Join me, at least in your minds,
in the Book of Mark. The Book of Mark is the shortest
of the Gospels, and it shares with us a lot about the Savior
as a servant. And as we follow the Lord Jesus
Christ through this book, as well as any of the books of the
New Testament, we find that the Lord never went anywhere without
a reason. He never got anywhere and said,
I wonder why I'm here. He always had a purpose in every
place he went. And he was finished with one
place. That wasn't the end. He had another place to go. Now
the ultimate end of the Savior was the cross. He had purpose
to come to this earth and lay down his life a ransom for people. That was the ultimate end. But
as we follow him through his life, through his ministry, those
last three years of his life, we find that he did many things
and said many things. And we've been looking at some
of the items or some of the things that the Lord did in the time
we've been with you in the past. And today we'd like to look about
a man who seems to be insane. He seems to be insane. And yet
the Lord has purposed to meet him exactly where he was. Now the scriptures tell us in
the book of Mark chapter 5, they went over to the other side of
the sea. Now Jesus had been in Capernaum,
let's just say that that's the Dalles, and he's going to travel
down to Dupher. But in between the two places,
there's a big lake called the Sea of Galilee. And so he takes
a boat from Capernaum across the lake down to Gadaree. Now that's about the distance
of going from here to Dufur, about 12 miles. And he went there
on purpose. Now there's a man down there
that he doesn't think he needs any help, but the Lord already
knows he needs a great deal of help. It tells us that, and when
he was come out of the ship, after the ship had stopped, they
got out of the ship and he's starting to walk, immediately
there met him out of the tombs. Now we know what the tombs are,
graveyard. No, that's what it is, a graveyard. This man is
living in a graveyard, in a cemetery. Says, immediately there met him
out of the tombs, a man with an unclean spirit. Now, it's
sad to say, but everyone that has ever been born into this
world has inherited a problem from our first father, Adam.
Adam was not to eat. He was told not to eat of some
forbidden fruit. Now some people say it's an apple.
We don't have in the Bible what it was, but it was some fruit
that he wasn't supposed to eat. And when he did, he disobeyed
God, and God had already told him, the day you eat, you shall
surely die. Now he died spiritually, but
he stayed alive physically for another 900 years. It's amazing
how old people were in the Old Testament. And Adam was one of
those people that was 960 years old when he died. Well, he's
been created with the appearance of age, so he died 960 years
later. He saw his seventh generation,
his seventh great-great. before he died. Now, when he
ate that fruit, the Bible tells us, and that's the only thing
we have to go on. I cannot go on what I think.
I have to go on what the Bible says. And the Bible says that
in Adam all died. So we kind of got this evil spirit
that Adam gave us. And it says he's an unclean spirit. And by that, it means when We
don't really wanna have anything to do with the Christ. We'll
get involved in religion, but we don't wanna have anything
to do with him or against him. Well, let's see what happens
here. Jesus is on a mission and he is on a specific mission.
He never goes anywhere without a reason, a purpose. Everything is on purpose. I wish
I could say that, that I've never gone anywhere that I wondered
why I was there. I've done that. Well, he goes
on, now who had his dwelling among the tombs and no man could
bind him. No, not with chains. Now it appears
that this man was so out of control that other people had attempted
to hold him in chains. Because it says here that he tried to cut himself with
stones. Now this guy is really out there.
They try to bind him with chains and nobody can do it because
they had been often bound with fetters and chains and the chains
had been plucked asunder by him. This man has super strength. He has the ability of taking
chains and breaking them. He is out of control and he can't
be controlled by even chains. Nobody could talk him We hear
the term, talk good sense into him. I've tried to do that with
my kids once in a while. Talk good sense into them. Don't
make these foolish mistakes. Well, this man, you couldn't
talk good sense into him. Nobody could bind him with chains.
And it just kind of reminds me of what religion often does.
We impose the law and say, now you're going to be better because
we have the law wrapped around you. And we continually break
them. We continue to break the 10 commandments all the time.
Well, we got somebody that can help here though. The Lord Jesus
Christ is omnipotent. That means he has all power in
the world. He is all powerful and he's all
knowing. And it was always night and day,
he was in the mountains and tombs crying, this man is out of control. Nancy and I, we used to teach
school and we'd see kids like this sometimes, just out of control.
Well, this man had grown up and he had this wicked spirit in
him. He had this attitude that had
been given to him in the fall of Adam, his father, and here
comes somebody to help him. Now, nobody else could help him.
That's the wonderful thing about the gospel. It does, it is able
to do what nobody else is able to do. The gospel is able to
save us. The Christ blood is able to save
us and deliver us from the great pain of the fall. Now when it
says in verse six, but when he saw Jesus afar off, he ran and
worshiped him and cried with a loud voice. And he says, what
have I to do with thee? Well, another translation says,
why are you interfering with me? Why are you interfering with,
why'd you come here? I don't want you here. Why did
you come here? Well, you know, when I heard
the gospel for the first time, I told Nancy, my wife, I hate
that man. I didn't want him. I didn't want
to go back. I didn't want to be it. I didn't want to hear
it. It was telling me that my works of righteousness was not
good. It would get me nowhere. This
preacher was preaching the gospel, and the gospel is all of Jesus
Christ. So this man comes, and that evil
spirit in him cries out, why are you interfering with me?
