I have had to wrestle with myself in
order to come to address you this evening
on this particular subject before us in Mark
chapter 5.
I don't know why.
Demon possession has no particular attraction for me,
and I'm totally unaware of any reason why
I should be inextricably drawn to this passage,
but I'm quite confident that this is the
Lord's word for us as we gather together
this evening.
And so, in obedience to that conviction, I
look at the passage with you and crave
your prayerful indulgence as we do so.
You will notice that we are beginning to
see how the case for the messiahship and
divine sonship of Jesus is being proved by
his life and by his teaching.
That's the background in this gospel and indeed
in the other gospels.
But along with the accumulation of evidence for,
you nevertheless find a growing rejection of the
evidence by an increasingly large section of the
community.
There is a bitterness that is beginning to
emerge in the hearts of the most religious
people of his day.
And that bitterness, of course, is ultimately going
to lead him to the cross.
That's the kind of general background to this
passage.
But there would seem to be something more
than what we see on the surface of
these scriptures.
Following upon the revelation of our Lord's lordship
and deity, divinity, his lordship particularly, over natural
forces at the end of chapter four, it
would seem that chapter five is now aimed
at showing us that he has the same
kind of power, the same kind of authority
over demonic forces.
And of course, this was very necessary.
It was necessary in our Lord's day.
It's necessary tonight for us to know that.
But I can't help being amazed at the
wonder of the way in which, in this
gospel as in the others, the Holy Spirit
has brought these things together.
In chapter four, the end of chapter four,
you remember, that day when evening came, Jesus
said to his disciples, let's go over to
the other side of the lake.
Leaving the crowd behind them, they took him
along just as he was in the boat.
There were also other boats with him.
A furious squall came up, and the waves
broke over the boat so that it was
nearly swamped.
Jesus was in the stern sleeping on a
cushion.
The disciples wake him up and said to
him, teacher, don't you care if we drown?
Now notice, he got up, he rebuked the
wind, and he said to the waves, quiet,
be still.
Then the wind died down, and there was
complete calm.
That's in the nature.
That's in the realm of nature around us.
Here in chapter five, in this incident, the
man with an unclean spirit, we have almost
the identical thing happen.
Only now, of course, our Lord is addressing
not the waves, not the billows, not the
storm and the sea, but he's addressing the
demonic and the satanic entrenched in the soul
of an individual.
But just as there was peace over Gennesaret,
so there emerged a peace into the heart
and into the life of this man.
And when his friends came to see him,
they could hardly recognize him for the man
they knew him to be.
There he was, sitting at the feet of
Jesus, clothed, and it is right, my peace
hath come, peace hath come.
I am firmly persuaded that we need to
be entrenched in the Gospels, and not simply
in the records, but in the principles they
enunciate, in the truths they declare, and the
principles underlying these truths.
And we need of all things to see
our Lord Jesus as the Lord of nature,
as the Lord of demonic and satanic forces.
We need to see him as the one
who is able to make all grace abound
towards all kinds of people, in all kinds
of circumstances.
And unless you and I have that kind
of conviction to go out into a Monday
morning after the Lord's Day, we cannot effectively
witness for him.
And we cannot in all sincerity be the
kind and quality of people we are called
to be.
Now let's look at this.
Let's look first of all at the man
and his tragedy.
The man before us was clearly demon-possessed.
There's no question about that as far as
the Scriptures are concerned.
This was not, however, the first case of
demon possession to be encountered by our Lord
Jesus, as we see from previous passages right
here in Mark.
There are two incidents in the very first
chapter of Mark.
One in the synagogue, and the other late
the same night they bring demon-possessed people
that Jesus should heal them.
And again in chapter 3 and verse 15,
we read that our Lord imparted power to
his disciples.
He called them to be with him, and
then he gave them power and sent them
forth.
And one of the reasons for sending them
forth and for giving them power was that
they should exorcise demons.
That they should be able to deal with
men whose needs were on this particular level.
Now let's look at this man before us.
