God has His purposes. Welcome to Grace to You with John MacArthur. I'm your host, Phil Johnson.
Thanks for listening. In verse 1 of chapter 1, the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. This is a history of the life and ministry of Jesus Christ, as is the gospel of Matthew, the gospel of Luke and the gospel of John. There are four Holy Spirit-inspired, divinely authored records of His life and ministry.
And even those four with all that they contain can't begin to tell the whole story. In fact, John reminds us that all the books in the world couldn't contain the record of everything that our Lord did. But the purpose of the writing of these gospels is stated for us by John. At the end of his gospel, he sums up not only the reason for his own gospel, but for all the others when he says, these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and believing you might have life in His name. The purpose of the writers is that you might believe that Jesus is the Son of God and in so believing have eternal life through His name. That is the reason we give such careful attention to these gospels.
It's a tremendous joy for us again to be going through the record of Mark. Now how can Jesus demonstrate Himself to be the Son of God? He can do it with supernatural knowledge. He can say things that have never before been said and for which He is the sole authority, such as in the Sermon on the Mount when the people were astounded that He spoke as one having authority within Himself, which was very unlike the rabbis who always quoted somebody else. And, of course, the comment about His teaching was that never a man spoke like this man. He was demonstrably more wise, more erudite, more learned, had more knowledge not only of the things that people were familiar with, but supernatural knowledge that had to come only from the mind of God, of course, than anyone ever. And so He demonstrated His deity with His knowledge and He said that.
He said, believe Me for My words. But He also demonstrated who He was, demonstrating His deity by His works. The Old Testament says that when the Messiah comes, when the Savior comes, when the Redeemer comes, He will literally fulfill the Old Testament covenant promises of a new creation, a new earth, a renovated earth. Isaiah describes it in great detail as very different than the world we know today, the fallen world.
There will be a wholesale renovation of the planet, followed by the implosion of the universe and its replacement by a new heaven and a new earth. If He is to be the Son of God, then He must demonstrate the power that God has over created order and He does that. He controls the wind, as we saw in chapter 4. He controls the waves. He creates loaves and fish, in fact, on two occasions.
One, the feeding of the five thousand and we'll see a little later the feeding of the four thousand and that's only the men, you can add the women and the children, massive occasions in which He created food. He has power over the physical world as demonstrated by His ability to give life to dead people and to give organs to people whose organs are diseased and limbs, new, fresh functioning limbs to people whose limbs are deformed, paralyzed or in some way injured or even amputated. He has this power. The Messiah must have power over the created world, the physical world. He must have power over another realm and that is the supernatural world since Satan is the prince of the power of the air, the ruler of the darkness who has extended His rule across the planet earth and runs the world system. The Messiah, the Son of God, if He is in fact the Son of God, must be able to have a display of power over demons and over Satan. There are many occasions in the four gospels in which we see this power displayed. None is as amazing as this one, the one recorded in Mark 5 which is also in Matthew 8 and Luke 8 and it deserves to be repeated three times because it is the most extensive and extreme illustration of His power over unclean spirits.
Let's read it again. Verse 1, they came to the other side of the sea, into the country of the Gerasenes. When He got out of the boat, immediately a man from the tombs with an unclean spirit met Him and he had his dwelling among the tombs and no one was able to bind him anymore even with a chain cause he had often been bound with shackles and chains and the chains had been torn apart by him and the shackles broken in pieces and no one was strong enough to subdue him. Constantly, night and day, he was screaming among the tombs and in the mountains and gashing himself with stones. Seeing Jesus from a distance, he ran up and bowed down before Him. And shouting with a loud voice, he said, "'What business do we have with each other, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I implore you by God, do not torment Me.'" For He had been saying to him, "'Come out of the man, you unclean spirit.'" And he was asking Him, "'What is Your name?' And He said to him, "'My name is Legion for we are many.'"
And he began to implore Him earnestly not to send them out of the country. Now there was a large herd of swine feeding nearby on the mountain. The demons implored Him saying, "'Send us into the swine so that we may enter them.'"
Jesus gave them permission. And coming out, the unclean spirits entered the swine and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea, about two thousand of them and they were drowned in the sea. Their herdsmen ran away and reported it in the city and in the country. The people came to see what it was that had happened. They came to Jesus and observed the man who had been demon-possessed sitting down, clothed and in his right mind, the very man who had had the legion. And they became frightened.
Those who had seen it described to them how it had happened to the demon-possessed man and all about the swine. And they began to implore Him to leave their region. As He was getting into the boat, the man who had been demon-possessed was imploring Him that He might accompany Him.
