Today a sermon on Mark 5 to bring us to the Communion Table. Please turn back there and we’ll make three observations from this passage we’ve just read.
1. We observe the great power of evil.
There are different ways of talking about sin. One way of getting a hold of the concept of sin is understanding it as a power. When Cain was being tempted with jealousy toward his brother, God says to him: Sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it. (Genesis 4: 7b).
Sin is an aggressor, a power. It can mess you up. Mess up families. Destroy towns.
Go back to Adam and Eve. When they decided to distrust God, to take matters into their own hands and decide apart from God, they couldn’t have imagined the force they were unleashing. The devastation of death!
They couldn’t imagine that as a consequence to their disobedience one of their descendants would be in this sad shape. Let’s look closer at him.
This man was called daimonizomai – maybe possessed by isn’t the best translation? Troubled by, successfully invaded by, in the sway of this ancient demon.
Yes, demon! Behind his unclean spirit, or perhaps what constituted his unclean spirit, was the activity of demons. Demons are real. A demon is not the dark side to your personality, or an archaic way of describing mental illness. Rather, a demon is an ancient being created by God, originally good, who has thrown his lot in with Satan’s, and thus works against God and the image-bearers of God.
V. 3 – The daimonizomai lived among the tombs. Imagine you’re a realtor and your new client is moving in from out of state. And when you ask him what he’s looking for, he says, “I want to be as close to a graveyard as possible.” I imagine a little chill would run down your neck. This guy not’s right.
The man had not always been this bad off. In V. 3 there’s the word “anymore” – no one could bind him anymore – the implication is that at time he’d been under control. This is confirmed in v. 19, when Jesus tells the restored man to return to “your friends.” Assumedly these friendships had been set aside while the man was running naked around the graveyards and mountains.
Proverbs teaches us that there is a way of evil, a way that leads toward death. The start down the path ending in death is often very trivial, a minor act or inaction that one hardly thinks about.
V. 4 – The man had often been bound…but the old techniques and ties didn’t work anymore. Evil had grown stronger. Evil isn’t static but grows. Demons are malignant beings who learn and adapt, who spring onto new technology. Satan prowls and plans; he’s a long-term strategist with patience that’ll take your breath away.
No one had the strength to subdue him – Mark uses this phrase to paint the picture of this man’s anguish. You might think that being in a place where no one has any power over you would be great. No accountability, no governance, no real restriction – but this isn’t a good place.
V. 5 – “Night and day…always” – The churning of evil is relentless. The devil has no pity. The demons, driven by their own gnawing misery, want to enfold us and our children into their misery. And their restlessness wills to make those we love restless and fatigued.
Fatigued by stupid desires. Dependencies. Addictions. Big impossible dreams. Chasing empty promises made by silly and careless people.
Parents can suddenly realize: my child is tired.
The man was among the tombs and on the mountains – on the mountains emphasizes that this man was outside of society, alone. Generally speaking, that’s not good. “He who isolates himself…rages against all wise judgment.”
Another description we’re given: Crying out and cutting himself with stones. The evil one is a joy stealer, a happiness killer. Yes, sin offers pleasure for a season, but it’s a short season. There’s something suicidal about every transaction with the devil.
From Luke’s account and v. 15, we learn that the man was running around in a state of undress. Was he totally naked? Possibly. The Bible’s psychological insight about nakedness is that it’s related to shame. Here is someone whose shame had so intermingled with his sense of self that he simply accepted it. I’m nasty and screwed up.
VV. 6,7 – The man runs from a distance to Jesus – well he must be overjoyed – only to say something like What do you want from me? He despises the Son of the Most High God yet is drawn toward him too. I think about those atheists who have created YouTube channels and every few days they make videos that raise the topic of God only to say why He’s not there or if He were there He must be malevolent. There’s something conflicted there.
When he calls Jesus the Son of the Most High God, he’s dead on, of course. In fact, if you’re reading through Mark’s gospel you’re struck by the fact that this troubled soul has a lot more insight into Jesus than do the Judean intellectuals. Yet I don’t think he’s using this title out of respect. If I’m in a city alley and some threatening thug walks up to me and says Ok, Colin David Landry, Son of Clovis, Son of Bertrand…. I’m thinking, oh shoot, this guy knows me completely AND thinks he’ll have no problem kicking my rear. In other words, this naming is an intimidation technique. A power move.
