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You're listening to the Vice
Chancellor's Hour, a ministry of Radio ABC 993 FM on the campus
of African Bible University. I'm Jeremiah Pitts, a professor
and administrator here at the African Bible University in Uganda. The purpose of Vice Chancellor's
Hour is to provide biblical and theological teachings that are
an extension of the ministry of the university. Welcome back to another episode
of the Vice Chancellor's Hour. We're working our way through
the Book of Mark. You know, I'm doing this study
because Jesus is so incredibly important, isn't he? That for
a very long time, even people who weren't Christians recognized
the uniqueness of Jesus Christ. But especially for Christians,
you know, we say we're followers of Christ. Isn't it important
to understand Him, to understand His life, and how He taught us,
how He died, and how He rose again? And the best sources for
that are the Gospels. That is, the Holy Spirit gave
us, in His Word, an understanding of how we should know Jesus through
these Gospels. We're looking especially at the
book of Mark, the Gospel of Mark. And we found our way in these
episodes, in chapter 5, verses 1 through 20. This is what it
says. 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. But he wrenched the chains apart,
and he broke the shackles in pieces. No one had the strength
to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs
and on the mountains, he was always crying out and cutting
himself with stones. And when he saw Jesus from afar,
he ran, he fell down before him, and crying out with a loud voice,
he said, What have you to do with me, Jesus, son of the Most
High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment
me. For he was saying to him, Come
out of the man, you unclean spirit. And Jesus asked him, What is
your name? And he replied, My name is Legion, for we are many. and he begged him earnestly not
to send them out of the country. 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. So he gave them permission.
And the unclean spirits came out and entered the pigs, and
the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep
bank into the sea and drowned in the sea. The herdsmen fled
and told it in the city and in the country. And people came
to see what it was that had happened. And they came to Jesus and saw
that demon-possessed man, the one who had the legion, sitting
there, clothed and in his right mind. And they were afraid. And
those who had seen it described to them what had happened to
the demon-possessed man and to the pigs. 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. He did not permit him. He said
to him, Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord
has done for you, how he has had mercy on you. And he went
away and he began to proclaim it in the Decapolis, how much
Jesus had done for him. And everyone marveled. What an
incredible story of the power of Jesus in this life of this
particular man. The first thing I think we need
to see is that Jesus is sovereign over the spiritual. Jesus is
sovereign. That means he rules over the
spiritual realm. Now, for my Americans, I might
take some time here to remind you that the spiritual world
is very real, that it is active, it is present, and it is just
as real as all of the things that we can see and taste and
touch. The reason that I know that it's real is because the
Bible testifies to it so much. You know, some of us have kind
of gotten the idea that it's only the physical world that's
a real world, and I'm sorry, but the Bible just doesn't agree
with that. While there are many things that
say they're spiritual that absolutely are nonsense, they're not real,
it would be wrong to come to the conclusion that nothing spiritual
is real. To believe that is to believe
something, I think, that's beyond what can be proven or that helps
to explain the world around us. But we see specifically in this
passage that there is a spiritual realm. In fact, it's described
as a spirit that's inhabiting a physical man. This is not the
first time that Jesus has healed someone who has an unclean spirit. You might go back to Mark chapter
1, where you find the demoniac there and Jesus heals him. Or
you might find the summary passage in Mark 4, which describes all
of the work Jesus did and mentions there that he held people with
unclean spirits. Now, there's some things you
need to know about this spirit. And the first thing is that he's
unclean. A lot of times when we hear unclean spirit in our
minds, we just kind of translate that into demon. And certainly
that is a good sort of synonym for what it is, but it's described
as unclean for a reason. And there are so many associations
in the story with unclean things, that it seems to be that the
Spirit prefers to be in things that are not clean. Either he
was living among unfaithful Jews, Jews who were not keeping the
law which was cleansing them, or among Gentiles that they weren't
supposed to live among. So they were living among people
who were not being faithful to the law of God regarding the
rules of cleanliness and uncleanliness. That law, that Old Testament
law, was meant to be a picture for us of the holiness of God. And so by living among those
who were violating those rules, by extension, was demonstrating
his uncleanliness. Not only that, but look where
the man lives. He lives among the dead. That
is, there were tombs, and that's not where the people of God were
supposed to be living. Now, what kind of person wants
to live among dead bodies? It's not a clean place, it's
an unclean place. Furthermore, when they were driven
out of the man, where did these spirits want to go? They begged
to be sent into pigs to be among unclean animals. Pigs are notorious
the world over for being filthy animals, and that's the desired
place for this spirit. This spirit is unclean. Not too
long ago, when I first came to Uganda to stay here permanently,
I had a Nile River tour. We got onto a small wooden boat,
and we were going around the Nile River, close to the source
of the Nile. And on that trip, the guys who were driving the
boat asked us if we might want to see a local cave. And I didn't
know anything about that, and I thought, oh yeah, okay, that
would be interesting. But upon entering the cave, I discovered
from the guides that this cave was a place of pagan worship,
worship to false spirits. And well, you know, I don't know
what you want to call them. I think the anthropologists call
them local religious practitioners. That's what they told me in grad
school. But I think locally we just call them witch doctors.
