9- When Pigs Fly: Mark 5:1-20 - Mike Olynyk, Meadows Church

You're invited!  Come on a journey as we see the sights, smell the smells & experience Jesus' story told by Mark in an immersive way.  Engage in the story as one of the crowd, the disciples or even as a religious leader.  For an even more immersive experience, click the link below to follow along with the PDF media with maps, pictures of historical sites and more.

WHEN PIGS FLY PDF - CLICK HERE

Meadows Church is a church in the community, for the community, located in Langley, BC.  We want you to know that you're welcome here!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

You're listening to audio from Meadows Church in Langley, BC. For more information about Meadows Church, go to Meadowschurch.ca. How are we doing? Hey, so I have a small obsession that's bad for me. It's is bacon. Does anybody else have that obsession? Like everything tastes better with bacon. I I didn't like Brussels sprouts until I knew that you could chop it up and fry it in bacon. Delicious. And then there's pork tenderloin spiced just right and baked in the oven and then sliced into a Maldalion. Or even better, spiced and then sauced and thrown on the barbecue. Oh. There's pork roast and pork chops. Am I starting to sound like forest gump as it comes to shrimp? Is anyone with me though? About pig? Yeah. So in our culture, we love the taste of pig, and we have this separate obsession about the same animal, but in this case, it's how cute they are. Driven by, of course, creative storytelling. And so, anyone love the book, If you give a pig a pancake? It's a dorbs, right? And how many of you have read the book or watched the movie Charlotte's Webb? A delightful, friendly, and unlikely runt of the litter hero. Wilbur's fun-loving and compassionate and naive personality eventually brings all the barn animals together and he avoids the butcher shop. And instead becomes a famous pig with the help of his friends, particularly Charlotte and her web writing. Or we have Babe. The movie about a pig who defies the odds and becomes the first sheep-herding pig. Warming our hearts and be begging the question, can I have a piglet for a pet? Right? It's so cute. That'll do, pig. That'll do. How many of you have seen the movie? Well, at this point in our discussion, you might be asking yourself, have we slipped into Mike's secret life of pigs? Well, no. Okay, well, maybe. But but no. I bring this up because a very, very culturally relevant point that we're gonna talk about today. And so I'll leave you hanging for a bit. And I've entitled our discussion When Pigs Fly. And are you curious? Well, let's uh wipe the drool from our sides of our mouths and let's dive right in to our story today. Join me in a word of prayer. Well, God, I thank you so much for this time that we can dive into your word. God, I pray, would we be able to experience you, encounter you, Jesus, in this story? We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, last week we encountered Jesus through the eyes of the disciples as seasoned fishermen who were went from fearing for their lives in a massive night storm to watching Jesus silence the storm. And they found themselves dripping wet, but looking out on a sea of glass. It was so calm. If you missed it, make sure to take a listen at metalschurch.ca slash messages. You can find all the messages of our Encounter Jesus series. I think we're on week 12th, and so you can look back all the way back in the fall when we started it. Jesus and his Montley crew, though, have arrived on the other side of the sea. And what would have been a two-hour cruise across the lake apparently has taken all night because it is now morning. How long did the disciples just sit there, staring at the calm sea in wonderment? Who is this man? Even the wind and the waves obey him. Well, the trick trip had taken all night, and they arrived at the shore here in the garrisons. Here you can see a herd of pigs, a massive herd of pigs, which is the economy of the town on the hill, feeding, and and the town is awake and they are ready to rush to Jesus. Why? We're about to find out in verse 1. So they arrived at the other side of the lake in the region of the Garrison. Then Jesus climbed out of the boat. Oh, sorry, when Jesus climbed out of the boat, a man possessed by an evil spirit came out from the tombs to meet him. This man lived in the burial caves and could no longer be restrained even with a chain. Whenever he was put into chain and shackles, as he often was, he snapped the chains from his wrist and smashed the shackles. No one was strong enough to subdue him. Day and night he wandered among the burial caves and in the hills, howling and cutting himself with sharp stones. Luke's gospel adds that this man was homeless and he walked around naked. This demon had destroyed his life, had made him insane, and had caused him to have supernatural human strength. So, this, just to give you an