How to Study the Bible - Bible Study Made Simple - How Jesus Restores What Evil Tries to Destroy | Mark 5

0:00Looking for a simple way to stay rooted in God's Word every day? The Daily Bible Devotion app by Salem Media gives you morning and evening devotionals designed to encourage, inspire, and keep you connected with scripture. Plus, you'll enjoy daily Bible trivia and humor. A fun way to learn and share a smile while growing in your face. Get the Daily Bible Devotion app for free on both iOS and Android. Start an in-your-day with God's Word. Search for the Daily Bible Devotion app in the App Store or Google Play Store, and download it today. Life Audio Hey everyone, welcome back to How to Say the Bible. I am so glad to be with you today wherever you find yourself, whether you're here on YouTube with us and you're getting ready to open up your Bible and you've got your journal and you're ready to study with me or you're doing the dishes, mowing the lawn, driving your kids around. However you're finding time to spend time in God's Word, what's so amazing and what I love so

1:03much about my job is you can never waste time in the Bible. You can never waste time in God's Word. It says specifically, the prophet Isaiah said God's Word will never return void, meaning when God sends out His Word into the world, it's going to do its job. So if you are faithful and available and you're just willing to listen and be present to what God has for you, God wants to know you. He wants to speak to you. He wants you to know Him. He wants you to feel and experience the kingdom of God right here on Earth. No matter your circumstances, no matter your troubles, God is here and wants us to know Him. So we get to enter in with faith as we go to scripture. It gives us the confidence and the freedom to enter into a chapter and just say, okay, what questions do we have? What do we understand? What do we not understand? And that's okay. We can engage the mystery that is the Bible. Remember that a lot of the Bible would have been heard audio. Like you would have listened to the stories of the Bible. You have learned by listening back in this time.

2:06And so it's pretty modern that we have what we have today, where we've got a very written out book with lots of study notes and a concordance. If you don't know what a concordance is, it's in the back of your Bible, and you can look up a certain word. You can find the ways that the Bible connects to each other. You've got these cross references in the middle. If you're here on YouTube, you can see I've got my big study Bible here and these cross references. There's some maps. You can also see how many cross references actually are shown in the Bible. You maybe have wondered what that is. What those cross references are. Is there's times when there is a theological principle or a historical piece of context that connects to another place in the Bible. And those cross references will help you find those other places. So for instance, if this story that we're going to read today or the parable of the Sower that we read last week, we're going to get a cross reference that shows us where it was also spoken about in the other Gospels. That's an example of what a cross reference is. So keep in mind that in the original listening of the passage,

3:09you didn't get this big book with all of these study notes. And we just sometimes need to remember that because it can feel very academic when we come to the Bible like this. And there's a part of that that's good. God's given us a mind. He's given us the ability to understand and discern and to learn. So we want to know that. But we don't want to miss just the beauty and the richness of the stories. We don't want to miss the part of it where we're supposed to have an emotional response. Like a story is meant to evoke an as a feeling and that there's tone to the words that are being shared and the stories that are being told. And specifically today, that's really going to come into play as we get into Mark chapter five together. So I've titled Mark chapter five the precious gift of humanity. And today we're only going to do the first 20 verses of chapter five. We're going to save the rest as we get into chapter six next week. So we're going to do these first 20 verses. And because it's a little bit shorter and we're not doing quite as big of an overview, I'm actually going to read you the story.

4:11And while I read you the story, I want to invite you to maybe not think so much academically, not think so deeply about a study or what questions you have, which we'll get to in a moment. But I want to invite you to just feel this story and maybe picture it as almost like a video in your mind if you were imagining a movie and a moment that was playing out. Just see if you can picture what happens here. So let's go together to Mark chapter five starting in verse one. Remember, we always have the disciples moving like there's a lot of moving and shaking in the gospel mark. Jesus is always moving around. He's teaching, he's healing, he's doing miracles in all these different places. If you recall from the last chapter where we ended, we didn't talk about it a whole lot. But where we ended is that Jesus is calmed a storm. So he's told those parables of abundance to his disciples. And then they go across the lake. And as they're going across the lake, there's a huge storm that kind of rises up. And the disciples are terrified. They feel like they're going to die.

