Good morning, South Manchester 7th Adventist Church. We give you a warm greeting to our religious liberty Sabbath. We also greet those of you who
are joining us online, on the internet, wherever you may be. Uh we pray that God’s spirit will bless you as we go
through this day together. And so this during our Sabbath school season, I’m going to be talking about one topic.
I’ll get to that in a moment. Uh for our main worship service, I’ll be talking about the coming great reset that we can
all choose to participate in. And this afternoon we’ll be speaking about the biblical basis for deliverance ministry.
Um we find today that many secular people are playing with the occult and uh actually a valid form of evangelism
and outreach is to be involved in deliverance ministry. And we’ll be talking about the biblical basis for
deliverance ministry this afternoon and that will be followed uh by a study called the 11th hour worker. We’ll be
looking at who are the 11th hour workers in the gospel of Matthew chapter 20. Who
are the 11th hour workers who according to Jesus are brought in to finish the work and bring the gospel to the ends of
the world. And that’s a fascinating study uh because um we can all be 11th
hour workers in a certain sense. And so for our Sabbath school this morning, um I want to talk about um the freedom that
we have to share our testimony and to share what God has done for us. And I
invite you to um open your Bibles uh to Matthew chapter 4. And we’re going to
pick up the story there in verse 36 of the story of Jesus crossing the Sea of Galilee. And our talk this morning was
entitled the tradition above all traditions. And then I lost my talk in Austria 3 days ago. And so I thought I
better switch over from that. So we’re going to be talking about the the story of Jesus crossing the Sea of Galilee and
what it means for us today. And so um as we begin this study in the word of God,
I’d invite you invite you to bow your heads with me and we’re going to invite once again the presence of the Holy
Spirit. So dear heavenly father, we thank you for the gift of Jesus Christ.
We thank you that you did not send your son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be
saved. And now, Father, as we reflect on this story from the life of Jesus Christ, I pray that the lessons it has
will sink into our lives and sink into our hearts. I pray, Lord, that they will yield a harvest of righteousness in each
of our lives. I pray dear heavenly father that we will use the freedoms we yet have here in the United Kingdom to
share what God has done for us and to lead people to Jesus Christ. So Lord as
we uh spend these moments together may your spirit speak through me and for me in the name of Jesus I humbly pray.
Amen. And so in Mark chapter 4 and you you’ll need your Bibles with you for
this uh time this morning. And we start out where Jesus has spent a whole day preaching and teaching. And at the end
of that day, he’s very tired. And if you’ve ever preached a sermon in a church, you know that it takes you to
about Tuesday to recover from the emotional and the spiritual and physical strain of preaching. I see some of you
smiling out there because when you preach, you give your all. And you studied the word of God and it is fresh
in your mind. And you’re fresh and filled with the joy of discovery. And when you preach um you feel completely
spent at the end of it. And so Jesus has spent a whole day teaching an enormous crowd. And when the day is over, we pick
up the story in verse 36. First 35. It says, “And the same day when the evening
was come, he saith unto them, let us pass over unto the other side.” Now,
this is a strange thing for Jesus to say because if you imagine that my hand here is the Sea of Galilee, Jesus has been
teaching on the western side of the Sea of Galilee, um, which was, you might say, the Jewish side of Galilee. And at
the end of a long day, you’d imagine that Jesus would say to his disciples, “Let’s just walk a couple of miles to
Capernium, where my home is, uh, where where the rest of the disciples come from, that little fishing village on the
west side of Galilee.” But Jesus says no at the end of the day. He says we’re going to cross from the western side to
the eastern side of Galilee. And he doesn’t say why, but he knows there is a man that needs saving on the other side
of the lake. And if I one of those disciples, I would have thought, but Jesus, why do we have to cross the lake?
You know, we we’re having a a full day in Manchester at the end of our day of fellowship together. It makes logical to
go to our homes in Manchester to sleep. Why would somebody say at the end of the program today, we need to drive down to
Bournemouth or Southampton? It makes no sense. And so, but Jesus says at the end
of a long hard day of preaching and teaching, we need to go to the other side of the Sea of Galilee from the
Jewish side across to the Gentile side. And so that’s what they do. And so they get in the boat in verse Mark 4:36. And
in Mark 4:37, it says, “There arose a great storm of wind and the waves beat
into the ship so that it was now full.” And so the disciples are experienced fishermen. They know that on the Sea of
Galilee, you often get these powerful storms hitting you at a moment’s notice.
