SPEAKER_00: My name is Kip.
SPEAKER_00: Um, if you have your Bibles today, you can go ahead and turn open with me to the Gospel of Mark.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna look at chapter five, and I'm not gonna read it yet, but we will get there.
SPEAKER_00: Um I was about nine years old.
SPEAKER_00: I loved to collect baseball cards.
SPEAKER_00: Is that still a thing anymore?
SPEAKER_00: Do people collect them?
SPEAKER_00: Do you still have some of them?
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Elijah, I believe, is waving his hand in the back.
SPEAKER_00: Um it's a it's a kind of a fun thing to do, uh, you know, but back in the day, I was a huge fan of the Oakland athletics.
SPEAKER_00: And uh why was I a big fan of the athletics?
SPEAKER_00: Well, it was the late 80s, and uh we had the likes of Mark Maguire and Jose Conseco and Ricky Henderson, and uh I'm an Ohioan, so in 1990, when the Reds won the World Series, I was happy with that, but I still rocked that A's hat.
SPEAKER_00: And every time that I would get a Mark Maguire, I'd hold on to it like it was treasure.
SPEAKER_00: And my buddy, he loved Jose Consecos, Ryan.
SPEAKER_00: So um anytime that he got a Maguire, naturally I'd won it.
SPEAKER_00: And uh one time he got a 1988 Topps All-Star rookie card of Mark McGuire, and I began to get my Jose Consejos in order to come up with the trade of a lifetime.
SPEAKER_00: And when I offered him the cards that I had, he looked at me and he said, Kip, I can't trade you this Mark Maguire card for those Consecos.
SPEAKER_00: And I was a little bewildered, why not?
SPEAKER_00: He said, This card is worth more than your life.
SPEAKER_00: And to my nine-year-old little brain, that had an impact because here it is all these years later, and I still remember his words to me.
SPEAKER_00: And it got me thinking, at the age of probably nine years old, the age of my daughter, what is my life really worth?
SPEAKER_00: I wasn't raised in a church.
SPEAKER_00: We I went and played uh uh Red Rover at my grandmother's church every couple months, but I didn't really understand the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: I didn't know the love of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And so years would pass and I would find uh Jesus, or should I say that Jesus found me in a little Methodist church in the backwoods of Ohio, and uh I fell in love with Jesus in this little Methodist church with an outhouse for a bathroom, and uh the average age of the congregant, about 80 years old, who showed me the love of Jesus, and I have been on a different track ever since.
SPEAKER_00: But I've never I've never forgotten that.
SPEAKER_00: And um, I wonder today if you have ever wondered what your life is worth.
SPEAKER_00: Perhaps you know, like I soon came to find out that my life was worth a lot to Jesus, but at the time I didn't know that.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're here today and you've asked yourself that question a time or two, or maybe you're going through a dark moment or a dry period in your life where you're just kind of wondering once again, do I have value?
SPEAKER_00: Does anyone see me?
SPEAKER_00: And what am I worth?
SPEAKER_00: And I believe that uh through this very uh exhilarating story found in the Gospel of Mark chapter five, we're going to learn our worth again, or we're gonna relearn that today.
SPEAKER_00: Are you ready?
SPEAKER_00: Well, here we go, Mark chapter 5, verses 1 through 20.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna read here from the the ESV.
SPEAKER_00: Uh it says, They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Garosenes.
SPEAKER_00: And when Jesus had stepped out of the boat, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit.
SPEAKER_00: 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 and chains, but he wrenched the chains apart, and he broke the shackles in pieces.
SPEAKER_00: No one had the strength to dissubdue him.
SPEAKER_00: Night and day among the tombs and in the mountains, he was always crying out, and he was cutting himself with stones.
SPEAKER_00: And when he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and he fell down before him.
SPEAKER_00: And crying out with a loud voice, he said, What have you to do with me, Jesus, son of the most high God?
SPEAKER_00: I adjure you by God, do not torment me.
SPEAKER_00: For he was saying to him, Come out of the man, you unclean spirit.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus asked, What is your name?
SPEAKER_00: And he replied, My name is Legion, for we are many.
