"Tearing Down Strongholds"

Mark 5: 1-20

     Dear Friends in Christ,   

   Where do slumps come from?  And no, I’m not talking about a batting slump that a baseball player might get into or even an entire team as happened to the Cardinals a couple weeks ago where they went from being 2 ½ games ahead of Cincinnati in 1^st place to being 4 ½ games back after a 5 game losing streak.  Rather the kind of slumps I’m thinking of consists of day after day of the dismals.  Some of you know what I’m talking about, don’t you?  Or what about fits of rage and temper tantrums where a person’s tongue is so sharp that maybe it can’t cut diamonds, but it can sure cut hearts?  Where do they come from?  And what about binges?  Three casinos in one night or two 6-packs in one hour or a wallet-full of maxed out credit cards in one afternoon of shopping.  Sometimes we get out of control, don’t we?  So where does this behavior come from?  Where does it originate?  Well, our usual response is that it comes from stress or a mid-life crisis or a chemical imbalance in the brain, all of which are valid answers.  The Bible, however, would take us behind all of those suggestions and would say, “These are merely the tools of destruction, but not the source of destruction.”  And it would then take us to the real root of all these negative, destructive behaviors.  And that would be a being that we’re going to spend our time talking about this morning known as Satan.  Perhaps Jesus said it best in John 10:10 when he told his followers that the devil has only one goal, one desire in mind for us and that is “to steal and kill and destroy.”

   So if you’ve got a good marriage this morning, you need to understand that Satan does not like that and he is going to do everything in his power to steal your joy and kill your love for each other.  If you came to church in a good frame of mind today, be aware that the evil one is plotting ways whereby he can take away your peace and destroy your hope and distract you from what God wants you to hear in this service.  That’s all he exists to do.  He is rotten and evil to the very core of his being.  There is not one good membrane or molecule in him. 

   Now I realize those words may sound a bit odd to our modern, sophisticated ears because I guarantee that if you turn on the evening news, you’re not going to hear Tom Brokaw or Wolf Blitzer talking about all the mayhem that Satan caused in our world that day.  Many people today have kind of dismissed him.  They don’t believe in a personal devil anymore.  And that’s sad because I can’t help but feel that there are few things that could please Satan more for while we’re out there ignoring or doubting his existence, he is free to wreak as much havoc and mayhem in our world as he pleases.  By the way, Jesus never ignored his existence.  He did battle with him and defeated him.  But he never dismissed him or downplayed him.  So any serious study of the life of Jesus which we’ve been doing for most of this year in my current sermon series entitled “The One and Only,” must include at least one installment of the view that our Savior had of Satan.  So that’s what we’re going to be looking at today as we examine this interesting story from the 5^th chapter of Mark’s Gospel.

   Now at the outset I’m going to warn you that this is one weird story.  It is full of unusual twists and turns.  So let’s get things started by looking at the unusual place where this encounter occurs.  Verse 1 of our text says: “They went across the lake to the region of the Gerasenes.”  Now that sounds innocent enough to us, but if you were a Jew at that time and had been told that Jesus and the disciples had just gone over to the region of the Gerasenes, you would have definitely thought it unusual.  For this was a place of unclean people – non-Jews lived there.  It was also a place where pigs were raised and we all know how Jews felt about pigs.  They considered them to be the uncleanest of the unclean animals.  And then to top it all off, this was a place of demon possession, as we’ll soon find out.  So, unclean people, unclean animals, unclean spirits.  All 3 of these were things any Jew would go out of his way to avoid, but Jesus purposely and knowingly went to an area where all 3 of these things would be waiting for him.

   Which takes us to the 2^nd weird thing about this story and that is the unusual person that Jesus encountered.  Notice how our text describes him: “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 any more, 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.”  I’m picturing a gangly fellow, a Charles Manson look alike, with long, stringy, tangled hair.  Beard to the chest, streaked with crimson from his own blood.  He has no clothes on, no sandals to protect his feet.  His body is full of scratches, cuts, and bruises, most of his own doing, for he found some sort of sadistic pleasure in hurting himself. 

   And notice where he lives.  He lives in a graveyard.  Apparently he feels more comfortable among the dead than among the living which is fine with the living because they don’t know what to do with him.  They’ve tried restraining him with shackles and chains, but he was too strong for even those to hold him.  So they have a real problem on their hands.  And we have a real picture of what happens when Satan takes hold of an area and a person.  The Apostle Paul has a special name for this.  He calls it a stronghold.  In 2 Cor. 10:4 he writes: “We use God’s mighty weapons, not mere worldly weapons, to knock down the Devil’s strongholds.”

   Maybe you’ve known a time in your life when Satan just seemed to have an unusual amount of influence and control over you and what you were doing, especially as you look back upon it now.  Maybe it was during those rebellious teenage years you went through or that mid-life crisis.  Or maybe there was a season of your life where it seemed like you were terribly weak in a particular area – you couldn’t stop worrying, you couldn’t stop drinking, you couldn’t stop arguing with your spouse, you couldn’t stop looking at those pornographic pictures.  That’s what is meant by a stronghold.  It’s a stranglehold, a vice-like grip that the devil has on your heart, your mind, your life. 