And the reason for that is just northwest of the Sea of Galilee, you have the Golan Heights. And at the top
of the Golan Heights, you have Mount Herman. And there are only two parts of the Middle East that have snow year
round. There is the Mall of Dubai in Dubai, which has a year- round ice
skating rink and and ski slope. It built indoors. And the other uh only place in
the Middle East where you have snow year round is the top of Mount Herman between Isra uh Lebanon and and Syria today. And
what happens is cold air from Mount Herman and the Golan Heights slides down the cliffs and into the Sea of Galilee.
And uh when you have a mass of cold air meeting a mass of warm air, what do you get? You get storms. Sometimes you
actually you get hurricanes forming and tornadoes even. And so the Sea of Galilee is notorious for one minute it
is as calm as a mill pond and the next minute you get this raging storm all around you. And the disciples know this.
And this is a storm though that’s swamping the boat. So these experienced fishermen, they are sailing through a
storm like they’ve never experienced before. They’re battling for their lives. And they they wake Jesus in verse
38 and they say, “Master, careest not thou that we perish?” And verse 39 says
this, “And Jesus arose and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, peace be
still.” And the wind ceased and there was great calm. And so this is a fascinating story here because uh the
disciples see a storm but Jesus sees something different. When Jesus stands
up it says there in verse 39 the first clue is this is that this is not a normal storm it says he rebuked the
wind. And that word to rebuke if you look through your Bibles later today in
Matthew, Mark and Luke’s gospel the three synoptics the word rebuke almost always occurs when Jesus is rebuking a
spirit. And that verb is where when Jesus speaks to spirits throughout the gospels it
says he rebuked the spirit. He rebuked the spirits. And so the first clue that this is not a normal storm is the fact
that Jesus didn’t speak to the storm. He rebuked the wind. And the second clue that this is not a normal storm is in
what Jesus actually said. Now my version says here he said peace be still.
But that’s not a great translation. Uh, imagine you have a three-year-old
son and you take him shopping in Asda and just when you get to the checkout, what do they have? Carrots and apples
and bananas. No, no, no, no. There’s Mars bars and Snickers bars and all kinds of goodies
for small children. And children know this. and you’re tired at the end of your shopping experience and you’re
standing at the checkout and your child his eyes light upon those um those um
Cadbury’s chocolates and Cadbury’s Easter eggs and Mars bars and marathon bars and so forth and your child says,
“Daddy, can I have some?” And you look down and you say, “Shh, no, no, no, no, no.” Then the child looks at you again,
says, “Daddy, can I have some?” And you say, “No, we’re not getting any chocolates today.” And then your child says, “Daddy, I want some chocolate.”
and you look down at your child with love in your eyes and you say, “David, be quiet.” Right now, be quiet. Now, do
you mean that your child is forever more for the rest of his life to be quiet? No. Uh the context and the tense that
you’re using implies this is an instant command that is to be obeyed in this moment. And when Jesus said in this
verse, “Peace be still,” he’s speaking in the he this is an imperative. It’s a command. is based on a verb and it’s a
second person singular and the tense is the irist which means Jesus is speaking to an individual here. He’s not speaking
to a storm. He’s speaking to an individual. And so when Jesus stands up in the storm he says you be quiet.
This isn’t peace be still. It’s you right now be quiet. And because it says
he rebuked the wind. That’s the verb that’s used when he’s speaking to demons. and the the the the tense and
the use of the verb when you pause what that that what that verb means you come to the conclusion that Jesus is speaking
to a demon. This is not a regular storm. As Jesus crosses from the west side of
Galilee to the east side of Galilee where he will meet a man with a demon, those demons are already stopping Jesus
crossing the lake. There are times in our lives when we go on on mission for
our Lord Jesus Christ. when we engage in evangelism or personal ministries or doortodoor or we run a health ministry
program or some other outreach events in our church and what we find is that Satan is running constant interference
even before we get to the event and and if you and if you are um doing a Bible study with somebody and you’ve agreed to
meet with them every Tuesday night at 7:30, you’d be surprised how many disasters happen at 6:00 every Tuesday
afternoon. They call you and they say, “Uh, my dog ate my homework.” And the
next week they call you and they say, “Um, uh, uh, my I’ve got a flat tire. I
can’t come meet you.” And the next Tuesday they call you and they say, “Oh, the roof collapsed.” And the next
Tuesday they call you and they say, “Oh, my dog is now at the vets.” And uh, you soon realize that every time you have a
Bible study, Satan is running interference on you. And so, if you ever done Bible studies, you ever prepared
somebody for baptism, this is a common experience. And so I want to encourage you when we when we face that
interference from Satan, the solution is not to find a solution, obvious human solution. The solution is to get down on
your knees and rebuke those spirits in the name of Jesus Christ because that is what’s happening. This is a spiritual
battle going on. And so uh the disciples are amazed and in verse 41 it says, “And
they feared exceedingly and said one to another, what manner of man is this that even the wind and the waves obey him?”
