Restored and Commissioned!

Sermon Summary:

In this powerful exploration of Mark 5:1-20, we encounter the transformative power of Jesus in dealing with spiritual bondage. The story of the demon-possessed man in the region of the Gerasenes reminds us that supernatural evil still exists, stripping us of our humanity. However, Jesus demonstrates his authority over these forces, offering healing and restoration. We’re challenged to consider our own ‘legions’ – the destructive impulses and cravings that control us – and to seek Christ’s supernatural healing. The townspeople’s fearful rejection of Jesus serves as a warning: how often do we miss life-changing opportunities due to fear of the unknown or disruption to our status quo? This message urges us to overcome our fears and embrace the life-altering power of Christ.

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Key Takeaways:

• Demons and supernatural evil are real, even in modern times
• Jesus has power over all evil forces and can restore broken lives
• Fear can prevent us from accepting Jesus’ transformative power
• True discipleship involves not just receiving healing but sharing it with others
• Sometimes our mission field is right where we are, among our own people

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Scripture References:

• Mark 5:1-20

Stories:

• The restoration project of the Elwha River in Washington state
• The Eccles family’s experience climbing Guadalupe Peak
• The strategy of a ministry in northern India keeping new believers in their communities
• Personal anecdote about the speaker’s dislike of scary movies, particularly “Ernest Scared Stupid”

Transcript

Good morning. My name is Katy Hodges, and I’m the Minister of Congregational Life here at First Baptist. My time hop reminded me yesterday that it was my ninth anniversary here to be on staff at our church. So that, sure. And that’s, which means now that I’ve spent more than half my life here, then, no, I’m just kidding. That math, that math doesn’t math, but it makes me feel young, so we’ll do it. Before we get going, I want to just, I want to echo, that’s such a preachy word, what Ryan and Curt and Michael have said about what’s transpired yesterday in Pennsylvania and just how abhorrent it is to think that violence and killing anyone would solve our problems and move the needle in a way we want to go. And we in here, especially in here and churches across the world, we submit ourselves to King Jesus, and we follow the Jesus way, and we believe that that is the way to hope and peace and life, and it is, in fact, the only way to hope. And so, y’all, in the next six months, we’re just going to have to keep that in front of us. And we are, as Dr. Wiles said, a purple church, and so we don’t get up here and claim so well, like Curt said, we don’t swerve to the right or to the left. We keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, and we move toward him. And so we’re just going to have to covenant to do that together every day, every day period, but certainly from now until November 7th or whatever it is. So, with that said, I’m honored to be here, and I’m honored to keep us walking through the book of Mark. We’re looking at Mark 5, 1 today, and so let’s just hop right in. It’s our tradition at our church that when we read the gospel of our Lord Jesus, we stand if able. So, if you’ll join me as I read these 20 verses from Mark 5, 1 through 20. Thank you. They went across the lake to the region of the Gerasenes. When Jesus got out of the boat, a man with an evil spirit came from the tombs to meet him. 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, but he tore the chains apart and broke the irons on his feet. No one was strong enough to subdue him. Night and day, among the tombs and in the hills, he would cry out and cut himself with stones. When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and fell on his knees in front of him, and he shouted at the top of his voice, what do you want with me, Jesus? Son of the Most High, swear to God that you won’t torture me. For Jesus had said to him, come out of this man, you evil spirit. Then Jesus asked him, what is your name? My name is Legion, he replied, for we are many. And he begged Jesus again and again not to send them out of the area. A large herd of pigs was feeding on the nearby hillside. The demons begged Jesus, send us among the pigs, allow us to go into them. He gave them permission. And the evil spirits came out and went into the pigs. The herd, about 2,000 in number, rushed down