idea, this is a first-century burial cave that was around the Sea of Galilee. And if you were to walk into one of those, you would immediately be hit with a complex odor. First, since the bodies were heavily clothed in myrrh and frankincense, that smell would linger. There would also be the smell of cedar and olive oil and herbs mixed with a dank smell of damp stone and of course the smell of flesh decay, which the burial spices could not completely mask. And this is where this man roamed and lived. To Mark's Jewish audience, this man was not only unclean because of his demons and the way he was insane, but he was also defiled because he would be in contact with dead bodies constantly. And also because he was naked. This man was the worst of unclean people. No religious leader would ever be in contact or talk with such a man. I mean, the religious people weren't on the east side of the sea because that was Gentile territory. But if they were, they would not have associated with this man. But Jesus not only crosses over to the Gentile side of the sea, but he loves everyone, and so he connected with this man. Verse 6. When Jesus was still some time a distance away, the man saw him, ran to meet him, and bowed low before him. With a shriek, he screamed, Why are you interfering with me, Jesus? Son of the Most High God, in the name of God I beg you, don't torture me. Jesus had already said to the spirit, Come out of the man, you evil spirit. Okay, so this is a subtle note. And it's actually a bit of a head scratcher. The demon is trying to gain any kind of power he can over Jesus. As we learn in chapter one in the fall of our series, spiritual warfare is actually real, and demons would have used anything to gain control. In this case, using name and title. Well, what's curious to me is that Jesus, the Messiah, all powerful, had already commanded this demon to come out. So why was the demon still inside the man? Should it not be instantaneous? Maybe we'll find our answer, but Jesus gains the upper hand and he asked the demon for his name. Verse 9. Then Jesus demanded, What is your name? And he replied, My name is Legion, because there are many of us inside this man. Then the evil spirits begged him again and again not to send them to some distant place, the Greek would say, to the abyss. There's something to note here. Remember, by Jesus becoming truly human, the Godman, Jesus, had to voluntarily give up all of his God powers, all of it, so that he could become truly humans. Philippians 2 tells us this. All his powers. For all that we see in our Encountering Jesus series was his reliance on the Holy Spirit and the amount of time he spent with his heavenly father. Oh, more power is needed to exert over this deliverance because it's not just one demon, it's a legion of demons. You see, I think Jesus is not all-knowing. We know that at this moment in time, he's given up omniscience, and so he's going about the course of things, and I think we can take notes a little bit. Because I think he's very purposeful in this interaction. Romans 8.11 says that the same spirit that raised Jesus from the dead is alive and well in us. Like this stuff from the Bible, it's not some book or some time period where this flourished, this spiritual warfare stuff. It exists today, just recently. I had a crazy couple of experiences performing deliverances, casting demons out of people. It was wild and not something I was trained for, yet Jesus gave me what I needed, and the Holy Spirit gave me what I needed. Spiritual warfare, friends, is no fairy tale, or it's not sci-fi fiction. Jesus here is about to show us the power of the Holy Spirit. And so let's talk about the word legion because everyone would have known how many men were in a Roman legion because they were conquered by them. There was between four and six thousand men in a legion. And our text will seem to tell us that there uh that they get 2,000 new hosts, so there must have been at least 2,000 demons, or more like 4,000 demons, in this one dude, by my thinking. That is insane. Well, let's continue with the story. Verse 11 that there happened to be a large herd of pigs on the hillside nearby. It was the economy of the village. Send us into those pigs, the Spirit begged. Let us enter them. So Jesus gave them permission. And I think this is a great conversation piece around the tables after this discussion. Why did Jesus give any sort of heed to these demons' request? Why didn't he just banish the demons to the abyss and be done with it? Did he care even for demons? I mean, they are fallen angels. Hmm. Curious. Well, it continues in verse 13. The evil spirits came out of the man and entered the pigs, and the entire herd of about 2,000 pigs plunged down the steep hillside into the lake and drowned in the water. You know, I always pictured the pigs running off a cliff like this when pigs fly, right? And that's what I grew up in Sunday school with. But a cliff like this doesn't