A Clash of Kingdoms

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Sermon by Josh Rice from Mark 5:1-20.

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The reading today is chapter 5, 1 through 20. They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the
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Gerasenes. And when Jesus had stepped out of that boat, immediately there met him out of the tombs, a man with an unclean spirit.
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He lived among the tombs, and no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain, for he had often been bound with shackles and chains.
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But he wrenched the chains apart, and he broke the shackles in pieces. No one had the strength to subdue him.
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Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains, he was always crying out and cutting himself with stones.
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And when he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and fell down before him. And crying out with a loud voice, he said, "'What have you to do with me,
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Jesus, son of the most high God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me.'
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For he was saying to him, "'Come out of the man, you unclean spirit.' And Jesus asked him, "'What is your name?'
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He replied, "'My name is Legion, for we are many.' And he begged him earnestly not to send them out of the country.
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Now a great herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside, and they begged him saying, "'Send us to the pigs, let us enter them.'
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So he gave them permission, and the unclean spirits came out and entered the pigs and the herd, numbering about 2 ,000, rushed down the steep bank into the sea and drowned in the sea.
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The herdsmen fled and told it to the city and in the country. And people came to see what it was that had happened.
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And they came to Jesus and saw the demon -possessed man, the one who had had the Legion, sitting there clothed in his right mind, and they were afraid.
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And those who had not seen it described to them what had happened to the demon -possessed man and to the pigs.
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And they began to beg Jesus to depart from their region. As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed with demons begged him that he might be with him.
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And he did not permit him, but said to him, "'Go home to your friends and tell them "'how much the
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Lord has done for you "'and how he has had mercy on you.' And he went away and began to proclaim in the
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Decapolis "'how much Jesus had done for him.' And everyone marveled." James chapter one, verse 13 says, "'Let no one say when he is tempted, "'I am being tempted by God.
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"'For God cannot be tempted by evil, "'and he himself does not tempt anyone. "'But each one is tempted when he is carried away "'and enticed by his own lust.
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"'Then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin, "'and when sin is fully matured, it brings forth death.
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"'Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers.'" I think this passage gives us a lot of trouble in the
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Reformed world, because there are two ditches when it comes to talking about demons.
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But what I hope to prove to you is that while this text has demons in it, that's not really what this text is about.
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This has two main points. Point number one is Jesus is expanding the boundaries and the borders of the kingdom of God into Gentile lands.
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And point number two is the radical reality of salvation that is brought on only by the decree of Jesus Christ.
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And so what we have is a lesson about how one who is completely, by the world's standards, unsavable, the very worst of situations, becomes the evangelist to the
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Gentile nations and to the city of Decapolis. But we often speak of these ditches, and so we have to deal with it.
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I told the guys on Wednesday night that when you come across texts like this, like if you're gonna preach about the
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Nephilim, if you're in Genesis 6, or if you're in Hebrews 7 and Melchizedek comes up, you can't just go through that text and be like, yeah, see,
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Jesus is the great high priest. You have to explain Melchizedek. You have to do that. In this text, there is a lot of curiosity because we have a very vivid story of a demon -possessed man, and this demon possession is a little bit different than what we saw in the synagogues earlier in Mark.
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This is a really wild situation here. And the ditches that we can fall into when we deal with demons and angels is on one side, we can describe everything to them, and we can say, the devil made me do it, right?
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Everything that's going on, the devil made me do it. I've been oppressed by Satan. That's why I'm doing what I'm doing.
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James obviously does not leave the door open for that. He tells us about our own corrupt nature and how we, in our own lust of the flesh, are carried away and open the door to that type of possession and oppression.
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But then on the other side, which is more common for us in the reform camp, is that we say that demonic and angelic influence is basically charismania hogwash.
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It's nonsense. And what our problem is in our camp, this is what we're most likely to fall into here, is that we functionally deny the existence of demonic influence, and we hold to naturalistic interpretations of everything.
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If I can't empirically observe it, then it's not real. Now, thankfully, there is a extremely popular podcast that's come out that at the very least has made people start thinking a little bit differently about this realm.
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That podcast is called Haunted Cosmos. I don't listen to every episode, but I think it has some good things for people at least to start thinking about not everything in the world has a naturalistic explanation.
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But see, biblically, there is zero doubt that a spiritual battle rages, that there are battles going on between principalities and authorities.
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And I think there's a hint in how Paul is talking about in that text. Principalities and authorities mean that there is demonic and angelic influence in the world, but they spend a lot of time with authorities.
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The nations of the world, there is an allegiance that's being called to Christ, and there is an enemy that very much wants nations to not hold that allegiance.
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So let's examine the battle more closely. And as we see this vivid picture, I wanna put you at first a curiosity, and it's one that gave me fits this week, is that we have a count of this event in all three synoptic gospels, but in Matthew, it's different, because in Matthew, he says that there's two men here, okay?
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That does not create a contradiction for us, because what's going on here is Mark is writing for a couple of reasons here.
