Turn this evening in your Bibles
to the book of Mark chapter 5. And let's read this portion of
scripture beginning in verse 1 of Mark 5. And they came over, that's the
Lord Jesus Christ and his disciples, 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, that's our Lord, 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, not
with chains, because that he had been often bound with fetters,
that's ropes, and with chains, and the chains had been plucked
asunder by him, he just tore them off as if they were paper,
and the fetters, the rope broken in pieces, neither could any
man tame him. And always, night and day, he
was in the mountains and in the tombs, and he was crying and
cutting himself with stones. But when he saw Jesus afar off,
he ran and worshiped him. and cried with a loud voice and
said, What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou 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, the Lord asked
him, What is thy name? And the spirit answered and sang,
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 near or nigh unto the mountains a great herd of swine,
or pigs, 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. And there were about two thousand
of the pigs. And they were choked in the sea. They drowned. And
they that fed the swine fled and told it in the city and in
the country, and they went out to see what it was that was done. And they come to Jesus and see
him that was possessed with the devil and had the legion. And this man was sitting, and
he was clothed, and he was in his right mind. And they were
afraid. And they that saw it told them
how it befell to him that was possessed with the devil, and
also concerning the swine. And they began to pray that the
Lord Jesus would depart out of their coast. And when he was
coming to the ship, he that had been possessed with the devil
prayed to our Lord that he might be with him. Albeit Jesus suffered
him not, but saith unto him, Go home to thy friends, and tell
them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath
had compassion on thee. And a man departed and began
to publish in Decapolis how great things Jesus had done for him,
and all men did marvel. Now, there's a lot of folks mentioned
in this portion of Scripture. In verse 14, there were they
that fed the swine. Now, I don't know if y'all know
much about pigs, but I had an uncle who had a farm that raised
some pigs. I didn't much care for slopping those hogs and the
smell they gave off. It is one nasty job. They stink like no other animal
I know of. But you know, there's always
those who will do anything to get through this life and make
a living. And there were they. But also in verse 14, there were
they that went out to see what was done. There's always those
who are curious about what's going on or what happened. But you see, they have no real
interest in who was doing it in the Lord Jesus Christ. And
in verse 17, there was they, those who all they wanted was
for Christ to get away from them. They didn't want anything to
do with Him. They despised Him. But lastly, there was this man,
this demon-possessed man, a crazy fellow. Now, my question to us
is, who among they do you and I identify with? Well, there are at least one
trait or quality of one of these people with whom every one of
us in this room should be able to identify. We all do realize, don't we,
that we're just more than a little bit crazy. I said that once before
here, and old Joe said it. Amen. You old enough to know
that, aren't you, Joe? We're more than a little bit
crazy. Turn over to Acts 19, and I want
you to see something. Acts chapter 19. Now, I don't know a whole lot
about demons and devils. And frankly, I don't want to
know too much. And let me advise you children, you young people
about something. I know all the rage right now
on TV is this foolishness about vampires and goths and all these
weird creatures and stuff. You know, don't worry about them.
Just leave them alone. Don't get involved with those
who are interested in them. It won't work out well for you.
I'm going to show you about some fellows who were mighty strong
and knew a lot about the Bible, had a big religious upbringing,
and they thought they could handle some of these demons. Let me
show you what happened to them in Acts 19, verse 13. Then certain of the vagabond
Jews, these were traveling Jews, they call themselves exorcists,
took upon them to call over them which had evil spirits the name
of the Lord Jesus, saying, we command you or adjure you by
Jesus whom Paul preached. And there were among these vagabonds
seven sons of a man named Sceva who was a Jew and the chief of
the priests in that area. And these seven fellows did that.
Somebody would say, we've got a crazy son. And they'd go in
and a crazy child. And they would command these
spirits to come out. Well, they tried this. And the
evil spirit answered and said, Jesus Christ, I know. And Paul,
his apostle, I know. And he said, who are you? Who were you? Now you go messing
with spirits and stuff and they're going to... Let me tell you,
you're nobody. You're nobody to them. They have
power that you and I don't have and we'd be best just to leave
them alone. And the man in whom the evil spirit was, when these
fellows said, you get out of him, they leaped on those seven
fellows and overcame them and prevailed against them so that
they fled or ran out of the house naked and wounded. It's a bad thing to mess with
this sort of thing. All right. Now, what is a demon
or a devil? That's something we need to understand.