Witch doctors would go there and would make sacrifices, leave
gifts to these false guys. And what stood out to me about
this cave is that it was disgusting. It was filthy. It was full of
gross things. And it's just the kind of place
that a spirit like this would want to live. Not in a place
that's clean and well-kept. Not in a place that's wholesome
and good for you. But the spirit prefers to be
among the dead, to be among the filth, to be among things which
are not holy. That's where it desires. That's
where it desires to be. That spirit is unclean. Not only
that, but we learn from this passage that an unclean spirit
is powerful. An unclean spirit is powerful.
I know some of you are disturbed that I'm saying that, but I'm
only telling you what the Bible says. The Bible says that this
unclean spirit was powerful. He was, in fact, able to inhabit
a man, that is, to take over that man's faculties. The man
was made to do things he didn't necessarily want to do. He inhabited
him. He entered him. And we see many
such examples in the scriptures of people who don't want to have
unclean spirits, and yet the unclean spirit has taken over
them. When the removal is there, sometimes it's referred to as
a healing. Other times it's referred to
as a removal or a casting out or throwing out, but sometimes
it's referred to as a healing, as though they were sick or broken.
And so it's something that's taken over them, like a disease,
which is difficult to get rid of. Not only that, because of
the unclean spirit, he's able to achieve incredible feats which
are humanly impossible. You may remember that in the
story, they cannot bind him. These people who know very well
how to fashion iron and how to keep things secure as prisoners
and regularly did so, they weren't able to stop this man. He could
break the chains. He could rend the iron. And as
it were, this is great power, there is great strength there,
there's no doubt. And I'm saying this and I'm wondering
how you're hearing it, but the fact of the matter is that the
Bible is saying that this unclean spirit can cause him to do things
he otherwise would not be able to do. And not only that, it's
not just one of them, but we're told multiple spirits inhabit
the man. That is, he's referred to as
a legion. A legion is more than one, and
it refers to itself as we, as a plural, more than one. It seems
there's more than one evil spirit inside of this man. Unclean spirits,
they really are powerful. Not only that, but this unclean
spirit is defiant and rebellious. You may notice that what he says
is, what have you to do with me? I often, when I think about
this passage, think about putting those words into the mouth of
someone else. Imagine you were in school and
you said to your teacher, teacher, what do you have to do with me?
I mean, it's almost inconceivable. I said it to a group of schoolchildren
one time, and they laughed, but it was a nervous laugh, like,
ooh, could we say that? Is that possible? Like, who would
say that kind of thing? Because they know very well if
they said something that defiant, that rebellious, they would deserve
punishment, and they probably also would receive it. This is
something you would never say to your boss. You would never
say to your boss, what do you have to do with me? If you did
that, would you expect that you would continue to work there?
I think your boss would find a different place for you to
work. Think of your mom and dad for you younger ones. What if
you said to your mom and dad, what do you have to do with me?