So…runs up to him. Wails about wanting to be left alone. Then attempts a power play. I need help…I hate your help. I hate you. Man, this guy is lost. Lost.
Seeing these massive contradictions, we’re not surprised that when Jesus asks what his name is, the answer is Legion. For we are many. Not simply that evil had invaded. But many evils had joined ranks and invaded and conquered.
So actually, here’s another point of description of this man. Controlled by many evils. Sometimes you look at a person… you look at yourself… and you see not just one main problem but several problems. Sometimes contradictory problems. Somehow I’ve managed to pull off being extremely averse to real work…and arrogantly proud…and judgmental at the same time.
To an extent this invasion of many is true of all of us. In his autobiography C.S. Lewis describes coming to a certain realization before his conversion: For the first time I examined myself with a seriously practical purpose. And there I found what appalled me: a zoo of lusts, a bedlam of ambitions, a nursery of fears, a harem of fondled hatreds. My name was legion.
So that’s the man, and he’s in a really bad way, and he had been getting worse for a long time, to the point that he was outside society and was known for being outside society and that’s just how it is so let’s the rest of us just get on with normal life. A bad guy that everyone, including himself, knows can’t be helped. Mark lingers over these descriptions to make us feel the hopelessness.
And although the man in this story is an especially striking case of the unleashing of the dark powers against humanity, nothing in here is that shocking. I mean, we’ve seen plenty of similar stuff today. We know about self-destructiveness and suicide. Even our secular prophets today are warning about young people, senior citizens, but even those in-between – becoming more and more isolated. Drawn into themselves. In the age of science, where we have so many explanations and answers, anxiety – crippling anxiety – is soaring. If we’re not screaming aloud like the demoniac, I don’t think I’m being melodramatic in observing that there’s a low-grade internal wail sweeping through society.
In this passage the Spirit wants to draw our attention to this ugly fact: Evil is real and present…and powerful.
2. The second observation is how little we understand evil.
Even though I find many scenes from Jesus’ ministry to be somewhat mysterious, this one is full of questions. So much so that one gets the impression that the shroud of mystery that hangs around this episode is purposeful. All the mysteriousness is didactic…intended to teach us how little we understand evil and the evil one and the underworld…and more broadly the supernatural…and how all of it interacts with this observable world.
Let me try to say that simply: This passage is purposely full of impenetrable mystery. May I just list some instances, though I’ll leave some out:
· We don’t know why Jesus chose to visit this Gentile region – today the disputed Golan Heights. As far as we know he visited here one time, made a positive impact on only this one strange fellow, and then – by popular demand – left never to return.
· The whole topic of demons is inscrutable: read the Old Testament and there’s very little about them, no exorcisms… and then enter Jesus and these beings start emerging. Keep reading past the gospels and you’ll find several allusions to the activity of demons and the Satan. We’re coached to assume that these dark powers are still operative today – – – but not given much info in discerning them. So many questions beginning with, when were they created? We know that they are fallen angels and buried in the OT prophets there’s some lore that might be telling that story. But more details please!
· We don’t understand the strength this man has. More fundamentally, we don’t understand where the man stops and the demons begin. “My name is Legion” – what? How about “Our name…”? We don’t understand demonic subjection: where is the line between mental illness, being spiritually bereft, and being subdued by demons? Why did so many enter one man?
· As we mentioned above, why does the man come running toward Jesus when the first words out of his mouth are about wanting to be left alone? Is there a “God-shaped hole” in everyone or do people naturally recoil from God?
· The man begs Jesus not to send the demons out of the country (v.10) – um, why? Are they territorial?
· Why does Jesus negotiate and even grant requests…of demons?!?
· Why do they want to enter the pigs? Why does the swine herd then rush down into the sea to be drowned?
· Why doesn’t Jesus solve the problem without the loss of any creaturely life?
So, this passage trains a spotlight on a fact that is generally true: Even though evil is real and present and powerful…In the Scriptures we are given negligible information about demons and Satan, the origin and mushrooming of evil.
In 2 Thessalonians Paul uses the phrase “the mystery of iniquity.” That phrase points to this: we are living among evil, evil has found its way into us – entangled in our members – the parts of our self, the segments of the body politic – – – yet we largely don’t understand it. It takes some experience and spiritual maturity – just to be able to discern good from evil! How much more understanding to resist evil, to do battle, to overcome!
