The demons recognize Jesus as the Son of God, Lord over all principalities, all powers, all rulers of this present world, all rulers of the darkness. They know that He is the sovereign, has the authority to control them, sentence them, execute them, eternally incarcerate them in the lake of fire and that's the plan and that's coming. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur.
I'm your host, Phil Johnson. Thomas Jefferson once took a pair of scissors to a Bible and cut out all of Jesus' miracles from the four Gospels. The result? A smaller, completely distorted picture of Christ, just 46 pages that Jefferson called the life and morals of Jesus of Nazareth. Now, as Jefferson's experiment shows, if you reject the miracles of Jesus, you really don't have much left. But with all the space Scripture devotes to the miracles of Jesus, the question is, how well do you understand what those miracles mean for you today? Consider that as John continues his series titled Jesus over All. But John, before you begin today's lesson on the power of Christ, you have a letter there from a man who found Christ's transforming power through our broadcast, and God is using him to reach others for the kingdom. It's a wonderful story, so take a minute and share it with us. Yeah, this is obviously one of my favorite moments in our radio program when we get to read these letters. So here goes this particular letter, which is tremendously encouraging.
It's from Jamie. He writes, I live in the heart of the Bible belt. I grew up in church and for many years thought I was saved until COVID showed up in 2020, and I came across grace to you on one place. I had never heard anyone teach the Scriptures like you. I truly believe God saved me during this time. Since then, until today, I share the gospel of Jesus wherever I go.
I work at an automotive plant, and after returning to work from COVID, our shifts were combined, and I started working with some new people. I came across a young man. We would speak in passing, and I noticed how miserable and hopeless he always seemed. So I began to proclaim the gospel to him and share many scriptures out of the gospel of John. I also directed him to the MacArthur study Bible and to the daily grace to you broadcasts. In one month, I witnessed God save this man right there at work.
I boast in nothing but Christ. Now others at the plant are paying attention to how this man now desires what Jesus desires. The joy that only Christ can give is evident in this man. His nose is buried in the Word daily, and his family is benefiting from his changed life. Both my co-worker and I want to thank you for sharing the precious gospel around the world.
Many signs, God bless, from two old country boys from Alabama, Jamie. That's a glimpse of what God does through his Word. By any means, his Word never returns void. It always accomplishes the purpose to which he sends it, and he does that with the ministry of grace to you as we send the Word out, reaching people where they are, sometimes in very unexpected connections.
That's what radio is able to do. And then beyond radio, all the other resources that are available are intended to take the truth of God, the life transforming truth of God, as far and wide as we can possibly see it go. And we know we can't do any of it without the prayerful support of friends like you. And God hears your prayers on our behalf. He knows your heart, and he blesses your faithfulness and your intercession. And when you support grace to you through your prayers and maybe through a financial gift, know that you are reaching people whose hearts God has prepared to respond to his saving gospel.
And you are purchasing friends for eternity. You'll meet there that came to know the Lord because you were faithful to invest in this ministry. What a great privilege. So thank you for remembering grace to you and the people we're reaching with biblical truth every day. Thank you for bringing us before the Lord in your prayers. Yes, friend, thank you for your important role in taking us before the throne of grace. And now let's get to today's lesson.
Here again is John MacArthur. He's also characterized by supernatural strength, verse 3 tells us that no one was able to bind him anymore, which means they had been trying to do it. In the ancient world, all you did with a maniac like this was restrain him. That's not too far into the distant past. I remember it wasn't too many years ago before mind-numbing drugs had come into play that people were put in straitjackets and put in padded cells so that all they could do was bang around and not even do harm to themselves because they were bouncing off mattress-like walls.
That's the way it was through all human history. Before the advent of mind-numbing drugs, or perhaps in the last century brain fries which turned people into zombies, this is what they did. They restrained them and they restrained them because they were dangerous. They were so antisocial as to be dangerous, to be deadly. This guy would fit into the category of a sociopathic mass murderer if he got away with doing what he wanted to do. Who knows who he had harmed? Who knows who he had killed? He was frightening. He was dangerous. He was a horrible menace.
He is a threat to the sensibilities and social morality of the people. They tried to chain him. They must have slammed him down, knocked him out with a blow to the head, tried to chain him, didn't do any good. He would break the chains. In fact, Luke says he would break the chains and be driven by the demons into the wilderness, just a total out of control maniac with amazing strength. He's aggressive.