And again, you children don't have to be afraid of this because
all that is, it's an easy answer. A devil is nothing but an angel
who sinned. It's an angel who fell. A third
of the angels were led by Lucifer to rebel against God. They sinned.
And God gathered them up and threw them to the earth. And
that's where they dwell now. But it's nothing but an angel.
And listen, every devil, all the devils are God's devils.
And they can't do a thing to you or me or anybody else without
God's permission. Do you remember in the story
we read here that these demons said, the Lord said, come out. Well, they couldn't come out
until He told them to. And then He said, they said, can we go
into the pigs? And they couldn't do that unless
He said, okay, you can go into the pigs. You see, they can't
do anything to God's people without God's permission. So that we
don't have to run around being all afraid and terrified of all
this sort of thing. But here's what I'm going through
all this to try to show us. You know what a crazy person
is? Just a person who sinned. Just a person who sinned. And
I think that means all of us. Which is why I said we're all
more than a little bit crazy. We are all so sinful. In this
day and time, unless somebody acts like Adolf
Hitler or Fidel Castro or Jeffrey Dahmer who killed all those people,
if somebody doesn't act like that, sin is so common in our
day. Lying, cheating, stealing, murder,
adultery, homosexuality, all that stuff is so common, we don't
even recognize crazy when we see it amongst ourselves. Somebody's got to kill six million
Jews before they go, that guy was crazy. And you see, the only difference
between you and me and that man is God's restraining hand. He
kept us from being that crazy. And all he did was let his hand
off a man, and we'd do anything. We're capable of anything. Sin
craziness is a terrible thing. But the truth is we're all crazy
enough that one day God's gonna put every sinner either in Christ
or in hell where we'll do no more harm. And you children,
I'm a little reluctant to tell you this. It may be something your folks
may not be too anxious for me to tell you, but have you ever done something
that your folks, all of a sudden, they found out about it, or you
got caught. And all of a sudden, they went, what were you thinking? Are you out of your mind? Are
you just crazy? What were you thinking? I remember
my dad saying that to me the first time. And it was a good
question. It was a good question. But now,
kids, how is it your folks know that about you? How do they know
to ask you that? You know why? They're crazy. How do they know what you were
thinking? How do they know what you would do? It's because they were crazy
too. You say, why don't they still
act crazy? Well, sometimes maybe they do
and you just don't know about it. Or maybe something's changed
to make them not act so crazy and to think so crazy and be
so crazy anymore. And I want you young people to
listen to what can happen if you come to know the Lord Jesus
Christ. You don't have to be crazy anymore.
You see this fellow, let me show you three things about this fellow.
And we can identify with them by nature. You know where this
fellow lived? You know where his home was?
It was in a cemetery. He lived in the tombs. He lived
with dead people. And do you know that every man,
woman, and child that's been born since Adam, we are all dead
men walking. Now, I can look around at the
gray heads here and they'll admit, it's not going to be long, is
it? For we're going to be dead. You see, when Adam ate of the
fruit, God said in the day you eat Adam, you're going to die.
Now he ate and he didn't just fall over dead physically, but
he did die spiritually. That's what makes him crazy.
Sin will make you crazy. But he did die spiritually. So
he doesn't think straight, but he didn't die physically. But
we're going to die physically one day. We just are. The day ye eat thereof, thou
shalt surely die. And do you know what? We're living
among the dead. Everybody here is going to die. And we're just
like this man in that regard. We're dead men walking. But secondly,
this man had been bound by ropes and chains, and yet nothing could
restrain him. And do you know the inventions
of men? The laws of men? Does that keep everybody honest?