Paul says this in Romans 7: I am of the flesh, sold under sin. For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate…So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me…
In 2 Corinthians Paul says that even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.
Discerning the good guys from the bad guys is a real job. Even discerning good from evil isn’t simple but comes after much experience. Understanding how wickedness arrives in us and tracing how it interacts with our will…even our most finely tuned spiritual masters do not understand. Evil is real and present yet how little we understand it. My friends, we got trouble with a capitol T that rhymes with D and it stands for Devils!
If you wanted one striking example of the sheer mystery of evil and its elusiveness, you need look no further than this passage. Where is the deepest evil in our episode today? And, of course, our mind first turns toward the lurid details like cemetery-dwelling, cutting, the naked shrieking man. There’s the deep evil.
But you arrive to the end of the passage and there’s someone saying let me hang with you Jesus and others saying, with all due respect, could you please find another venue. And then we ask again: where has the darkness gathered? In civilization. In suburbia. In normality.
And then one more thing: we ask ourselves, why did those townspeople very nicely ask Jesus to leave? Because this whole salvation, Kingdom expanding business was going to cost them some money. Sure, it’s nice to see that man relieved of demons but we don’t approve at how high the cost. Jesus’ priorities aren’t ours. This Kingdom of God is upsetting.
Jesus, this costs too much. Please move on. Now we’re staring into the heart of darkness. I didn’t see that coming!
Jesus, this costs too much. Please move on. And he does. And he will.
Evil is here. But we don’t see it…we think the problems are elsewhere.
3. Our final observational task will be to focus on Jesus.
We’ll do this briefly, and with a list of four.
· He’s there. I want to think that Jesus visited that region only to go after that sufferer.
· He’s in charge. This is the main lesson, I think. I want you to imagine this room of darkness and chaos and death – evil – and Jesus in the middle of that room. Calm. Focused. Hands up. Directing.
There are so many small yet compelling indications that Jesus is in charge. For starters, He’s issuing commands and they’re being obeyed – that’s a mic drop right there.
But then also he’s never taken aback by, what to us, are the strange requests. He understands all these creatures drives and needs.
And then this weird thing: he’s granting permissions (v.12) – why is he complying with their requests? If I were in Jesus place, I’d demand exactly the opposite of what the demons request. One creature is saved and 2000 lose their lives. What!? OK, Jesus values the human infinitely higher than the non-human. But then we ask again: why doesn’t Jesus exorcise the demons and send them packing without the loss of the 2000 swine? But that’s what we’re saying: this Man understands heaven and earth and the underworld…and I don’t. The best possible Man here makes the best possible move. This concession to demons? This tradeoff? Those seeming setbacks were the best possible moves! He understands; He’s in charge.
· He commissions. Through the commissioning of the now restored man he offers mercy to those that have asked him to leave, whom evil has mastered. You can’t be where I am yet. Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you… I’m sure that America – this country crouching toward death, vulnerable, conflicted, filled with shame – needs a lot of help. One thing that would help is simple: for those individuals who have been rescued by Christ to testify to their friends how much the Lord has done for them.
· Finally, in the war against evil and the dark powers, he takes our place. I’m not the first interpreter to notice that this is not the only man in Mark’s gospel who we find in the place of skulls, cut up, naked, and crying out with a loud voice. Yes, if man who goes by Legion is going to be finally and fully restored, if any of humanity is going to be saved from the evil that was launched into the world by our first parents…
…a second Adam must needs enter into the heart of evil and sin and death in our place.
For our sake God made him to be sin who knew no sin
…and the demons will need to be disarmed of their great power
God made us alive together with Jesus, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by cancelling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This [record of debt] he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He [thus] disarmed the [demonic] rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in the cross.
Jesus enters the heart of the underworld and comes out – Christus Victor.
Here’s the three-part lesson. 1) Don’t underestimate the power of evil… which could look like not registering that it has seeped into you. 2) Realize the darkness is too deep for you or Trump or Biden or slogans or rate cuts or self-help programs or romance or good kids to overcome. 3) Trust Jesus. Trust him in exactly this sense: that you’re believing what he says is true, that you’re following his directions, and you’re believing and following even before you understand how it could be true or where exactly he’s taking you.
Whatever it costs to have Christ around and advancing His rule – truly He’s our only hope in life and death.
Leave a Reply