And so the disciples get off that boat on the Gentile side of Galilee and they’re wondering who exactly is Jesus
Christ? What manner of man is this that’s just still the storm and calm the waves? And so keep your fingers in Mark
4 and go back to Psalm 107 and you’ll understand why the disciples are asking
this question. They’re asking this question with good reason. Because Psalm 107 talks about how God rescues those
who are in trouble. And it talks about people who are sick, people who are in prison, people who are lost in the
desert. And there’s a portion of Psalm 107 that talks about those who go down into the sea in their ships to do
business. And it says in Psalm 107:25, it describes how the storms come. It
says, “For he commandeth and raiseth the stormy wind, which lifteth up the waves thereof. They mount up to the heavens.
They go down to the depths. Their soul is meltless because of trouble. They reel to and fro and stagger like a
drunken manner at their wits end. Verse 28. Then they cry unto the Lord in their
trouble and he bringeth them out of their distresses. He maketh the storm calm so that the waves thereof are
still. And now this passage when it says that when people go down to the sea and they get caught in the storms on the
sea, verse 28 says they cry unto the Lord in their distress. Now in your
Bible is the word Lord in capital letters. Okay. What that means is that this is
how the English translators are translating Yahweh or Jehovah. So that’s
how they translate the word Jehovah, the personal name for God, the creator God.
And so uh Psalm 7 says that when you cry out to Jehovah, the creator of the
universe, he will still the storm and quieten the winds. And so, turn back to
Mark chapter 4. Jesus has just start um calmed the storm and still the winds.
And so, the disciples have just seen Jesus do what only the creator of the universe can do. And so, they get off
the boat thinking, “What manner of man is this? Who exactly is Jesus of Nazareth that even when the wind and the
waves obey him? Jesus has just done what only God can do? You may be studying
with a friend of yours um who and their their religion may deny that Jesus Christ is God. And a helpful way to go
about showing that Jesus is God is to go through the stories of the gospels and show that Jesus does repeatedly what
only God can do. Such as Mark 2 in this gospel, Jesus says, “Son, thy sins are
forgivenly.” And the Pharisees say, “Who does he think he is? Only God can forgive sins.” And there are faiths here
in Manchester City, religions who say, “Only God can forgive sins, not man.”
But Jesus does what only God can do. Repeatedly throughout the gospels. And so, having got off this boat, we come to
Mark 5:1. I’m going to read verses 1-5. This is the picture of the Gerosene
demoniac. And it says there Mark 5:es 1-5. And they came over onto the other
side of the sea into the country of the gatherines. And when he’d come out of the ship, immediately there met him out
of the tombs, a man with an unclean spirit, who had his dwelling among the tombs, and no man could bind him. No,
not with chains. Because he had often been bound with fetterss and chains, and the chains had been plucked to by him,
and the fetterss broken in pieces. Neither could any man tame him. And always night and day he was in the
mountains and in the tombs crying and cutting himself with stones. And if you
ever want a picture of where Satan would take somebody today, this is a picture. This is what happens when people yield
their conscience to Satan, when they yield control of their mind and their body and they no longer believe in
religious liberty and they no longer believe that God has given them a conscience and they’re no longer sensitive to the voice of the Holy
Spirit upon their conscience. This is a picture of what Satan would do to all of us today were it not for the presence of
the Holy Spirit in our consciences. And this is this is a terrible picture. This is a man you his body he’s beating
himself with stones. So a psychiatrist would say this man experiences self harm behavior. But put bluntly he’s naked and
he’s beating his body with rocks. So his body is battered, it’s bloodied, it’s bleeding, it’s bruised. It’s a terrible
sight. around his wrist are broken chains because it says there in verse um
verse where it is uh that uh in in the passage there um in verse three no man
could bind him and that verse is you that word is used in James chapter 3 to say that we’ve controlled every animal
there is but we can’t control the tongue so the implication of the verb here is that the local community treats this man
as they would a wild animal and even though he is alive he’s forced to live among the head among the tombs and his
body is naked. His hair is unruly. His his body is battered and broken and bloodied and bleeding and uh out of his
eyes there is anger and hatred and there is cursing out of his mouth. And even though he is alive, he’s condemned to
live among the tombs. He’s a man with no friends, no family, no human companionship, no nobody to give him a
hug, nobody to give him a word of encouragement. He is basically the living dead.