SPEAKER_00: And he begged him earnestly not to send them out of the country.
SPEAKER_00: 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.
SPEAKER_00: So he gave them permission.
SPEAKER_00: 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.
SPEAKER_00: The herdsmen fled and told it in the city and in the country, and the people came to see what it was that had happened.
SPEAKER_00: And when they came to Jesus and saw the demon-possessed man, the one who had the legion, sitting there clothed, and in his right mind, they were afraid.
SPEAKER_00: 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.
SPEAKER_00: As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed with the demons begged him that he might be with him, and he did not permit him, but said to him, Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you and how he has had mercy on you.
SPEAKER_00: And he went away and began to proclaim in the Diapolis how much Jesus had done for him, and everyone marveled.
SPEAKER_00: We praise God for his word today.
SPEAKER_00: May it change our lives and redirect our steps, Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: We ask.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: The title for the message today is Wrecked by Mercy.
SPEAKER_00: Have you guys ever been wrecked by the mercy of God, by the love of God, by his grace, his undeserving, unmerited favor towards you, a wayward sinner?
SPEAKER_00: And then we're in good company today.
SPEAKER_00: Though there are countless ways to unpack this text, I'd like to do it by making three points about the mercy of God.
SPEAKER_00: And as we do this, we'll fully draw out the meaning of the text, informing us of what it meant to the people in Jesus' time and how it applies to our lives today.
SPEAKER_00: The first thing that we see is that God's mercy is boundless.
SPEAKER_00: You know what that word boundless means?
SPEAKER_00: Well, if you look it up in Webster, it means having no bounds.
SPEAKER_00: Don't you like that when you look a word up and uh it just kind of redefines it in the opposite way?
SPEAKER_00: It means infinite or vast, unlimited or inexhaustible.
SPEAKER_00: In Mark 5, 1, it reads, they came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Garriscenes.
SPEAKER_00: But to fully understand how monumental Mark 5 is, we have to go back in the narrative a little to Mark 4, to a scene where Jesus is teaching a large crowd.
SPEAKER_00: So when you read the scripture, a lot of times, if you read it, uh you you you know, it can't be said all the time, but uh there are some events that the gospel writers kind of loosely attach, they're not always in order, but Mark 4 and 5 are legitimately in chronological order.
SPEAKER_00: So to understand really the um the weight of Mark 5, we've got to see what's happening in Mark 4.
SPEAKER_00: And I know Timmy's gonna love this because he's been hanging on to this Mark IV for a while.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus with us in the storm.
SPEAKER_00: Come on, can you say amen?
SPEAKER_00: But before Jesus was ever with us in the storm, what he what's he doing?
SPEAKER_00: He's teaching in parables at the beginning of Mark IV.
SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, a parable is simply an earthly story with a heavenly meaning.
SPEAKER_00: I've heard it said before.
SPEAKER_00: Um and this is what uh Mark uh you know portrays Jesus as doing in Mark 4.
SPEAKER_00: And see, uh the the trouble with parables is they weren't necessarily easy to understand all the time.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, in verse 10 of Mark 4, uh it says, when he was alone, Jesus, those around him with the twelve asked him about the parables, and he said to them, To you it has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but to those outside everything is in parables, so that they may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear and not understand, lest they should be turned turn and be forgiven.
SPEAKER_00: And he said to them, Do you not understand this parable?
SPEAKER_00: How then will you understand all the parables?
SPEAKER_00: The reason I mention that is because it's when we get to Mark 5, we're going to see something as the story unfolds with the demoniac.
SPEAKER_00: And perhaps you've heard the saying before, some things simply can't be taught, they have to be caught.
SPEAKER_00: Are you like that?
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes in life, we need some hands-on experience.
SPEAKER_00: If you've ever tried to put something together by reading the directions, right, you're probably a better man or woman than I am, but I like the hands-on, you know, that's how I remember things.
SPEAKER_00: And unfortunately, I have to go back through and rebuild something time and again to make it happen.
SPEAKER_00: But we need sometimes that experiential, uh, that teaching in action.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm telling you, friends, open your nets for the proverbial fish catch, even though there's not going to be one, because we're going to move forward across the Sea of Galilee.