Yeah, all you got to do is say, don't lie. If you lie about it
and take people's money, you go to jail. That stops everybody,
doesn't it? No, it doesn't stop anybody,
does it? Doesn't stop you children from telling you folks not the
truth sometimes, does it? And you ought always to tell
them the truth. But you see, not even the law
of God stops men, stops sinners from committing sin. It won't
do it. And modern religion, you know,
it's not going to restrain. It may restrain men for a while.
But eventually, they're going to throw it over. Why? Because
sin madness is not an outward problem. It's a sickness of the
heart. It comes from the inside outside. It's not the environment or bad
companions that influence the degree of our evil at any point
in time. But kids, don't hang out with
the wrong people. If your folks say, I don't think
we're going to have a play date with them anymore. You listen
to them. If the teacher, if there's somebody in school who's always
in trouble, you'd be wise to stay away from that. That's just
good common sense. But I tell you what, there's
no righteousness before God in that. It's not going to make
you good. It's not going to take away your
craziness. It can't do it. Unless God restrains us, otherwise
we're capable of acting like the worst of all the crazy sinners.
But I want you to notice the third thing. This man was always
crying. It describes him as living in
the mountains and running all over through the hills and then
they buried people up in there in these rock caves and things.
And he is running around all the time. And that word crying
means he was screaming in torment. and he was crying out for help. It's the same thing that when...
Well, let me deal with that in a minute, but it's... Just let
it suffice to understand that this man kept screaming for two
reasons. Everything in this life, I promise,
does one of two things to all of us. By nature, only two things. You say, that sounds way too
simple. Well, you see if I'm not right. Everything in this
life either scares us So I've never been afraid. Well, you
know, let the right thing happen, it'll scare you. You sitting
in a foxhole in a firefight, I promise you, you'll get scared.
Most of it, all it takes is somebody to walk up behind us real soft
and go, boo, and we jump out of our hide. Everything either
scares us or you know what else it does? It frustrates us. It
frustrates us. There's no satisfaction in it.
All the goods and all the things in this world are never going
to satisfy us. There is never any peace as long
as the guilt of sin is with us. We are scared to death of the
consequences of sin and we ought to be. And we know we can't do
anything about it and that frustrates us. But then lastly, notice that
this man cut himself. Now, I suppose it means if he's
running around naked, he's stepping on stones and cutting his feet.
But it means more than that. He was taking sharp stones and
he would cut himself, make himself bleed. And whenever we sin, there's
always consequences. Sinning is the most self-destructive
thing a person can do, yet we persist and insist on doing it
anyway. And it's a death by a thousand
cuts. The truth is, it only takes one
sin for us to be condemned. God's holy. He won't tolerate
even one sin. But we just make a big time of
it. We start right after we're born and we just keep right on
going all the way to the grave. And God is so holy, He won't
tolerate sin. And I'll tell you what, it's
just, we're just killing ourselves the more we do it. But this poor
fellow, he's in a mess, isn't he? And so are we by nature. That's the point. So what do
we need? Well, you and I need the same
thing this man needed. You know what that was? Look
at verse 6. Back in Mark 5, verse 6. When
this man saw Jesus afar off, he ran and worshipped Him. We
need Christ first to come where we are, and we need to run to
Him. We need to worship Him. He did
so and now let's consider how this man was after he met Christ.
You see in verse 15, read that with me. They came to Jesus to
see Him that was possessed of the devil and had the legion
sitting. He was sitting. He was sitting. He'd been running all over that
mountain. For years he'd been running like a crazy man. And
they'd tie him up, he'd break him and he'd run some more. They'd
chain his ankles, he'd break them, he'd run some more. He
never sat down. Turn over to Isaiah chapter 6
with me. If we ever see the Lord Jesus
Christ, we'll stop running from one thing
to another. And we'll sit down. You see, we need to see the Lord
Jesus Christ sitting on His throne. In Isaiah chapter 6, look at
verse 1. In the year the king Uzziah died,
I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne. He was sitting down.