And this is where Satan would take us as individuals and as a society when we
close down the voice of the Holy Spirit. And I want you to imagine that you’re
one of those 12 disciples and you get off that boat and you think, “What on earth we doing out here?”
Because they’ve just crossed from Jewish side of Galilee to the Gentile side of Galilee. In those gent in those Jewish
disciples minds, they are now in unclean gentile territory.
They are standing among the tombs. According to the law of Moses, if you had contact with a tomb, you are
ceremonially unclean. They meet a man with an unclean body that’s bleeding and
bruised. To touch him makes them ceremonially unclean. He’s filled with an evil spirit or an unclean spirit.
Just down the mountain side are 2,000 pigs. They’re an unclean animal. Those unclean animals are looked after by
swine herds. That’s an unclean profession. So, we read this story today
and we don’t we don’t kind of capture all the barriers of uncleanliness those disciples are moving through in this
moment. Um they they meet they they cross a lake where there was an unclean spirit. They step into unclean Gentile
territory. They find an unclean man physically who’s filled with an unclean spirit who’s living among the tombs. So,
he’s ceremonally unclean. And there are pigs which are unclean animals and unclean swine herds around them. That
this this story is filled with barriers of uncleanliness. But Jesus in his love
for lost humanity, he penetrates all those barriers of uncleanliness because on the other side of those barriers of
uncanliness, there is a man worth saving.
And sometimes we come to church or we sit online and we watch in our homes and uh we have a sense that we’re not we
have a sense that despite how nice we look on Sabbath morning, we also have
burdens of game sh um burdens of shame and guilt. We all have regrets. All of
us have in our minds would ofves and coulds and shoulds. I could have sh I could have done better. I should have
done that differently. If I had my time again, I wouldn’t make those same decisions again. And this story is a
reminder that there is no barrier of of sin, no barrier of shame, no barrier of
guilt, no barrier of social ostracism, no barrier whatsoever that the son of
man is not willing to penetrate to reach into my heart and to reach into your heart.
And when we see just with just barriers of shame and barriers of guilt and reasons why God could not love me, God
says, “No, I’m going to penetrate all of those barriers because behind those are barriers there’s a man and a woman worth
saving.” And so Jesus steps out of that boat and he’s penetrates all those barriers of
uncleanliness because behind them there is a man that needs saving.
And when the man, it says in verse 6, when he saw Jesus a far off, he ran and
worshiped him and cried with a loud voice and said, “What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou son of the most high
God? I adure thee by God that thou not torment me.” And so the man, he’s
standing among the tombs, and he sees his boat come up from the shore of Galilee, and out of the boat step 13
men. There are 13 men standing on that shore. And that man does not know any of them
from Adam or Eve. But there is something special about the man from Nazareth.
And so when when that demoniac he runs to the group of 13 men, he doesn’t bow at all of their feet. He runs straight
to Jesus because he senses that Jesus can help me. Of all of those uh 13 men,
only one of them has the ability and the willingness to set me free. And he runs and he falls at the feet of Jesus. And
that’s enough to tell Jesus that this man wants help. Because when he opens his mouth, it is not the man who speaks.
It is the demon within him. And so this man has lost control of his tongue. He’s lost control of his ability to speak.
When he opens his mouth and talks, it’s the demon speaking. But Jesus knows that this man needs help simply by the fact
that he walked towards him and he fell down before him in worship. And there are times in our lives where we
encounter um crises in our lives where we experience a pain so deep, an evil so
horrifying, a shock so traumatizing that sometimes words fail us. And there’s
nothing we can say to God. There are times in your life when you encounter evil so evil that you are
forced into silence. And this man, he falls at the feet of Jesus.
And Jesus knows that this man is asking for help even though he cannot articulate it with his words.