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Mark wants to show the evangelistic nature of the kingdom, but Mark is also talking about the kingdom of God coming and it expanding its bounds.
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We talked about that last week, that Jesus shows his authority over nature itself. And this week, we're gonna see that Jesus makes war with the one who is the king over the nations, because remember when the temptation happened, that Satan offered
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Jesus the nations, and we believe that that was an offer that had some skin in the game.
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If Satan did not have those nations to offer, and Jesus knows everything, then that was not a real temptation.
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But Satan did have those nations to offer, but Jesus was going to take them by force. And we see the first legs of this today as Jesus goes to Gentile lands, he's crossed the
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Sea of Galilee, he's on the southeastern edge in the lands of, there's a textual variant, we'll say it in the land around the cities of Decapolis, there's 10
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Gentile cities in this area. And we see a man who Mark focuses in on who is completely enslaved to the power of Satan.
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And so what I want you to see first is that when given over completely to the
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Prince of Darkness, what's going to happen is you have a man who doesn't look like a man anymore. You have a man who is living among the dead, you have a man who everyone would look at and go, whoa, that's bad.
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No one would claim that. One of the things I tell my high schoolers as I warn them,
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I tell them all the time, first couple of weeks of school, I say, kids, no one when they're 12 years old dreams, one of these days
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I'm going to be a meth head. So what I want to do, I want to live under a bridge, have no teeth and scream at everybody and lick my gums.
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Nobody says that. And yet it constantly happens. And the reason why it happens is because we in our sinful flesh will open the door and leave it wide open for Satanic oppression.
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And in the Bible, when we see the word witchcraft, it is often translated from the Greek word pharmakia. And so we know that drugs and we know that hallucinogenic mind -altering drugs open a door into this realm of demonic oppression in this kind of world.
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So what I want to talk about first is, I told the guys again Wednesday, your audience, your application is for the people who are looking at you.
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And so as I think about this text and we see a madman who's cutting himself, who's living in tombs, who everyone in the cities around has made a pathway around this place because they don't want to go through this area because this guy's a raving lunatic.
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It's as if he's a wild lion who's living in this valley. Everyone's making their way around.
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And we think to ourselves, what is the real danger for us? So I want to look at the shackles of Satan. Because the shackles of Satan, as we see in this text, are much stronger than the shackles of man.
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The shackles of man are chains. And through the power of Satan, this man is ripping apart chains.
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Can you imagine what a fearsome thing to see? Would you want to get anywhere near a man who's screaming obscenities, cutting himself naked out in the wilderness, living in tombs among dead bodies, and can rip chains asunder?
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What a scary thing it is. So what we have to look back on, this is why I read the passage out of James, is that we have to examine the wiles of the enemy.
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And we have to study the enemy, not so that we would be like him, but so that we would be able to identify the bait on the hook that he latches us in with and that he takes us into his schemes.
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Because the shackles of Satan are, first, seductive. They are quite seductive. And you can imagine, in this man's case, he's been promised something.
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As he lives in this community, he's been promised something that is seductive. And so in taking the bait, he has opened himself up to this possession by legion.
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And I think the seductive thing that we see right away is he's been given supernatural strength. And that appeals to men, doesn't it?
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Men, what would you give for supernatural strength? The ability to just lift huge objects easily.
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The ability to tear metal with your bare hands. It's hardly to be imagined. And yet that would be a seductive thing because strength and power go together for men.
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And so this man has been given a bait. And often, the shackles of Satan are clothed in subtlety.
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They're hidden. And they look good until the mask is ripped off by reality.
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Our enemy is cunning. He is silvery smooth.
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He has a sweet tongue. And our enemy comes to us often as an angel of light, and he promises seemingly good things that are obtained by bad means.
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And then when we bite on the hook, we are hooked. We see it in our world today with drug use.
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We see it with the fractiousness and the division within the church of God that we hear, hey, we hear subtle lies like, look, we hold the truth, no one else does.
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You gotta separate. That's a lie of the enemy. We see the lie of the enemy in our computer screens and our phone screens every single day.
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He has enslaved a generation of men with the subtle idea that, look, women are horrible anyway.
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They're going to divorce you. So guess what you should do, men? Forget them. You don't need that trouble. You can get your gratification on your phone screen every day.
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Every single day, anytime you want. And the bait is on the hook.
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And all it takes is you grab it that one time and release the pleasure.
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Here comes the shackles. And the shackles cannot be removed by the power of men. We see that as point number two of the shackles of Satan.
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They cannot be overcome with the means of man, with external means. The town had had him chained and shackled.
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They had had him banished into this wilderness, into this desolation. And what we will do often with the shackles of Satan is we will attempt with willpower and asceticism to throw off these bounds.
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And it doesn't work because we are not strong enough to fight the spiritual battle by carnal means.
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And me saying, I'm going to do, I'll never do this again, I'll never do this again, I'll never do this again, is a fool's errand.