the steep bank into the lake and were drowned. Those tending the pigs ran off and reported this in the town and the countryside, and the people went out to see what had happened. When they came to Jesus, they saw the man who had been possessed by the legion of demons sitting there, dressed and in his right mind, and they were afraid. Those who had seen it told the people what had happened to the demon-possessed man and told them about the pigs as well. Then the people began to plead with Jesus to leave their region. As Jesus was getting into the boat, the man who had been demon-possessed begged to go with him. Jesus did not let him, but he said, go home to your family and tell them how much the Lord has done for you and how he has had mercy on you. So the man went away and began to tell in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him and all the people. They were amazed. Thank you. You may be seated. I want to start this by confessing one thing. I cannot stand scary movies. I’m not in it for the thrill. I’m really not a thrill seeker at all. Ryan and my friend Bethany often tried, now they know me better, to get me to go with them to see horror movies. Some like jump scare movies. We saw one that I wouldn’t even, it was awful. They suckered me once and I had one of them on the right and one on the left. I couldn’t leave the theater. I really didn’t want to do it. But I think there are two reasons primarily that I don’t, maybe more, that I don’t like scary movies. One is because when I was a very young child I got exposed to a scary movie too early and it is this movie right here, Ernest Scared Stupid. Anybody, anybody seen Ernest Scared Stupid? Yes? Okay, the first service had not seen it. Are most of you familiar with like the Ernest P. Worrell catalog? Yes. So this movie came out in 1991, so clearly I was way too young to watch it. I was way too young to watch any of this and it scared me really bad. Here’s the reason I think that it scared me. For those of you who have seen it, you can, you can vote on this. It’s not demons, which we’re going to talk about. The character, the antagonists are trolls and the trolls have figured out how to project their voice to sound like your parent, like your mom. So if you’re a little kid and you realize that there are trolls that exist and they can sound like your mother, and so there’s even a scene where this kid’s in bed and its mom is on the edge of the bed and it rolls over and what does it see? Not its mother they’re supposed to trust, but a troll. And so that kind of defined my little home when I was like six, that like behind every shower curtain wasn’t, you know, I was just very scared is all. I can move on from there. But I didn’t like scary movies after that, Ernest Scared Stupid. But the other thing that’s more serious is a lot of scary movies delve into things like exercise. And I just don’t really favor to go there or to touch that for fun, right? Like, and I know some of you really like this kind of movie experience, but why would you want to go expose yourself to something that we actually believe in and might be spooked by and believe in some power? Why would you pay to sit through that and be spooked by it? I don’t really want to ever have a part of that unless we want to like take it seriously and talk about it. But I don’t want to go there and say, well, I didn’t pick the text today. Dr. Wiles did. And so today we’re going to take it seriously and talk about it. And so I want to open the text with you and I want to walk through it. We’re going to talk about demons today, or at least some form of that. So right off the bat, I want to point out a few things to you in this that makes this unexpected already. So at the very beginning of the story, Jesus gets in the boat and he travels to the other side of the sea and he’s in Gentile territory. So he is in a new and a different place. What’s most obvious about this, and you might’ve picked up on it, is there is a hillside of pigs and not feral country pigs that no one is tending that just came out of the woodwork. These are with their farmers. These are pigs with their pig farmers. It’s part of their economy. They’re going to eat those pigs likely, something that would have never happened in the Jewish culture. And so I want to point that out. It’ll come into play later, but Jesus is in a new and unexpected place. Early in his ministry, even now he is showing how vast, how wide sweeping, and how powerful his reign is going to be. And I don’t want you to miss that right off the bat.