Some years ago, I met a lady in Iraq, ISIS, on the rampage, and um she was sitting in silence in a
warehouse, a Christian lady, and she had a bowl of rice and beans in front of her. She was sitting on a mattress on
the floor. Those were her only earthly possessions. And I said to her, “How did you get here?” She says, “Uh, last week
ISIS conquered the modern day city of Mosul and they they drew the letter N on our doors. That means N for Nazarene
that you’re a Christian and they said you have 48 hours to every Christian in Mosul. You will leave, you’ll convert,
or you’ll be killed. Three options.” I said, “What happened?” She said, “The
entire Christian community upped and left within 24 hours. Nobody was going to stay and be killed. Nobody was going
to be forcibly converted. Everybody left. And she so she said um we were engineers, we were doctors, we were
accountants, we were teachers, we were scientists. We were the educated middle class. She said, “And we left
everything. We left our homes, we left our possessions, we left our cars, we left anything of value because we just
had to walk out of the city.” And she said, “As we walked out of the city, there was a checkpoint and ISIS was
there and they were checking everybody and they were taking anything of value.” So, wedding rings and belts and watches
and glasses, everything was stripped from our bodies. And she said, “I had a husband, and because he was a
middle-aged man, they thought he was a potentially an enemy. So, they took him behind a sandburn and put a bullet in his brain. And I have two daughters, a
10 and 12, and they took my two daughters and they put them to work in a brothel for jihadis. And they gave my
daughters a cell phone. And every day my two little daughters call me begging for help. And she says, “Every day I want to
hear from my daughters, but when I do hear from my daughters, I’m just traumatized as well as they are.” And
those little daughters were asking mom, they had one request of mom. They said, “Mom, please tell the Americans where we
are and ask them to drop a bomb on this building. They wanted out of their living hell.” And so she told me her
story and then she lapsed into silence. And what do you do when somebody tells
this to you? There’s not a lot you can say. In fact, there’s nothing you can say. In the book
of Job, it says there in the in the third chapter that when Job’s comforters came and saw him and they saw the depth
and the extent of his suffering, it says they sat in silence with him for seven days. That was the most useful thing
Job’s comforters did. It wasn’t to talk. It was just to give him a hug and sit in
silence. Because there are times in life where evil is is so manifest uh that
that words cannot express they cannot do justice to the depth of horror and revulsion that we experience. And so
there are times in our lives today where we kneel before God beside our beds in the evening and we don’t say we we there
are things we cannot say to God. But we say, “Lord, I want you to read my heart and you know what’s inside of me and you
know what I’m going through and you know the horror and the pain and the trauma that I’m going through right now. I’m
asking you simply to read my heart.” And Jesus reads this man’s heart and he
knows that he is controlled by demons. But he also knows that the man behind the demons wants to be set free.
And so Jesus verse 8 says this, “For he said unto him, come out of the man, thou
unclean spirit.” And he asked him, “What is thy name?” And he answered, saying, “My name is Legion, for we are many.”
And he besought him much that he would not send him away out of the country. And so when Jesus says to the man, “What
is your name?” The demons reply and they say, “My name is Legion, for we are many.” And you know, a legion was the
heart of Roman military power. The heavy infantry of the Roman Empire were the Roman legions. Yes, they had cavalries.
Yes, they had auxiliary troops like archers, but the heart of Roman military might were their legions. And a legion
was about 5,000 professional heavy infantrymen. And they could fight almost
anybody on Earth and win their battles. And whenever the legions came to your country, it was never good news. It was
always bad news. Whenever the legions came to your country, for instance, when the Roman legions invaded Britain, they
first came under Julius Caesar in about BC 40. Then they came for the real conquest under Claudius uh 100 year 80
years later about AD60. And when the Roman legions came, they killed, they slaughtered, they raped, they pillaged,
they burnt the towns to the ground. They sold the survivors into slavery. And then they had the goal to call it the
Pax Romana or the Peace of Rome. Having created a wasteland and wiped out the indigenous peoples, they then called it
the peace of Rome. The Pax Romana. And so when this man says, “My name is Legion, for we are many,” he’s speaking
to the depth of oppression that he’s experiencing, that this one man, just as one man could not stand up against a
legion of Roman soldiers, this one uh demoniac on the on the Gentiles side of the Sea of Galilee, he has no chance of
standing up to or defeating or telling that legion of demons to leave him.
And this is an interesting story, this and I was just chatting with somebody before this. There are many people in
our British society today, secular people, who officially don’t believe in God, but they’re playing with the
occult. They’re checking their horoscopes every day. They they visit mediums. They go to seances. They they
do palm reading and fortuneelling. They play with Ouija boards. Our society is is officially largely secular, but in
many ways, it’s actually becoming pagan. And there is one great way to minister
to people caught up in the occult if they’re secular is to say that Jesus Christ can set you free. Now many
Muslims know that uh Muhammad is dead and Jesus is alive and Jesus has the
authority and ability to set you free. And so Muslims know that when you are filled or attacked by jin or that’s
their that’s their word for like a fallen angel, they know that Jesus has the authority to set you free. And so
ministry among Muslims is often preceded by deliverance ministry.