Perhaps in coming to it it's just as
well for us to notice another thing too.
Then in this chapter 5, just as later
on in the chapter, there is a woman
brought before us whom the physicians have been
unable to heal.
Though she had been in a very sad
physical condition for a number of years and
was no bettered, as I believe the King
James puts it.
She had attended the physicians, but they'd been
able to do next to nothing.
So in this case, society had been completely
unable to do anything to alleviate and to
help him.
I think seeing these things enables us to
realize that wherever we go into life, wherever
we find ourselves, whatever the circumstances, however dark,
however dire, there the grace of God may
operate savingly and powerfully.
Is anything too hard for the Lord?
Now let's look at this.
First of all, the man's condition as it
is described in verse 2.
When Jesus got out of the boat, a
man with an evil spirit came from the
tombs to meet him.
We've already indicated that that word evil fundamentally
means unclean, but unclean in the sense of
evil.
I don't need to stay with that.
Our knowledge of this kind of condition is
very limited, but the picture presented here is
not unprecedented.
No less ferocious than the storm through which
Jesus had just emerged.
The spectacle was harassing and tragic in the
extreme, making his home in this eerie atmosphere
among the rocks.
There on the cliffs overlooking the lake of
Gennesaret, this crazed man now made his home.
He was restless, he was wild, and he
was menacing.
As much a minister himself as he was
to anybody else.
Apparently insensitive to physical pain, he derived some
strange satisfaction from self-inflicted wounds, and he
didn't feel a thing, apparently.
He was shrieking, he was yelling, he spent
his time expressing his pent-up agony and
anguish in shrieking and in yelling and in
communicating to the countryside some sense of awe
and fear.
This was not the kind of place you'd
walk at night alone.
Scripture distinguishes, of course, between degrees of demon
possession.
I say this, though I do not understand
the phenomenon any more than others of you
do, but I state what Scripture states.
There are times when we encounter a simple
condition of demon possession, if any such example
can be termed simple.
In Mark chapter 1 verse 23, we're told
of somebody who was possessed of a demon,
simply.
That's all we're told.
That's bad enough, of course.
But on other occasions, we're told something more
than that.
On one occasion, at least, the Scripture speaks
of a person possessed by seven demons.
That's Mark 16, 9.
And yet in another, we are told of
one demon who was expelled from a certain
human life, and he later returned with seven
other demons or devils stronger and worse than
himself.
In this case before us, however, even the
number seven is outgunned.
A whole legion of demons inhabited this pathetic
soul.
Now, if you look up your dictionary to
find out how many comprise a legion, you
will find that at different times in the
history of the Roman Empire and the armies,
a legion meant so many, and it varies
over the years.
It could well have gone up to 6
,000.
Well, now, don't necessarily take this literally, because
in that case we don't know what figure,
what number to fix on.
But the point is there were a multitude
of demons that had congregated in the soul
of this one man.
Not one, not seven, not a few more,
not a dozen, but a legion.
Their influence, therefore, was overwhelmingly irresistible.
The point is, you see, surely the divine
record is wanting us to get the impression
that this man was under total alien control.
Absolute, total alien control.
In this condition, it will be noticed that
the man was tragically divided, divided within himself.
He really didn't know where he was nor
who he was.
He'd lost his proper sense of identity.
He appears as a split personality, now taking
more or less, speaking more or less at
his own impulse, he speaks of himself as
I or we.
In the first person singular or plural, then
he speaks of himself in another way.
In this sad mental state, the pathetic creature
derived strange satisfaction from his unnatural behavior and
his apparently insensible infliction of pain on his
own body and frightening other people.
Then look at the man's relation to society.
I think this has a lot to tell
us.
This man, we read in verse three, lived
in the tombs and no one could bind
him anymore, not even with a chain.
Now that statement that no one could bind
him anymore, implies, of course, that previously, at
some previous stage in the development of his
tragedy, there were those that had tried to
help him.
I think this speaks well of that ancient
society that we know so little about.
Someone cared for this man.