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Because the question is not about willpower, the question is about Christ's power and our listening to the
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Holy Spirit in our heart. And so what we have to do is we have to learn how to end scripture with worship and in fellowship and in accountability to turn the noise down on our own self -will and the noise down of the voices around us so that we can hear the
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Holy Spirit and so that we can be conformed to the image of Christ. But too often we are shackled in sin by trying to solve the problem with what our eyes can see.
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And so this man is hopeless, destitute, thrown out of the town. And so what we see is as the shackles continue and as we abide in slavery, that we will eventually abide in death.
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And this is critical to understanding this passage. So the number three thing is that the shackles of Satan and the hook that's lured in, as James said, is going to conceive, give birth to sin, and then when it's fully mature, death, death.
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So this man is a vivid object lesson of the end result of sin, which is that he is sleeping among dead bodies.
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It's the only place he can find comfort. It's the only place he can find shelter is in tombs. Can you imagine?
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How hard up would you have to be to go sleep next to the cadavers in the rocky, stony tombs of desolation?
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It's madness. On his trip on that way, where he ends in death, he goes into delusion and self -harm.
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The shackles of Satan bring delusion, mutilation. And we look to ourselves and we go, hey, there's not really a battle with demons.
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People who mutilate themselves, they have mental illness. And I just say, where do you think that came from?
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Do we have satanic oppression in the United States right now? Have you heard anything about the delusional desire for people to mutilate themselves?
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Yeah, I think we do. We have it in the transgender movement, where we have a whole culture of saying it's good to mutilate ourselves.
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That is satanic. That is demonic oppression. That is the principalities and powers. When you know, if you've been around young people long enough, you will know that when the drug use starts to coming in, you get depression and you start to get self -harm.
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Cutting, slicing wrists, trying to bring pain on in a way that's not from the psyche, but is from the physical.
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Trying to feel something, because the drugs make us so numb. That is satanic oppression.
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It's debasing. And the person feels like there is no way to get out. Cutting yourself, screaming obscenities.
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We would look at that person, we go, man, that must be a crazy person, living on the corner of the street in a big city, panhandling money and yelling obscenities at people.
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And we go, whoa, that is so uncivilized. And yet, that same thing, that's just a run of the mill day at Planned Parenthood.
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That's what they do every day, all day. Screaming obscenities and harming, mutilating.
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That is the debasement. We see the devolving of the image of God into that of an animal. This man living like a jackal, covered in blood all the time.
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You know he was. This man had to look like a hewn up piece of meat. Cutting himself, screaming, slobbering on himself naked.
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What a terrifying sight. And we're gonna see the difference between the image of man and that of an animal in this story.
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Because these demons have almost, almost erased God's image from this man.
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And that's what they wanna do. That's what Satan desires to do. God says, I made male and female.
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Satan says, I want to erase that distinction. God says, I have saved a people.
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Satan says, I want to cause division within that people. God says, I take no delight in the destruction of the wicked.
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Satan says, I take maximum delight in the destruction of the wicked. Let me get as many as I can to destroy.
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That's his enemy. Because what Satan does fundamentally in the shackles of Satan, is they reverse the love of neighbor into a destruction of neighbor.
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Look at this man's relationship with his people. His people have thrown him out. They're terrified of him.
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Because he's been doing violence to them. If we get into the cycle of sin, people will mean nothing to us.
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The only thing that means anything to us is to continue the delusion and the shackles that Satan has put on.
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Because this pushes insanity. Isolation from society. We are made to image
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God who is the triune Godhead. God in perfect community from the beginning of time. We are made in his image.
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That's why we desire social interaction. That's why we desire to be together. That's why the means of God's conquestorial kingdom is the gathering of his saints in the church.
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And Satan sees that. And all the schemes of Satan push into isolation. They push into dividing into smaller and smaller groups.
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Because when you're isolated, you're weak. Jesus said, if you strike down the shepherd, the sheep will scatter.
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And the scattered sheep are now susceptible to ravenous wolves. So this man is extremely susceptible to all of these delusions and panics because he's been thrown out of society.
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And notice this. Matthew gives the insight that the shackles of Satan, often it burns our conscience.
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Even when our conscience gets seared, the person knows that it's wrong. They're not proud. I was talking to Cooper, I believe, on Friday night.
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We're talking about even the far -gone atheist. They're very hesitant to say blasphemous things about Jesus specifically.
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They'll say things they don't believe in him. But they will not often say that Jesus is just a lying huckster. They are very far gone when they say things like that.
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Because God has made us. And because the rocks and all of creation cry out that Jesus is the son of God.
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And so it is a truth that's burned into the psyche of humanity. And when we, in our delusions, suppress the truth, we are at odds with nature and the way that God has created things.
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And so because of that, when we are enshackled and we are enslaved to Satan, what we will try to do is we will try to find drug buddies so that we can all get together and do fentanyl together.
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Don't ask me why. You're a zombie. You don't really know that someone's there, but you'll do it anyway.
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And we know this to be true. That people find small groups of people to encourage them in their delusional sin.