Do you know why the Lord Jesus Christ is sitting down? His work's
done. It's over. He's done what needed
to be done to redeem God's people. He came to this earth, lived
a perfect life without sin. He died on the cross to put away
the sin of His people. He's gone back to the Father
and He sat down on the throne. You know why this man never sat
down? He had no peace. He was scared to death of when
he was going to die. And that's by us by nature too.
There's no peace. We can't sit down. We have no
confidence in what we've done or what we have to do, what we're
afraid of. But if we see Him sitting like
this, it says in verse 2 of Isaiah 6, Above it stood the seraphim,
each one had six wings, with two he covered his face, with
two he covered his feet, and two he did fly. And the one cried
unto another, saying, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts, the
whole earth is full of His glory. The posts of the doors moved
at the voice of Him that cried, and the house was filled with
smoke. And then what happened? When Isaiah saw Him seated, he
said unto himself in verse 5, Woe is me, for I am undone. I am a man of unclean lips, and
I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. Mine eyes have
seen the King, the Lord of hosts. If we ever see the Lord Jesus
Christ, we'll shut our mouths, stop working, stop trying to
do anything. We'll see ourselves as sinful,
and we'll sit down. And if we ever see Christ, we'll
run to worship Him. You know, a pastor doesn't have
to beg, bribe, or threaten God's people to come worship Him. They'll
run to sit and worship at every opportunity. Nobody held a gun
to anybody's head here tonight, did they? I hope not. You're
here because you want to be here. You want to hear more about the
Lord Jesus Christ and how He put away our sins so I don't
have to be scared anymore. But then notice back in our text
in verse 15, it said not only was he sitting, it says that
he was clothed. The madman was sitting and he
was clothed. Adam's fig leaf only drew attention
to his nakedness. But you and I don't have to be
naked anymore. Do we understand? We have clothes
now. The Lord Jesus Christ, do we
realize that when it describes what happened at the cross, they
took all these clothes. And that had to be so humiliating
and so awful. When they nailed Him on the tree,
He had no clothes. Because He's us by nature. We have no righteousness. We've
got no fig leaf. We've got nothing to cover us.
But He died like that. And before He went up there,
they took His robe. You know what that robe represents? It's
the blood of Jesus Christ cast over us. We don't have to be
afraid anymore. Our sin's all gone. And we now
have the righteousness of Christ. We're clothed in His righteousness. We don't have to be afraid anymore.
We as God's children have the very righteousness of Christ
as our wedding garment. We can worship without fear and
in complete confidence. But then notice the third thing.
He was sitting. He was clothed. And I like this. He was in his right mind. He
wasn't crazy anymore. Wow. Can you imagine a fellow
been running around crazy all his life? And now he wasn't crazy
anymore. Sin makes us all crazy. But if
the Lord Jesus Christ has put away our sin, we don't have to
be crazy anymore. Does anybody here think your
case is too hard for our Lord? You think you're just too bad? There's just too much craziness
in you. Does anybody think that? Turn
over to Hebrews chapter 7. I wouldn't blame you if you thought
that. Consider this poor man and the
tombs. Consider the magnitude of his condition. What do we
know about this man's capacity for sin? You think God can save this man? He can save anybody. He might
save me even. Well, you'd be right because this man, you know
how many devils he had in him? His name was Legion. You all
know how many were in a Roman legion? It varied some, but some
of the legions had 12,000 men. This man had 12,000 demons in
him. What is our capacity for evil?
I don't know if that's the limit or not, but that gets my attention,
doesn't it yours? How much ever devil's demons
there were in him, it took 2,000 pigs to hold them. When they
came out of this fella, the 2,000 pigs, it took all of them to
absorb it, and then it drove them crazy that they ran off
a cliff and all drowned. What's our capacity for evil?
This man's capacity for sin and evil was immense. And so is mine,
and so is yours. It's okay to sit here and think,
if God saved this man, He could sure save me. You'd be right.
