Jesus - An Extraordinary Provoker (part 2) - Mark 5:1-20

Sermon Series: Spare Me the Details - Just Give Me Jesus

What are some of the things that make people comfortable and give people peace in life?  Seriously, what do you think some of those things are?  Two things came to my mind.  The first is ‘familiarity.’  Most people hate change.  It makes them uncomfortable and takes away their sense of peace.  So if that’s the case I’d argue that things that are familiar actually give people a sense of peace and comfort.  It doesn’t matter if what is familiar is a bad thing.  People have learned to live and cope within that bad situation, and while the situation may be bad, there is still a sense of comfort because they have learned to live and maintain in that environment.  The second thing that came to my mind was money.  When people have money in the bank it seems to give them a sense of peace and comfort.  I think the thought is, “If something goes wrong then I can either buy a ‘new’ one or I can pay someone to repair the thing that’s not working properly (whether it’s a car, a hot water heater, or even a marriage).”  But what are we to do when what’s familiar and money are taken away from us?  Does that mean we have to go without comfort and peace?  Does that mean we’ve lost the two things that really matters?  Or is it possible that there is something (or someone) that is more important than these things and that is far more important to run after than familiarity and money?  That’s the question that I believe this week’s text will answer.

Last week we considered Jesus as an extraordinary provoker.  And in Mark’s account of Jesus calming a storm we saw that His provocative power was on display in two ways.  We argued that when Jesus demonstrates His power by confidently declaring future situations and when He demonstrates His power over all of creation that should provoke a response from us.  It did for His disciples and close followers.  They had to choose to respond in either ‘fear’ or in ‘faith?’  In this week’s text we are going to continue to consider Jesus as an extraordinary provoker and we are going to see two other ways in which His provocative power was on display and challenging others to respond to Him. 

Before we jump into the text, it’s important this week that I make a few notes about the context.  On several occasions in Mark’s gospel we have been surprised by Jesus (largely because He does and says things that are unexpected).  The setting for this story is once again an unusual and unexpected one, which seems to go right along with the rest of Mark’s gospel.  Let’s begin by noting that Jesus, His disciples, and some of His close followers have just come out an enormous storm on the Sea of Galilee and they are headed for the eastern side of the sea.  The area on the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee and the Jordan River wasn’t Jewish territory but was almost exclusively made up of Gentiles.  So for these Jewish men to travel into Gentile territory for the sake of doing ministry was a very unexpected move.  These Jewish men were entering an area that most of their Jewish counter-parts would have considered unclean because of the Gentiles and their pagan faiths.  Then notice that Mark gets even more specific about where they land.  Verse 2 says that they met a man “out of the tombs.”  Of all the places that the disciples could have put their boats ashore it appears that Jesus directed them to put the boats ashore near an area used primarily as a burial place.  Now OT Law declared that anyone who came into contact with the dead was defiled and was made unclean for seven days.  And that anyone who failed to purify themselves after being in and among the tombs was to be cut of from the nation of Israel.  Check out Numbers 19:11-14.  On top of all of this, the text implies that herding swine was one of the occupations that the people in this area engaged in.  The OT Law declared that pigs were unclean.  Both Leviticus 11:7 and Deuteronomy 14:8 say, “And the pig, because it parts the hoof but does not chew the cud, is unclean for you.”  Finally, verse 2 tells us that the man who met them when they came upon the shore was “a man with an unclean spirit.”  James Edwards summarizes the scenario this way, “Thus Jesus meets a man with an unclean spirit living among unclean tombs surrounded by people employed in unclean occupations, all in unclean Gentile territory.”  This is definitely not a place we expect to find a bunch of Jewish men traveling to.  But this is exactly the location that Jesus had directed them to go and to proclaim the gospel.  That’s the unexpected setting.  Now let’s set our eyes on the Savior as He once again provokes a great response from those He comes into contact with.

Having just been through an incredible physical storm, we find in chapter 5 that Jesus encounters another ‘storm’ of sorts.  But this storm isn’t a physical storm made up of great wind and rain – it’s an internal storm residing inside an individual.  Mark describes for us, beginning in verse 3, a man with an unclean spirit who comes upon Jesus as soon as He comes ashore in this Gentile region.  The man appears to have isolated himself to living among the tombs.  Apparently the unclean spirit residing in him has caused him to be at best a nuisance to those living nearby, but perhaps worse – perhaps even a danger to those people.  Notice the descriptive language Mark uses to describe this man in verses 3-5.  This unclean spirit had caused this man to have monstrous type strength as the text says that he had been able to break chains and shackles that had been placed on him and that there was no one who had the strength to subdue him.  This spirit also caused him to go about among the tombs and on the mountains both night and day crying out and bringing physical harm and pain to himself.  This unclean spirit was causing a strong and violent storm to rage within this individual.