actually exist on the Sea of Galilee. This was probably the hill that they came down. Sorry, it's a little pixelated. And you can see the lower picture there is the terrain across on the east side of the Sea of Galilee. And so if we're actually picturing it, the herd of pigs would have run down the hill and then across the floodplains and then into the water. Are you seeing this? Do you get the picture? And I think, Wilbur, babe, bacon. Why would you do that to bacon, Jesus? Well, we started our conversation off talking about our culture, and we looked at bacon and we looked at pigs. But for first century Jewish men, you couldn't even touch a pig. Never mind eat it. God had commanded in Scripture that they see pigs as unclean. And actually, a herd of pigs would have been an abomination to them. Stay away. Don't go into that town. It would cause even the uh land that the herd was on to be defiled. There was no such thing as a Jewish pig farmer. That was against God's law. And so do you see the difference in thinking these art cultural thinking and first century Jewish thinking? You see, Jesus took an unclean thing out of the man, many unclean things, thousands of unclean things. He put them into an unclean thing, and then he redeemed not only the man but the surrounding land. Oh, by the way, don't go throwing out the rest of the bacon in your fridge or uh swear off mouth watering pork tenderly, because we actually have a passage of scripture that talks about this. You see, in Acts, Jesus or God reveals to Peter, brings a vision of a blanket down, and has all these things that were previously unclean. We're talking like shrimp and lobster and crab and pigs and all sorts of things, turkey. And God tells Peter, when Peter says, I won't eat these things that's unclean, God says, Do not deem something unclean that I have made clean. There's a cool reality there. You see, Jesus died on the cross and he rose from the dead, and he not only redeemed us, but he is in the process of redeeming all of creation. So we can eat pig. Delicious. And we can have a piglet if we want. Though I think it's maybe against township code. But pigs and crab and shrimp. Hmm, it's redeemed and we can have a feast. Let's keep going. The herdsmen fled to the nearby town and the surrounding countryside, spreading the news as they ran. People rushed out to see what had happened. A crowd soon gathered around Jesus, and they saw the man who had been possessed by the legion of demons. He was sitting there fully clothed. Where did he get the clothes from? He had time to do that, and perfectly sane. And they were all afraid. Couple things first. I think it's really worth noting how much time passes here. Because I kind of gloss over this. The guy gets healed, the people come, and then Jesus is gone. But after the herd goes into the water, the herdsman would have to ran to the town center and the surrounding farms. And maybe as far as Hippo, which was a couple miles away. And then they'd tell the story, and then people would rush back and to see this man. And you know what? We're just gonna give this man a name because uh the guy with the demon just doesn't cut it. And so we're gonna call him Frank today, okay, guys? Frank? Everybody say Frank? Yeah, okay. Can you take in this absolutely beautiful moment between Jesus and Frank? A legion of demons have been has been ravaging his body, causing both superhuman strength and self-harm and socialization and even insanity. And now he's free of all of it. And he is sitting with Jesus clothed and in his right mind. For five, ten, twenty minutes, maybe an hour, two hours. He's sitting with Jesus. It's an incredible experience. And the beautiful thing was, this unclean of unclean men, Jesus welcomes it because he made him clean. There's something beautiful in that. That is our God, the God we serve. He's never too busy. And Jesus is right there with him, talking with him. Oh, to be a fly in the wall on at that moment. Okay, one other thing. I I I gotta confess, sometimes I feel absolutely ridiculous looking things up, but I do, because you know this, I read my Bible with a curiosity, and when I have a curiosity, I want to experience the Bible, and so I look it up. I don't just read it for reading's sake. And so I typed, do drowned pigs float. Uh, it wasn't a fun pictures to look at, but yes, they do. So there's the picture. You have this lake near the shore, and it is littered with dead pigs floating on the surface, white and pink skin covering the surface of the water and spreading out. And then there's Jesus, and then there's Frank, clothed in his right mind. So let's read that again and picture this. The herdsmen fled to the nearby towns and the surrounding countrysides, spreading the news as they ran. People rushed out to see what had happened, and this is what they saw. And a crowd soon gathered around them. And they saw the man who had been possessed by the Legion of Demons. He was sitting there fully