Go on. Beg God to take away every sin
you have. Do what this man did. Run to
the Lord Jesus Christ. Sit at His feet. Beg for mercy. He'll do it. He'll do it. In Hebrews 7, do you see in verse
25? Wherefore He, our Lord, is able
also to save them to the uttermost. You got ten legions worth of
sin? It's okay. The Lord can take
care of one legion. He can take care of a thousand
legions that come unto God by Him, seeing He ever liveth to
make intercession for them. Our God, He is able to deliver
you. Most gods being preached in most
pulpits in this world couldn't save anybody. They all say, well,
if you or if I have to, you know, if we got to do anything, whether
it's walk an aisle, let him into our heart, come to him, do some
good deeds, keep the law, if it's anything, all that is, is
being bound by chains and ropes of religion. It's crying in the
land of the dead, and that's a death by a thousand cuts. Won't
do us any good. But if we ever see Christ, if
He comes where we are, and His Spirit will show us, not that
if God could save this fellow, He could sure save me. No, no,
listen. No. What we'll see is this. If Christ by His Spirit saved
me, I don't have any problem understanding how to save this
crazy guy. He hadn't got a thing on me. All he had was one legion. I know myself better than that. I pray God will show each one
of us who and what we are by nature. Oh, if that happens. We'll do
what this fellow did. Go back to the text. Do you see
what this fellow did in Mark 5 verse 18? And when he was coming
to the ship, when our Lord got on the ship ready to leave, he
that had been possessed of the devil prayed to our Lord that
he might be with him. Sort of takes the fear out of
being old, doesn't it? Sort of take some of that out.
Y'all understand that I can give you a great example of this.
My son Luke went to visit his granddad, Henry Mahan of Virginia,
not long ago. And Henry got ready to go to
bed and he came up to Luke and he said, Luke, he said, I got
the same prayer every night when I go to bed. He said, I asked
the Lord to have me not wake up here, but wake up with him.
Now, if we live long enough, that's the place we're going
to come to. We're tired of it. We're just worn out with sin.
And we just want to go be with Him. Isn't that what we want? We want to go be with Him. I
tell you what, you kids, your mom loves your dad, and that's
why she wants to be with him. Your dad loves your mom, that's
why he wants to be with her. If you love one another, that's
why we come here. We want to be with Christ, but
until then, let's be with each other and worship Him. Our great desire will be to go
where He is. But look in verse 19, what happened?
Howbeit Jesus suffered him not. And let me stop there a minute. This is so wonderful to me, to
see this. Now, he's going to tell him he
can't go with him. He's going to tell this used
to be crazy fellow he can't go with him. And you say, oh, I
bet he suffered for that. It might have upset him at the
time because he wanted so much to be with Christ, but you'll
see it's going to work out just fine. It doesn't say the man
suffered. Do you see who suffered? For
this man not being with Him, it says our Lord suffered. Now
listen to me here. Our Lord Jesus Christ so loves
His children, He suffers for them not being with Him right
now where He is. But if He makes it that way,
it's for our good and the glory of God the Father. So if we dwell
here a while, if we have to stay on, That's His will. But you see, it says, He suffered
that the man not, but said unto him, Go home to your friends,
and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee,
and hath had compassion on you. Our Lord had other plans for
this man. Our Lord told him to go home, to tell his friends.
Now I understand, our Lord has apostles, and prophets, and evangelists,
and pastors, and teachers, and all these things. And we may
say, well, I'm none of these. I'm not any of those. Why am
I still here? Well, we may not be some of those things,
but you and I do have a home, don't we? And we do have friends
and we ought to tell them two things. What great things the
Lord has done for us and that he's had compassion on us. That's
the only two things that matter. When I first became a believer,
I ran to my family and said, wow, I got something to tell
you. And I started talking about the
doctrines of grace and Calvinism and all this stuff. And they
were like, what are you talking about? And dear old Charlie Payne
one day said, Bob, quit talking about all of that and go tell
them what the Lord's done for you. And I wish I had before
I wrecked my whole family. It's simple, isn't it? Just tell
him, go home, tell a friend, tell your friends what great
things he's done for you. And we can sure tell him about
how much compassion, as crazy as we are, we can tell him about
the compassion, can't we? Anybody here deserve not to be
crazy anymore? I don't think so. But by God's
grace, he's had mercy on me. He's taken away my crazy and
given me his righteousness. What ought we to do? Well, we
ought to do what this man did. What the Lord told him to do.