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This is the anatomy of how oppression works. This is the anatomy about how Satan operates.
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Because we feel better in our delusion when more people share our delusion. Ultimately, Luke 8, 27 tells us this man is naked and he is totally stripped of dignity.
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He is covering nothing. There is no hope, no future. Shame, fear, beastly, gripped in hate and hopelessness.
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That is the situation of the demoniac. Now, depressing stuff. Did you know that every step towards that begins with a suppression of truth and thinking just like Adam and Eve did in the garden, that God is withholding something from us and that we can take it because we know just a little bit better than God.
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That is always the lie that starts us down this path of demonic oppression. It is a dangerous thing to sin.
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Church, do we remember that? We tell white lies. We let our eyes linger a little bit too long on that Facebook short.
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And the algorithm sees and it feeds us more. We will gossip just a little bit, just a little bit.
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Make it sound like a prayer request. And never do we realize, A, that that sin nailed
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Christ to the cross and that he bled and died to forgive you for the heinousness of that act of rebellion against God.
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But I think also in our blindness and delusion, we think that we are great and we think that we can take our sin and that we can keep it in a little box and we can keep it under control.
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But it's like keeping a honey badger in that box. And he's gonna bust out and he's gonna go crazy and rampage through the house and destroy everything in there.
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I'm sure at one point this man thought that he had everything under control until Legion completely comes in and dominates him.
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And that's where we find him. And Christians, if we want to make way, look, we're all sinners.
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In this side of glory, there's not gonna be a perfect purging of sin out of our midst, but God has given us tools in Matthew 18.
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God has given us tools in this body to where we're not on this path alone, to where we can rebuke and exhort and encourage.
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And we should live our lives with a couple of people who know intimately what's going on in our life and what's going on in our house.
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And when we have that, we have a safety net of people who can identify the sin that we are so blind to and we can treat it and pray and cry out to God about it in repentance at its early stages before it's got us tearing ourselves apart.
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Sin is extremely dangerous. And notice that the Lord of glory knows all about this man.
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And he goes across the sea for this man, for this man. And this is one of the wildest stories of the
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New Testament because it is totally turning everything that we know about how to start a movement completely on its head.
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Because Jesus' first envoy into the Gentile nations is to save a man who looks like an animal and who acts like an animal.
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So that's bad news, right? Sin is dangerous. You will fall into it. It will give birth to sin and it will mature into death.
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And that is the path that we all walk. And yet, and yet, there's this thing. We see it in verse eight, there's a turn.
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Even the demons believe and they shudder. Verse eight, he had been saying to him, this is
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Jesus, had been saying, come out of the man, you unclean spirit. Jesus was getting off the boat.
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Walking onto the shore and praying for this man and talking to these unclean spirits as soon as he steps foot on the shore.
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And these demons are in a very dangerous place now because the Lord has turned his sights on Legion and he's going to make war.
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And this is going to be a very anticlimactic war for the demons. They don't have much to say.
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You're gonna see that they sound like the bleeding of sheep or the screaming of pigs in this story. All they do, the whole posture of Big Scary Legion is to beg things of Jesus Christ.
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That's all they do. There's no demands, there's no threats. There's just on your knees begging.
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But it's not the kind of worshipful on your knees. He had been saying, come out, come out.
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For the demons, you have to understand that this is not an ethereal thing. That's what we so often think of this realm as, is we think, hey, there's this spiritual battle going on.
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That doesn't really make sense. Maybe I read This Present Darkness and got scared a little bit a few years ago in the 90s.
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Yeah, a few years ago, like a long time ago in the 90s. Okay, and that was going on. And now, I don't know, like I'm just living my life.
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I'm in the mundane. Look, guys, there is demonic stuff going on and it's not ethereal, it is real.
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But also, Jesus is not an abstract spiritual proclamation.
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The kingdom of Jesus is real and it's tangible and it has complete power over unclean spirits and over demons because these demons know, unlike many in the church today, these demons know that Jesus presents a real threat to their dominion.
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His presence is a threat because make no mistake, this is an invasion into Gentile territory.
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What do you call someone who comes into the country and tries to change the religion of the country? Saudi Arabia would have no trouble identifying what that is.
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Those are enemy combatants, okay? Jesus is coming with this religion of the
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God of Moses and he is bringing it into the Gentile shores and he is invading because his kingdom is going to grow beyond where it was, where Israel was the wild branch, where Israel was the one that had wild grapes.
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It never blossomed into the vineyard because it was always waiting for the fulfillment of Christ who was gonna come and be the true vine, the true
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Israel. And this was going to have the biggest grapes you ever saw in your life because his vine was going to stretch to all the nations.
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The blessing of Abraham fulfilled in Jesus Christ. The blessing of Abraham would be every nation.
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His descendants would be like the sands of the seashore. That wasn't gonna happen in the extremely small, confined area of Israel.
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It was always going to go out further than that. And so Jesus steps foot on enemy territory and he makes war.
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He makes war immediately. And this demon knows it. He's quick to acknowledge the identity of Jesus and what his reaction is is to beg clemency.