We don't know what they did, we don't
know how they set about it but we
do know that they tried to do something.
To me, one of the unfortunate things in
the 20th century in which you and I
live is that there are so many people
we may meet on our streets or elsewhere
for whom people apparently do nothing, still
in a civilized situation such as ours, who
are utterly friendless and who, as far as
they can tell at any rate, whether they,
like the rest of us, have a very
bad memory, they say that no one has
tried to help them in their dire, difficult
situations.
Even here in the city of Toronto, with
all its churches and all its Christians and
all its ameliorative institutions.
I had someone the other day, we don't
need to go into details, talking and he
said that for over 15 years he had
almost lived as a hermit.
He didn't know how to talk to people
anymore.
No one cares for a guy like me,
he says.
Now whether that's true or not, the fact
that a man is able to say that
means that it's too true to make for
comfort for you and for me.
And somehow or other they had attempted previously
to do something for this man.
Now I gather that the normal means probably,
in the day and age we're talking about,
the normal method of attacking a situation like
this was the physicians of the age would
apparently put some chains over the shoulders of
the man, heavy chains if possible, not in
the first place to bind him, to shackle
him, they did this later, as indeed in
this case, but really to put so much
weight upon him and so much physical pressure
upon him that the man would be made
tired and incapable of doing what he normally
did.
So that they would just tire him out.
If that didn't work, then they tied him
up, perhaps with ropes, and if ropes were
of no use then, as in this case,
with chains.
And if it wasn't sufficient to tie his
hands and his arms so that he didn't
hurt anybody, they tied his legs as well
so that his movement was limited.
Now I don't like to talk about that
treatment, I think it's barbaric, nevertheless they cared
for him and they tried to do something
for him, but nothing helped.
This man seemed to have a supernatural energy
from somewhere.
The massive chains on the backs of other
people tired them out, but not this man.
He went on, he had resources, he could
go, he could do what others could not,
and he went on and on, and he
tried to tie this man's hands, and he
snapped the fetters asunder, tried to tie this
man's legs, he tore them loose.
There was indeed a veritable supernatural phenomenon.
Neither could he be subdued, it says in
the NIV at the end of chapter 4
there, there's a question about that word, as
to whether that also refers to the physical
attempt to tame him, or does it refer
to a psychological approach?
I don't want to argue, I'm not sure.
It could well refer to a psychological method
of taming him, of trying to cool him
down a little, to pacify him, but whatever
it refers to, the point is it came
to nothing.
And thus, out of sheer dismay and frustration,
society, as such, seems at least to have
confined the man to an isolation unit, in
the lonely tombs of that somewhat isolated cemetery,
as we've indicated, above the cliffs overlooking the
sea of Nazareth.
And there, in that geery atmosphere, he continued
his shrieking, and his making a nuisance of
himself, frightening the children of the community, and
the womenfolk, and others.
There he continued, but no one could do
anything for him, the man and the Savior.
Oh, isn't it wonderful that we can go
on?
You know, even if this were not true,
wouldn't it be wonderful to spend a Sunday
evening just thinking about something of this kind?
But men and women, brothers and sisters in
Christ, the wonder of wonders is that this
kind of thing is true, it has happened,
and the power of our Savior is such
that it can happen today.
When confronted by the Son of God, this
man's sickness expressed itself in a hypersensitivity.
He was unusually sensitive, in particular, to the
divinity, to the deity of our Lord Jesus
Christ.
Listen again to verses six and seven.
When he saw Jesus from a distance, he
ran, and he fell on his knees in
front of him.
He shouted at the top of his voice,
What do you want with me, Jesus, Son
of the Most High God?
Did you ever hear of such a thing?
Here is a demon-possessed man, possessed by
a legion of demons, and the legion of
demons, in harmony with the man, in fellowship,
as it were, with the man, the man
and the demons, as one entity now together,
cry out to the Lord Jesus, What do
you want to do with me, Jesus, Son
of the Most High God?