And we as modern day um uh Christians as Adventists living in earth’s last hours, we know from the book Great Controversy
and the book of Revelation, particularly 16, that the the forces of the occult and spiritualism will be major players
at the end of time to seeking to deceive humanity. And so we should not turn away from deliverance ministry. We should be
embracing deliverance ministry because that’s how people are set free. They’re set free from satanic control, satanic
oppression, and from demonization. And so the demons, they beg with Jesus
not to be sent away out of the country. And in verse 11, it says this. Now there was there nigh into the mountains a
great herd of swine feeding. And all the devils be besought Jesus, saying, “Send
us into the swine that we may enter into them.” And forth with Jesus gave them leave, and the unclean spirits went out
and entered into the swine. And the herd ran violently down a steep place into the sea. They were about 2,000 and were
choked in the sea. And this was the first recorded stock market crash in history.
And why do I say that? Because 2,000 pigs is a lot of pigs. Even today, 2,000
pigs is a lot of pigs. And 2,000 pigs would represent the collective wealth of
the local communities. And so even today in the Middle East, a shepherd walks through the village from
this side to this side early in the morning. And all of the animals in the village as the as as the animals walk by
the on the street, they leave their stalls in their homes automatically. They don’t need to be told to do this.
And they join the herd. And as the shepherds walk through the town, the herd of animals gets bigger and bigger
and bigger and bigger till finally when the shepherd leaves town, all of the animals are with the shepherd. And at
the end of the day, when the shepherd comes back into town, he walks through the main street into town. And as he
walks through town, each of the animals peels off into their respective stalls. They know where their home is. And so in
those days, if you if your child was was sick, you maybe sold an animal and you went to see a doctor. If your if your
child if your daughter was going to get married, maybe you gave some animals as a dowy or you sold some animals to pay
for the wedding. If if uh you wanted to go on a long journey, maybe sell some animals. If you wanted to build a house,
you sold some animals. In those days, animals represented wealth. And even
today, there are parts of the world where animals represent wealth. If you go to, let’s say, Kenya, many of the
tribes there, the animals they have represent their wealth. This is a reality today. And so this herd of 2,000
pigs represents the collective wealth of the local town. This represents their
savings accounts. This is their retirement account. This this is their um this is their investments in the
stock market. This is their um rainy day fund. This is these are the animals
they’re going to pay for their kids when they get married and so forth. These pigs are precious to those people.
And when Jesus he sends the pigs the the the swine the demons into the pe into the pigs they go to the eastern shore of
the sea of Galilee and you can go there to this day there is an escarment and the escarment is about 60 m down let’s
say 180 ft it’s a steep drop into the sea of Galilee you can see where this story took place and you can see where
the pigs ran off the over the cliff and they fell into the water and they drowned now you ask we ask ourselves why
when Jesus set this demoniac free. Did you bring an economic catastrophe on the local community?
Why couldn’t just Jesus imprison those demons in chains of deepest darkness
where other demons are being held till the final judgment? Read about that elsewhere in the New Testament. Why
couldn’t have Jesus just imprisoned those demons so they could no longer torment humanity? Why couldn’t he bring
them under judgment before the final judgment of demons actually begins? Well, the answer, it seems to me, is
this. If you study medicine, uh, one of the first rules you learn is, um, do no
harm. Is that right? Whatever else you do, do no harm.
And, um, Jesus did not follow that hypocratic
injunction in this case here. Yes, he set this man free, but he brought an economic catastrophe to the local
community. Why did Jesus do this? Well, it seems to me the lesson is very clear in the story
and it is this. That in the eyes of God, the salvation of one soul is more
important than all the gold of Fort Knox or the gold in the Bank of England or the wealth in this world has to offer.
That your salvation is more important to God than all the wealth this world has
to offer. that the salvation of the people of Manchester is more important
to God than all the money we have in our bank accounts. God is more concerned about saving souls
than he is about building our wealth. And uh this is a reminder to us that and we sit here on Sabbath morning and
sometimes people come to church on Sabbath and they look good on Sabbath morning, but some of us here have come
from places where there are hard words spoken to us throughout the entire week. Sometimes people come to church and it’s
a break from the verbal hostility they get throughout the week at home. There are people who come to church and their
ears are ringing with things like, “I should never have married you. My dad was right about you. I could have done
better than than marrying you. You’re a worthless kid. You’re never going to amount to much. Why can’t you be like
that kid down the road? I wish I could trade you back, trade you in again.” People come to church from a world of
verbal hostility, painful arrows that are shot into our hearts. People come to
church with level of brokenness and brokenheartedness and just inner pain because they don’t
hear anything worth anything that affirms them as being sons and daughters of the living God.