SPEAKER_00: Are you ready to journey, journey across the Sea of Galilee?
SPEAKER_00: It says in verse 35 that when evening come, he said to them, Let us go across to the other side.
SPEAKER_00: That was that's a power keg of uh dynamite there that was about ready to explode.
SPEAKER_00: When he said, Let us go to the other side, this was a paradigm shift in the inauguration of Kingdom of Jesus' kingdom ministry, because things were about to change.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, the clue in Mark 4 helps us to understand the entirety of Mark chapter 5, not just verses 1 through 20, as Jesus ministers in a very uh obscure place to obscure people that weren't favored by the Jews.
SPEAKER_00: And so we're going to hear about this.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus and his disciples were literally about to take on the wildest river rapids ride you can imagine because Jesus literally was hellbent on teaching a lesson about his mercy.
SPEAKER_00: The parables, he put them to bed.
SPEAKER_00: Now he's going to go out and demonstrate what he means by seed sowing.
SPEAKER_00: And so they get in the boat.
SPEAKER_00: And then we know what happens in chapter 4.
SPEAKER_00: There's this crazy storm on the sea, and the boat is rocked back and forth, and these experienced fishermen are overcome with fear.
SPEAKER_00: And where is Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: Well, where is he, Tim?
SPEAKER_00: Fast asleep.
SPEAKER_00: Because he knows he's got things under control, right?
SPEAKER_00: But as we look at that story, sometimes we miss the context.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus was on mission.
SPEAKER_00: And because the mission was so uh, the mission was opposed by the spiritual forces that wrestled him as he went to the land of the Garrisones because something was about to happen.
SPEAKER_00: And in our lives, friends, sometimes, you know, God's bringing us to a destiny, and he's bringing us to help us to see, you know, uh, he's going to kind of close the chapter on a on a storm of our lives, but before that happens, there is some opposition to help us know that God is with us and that he has not left us, right?
SPEAKER_00: It's okay to trust Jesus in the storms of life, but we gotta see that there is a mission involved in it.
SPEAKER_00: And so this is what happens here is that uh the the mission that the devil opposed was the gospel to the whosoever.
SPEAKER_00: The old devil didn't want his uh the people of the day or us today to come into a saving faith of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't want us to know that the gospel is for us, he didn't want us to know that we're the chosen of God, that it didn't belong to one uh you know sect or religion, or it didn't belong to one socioeconomic uh status, it didn't belong to one ethnicity, it belonged to the whole world.
SPEAKER_00: The whosoever the devil feared, and he was going to make waves because Jesus love is for the whosoever.
SPEAKER_00: So he shows up in a graveyard, and a breakdown of the historical and biblical context reveals why this specific excursion was so radical.
SPEAKER_00: First, it was pagan, non-Jewish territory.
SPEAKER_00: The region of the Garrisones was located on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee and belonged to the Diapolis, a league of ten heavily Hellenized or Greek cities.
SPEAKER_00: For a Jewish teacher traveling here meant leaving the relative safety of Jewish Capernaum to step directly into a pagan world filled with foreign gods and Roman imperial influence.
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't safe.
SPEAKER_00: And what did Jesus say?
SPEAKER_00: We're sailing towards the garrisons.
SPEAKER_00: Get ready.
SPEAKER_00: The second thing that makes this excursion just crazy is the abundance of unclean animals.
SPEAKER_00: According to Mosaic law, pigs were deeply unclean animals.
SPEAKER_00: The presence of a massive herd of 2,000 pigs roaming the hillside was a glaring visual anchor proving that Jesus was no longer in Israel.
SPEAKER_00: Religious Jews strictly avoided these areas to prevent them from becoming ritually defiled.
SPEAKER_00: Yet, Jesus, he sailed right towards the Garrison.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that beautiful what he does?
SPEAKER_00: Has he sailed that way in your life?
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever felt yourself unclean, defiled by sin, separated from God, and the next thing you know, you look on the horizon, and there's Jesus sailing into your storm-tossed wrecked life.
