The Maniac (Part B)

Am I the one being played like a fiddle? Am I the one that the world has recruited using my carnality, my urges, my passions, my emotions? The Spirit is supposed to overrule your emotions. Do you not know that? If you say, but I just feel, you know, what does the Bible say? Because that has to be the deciding factor for the believer. And when you're young, you don't know these things yet. You might think you do.

You may know portions of it. But if you're getting it wrong, you're either defying God to his face or you just don't get it. Today, Pastor Rick will continue in the Gospel of Mark, Chapter 5, and his message called The Maniac. From their own carnality, from their self, from the world. But this man, he's not scoffing. The man inside, there are multiple personalities here. There is the man and then there's the personality of over 2,000 demons that seem to have a spokesman. There's not a human being on earth that could deal with something like this.

Not without God. His body, as mentioned, covered with scars of self-inflicted wounds that he had acquired over a period of time. His hair, his beard, likely matted and dirty and filled. What a sight!

Just a look into his eyes. Have any of you ever been, I don't know, you might have seen it elsewhere, but I know you'll see it in the big cities. You will see demon-possessed. Ride the subways in New York City. I don't mean the commuters. I mean there are people living in the subways that aren't behaving like human beings.

And you can see some of this in some of the cities in this country, I think more easily than you can see them elsewhere. Verse 7, And he cried out with a loud voice and said, What have I to do with you, Jesus, Son of the Most High? I implore you by God that you do not torment me. Who's talking here? Well, the demon is overruling the man, the host at this moment.

There's a war, there's an intense conflict inside. And so the demon is saying when he says, he cried out with a loud voice, What have I to do with you, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? He says, Why are you bothering me? I'm not bothering you.

What a sassy little punk. You are bothering the Lord by bothering humanity. God is not indifferent to these things.

And so they were. Yeah, they were bothering him. In fact, evil spirits who appear in the New Testament, they make no mistake about the person of Christ. They know who he is. That mistake is reserved for humans who enjoy scoffing at the Lord, who pretend that he is not who he says he is. But the demons knew who he was.

We covered this in chapter one, and now we're covering it again. But here the voice of the evil one confesses Christ to be the Son of the Most High. That is linked to Daniel chapter four.

Nebuchadnezzar had become so full of himself, he was going crazy and didn't even know it. He has this dream. Daniel comes in and explains it to him. He says, You're the one.

You're going to go nuts, but you're going to be restored. But within that dream, Daniel chapter four, verse 17, we read what Nebuchadnezzar heard. In order that the living may know that the Most High rules in the kingdom of men gives it to whomever he will. God is Most High, he is sovereign, and his people must learn to be content with that. And other Christians before us have suffered and died horrid deaths attached to that understanding, refusing to let go, looking beyond this life. It talks about in Hebrews chapter 11.

The world wasn't worthy of these people, it says in chapter 11. And so the demons call him the Son of the Most High, putting him equal with God the Father. And without hesitation, after they say this, you know, why have you come to us, Son of the Most High? Without hesitation, they slander him, accuse him of being a tormentor. They can't help themselves. Wickedness is wickedness, and it's going to do what it does.

And here we are seeing it happen. I employ you by God that you do not torment me. Well, what gave you the idea that he's going to torment you?

Well, the understanding that he is high and holy and clean and you are not. They did not care that they were tormenting the man, yet they wanted to be shielded from such agonies. Such is evil. Such are evil people.

They want mercy, they just don't want to give any of it up. They will accuse the innocent of the guilty things that they are doing. I'm trying not to go into, you know, the news media and all of the rest that are in that group of liars and treacherous.

Treasonous is the word I want. Verse 8, For he said to him, Christ speaking, Now come out of the man unclean spirit. And again, scripture makes no effort to hide the fact that evil spirits exist and that they target human beings and inhabit them and create such a disaster as this. We don't know how the man got into this condition.

We're not told. It really is not relevant, except we can say through observation, collective observation over the centuries, that dipping and dabbing in the occult, the occult will open that door. Drug abuse, egregious immorality. I mean immorality that is over the top, that is animalistic. And of course, some of the cults that are out there, these open the mind to evil spirits and once they get in, they don't leave of their own accord. They get hold of people because they invade bodies. They are a menace to the mind. They refuse to leave.