I indicated earlier on that at this point
in time, whereas on the one hand, the
evidence for the deity and the Messiahship of
our Lord Jesus Christ was growing, on the
other end of the scale, opposition was mounting.
But as the opposition was mounting, here, out
of this eerie atmosphere, comes a demon-possessed
man, an unquestionably demon-possessed, if ever there
was such a phenomenon, and he recognizes Jesus
from a distance as the Son of the
Most High God.
When men were stubbornly unyielding to the claims
of our Lord, he was sensitive to the
fact that something had happened in Gadara that
day, and the deity had invaded the territory
of demons.
This lone demoniac of Gadara was uncannily aware
of the truth of our Lord's deity, and
willing, apparently, to offer him some kind of
reverent obeisance.
I'm not suggesting that it was anything of
the kind Mr. MacLeod was talking about this
morning.
I wouldn't be foolish enough to suggest that
it was anything of that depth or of
that kind, but somehow or other, this possessed
man, this bewildered man, this man in the
grip of evil demons, knew that Jesus was
someone to bow before.
And yet you have men and women in
the Christian church that hardly seem as worthy
of worship.
But it was an unbearably distressing sensitivity, if
we consider this any further.
Oh yes, he kneeled before Jesus.
He kneeled in front of him, and he
called out.
He shouted out on the top of his
voice, but notice what he did ask for.
And this, of course, unmasks the real nature
of the man's character.
What do you want with me, Jesus, son
of the most high God?
Swear to God that you won't torture me.
You see, this man was afraid.
This man was afraid that Jesus, whom he
knew to have divine power, would literally do
something to torture him.
I wonder whether I'm speaking to someone tonight,
and you know exactly what this meant, or
means, in the past, in your life, or
in the present.
So that when Jesus comes near you, when
you come to a service, when the spirit
of Christ is abroad, and you sense somehow
or other he's coming too near, he's going
to hurt me.
And you become awfully excited and agitated, and
you want to get away from it all.
And you want to break rank.
My friend, he's the only one who can
help you.
And whatever your condition, and whatever may be
going through your mind, whatever may be worrying
you, whatever may be oppressing you, whatever may
be threatening you, there is only one Savior
who can lift the burden from your soul,
and that is the Christ of God.
I find this terrible, you know.
Jesus, you're a torment to me.
I'm afraid of you.
I know who you are, but even though
I know that you're the Son of God,
don't torment me.
Swear that you won't.
I know you've got the power, but don't
do it.
Is Jesus a torment to you?
Are you keeping him at arm's length because
you're afraid that he'll do something you don't
want done?
So much for the man and his tragedy.
Let's turn for a moment to the divine
physician and his treatment.
Oh, it's good that we can come here.
First of all, Jesus asked the man's name.
Now, I believe there is strategy here, psychological
strategy.
Then Jesus asked him, what's your name?
My name, he said, is Legion, for we
are many.
Notice that.
My name, singular, is Legion, for we, plural,
are many.
Grammatically, it doesn't make sense.
In reality, it was exactly true to the
facts.
Now, it has been suggested that the Savior's
principle was really to arouse the man's consciousness,
to arouse the man's awareness to the gravity
of his need.
I don't know whether that is so.
I tend to agree with it.
And the reason probably for that, if this
is the case, the probable reason for it
was this.
Jesus would awaken in the man an awareness
of the gravity of his need in order
thereafter to get his cooperation, the cooperation of
the patient along with the physician against the
enemy of his soul and of his spirit
as well as of his body.
But you see, not until the man is
aware of the gravity of his own need
will he cooperate with the Savior.
Will he even want to be healed?
And Jesus asked, what's your name?
Oh, he knows the questions to ask.
Don't you know that, Christian people?
Haven't you been awake at night and been
in communion with your blessed Lord and doesn't
he ask some piercing, penetrating questions of you?
I've never known anything like the questions the
Lord asks me.
And I never will.
They're so penetrating.
They get at that spot that I don't
want him to see and I don't want
him to talk about.
But he asks the question and he prods
and prods until he gets an answer.