SPEAKER_00: Praise God.
SPEAKER_00: The next thing that we see is that he walks into the graveyard.
SPEAKER_00: The gospel note that the demon-possessed man lived among the tombs.
SPEAKER_00: In Jewish culture, touching or being near graves caused severe ritual defilement.
SPEAKER_00: By entering a cemetery in pagan territory, Jesus was intentionally walking into what his contemporaries viewed as the ultimate spiritual wasteland.
SPEAKER_00: And again, Jesus heading towards the garrisons.
SPEAKER_00: I uh worked in Plymouth for a while, Plymouth, uh, Massachusetts, of all places, from Ohio, but that was the first appointment that I served in.
SPEAKER_00: And if you know the history, Coles Hill was the really the place where the pilgrims, the first plantation was, and on top of that was Fort Hill, where there was a big cemetery.
SPEAKER_00: And some of the bones of the pilgrims evidently are still there.
SPEAKER_00: But there was this guy named Dan who came to our soup kitchen.
SPEAKER_00: And you know where he lived?
SPEAKER_00: He lived in the Fort Hill Cemetery.
SPEAKER_00: You know why he lived there?
SPEAKER_00: Because no one bothered him in the cemetery.
SPEAKER_00: And he'd often say to me, Kip, I'm in a bad mood today.
SPEAKER_00: I said, Well, why?
SPEAKER_00: He says, I woke up on the warrant side of the grave.
SPEAKER_00: And that was his reality.
SPEAKER_00: And I know that when we talk about demon possession and this really kind of Harry Potter-like situation in the land of the garrisons in this graveyard, we forget that the real demonic oppression here may not be the demons at all.
SPEAKER_00: It may be the social ostracism that this fellow endured by his fellow people who often chained him hand and foot and cast him out.
SPEAKER_00: And my friend Dan had struggled a little bit with that, and that's why he slept in the graveyard.
SPEAKER_00: And it was interesting to have that perspective.
SPEAKER_00: The final, uh, the other reason that this was an excursion that was crazy is that the man uh was a public enemy, so the people thought.
SPEAKER_00: He would uh, Jesus went to see a violent outcast with supernatural strength.
SPEAKER_00: He was demon-possessed.
SPEAKER_00: Demon possession still happens today, friends.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus Christ can break the chains of any demon that's afflicting you.
SPEAKER_00: I want you to know that today.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus has power over demonic activity in our lives, and he can break it off and shake it off.
SPEAKER_00: And he's gonna prove that to us in this story today.
SPEAKER_00: And can you imagine this fellow spent his night naked, screaming, cutting himself with sharp stones, terrified?
SPEAKER_00: He terrified the people, and stepping out of the boat to face this man was a massive physical risk.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus didn't care about the safety, he cared about this man.
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that beautiful?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he put himself at risk if the Son of God can actually do that, right?
SPEAKER_00: When he calls us out to minister, he we're in some some measure at risk if we're doing it God's way.
SPEAKER_00: People aren't gonna like that.
SPEAKER_00: They're gonna jeer us, maybe, at the least, persecute us in different ways, right?
SPEAKER_00: But we've got to have our eye on the end goal, the gospel for the world, eternity with our brothers and sisters in Christ, with Christ.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Not separated from God forever in hell, because that's what our sin does.
SPEAKER_00: That's the track that we're on.
SPEAKER_00: The other thing culturally was provoking a legion of demons was a pretty scary thing, just at face value.
SPEAKER_00: When Jesus asked the demon its name, it replied, My name is Legion, for we're many.
SPEAKER_00: To a first century crowd, the word legion carried a massive political and militarial punch.
SPEAKER_00: It explicitly mirrored the Roman legions of brutal military units occupying their homeland, confronting a spiritual army of this scale, was a display of raw, provocative authority that terrified the local population.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus was ready to do that, right?
SPEAKER_00: Because he had power over demons, he had power over the whole universe because he was the creator of the universe.
SPEAKER_00: And as he was showing mercy, he was wooing, courting, and drawing a whole community, not only there, but for us today, to see that he is the deity.
SPEAKER_00: He is the God, the Lord of all.
