Valuing People - From My Heart to Yours Part 6

Well, as you know, last week I was in Israel, and one day after we had toured around, Gordie Langley, who was there with me, my friend, he and I went out to go down into town, about a 10-minute walk.

We were up at the Sea of Galilee, about a 10-minute walk from our hotel, and just sit and relax and talk a little bit. And I had taken over with me a bunch of CDs of my life story in Hebrew. You know, we have those CDs in 14 different languages right out here in the lobby at our churches, and we're coming up with something even more, you know, millennial-friendly, but I'll tell you more about that in a couple of weeks. But anyway, we went up there, and I forgot to take any CDs with me.

I mean, it just, I forgot. So we were sitting there, the servers were nice, and the cashier, everybody, and I was like, Gordie, you know, I cannot believe I forgot to bring my CDs. And as we're walking back to the hotel, about a 10, 12-minute walk, the Holy Spirit was beating on me, saying, you need to go back and get some of those CDs and bring them back up to the people in this cafe. I said, well, Lord, maybe I'll come up tomorrow night. And the Spirit said, well, they may not be there tomorrow night. I said, well, Lord, it's 10 o'clock at night. We got to be up before 6 o'clock in the morning. I got a bunch of sermons to preach tomorrow.

I need to be good and fresh for you. And the Lord said, Lon, I want you to go back there, get those CDs, and take it back up to those people. And I'm like, but Lord, I don't really want to do that. I don't feel like doing that.

I'm tired. And we argued the whole way back to the hotel, me and the Lord. And finally, when we walked into the lobby of the hotel, the Holy Spirit said to me, Lon, if you don't get those CDs and walk back to those people, the message that you're going to preach the weekend you're back, this weekend, you are going to be the worst kind of hypocrite imaginable. You say, wow, what kind of message were you going to preach? Well, folks, I got to tell you, it's not a message I were going to preach. It's a message I are going to preach right now.

So are you ready? All right. Here's the message. It comes out of Mark chapter five. And the title of our series is from my heart to yours. And this is on my heart. So I want to communicate it to your heart. Mark chapter five.

Here we go. Verse one. Then Jesus and his disciples went across the lake, that is the Sea of Galilee, to the land of the Gerasenes.

Now, let me show you a map. And what this means is Jesus went over to the east side to Gerasa on the east side of the Sea of Galilee. And when Jesus got out of the boat, a man from the tombs with an unclean spirit, a demon met him. Now you say, Lon, well, you're an educated man.

I mean, come on. You don't really believe this, do you? You don't really believe that there's a being called the devil, do you? You don't really believe that there are demons, real demons, do you? You don't really believe that this man had demons inside of him, do you? I mean, when the Bible talks about devils and demons, isn't that just an allegory for the evil in the world?

Well, the answer is no, not at all. The Bible says, Isaiah chapter 14, Ezekiel chapter 28, that the devil and Satan and Lucifer, that this is a real angelic being who led a revolt against God before this world was created. And the Bible says that demons are fellow angels who followed him in this revolt. And the Bible says that right now, these demons and the devil himself are running loose here on earth. But the Bible says that even so they are still under the authority of God.

And finally, the Bible says that their final destination at the end of the age is the lake of fire, the abyss, as it's called in Luke chapter 8, where Revelation 20 verse 10 says, they will be tormented day and night forever and ever. Look, the Lord Jesus Christ spoke to demons, he had conversations with demons, he cast out demons, and he even went one on one with Satan himself in Matthew chapter 4, at his temptation in the wilderness. Friends, the Lord Jesus Christ believed that the demons and devil are real.

The Bible says that Satan and his demons are real, and therefore educated or uneducated, I believe exactly what the Bible says. Amen. All right. And this let me say before I go on, that I just want to take a moment and remind you that in light of this, the occult is nothing to play around with Ouija boards, tarot cards, seances, witches, fortune tellers, movies about Satan and demons and exorcisms and vampires, Ephesians 4-27 says, do not give the devil an opportunity to gain a foothold in your life.

And that's precisely what exposing ourselves to this kind of material does. So as your pastor, may I say to you, stay away from this stuff, and keep your children away from this stuff. Amen.

All right. Now let's finish up the story. So this man lived in the tombs and no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain, for he had often been chained hand and foot, and he would tear the chains apart and break the irons on his feet, and no one was strong enough to subdue him. And constantly night and day among the tombs and in the mountains, he would cry out and gnash himself with stones. Everybody was powerless against these demons.

Ah, but friends, that's all about to change. Verse six, and when he, the demon, saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and what did he do? He fell on his knees before him and he shouted at the top of his voice, what do I have to do with you, Jesus, son of the most high God? And the demon went on to say, I implore you by God, do not torment me. For Jesus had been saying to him, come out of the man, you unclean spirit. Then Jesus asked the demon, what is your name?