You hear how defiant, how rebellious it is? This unclean spirit knows
very well who Jesus is, and yet he answers with a form of defiance,
a form of rebellion. Now, this part's a little tricky,
so I need you to stick with me. He does call Jesus by his name
and title. Now, a lot of people think, well,
if he says Jesus' name and title, then he's giving him honor, right?
I mean, he calls him Jesus, Son of the Most High God. And at
this point in the book of Mark, The demons have done the best
job of identifying Jesus correctly. They're the ones who can look
through everything and see who Jesus really is. In fact, if
you look back in Mark 1, you might see that the demon back
there does the same thing, doesn't he? He calls Jesus by name. But
you have to understand that they're not doing this because they want
to submit to Him or to give Him honor, but they're doing it as
a form of defiance. That is, Jesus had already said
that there are things about Himself that He did not intend to reveal
yet, that it needed to be revealed at the right time. In fact, in
Mark 1, He expressly tells that demon to be quiet, to shut up,
because the demon's not trying to be helpful. The demon is doing
something really devious, and this is what demons do. He's
actually saying it in order to be destructive. You know, we
have this idea about the truth that the truth of its own is
always being helpful, but actually you can see here that's not the
case. That there are true things you can say at the wrong time
or in the wrong way that are intended to be destructive. It's
not because of the nature of truth, it's because of how truth
can be weaponized to hurt people. This is why the Bible tells us
to speak the truth in love. It's not telling us that if you
can't be loving, you should be dishonest. What it's saying is
when you bring the truth, you need to bring it for healing,
for uplifting, and for helping. And if this demon was being submissive
to Jesus in the good and right way, then he never would have
revealed something he knew was not meant to be revealed yet.
But here you see him call him Jesus, Son of the Most High God,
and just as we see in Mark chapter 1, this is meant to be a form
of rebellion. He doesn't want to be helpful,
he wants to be hurtful. And for you and me, this is a
lesson, isn't it? that we shouldn't hide behind the fact that we
were just telling the truth if the meaning of the truth, the
intent of the truth-telling was to bring harm. But even when
we say things, perhaps even things people don't want to hear, the
intent of it should always be loving and for good, for the
upbuilding and the nourishing and the support of those around
us. Now it's true sometimes people just hate the truth, and that
doesn't mean we should stop telling it. But we should be very careful
about our intentions in using the truth. It's so very easy
to use the truth not as a tool to help or to heal, but as a
tool to destroy. That's certainly what this defiant
spirit is doing. So, the spirit is unclean, the
spirit is powerful, the spirit is defiant and rebellious. Finally,
that unclean spirit is destructive. It is destructive. What is the
result? You might look at this and go,
well, if the spirit is powerful and the spirit can be rebellious
against Jesus, wouldn't I want something like that in my life?
You need to understand that this unclean spirit is incredibly
destructive. This man is not able to live
around other people. He can't live with family, friends,
and neighbors. He can't live in civilization,
but he is exiled on his own. He cannot be around other people. It's not even that he chooses
to not be around other people. He can't be around other people. It drives him away. It destroys
his relationships. It destroys his community. It
keeps him separate from everyone else. Isn't that exactly what
sin does? Not only that, but it causes
him to cry out. Imagine, in the middle of the
night, this guy is crying out in the darkness all by himself
among the tombs. He's up and down, up and down.
He's crying out. It reminds me, when I was much
younger in university, some buddies of mine and I would often play
soccer, and we would then go out and go hiking in some mountains
nearby. One time it was dark by the time
we got to the hiking trail, and it was quite late in the evening,
and in fact, there was a man not too far from the parking
space, and he was yelling. alone. At first we thought something
must be wrong with him, but then later we found out that I think
he was out of his mind. I think he was out of his mind,
crying out. He was just alone in the darkness
of the woods, just crying out in pain. And that sound, it really
kind of haunts me, even to this day, this idea of someone crying
out. That's what the unclean spirit, there's no way is this
guy happy. He's not settled in life. Good
things are not ahead of him. He's alone and he's crying out. Not only that, he's physically
hurting himself. It says he cuts himself with
stones. Oh, what a sign of the deep pain
that this man was in, that he afflicts his body. Far from helping
him. Yeah, the spirit is powerful,
but what good does it do this man? Because he's not only alone
and crying out, but he's cutting himself with stones. He's damaging
his own body as a response to this demon. This is where I say
to you, how foolish would it be for you or I to invite an
evil spirit in hopes that we might become powerful? Some of
you guys that are listening to me, maybe you've played around
with some of this stuff Maybe you thought, well, I'll go to
this guy and he'll make something special for me and I'll get what
I want. I'll cause this person to be harmed or I'll cause this
person to fall in love with me or I'll make someone change their
mind or I'll get some good luck or I'll cause some bad luck.