Now I must add here, before I lose some of the audience, born again believers cannot be demon possessed. They can be a nuisance. They can be pretty stupid. They can be dumb. And the opposite, too. They can be wonderful.

They can be smart. I mean it goes both ways, but they cannot be demon possessed. The light and the darkness cannot dwell together. So when we read of demon possessed people in the scripture, they're not born again. Yet, in this man's case, he's going to be quite a tool in the hands of the Lord. And so the rules and the rulers of darkness, the rules are often beyond us.

Paul keeps it short. He says we don't wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in heavenly places. The spiritual places, that in heavenly places is translated as heavenly, but it's really spiritual places. The unseen world that is around us, there are laws that we know about that are spiritual, and there are many laws that we do not know about. That was the case with Job. Essentially, God says, listen, I'm not going to lay it out to you.

There are laws you just don't know about. But here's what happened. And he tells Job, you know, you were a battleground. For my glory and for the benefit of countless multitudes through the ages that will read your story and gain strength in the faith and remain strong in the faith while they endure the most awful circumstances and attacks by the underworld and other human beings as well. Because Satan was not the only one that attacked Job.

Incidentally, three of his quote-unquote friends wasted, well, they did waste seven days, and then they made up for it and they attacked Job, talking about things they knew nothing of. Anyway, many lost souls, they perish in sin because they deny the existence of a very personal Satan. Now, when we say Satan, it includes Lucifer, but it's not limited to him. Lucifer's not going to target your average individual.

He's got bigger fish to fry. He goes for the heads of nations, but he's got enough minion to assign them to target everybody else. And it is a fact that there are souls perishing in their sin because they deny the existence of Satan and his helpers, sneering at the idea while Satan plays them like a fiddle. And as long as they deny the existence of these evil forces, it is not very much anyone can do.

Except preach the truth and under the conviction of the Spirit, they get converted. They come out of the darkness and they see what's going on. Demons, like the flesh, they are usurpers. They take over. They don't ask for permission. They snatch it.

They intrude. These demons here had no claim to this man's body or his mind, the soul of the man. The soul is that part of us that interacts with each other. And so he is enslaved. Verse 9, Then he asked him, What is your name?

And he answered, saying, My name is Legion, for we are many. Now Christ, again, is exposing to his disciples and followers what is going on here. That while the man is still functioning, he's not functioning correctly. There is a major defect and it is an external force has been introduced to the man, has been put inside of him.

Something external is now internal. And it is demonic. It is spiritual. And he wants his disciples to understand that there is a real war with an entity, an enemy, known as the adversary. Satan. The word Satan means adversary. The word devil means slanderer. That's what the adversary does. He talks bad about us.

He attacks us verbally in any other kind of way he is allowed to attack us. But once, once upon a time, this man had his own identity. He was born. He was given a name.

He grew up. And at some point, he lost his identity to these demons. And Christ is saying to us, but he is recoverable. That which the demons have gotten hold of, I will restore if the person will let him. It says here, And he answered, saying, My name is Legion, for we are many.

It's not his proper name. It comes out in verse 15, of course, and it's coming out here. Now a full Roman legion was over, almost 7,000 men, infantry and cavalry and support. The idea here is not that this was a full Roman legion of 6,800 demons. The idea is that he was packed with them. Divisions of them. Military divisions of demons.

It was loaded. Now again, those without Christ to the world, as they observe these behaviors in humans, they come up with names such as dissociative identity disorder, and those names are all impressive, I guess. They just don't fix it. Not enough to give it a label. We need power. He has a split personality, split up with these demons. And the Bible gives us a spiritual diagnosis, demon possession. That's what he had.

That the world scoffs at. Oh, come on, he's just sick. No, this one. This one is demon possessed. Are there physical ailments that can drive a person mad?

Sure. Rabies left untreated will drive you mad. For example, I mean, there are other things. But this one is demonic. Over the years in preaching about this stuff, usually there's someone that gets offended.

I don't get it. They get offended that you can say that there are people that are demon possessed that are labeled as being insane, but they actually have demons. The only thing I can tell you is I go by the scripture. That's good enough for me. I do not ask the world what they think. I ask the Lord what he thinks. And I'm satisfied with that.