SPEAKER_00: There is no one that can match him.
SPEAKER_00: And so he was proving his authority, and he'll prove it again in our lives, that Jesus was into doing this a long time ago.
SPEAKER_00: We talked about Rahab, who was this promiscuous woman who lived in a wall, who actually was added to the bloodline of Jesus, right?
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't just a New Testament thing that God is for everyone.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus shows it here.
SPEAKER_00: And as Peter in Acts 10 has that vision of all things unclean and makes that trek to Cornelius' house, I got to imagine that he's recalling this vents on the shore there of the garrisons that day, thinking, oh, I'm finally starting to get it, right?
SPEAKER_00: Are we finally starting to get it?
SPEAKER_00: That fellow that's working with us that we can't stand, or the guy that goes to the gym.
SPEAKER_00: There was one fellow there at the gym, I won't mention names, but uh Pastor Stephen and I uh I, you know, I was always kind of annoyed with him because he was taking our our our benches, he wasn't moving.
SPEAKER_00: He'd go from one machine to the other and never wash the machine when he was done.
SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, I just I had a hard time with it.
SPEAKER_00: And finally, I went up to him and introduced myself, and I don't think anyone had ever talked to him before.
SPEAKER_00: And Pastor Stephen said, Well, you broke the ice.
SPEAKER_00: I said, Well, yeah, I broke something.
SPEAKER_00: And uh, and so it's interesting.
SPEAKER_00: I saw him not long ago at the Target, and he came up to me and called me by name, and I called him by his name, and uh, I won't say it.
SPEAKER_00: Who knows if he's watching?
SPEAKER_00: But I thought that was interesting because it's just simple things like that in life.
SPEAKER_00: Walking across the other side of the office, walking across the other side of the construction site, wherever you're at, the school, and just making known I'm here, I'm available for you.
SPEAKER_00: And that's what it can be.
SPEAKER_00: We can get all caught up in the, you know, um the thrills, I guess, of the story and forget that uh not everyone, thank God, is half naked and demon-possessed.
SPEAKER_00: We have a chance to minister to those in our lives, our neighbors, our friends, those who really need a touch from God.
SPEAKER_00: And so that's what we see Jesus doing.
SPEAKER_00: The second thing is here, God's mercy declares our worth.
SPEAKER_00: And we don't have time to go through every detail of the story, but this next part I think is really cool.
SPEAKER_00: And there's just one verse, I guess, that I want to that gives us a clue here about why this act kind of was a pretty big deal for for people.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 17 it gives us a clue.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and and it's this in verse 13, all right, uh, he gave permission for uh, you know, the swine to enter, or excuse me, the legion to enter the swine.
SPEAKER_00: And you say, well, that's crazy.
SPEAKER_00: Like, um, why would Jesus do something like that?
SPEAKER_00: And through the the years, I've I've kind of got some answers, and I just wanted to share one with you that really reflects God as a merciful God in a way that we may not think.
SPEAKER_00: David J.
SPEAKER_00: Downs in his book Economics, Taxes, and Tithes, says a herd of a 2,000 swine represents an exceptionally large livestock operation, and their monetary value in contemporary terms would be likely reaching approximately a quarter of a million dollars.
SPEAKER_00: This estimate reflects it reflects a significant economic loss the animal owners, plural, sustained when the demon-possessed man was healed.
SPEAKER_00: Losing 2,000 swine would have represented a catastrophic financial blow to the owners.
SPEAKER_00: In first century Palestine, the econom the economy was agricul in nature, with livestock serving as a crucial asset for both subsidence and commerce.
SPEAKER_00: A herd of this magnitude would have been substantial investment, likely representing years of breeding and capital accumulation.
SPEAKER_00: He goes on to say the loss of 2,000 animals would have eliminated a season or more of profit, disrupt supply chains to nearby markets, and potentially threatens the owner's ability to pay debts and meet tax obligations.
SPEAKER_00: This was no small thing.
SPEAKER_00: 2,000 swine in this region represented their whole economy.
SPEAKER_00: And you know what Jesus did?