And he replied, my name is Legion, for we are many. A Roman Legion contains 6,000 soldiers, and I don't know if there were 6,000 demons inside of this man, but the fact that their name was Legion indicated there were a bunch of them. And you know, it's very interesting what the gospels of Matthew and Luke record that the demon said next. In Luke's gospel, the demon begged Jesus that he would not command them to go into the what?

The abyss. And in Matthew's gospel, chapter eight, behold the demon cried out saying, what do we have to do with you, oh son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time?

And what's the time? Well, it's at the end of the age when the Lord Jesus returns. And, and thanks, remember we said earlier that the demon's final destination, when, when will it be? At the end of the age. And where will it be?

The abyss, that's right. The Bible says they know it. The demons know that their time is limited, which is why they're trying to cause all the damage they can right now, because they know there's a day coming when the Lord is going to lock them up and throw away the key, and there will be no more damage for eternity that they can possibly cause. Amen? We say amen? Listen, if that's the best clap you can give, let me just say to you, you have never fought with these things before.

Let me say their time is limited. Praise the Lord. Yeah.

Right. Now there was a large herd of pigs feeding on a nearby hillside and the demons begged Jesus to allow them to go into the pigs. So he gave them permission and the demons came out of the man and went into the pigs. Now this should strike you as strange, because Jewish people don't raise pigs, because devout Jewish people, they don't eat at red, hot and blue.

You know what I'm saying here, right? So what in the world are a bunch of Jewish people doing raising pigs? And these were not wild pigs.

They were domesticated pigs, because we're told in a moment or two there were people tending them. Well the answer is folks, that the east side, at the time of Christ, the east side and the south side of the Sea of Galilee were not populated by Jewish people. It was populated by Gentiles. As a matter of fact, there were 10 Gentile cities on the east and south side. We'll show you a map of the Sea of Galilee called the Decapolis.

Deca means what? And polis means cities. Anybody go to high school, take history. Yeah, cities, right.

These are the 10 cities and as you can see, Gergesa, circled in red, was one of them. These were Gentiles, not Jews, and pigs were a cash crop for these people. Watch. Then the herd of pigs, about 2,000 in number, rushed down the steep bank and into the lake and were drowned.

I mean we're talking a huge financial loss here. And then those who were, what's the next word? Tending the pigs.

I told you these were domesticated pigs, ran off and reported this in the town. So all the townspeople went out to see for themselves and when they got there, they found 2,000 of their pigs bobbing like corks in the Sea of Galilee and the man who had been possessed by the legion of demons sitting there dressed and in his right mind. Nobody could heal this man.

Nobody could corral this man. The demons tormented him so badly that he went around howling like a coyote at night, cutting himself, hurting himself. But here he was, sitting at the feet of Jesus, dressed, calm and in his right mind. Hey, when Jesus does something, he does it right. Amen?

Amen. And the people, look at this, the people, look what they did. Then the people began to plead with Jesus that he leave their region. Now it occurs to me that the city they came from back in their town must have had sick people in it.

It occurs to me there must have been lame people and blind people and deaf people and crippled people and people with leprosy and people who were dying of some disease back in their town. Why didn't these people say, oh my gosh, Jesus, please, can you come back to our town with us? We got all these people who need you to do for them what you just did for legion.

Come with us, please. Why did they do that? They said, would you please leave? Well, I'll tell you the answer and this is the salient point of the whole passage.

Don't miss it. The reason they wanted Jesus to leave is because they didn't want to lose any more pigs. The pigs and the money that the pigs represented, they were more concerned about them than they were about the people that Jesus could help if he came back to town. Do you see that?

Do we see that? Okay. So as Jesus was getting back into the boat, by the way, friends, Jesus is a gentleman. If you ask him to leave, he'll leave. And I want to say if you're here and you've never trusted Christ as your savior and people have tried to press Christ to you and have been praying for you and have been challenging you to receive Christ and you've been saying to Jesus, go away, go away. I'm not interested. You better be careful. Be careful. I'm warning you because I love you. At some point, Jesus may just go away and not offer to come back to you.

This happens, friends. He's a gentleman. Be careful about telling him to go away. If you're here and you don't know Christ, my advice to you is to say Jesus right now, while you're still offering, I'm accepted.

I hope you'll do that. Well, when Jesus was getting back into the boat, the man who'd been demon possessed begged to go with him, but Jesus would not allow him. Instead, Jesus told him, go home.

And what's the next word? Tell everyone the what great things the Lord has done for you and how he has had mercy on you. So the man went away and began to proclaim throughout all the Decapolis, all 10 cities, what great things Jesus had done for him. My friends, Legion became the first traveling evangelist in all of Christian history.