He's wickedly aggressive, frighteningly so. And Luke's comment that he would break the chains and the demons would drive him into the wilderness. The demons are torturing this man. They're torturing all the people that come in contact with him, but they're torturing him too. He is both the means of torture and the victim of torture and torment. Verse 5 sadly says, constantly, night and day he was screaming among the tombs and in the mountains and gashing himself with stones.
So he's just peripatetic. He is sleepless. He is restless. He is wandering out and in and out of the tombs, in and out of the mountains, driven into the wilderness, the desert by the demons, tormented. This is a living hell. This is a taste of hell, completely subsumed to demonic power and presence.
Nothing good, nothing left, no escape, no rest, no sleep, this is hell. And looking for relief, he grabs stones and unsuccessfully successfully attempting his own life, hacks away at his flesh with stones meant to cut. The man makes modern perverted monsters like Charles Manson look like Boy Scouts. He is so subdued that his own personality is never even seen. He's more at home with the dead than the living and he is a threat to the living, serious threat. In fact, he's such a threat that Matthew 8.28 says no one would pass that way because he was so and the word is violent...violent.
If you took a survey of the local community and asked them, which neighbor would you most like to see move away? It would be him, you would think, wouldn't you? I mean, if you had the choice between having him move away and Jesus leave, who would you choose?
We'll see later who they chose. He's raging, violent, deadly, supernaturally strong, deviant, perverted. There's nobody like this guy in Scripture, nobody, because Satan doesn't usually operate this way. He disguises himself as what? Angel of light, he likes to go to church in a gray suit, likes to sit in a pew, likes to stand behind a pulpit, likes to teach in a seminary.
That's what he likes to do. He disguises himself as an angel of light. The closer he can get to Christianity, the closer he can get to the truth and deviate people from it and lead people astray, the happier he is. He runs a clandestine operation, only occasionally do you see this kind of thing.
And we see it from time to time in our world, don't we? These deviated, perverted people that we call monsters that do things that are beyond comprehension for normal people, Satan usually doesn't operate that way. He wants to hide in the pews among the respectively religious people. Well, this man sits up in his perch on the hill in one of the tombs and he sees these little boats tying up and realizes he's got some new victims, some people who aren't from the neighborhood. They don't know you're not supposed to go there.
You're not supposed to be in that place. He sees them tying up on the shore and coming off of the boats and walking along the beach. And I'm sure they were close to Jesus since He was the leader and there was no agenda. So he probably started his usual approach with his buddy flying down the hill, screaming with this demonic shriek, ready to attack and maim and kill. And then all of a sudden when he gets to where he can see who's there, verse 6 says, seeing Jesus from a distance. Whoa, he just saw somebody he had known for thousands of years. You say, well how did he know it was Jesus? The demon is the Spirit. How did he know it was Jesus?
How did he recognize Jesus? The Word is out among the demons. There is a demon network. What do you think Jesus has been doing for the last couple of years? Confirming the kingdom of darkness, casting out demons, the Word was out.
The Word was out. It probably went on the spiritual network really fast that Jesus had left Capernaum and was going somewhere. And since they're not omniscient, they wouldn't know till He showed up. Whatever the mechanism of recognition, He saw Jesus. Luke adds that when He saw Jesus, He shrieked, screamed in horror. And that was the standard operating response when Jesus showed up in a synagogue and there were demons in the congregation sitting in the pews, if you will, in the respectable people.
When Jesus was there, you remember the demons screamed, blew their cover because their fear overwhelmed their ability to hide. And then He did an amazing thing. It says, He bowed down before Him.
Whoa! He is now subdued, not by chains, but by sheer terror. The man collapses.
He doesn't know what's going on. But the demon dropped Him to His knees. The man has no interest in worshiping Jesus, but the demon does, the demons do. When it says the man saw Jesus and ran up to Him and bowed down before Him, He's in a hurry to get to Jesus, not to do Him harm, but to bow.
It's the word proskuneo in the Greek, it means to worship, to demonstrate submission, to show respect to one greater than yourself. No one could make Him bow. No one could restrain Him. No one could control Him.
No one could make Him submit. But the presence of the Lord Jesus cuts Him to His knees. The man goes down because the demons go down and the man goes down under their power. The demon force in that man is subdued by the presence of their sovereign King, their sovereign Lord, their sovereign Judge. The demons recognize Jesus as the Son of God, Lord over all principalities, all powers, all rulers of this present world, all rulers of the darkness.