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Here's what he says. After seeing Jesus from, oh, I should make this note. This will help with this passage.
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The pronouns in this passage are wild, okay? Like you got masculine, you got neuter, you got plural, you got singular.
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Here's the deal. Is the man talking or is legion talking? It's indecipherable and it doesn't matter.
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Every time that this man or legion is talking, it's the same voice, okay? The man is so far gone and so under the possession of legion that for them to talk is the same thing.
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And so here's what he says. After seeing Jesus from a distance, he ran up and bowed down before him.
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And crying out with a loud voice, he said, what do I have to do with you, Jesus, son of the most high
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God? I implore you by God, do not torment me. Parallel passage,
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Matthew 8, 29 says, behold, they cried out saying, what do we have to do with you, son of God?
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Have you come here to torment us before the time? Before the time.
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Luke 8, 31, they were imploring him not to command them to go away into the abyss.
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This is a very interesting thing. And it highlights the insanity of Satan, right?
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The insanity of Satan. Satan rebelled against the most high God and he was cast down out of heaven.
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And what Satan knows is that his time is coming. His time is coming. And as an insane person,
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Satan's response is not to repent and to bow the knee because he is prevented from doing so by the
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Lord's will and his perfect will. But Satan, instead, wants to break as much as he possibly can before his time.
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And so what the demons do here is the demons beg Jesus not to torment them because their time has not come.
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And this is an eternal torment, to be thrown into the abyss where they will make their domain forever.
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That's what hell was created for. The lake of fire was created for the fallen angels and for Satan.
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And man joins them because of our rebellion, our Satanic rebellion against God.
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Hell was not made for man, hell was made for the fallen angels. But because of man's belief in the lies of the fallen angels and because of the oppression and the dominion of the prince of the power of the air over those sons of disobedience who are ordained to be vessels of destruction, they will make their abode in the lake of fire forever.
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And that gives God no pleasure whatsoever, but it does show his perfect righteous justice and it shows his compassion to save some who were rebels.
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It's not our time. It's not our time. Who are you, Jesus, most high God? Understand here, this is important for us in the church, critically important, that acknowledging who
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Jesus is will not save you. It will not save you.
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It is a dependence on the kindness and mercy of Jesus that is the substance of faith.
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And we know that faith is a gift of God out of his grace, Ephesians 2, eight and nine.
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Because if we could conjure up faith, then we could brag about it. If we could come up with our own faith and say, yeah,
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I do believe in you, God, I'm glad that I figured this out, then we can boast because we have become the spiritually enlightened ones.
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But we are not Gnostics. We do not believe in spiritual enlightenment and spiritual umpires.
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We believe that out of God's grace, which is his unmerited favor and his kindness towards some that he has given us faith.
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And that faith is belief. That faith is a fealty in Jesus Christ. That faith is a belief and a dependence on his kindness and his mercy and his salvation.
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These demons know nothing of Christ's salvation. They do know who he is, but they don't want any part of it.
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They don't want any part of it. They want his mercy without allegiance. They're trying to break everything he's building and they want clemency.
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They want to be left alone to do evil. Boy, there's a sermon in that, isn't there?
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Christians, have we left people alone to do evil just so we can be left alone ourselves?
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You know that the enemy cares nothing about us making our proclamations and about us hugging each other's neck and being happy in the little place.
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He cares tremendously about what happens at the end of this story. Because every time
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Jesus releases the captives and every time people start acting like they have true faith, there is economic loss to the pagans and the world gets turned upside down every time.
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I've heard it said, and I think it's true, do you realize that we would have economic calamity if abortion was completely abolished tomorrow?
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We have built our country on the backs of women aborting their babies and there would be tremendous consequences economically if that practice was stopped tomorrow.
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Tremendous consequences. Christian, are you ready for that? I think we have to be ready because what
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Jesus doesn't do is leave people alone. He confronts them and he confronts the evil and these demons just want to be left alone, live and let live.
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What do you care about Decapolis, Jesus? And Jesus says, Decapolis is mine. It's mine and you're not going to stay there because understanding this, the timing appeal is not gonna work.
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Why is it not gonna work? Because Jesus' time has come. Remember back to chapter one. The kingdom of God is at hand.
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The kingdom of God is at hand. The demons have had this land under their thumb for too long, for centuries.
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And now the king has come and they want to stay in this region because this region, it's not that it's special, it's that they've been setting up camp here and doing a lot of good for the kingdom of darkness.
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They'd held the people blind and afraid in this area. So why do they want to go into the pigs?
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There's a lot of weird stuff in commentaries. There's a lot of weird ideas, right? Why do the demons want to go in the pigs?
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Is it because they can't exist out in the air? No, the reason they want to go into the pigs is because they firmly want to keep rooted in this principality.
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It's this area they want to be. They look at the pigs as being a half step for them to be able to keep their foothold in the area.
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If we can stay in these pigs, Jesus is gonna leave eventually and we can go get somebody else.