You see in verse 20? And the man departed and began
to publish in Decapolis how great things Jesus had done for him.
And do you know what? Folks marveled. I tell you, they're
not going to marvel at Calvinism. They're not going to marvel at
the doctrine of grace. They're not going to marvel at election. They're
not going to marvel at any of that. But I tell you what, if they
knew you before, And they see you now. You think the folks
that saw this crazy man didn't go, wow, something happened here.
If they knew you when you were crazy, you tell them who changed
you. You tell them what he did for
you. He had compassion on you. And you know what will happen?
They'll marvel. They'll marvel. They might just come with you
to hear your pastor preach the gospel. It appears that the Lord
raised up a missionary here, an evangelist. Decapolis was
ten cities in an area, and this fellow went to all of them, telling
what the Lord had done. He exalted Christ, what great
things the Lord had done for him, and he confessed his sin
and his need of Christ. And you and I again say, well,
I'm not a preacher or teacher, and that's okay. It's good not
to know what we're not. Do you hear that? I appreciate
what our pastor's doing in this preacher school, and I don't
want to get sidetracked here, but I beg you, pray for what's
going on. Pray for what our Lord is doing.
Our pastor is putting immense effort and time and energy, and
God's blessing it. Can't you see what he's doing
when he's sending these young men who never spoke? I mean,
he's raising them up. I think this is called revival,
and we're getting to see it. Pray God will continue to bless
it. And it doesn't mean everybody in there is going to be a pastor
or even a preacher. That's not the point. But we
can all go home and tell somebody, can't we? It's good to know what
we're not. But we all have homes. If he hadn't done something great
for you, hear this. If He hadn't done something great
for you, you don't have any sense of His compassion. Maybe He hasn't. Maybe we don't know Him yet.
Maybe we're still crazy. Tell me. Tell those folks. So they'll marvel. The Lord can
make them marvel and then ask them to come hear your pastor.
I want you to see one other thing. Back in verse... When I started
this message, I said there was a lot of A lot of people in this
story, but I didn't mention in verse 1, they. They came over
the other side of the sea. You know, our Lord came a long
way for this one sinner who was a crazy man. He went all the
way across the sea for one guy. One guy. And that's a picture
of our Lord came from glory to this earth for His children,
for God's children, to save His sheep. And He'll send His Spirit
a long way, however far, for one of His own. But do you know
why He came? This man was running around crying. And I can tell you what he was
crying. He was crying the same thing that Blind Bartimaeus was
on the side of the road. Jesus, Thou Son of David, have
mercy on me. He was crying the same thing
the fellow in the temple cried. Beat upon his chest and said,
Oh God, be merciful to me, the sinner. God's people cry out. Cry out. If you don't know Christ,
cry out. Go ahead, cry out. Ask Him to
have mercy. To come where you are. He will.
This is proof of it. And I can tell you why you cry
out. Because He sends His Spirit to make you cry. It's not something
you gin up and go, I guess I ought to do this or get baptized or
what, no. No. God ever touches our heart and
says, cry, cry, we'll cry. And when we cry, He'll come.
Doesn't matter how far, He'll come. He will send His Spirit
a long way. And this account is proof and
evidence that the crazy man cried out. Christ came and set him
free. And I asked in the beginning, who is it you want to be identified
with? Is it they that do anything to make a living? Is it they
that hate Christ? Is it they that are religious? Is it they
that are curious? No, this is the they you want
to be identified with right here. The Lord Jesus Christ and His
disciples. That's who you want to be identified
with. Seek Him. Seek Him. This account is not
so much about a madman as it is all about the God-man. The
Lord Jesus Christ. He gets all the glory in this.
The madman went his way and did as he should. And I'll tell you
where he is right now. He's with our Lord. Our Lord's not suffering
anymore over this man. No, He's with him where He is.
Well, I pray the Lord will bless His Word tonight. Paul, you got
a closing hymn?