He became the Billy Graham of the Decapolis, going from a demon possessed man to Billy Graham of the east side of the Sea of Galilee. What a great story, huh? What a wonderful story. Now, that's as far as we want to go in our passage because we want to ask our most important question now and you know what it is. So are you ready? I know you've missed this. So here we go.

Come on now, everybody, nice and loud. One, two, three, four. Right. Folks, can I tell you why this passage is on my heart today to share with you? It's because last week our tour group stood at the very spot where Mark chapter five took place. Today, it's called Cursi.

I'll show you a picture. There's a church there from 325 AD, the remains are. And then if you look up in the hills, you see the tombs even there today where Legion was living and where he came down from to meet Christ. And as we stood there, God reminded me as he does every time we go to this spot that Jesus did not die on the cross for church buildings. And Jesus did not die on the cross for parking lots. And Jesus did not die on the cross for attendance figures. And Jesus did not die on the cross for offering plates. And Jesus did not die on the cross for book sales. Jesus died on the cross for people. And see, see sometimes, sometimes I forget this.

I get so busy and I get so distracted and I'm in such a hurry and I get so sinfully focused on my own issues and my own selfish agenda that I put people second. Just like I did those people in Israel that I didn't want to go back to and give a CD. You say, well Lon, I'm dying to know, what did you do? Well, I went up to my room. I got six CDs in Hebrew.

I walked back the twelve minutes to the café. I gave out the CDs to everybody there. They were amazingly receptive.

One of them hugged me for giving it to him. And then I walked the twelve minutes back, twenty-five minutes round trip. But folks, aren't the souls of five or six people worth twenty-five minutes? Amen? You say, oh Lon, you're such a wonderful example.

No, I'm not. Did you hear what I said to you? That I argued with God the whole way back to the hotel.

I didn't want to go back. No, I'm not a good example of this principle. I'm a terrible example of this principle. But I know this is the way God wants me to be. And so I'm trying to get better. And I'm asking the Holy Spirit every day to help me get better, and help me slow down, and help me have a moment for people, and help me have an arm for people, and help me have a concern for people. I'm trying to do better, but I'm not a good example. Jesus is a good example.

I mean, he had an agenda a whole lot bigger than mine, and he never, never was too busy for people. And folks, as followers of Christ, I hope that you'll be trying to do this very same thing. Say, Lord, please slow me down. Please Lord, help me to look up from my own agenda and see people all around me who need a little bit of love, who need a little bit of encouragement, who need somebody to put their arm around them, who need somebody to say an encouraging word. Help me God do that. Now let me sum up. If you want to know what the purpose of today's message was in one sentence, here it is. Above everything else, God cares about people. And as his followers, he wants you and me to have the very same value system, both in our personal lives and here in our church family.

That's the point. We got it? Got it? Okay, let's bow our heads together. And with our heads bowed and our eyes closed, here's what I want to ask you to do. I want to ask you to think of some people that you know that really need you to slow down a little bit for them. I know you've got people in your life like that, because I do. I've got a son who's been away from the Lord in his comeback, but his wife is divorcing him. And I've got three grandchildren right in the middle of this, age four, two and one. And I've got a daughter who's medically fragile and disabled. And I've got friends who are lost that I love and I care about and they need Christ.

We've all got people. And now that you've got those people in your mind, here's what I want to ask you to consider. I want to ask you to take the time right now to leave where you're sitting and come join me down here in the front. And let's get on our knees together and let's take the time to pray for these people. If you can't get to the front, just get on your knees right there in your seat. If you're up in the upper tier, we'll wait for you.

But I want to invite you to come down right now and let's invest time in these people. Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to please grip us with the needs of people around us. Oh God, I ask you to forgive us as your people, to forgive me for being so into our own agendas and being in such a hurry, particularly in this crazy town, that we don't even have time to look around us, Lord, and see people in need everywhere we go.

Oh God, I pray that you would change us. And Lord, when we go out of our house in the morning, may the first thing we think about is not our meetings, but rather the people we're going to meet, Lord, and how much you love them and how much they need you, Lord, and how much they need a comforting hand and somebody who's just willing to pray for them and with them. Lord Jesus, for all the people we've prayed for today and thought about today, there is no God like Jehovah. Lord, there is no problem any person has that you can't meet. I am the God of all flesh, you said to Jeremiah.

Is there anything too hard for me? And so God, it's in that confidence we lift up people who are sick, people who are needy, people who are discouraged, people who are downcast, people who are lost, people whose marriages are coming apart. Oh God, honor our prayers and do a work in these people's lives because we know it was for them you came and died. And Lord, make us a church, I pray, that doesn't think in terms of anything else but people and how we can serve and love and help people. Make us an extension of your heart here in Washington, Lord. So we commit these folks to you that we've prayed for and thank you, Lord Jesus, that because there is no God like Jehovah, we can leave them safely in your arms. We commit them to you, Father, in Jesus' name we pray, and God's people said, Amen.