clothed and perfectly sane, and they were all afraid, and they had lost a lot of money because this was the major source of income for this community. Then those who had seen what had happened told the others about the demon-possessed man and the pigs. And the crowd began pleading with Jesus to go away and leave them alone. So we gotta understand that these were not Jewish people. This was the Decapolis culture. They were infused with Gentile Greek culture, and they were seeing their prophets go literally floating down the Sea of Galilee. From a foreigner who just got off the boat when he shouldn't have. And in this, the these feelings, there's fear and there's confusion. Frank, the dude that shrieks and cut himself and is super powerful, he's no longer possessed. He's in his right mind. Something happened. And it was all from this foreigner. Go away. Well, Jesus assented to this. And he walked back to the boat. The same boat that he had calmed the storm in the night before. And by the way, I can't I can just see the expression on the disciples' faces who were with him. Jesus had just hours ago shussed a storm, and now he had cast a legion of demons into pigs, and this guy. In his right mind, and they're saying, Who is this man? As Jesus was getting into the boat, the man who had been demon-possessed begged to go with him. But Jesus said, No, uh, go home to your family and tell them everything that the Lord has done for you and how merciful he has been. So the man started off to visit the ten towns of that region and began to proclaim the great things Jesus had done for him. And everyone was amazed at what he told them. What an incredible story arc for this man. How long had he been so unclean, so ravaged by demons? And now he's being tasked with sharing the gospel to people all over his region. The decapolis, the ten towns you see in this picture. So many people in the world see Jesus as Judgy McJudgerson and such a buzzkiller or full of condemnation, and they're offended by him. The story tells a different story. Our God Jesus embraces and he sees us for what we are as a beautiful creation that he made. He embraces up, he frees us and then sends us out to be purposeful, sharing the gospel and spreading the good news with other people. It's such an incredible love, freedom, and purpose that he offers us freely to anyone who embraces it. You see, Jesus gets in a boat and he turns head. Jesus shows us that he is sovereign, that he is all powerful. The wind and the waves obey him. Thousands and thousands of demons come out of the man in a word. And then through that man, non-Jewish families hear the gospel. I gotta tell you, as I look at history, some 35 years later, there would be many who come to faith in those ten towns, in the Decapolis, it's recorded. Both actually after the stoning of Stephen, which would happen a couple years after this story, and then at 70 AD, when there was this great persecution in Jerusalem, Christians fled all over the Middle East. And these history books tell us that Christianity flourished in the Decapolis. So, friends, I have to wonder how many people heard Frank's story and had the pomp primed so that they could receive the gospel and the freedom that Jesus offers. Hundreds, maybe thousands of people came to faith through the most unclean of unclean men that was made clean by Jesus. So the the thought today, and we're gonna enter into some worship right now, is if you are here and you are feeling unworthy, you've done some things. You're not proud of them, you're holding on to that, know that Jesus redeemed the most unclean of clean unclean men. Sat with him and restored him and sent him. You are never too far gone to meet Jesus and to be changed forever. He takes our burden. And if you want, I would love to pray with you. I'd love to chat with you more about this. If you're here and and you are trying to do it on your own and and life is just exhausting, know that Jesus wants to take your burden and he wants to set you free. And lastly, if you're here and it's just been way too long since you sat with Jesus like this man in the most amazing moment of his life, know that Jesus welcomes you to that beachside fire with him. Spend time in the quiet, to spend time even now in worship, to read more of the amazingness of who he is in scripture. He welcomes you to that. God, I thank you for this time that we've been able to just dive into scripture. Dive into your word, dive into your story, Jesus. Thank you that you are all powerful, that the wind and the waves and that thousands of demons are no match for your power. God, continue to work in our hearts, we pray. We worship you and we want to continue in that worship now. In Jesus' name.

unknown 27:33

Amen.

SPEAKER_00 27:35

We're so glad you chose to join us today. To find out more about Meadows Church and how you can get involved, connect with the pastor or how you can partner with us in ministry. Go to meadowschurch.ca.