2019-11-10 – Mark 5.1-20 – “Send Us To The Pigs”
Good morning everyone. It is so nice to be able to spend some time with you all in fellowship with the Lord. Thank you and God bless you for being with us today.

Thank you all again for those that contributed to the Business Meeting and luncheon last week. It was a joy to experience fellowship with you all and consider with you the quarter year past and what’s ahead for our church.

Before we get started today, I want to recognize the fact that tomorrow is Veterans Day, where we recognize our past and present military. I hope you have the opportunity to get out and consider the freedoms we enjoy as a result the efforts and sacrifices of our military citizens of this great nation. In that regard, if you have served in military service or as an emergency responder, would you please rise. [applause] And if you are or were a family member of one of those, we applaud you as well. We also have a few current military members to recognize, Dan Mitchell, Stephen Higdon, Quentin Manual. Are there any others?

Please turn in your Bibles to Mark 5.1, pew Bibles pg. 891 in God’s Inspired, Infallible and Living Word, but let us first start with Prayer.

To give you a little background to what we are going to discuss today, you should know that Jesus was in the first year of His three year ministry. He had been performing many miracles, He chose His twelve apostles, and as we learned last week in this book of Mark, He was showing them and us effectively, that He really is the Christ, the Messiah Savior that the Jews were waiting for. Last week we went over how after Jesus was teaching from the boat to the masses of people on the Sea of Galilee. Afterwards they went to cross over to the other side of the sea when they were caught up in a huge storm. Jesus then calmed the seas and the apostles conveyed their fear not of the sea, but now of Jesus Himself, saying “Who then is this? Even the wind and the sea obey him!” They realized that this man Jesus, was not only fully man, but also fully God at the same time. He was and is still in control of even creation itself. That is a thought and reality that all of us should come to in our faith walk. Jesus wasn’t just a good man. Jesus wasn’t just a most excellent prophet. Jesus was and is God in the flesh.

That takes us to chapter 5 now of this great Gospel book of Mark.

Mark 5 Demons Driven Out by Jesus

5 They came to the other side of the sea, to the region of the Gerasenes.
2 As soon as he got out of the boat, a man with an unclean spirit came out of the tombs and met him. 3 He lived in the tombs, and no one was able to restrain him anymore—not even with a chain— 4 because he often had been bound with shackles and chains, but had torn the chains apart and smashed the shackles.
No one was strong enough to subdue him. 5 Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains, he was always crying out and cutting himself with stones.

6 When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and knelt down before him. 7 And he cried out with a loud voice, “What do you have to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you before God, don’t torment me!” 8 For he had told him, “Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!”

9 “What is your name?” he asked him. “My name is Legion,” he answered him, “because we are many.” 10 And he begged him earnestly not to send them out of the region.

11 A large herd of pigs was there, feeding on the hillside. 12 The demons begged him, “Send us to the pigs, so that we may enter them.” 13 So he gave them permission, and the unclean spirits came out and entered the pigs. The herd of about two thousand rushed down the steep bank into the sea and drowned there.

This small piece of His-Story is so much more significant than even what it initially conveys to the everyday casual Bible reader. It seems like it is just a brief instance that Jesus has the ability to exercise and demonstrate His amazing powers, even over that of the demon possessed. But just like so many other incidents in our Bible, especially those related to Jesus Christ, there are so many other deeper implications of these scripture verses. I have the privilege, in preparing theses sermon messages to dig a little deeper than the casual readers, and to that I am most blessed in doing so. I can start you out with a few questions that you might even ask yourself about this event.

Why did Jesus go there in the first place?
Who are these demons?
Why would the demons ask to be sent into the pigs?
Why did the pigs kill themselves?
What does this have to do with me?

We will go through these questions one at a time then summarize.