It’s in verse 6 we that we begin to see Jesus’ provocative power on display as He demonstrates His authority over every spiritual being.  In verse 6 the man possessed by an unclean spirit comes to Jesus.  But rather than falling on Jesus in the form of physical assault the man with the unclean spirit falls down before Him.  Then notice what He cries out and how he identifies Jesus.  He first asks, “What have You to do with me?”  And then he says, “Jesus, Son of the Most High God.”  This unclean spirit uses a very specific label to identify Christ within a region where many gods were worshiped and called upon.  This unclean spirit doesn’t call Jesus the son of a god.  He demonstrates a right understanding of the one true God and knows without a doubt that Jesus is His Son.  Jesus is the Son of the God who is above all things and so the unclean spirit identifies Jesus as the “Son of the Most High God.”  However, there was more to the demon’s plea than just a proper identification of Jesus.  The demon also ‘adjures’ (earnestly advises) Jesus not to torment him, as we find out in verse 8 that Jesus was telling the demon to come out of the man.  The demon not only identifies Jesus, but also recognizes His power and authority over him.  The dialogue carries on a little longer as Jesus asks the demon his name in verse 9.  And the name which he gives and what follows seems to paint a discouraging picture.  The demon tells Jesus that his “name is Legion, for we are many.”  The demon’s name reveals a picture of what was controlling this man and even suggest something about the whole Gentile region.  Jesus and His disciples had come into an area and come upon a man that wasn’t under the influence of one demon but literally thousands of demons.  Later in verse 10 the demon is no longer earnestly advising Jesus but is now earnestly begging Him “not to send them out of the country.”  The demons were having great influence over the pagan Gentiles, leading them away from God and to worship other gods.  So while they were wanting to stay in the region they also understood that they were subject to Jesus and His command, and so they begged Jesus to let them enter the herd of pigs that was feeding nearby.  Jesus grants them permission and the text says that the unclean spirits came out and entered the herd of pigs and that the entire herd rushed down a steep bank into the sea where they drowned.

The clear principle of this text is that Jesus has great authority over every spiritual being.  The man they came into contact with was possessed by many unclean spirits.  These unclean spirits were causing an internal storm of incredible magnitude to take place in this man.  But in the same way that every part of the physical storm (the wind, the rain, and the waves) in the preceding verses was subject to Jesus, so is every spiritual being.  For here we don’t just see one particular demon being subject to Jesus, we actually see thousands of them surrendering to His command.  You hear all the time that there is strength in numbers.  So if ever there was a time to rise up against Christ this was the time for the demons.  Literally thousands of them controlling and influencing this individual.  They could have caused him to attack Jesus and to attempt to destroy Him believing in the strength of their numbers.  But these demons knew that even that was not a possibility – their only course of action was to beg for mercy from Jesus.

You guys remember the game Pac-Man don’t you?  You remember what the point of the game was right?  You had to eat all of the dots without getting stopped by one of the ghosts.  If you came into contact with any of the ghosts then you died.  But what happened if Pac-Man ate one of the big dots in one of the four corners?  Then for a time, the ghosts turned blue and Pac-Man was able to overcome them by eating them.  But the ghosts only stayed blue for a short amount of time and after that time they changed back to their normal selves and once again could destroy Pac-Man if they came into contact with him.  Imagine how that game would have been different if once Pac-Man ate one of the big dots in the corner those ghosts remained blue.  It would have been a lot different right?  Instead of the ghosts pursuing Pac-Man they would have been fleeing from him.  They would have understood Pac-Man’s supremacy over them and they would have fled from Him in hopes of maintaining their lives.  This is what Jesus’ authority over every spiritual being is like.  Every one of them is subject to Him and it’s not for a brief moment of time.  Christ Jesus is now and will forever have authority over both the physical and spiritual world.

