Listen Queue
There is nothing in your queue.
You can add media by tapping the “add to queue” icon located near the media player.
September 13, 2009
Without Christ, our lives have much in common with the demon-possessed man whose story is found in Mark 5. Like him, we are hopeless, alienated from God, and in bondage to evil. Alistair Begg encourages us to see how the enslavement, deliverance, and subsequent testimony of this man’s experience points to our own transformation by the Gospel.a
1uThey came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes.1 2And when Jesus2 had stepped out of the boat, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit. 3vHe lived among the tombs. And no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain, 4for 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. 5Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always crying out and cutting himself with stones. 6And when he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and wfell down before him. 7And xcrying out with a loud voice, he said, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, ySon of zthe Most High God? aI adjure you by God, do not torment me.” 8For he was saying to him, “Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!” 9And Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” He replied, “My name is bLegion, for we are many.” 10And he begged him earnestly not to send them out of the country. 11Now a great herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside, 12and they begged him, saying, “Send us to the pigs; let us enter them.” 13So 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.
14The herdsmen fled and told it in the city and in the country. And people came to see what it was that had happened. 15And they came to Jesus and saw the demon-possessed3 man, the one who had had cthe legion, sitting there, dclothed and in his right mind, and they were afraid. 16And those who had seen it described to them what had happened to the demon-possessed man and to the pigs. 17And ethey began to beg Jesus4 to depart from their region. 18As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed with demons begged him that he might be with him. 19And he did not permit him but said to him, “Go home to your friends and ftell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.” 20And he went away and began to proclaim in gthe Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him, and everyone marveled.
Copyright © 2024, Alistair Begg. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license. The ESV may not be translated in whole or in part into any other language.