And so I want you to hear this very clearly this morning. In the eyes of God, you are more important than all the
wealth this world has to offer. Amen. And you’ve you we know the cost of everything in the modern west, but we
rarely reflect on the true value of things. Uh you can buy a human being in Libya
today for a couple hundred dollars. Yes, slavery is alive and well in North Africa.
Slavery is alive and well. You can buy you can buy a migrant who’s traveled up from subsahara and Africa hoping to
cross into Europe, but they get caught by slave traders and they’re sold in the slave trade slave markets of Libya. Yes.
Even today, we know what it costs to buy a human being. But we’ve lost sight of
the value of a human being. God sent his only son into the world to
die to pay the price that we might be redeemed for eternity.
And this story reminds me that I am worth more to God and you are worth more to God than all of the wealth this world
has to offer. So the next time somebody comes at you with verbal attack and verbal assaults
and they want to degrade you and denigrate you and despise you and deprecate you and all the rest of it,
just remember this story. Jesus saved you. He came to save you
recognizing you are more important than everything or anything that abuser has in this world. You are more important to
God than anything this world has to offer. And the story goes on. Verse 14. And
they that fed the swine fled and told it in the city and in the country when they went out to see what it was that was
done. They came to Jesus and see him possessed and see him that was possessed with the devil and had the legion
sitting and clothed in his right mind and they were afraid. And so the swine herds, they go into town and they say,
“The pigs are dead.” And the people come rushing out like, “Where is our pigs? Where’s our pigs?” And um you know there
are people today who are addicted to the stock market. Have you noticed that? Okay. I’ve noticed this in my life. I’ve
met with many rich donors in my life in the Adventist church and there I’ve noticed that very poor Adventists,
financially poor Adventists, um they worry about not having enough to pay rent this month. And very wealthy
Adventists worried about losing their millions every day. And everybody’s consumed by worry. People are worrying
about whether they can pay rent this month. And for many people these days, it’s a genuine concern. Other people are worried about whether they’re going to
lose anything this month or this day. And there are people who have on their desks um a monitor with the Dow Jones or
the Footsie 100 going second by second on their on their screen. And their
emotional state in the day goes up and down with the stock market. I mean quite
literally. And they’re consumed by fear of loss. And when those swine when those
people come out and they see this man seating at the feet of Jesus, they see a
new creation. Those hands that used to beat himself and engaged in what we today call self
harm behavior. Those hands are resting peacefully in his lap. That naked, bloodied, bruised, bloodied and bloodied
and bleeding body is now covered in a fresh garments of clothing. And the woundedness is now completely covered
up. And they see a peaceful man. They see a redeemed man. They see a man in whose eyes no longer flashes hatred but
flashes the love of Christ. They they hear a tongue that is no longer hurling curses at the neighbors by, but there is
a tongue that is singing the praises of God. They see hands that are no longer beating himself, but they’re now hands
of peace and they’re resting peacefully, waiting for what God would have them do. What they see is a new creation. And in
Mark chapter 5, the first five five first five verses here, we see what Satan would do to a human being if he
gets half a chance getting into their life. And then later in the story, we see what God wants to do in a human being’s life. And we can make that
transition from here to here. When we exercise our religious liberty and we start listening to the voice of the Holy
Spirit every day and we start allowing God to shape us as we become sensitive to the word of God and we can we we
sensitize our conference our conscience every day by reading the word of God
getting to know God for ourselves so we know when he’s speaking to us. You know when when um uh if you have a dog and
you take your dog to a dog park and there’s 99 other dogs there. So, there’s 100 dogs running around in the dog park
and your dog is called Charlie and you want Charlie to come back to you because it’s the end of playtime. Do you stand
there and you say, “Charlie, come back.” No. You say, “Charlie, come here.” And
your dog knows what, “Charlie, come here.” means. Yes. He recognizes the one voice among all the adults around the
park and he runs back to you. And when you when you spend a long time with somebody else, you get to know
instinctively what they think and what they want and all matters. Yes. So, when I have a wedding anniversary with my
wife and she says, “Let’s go out for to my favorite restaurant, I know that it’s Olive Garden where we get soup and
salad. But if I drive past the Olive Garden and turn into Taco Bell, I prefer
Taco Bell. Um the fi the five burritos are very nice. You don’t even need to get out of the car to eat them. You
know, you can go through the drive-thru and you can keep on driving, just eating and driving at the same time. To me, that’s a very efficient meal. I don’t
have to waste time stopping and sitting at a table for Taco Bell. But I know that my wife doesn’t like Taco Bell. And
after 25 years of marriage, um, as we’re driving into town, she doesn’t need to
tell me, “Let’s stop off at Olive Garden.” At this stage, I know exactly what her wishes are. And when you spent
a long time with somebody, you come to know instinctively uh and immediately what they want to do in certain matter.