SPEAKER_00: He wrecked it to show that people in this one demon-possessed man his worth.
SPEAKER_00: And so they went and they ran and they told the city people and the and the country people, and they came out and they saw the man, and he was clothed.
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
SPEAKER_00: Hadn't seen that in a while, and he was in his right mind, conversing with Jesus, and it said the people were terrified.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if I'd be terrified by that sight, which leads me to believe that they were terrified because of the pigs.
SPEAKER_00: Because it says that they also told about the pigs.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus was willing to wreck some things to bring a person over that threshold of grace and into his kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: The chains had come off, and he was sitting there clothing in his right mind, and that is a miracle in itself.
SPEAKER_00: In the context of what this man had gone through, that was a miracle in itself.
SPEAKER_00: And naturally, naturally, this man who really has gone unnamed has an identity now.
SPEAKER_00: We don't know his name, but we know that his identity isn't naked anymore.
SPEAKER_00: It's clothed, his identity is sane, not a lunatic, right?
SPEAKER_00: And he wants to go with Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: I would want to go with Jesus too.
SPEAKER_00: Can you imagine?
SPEAKER_00: He has to turn and face all those guys that assaulted Jesus and asked him to leave.
SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says to him, No, no, no, no, I can't have you go with me.
SPEAKER_00: I need you to do something for me.
SPEAKER_00: And he said, just like the kids this week in St.
SPEAKER_00: Louis, will you go?
SPEAKER_00: Are you ready to go?
SPEAKER_00: Are you gonna go?
SPEAKER_00: Have you seen enough?
SPEAKER_00: Because listen, sometimes the greatest education in the world isn't gonna train you.
SPEAKER_00: But when you have been set free by the Son of God, the King of Kings, and when the chains have fallen off, you don't need a seminary degree, you don't need, you know, a school of theology.
SPEAKER_00: All you need to know is that God is with you and your testimony matters.
SPEAKER_00: And so that man went back with a sane mind, and you know what?
SPEAKER_00: He didn't even probably have to say much.
SPEAKER_00: Would you really?
SPEAKER_00: Hello?
SPEAKER_00: They knew it was past.
SPEAKER_00: There was this guy named Dan, and uh he was uh in Providence for a while.
SPEAKER_00: Or it wasn't Dan.
SPEAKER_00: I already mentioned Dan.
SPEAKER_00: Uh it doesn't matter his name, but he uh I believe it was Jose, and he uh, you know, I moved to Providence in 2010, and my man Jose was out on the streets of Providence in 2010, and like I'd never seen him sober before.
SPEAKER_00: He was just just there, and uh he went into our adult rehab center at the Salvation Army, and he he surrendered his life to the Lord, and so six months sober, we were doing this event on Broad Street, and so he comes back, he kind of comes back to the area that he was in, and he sits down at this table, and we're doing this uh outreach and we're singing songs, and and all the people there like they're they're not really struck by the song.
SPEAKER_00: They they see Jose sitting there, and they walk up to him and they're like, Wow, Jose, what's going on, buddy?
SPEAKER_00: What's happened?
SPEAKER_00: And he begins to tell a story.
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't because he had a loud vocal voice of an evangelist, it's just that he was presentable, he looked like he was actually clear-eyed and sober, and there was something that changed with Jose.
SPEAKER_00: You know, has there been something that has changed with you?
SPEAKER_00: Do people notice the difference?
SPEAKER_00: I hope that they do, right?
SPEAKER_00: And so there's something pretty amazing about uh how radical God is with his mercy.
SPEAKER_00: Um just as a little tidbit here, as I begin to kind of maybe draw this to a close, um Donald English says this in his commentary on the uh Mark, the message of Mark.
SPEAKER_00: Um now comes another surprise he says at this story when he when the man is asked to go back and proclaim.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, who plainly does not yet trust his disciples to go out alone preaching, since they barely have yet what he calls faith, in Mark 4:40, sends legion straight back home to preach the good news.
SPEAKER_00: Is it too much to suggest that this man has already been to the heart of the gospel, in that his experience of exorcism is a dying and rising one?