The second way that we see the provocative power of Jesus on display in this text is as He uses His power for the purpose of belief and redemption – not to prosper health and wealth.  In verse 14 we see the herdsmen hurrying back to the city and the surrounding country to report what had happened out on the hillsides by the sea.  Most likely there was a lot of uncertainty in their reports.  You would assume that they always kept an eye on this man with an unclean spirit.  If he was powerful and dangerous, and if the hills where they herded the pigs was near the tombs, then they probably always kept a watchful eye on this man so that nothing happened to them by surprise.  The herdsman probably saw the handful of boats coming ashore.  And they probably saw the man with the unclean spirits take off after them.  So what might they be preparing themselves to see next?  Probably a physical attack.  They were probably expecting for this man to pounce upon these men and to physically harm or even kill them.  So you can imagine their surprise when this man, running towards these men, suddenly falls down before one of them.  Chances are that the herdsmen could not hear the dialogue between Jesus and the demon possessed man, but more than likely they were watching very closely.  Then the next thing they know, their entire herd goes wild and every last one of the pigs runs down a steep bank and into the sea where they drown.  If I’m a herdsman now I have to figure out what to do.  To stay on the hillside seems a bit pointless because I don’t have any pigs to watch.  To go down and find out what is happening with the man with the unclean spirits and these men who have come in boats still seems a bit dangerous.  So I guess I’d do exactly what they did – run back to town and start telling people what happened.  Verses 14 and 15 tell us that the people came to see what had happened and that they came to Jesus.  (The whole strength in numbers things probably coming into play here)  The people were probably more courageous to approach these men since they greatly outnumbered them.  The first thing verse 15 says that they noticed was the man with the unclean spirits “sitting there, clothed and in his right mind.”  And then it says that they were afraid.  In the same way that Jesus spoke to the storm in the passage we examined last week and brought peace and calmness, Jesus spoke to this man who had a great storm raging within him, and casting out the unclean spirits by the words He spoke, Jesus brought peace and calmness to this man.  Typically, ‘sitting’ around or before Jesus is a picture of someone listening to and learning from Jesus.  So we begin to see that this man has not only been freed from the demonic forces which held power over him, but now he is also demonstrating characteristics of a believer in and follower of Christ.  In verse 16 it says, “and those who had seen it described to them what had happened to the demon-possessed man and to the pigs.”  There only seems to be two groups of people that this could be a reference to – either the herdsmen or the disciples and other close followers of Jesus who had come in the boats with Him.  It seems that the herdsmen would have been at a great disadvantage standing off at a distance and probably without any chance to hear what was taking place.  So the most likely case is that the disciples and the other close followers of Christ were explaining to the people what had taken place (perhaps so that Jesus could continue to minister to the man he had just cleansed from the unclean spirits). 

Verse 17 is for me one of the saddest and scariest verses in all of Scripture.  Jesus has come to this Gentile region as the only One who can give them hope and freedom from the oppression that they experience from the demonic forces in the region.  He has displayed His power in what is without a doubt a super-natural miracle.  And the people respond by begging Jesus to leave.  The people were begging the only One who could save them to depart from them.  And verse 18 tells us that Jesus did what the people asked because we see Jesus, His disciples, and His followers getting back into their boats.  As they were, the man who had had the unclean spirits begs Jesus to allow him to come with them.  But Jesus doesn’t permit the man to do so most likely for two reasons.  First, having a Gentile as one of his close followers may have become a stumbling block to the Jews that Jesus was doing ministry among on the other side of the sea and Jordan River.  The second reason probably had to do with the need for ongoing testimony in the Gentile region.  They had requested that Jesus leave and not come back.  This man could remain as one who could tell of Jesus in this Gentile region and proclaim Him as the “Son of the Most High God” who had rescued him and saved him.  Jesus tells the man in verse 19, “Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.”  Then notice Mark’s little extra emphasis on the person of Christ in verse 20.  “And he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him and everyone marveled.”