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That's the plan. That's the plan. So the unclean spirits, poetically, are going to come out of an unclean man into unclean animals.
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That is the irony of the passage. These demons, though, if we got real scared of them, and we should be somewhat afraid, right?
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The devil is a lion prowling. We're told in Jude that we should not even blaspheme the demons, right?
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That we should say, God, rebuke you. We do not have power over them. Jesus has power over them.
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But these angelic beings do have finite knowledge, finite. They are not omniscient.
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They don't know everything that's gonna happen because these demons, when they ask to go into the pigs, they think that they will be safe in the pigs.
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They don't understand that the results of going in the pigs are the same as the results of banishment. Why do they not understand this?
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Because they don't understand the purpose of God and they don't care about the purpose of God. That is the debased mind.
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We don't care about the purpose of God. It doesn't mean anything to us. And so these beings are finite. And so what happens is when they go into the pigs, the pigs have no image of God in them, do they?
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Pigs are animals. If you've been around pigs, they're one of the smartest animals that there are.
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They're very smart. One might say they're sometimes devilishly smart. They can remember. They are frustrating.
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They know things. They can be trained quickly and they go back to feral in 30 days. They're one of the only animals in the field that does not have fright of man.
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They don't run away, they attack. They are aggressive. But these pigs, they don't have the image of God.
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And so these demons who have so controlled this man to the point of death, to where he's mutilating himself, to where he's living in these tombs, when they go in the pigs, they're going like full throttle.
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There's no subtlety. And they go into the pigs and the full death spiral that they've already worked in their practice in this man instantly goes into the pigs.
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And so the pigs have no resistance at all and they run straight off the cliff and die. Why? Because the purpose is for banishment.
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Some might say that Jesus fools his enemies here. Would you say that? I think so.
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They think that they're being given clemency and Jesus knows that he is banishing them, that they are going back to the air out of this region because what's gonna happen in this region is the war of the gospel, the war of the gospel of critical importance, and this is for us to understand.
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When it comes to sin, I know you don't live this way and I know sometimes we forget it. And I have these counseling calls and I understand and I talk to men and women all the time.
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Here's what you have to understand. Demons have zero, zero resistance to the commands of God.
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Zero. They must obey immediately. They have no power over Jesus Christ and neither does your sin over you,
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Christian. Do you need to hear it again? Your sin has zero power over you,
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Christian. What you have are all the tools of righteousness. Why do we fear?
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Why do we fear? Will Jesus start a good work in us and then leave it incomplete? I think he's promised something different than that, that he will complete every work that he started in us until the day of glory, that we are in the hand of our creator and that nothing and no one can take us out of his hand.
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And so he works in us and he works to sanctify us and he forbears even our rebellious sin as people who believe in him because he is disciplining and sanctifying us and he is using the tools of the enemy to grow us in strength.
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Count it a joy when we encounter various trials for they build our perseverance and they build our toughness and they also build our resistance to sin because the hand that was burned by the pot is not so likely to touch that pot again.
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Sometimes we have to be burned by it. And Christian, we don't have to live in slavery to sin because Jesus has already won the battle and freed us from it.
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So what happens? Jesus says, you can go in the pig and then this man goes under a very slow transfer.
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No, no he does not. He is instantly changed. And the disciples were prepared by this.
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It's something you might miss in the text, right? The man is instantly changed and he gets dressed. One of the questions
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I asked in the text right away, where did the clothes come from? I mean, were they laying around in the wilderness?
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I don't think so. Presumably the disciples have brought a change of clothes and they give him his clothes.
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They're ready to be on mission. This man has saving faith. What an amazing story.
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And sometimes by God's grace, by God's grace I can take my story for granted, right?
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That I came to know Christ at the age of seven. I wasn't living under a bridge.
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I grew up in a family where my mother and my father were exhibiting the discipline of the
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Lord and they were living lives that were faithful to Christ. That's not everyone's story. But even in my story, it can be a lie of the enemy to think that I was basically good before I kind of just waltzed into saving faith.
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That's not how it happens. Every desire of my heart before Jesus changed my heart was for self and evil and wickedness.
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The Bible is clear about that. This man, the same way. Every desire of his heart was to kill, destroy and steal outside in this desolation.
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But when he comes to himself, when the unclean spirits are banished and he sees the Savior who banished these demons, his first result, his first desire is to get dressed and desire to follow
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Jesus. He wants to go in the boat with him. He wants to be a disciple.
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But Jesus has another purpose for this man and that is to be a missionary to Decapolis.
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And this is where I wanna leave us with the heaviest blows today. I think that we've forgotten this in our church strategy in America.
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Look, here's what we do. We don't see the urgency of the gospel.
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We think that people are beyond reach. We don't evangelize. We don't tell our friends.
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We don't tell our coworkers because we have lived in fear of what the response has been or we live in hopelessness, thinking that maybe
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God's grace is not as powerful as we thought it was. We would never confess that with our mouths, but we confess it with our actions all the time.