5:12They say to Jesus, teacher, don't you care if we drown? Because Jesus was sleeping in the boat at this time. And Jesus gets up and rebukes the wind and the waves. He actually says to the wind of the waves, be still. And the storm completely calms. And we end that chapter with Jesus saying who are the disciples saying about Jesus? Who is this? Who is this man? Who is this Jesus? And this is really the question of all of our hearts. The real question is who is Jesus to you? Jesus was a historical figure. It's widely known and accepted that Jesus is not a fable. Jesus is not a mythical creature that was created by people who wanted to create a religion. Every many texts outside of the Bible, historical texts that we have access to show that there is a man named Jesus who walked the earth. That's a real thing. And that's not disputed at all. We do have to ask the question, who is Jesus to us? And the disciples in this moment of amazement as Jesus has been teaching and healing. He rebukes the wind. He calms the storm and the disciples are like who is this man?

6:14And now we pick up in chapter 5. It starts and says they went across the lake to the region of the garrisines. When Jesus got out of the boat, a man with an impure spirit came from the tombs to meet him.

7:14This man lived in the tombs and no one could bind him anymore, not even with the chain. For he had often been chained, he 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 in 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 god in God's name, don't torture me. For Jesus had said to him, come out of this man, you impure 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 impure spirits came out and went into the pigs.

8:19The 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 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 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 about the pigs as well. And 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 said, go home to your own people 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 many how much Jesus had done for him and all the people were amazed. Okay, lots to unpack here, but first all I wanted you to do was hear the story,

9:21and I wanted to ask you, what did you notice in this story? What do you notice about what's happening here? We've got a very dramatic story happening. We know that there must be tombs nearby. And as Jesus lands in the boat, this man who is so broken and so violent and so completely possessed that he cannot be with other people comes out and falls at Jesus's feet, right? And then we have this interesting interchange where you sense that there's a wee speaking, but it says that he is speaking and we know that we're entering into this place where Jesus is speaking to these impure spirits. Then on top of all that, these demons go out of the man and they go into these pigs and the hurt of pigs runs off of the cliff and it drown in the lake. This isn't very dramatic stuff that's happening here. So let's break it down and talk about what we need to know. And I'm just going to start with what's the backstory because it's going to help us bring this story to life, but without any backstory. If you don't hear anything else and you just feel this story, I just want to remind you

10:25of what this man would have been like. He was bound for some reason. People would bind him with the chain. He'd been chained hand in foot, but he was so powerful he could break the chains. And it says that he would cry out and cut himself with stones. This is almost the exact opposite of what we would think of when we think of a abundant life. This feels like a violent, hurting, helpless person who is so overcome by pain that they're just expressing pain in the world. It is so powerful, powerfully difficult to think about the desperation of a person who's in this position. Now, let me give you a couple of backstory elements all within your study notes that are going to help you understand what the story is really about. The first is this. We know that when Jesus crosses over the lake, he actually is going into Galilee. He's going to, excuse me, he's not going into Galilee. He's going into a territory where there were Gentiles. Most of the people there were Gentiles.

11:26Now, what's a Gentile? A Gentile is anyone who's not a Jew. So this is a person who is not God's righteous people. God's chosen people by birth, by nation. This would be anyone outside of the Jewish faith. So we're entering into a whole different experience now because Jesus was a rabbi. He came to the Jewish people. He would be teaching in synagogues. He was with the Jewish people. And now we've got a turn of the story where now he is with the Gentile people. He's with people who don't know God in any way who aren't following God the Father. And he's now engaging in them and giving them the story of who he is. And what it means to follow God the reason that we know that this was a Gentile region would be also because of the pigs Jewish people do not eat pork. It would be considered not kosher to eat an unclean animal. Pigs were considered unclean. So the fact that there's this massive herd of pigs, which would be a source of the economy would be a source of commerce. For that group of people says that this is Gentile territory.

12:29So the pigs mean that this is is not Jewish. And then the third thing that we get here is this possession, this demonic possession. And we have Jesus asking about the names of these demons. And the answer is Legion. Legion was the size of a Roman force. Like a word we would use in the military would be like a battalion. Or Legion was a size. It would be like five or six thousand men. So the fact that when Jesus asks who are you and the answer is we are Legion tells us how desperately possessed this man was and what a desperate place he was at. And it's just a huge reminder again as it says in Ephesians six that our struggle on earth is not against flesh and blood but it's against the powers and principalities of this evil world. Now you might ask the question is demon possession real? Like I don't know anyone who's possessed by a demon. I haven't seen any of that. And it is an interesting question to ask how does the enemy manifest himself in our world today? And I think that people can got to go one of two ways

13:30when they ask this question. On the one hand people can get way into this world and everything is demonic and everything is evil and everyone is possessed or oppressed by a demon and there can be an over emphasis on the work of the enemy. On the other hand which is where many people fall and many camps is we act like the enemy is not real at all but there is no such thing as a spiritual realm. There is no such thing as good and evil and I want to invite us into a middle space where we ask the question, okay how much time did Jesus give? How much air time did Jesus give the enemy? We should probably land about there and what do we see to be true in this time and how do we understand it in our time? So one of the things that I've heard said about the way the enemy works is it is a great deception to have people believe that you are real. That's a wonderful way to work. It's a wonderful way to do your work in the world but what we know about the enemy is what Jesus tells us in John 10 verse 10.