SPEAKER_00: Certainly, he has known what the disciples have not yet been willing to discover, namely, what it means for one's life and future to be wholly in Jesus' hands and at his disposal, and to have emerged at the other end a saved person, such evidently in the mysterious economy of God, are to be trusted with the message, while those with much more background are stumbling forward on a voyage of virgin discovery.
SPEAKER_00: That's eloquently put.
SPEAKER_00: And I think that we find ourselves in that sometimes.
SPEAKER_00: Um, my wife and I and daughter had a chance to go back to Ohio this week, and uh my dad has had a friend in the last six years that I hear about a lot.
SPEAKER_00: His name is Jeff.
SPEAKER_00: And I thought the reason why I heard about him a lot was because he's my third cousin on my mom's side.
SPEAKER_00: So it's like, yeah, my dad, man, he got saved probably, you know, 15 or so years ago.
SPEAKER_00: My dad, uh, you know, uh he uh um, you know, he had a trans transformative moment in his life, and he began to walk with God, and it's it's beautiful.
SPEAKER_00: He's teaching Bible studies, he's doing all these things.
SPEAKER_00: But uh with that uh newness of life, he's been to an he's engaged with a lot of the family.
SPEAKER_00: And Jeff is one such that I thought he engaged with.
SPEAKER_00: And so um, which he did, but I was in for a surprise.
SPEAKER_00: He met us at King's Island and he bought Emma and I wristbands, it was the fast pass, so that we could get it to all the rides really quick while everyone else was waiting in line.
SPEAKER_00: So we probably rode 15 and 20 rides instead of like four or five that day.
SPEAKER_00: And when my daughter was with my dad, uh he uh we went on to ride a ride, I think it was the beast.
SPEAKER_00: And when we were in the the line, he says, Skip, you really don't know who I am, do you?
SPEAKER_00: I says, Yeah, man, you're my third cousin, right?
SPEAKER_00: I I know who you are.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Yeah, he says, but there's more than that.
SPEAKER_00: He says, probably the reason you don't remember me is because when I was in your dad's life, we weren't around very much.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, I'm predominantly the reason that your dad wasn't around when you were little, because we was out running, we was out doing some things, and what I didn't realize, yes, he's my third cousin, but he was one of those friends that my dad ran with.
SPEAKER_00: And I never really saw my dad, and he said to me, almost an admission, you know, that it wasn't just you, it was my kids too, and all of our kids.
SPEAKER_00: He was incarcerated in the 90s and met Jesus through a prison ministry, and it redirected his whole life.
SPEAKER_00: And here I am, all these years later, he's confessing this to me, and all I can do in the line of that ride of the beast is give him a big awkward hug while everyone's watching.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, I love you, brother.
SPEAKER_00: And we go in and we we we sit on the ride.
SPEAKER_00: It was uh Emma actually rode the diamond bag, and it wasn't because of me, it's because Jeff kept saying, Oh, it'll be fun, it'll be fun.
SPEAKER_00: And Emma decided that she wanted to ride it.
SPEAKER_00: So we walked across the park and we get in line.
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, and and there's two seats in each cart.
SPEAKER_00: And I see Emma, I was waiting for her to follow me, and no, no, no, she's standing with Jeff.
SPEAKER_00: She wants to ride with Jeff.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm sitting there behind him and watching my daughter smile with that wristband on, looking up at Jeff, and they're talking, and I'm like, what a picture of God's mercy, what a picture of God's redemption, right?
SPEAKER_00: He he couldn't do anything about the past, but he was gonna move forward with a uh a life that has been transformed by the gospel, and and everyone was going to know it.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, ironically, he's wearing a shirt about the chains falling off.
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, man, that's confirmation.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna preach that.
SPEAKER_00: And uh the chains were off.
SPEAKER_00: And finally, I'm just gonna close with this uh one more story.
SPEAKER_00: And and this here, man, I I tell you, there are certain moments in your life where you know that God just flexes and you know it's a God thing, and and there's no other way that you can, you know, fathom it.
SPEAKER_00: But usually when I get when I'm asked to preach at a place I've never preached before, I preach on Mark V.