Now if we're talking about maybe recipes to make an omelet or something, I'll go to the world for something like that. And I understand sometimes it's because they have a loved one that maybe is unstable, and they think that I'm saying to them that automatic demon possession. There are other factors. But we won't go there now.

We're going to stay right here. Satanic legions behind this man's failure, behind the failure of nations. I mean, you look at Nazi Germany, and you see a nation under the influence of demonic forces. You see people at the highest levels of their government, demonic. Industrialized genocide, where you create factories to kill people in bulk, repetitively. It's demonic.

I mean, what the Japanese did to Manchuria, and what they did in Chichijima and other places, the cannibalism. This is egregious immorality and sin. This is off the chart.

This is not a person stealing from one person to make themselves feel better about something. This is demonic. It is real. It is documented.

If you want to sit there and say, well, they have dissociative disorder or whatever, you go right ahead. The Bible knows better, and I side with God. But here is the problem with this. To this day, we have Christ, the Christ Haters Club, all over the earth, inspired by spiritual adversaries on multiple levels. It's like a pyramid.

At the bottom, you've just got the dupes, but as you move up to the top of the pyramid, fewer in number, yes, but demonic. It intensifies their evil. What is that response to it? Righteous defiance. That is our response to all evil.

Truth and love. We don't move. We have a king. We serve him. Jesus said, you know, if I were king of this world, my subjects would fight for me, but bigger things.

We have to learn this lesson, especially we here in America who have enjoyed so much freedom. Those who stand for lies refuse the truth of Jesus Christ. We know that. Those are the ones being played by a fiddle. For example, not only are they doing evil, but the neo-evil, the end-time evil, is recruiting people. And you know who they're targeting the most? The young, because they think you're dumb enough to believe it. And sadly, they are sometimes.

Not all the time. Then, I've noticed something. The young become recruited by Satan, and then they recruit their parents.

The parents begin to sympathize. Oh, you know, you got a point there. And in so doing, he takes down a whole family, a whole household, a whole church, a whole city, state, nation. These are real things, and you just look out the window. You see them taking place. I mean, literally look out the window.

You'll see parked cars. But look around society and what's going on in the world. Satan says, you know, Jesus is love, and it's okay to be homosexual. Well, okay, let me ask you then, is it also okay to murder too?

Are we going to downsize that one, or you just pick the ones you want? So you don't get the pick, because the Bible has made it clear. You should not lie, Leviticus 18, 22.

You shall not lie with a male as with a woman. It is an abomination. It is something that is hated. But yet, they're selling it to our kids. They're selling it to our adults. It doesn't mean we hate them. Hate them or not is wrong in the eyes of God. That's what we're interested in.

Is God supposed to say, oh, you like it that much? Okay, let me change it. Okay, this is goals four now. Methamphetamine. Want to be a crackhead and infect your children? Want to be a heroin addict? Infect your children?

Oh, go right ahead, because you want to do it. God doesn't do that. Under Satan's spell, the world will advocate the murder of the unborn.

They're justifying. In fact, they will advocate the murder of the just born to cover themselves in their filth. And we're supposed to come along and say, look, we can't change anybody's mind, but we can be used by the Lord to get in front of those whom God is changing, and he's going to use us to do it. You don't have to like it.

It's going to happen. That's a defiant spirit. That is a father saying, as for me, I'm going to serve the Lord. If the rest of my house doesn't serve the Lord, I'm serving the Lord. That's the mother standing up and saying, as for me, I don't know what the rest of you are going to do. I want you to serve Christ, but if you don't, I'm serving him. That's the children standing up and saying, look, mom, dad, I'm hoping you're serving the Lord, but if you're not, I'm serving the Lord. That's righteous defiance. What's the alternative?

Sniveling? Backing down from the faith? Christ does not back down from any of these people as we go through this story. Wherever I'm at, whatever verse I'm on. Verse 10, let's try that one.

And he begged him earnestly that he would not send him out of the country. What is that? What is going on there? Why? Does he not have a visa? His passport's not up to date.

Well, I hate the picture on it. He must have feared the overlords in the underworld. They're spiritual laws we're not privy to. We get little hints of them, and here's a big one.

He wants to stay where he is, this legion. We know we've huddled up here. We find that even in our own world, there's chaos and anarchy. In verse 11, now a large herd of swine was feeding near the mountains. So all the demons begged him saying, send us to the swine that we may enter them.