14:30He says the enemy comes to steal, kill and destroy. I have come so that they may have life and have it to the phone. So the note that I wrote to myself is that any place where we see dehumanization is evil. Jesus said anything where there exists black of a precious understanding of the worth of human beings is a place where evil exists. Dehumanization is taking the humanity out of a person. And what we see here is one of the most hitively dehumanized people we could ever see. We see a man being treated worse than an animal. We see a man who's been cast out from his community who is so, is experiencing life in his, in so much pain and is so oppressed that he can't even be in community. Often people would live in tombs because it would be like a place where you could find shelter. So if you were very poor or like this man very isolated and he's been given up on, obviously everyone is given up on this man being anything but insane.

15:32And this insanity that he's experiencing is so dehumanizing that he's hurting himself. He's in so much pain that he's hurting himself. And so what we see here is this is what evil looks like. And whether evil is manifest in obvious demonic possession or if evil is manifest in the very subtle ways that people dehumanize other people, both are evil. It's just a matter of whether it's subtle or obvious. And so Jesus has this obvious moment where he wants to, like we said, Jesus is always healing. He's always restoring life. He's always bringing life. He's always about life. And so he immediately calls these demons out of this man. And before, but they won't, you know, they don't leave right then. They know who Jesus is. That's the other thing that's really interesting. They say they call him the son of the most high god. They know who Jesus is. They recognize that he has more power than they have. And they ask him to not cast them into the abyss, meaning like a place of eternal punishment, but to let them go into these pigs, which again, mystery, we don't know why Jesus does what he does.

16:34But what's interesting about this happening, if you think about it, is that 2000 pigs are a lot of pigs. That is a lot of commerce. That is a lot of wealth. And what I read from this when I think about what's happening here is that Jesus is putting such a precious, that a human being is such a precious commodity is so important, is so valuable, that there's no amount of pigs that could ever be more valuable than this human being. And that Jesus is like, it's better to let these 2000 pigs jump into the lake than to have this man not restore to sanity. His life is so precious. His life is so important. We see this incredible gift that God has given when he says that he has made us different than the rest of creation. It says in Psalms 8, that God has set us a little lower than himself, that we've been given this ability, it says in Genesis, to rule over this world. And that only humanity is made in the image of God. That God has given us all these beautiful gifts in his creation, and we have all of this beautiful,

17:36wonderful things, but only men and women are made in the actual image of God, really represent God's DNA. And we see that present here when Jesus is like, this one man's life is so precious that there's no amount that's not worth that. And we're going to see Jesus continue to show us that in future chapters. Looking for a simple way to stay rooted in God's Word every day. The Daily Bible Devotion app by Salem Media gives you morning and evening devotionals designed to encourage, inspire, and keep you connected with Scripture. Plus, you'll enjoy Daily Bible trivia and humor, a fun way to learn and share a smile while growing in your faith. Get the Daily Bible Devotion app for free on both iOS and Android. Start an in-your-day with God's Word. Search for the Daily Bible Devotion app in the App Store or Google Play Store and download it today. The financial loss was nothing close to the worth

18:37of this human being. So dehumanization appears in our world, evil appears in our world in small and big ways. On the very small end of the subtle end of the spectrum, we have stereotyping and name calling and trope said all of these ways that we make someone any less human than they are. My kids laugh, we were just talking with our kids who are in their 20s now, couldn't growing up and out. And recently I asked them, did you think we were strict parents or lax parents? And the immediate response from the two older ones was strict, the youngest one lax. I'm sure some of you guys understand. What it's like for the baby of the family, but one of the places that we were really strict was on name calling. Like it was an absolute no-go in our house. And no one was allowed to be called stupid, to be called an idiot. In fact, I would say like, you can say to your sibling, you did a stupid thing. You cannot say that they are stupid. When we name call, when we label, we remove the humanity from people. It is the most subtle form of evil. It is absolutely evil. It is the place that's the place where evil starts.