And He didn't let him. But He said to him, "'Go home to your people and report to them what great things the Lord has done for you and how He had mercy on you.' And he went away and began to proclaim in Decapolis what great things Jesus had done for him and everyone was amazed." As I said, if Jesus is in fact the Son of God and the Messiah and the Redeemer, if He is the one who will crush the serpent's head, then He must demonstrate power over the kingdom of darkness. You remember 1 John 3.8 says, the Son of God appeared for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil.
That is part of the divine purpose. You remember in Luke chapter 11 and verse 20, Jesus said, if I cast out demons, it is by the finger of God. And if I cast out demons by the finger of God, you know the Kingdom of God has come.
The Kingdom has come in the sense that the King has come. What did He mean by the finger of God? If you go back to Exodus chapter 8, you read the account, the very interesting account of the magicians of Egypt trying to copy what Moses did by divine power.
They had their false and deceptive fabrications of things. But eventually Moses was doing things by the power of God that they couldn't duplicate. And so it was the magicians of Egypt who in Exodus chapter 8 and verse 19 said, this is the finger of God.
In other words, finger is simply a substitute word for power. And it is that very language that Jesus borrows from the Egyptian magicians in His comments in Luke 11 because that would be a very familiar story to the Jewish people and they would remember that what was going on in Egypt was the finger of God, meaning the power of God. And even the pagan Egyptian magicians acknowledged it and Jesus then borrowing that familiar concept and language incorporates it into His statement, if I cast out demons by the finger of God, then you know the Kingdom of God has come.
And there was no other explanation for what He was doing. So part of His ministry was to demonstrate the power of God over the world of darkness. As we come to this account, I've told you there are three dominating powers that are basically revealed here...three dominating powers. Number one is the devastating power of demons...the devastating power of demons. Though demon possession has gone on for a long time, you see it in Genesis 6, but you don't have occasions of demon possession being manifest throughout the history of the Old Testament. It also becomes apparent that open demon possession that has visible manifestation through human behavior begins to disappear even in the New Testament. But during the life of our Lord Jesus Christ, demon possession becomes extensively manifest. And it isn't because the demons want to manifest themselves, it is because Jesus brings them out. Demon possession almost exclusively and certainly at an amazing level is revealed during the life and ministry of Jesus and then the Apostles and it begins to diminish as the Apostles begin to disappear. In this explosion of power that came with Jesus came an explosive revelation of the conflict that demons waged against Him and how much power He had over them. So with that in mind, we come to the opening seven verses, the devastating power of demons.
We've already discussed it. Jesus is in a little flotilla with the Apostles and the disciples coming across the northern part of the Sea of Galilee to the eastern shore. They have encountered a storm in the middle of the night. It's taken them a while because the storm threw them off course. They finally arrived in the dawn on the other side. Jesus spoke and the wind stopped and the waves stopped.
We remember that amazing event. They finally reached the other side. They probably didn't know what was going to happen when they got there. They assumed that because this is a more rural area, we're going to go over there and get a little rest maybe from the crush of the crowds and these Apostles and disciples get a little more individual personalized instruction from our Lord.
But that wasn't the plan. As soon as He got to the other side, called the country of the Gerasenes, there was a village there named Gerasa, that's why it is called that. Although in Matthew it's called the region of the Gadarenes because there's a bigger city south and east, Gadara, that kind of gave its name to the region. So it's the region of Gadara and it's the actual village of Gerasa in that area.
And there's still a village there today even with the name Cursa. When he got out of the boat, immediately a man from the tombs with an unclean spirit met him and he had his dwelling among the tombs and no one was able to bind him anymore, even with a chain because he had often broken the chains and shackles that had bound him. They were torn apart by him, broken in pieces, no one was strong enough to subdue him.
So now he's a wild man and he's uncontrolled. He is violent, according to one of the other writers. He is so violent that nobody wants to pass that way. He does deadly damage to people's lives. He is a threat to life.
Constantly night and day showing his horrendous restlessness. He's screaming among the tombs and in the mountains, gashing himself with stones. We would say psychologically he's a sociopath, but truly in reality he is a demon-possessed man whose own personality and sense of self-control has been totally sublimated. He is now simply a vehicle for demonic expression.
They have totally taken the man over. We find then as he comes down the mountain in his normal, terrifying, screaming assault, verse 6 says, he sees Jesus from a distance and he ran up and bowed before him. The other people in that region might have not known Jesus, but he knew Him. Oh, believe me, the Word had passed on the demonic internet, whatever that is, so that all the demons everywhere knew what Jesus was doing in Galilee. Whatever the mechanism of spiritual recognition, it wasn't that the man recognized Jesus, it was that the demon did. The demon would certainly know he was in the presence of holy God, God the Son. He is crushed immediately, the demon in the man...demons actually, although one is the spokesman, he bows, the word proskoneo is the word for worship, he falls prostrate at the feet of Jesus. And he screams with this shrieking loud demonic voice that has overpowered the human voice and is using the human vocal cords. What business do we have with each other? Jesus, Son of the Most High God. Why does He ask that question? Well, first of all, He knows who He is, the Son of the Most High God.