Right when Jesus gets there, he is immediately met by a man with impure spirits. If you’re looking in the scripture to find that word immediately, like we see so much in Mark, for whatever reason, the NIV doesn’t have it right there, but don’t miss it. Immediately, a man runs up to him in that very first scene and this demon possessed man and Jesus start this long exchange. In fact, halfway through the exchange, the tense changes and Jesus, it’s no longer talking to the man. Jesus is talking to whom? Directly to the demons. And they say, Jesus, they’re trying to bargain with him and plead with him. Can you let us stay in the region? Can you just send us into those swine? And Jesus agrees. And then they rushed down a hill and all the swine are drowned. I think it’s reasonable that this scene would bring up some questions or at least cause us to pause in a modern reader’s mind. I think it’s reasonable that this scene would bring up some questions or at least cause us to pause in a modern reader’s mind. What did I just read? What just happened? What are we going to do with this story today? What do we do with these demons that are throughout this story? I want to parse this two ways this morning with you. One, I want to start with this. It’s important to say as a church that we believe that demons really do exist. So if you’re wanting to dismiss this passage as just something that happened back then and not now, I would pause and I would ask you to not dismiss that so quickly and believe that there’s something here for you today. In fact, even in our FBCA spheres, particularly with our global centers and our cross-cultural workers, we still encounter supernatural evil that can’t be explained in any other way all the time. People in this room have encountered that. And we also encounter supernatural good or angels and things that we absolutely can’t explain in any other way. This is still vibrant and very real, especially globally in our world today. And so we really do believe these things, but we don’t know how to explain them. And so we don’t know how to explain these things. And it’d be very dangerous to dismiss it and claim that we’ve moved beyond this as a culture or as a society. The other side of this, the cousin to this, is that in our modern Western culture, we can easily embrace a reasoned, educated, scientific method-driven mindset for what we might call demons back then. We can read this text and say something like, well, clearly this guy was schizophrenic, and we just didn’t have vocabulary for it back then. Or they didn’t have psychologists then, so now we know. So here’s what I would want you to say, what I’d want you to hear about that. Just because we’ve advanced as a society in the ways of psychological thought, let us not deceive ourselves in here into thinking that we are no longer under the attack of any supernatural evil that strips us of our humanity. We are just as much today under attack as we ever have been. And you can think of all these examples, and we’ll get to them. We still, as Christ followers, believe in supernatural evil that destroys and strips us of our humanity, and we still believe that we need Jesus’ supernatural healing to make us whole. Point blank. In this exchange, Jesus says to this man, he says, what is your name? Such a powerful question. What is your name? And he says back to him, I am legion, for we are many. A legion is the largest unit of measurement in a Roman army, up to 5,000 men. Here’s what David Garland says to kind of put this together for us. He’s a brilliant New Testament scholar. People today are, is this on the screen behind me? Oh, good, yeah. People today are more likely to be controlled by a legion of cravings, captivations, and destructive impulses than by a legion of demons. Did you catch that? William Lane says it like this, legion may express the man’s sense of being possessed by an aggregate of uncoordinated impulses and evil forces which has so impaired his ego, it’s a pathetic admission of the loss of all sense. When you read it like that, I wonder for us in here if you’ve ever felt that way, if you might feel that way now. What’s your name? Legion, for I am many. I’m so torn and tattered and impulsive that I’m pulled in so many directions and I’ve lost my sense of self. I’m metaphorically living in the tombs. Nothing is working out and I feel like this demoniac tearing my skin and yelling at the walls. And what happens in these rock-bottom, moments like this demoniac is that we have lost our sense of identity and purpose and belonging and we are not living into the fullness of life in Christ. Because this is what demons do. They distort and destroy the image of God in humanity. And the good news is for us today, Jesus has reign over it all. Jesus has the power that made the other side of the lake, demon-possessed outcasts, healed and he still exercises that power today, every day for those who follow him.