So to the demons it seemed like a good idea at the time. And this is helpful to us, verse 13, and at once Jesus gave them permission. Then the unclean spirits went out and entered the swine.

There were about 2,000, and the herd ran violently down the steep place into the sea and drowned in the sea. So here in verse 13, they had said, send us into the pigs. Jesus said, go for it. He's just like, as you wish.

Knowing what's going to happen, he knows what's going to happen. Now the disciples, they can't see the demons and like ghosts rise up and go into the man. They're just watching this exchange take place, but they can see that stampede of swine rolling down the hill off the cliff.

And they knew that wasn't like, you know, Mars must have lined up with Jupiter, and we didn't even know about it. This was directly related to the word of the Lord, come out. Can we go into the pigs?

Sure, have at it. And there was the proof. Now only Mark counts how many swine there were. I don't know why, but he is the one that tells us there were 2,000. And so what is the lesson? One human being can hold more demons than 2,000 pigs.

Is that not incredible? That has something to think about, the capacity for evil and humanity and human beings? There's a big difference between humans and animals. They're not the same. This is confirmation that demons cannot successfully inhabit animals. You have a mean, vicious dog, he's not demonic. He may look like he is or something.

His instincts are what they are. But only the unsaved can be possessed by demons. Now, here we're seeing, in addition to Christ muzzling the storm, he is casting out an army of ill spirits.

And it is also interesting that the swines seem to prefer death than possession. Their survival plan backfired. They wanted to be embodied spirits, embodied in some other living creature, and it failed. Now they're disembodied after all. What happens after that?

They roam around looking for someone else. We know that much from another story of Christ. But Mark had already recorded Jesus' words. No one can enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods unless he first binds a strong man, and then he will plunder his house. And that's what's taking place here. Christ has come in and he's cleaning house because he is stronger than the demons that were in the man. So God says, yeah, in spite of what happened, still the man is more important than the animal. Matthew 12, 12, of how much more value then is a man than a sheep is something we have to accept. It doesn't mean that there's some horrible, therefore, you know, therefore all the animals are going to, you know, it doesn't mean anything like that.

It just means that man is more valuable to God than animals, according to Jesus Christ. And it does not take brains to be destructive. A person can have brains and be destructive, or they can be dumb and be destructive. Many a home, many a church, many a country has been ruined by fools.

And we need to recognize that because what is the purpose of the lessons always? Is it I? Is it me, Lord? One of you will betray me tonight. And they all said, is it me? They were concerned.

They did not want to be that person. Well, when we come to the scripture and we have good and evil lined up next to each other, we are supposed to say, is it me? Am I this guy? Am I the fool?

Am I the one being played like a fiddle? Am I the one that the world has recruited using my carnality, my urges, my passions, my emotions? The Spirit is supposed to overrule your emotions. Do you not know that? If you say, but I just feel, you know, what does the Bible say? Because that has to be the deciding factor for the believer. And when you're young, you don't know these things yet. You might think you do.

You may know portions of it. But if you're getting it wrong, you're either defying God to his face or you just don't get it. And that does not mean that Satan's going to show you mercy. The Bible does not say, blessed are the dumb. We are supposed to be enlightened and that takes work.

It's not automatic. And that's why Satan spends so much time trying to dumb down the church and say, you know what, let's skip the preaching. Let's just keep singing.

Everybody just feel good about everything. But let's not expand our understanding of spiritual things. And let's surely not be convicted. If we're doing something wrong, the best way to handle that, says the flesh, is to not hear about it. The Spirit knows better. And he can't only hear the bad things.

He'd just be pummeled. That's not the idea either. It's striking the balance, which is the definition, essentially, of grace. The balance given by God. Thanks for tuning in to Cross Reference Radio for this study in the Book of Mark. Cross Reference Radio is the teaching ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville in Virginia. To learn more information about this ministry, visit our website, crossreferenceradio.com. Once you're there, you'll find additional teachings from Pastor Rick. We encourage you to subscribe to our podcast. When you subscribe, you'll be notified of each new edition of Cross Reference Radio. You can search for Cross Reference Radio on your favorite podcast app. That's all we have time for today, but we hope you'll join us next time as Pastor Rick continues to teach through the Book of Mark, right here on Cross Reference Radio.