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Nov 21, 2021

Pagans, Pigs, Power, and Peace

Pagans, Pigs, Power, and Peace

Passage: Mark 5:1-20

Speaker: Brad Owen

Series: Follow: Learning from Mark about Jesus’ Most Misunderstood Command

As modern people we find ourselves caught in a dilemma: we resist the notions of spirits, demons, and personified evil, but many have experiences with dark and destructive expressions not easily reduced to merely human peculiarities. Do the accounts of Jesus’s confrontations with oppressive forces on people have anything for us? What specifically do those encounters have for us as we seek to know what it means to follow Him?

Readings & Scripture

PREPARATION: Isaiah 49:24-26
LEADER: Can the prey be taken from the mighty, or the captives of a tyrant be rescued?

ALL: For thus says the LORD: “Even the captives of the mighty shall be taken, and the prey of the tyrant be rescued, for I will contend with those who contend with you, and I will save your children.

Central Text: Mark 5:1-20
Mark 5:1 They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes. 2 And when Jesus had stepped out of the boat, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit. 3 He lived among the tombs. And no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain, 4 for he had often been bound with shackles and chains, but he wrenched the chains apart, and he broke the shackles in pieces. No one had the strength to subdue him. 5 Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always crying out and cutting himself with stones. 6 And when he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and fell down before him. 7 And crying out with a loud voice, he said, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me.” 8 For he was saying to him, “Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!” 9 And Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” He replied, “My name is Legion, for we are many.” 10 And he begged him earnestly not to send them out of the country. 11 Now a great herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside, 12 and they begged him, saying, “Send us to the pigs; let us enter them.” 13 So he gave them permission. And the unclean spirits came out and entered the pigs; and the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the sea and drowned in the sea.

Mark 5:14 The herdsmen fled and told it in the city and in the country. And people came to see what it was that had happened. 15 And they came to Jesus and saw the demon-possessed man, the one who had had the legion, sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, and they were afraid. 16 And those who had seen it described to them what had happened to the demon-possessed man and to the pigs. 17 And they began to beg Jesus to depart from their region. 18 As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed with demons begged him that he might be with him. 19 And he did not permit him but said to him, “Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.” 20 And he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him, and everyone marveled.

BENEDICTION: Romans 8:31
LEADER: What then shall we say to these things?

ALL: If God is for us, who can be against us? Amen

Related Scriptures:

  • Psalm 22:22 / Hebrews 2:11-12
  • Luke 10:17-20
  • John 12:31
  • Romans 8:31
  • 1 Corinthians 2:12
  • 2 Corinthians 5:11-15
  • 1 John 4:4

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

  1. When Jesus taught us to pray the Lord's Prayer and in it said, "...but deliver us from evil," to what was he referring?
  2. In some good Bible translations if the Lord's Prayer that's translated, "...but deliver us from the Evil One."  Who is the Evil One?  What is his desire to do that's so dangerous we need God's deliverance?
  3. What's the difference or intersection of mental illness and demon possession?  How can typically minded seemingly stable people be possessed to do the work of The Evil One in subtle ways?
  4. In the New Testament Gospels and in Acts, list the Pharisees who were healed of their spiritual afflictions and were healed by Jesus Christ and next to that list the demon possessed people and their caretakers who were healed by or better said allowed Jesus Christ to heal them?
  5. Are there demons in the modern world?  If so, how have you experienced their work if the Holy Spirit dwells in your heart?
  6. What is the good news for those saved and secured as Children of God as it relates to demons?

QUOTES:

 

  • 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, The Screwtape Letters
  • It is inherent in our entire [Western] philosophical tradition that we cannot conceive of a ‘radical evil’…Hannah Arendt
  • We are lived by powers we / pretend to understand….W.H. Auden
  • You’re gonna have to serve somebody
    Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
    But you’re gonna have to serve somebody. . .  
    - Bob Dylan, “Gotta Serve Somebody”

 

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