SPEAKER_00: Because uh the message it's universal, it's the crux of uh the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: It's really you can never fail, you know, with with scripture when uh you know when you when you hit it from this angle.
SPEAKER_00: And so in 2017, I was invited to a uh a place to speak um at a rehab center, and I told this story, and of course I told the story about that 1988 Topps Mark McGuire rookie card that I really wanted, and uh I didn't get because my my uh evidently the card was worth more than my life, and I was telling this story.
SPEAKER_00: And at the end, I went and uh the administrator said there's someone that has something for you here, and he wants to give it to you, and so I didn't find the guy, and I was like, Well, I guess I'll just leave.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know where he is.
SPEAKER_00: He's waiting at the door the whole time so he doesn't miss me.
SPEAKER_00: And he pulls out Are you ready for it?
SPEAKER_00: This 1988 Topps rookie card of Mark McGuire, and he hands it to me, and he says, I've been carrying this card for 10 years now.
SPEAKER_00: The dude came into the place with just a bag with his clothes.
SPEAKER_00: He says, I've hold on held on to this card for 10 years, and I've never let it go, and I had no idea why.
SPEAKER_00: And he says, now I know why.
SPEAKER_00: And he says, I'm okay now with giving this card to you because I think you may need it as well.
SPEAKER_00: And I and I remember driving home because of something that I was going through thinking, my goodness, I just wept because of God is that good, because he hasn't forgot where we're at.
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes we need that reminder.
SPEAKER_00: And if you haven't had that reminder today, friends, I pray that God would draw your heart, that he'd draw your mind, that he would uh help you understand that you're worth it.
SPEAKER_00: He's not in love with some future version of who you're gonna become.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he wants us to grow.
SPEAKER_00: Don't get me wrong, he'll take us where we're at, he doesn't want to leave us there, but he's he's not uh, you know, in this thought pattern of, you know, uh he knows all and he knows that uh that we're his.
SPEAKER_00: And so if he hasn't made that clear to you, I pray that he does.
SPEAKER_00: And uh so there may be some here today that uh maybe you feel like that man, maybe you are oppressed in some way by demonic activity.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, let's be real.
SPEAKER_00: It's uh this wasn't just some you know time of Jesus issue that we're dealing with, and you need prayer today, I'd invite you to come.
SPEAKER_00: If you are in a place today where you have just uh recaptured and realized your worth, um I want you to come and I want you to uh to thank God for that.
SPEAKER_00: And if you're here today and you didn't know what you were worth to God, I just want to tell you this about Jesus being a missionary.
SPEAKER_00: That was just the Galilee seashore experience.
SPEAKER_00: Do you know that there was a conversation in heaven that went something like uh this between the Trinity?
SPEAKER_00: Look at this, right?
SPEAKER_00: Sinstruck humanity.
SPEAKER_00: Look at them, they don't know their right hand from their left.
SPEAKER_00: What are we gonna do about this?
SPEAKER_00: And this is just me, this isn't from the Bible, right?
SPEAKER_00: And there's a knowing look, the son, towards the father, I'll go, right?
SPEAKER_00: And he steps down on this strength, sin-struck earth without sin, right?
SPEAKER_00: And he journeys, hey, he he weeps at the death of Lazarus, he knows what it's like to experience emotion, right?
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't hide his tears, he knows what it's like to be rejected, to be hated, to be misunderstood, and he lives in the context of a close relationship with four or twelve fishermen and a bunch of other disciples who don't fully yet understand what his kingdom's all about, and he bears with them anyway.
SPEAKER_00: And then he sets his sights to Jerusalem and bears the oppression of not only his people, but of all people in the form of a wooden cross on Calvary and stretches out his hands and cries out, forgive them because they don't know what they're doing.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: And there's only one God that can do that, there's only one faith.
SPEAKER_00: We we serve one God that can do that that has written a love story so magnificent and beautiful.
SPEAKER_00: No other God can do something like Jesus did.
SPEAKER_00: And so, if that's you, if you haven't taken them up on his offer, it is for you.
SPEAKER_00: Don't worry about what you've done or where you've been, just know where God's taken you.