Brothers and sisters, you don't know what you're playing with.
It's real and it's dangerous. I'm not saying it's always real.
There's plenty of charlatans out there that are willing to
take your money and laugh at you behind your back. But some
of these people, you're meddling with them and some of them, are
real servants of the devil, and you don't know what you're playing
with. You think you'll become more powerful because a spirit
is powerful, but instead what you see is it will destroy you.
It will cause you to be driven out from everything and everyone
that you love, crying out in pain and destroying your body,
and you will be the prisoner. It will inhabit you, but you'll
be the prisoner. Do I have some hope for you?
I do. Christ is infinitely more powerful. Christ is infinitely
more powerful even in this spirit. You know, I took the name legion.
A legion typically was between 4,000 and 6,000 men. The number
did fluctuate a little bit. We might take it from the number
of pigs that were there that the number might be smaller,
but still in the thousands. And this is where I start to
ask you a question. Right? How many people can one man fight? You ever thought about that?
You know, if you think about it, one man fights one man and he
wins. You go, okay, yeah, he probably can handle himself,
right? One guy fights one guy, he wins. Yeah, he can handle
himself. One guy fights two guys? One guy fights two guys and he
beats them both? I think everybody knows. Okay, that's pretty special.
Not crazy, but that's pretty special, isn't it? What about
one guy fights three guys? He beats three guys? Wow, okay,
this guy's like another level, right? You know, big guys, tough
guys, you can't beat three guys. By yourself? That's kind of crazy.
2,000 guys? Where's the one guy who by himself
of his own strength is able to beat 2,000 guys? I don't know
who that guy is. Never heard of him. You know
Jesus, when he's recognized by that demon, what's the demon's
response? Look how many spirits it's saying
there is in there. Thousands. But what word does
it use? It says they beg him. They beg
him. Now, some of you, if you're,
you know, listening to me from the U.S. or Europe, you may have
in your mind, we have people sometimes that call themselves
beggars and, you know, they're looking at you in the face and
they're saying like, hey, you want to give me some money, man? And
I'm here to tell you that that's not a beggar. Okay? If you want
to see a beggar, you can come to places like Uganda, where
the beggar is broken down, where he doesn't look up, he may not
even physically be able to get up, where he's down on his knees,
and he's truly begging. Please. Please, that's begging. And so too, this demon was begging
Jesus. Please. He knew he was in the
presence of someone far more powerful than he was. Jesus is the one who makes the
decisions. Jesus is the one who grants permission. No spirit is as powerful as our
Christ is. You have no reason to fear them
so long as you are His. Your Savior will keep you safe. Some student of ours not too
long ago went on a student mission. We do that every year. Students
go out and they pick a ministry and a location and they go support
that ministry in that location. And our students went to Jinja,
just outside Jinja. And while they were there, they
were doing something that's a bit unusual here. They were going
door to door and they were witnessing. That's not done in Uganda a whole
lot in my experience. And while they were there, they
went to a compound in this rural location, and the man of the
house wasn't there, but they were invited in. And so they
go into the compound, these young students, and start witnessing
and speaking of Jesus. While they're there, the man
of the house returns, and it turns out he's a local witch
doctor. And they were concerned what his reaction would be, but
instead of being defiant, he ran away in fear, yelling that
they were more powerful than he was. This is the picture of
our Christ. You may have lost track of that
in this world because the devil would love to have you believe
that he's more powerful. But the truth of it is, our Christ
is more powerful by far. Even the most powerful beings,
these demons. So what will your reaction to
this story be? Jesus casts out a demon, saves
a man. What will your reaction be to
these events? Well, I'm going to tell you there's
two reactions. You see them in this story. Two different reactions
to the same event. Same thing happens, but people
react in two different ways. Look at the herdsmen and the
townspeople. That's one reaction. We're told that the herdsmen
fleed to the city. That is, they ran away. That
word flee tells me you think you're in danger. That's what
flee means. Like, you know, somebody behind
you is going to do you harm. You flee. You run away. The house
is on fire. You flee. You run away. Right? It's as though they were in trouble,
as though they needed help. They needed someone to come and
to help them. So they fetch those townspeople
and they come back. This phrase in the whole story
is kind of the most mind-blowing of the whole thing. This is what
it says their reaction is, okay? Listen to it. Listen to it carefully.