Jesus can heal, restore, and redeem.

Brian and I are national park people. We’re aspiring national park people, but now we have triplets so we’re discovery channel people now, right?

But there’s an interesting story about a national park in northern Washington state and there’s a restoration project that’s happened there and I want to talk to you all about it for a second. It’s particularly the Elwha River, E-L-W-H-A, and I want to read this. This is from the National Parks website. It says, For millennia, the Elwha River ran wild, connecting the mountains and the seas in a thriving ecosystem. The river proved to be an ideal habitat for andronimous, that’s sea-run, fish, with 11 varieties of salmon and spout spawning its water. These fishes thrived in the cold, clear waters of the Elwha River and historically served as an important food source for the lower Elwha Column tribe and living along its banks. American expansion spurred a continual demand for lumber, the growth of the logging industry brought rapid change, and then that caused the Elwha River to have a construction of two dams. They were built in the early 1900s. However, constructions of the dams blocked the migration of salmon upstream, disrupted the flow of sediment downstream, and flooded the historic homelands and cultural sites of the people living on its river. You get the image there. Such an important flow of, particularly, sediment. The Elwha River is really narrow. All of the limestone of the Elwha River has been completely blocked and it starts degrading at the ecosystem, everything that depended on the salmon and the trout, the things that ate it, the sediment that went downstream, and then this whole ecosystem in northern Washington State just starts eroding and what was flourishing and had life no longer did. In the late 1900s, a planning started, and in 2011, a restoration project started. After two decades of planning, the largest dam was built. The dam was set up in the state-owned removal in the history of the United States began and finished in 2014. And since then, the Elwha River once again flows freely from its headwaters to Olympic Mountains and to the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The point of this, this river, this Elwha River, which was once flourishing and life-giving masterpiece sustaining all around it, was blocked, disrupted, and flooded. It couldn’t be what it once was, and a restoration project was needed. How much more with us do we need a restoration project to return us to our former glory, all that God intended us to be, flourishing, life-giving, connected to him and made in his image? Jesus offers this to us today. We can be restored, vibrant, and flourishing, but we need Jesus’s supernatural healing to get us to that place. We cannot do it on our own. With our remaining time today, I want to look at the two responses that we see to this story as it plays out. We’ve actually already seen a lot of the stories that we’ve seen. We’ve actually already seen a lot of the stories that we’ve seen. One response, we see the demons’ response when they see Jesus. What do they say? Do you remember in verse 7? They look at Jesus and they say, Jesus, Son of Most High, which is quite an observant statement for demons when you still see people not understanding at all who Jesus is. So we already see one response, but now we have two more responses. In verse 14, and I want to read it again because it’s been a second. In verse 14, here’s what it says. I’m going to go through 17. Those tending the pigs ran off and reported into the town and the countryside, and the people went to see what happened. I wonder what their report sounded like. This is your career, or you’ve been stewarded. You’ve been told to steward all these pigs, and then you have to watch this scene play out and then go report what happened. And so it doesn’t surprise me that the people wanted to come see for themselves. Then when they came to Jesus, they saw the man who had been possessed by the legion of demons sitting there, dressed and in his right mind, and they were afraid. Those who had seen it told the people what happened, told about the pigs as well. Then the people began to plead with Jesus to leave their region. The townspeople heard the story. They see the result with their own eyes, and how do they respond? They ask Jesus quickly to leave. And the text even tells us why. They were afraid. What were they afraid of? It’s left to our interpretation. Were they afraid of this Jesus who had power like they had never seen? Were they afraid of what he would do to their jobs, their economics? If we let this guy stay, is he going to kill all our industries, just like he killed my fleet of pigs that just went into the sea? Are they afraid of Jesus changing their way of life? Or maybe just afraid of what they don’t understand? How could this be? I don’t want it. They’re so afraid that they miss Jesus, the savior of the world, and they beg him to get back on the boat and leave right now. And just like Jesus does with the demons before, he grants their request. Isn’t that sad? The Jesus has shown up. He’s healed a person. They come and see it for themselves, and they’re too afraid to accept it, and they just want to go back to the status quo. How many times do we miss something because we’re afraid? I see the Eccles family back from a week long road trip. You made it. You’re smiling. You’re awake. Yeah, I mean, that’s really all very good. Aaron, we followed you on Facebook. Y’all went, I told Brad, y’all went at a marking pace. Immediately the next thing, and immediately we woke up and did the next thing, and immediately. But I know because I followed and I talked to Brad that y’all debated climbing Guadalupe Peak. Guadalupe Peak is the, it’s part of the Guadalupe National Park. It’s the tallest peak in Texas. It’s not an easy climb, especially the first bit. I mean, especially in the middle of summer, I’m seeing those head nods. But I know because I talked to Brad about this is that you had a little bit of fear that may have kept you from doing it. And what I know is that because you overcame that fear and because you did it is very meaningful, very rewarding, and a bonding moment for your family, if nothing else. It’s just a small example. When we don’t let our fear rule us, and we try something new and we conquer our fear, how God can use that and how we become who we are. But how much more when we experience Jesus he offers us life change and invites us to something new, but all the factors that play in are too much. We see this with the rich young ruler. The rich young ruler approaches Jesus and Jesus says, come follow me. But y’all know, what does he ask of him? You have to sell everything. And he says, oh, that’s, that’s too much. And he says, oh, that’s too much. And he says, too steep. I’m good. And he walks away and he misses life with Jesus. And we can look on that and say, oh, I’d never do that. Look, I’m in here. I’m a Jesus follower. So many times y’all, Jesus shows us an opportunity, an invitation, but we calculate the costs and we’re too afraid and we miss it. And just like the Gerasenes and the Decapolis, we just say, Jesus, could you just get back on the boat? And could you just go back to where you came from? And we’re going to continue life as usual. Thank you very much. Be careful. Take your spirit. We’re not beyond this. The other response that I want to talk about, it’s kind of, it’s kind of a heartbreaker for me. It makes me sad on first read. I want to talk about the reaction of this healed man, this former demoniac. So as Jesus is getting into the boat in verse 18, Jesus is getting in the boat and the man who had been demon possessed, begged to go with him. And what does Jesus say? You cannot. Jesus, you have changed my life. You have healed me from something I didn’t think I could ever be healed from. I was literally living in the tombs. You have restored me. The text even says he was healed and clothed and in his right mind, sitting at the feet of Jesus. And then Jesus gets back in the boat. Jesus, can I go with you? No, you need to stay here. Oh, what a punch in the gut. Jesus, we just want to be with you. I want to follow you. Isn’t that the point of this whole thing? Jesus, I want to be a follower.