They always do. Back in chapter 1 verse 23, the demon said, we know who You are, the Holy One of God. In chapter 3 verse 11 it says they all said that. Whenever He ran into a demon, the demons all confessed that He was the Son of God. They know who He is. But what they don't understand is why are you here now?
What business do we have with each other, Jesus? And Matthew adds that He said before the time. I've said this before, I'll say it again, the demon's theology is orthodox. They have an orthodox theology proper, that is they know God to be who He is, a Trinitarian God.
They have an orthodox Christology, they know that Jesus Christ is the Son of the living God. They have an orthodox eschatology, they understand that there is a future timetable in which they will be sent to the lake of fire and this seems off schedule...off schedule. In Luke it says that He even said, don't send us into the abyss, abussos, the pit, the place where God occasionally binds permanently the demons such as He did those who sinned in Genesis 6.
Second Peter 2 and Jude tells us they were bound permanently in a pit. Demons don't want to be in a pit. They are evil, they are not just evil but passionately evil and they want to be able to do their evil in the world.
They want the freedom to roam and create their havoc. They don't want to be locked into a pit, even if it's not the permanent lake of fire. So He comes and says, wait a minute, this isn't the schedule, this isn't the time and please don't send us in to the pit. The pit is something they could be sent to then and now, that's not future, the lake of fire is future.
It doesn't seem to be the schedule that they're familiar with. Now that leads us to verse 8 and the second power. The first power is the devastating power of demons.
The second is the delivering power of deity...the delivering power of deity. In verse 8, Jesus had been saying to the man, come out of the man, you unclean spirit, to the demon who was the spokesman, the representative spokesman for all the demons that were in this man and there were many, as we will see. Come out of the man, you unclean spirit.
Other occasions in the New Testament record that He said very similar things to that, very kind of familiar statement to the demons to be told to come out and to be identified as unclean spirits. He also was asking Him, what is Your name? What is Your name? The man had a name, I'm sure. He had a name that his mother and father gave him when he was a sweet little baby in their arms, probably a name that had family significance and family meaning and maybe even incorporated into it some virtue or some characteristic they hoped would be true of their little one. But by now the human name has been sublimated.
The man's personality is so totally dominated that he essentially is virtually out of existence. And so the name that is given in reply is the name that relates to the force of demons that now live in him. And so the spokesman demon said to Jesus, my name is Legion for we are many...we are many. Luke says, many demons had entered that man, leading therefore to the choosing of the name. And just to show you how extensive it is, Legion is really not a name, it is a military designation and a Legion had up to six thousand soldiers...six thousand Roman soldiers.
It's a military unit of thousands of men, up to six thousand soldiers. Jesus draws that name out. Some commentators have assumed that the demons were happy to give that name because they thought it might intimidate Jesus to know that there were that many of them He had to deal with.
I don't see that as reality. I think they understood they couldn't intimidate Jesus, they know exactly who He is. But He draws the name out of them. They're not giving the name as a defense mechanism, He's demanding the name because He wants to demonstrate the extensiveness of His power over demons.
It's one thing to cast a demon out of a person, it's another thing to deal with thousands of demons with a simple command. They don't want to come out of the man, they don't want to be sent to the pit, they don't want to even go out of the country because they begin imploring Him earnestly not to send them out of the country, verse 10. They're not ready for the Lake of Fire, that's the future, that's not the time yet. They're not ready for the abyss, they don't want to go there into that place of incarceration where they can't function.
They don't even want to leave the country they're in, the region they're in. It's Gentile territory which means it's a territory in which there are probably multiple religions, all of them concocted by demons because anything other than the truth is a demon doctrine, right? Doctrines of demons. So they've developed a perfect setting for their promotion of the Kingdom of Darkness. They have their own religions, their own cults, their own idols. It is a desirable context for their evil operation. And this man is...this maniac man is only one feature of their evil operation, no doubt.
There probably were many more demons operating in the area through the false religion without manifesting themselves so that those false religious leaders looked respectable and even moral. They want to stay there with whatever they've got going, they want to continue to do it. It's not time for their eternal torment.
They don't want to go to the abyss, so they have a plan. Verse 11, now there was a large herd of swine feeding nearby on the mountain. Now this reminds us again that we're in Gentile territory, right? Jews don't raise pigs. This is a Gentile operation and it's a large, large herd. According to verse 13, there are two thousand pigs in this herd.
