Jesus and Demons #2 - Mark 5 - The demons in Gerasene

Jesus and demons Part 3 - Temptations and accusations David Flowers, 11/11/2012 Jesus and demons Part 2 - The demons of Gerasene David Flowers, 04/11/2012 Jesus and demons Part 1 - How Jesus starts His ministry David Flowers, 28/10/2012

Most people like Jesus. They may not know much about Him but what they do know is usually good. He was a kind man who did good things. I think He was, is, much, much, more than that but I do agree that He is good.

If you read about Jesus in the bible you will find that he has regular confrontations with people who are not good and with demons who are evil. And He always wins. What can we learn from Jesus therefore about evil and about demons?

But we need to keep a balance.

There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.
C.S.Lewis, Screwtape Letters

What do we think of when we come across bible accounts of Jesus (and others) dealing with demons? There are 100 mentions of demons in the New Testament and our songs and stories tell us about how our faith in Jesus overcomes an evil spiritual realm.
1.       You may be firmly committed to a belief in Satan and demons; you may be familiar with ministry to people who are influenced by demons. Let’s learn some more.
2.       You may be firmly committed to an exclusively scientific world view with no room for the spiritual realms. I would like to give you some things to ponder.
3.       You may be somewhere in the middle – living with a scientific and materialistic world view but also fully aware of the role for the Spirit of God in your life and therefore suspecting there may be a some sort of evil spiritual influence out there too. I hope this will equip you some more.
4.       Or you may think of yourself as rather ignorant of the whole thing, somewhat fearful and would prefer to avoid the issue. I will re-assure you that this is a safe subject because of the proven power and presence of a person, Jesus, who loves you completely and who has done what is necessary to rescue you from fear.

The existence of evil

A more thorough examination here (week #1)
We, western scientific materialists, find ourselves out-numbered by the vast majority of the world. In most cultures and societies there is no difficulty in understanding an interaction between a material and a spiritual world, between the natural and the super-natural.  
In many parts of the world, when bad thing happen the explanation is at least partly found in the existence of an active spiritual realm. When we face someone who is behaving in a really bad, an evil, way, how do we explain it?

1.       Sociological explanations – it is the result of your environment.
2.       Psychological – damaged by poor parenting.
3.       Biological – something wrong with a chemical imbalance.
4.       Psychiatric – he didn’t know what he was doing.

All these things can have an impact. However, they do not satisfactorily explain the cause and source of evil. If you accept that there is something fundamentally wrong with the world, then these three factors will influence for better or worse.

Our reluctance to designate some of the things we see as evil arises from our resistance to the idea of an ultimate good and an ultimate evil and an ultimate right and an ultimate wrong. But without that explanation our butter has no bread on which to be spread.

I am a rationalist and I am comfortable with science, but I also believe in God. Last week I gave you a five point summary of a biblical explanation for evil and demons:

1.       A spiritual realm characterised by good and evil
God is good and loving – that which opposes God and the good is evil. I believe in a spiritual realm in which both good and evil operate.

2.       Created personal beings
God created at least two races of personal beings with intelligence and a moral understanding: angels without earthly bodies and humans with earthly bodies;

3.       Rebelled and banished
Some angels, through pride, over-reached themselves and were separated from God’s presence – the leader is known as Satan and he has many angels banished along with him – the demons. They are on a mission against God, and that mission is the source of evil.

4.       Humans sin
Our world’s brokenness can be traced back to man’s decision to succumb to the voice of the enemy and rebel against God (unlike Jesus in the desert). Something that is described in beginning of Genesis but is a daily choice we make in our life today.

5.       God’s mission is of restoration
Despite that, God is on a mission to restore us to Himself, to give us a way of choosing to repent and turn and re-establish a relationship with our creator God. He has accomplished that through Jesus’ victory over the enemy.

In preparing a teaching series on Mark it became clear to me that the starting point of understanding how Jesus set about the Mission of God was by dealing with demons.

In Mark 1 and 3 we observed Jesus setting the scene for His ministry:

1.       Jesus doesn’t start his ministry until he has disarmed Satan;
2.       Jesus preaches the good news and in so doing defeats Satan in people’s lives;
3.       Jesus commissions His disciples to do the same;
4.       Jesus explains what He has done.

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Let's unpack one particularly thorough account of Jesus confronting demons.

Mark 5:1-20

V.1.
Mark uses the lake as a place setting - going from one side to the other. From the Jewish side on the west to the gentile side on the East.

Verse 2
Comes toward Jesus – potential violent and fearful event.
“Possession” cf v15. Inaccurate translation of daimonizai – demonised would be a better transliteration. Influence, afflicted, vexed. Driven toward hate, violence, destructive behaviour.
Possession implies control – which is rare. This is a most extreme example.
God created us with free will, it is a crucial point, so you choose your behaviour and the cast of your life. The enemy can only influence, tempt, accuse. The only control he has is what you give him.

Verses 3-5
Heart goes out to the man. Loneliness, abandonment, self-destruction, fear.
Lived in the tombs = dwelling, his home.
What would we do with someone who behaved like that?
Bedlam, drugs, section. Where does it come from?
Jewish tradition defined insanity as : running about at night, spending night in cemetery, tearing one’s clothes, destroying what you have been given.

Verses 6-8
Shouting – screaming – big reaction.
Tables turned – demons don’t cause fear, they are terrified – recognise that the strong man has been bound.
Demons “swear to God”. Demonstrates how much Jesus is in charge and has total control. Usually the person doing the exorcism adjures the person “swear to God”.