What's your name, man?
It seems such an ordinary question.
But then at last it comes out, you
see, with all its conflicts and all its
contradictions.
Our name, my name is Legion, for we
are many.
He's aware of the contradiction and he explains
it, but it's no explanation.
He had lost sight of his own true
self and becomes swamped and submerged beneath the
total influence of these evil forces that had
invaded his life.
Men and women, there are many people in
the city of Belfast tonight in this condition.
I don't pretend to be a specialist in
this realm, but I do recognize it from
time to time and I'm sure you do
too.
Jesus asked the man's name and the man
gave the name and recognized with the same
breath his utter confusion.
My name is Legion.
That doesn't make sense.
We're Legion, but we're many, he says.
It's not my name, it's our name.
I'm in with a host of them.
I'm not sure where I am, but there
I am somewhere.
And then comes the sovereign compulsion and yet
the gracious concession of our Lord.
It seems that as Jesus was facing the
poor man, he was actually repeating a command.
The tense here would suggest that Jesus was
repeating something to him, and what he was
repeating was this.
He was repeating to the evil spirit, come
out of this man, you evil spirit.
We read in verse 8, for Jesus was
saying to him in the imperfect tense, come
out of this man, you evil spirit.
Having elicited the man's self-awareness to some
extent by asking his name, our Lord then
seems to have in some measure summoned him.
That is, summoned the patient to take sides
with Christ the physician against the powers that
have invaded his soul and made him the
man he has become.
This in turn results in the demon becoming
sensitive to the imminence of their pending and
forced exorcism by Jesus.
And in their recognition of Jesus' capacity to
dethrone them, they bid him not to expel
them from the country but grant them permission
to enter into the herd.
You see, these demons recognized that their Lord
was there and that his word was final.
Knowing that he would utter that word to
save this benighted man, they said, don't send
us out of the country.
Now again, we're out of our depth.
Let's acknowledge it.
Our knowledge limits our capacity even to comment
with assurance.
Suffice it therefore to say that for some
reason unknown to us, Jesus granted that strange
permission.
He granted the permission to these savage demonic
powers in going out of the man to
enter into the pigs that were around, a
herd of swine.
And this they did, with the result that
the whole herd became uncontrollable and plunged headlong
over a precipice to be drowned in the
sea below.
Now why did Jesus do that?
Oh, there are a whole host of questions
here I cannot address.
I'd be happy to do so in private
with anybody, but let's get to what I
think at any rate is the important thing.
Why did Jesus do it?
Why did he allow it?
Well, remember this was an illicit swine trade
anyway for Jews.
They should not have been trading in swine,
but that's by the way.
I believe that the main reason was this.
How could Jesus demonstrate his infallible power to
a man such as this?
There's got to be something that he can
see with his eye.
Jesus has to do something that is evident,
absolutely evident, no question about it.
Here the demons have somehow vocalized their request,
don't send us out of the country, send
us into the swine.
Jesus allows the prayer they offered.
He has a prayer answered, demonic prayer answered.
He lets them go into the swine and
the man sees the consequences.
He sees two things at one and the
same time.
He sees the awful power that had been
in him now in the swine and with
such consequences.
I don't know when he took all that
in.
I'm not sure that we've taken it all
in yet.
The demonic power that can drive 200 swine
into the depths to be buried is sufficient
power, my friend, to drag you and me
to the depths of hell.
But Jesus said, go out of him and
the powers left him and legion forsook him
and took charge of the swine and the
very man saw the swine struggling for their
last breath in the brine beneath.
That's why the value of the soul in
the sight of the Lord Jesus was such
that 200 pigs losing their lives meant nothing
in comparison.
He would persuade the man of the destructive
power of the evil spirit and of the
saving might of his own word.
You got it?
We've got a wonderful savior.
He wants us to be persuaded.
He wants us to be sure.
And he goes out of his way.
He does so many things all at once.
We don't see them all, but what we
do see is sufficient to recognize how much
he cares for us.