So this is a rather significant enterprise. It might even be a village enterprise with that many pigs. So the demons say to him in verse 12, send us into the swine so that we may enter them. Inevitably someone will ask me, why did they want to go into the pigs? I don't know. I am happy to report to you, I have absolutely no insight into why demons want to do anything. I don't operate in that realm. I don't know any demons well enough to ascertain their motivations.
I have no idea, except to say they want the freedom to do damage. And if you can't do damage through a man, you do damage through animals. Is it possible that an animal could be demon-possessed?
Obviously it is. It is possible that demons can literally take over the behavior of animals. Animals are not self-conscious, they don't have a personality. Sorry, folks, your dog does not have a personality. You think it does, it has certain behavior characteristics that are unique to it. But it's not self-conscious.
It's not a person. And so it has a brain and behaviors that demons can dominate. And the very action of the pigs, as we'll see in a moment, indicates what demons do. They create chaos.
They remove normal instinct and normal restraint that even animals have and create violent and deadly results. Now just as a footnote here, the question that struck me as I was thinking this through, the demons are begging for mercy. It says the demons implored him. They're begging.
This isn't just one request. I mean, it's coming out of this man and this demon on behalf of the rest is begging and pleading with Jesus. And you know, you might think, send them to the pit. The world would be a better place if we had two thousand less demons, or four thousand, or however many there were in this legion.
Doesn't that make sense? And in fact while you're doing it, send them all to the pit. Why not just rid the world of demons in any fell swoop, in any moment, God could take all demons that exist and He could put them in chains instantaneously.
You say, how do you know that? Revelation 20 says in the future, in the Millennium, that's exactly what He's going to do. He's going to change Satan and all his forces for a thousand years.
He could do it any time He wanted. The fact that He doesn't do it now indicates that He doesn't want to do it now because they serve a purpose. God has His purposes.
He could stop the whole satanic operation instantaneously, bind them all, or throw them all into the pit immediately, even into the lake of fire. But He has His purposes. He lets evil run its full course because it brings Him glory. It brings out...it brings out the wonder of His grace and it also brings out the wonder of His wrath.
He'll shut it down when He gets ready to shut it down, but He's not ready yet. That's John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. Today's lesson on Grace To You is part of John's current study titled, Jesus Over All. John, your lesson today is one of about 1,500 that you've preached from the four Gospels. And in fact, during your 55 years as pastor and Bible teacher, nearly half of your sermons have come from Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Now, is that a pattern that believers need to follow? In other words, should the narratives of Jesus' life have priority over the rest of Scripture in the way a believer studies the Word of God? You wouldn't want to say that they would have priority over other Scripture, but you would want to say that they are foundational to other Scripture, even the Old Testament. That might surprise you. You might think, well, the Old Testament came first. Isn't it the foundation?
No. If you study the Gospels, you're studying the foundation of the Scripture. You're studying the person of Christ in four testimonies, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And then, if you read the rest of the New Testament, the writers are explaining what the Gospels record. They explain the person of Christ. They explain the death of Christ. They explain the resurrection of Christ.
They explain the ascension of Christ, the sending of the Holy Spirit, the establishment of the church. The whole ministry of Christ laid out in the Gospels is explained in the Epistles. And then the New Testament ends with the book of Revelation, the coming glory of Christ. When you have seen Christ clearly in the Gospels and understood the theology of his life and ministry in the Epistles, now you can go back to the Old Testament because you know who Christ is, and you can find him everywhere he appears in the Old Testament. You know, the disciples on the road to Emmaus were so confused until Jesus went to the Old Testament, to Moses, the Law, the Prophets, the Holy Writings, and explained everything concerning himself.
And they said, we understand and our hearts burned within us. Christ is the theme of Scripture. It starts in the Gospels.
Thanks, John. And friend, if you want more help in discovering Christ throughout all of Scripture, let me suggest you pick up a copy of the MacArthur Study Bible when you contact us today. The Study Bible has nearly 25,000 notes from John, detailed introductions to each book, more than 100 charts and maps, and it is an ideal resource, whether you're a new believer or a long-time saint, helping you understand what God's Word promises you and what it demands of you. To order the MacArthur Study Bible available in the English Standard, New King James, and New American Standard versions, call us at 855-GRACE. That's our toll-free number once more, 855-GRACE.
Or you can shop online at GTY.org. Now, if you've been encouraged by John's study, titled Jesus Over All, if you've benefited from John's recent study on the future of Israel, or if someone you know has trusted Christ after hearing this broadcast, we'd love to hear your story. Send an email to Letters at GTY.org, or you can mail your letter to Grace to You, Box 4000, Panorama City, California 91412. Now for John MacArthur, I'm Phil Johnson. Remember to watch Grace to You television on Sunday, Direct TV, Channel 378, and be here Monday as John continues his look at Christ's authority over everything and see what that means for your life. It's another half hour of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time on Grace to You.