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James again says, right, blessed are those who are doers of the word and not hearers only.
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He also says that your faith without works is dead. If you tell someone go and be fed and you don't feed them, you have done nothing.
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If we say with our mouths, boy, I hope that the lost will accept Christ, and then we do nothing, how are we any different from a lost person?
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And in the church, what our church planting strategy oftentimes is is to plant churches so that we can take sheep from other churches that we deem to be a little bit less doctrinally rich than ourselves so that we can pin up sheep from other places and just move the pieces around.
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Is that how an empire grows? Is that how a kingdom grows exponentially? The fields are white for harvest, but the workers are few because from the beginning, the desire of the workers is to keep what they got.
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That is the establishment of the religious elite in Israel, is it not? To keep what we got.
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Don't let it go out there. In fact, it makes us very angry when it goes out there because somebody that cusses a little bit and smells a little bit might come in here and make us all uncomfortable.
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What a terrible situation that we've put ourselves in in the church because we feared man and because we've forgotten that God has the power to save and that in his kindness to us that he has given us this message that we're not responsible for the results, but we are responsible to bear witness.
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And I know that that's happening in this body. I hear the stories. I hear the stories of people who are telling their coworkers who through years are evangelizing their family members and what a joy it is when
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God saves one of them. And we should desire to experience that joy. This man's desire is to follow
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Jesus, but Jesus has another plan and he sends him back to Decapolis. What's this man supposed to do?
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Does he have a degree from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary now? How much doctrine do you think the demoniac knows?
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Where does our knowledge of doctrine come from anyway, if not the Holy Spirit? Now, don't be fooled.
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God uses means to accomplish these things and seminaries and discipleship are the main way that he does this, but this man is sent out and he sent out with a simple message and that message is this.
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You guys saw what I was. You saw that I was a murderer. You saw that I was cutting myself, laying naked in the tombs of the wilderness and I saw this man,
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Jesus, and Jesus cast these spirits out and I saw thousands of pigs go kill themselves with these unclean legion demons that were infesting my life and they're gone and I'm dressed and you should worship him.
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You should worship that king. That's the message to Decapolis and the people of Decapolis are afraid because every time you come into contact with the supernatural work of Jesus Christ, the right and rational response is to be afraid.
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Should we fear God? Yeah, unless you're stupid, you should fear God. God is running everything, everything through his perfect will and he is all powerful.
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This man shows his faith is real by obeying. Jesus says, no, you're not gonna come with me.
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You're gonna go home to your people and report what great things the Lord has done for you and how he had mercy on you.
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Did this man deserve mercy? By no means, he was a tool of the archetypical enemy of God but what's the man do?
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He went away and began to preach in the Decapolis the great things Jesus had done for him and everyone was marveling.
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They lost thousands of pigs, huge economic loss. They are afraid. They don't know what to do with this so you know what they do?
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The thing everyone enslaved in their sin does, they beg Jesus to go away. Go away. But this man, they can't send away because he is a
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Gentile. He's one of them. They can't deport him, so to speak. So he's going to sit here and do you miss it?
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Don't miss it. I've been told on good authority by the internet that men think about the
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Roman Empire like once a week. All right, so go with me here. When you hear the word legion, what do you think about?
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Do you think about the legions of the Roman Empire? Yeah, I would think so. So don't miss this, right? This demon is even under the power of Jesus Christ in naming himself because what
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God has done is he has declared I am making war on the powers of this earth.
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Most notably in his time, the Roman Empire. And it would take some 300 years before it would fully come to fruition and you can't even imagine this.
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America is not even close to as great on the known world scene as Rome was in the time of Jesus.
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Their power was insurmountable. To think about rebelling against them was death. To think that you were going to escape them was insane.
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And yet Jesus declares war on legion, throws them down, they will drown in the sea and he is that small stone.
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Remember the parable of the mustard seed. This kingdom is growing and this stone not cut by human hands is going to grow until it takes up the whole world.
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And in 300 years, not through the power of the sword but through the power of the message of the demoniac, the
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Roman Empire is toppled and it becomes a Christian empire. Do you think it's a mistake that Constantine made
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Christianity the religion of the Roman Empire? No, it was ordained by God and when he stepped foot on the shore to throw legion out, that was a declaration of war on the power of the
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Prince of Darkness. They were afraid and they should have been afraid. How are we doing?
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How are we doing? Do you think that our nation is afraid of God? How often do we pray that God would take enemies and turn them into sons?
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Can you imagine how demoralizing it is to the enemy when we take his own people and then they turn around and fight against him?
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That's far better than killing the enemy. Far better than killing the enemy is to rob and plunder him because the strong man is bound, we know that.
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The strong man is bound and the gospel has no limits on it. So what is the conclusion today?
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I've got four points of conclusion. Point number one, do not be fooled by the attractive lures of Satan.
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They are baited hooks of death. It'll feel good for a time. The pleasures will be fleeting.
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No one would sin if there wasn't bait. No one would fall into it if it didn't make you feel good but it will destroy your relationships.