Imagine his care for this unscrupulous character and
what sin that made him yet Jesus cared
enough for him to go out of his
way to bring these things together, to persuade
him that heaven loved him still.
Oh, that's grace.
Now come with me for a brief moment
to the society and its reaction.
I don't know that I'm capable of preaching
about this.
Indeed, I'm not sure that I'm capable of
preaching about the other sections either that we've
covered, but society and its reaction frightens me.
The news spread like lightning.
The herdsmen bereft of their herd scattered posthaste
to the city and the surrounding countryside, announcing
two things with one breath.
The healing of the demoniac that lived there
in the cemetery above the sea.
His healing, miraculous though it was, they announced
it.
They could do no other.
It was so evident.
And the loss of 200 pigs, judge you
which was the most important in the years
of those that heard it.
But they were bound together as part of
the one story.
And you could not declare the one without
the other.
The spectacle which greeted them, the people of
the countryside came in.
They must see this thing for themselves.
Hearing about it is one thing.
It's unbelievable.
Nothing like this has ever happened before.
I mean, this thing was not happening before.
It's altogether new.
And so when they come posthaste, the spectacle
that greeted them were told in verse 15.
When they came to Jesus, they saw the
man who had been possessed by the legion
of demons sitting there, sitting, sitting, sitting down,
sitting down there, dressed and in his right
mind.
And the spectacle was so amazing that we're
told they were afraid.
Now, you're not afraid when I'm not afraid
when I see you good people sitting down.
If I saw you standing up, I might
get excited and drawing coming towards me with
your books or something.
But seeing you sitting down and clothed and
in your right mind, that doesn't frighten anybody.
Why should it frighten anybody here?
Well, because of course, this is not the
way things have been with this man.
They knew how he was.
And this is unnatural.
There's something extraordinary responsible for this.
This man is sitting, this man is clothed,
this man's in his right mind.
And it wasn't like that.
His world has been told upside down, but
right side up.
The identity of the man, of course, was
undeniable.
So that the reality of the miracle upon
him was beyond dispute.
He was healed, he was clothed, he was
in his right mind.
He had plagued their countryside long enough to
be known alike by his features and by
his foul, fearsome shrieks and awesome behavior.
Some of them probably had even been involved
in binding him with ropes and chains.
Some of them.
Perhaps some of the physicians were there.
I don't know.
But recognition was one thing.
It's the man, all right.
It's this is, this is not somebody that's
just suddenly invaded our island or our country.
But it's the man.
We knew him.
We've known him for years.
Recognition was one thing, however.
There was this challenging difference about the man
they recognized.
The diabolical frenzy that drove him on his
errands of hate and self-immolation had all
gone and ceased.
There he was, clothed, sitting at the feet
of Jesus and in his right mind.
Oh, blessed be the name of God.
Do not, do not fail to notice the
same kind of peace that overtook the raging
sea in chapter four.
That's why I referred to it earlier on.
Jesus said, peace, be still.
And there was a great calm.
Jesus looked at these legion of demons and
said, get out of him.
And there was peace, heavenly peace, redemptive peace,
the peace of God.
It's the same thing in a different area.
The emotions these people felt, they were afraid.
Those who had seen it told the people
what had happened to the demon-possessed man
and told about the pigs as well.
I like the NIV there.
I think it's very, very picturesque and very
true to the Greek language.
And told them what had happened to the
pigs as well.
Gazing at that incomparable testimony of their Lord's
compassion and power, the crowd sensed the awesome
wonder of it all.
With the demons expelled from the soul, the
man's shrieks had not only abated, but his
sanity had returned and his sense of propriety.
The insane man was normal again.
That meant that the one responsible for it
must be incomparably more powerful than the greatest
among them, the Gadarenes.
He must have had power and ability not
given to their physicians, not given to the
society working in concert, not given to the
accumulated wisdom of the peoples.
He stands above them.
And beyond them, they were awed.
But what about the swine?
Oh, the man was healed all right.
And that was nothing short of a miracle.
They would all agree about that, but 200
swine lost?