It says they found him sitting there, clothed and in his right
mind, and they were afraid. Did you hear that? He was sitting
there, he's clothed in his right mind, and they were afraid. Now
you gotta understand, these guys know who this guy is. They've
tried to arrest him and they failed. They put him in chains,
he breaks them. This guy's running around screaming
all hours of the night, cutting himself, looks like a maniac,
lives with the dead people. Everybody knows about this guy.
They know who he is, they know how he acts. They see him sitting,
clothed and in his right mind, and their reaction is fear. Their reaction is fear. They were more at peace with
the demon, with that unclean spirit, than they were with the
power of God. They saw the power of God, and
they found it unsettling. It says they begged Jesus to
leave. They saw that he had done a miracle
in this man's life, and they asked him to leave. They acknowledge
his power. They know he's powerful. All
three reactions, actually, that you see in the story are reactions
to Jesus's power. Not one person there sees anything
other than Jesus is powerful. But in one case, it causes them
to flee and then to beg Jesus to leave. Just like the demon
begged, they beg. They beg him to leave. And I
think that raises a question for you and me. Is there anything
in our lives, is there an evil in our life that we've made peace
with? I ask this question with fear
and trembling. I'm afraid of the fact that in this life, there
may be something that I know is wrong, but I've made peace
with it. So much so that when God changes it in my life, I
don't want him to. Do you understand how terrifying
that is? And so I'm asking you, brothers and sisters, look at
your life. Look at your life. Is there something
in your life that you've made peace with that's evil? And so
you don't want God to change it. Don't make peace with evil,
brothers and sisters. Don't make peace with evil. Make
peace with God. The herdsmen and the townspeople
acted all wrong. They ran away like something
bad was going to happen to them. They asked Jesus to leave because
they had made peace with evil. Oh, but that's not the only reaction
we see, is it? That's not the only reaction
we also see. That man who formerly had the
demon, he feels differently. You know, just like we saw that
word beg when it came to the demon and when it came to the
townspeople, we see it with this former demoniac as well. He also
begs. But what does he beg for? It
says he begs Jesus to come with him. Let me come with you. Let
me come with you. He's not saying go away. He's
saying let me come. Let me come with you. What a
beautiful cry of the heart. His heart's desire having been
rescued, having been healed. All he wants to do is go with
Jesus. All he wants to do is go with Jesus. It's a surprise
to me, maybe a surprise to you. Jesus tells him no. But is Jesus
sovereign? Does Jesus get to say? Yes. Other
times Jesus says to this guy, hey, you come with me. At other
times, he says, go where you will, and the man comes with
him, and it's good. But this time, the man says, I want to
go with you, Jesus, and Jesus says, no, stay. And that is the
right of Jesus. Jesus is sovereign. Jesus is
the king of this situation. That he's the one who says, stay
or go, it's his call. And a real disciple gets that.
I hope you get that too. We have our desires, don't we?