   In our text this stronghold is manifested in 3 different ways, what I’m going to call 3 hints of hell, all of which are signs we need to be on the lookout for in our lives and the lives of those close to us.  First of all, we see self-imposed pain.  The demon-possessed man, we’re told, would cut himself with stones.  Of course, we’re more sophisticated than that.  We bring pain into our lives through drugs or alcohol or food or 80-hour workweeks or illicit sexual relationships. 

   Then a 2^nd indication of hell’s presence is endless restlessness.  Our text says that this man would cry out night and day among the tombs and in the hills.  While God wants to give us a peace that passes understanding, Satan wants to create in our hearts a raging frenzy, an anxious uneasiness that is never able to find rest.

   Then the 3^rd hint of hell that comes out in our text is isolation.  This demon-possessed man lived all by himself among the tombs.  That’s because Satan hates community.  He hates fellowship.  He hates what we’re doing here today because he knows that wherever two or three are gathered in Christ’s name, Christ is right there in the midst of them.  So when you wake up on Sunday morning and find yourself wanting to sleep in, understand that that’s not your body trying to tell you that you’re tired and you just need some extra rest.  Rather that’s the evil one trying to keep you isolated from the fellowship and community that could be yours if you just got up and came to church. 

   So we’ve looked at the unusual place where our text occurs, the unusual person it involves, and now we’re going to look at the unusual Presence that shows up in the person of Jesus.  You’re going to love what happens next.  For as Jesus and his disciples are met by this unclean man with an unclean spirit in this unclean territory, Jesus wastes no time.  He steps out of the boat with both barrels blazing and issues a command.  He says: "Come out of this man, you evil spirit!"  Don’t you love that?  No chitchat.  No small talk.  No introductions.  It’s like one of his children has been taken hostage by the enemy and he is bound and determined that he’s going to rescue that child. 

   And I love the reaction that this man gives to Jesus.  He says: "What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? Swear to God that you won't torture me!"  Now understand that the one who is really speaking here is not the man, but the demons that possessed him.  Notice I said demons rather than demon.  We know there was more than one by the name this man gives when Jesus asks for it.  He says: "My name is Legion…for we are many."

   That name “Legion” tells us several things about the demons of hell.  First of all, there are many of them.  You know what a legion was back then?  It was a term used to describe a battalion of Roman soldiers that numbered 6000.  Does that mean this man had 6000 demons inhabiting his body?  Perhaps.  For what bats are to a cave, demons are to hell – too many to number.

   But these demons are not only numerous; they are also well equipped and well organized.  Roman soldiers were among the best-equipped and organized of fighting men known in the ancient world.  That’s why Paul tells us in Eph. 6 that we need to “put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground.”

   The point I’m getting at here, my friends, is that we need to dismiss any image that we might have in our minds of Satan in a silly red suit with horns and a pointed tail, carrying a pitchfork in his hand.  He is a powerful, intelligent, and deceptive being who deserves our respect, but not our fear.  I like how Martin Luther puts it in the 3rd ^verse of his great Reformation hymn, “A Mighty Fortress.”  He says: “Though devils all the world should fill all eager to devour us, We tremble not, we fear no ill, They shall not overpower us.  This world’s prince (that’s Satan!) may still scowl fierce as he will.  He can harm us none.  He’s judged, the deed is done.  One little word can fell him.”  And that little word that can defeat him is really the living Word of God Jesus Christ, my friends. 

   For notice what he does in our text.  He sends those demons packing.  He orders them into a herd of swine and we’re told they “rushed down the steep bank into the lake and were drowned.”  And by so doing, Jesus gave that man his right mind and his life back again. 

   So what can you take home with you from this story today?  Well, I hope you’ve seen the importance of staying close to Jesus because Satan and all the demons of hell are powerless in the presence of Christ.  And the reason they are is because at the cross Jesus brought to fulfillment the promise that God made shortly after Adam and Eve had sinned when he said to the serpent, or Satan: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel."  Now if you crush the head of a snake, what have you done?  You have taken away its power to harm you, right?  I actually had that experience a little over a week ago when I went out to my garage to get in my car and drive into work and there was a snake in our garage.  He wasn’t huge, maybe only 10 inches long.  But when he saw me, he assumed a striking position.  So I grabbed my trusty machete which happened to be right there and no, I didn’t cut him up into little pieces because that would have made too big of a mess.  Rather I whomped him over the head with the flat end of the blade.  I crushed his head.  And though he still wiggled a bit, I knew he wasn’t going to harm me or Marilyn anymore. 

   Well, that’s what Jesus did to Satan at the cross and the empty tomb.  And though the devil still has a lot of wiggle in our world today, he has no more power over those of us who are connected to Christ by faith.  So when Satan comes knocking on the door of your heart, trying to establish a stronghold there, just give him the same answer that Martin Luther used to give him.  If you know anything about Luther, you know that he and the devil had their share of encounters over the years.  And when Luther would sense that evil presence trying to worm his way into his heart, he’d simply say:  “Go away, devil.  Martin Luther doesn’t live here anymore.  Jesus Christ does.”  You see Luther understood what I want so badly for all of you to understand and take home with you today.  And that is what John tells us in the 4^th chapter of his 1^st epistle, the 4^th verse: “Greater is he who is in you (that’s Jesus!)  than he who is in the world (which is Satan).”  So remember to respect the devil, but don’t fear him.  Instead, gain victory over him by always remaining close and connected to Jesus.

     Amen.