2,000 swine were lost?
Oh, you notice how the gospel puts it?
All turned to fear.
The healer could evidently deal with the moral
and social problems of Gadara.
They recognized that, it would seem.
Here is one among us who can deal
with this kind of problem, and probably there
are many others suffering from something akin to
this dear man.
And there are other problems physical.
If he has this amazing power, what a
man to have live among us.
But if it's going to cost 200 or
however many swine, each time he works a
miracle of healing, is it worth it?
Do you want Jesus if he is going
to cost you 200 heads of pigs each
time he heals a soul?
And you see the issue is this.
Shall we ask him to stay?
Shall we beg him to come around the
countryside to heal other people?
Or shall we bid him go away in
case we lose more swine?
Again you will notice, just as fear followed
the stilling of the storm, so also a
fear followed the recognition of what has taken
place here at Gadara.
So we read in verse 17, then the
people began to plead with Jesus to leave
their region.
Did I read that all right?
I'm afraid to tell you that I did.
I didn't make a mistake.
I'm sorry to tell you, but that's what
it says.
Then the people began to plead with Jesus
to leave their region.
With all that power, with all that grace,
with all that compassion, with all the untapped
resources of his deity to meet their need,
they ask him to leave.
Why?
Because he was a threat to their pig
trade.
Men and women, society hasn't changed a bit.
Their insane assessment of things led them to
plead repeatedly, it would seem, and ardently, that
the benefactor and the author of such healing
should leave their territory rather than endanger their
property.
Their pig trade was more important to them
than the healing of their sin-bound society
from the ravages of Satan.
Jesus must go rather than lose their pig.
I don't know whether this is good poetry
or not, but have you heard this?
I don't know who the author is, but
I've had it in my files, I'm sure,
for years, and it rose from the dead
this last week.
Rabbi, be gone.
Thy powers bring loss to us and ours.
Our ways are not as thine.
Thou lovest men, we swine.
Oh, get you hence, omnipotence, and take this
fool of thine.
His soul?
What care we for his soul?
Not good to us that thou hast made
him whole, since we have lost our swine.
And Christ went sadly.
He had wrought for them a sign of
love and hope and tenderness divine.
They wanted.
Christ stands without your door and gently knock.
But if your gold or swine the entrance
blocks, he forces no man's hold, he will
depart and leave you to the treasure of
your heart.
I told you I was afraid to preach
this, didn't I?
I believe that there are so many ills
in society tonight that could be, that could
be almost wiped out just like that.
The slaughter on the roads, the causes of
murder and bloodshed in the homes, man murdering
wife, wife murdering husband.
What have we?
If only alcoholic beverage was prohibited.
It's a, that's all.
It's involved in, I believe, over 80 percent
of the accidents on the road.
It may not be the sole cause, but
it's involved.
Well, in the name of God, in the
name of decency, in the name of logic,
in the name of care, in the name
of compassion, why don't our civilized governments get
rid of it?
Because they love swine more than souls, money
more than men.
And that's but an illustration.
If we wanted to, there are so many
things we can do, but we love our
swine.
One last little picture, can you take it?
The Savior and the liberated man.
The populace persuaded the healer to leave their
country, and he was about to go.
Yes, he was about to go.
Blessed Lord Jesus, the Lord, the sovereign Son
of God.
John tells us that he stands at the
door and knock to come into our hearts.
And he comes in, if any man will
hear my voice and open the door, he
comes in.
And this passage tells us, and I believe
in the sovereignty of the Savior and of
God, but this passage tells us that when
men plead for him to leave, he leaves.
Be careful how you deal with him.
But what about the man who's been healed?
The liberated man begged leave to accompany the
Savior.
Verse 18, as Jesus was getting into the
boat, the man who had been demon possessed
begged to go with him.
Now this request marks the new relationship, you
see, that's begun between the saved and the
Savior.
It's always the case.
It's always the case where there is true
faith that has bound the needy to the
Savior.
This is what happens.