So the question that doesn’t seem incredibly clear at first is why the people of the region would want to send Jesus away.  He did a super-natural miracle in casting out the unclean spirits dominating this man’s life.  So why beg Him to go away?  The answer probably lies in what happened to the man and what happened to the pigs.  While the change that took place in this man’s life was a good change, it was not what was familiar to the people.  Jesus had come and radically changed him by casting out the unclean spirits.  But it appears that these people were afraid of both the power of Christ and the change that He brought.  It also appears that raising pigs was one of the mean these people used for making a living.  2000 pigs feeding on the hillside would have “represented an enormous livelihood” and when they ran into the sea it was “an economic catastrophe.”  An enormous amount of money could have been made by selling those pigs.  But with them all dead and in the sea they wouldn’t be able to get anything for them.  So while one particular man had been helped in an amazing way, many among the rest of the people had suffered great misfortune with the loss of the pigs.  These are all things that we are implying from the text though – and I believe for a very significant reason.  Mark wanted to draw the attention of his readers to the salvation that took place for one man from a tragic fate.  Because, “in the eyes of Jesus, the rescue and restoration of one person is more important than vast capital assets” (James Edwards).  Jesus has great power that provokes responses from us all.  And what is so provoking in this story is that Jesus uses his great power for the purpose of belief and restoration, not to prosper health and wealth.  For many that’s hard to understand.  They want to prosper and to have great material possessions.  When they find that that isn’t what Jesus brings and they see His incredible power and authority over the man with the unclean spirits they fear Jesus and beg Him to leave.

We have seen already in Mark’s gospel that Jesus’ ministry was for the sake of reconciling sinners to God.  Back in Mark 2:17 Jesus was being questioned by some of the religious leaders as to why He was spending time with tax collectors and other sinners.  Then Jesus answered them by telling them the reason which He had come.  “Those who are well have no need for a physician, but those who are sick.  I came not to call the righteous but sinners.”  Jesus’ mission was to change lives.  He wasn’t coming to make people more prosperous in their portfolios and He wasn’t coming to pat people on the back and say, “I’m here to help make sure you stay comfortable in the life you choose.”  Jesus came to radically change our position in life.  He came to restore sinners who were far from God back into right relationship with Him.  And that both calls for and results in great change.  When Jesus comes to you (and this is how it works – Jesus doesn’t demand that we come find Him, He comes to us, just like He did the Gentiles in this story) He comes to free you from sin and your bondage to Satan, and He comes to reconcile you to God.  If we have any other ideas about who Jesus is and what He came to do we have to throw them out.  He didn’t come to make you more comfortable in your sin!  He came to rescue you from it!  We need to realize that this is the mission that He is on and then we need to ask Him to forgive us and to make us right with God the Father.  Please, please, please, don’t beg Christ to leave.  Don’t make the mistake that these Gentiles did!  Don’t fear what Christ can and will do for you.  Don’t make the mistake of begging Him to leave you.  The people in the story did and He agreed to their pleading.  Then the only true source of hope, peace, and comfort in their lives got in a boat and rowed away.  Don’t reject Jesus because of His great power.  Instead, come to Him in faith!

Questions for Small Group Discussion

1. Read Mark 5:1-13.  One of the things that we noted in these verses was that Jesus has authority over every spiritual being.  We saw that demonstrated in an amazing way when Jesus not only cast out one unclean spirit, but many unclean spirits from the man he encountered.  While we may not encounter demon possession in the same way Jesus did in this encounter, we may meet people in spiritual battles, wrestling with many sins, and discouraged by their perceived weakness.  Chances are we will wrestle with the same things at times in our lives.  How does Jesus' power and authority over every spiritual being (and battle) give us hope?  How can it give hope to others who aren't believers in Christ?  What can we do to encourage ourselves and others (both believers and unbelievers) with this truth?  Is there someone you know right now that needs to hear this?

2. Read Mark 4:14-20.  When Jesus came ashore on the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee, into a Gentile region where many other gods were worshiped and called upon, He has an immediate impact.  Mark reveals that what was familiar to these people changed  as they saw the man possessed by unclean spirits restored and realized that it was by the power and authority of Jesus that it took place.  And like the disciples after the calming of the storm, these unbelievers feared.  Is Jesus' presence and power noticeably different than the idols that our community holds on to?  Should it be?  If so, how?

3. In verse 17 the people from the city and surrounding country begged Jesus to depart from them.  For believers in Christ this is an incredibly sad verse.  The only One who can bring salvation, healing, and hope to them is asked  to depart.  While we would never vocalize a desire for Jesus to depart or leave from us, do we ever communicate that with our actions?  Are there times that we communicate with our actions that we don't need or want Jesus' presence in our lives?  If so, why do we do this, what can we do differently, and how might things change if instead we plead with Jesus to be active in everything that we are a part of?

4. What step of faith does this passage of scripture require us to take as individuals and as a small group?  How do we work this out on mission?