We have the things we want. We even have things that we know
to be or believe to be good, but God doesn't have them for
us. He has something else. And a real follower of Christ,
a real disciple, he doesn't do what he wants. He does what God
wants him to do. This man's reaction isn't to
make Jesus do what he wants, but is to do what Jesus would
have him to do. And why does Jesus leave him
there? This is especially instructive for you and me. It's to proclaim
what Jesus had done. To proclaim what Jesus had done. You're here on earth. You know,
the Bible tells us to live as Christ and to die as gain. To
die is gain. And I hope you have eyes towards
heaven, but don't forget to live is Christ. We flip that around,
don't we? Don't we flip that around? We
start to say, well, to die is Christ and to live is gain. Let
me get what I can get here. And when I'm dead, I'll go to
Jesus. But the Bible says the opposite. To live is Christ,
to die is gain. If you are saved and you are
here, you have been rescued from the powers of darkness, which
were so destructive and unholy, and you are still here because
God has a purpose for your life, and that is to proclaim what
he has done. Proclaim it. He has you here
to praise him and make his glory known. He deserves it. Don't
let it pass. I'm reminded of a student of
mine, and when she came for interviews, we always interviewed them about
their confession of faith. What do they believe about how
to be saved, and do they really believe it? And this young lady,
she knew how to be saved, and she could express it, that she's
saved by grace through faith, and she went through those pieces.
She knows them, thank the Lord. She knows some of our graduates
in her life, and they had some help there. They had helped her
in knowing what it meant to be a Christian. But there was a
missing piece, and it came up in the interview. She had no
assurance. She had no assurance. And I found
that to be a fairly common thing, that they know how to be saved,
but they struggle with assurance. How can I really know I'll be
saved? It was my very, very good pleasure to share with her that
you rest in the work of Christ, and that's where your assurance
is. It's in His work. Not in the size, not in the strength
of your faith, but in the object of your faith. That's where the
assurance is. And that in Christ Jesus, as
surely as you are His, nothing can wrest you from His hands.
He says all of the ones the Father has given Him, He will keep.
No one can take them away. I didn't know it at the time.
I didn't hear this until later. I could see that this young lady
was very excited, but I didn't know why and how much. Later, she shared her testimony,
and in her testimony, she mentioned that very day that she had known
a lot of people who weren't good people, had been raised up around
them and near them, and they often talked about the fact they
might end up in hell together. because she had no assurance.
When she got done with that conversation, she called her friends. She said,
I know I'm going to heaven, and you can know too. She'd had no
assurance, but as soon as she had that object of her faith,
as soon as she knew what Christ had done, she wanted to proclaim
it. She wanted everyone to know.
I'm telling you, that's why we're here. That's why we have our
chapel. Our chapel at African Bible University is called Kirk
of the Hills out of respect for a church that sent us, but also
because we're a church that's on a hill. And when I see it,
I see it as a fortress on a hill against spiritual oppression.
We have a Savior who saves us, and the power isn't in that building,
and certainly the power isn't in the people who are in the
building. The power is in the Christ who saves them. And our
job is to proclaim it. This radio exists to proclaim
what Christ has done for us. This university exists to proclaim
what Christ has done for us. And whatever else we're doing,
and there's a lot of other things we do, all of them come back
to us telling people what God has done for us. I hope you're
doing the same. Trust Him. Put your assurance
in Him. This Christ is stronger than the most powerful spiritual
forces. He's able to save to the uttermost. What will your
reaction be? Will you make peace with evil?
Or will you obey your king and proclaim what he's done? I know
what I want to do. Hope you do the same. You're listening to the Vice
Chancellor's Hour, a ministry of Radio ABC 993 FM on the campus
of African Bible University. I'm Jeremiah Pitts, a professor
and administrator here at the African Bible University in Uganda. The purpose of Vice Chancellor's
Hour is to provide biblical and theological teachings that are
an extension of the ministry of the university.
The Reality of Evil Spirits
Series Learning from Mark
The world in which we live is not only a physical world but a spiritual world. In this episode, the VC looks at how the evil of the spiritual world is assessed and addressed by Jesus.
| Sermon ID | 129248334851 |
| Duration | 30:20 |
| Date | |
| Category | Radio Broadcast |
| Bible Text | Mark 5:1-21 |
| Language | English |
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