Verses 9-10
Conversation, Jesus completely in charge, not bargaining.
Legion (Latin from Romans occupying army - about 6,000 men).
The demons want to stay in an "unclean" area.

Verses 11-13
Pigs – unclean too (Jewish).
They think they have a deal but the pigs are just destroyed & the demons forced to leave.
In the previous chapter  Jesus demonstrates power over the sea & storm – saves the disciples from drowning. Here he demonstrates his power by drowning the demons and the pigs.
He has cleaned the unclean demons out of the man and he cleans the unclean pigs out of the land.

Verses 14-17
In his right mind – implies a psychosis of some sort. Contrast. No difficulty in connecting the psychosis with an evil influence.
They were afraid before – they tried to chain him.
Now they recognise and are afraid of the person who has the power to heal, to set free, to deal with demons.
Reaction to power of demons manifesting as some sort of insanity was to exclude the man from the village. Reaction to the much greater power of Jesus was to ask Him to leave too.
What’s our reaction to the presence of Jesus?


Jesus turns up on a scene where evil spirits are thought of as having the run of things. As He ushers in the Kingdom He does so as the first person with authority to defeat the schemes of the enemy. Has bound the strong man.  He comes to destroy the enemy’s work. He comes with a message of grace and forgiveness, of healing and restoration. And even an extreme case of a man under the influence of 000’s of demons can be set free with a word from the Son of God.

Halloween

The evening before All Saints’ Day – the dark before the light, the night before the day, evil’s last fling before good triumphs, death loses its grip on life.
I don’t like Halloween – now the third largest spending excuse of the year after Christmas and Easter – and whereas those are celebrations of good things this celebrates nothing good whatsoever.

Halloween has a complex derivation (some pagan, some Celtic, some Christian). I don’t really care about that. I do care about playing fast & loose with the powers of evil. Our pumpkins, trick or treat games, dressing up  in skeletons and witches all toy with ideas about demons & death, threats & fear.

The demons of the dead who haunt the graveyards come to visit our homes and remind us of the skeletons in our cupboards, the secrets and the guilt we have hidden deep in our hearts. We try and hide behind disguises, offer gifts to ward off the threats. Malevolence trade favour for violence.

Last week Canon Angela Tilby on Thought for the Day described it as the demonic ride of the unquiet dead.
The enemy uses any excuse to threaten us with the anarchy of the spirits that have lost their way, the darkness we have left in the buried world.

Compare the before and after

Before (1-5): naked, roaming madly, alone, abandoned, rejected, destruction, amongst the darkness and the dead, humiliated, shamed, cast out of the community.

After (15): sitting, clothed, in his right mind, friends with Jesus (and the disciples). Set free because Jesus has bound what previously had bound him.

• From the graveyard to the sweet open countryside.
• From the dungeon to the mountain top.
• Broken and bound to healed and free.
• From unclean to clean.
• From fearful to follower.

When Jesus turns up in our lives, He is the one doing the binding, He is the one of whom we should be afraid – not because He is nasty, like the demons, but because He has the power.

When Jesus turns up in our lives, He blasts the darkness with the light of His presence, He destroys the fetters of the dead with the power of His presence.

As you read through the gospels you see Jesus doing this at every turn – whether he is bring sight to the blind, feeding the hungry, or speaking truth into lies and superstition.

And when we find ourselves grappling with pain & guilt, regret & illness, loss & greed & lust and the dark side of life - this story serves as a shining beacon of God’s mission to rescue us.

How can we explain the depth of this man’s depraved isolation? Sociological, biological , psychological, psychiatric? I am sure those could all have contributed to the disaster that was his life. But were they the cause? Would a potion of drugs, some profound therapy and a listening ear have helped? Perhaps.

But the evidence in this story (attested in the other gospels and similar to many other things Jesus did) is that the complexity, depth and pervasiveness of evil can’t be dismissed easily as being caused by our environment.

Conclusion

I believe the enemy and his demons are at work today in 21C Leeds doing their best to “steal, kill and destroy” God’s good creation. Occasionally we may see something this extreme, most of the time we don’t. Unaware of the demons working away we are also ignorant of their expulsion when Jesus’ presence lights up our lives.
·         The enemy will do his best to screw up your life – mainly by separating you from God. But he needs your cooperation (Jesus in the desert refused to cooperate and consequently bound the strong man).
·         If your life’s trajectory is away from God anyway, demons will probably leave you alone. You are doing their job for them.
·         If you see brokenness – in society, in a family, in an individual, in yourself – does that mean it is all the fault of demons? No. We all have a part to play too – more next week.
·         If someone is influenced by demons will he be possessed, controlled? Almost certainly not – especially if he is a follower of Jesus.
·         And the most powerful way of pushing back the enemy’s territory is very simply to invite Jesus into your own life, follow Him with all your heart and introduce Him to others. He has the power from which demons run screaming.
 

Let’s return to the land of the Gerasenes

Where would you rather be?
·         Alone, fearful, broken, running in darkness?
·         Or clothed, in your right mind, seated with Jesus?
·         Unclean or clean?
·         Fearful or a follower?

Jesus binds up the evil strong man and plunders his house. He does that by setting us free from the enemy’s attempts to bind us.

Whatever darkness or pain the enemy is using in your life – whether large or small – come running to Jesus, kneel at His feet, recognise Him for who he is and let him set you free.