Last week, Ryan Chandler, who I saw, Ryan, you’re in there. Ryan Chandler preached. Didn’t Ryan do a good job last week? I thought so. I thought so. When Ryan preached, he asked us, this is good. I’m not, this is a positive thing. I promise. Okay. When Ryan preached, he asked this. He says, he said, he asked us this question. How would you define what a disciple is? Do you remember that? He’s defined disciple. And I thought, I thought in my head and I came up with my own, I went to seminary too, my own definition of what a disciple is. And I thought something like someone who is striving to become more and more like Jesus every day. It’s like actively becoming more like Jesus every day. And then Ryan defined it differently, slightly. And he said, something like a disciple is one who makes more disciples. Is that fair, Ryan? Okay. He says, you’re sure. In that case, the true mark of discipleship is, is that you’re reproducing disciples. It’s not just that you get to sit at the feet of Jesus and you don’t just get the mountaintop experience of going with him wherever he goes. We look at this man healed. He wants to sit at Jesus’s feet. We all think that’s very noble, but Jesus has different plans. This guy’s discipleship looks different than dwelling with Jesus. Jesus puts him on mission immediately and not just any mission, but a mission to tell the entire Decapolis about him. And he becomes, as N.T. Wright says, the first Gentile missionary, this nobody that was in the tombs. I wonder for us, how many of us in our big, high, holy, spiritual moments, we just want to stay close to God. And we just want to ride the high. We want to leave everything behind and just dwell with Jesus. And sometimes that’s good. Sometimes that’s not good. And sometimes that’s not good. And sometimes might even be what you need. But God has a mission and a purpose beyond you just feeling good and secure. Salvation, healing, and restoration, they’re not just about you. They are about you, but they are not just about you. We are restored to be restorers. We’re healed to go then be agents of healing. We’re blessed to be a blessing to those around us. The healed man says, you’ve changed my life and I want to leave everything and follow you. And Jesus says, I want you to do what’s even harder. I want you to stay put. Y’all know our church sends its own overseas workers. We’re really proud of it and we should be. We’ve worked really hard for it. And we have some terrific, fantastic cross-cultural workers. And I would really recommend you get to know them because they’re fantastic people. But those people, those cross-cultural workers of ours, they didn’t just start proclaiming Jesus when we put hands on them, commissioned them, raised money, and then sent them. They didn’t start talking about Jesus when they got to Spain or Slovenia or Sierra Leone. They were Jesus. They were Jesus people talking about Jesus when they stayed, when they were here, because I know them. They each said yes to Jesus and his mission long before they were professional. And they were faithful here before they were faithful there. In fact, we have a whole church full of people who fulfill Mark 19 and go home to your own people and tell them how much the Lord has done for you. And now he has had mercy on you. This temptation is real to want to huddle up remove ourselves from anything that’s other. It’s easy to want to camp with only Christians and hang out with only people who look and think and believe like you. But for Christ followers, sometimes going looks like staying. And that can be the harder route. When I was in West Texas, I had a good friend who remotely from Lubbock was a minister helping lead a ministry in northern India. And one of their missions tactics, one of their strategies was when they encountered new believers and converted people to Jesus, they would say, I’m going to help you. And I said, those new Jesus followers, they would keep them where they were. So they didn’t say, hey, move back to the main city and let’s go through two years of training camp. And then we’ll release you and send you back to your people. They said, actually, you are going to be the most fruitful and the most connected and the most missional that you can be right now where you are, because, you know, all the people that don’t know Jesus. And so they would bring people to Jesus and then they would leave them where they were and disciple them as they went. And they said, bring your friends, bring your friends in, go tell your people, bring them on in. And it, and it flourished. The ministry flourished because instead of saying, get in the boat and let’s go, they said, why don’t you stay and tell your people what it is.

We see today in this powerful story, a man liberated from his bondage and given a commission. Unlike the others healed by Jesus to this point, Jesus tells this man to tell everyone. He has no concern with the messianic secret that he had on the other side of the sea. He says, you can tell anybody you want and I want you to go right now and do it. And how is it received? He told everyone and at the end of our verse in 20, and all the people were amazed. Jesus used an outcast that everyone had written off to be his messenger to his own people and by his grace, it worked.

So for us today, I wanna ask, what restoration do you need? What is the legion within you that’s battling in your spirit and where do you need the liberation that only Jesus can bring? And then who are your people that you need to go home to? Who needs your humble testimony here in your circles? This is the invitation I have for you today. I’m gonna pray and as we do that, I want you to use this time, allow Christ to guide your heart and mind to where you need to surrender today. You can come forward and be prayed with. You can just sit and respond in your seat. So Michael asks you to come, I’ll pray. Use this time as you will. Let’s pray.