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It will destroy your character. It will destroy your work. It will destroy everything and it will leave you for dead and you will be delusional and debased.
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Don't be fooled. Point number two, resist the devil and he will flee. Why? Why?
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Because Jesus has conquered him. Where is your victory? Death.
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Where is it? It's been destroyed. There is no victory in death. There is no victory in sin.
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Christ has given us victory over both of those things. So how do we resist? There's disciplines and fundamentals, right?
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Blocking and tackling. We pray. We fellowship together. We study the work. We work hard.
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We work hard in our lives. Men, the best natural deterrent that God has given you against sin is working hard.
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Pretty hard to do the sins of idleness when you're working hard. Pretty hard to look at porn when you're at the job giving it full tilt, isn't it?
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Pretty hard. Doesn't even seem tempting then, does it? It's when you're sitting around doing nothing that you give the devil his opportunity.
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We discern. We seek wisdom. We ask God for wisdom. Have we done that in our prayers?
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Lord, give me wisdom to do good, to avoid laziness, to avoid the snares of the enemy. That's how we resist.
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How's your resistance doing? Pray that we would have resistance. Point number three, do not fear, but instead obey.
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Do not miss the miracle of what Jesus has done to save you. If you're in this place and you swear allegiance to King Jesus, that's not by your own doing, and so you cannot undo it.
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Jesus has called you, he has saved you, and that is done. He will clothe you in white robes, and he will give you all the tools to grow in righteousness and fellowship with God.
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Now, very practical, very practical. Point number four, do not hear, do not fear the frightening nature of Jesus setting wrongs to right.
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Look, guys, if we start doing this, there will be resistance. There will be resistance.
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The status quo is going to change. The status quo is going to change in your home. The status quo is going to change with your relationships.
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It's going to change with your coworkers, and you will find resistance. There will be people that hate you. There will be people that try to shut you up.
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There will be old institutions of apostasy that are gonna crumble. Already we see the stones starting to fall down from the decadent church that has highlighted
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American Christianity for the last 100 years, and those institutions are starting to crumble, and it makes people uneasy because there's a lot of money and power tied up in those things.
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And just to put it simply, what we've done in the church is we have allowed evil to thrive. We don't let it grieve us, and we have not feared
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God. We have instead feared man and done nothing. And so what's gonna happen is as these old institutions start to crumble, that their ideologies and ungodly thoughts are going to be dragged out into the public, exposed and diagnosed, and we're gonna lose people that we respected highly because they have been operating in the dark, and their deeds are gonna be drawn out and exposed, and it's gonna shake us.
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We see it seemingly every couple of months with a celebrity pastor. Our faith is not built on celebrities.
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Our faith is built on the truth of God's word and the message of salvation. There's gonna be economic losses, but understand this.
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This is what Decapolis did not get. Men are more important than pigs. How many pigs are worth one man's life?
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All the pigs. We can eat sheep. Beef tastes better anyway, all right?
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Bacon would be a loss for sure, but look, there's gonna be turmoil that happens, and here's what we have to do.
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So if we're not gonna fear this overturn, what we have to do is we have to dig deep into our relationships. We have to dig deep.
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We have to go with depth. We have to be in each other's lives. We have to preach the message of the
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Lord Jesus Christ, and we have to pray. Get this, we have to pray for a great harvest. We pray that we would plant churches because of the lost coming in here, not because we're moving people around from church to church.
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The kingdom does not grow by just spreading the resources around. We need a reaping of the lost, and church,
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I feel it in my bones, and all the things we're aligning this morning as I hear stories and the way this week has gone, we have to pray for the lost.
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This is the great loss of the reformed camp is that we pray for acumen in our doctrine and we've forgotten the lost.
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We've forgotten the lost, and we need to pray that Christ will bring a great harvest, a great harvest so that his kingdom would grow for his glory because he deserves all the glory.
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Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we pray that right now. We know that your scripture says that the fields are white for harvest and that the workers are few.
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Lord, we pray that we would be diligent workers, not for our own glory, not in our own power.
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Our own power is minimal, but your power is infinite. So Lord, we pray that we would be fearless in proclaiming this message, that we would have the fervor of the demoniac or that he saw life from death and nothing would stop him.
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Lord, even in a town that was hostile to you as they ran you across the seashore,
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Lord, you left this man and this man had a message and that message brings down kingdoms. Lord, may we believe it, not only for our individual salvation,
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Lord, but will we believe and may we be made to believe that your gospel is the greatest power on the earth or that it draws men and women, boys and girls from the lines of Satan into your inherited family.
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Lord, may we be made strong in the gospel. We fear no evil, but instead that we would pour out our lives as an offering of worship and of bearing witness to the things that you have done and they are glorious.
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Lord, I hope that we would have a conviction from this text, Lord, that we would see the lost and that we would fearlessly give the message.
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Lord, give us wisdom to do it. Grant us wisdom to do that work. Give us discernment and give us a zealousness and a fire to do that.