits were actually gone. But more than anything else, the drowning of the 2,000 swine was a vivid object lesson to this Christ-rejecting crowd that, to Satan, a pig is as good as a man! In fact, Satan will make a man into a pig! The Lord was warning the citizens against the powers of sin and Satan. It was a dramatic sermon before their very eyes: ‘The wages of sin is death!”
“14 Their herdsmen ran away and reported it in the city and in the country. And the people came to see what it was that had happened. 15 They *came to Jesus and *observed the man who had been demon-possessed sitting down, clothed and in his right mind, the very man who had had the "legion"; and they became frightened. 16 Those who had seen it described to them how it had happened to the demon-possessed man, and all about the swine.” We see the herdsmen who had lost all of their swine going into the town and the country to tell all they could find what Jesus did and the results will be very disappointing. They come back with the people they told and they say that this demon possessed man was sitting at the feet of Jesus, and not only sitting there but cleaned up and in his right mind, and believe me they knew who he was before.
“17 And they began to implore Him to leave their region. 18 As He was getting into the boat, the man who had been demon-possessed was imploring Him that he might accompany Him. 19 And He did not let him, but He *said to him, "Go home to your people and report to them what great things the Lord has done for you, and how He had mercy on you." 20 And he went away and began to proclaim in Decapolis what great things Jesus had done for him; and everyone was amazed.” We see two things here in these verses: One was that the town’s people wanted Jesus to leave for they were frightened. They were like the disciples who were more afraid of being in the boat with Jesus than being in the boat while a ragging storm was going on around them. These people were more afraid of Jesus than they were of a man who had thousands of demons in him.
This Gentile man was probably the first missionary that Jesus would send out into the world to tell what had happened to him, but the man wanted to go with Jesus. Jesus did not allow this, but we see from a latter chapter that the man had gone out and done what Jesus had told him to do. This man not only was not demon possessed anymore but was a believer in Jesus Christ as His Messiah and Lord.
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