They know that He is the sovereign, has the authority to control them, sentence them, execute them, eternally incarcerate them in the lake of fire and that's the plan and that's coming. By the way, as a footnote, demon theology is orthodox...demon theology is orthodox. Though they develop liberal theology, they espouse heresy, they themselves are orthodox. They know what is true about God and Christ and the Holy Spirit and salvation. They're orthodox and they hate what they know to be true. Verse 7a says, and shouting or screaming with a loud voice.
This is the typical response. The demons go into some kind of paroxysms with terror and they scream through the vocal cords of the person in whom they have taken their residence. More demonic shrieking using the man's voice. And the demon representative who speaks on behalf of the mob of demons in the man says, so important, what business do we have with each other, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I said they were orthodox, didn't I? They know exactly who Jesus is. And by the way, in the first part of Mark until you get to the middle of Mark's gospel, they're the only beings who recognize who Jesus is.
They're the only ones who say, you are the Son of the Most High God, you are the Son of God. The first time a human being says that is at the end of the book. But halfway through, at least the disciples confess that He is the Christ. But it's not till a Gentile centurion confesses that at the end that you hear it from any human being.
They know who He is. And this is their standard...I guess their standard response because it's exactly what the demon back in chapter 1 said in Capernaum in the synagogue when Jesus started teaching in the synagogue. Verse 23 says there's a man in the synagogue with an unclean spirit and he screamed. And this is what the Spirit said through that man's vocal chords. What business do we have with each other? Jesus of Nazareth, have you come to destroy us?
I know who you are, the Holy One of God. Same thing. What business do we have together? Why are you here?
And here it's the same thing. What do they mean by that? What business do we have with each other? Jesus, Son of the Most High God. Two things to point out. First half of it, what business do we have?
Second half, Son of the Most High God. What do they mean by what business do we have with each other? Do they know that there's a plan to send them to the lake of fire? Absolutely. Do they know that Jesus will be their judge?
Absolutely. Do they know He has the power to bind them and send them everlastingly into hell? Yes. Do they know that if He wants, He can send them into the pit, a place of demonic incarceration already occupied by demons who sinned back in Genesis 6 and were sent there and perhaps other demons had been sent there through history? Do they know that can happen?
Yes. Do they know that there is a final judgment to be rendered on demons? Do they know that they are to be bound for a period of time when the earth is renewed and restored in the great and glorious Kingdom of Messiah and then sent to the lake of fire? They know all of that. They know that.
They have been around since the creation. They know that. They know that. They understand that. So why do they ask the question, what business do we have with each other? What they don't understand is the timing.
Why are you coming after us? You don't find in the whole Old Testament any of the prophets doing this. You don't find any of the priests doing this. Nobody confronts the demonic enterprise in the Old Testament, nobody.
Is it around? Of course. Nobody does this. This doesn't happen until Jesus comes. But they are concerned that the timing is off.
Nobody has ever done this to us before. Their eschatology is so good, they know that the judgment of demons is related not to Jesus' first coming but His second coming. And so they're saying, what's going on here?
What's happening here? What business do we have with you? In fact, in Matthew 8 29, the demon spokesman for the group says this, Have you come to torment us before the time? Have you come to torment us before the time?
It's not time yet. That's connected to your second coming, not your first coming. They knew He was coming the first time. Listen, they interpreted Isaiah 53 perfectly. They understood that He would be the Lamb that would offer His life as a sacrifice. They understood that. They understood Psalm 16 that He would die and rise again, that God would never allow Him to see corruption but show Him the path of life.
It didn't connect. Why now? So I say, they're orthodox even in their eschatology. They knew that it wasn't the time. This was the time of Messiah's death and Messiah's resurrection. This is not the time of His reign and His Kingdom and their judgment.
What's going on? So they correctly identify the timing of their final judgment and they secondly correctly identify Jesus as Son of the Most High God. That is just such a complete statement. The Most High God, a glorious title for God in the Old Testament that usually goes like this, the Most High God, possessor of heaven and earth. The Most High God is El Elyon, God sovereign.
The Most High means sovereign above all others, higher than all others. You see it in Genesis, Numbers, Isaiah, Daniel, references to the Most High God, possessor of heaven and earth. And this demon's recognition is that you are the Son of the Most High God.
That is to say you bear His same essence. In Luke chapter 1, the angel, Gabriel comes to tell Mary she's going to have a child. Verse 32, he will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. Verse 35, the Holy Spirit will come upon you, the power of the Most High will overshadow you and for that reason this holy child shall be called the Son of God. He knows who Jesus is.