19:39And I'm gonna let you find your own, make your own conclusions about where we see that in our culture right now, but any time that the humanity of people is removed and it's replaced with name calling, with tribalism, with stereotypes, with tropes. It is evil. When you see that on the spectrum over here, that is a subtle form of evil, evil nonetheless, all the way over to war, genocide, trafficking. That is what is, what this, where it leads. Evil is inherently destructive. Evil is always about stealing, killing, and destroying. Whether it looks like demon possession or not, we know that it says in Ephesians, our struggle is not against flesh and blood. It is against the powers and the principalities of this heavenly realm. So that is what we're about and what we see Jesus being about here. Okay, let's move to the really cool part of this story. So all of this happens. This man is completely restored to sanity. And then it says that the people who see this happen are terrified by Jesus. Let's remember, we can often think of Jesus as like our friend and Jesus as a friend. But don't be confused about what it means

20:41that Jesus is a friend. He's also Lord. He is the one who has authority over all creation, over all forces, and it's really powerful. And when you get around that power, it is overwhelming. And these people are experiencing Jesus and it's terrifying. It's terrifying to think that a person has that kind of power. There is this mystical, mysterious part of the presence of Jesus that is hard to explain, but you know it when you're in it. And it is overwhelming. Because that is the kind of power and holiness that Jesus possesses inside of himself. That's why we understand that Jesus is fully God and fully man. And so this man is completely restored to his right mind. He's sitting with Jesus. He begs to be able to travel with Jesus. And now Jesus does something different than he's done any other time in the chapter so far. He says, go and tell everyone what I've done for you. Now remember, we just talked about the Messianic secret. We just talked about this idea that Jesus keeps saying that people don't tell anyone who I am. And so commentators are often like why now?

21:42And one of the things that we know that's different right here is this is the pivotal point where now Jesus is bringing the message of the kingdom of God to the Gentiles. And if you were a Gentile, if you weren't raised in the Jewish faith, you wouldn't have all of these ideas about who this Messiah was going to be. You wouldn't necessarily think that Messiah was going to bring rain, you know, overthrow the government and establish an earthly kingdom. You would just be experiencing Jesus who's, you know, taking a man from insanity to complete sanity, taking a man from removed from his community to a guy who's now like going through all 10 cities of that Gentile territory, talking about this man Jesus and Jesus sets him free to do that. So we ask the question, what does this mean for us when we think about this story? I think that when we ask, what does this mean? Clearly a huge part of this story is about evil and good and how that moves in our world. But the thing I think that we can really take from this and we think about it for our own lives is think about this gift that this man now has

22:42for the rest of his life. Our greatest gift, our greatest weapon of good in this world is our testimony. It's our understanding of who we were before Christ and who we are after. And your story might not be as dramatic as this man who had a legion of demons that was violently oppressing his sanity and his peace and his goodness, but you do have a story. You do have a time before Christ and you do have a time after Christ. And perhaps the great miracle of your testimony is something that's happened in your heart. Maybe it's a place of forgiveness. Maybe it's a place of freedom. Maybe it's a place where you've been set free from fear whatever that might be. That is your testimony. It is our greatest weapon of good in this world. It's understanding that we are people who can say that we have been set free by the power of Jesus Christ. It is the witness of this man that begins to spread the message of Jesus into all of these ten cities in this Gentile territory. And it is the witness of your story that will spread the goodness of God in the places

23:43that he's called you to be. It is powerful. If you haven't thought about it in a while, ask yourself the question, where would you be without Jesus? Maybe you have grown up in the church. Maybe you became a Christian when you were 12 or 13 at a youth group camp or at VBS. Or I want you to think about if you had an unrestrained life in which you have not known the love of the Father, where would you be? Because that is your testimony. Knowing who you are, knowing who you are in Christ is the powerful weapon of good that God has given each one of us. All right, you guys, we'll talk next week. How to study the Bible with Nicole Eunice is a production of Life Audio and Salem Media. If you like what you heard today, please take a second to rate and review the podcast in your favorite podcast app so that more listeners like you can find the show. For more faith-filled inspirational podcasts, visit us at livefodio.com.

24:44This, this is my skyship, Tremor. My cargo is stories and our destination, Trees. With a wide sleep stories for kids, you can help your children fall asleep fast and learn about God. To find these kids' bedtime stories, go to lifeaudio.com or search your favorite podcast app for abide stories for kids. You can also download the abide app from more Biblical meditations at abide.com.