They become bound together, and they can't think
of life separated from one another anymore.
And so this man begins to talk to
the Lord Jesus.
If you're leaving, he says, then let me
come with you.
The people of Gadara, for their part, had
begged Jesus to depart.
They didn't want him.
He, for his part, begged the same Jesus
that he, this man, might accompany Jesus if
Jesus has to go.
Henceforth he belongs more to the Savior than
to his natural relatives, the people of Gadara.
Do you know this sense of belonging to
the Lord Jesus Christ?
Just because he's heard your cry and met
your need and whispered the word of grace
that released you from yourself and your sin
and Satan and made you a free man
or a free woman, do you know what
it is to be bound to him?
Do you know what it is to say
with this man, what we have here, or
with Peter, as he says in another place,
Lord, to whom else can we go?
You are the only one that has the
words of eternal life.
Where else can we go?
We're coming with you even if the crowd's
going in the opposite direction.
See, there's a tie that is bound when
Jesus manifests his saving power towards us.
They're bound to him.
The other thing is this, and I'm through.
The liberated man nevertheless agreed to do as
Jesus bade him, rather than press for what
he himself had first desired.
His first choice was, Lord, if you're leaving
Gadara, let me come with you.
No, says Jesus, no, no.
No, no.
Jesus did not let him, but said to
him, you go home to your family and
tell them how much the Lord has done
for you and how he has had mercy
on you.
Notice not Jesus, but the Lord.
Jesus speaks of himself as Lord.
He doesn't want the man to make any
mistake.
When the man goes home, he wants this
man to tell the family, Jehovah, the God
of Israel has done something for you and
tell the people that the Jehovah of the
Exodus and of the prophets and of the
law, the great Jehovah God has acted in
your life and tell them how great things
he's done for you.
So what we read is this, a great
change must have been brought in this man's
heart, though the New Testament doesn't say much
about it because we read.
So the man went away and began to
tell him the Decapolis, the 10 cities, how
much Jesus had done for him.
You see, Jehovah was Jesus to him and
Jesus was Jehovah for him, for Jehovah had
come to him in Jesus.
I don't know how he said about it.
I've got an imagination too.
I'm sure you have a boy.
I can see this man going around the
countryside, going from one to the second and
the third and the fourth and the fifth
of these 10 cities to tell the people
how great things Jehovah had done for him
in Jesus.
And so the story goes on and the
miracle of the grace of God is reduplicated
over and over and over and over again.
Not in exactly the same way, and yet
you have the same grace shown and the
same power exhibited and the same kingdom extended
and the same God glorified and the same
salvation experienced.
Is there someone in Knox tonight who doesn't
trust Jesus Christ as savior?
Oh, my dear friend, turn to him.
How can you deny him?
How can you do other than trust a
savior, the record of whose life is so
completely compelling?
Trust him tonight in the simplicity of your
soul and say, my Jesus, I trust you.
I know you've come to save me along
with others, and I will trust in you
and rest in you.
And I too, if you don't want me
to go somewhere else, I will go home
to my family and I will tell my
family what great things Jehovah God of Israel
has done for me in Jesus, conceived of
the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and
buried.
I will tell the family and I'll show
them the change Israel.
Hallelujah.
That's how missionaries are made.
That's how witnesses are born.
May God deepen the work of his grace
in all our hearts and send us out
into a new week with the conviction that
he is the person he claimed to be.
And therefore, on the streets of Toronto today,
it is possible for men to be saved
from sin and all its hideous reality unto
everlasting life.
Let us pray.
Dear Heavenly Father, you know our hearts.
We confess to you, our Lord, that when
we ponder some of these things, we really
do not know how to respond.
And we just ask you now, rather than
try to put into words what we want
to or what we ought to, just read
our hearts.
Read mine and the hearts of my brothers
and my sisters here.
Read our hearts.
Read our spirits.
Know that in all of our hearts and
souls, there should be a song of gratitude
that is worthy of your name.
Thou blessed Lord God, our Father, through Jesus
Christ.
Amen.