So why did Jesus go to this place? As I read in the introduction, Jesus was making Himself known throughout the area of Galilee. So many people came to see and learn from Him that He chose to teach from a boat while the crowd was on shore so He could be most effective at reaching the masses. He gave the effort all He had until it was getting dark and then Jesus told the disciples to finally go over to the other side of the sea. While they were sailing, they ran into a horrible storm that we talked about last Sunday, while Jesus was fast asleep. That is until the disciples woke Him up in fear of their lives. Jesus calmed the storm and they subsequently landed the boat on this region of the Gerasenes.
I will argue though that they didn’t just accidently land on this spot where the crazy demon possessed man was living. Instead I will suggest it was a divine purpose that took Jesus to that area. 1) to heal the man and show Jesus’s divinity and power, but also 2) to spread the Gospel through the healed man’s testimony. We will talk about that more later.

The man that met them was possessed by a “legion” of demons. A legion is a military term meaning thousands. So thousands of demons had possessed this man for quite some time. If you read also the other accounts of this event as written in Matthew 8:28 and Luke 8:26 , you will see this man was such a problem that they tried to chain him up, but he broke out of those chains and was running round naked amongst the tombs of the dead. He was also cutting himself with sharp rocks and howling uncontrollably. The towns’ folk were rightfully afraid of him and they avoided that area as much as possible. He was truly a crazed demon possessed lunatic and a menace to society.

The legion of demons inside the man immediately recognized Jesus from afar and they had the man run and kneel down before him. Verse seven says “he cried out with a loud voice, “What do you have to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?”” Demons, as you should know are fallen angels. There are a couple events in the Bible that talk about demons or fallen angels. One from before creation when Satan tried to take God’s thrown. God threw Satan out of heaven with one-third of the angels. Some of those fallen-angels (Jude 1:6) are locked “in darkness, bound with everlasting chains” for their sin. Others I believe, are free to roam and still follow Satan as their leader and do battle with the holy angels in an attempt to thwart God’s plan and hinder God’s people (Daniel 10:13 ). I will never claim that I have it all figured out, but I know demons do exist and they have influence on our world. But God is in control.

As we see in our verses today, demons have the ability to take possession of a physical body, but take comfort dear Christian, knowing that this cannot happen to a child of God, since the Holy Spirit resides in the heart of the believer (1Jon4)

This event here today you should know is very significant in that although Jesus and the Apostles run into demons on several different occurrences, there is no place else recorded in scripture where so many demons are engaged other than before creation and in Revelation. Jesus was showing the apostles His authority and His power in a big way. First, as we discussed last week, Jesus commanded even the storm and the sea, and now He is exorcizing a legion of demons. If there was any doubt in the minds of the apostles before, you would think these two events should have dispelled them. Jesus was and is truly God in the flesh.

So why would these demons ask to be sent into the pigs? And Why did the pigs kill themselves? First you should know that this is a Gentile area outside of the strong influence of the Jewish religious authority. Another way you know this is that they were raising pigs, and Jews don’t eat pig. These thousands of demons, knew their time was short, they recognized Jesus right away and threw themselves prostrate, through the man at Jesus’s feet. I have know idea what Jesus might have otherwise done with these demons, but I can guess based upon their request that going into pigs was better for them than the alternative. Maybe they thought they could still exist and negatively influence the world through the pigs. Maybe make people feel guilty by eating them, lol. I have seen rabid animals before and it is ugly-scary for sure, and I would bet a demon possessed swine would be ugly-scary as well and perhaps even deadly too.

I have no doubt that Jesus could have bound and destroyed all these demons in a moment if He wanted to. We know this because that is exactly what is laid out for us in the book of Revelation. Satan and all the demons are chained and bound for a thousand years it says. If he can do it in the future, then He could do it during this event as well. But God has a purpose for even these demons. If it were not for the demons and their negative influence, then we might never want to choose to believe in a Savior Messiah. Some things we will never fully understand this side of heaven, but I trust that God knows everything. So the demons ask, and Jesus gives them permission to enter the pigs. The pigs immediately rush down the hill and do a “Swine-dive” over the cliff into the water below. Scripture doesn’t tell us, but I would bet they had sa