I'm having a good time. Well, how can a man have a good
time living in the tombs, crying all night, away from his family,
and nobody could control him? How could he say he's having
a good time? Well, he just doesn't know the goodness of God that
leads us to repentance. He goes on to say, and he said
unto him, come out of that man, thou unclean spirit. Now this
is the words that we find in the New Testament written in
red. These are the words of the Lord. The Lord said, demons come
out of him. They didn't say, well, when it's
time, or when we feel better about it, or when we feel good
about it. They came out at the command
of the Lord Jesus Christ. Come out. And he said, what is
thy name? And he answered saying, my name
is Legion, for we are many. Well, I looked up in a Roman
legion, there's between three and 6,000 men. So what we have
here is the embodiment of three to 6,000. Now, what does that
tell me? You know, people say, well, I
know I've sinned over here, but I've got all these good things
over here. What this is telling us is that there isn't any good
in us by nature. We don't have any good towards
God. We don't have any love for God by nature. And the Lord Jesus
Christ is going to take care of the problem. The Lord is going
to clean him up. He's going to clean him up much
better than his parents could. claiming much better than a preacher
could, claiming much better than any religious leader could, because
only they could reform. But he is going to regenerate.
He's going to give him grace. So it tells us here, and he answered
and said, my name is Legion, for we are many. And he besought
him much that he would not send them out of the country. He says,
please, please don't interfere with us. Just leave us alone. Well, that's not enough for the
Lord. The Lord has never given in to anybody. that he intends
to do some good for. The Lord is omniscient and omnipotent
and omnipresent and he has a mission and he's going to carry it out
exactly as he has determined to do. He has a people that are
in all every nation kindred people in town and he is about fighting
them and he has one that's been used to living in the tombs.
How bad could this be? How bad could this man be? Well,
we find another time there was a publican, and a publican is
a name for a tax collector. You know, the IRS just sends
us letters and we fill them out and put a check in there and
send them back. In the days of the Lord Jesus, there was a man
came knocking at your door. And he said, I want to collect
the taxes. And he'd collect the taxes. And
generally he was a Jew that had given himself over to the Romans.
and he was hired by the Romans. Now, they hated him. But this
publican would not even raise his eyes to heaven, smote his
breast and said, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. And Jesus said
that man went down to his house justified. And justified means
he had all his sin taken away. Well, this man He said, just
leave me alone, I'll be okay. And now there were in that nigh
in the mountains, a great herd of swine feeding and all the
demons besought him saying, send us into the swine that we may
enter into them. And forthwith, Jesus gave them
leave and the unclean spirit went out and entered into the
swine and they read down into the sea and they drowned. And
as we come back, we find that the Lord is dealing with this
man. And it said here that this man,
let me get to it. It tells us that this man, that
they came to Jesus and see him that was possessed of the devil
and had a legion. Now notice these three things
that he was doing. He was sitting and clothed and
in his right mind. Now, prior to this, Sad to say,
ladies and gentlemen, the man ran around naked. He was out
of his mind. He was naked before God and man. And the Lord clothed him. Now
that's a picture of him clothing us with a robe of righteousness.
And he's sitting, he's sitting at the feet of Jesus. The one
that he said, I don't want to have anything to do with is now
sitting at the feet of Jesus. He's clothed. And then the scripture
tell us something about this man. He was in his right mind
before he was an insane man. And now the Lord's disciples
come back to him and says, what is this? And the man is sitting
and clothed and in his right mind. Now the Lord is the only
one that could do that. Many other people had tried.
Many people go to different people to get help with their spiritual
needs, but there's only one that can deal with that, and that's
the Lord Jesus Christ. And they saw him that was, that
had been possessed of a devil, had a legion, and he's sitting
and clothed in his right mind, and the neighbors around says,
now we're afraid of him. And that's interesting before
he gave them reason to be afraid of him. And now he has, they
have no reason to be afraid of him and they're afraid of him.
Well, they couldn't do anything with him. They couldn't understand
him. And now the Lord came on purpose to this man who lived
in the tombs and blessed him with the greatest blessing that
anybody could be blessed with. And that is spiritual healing. He was made to be a child of
God. Now he's already a child before
the foundation of the world. God just identified him as that
here. You know, the scriptures tell
us that God looked down from heaven to see if there were anybody
that sought after him and he found none. You know what he
has to do now? He has to seek after us. We're
not going to go after him, he has to seek after us. And that
is what he's in the business of doing in his ministry today. Well, we find later in this chapter,
and we may cover part of it next time, there's a young girl that's
sick and he has to go deal with that. on purpose. Just remember,
the Lord never did anything or went anywhere without a purpose. And his purpose here was to deal
with a man that was insane, could not be bound, halted, or fettered. And the Lord dealt with him and
now he's sitting and clothed and in his right mind. That's
what God's people do. They sit at the feet of Jesus,
they have the robe of righteousness, and they have the mind of Christ.
What a glorious day it was for that man. And now, Jesus says,
I want you to go home and tell your family what great things
the Lord has done for you. In your hymn books,