He even understands the plan and the timing of the plan. He's been having free reign along with all of His fellow demons in this one life and out of that one life wreaking havoc in the region, doing bodily harm and damage and probably even killing people. What is Jesus doing there now? By the way, in the third chapter of Mark and the eleventh verse, it says, whenever the unclean spirits saw Him, they would fall down before Him and shout, You are the Son of God...You are the Son of God. That was not an act of repentance. Demons can't repent.
They are unclean and will be forever. That was a recognition of the reality of who He is. Now back to the story in chapter 5. Here is this bizarre monstrous sociopath in a heap at the feet of Jesus subdued, at the same time screaming in fear. And at the end of verse 7, he says, I implore you by God, do not torment me. Huh, you haven't minded tormenting that poor soul. Don't torment me, basanizo is to torture, the worst possible kind of experience to be tortured.
Why did he say don't torture me? Because Luke 8 31 says that he asked Jesus not to command him to go into the abussos, don't send me to the pit. Don't incarcerate me in the pit, the abyss, the place of found demons.
Abussos really means the bottomless pit, the pit with no bottom. It's used four times in the book of Revelation. Don't send me to that place. Don't send me, if you will, to the place of incarceration, the sort of vestibule to the lake of fire. That's where the Lord sent the demons that sinned in Genesis 6.
That's what it says in 2 Peter 2 4 and Jude 6 and 7. And I believe there have been other demons added to that place through the years because those demons from Genesis 6 were bound in everlasting chains. They're never going to get out of there. But this group of demons through their spokesmen begged Jesus not to send them into the abussos, into the pit.
They're very happy where they are. So that's His plea because Jesus was saying, come out of the man, you unclean spirit. Please don't send us to the pit. Now I want to stop there and just say this, here you see the devastating destructive power of demons, Satan's power.
Don't kid yourself about Satan. It's not always this blatant, it's not always this overt. But we have enough people that show up in society like this to understand that behavior, don't we? How else can you explain a Charles Manson? How else can you explain a Dolmar? How else can you explain somebody that kills relentlessly and eats the victims?
How do you explain that? That is not psychological deviation. That is demonic possession.
And we get enough of it to understand it's there. We even use the word monsters, maniacs. We run out of adjectives to describe people like that whose lives have been literally taken over by demons.
As I said, that's the exception, not the rule. They usually like to show up in religious situations and hide behind clergymen and teachers and devoted religious leaders. Their power is fierce, deadly, destructive and even damning power. So the opening scene is the scene of the power of demons.
We'll call it the devastating destructive power of demons. But in verse 8 we make a transition to another kind of power, the delivering power of deity...the delivering power of deity. And this spokesman demon and these demons who are in mass in this man, they know the power that the Son of God wields. And they know that it's a greater power than theirs.
As the Scripture says, greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world. And they know that Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil. They know that He came to crush Satan's head, to judge Satan and his whole domain.
They know that. And so as Jesus begins to command them, all they can do is plead with Him not to send them to the pit because they know His power is so great that He can send them any place He desires. All they can do is beg for a kind of mercy. You might think that He would send them to the pit because that would get rid of them. And wouldn't the world be a better place if there were a few thousand demons not here? But He doesn't because they're really not the devil's demons, they're His demons. And like all demons and like Satan himself, Satan is God's devil. They function within the purposes and the parameters of God's design for divine purposes.
We'll see that unfold when we look at the delivering power of deity next time. As John said before the lesson, your letters are a great encouragement to us, so write us a note and send it our way. Our address is Grace to You, Box 4000, Panorama City, California 91412.
Or you can email us at letters at gty.org. And if you're looking for more resources to enhance your study of Scripture, go to gty.org, where you can download 3600 of John's sermons in MP3 and transcript format, free of charge. You can also read daily devotionals, watch episodes of Grace to You television, and catch up on posts from the Grace to You blog, featuring practical articles from John and our staff addressing issues that affect your life and your church. And if you don't know where to start, check out GraceStream. That's a continuous loop of John MacArthur's sermons. We start in Matthew chapter 1 verse 1, we end at the end of the book of Revelation, and then we just start it all over. So whether you have 15 minutes or a couple of hours, you can jump into GraceStream and start listening.
All of that and more is available at gty.org. Now for John MacArthur and the Grace to You staff, I'm Phil Johnson. Thanks for making this broadcast part of your day, and be back tomorrow to find out how a herd of pigs helps strengthen your trust in Jesus. It's another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace to You.