And when we walk with the Lord day by day and we feed our mind on the word of God, as we spoke about last night,
reading and applying the teachings of Jesus Christ on a daily basis, then when questions come our way in life, we know
instinctively what the will of God is in that matter. And the longer we walk with Jesus, the more intentional our walk is,
the clearer his voice becomes in our lives. And those people, they see this man
who’s a new creation in Jesus Christ. Then they look over the cliff and they say 2,000 dead pigs. And with them their
financial dreams and their financial security and their financial prospects
maybe for marriage and their retirement are just rotting in the Sea of Galilee there. And they were afraid and they’re
not very happy about it. And it says in verse 17, it says they began to pray him
to depart out of their coasts. Now that where it says they began to pray him, the text is in the imperfect here, which
means they were repeatedly asking Jesus to leave. They were saying things like, “Well, Jesus, we heard you’re a great
teacher and we’re glad to have met you, but you need to go back to your side of the Sea of Galilee.” Or, “Jesus, thank
you for coming to town. Thank you for healing this man, but it’s time for you to go back to your side of Galilee.”
Jesus, we’re really glad to meet you, but we’re kind of busy today. Come back next week, but just go back to your side
of the Sea of Galilee right now. So, they were repeatedly begging Jesus to leave.
And what were they doing? We say, well, we wouldn’t be like that today. We
wouldn’t ask Jesus to leave our lives, would we? Because in that moment, those people
were choosing pigs over people. They were choosing. They didn’t want
Jesus coming into their life and causing a financial cataclysm. So, they want Jesus to leave. They’re not so concerned
about Jesus saving a man from demons, doing something nothing they can do. They’re only concerned about the
financial losses. And so, they ask Jesus to leave. And so, these people choose
pigs over people. And we say, “We would not be like that today.”
really. Well, I want to suggest to you today that you can tell somebody’s walk with
God but by how they spend their monthly income. Your budget is an expression of your
spiritual values. How you spend your money, what you prioritize for expenditure, where you
put your pounds and pennies is an expression of where your heart really is. There are some people pay their
bills, they pay their house, rent or mortgage or whatever it is, and they pay for their food, they pay their taxes,
and they keep $300 or $400 for eating out and going to football games and
paying for some something on the internet. And there are some people who save money
every week so they can go and get blind drunk on Friday or Saturday night, as they say. And there are some people who
save money all year so they can go for a two week um alcoholic bender in the in the Costlanca every year.
And there are some people who say my community has homeless. My church has
got single moms who can’t pay rent this month. My church has elderly members who
are struggling to pay for the heating of their home this winter. I’m going to rep prioritize my expenditure so that I’m
going to bless God’s children who are hurting and are in need. My funding, the money that God gives me
is not just for me to spend. It’s for me to pass on as a blessing to other people. I want to challenge you today to
choose people over pigs and not be as this world and choose pigs over people.
To look at your budget honestly and ask yourself, what of my budget can I use
for blessing the poor? What in my budget can I use for helping um a family who’s
got medical bills or a family that’s struggling with their heating or or or um a single mom who’s got a real you
know single moms tend to live on the edge of financial bankruptcy dayto-day and one one one burst tire one broken
engine one broken window and it sends them into a financial collapse. Be
thinking about this about how you use your finances. Um, oh that God’s people would be known for the love known for
the love that we have one for another by the fact that we look out for one another. By the fact that we’re intentionally praying, Lord, who can I
be a blessing for in this coming week. Don’t choose pigs over people because if
you do, you end up asking Jesus to leave because Jesus did not come to save your pigs. He came to save the people around
you. And so they began to pray Jesus leave. And my time is almost up here. So it
says in verse 18, when he when Jesus was come into the boat, he that had been
possessed with the devil prayed that he might be with him. But Jesus suffered him not and said unto him, “Go home to
your friends and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compassion on thee.” And so the
demoniac, he whereas the people are begging Jesus to leave, the demoniac in the same tense in the Greek, he is now
begging Jesus, can I please go with you? I want to follow you. I want to be close with you every day. You’ve just saved me
from demons. There’s nowhere else where I want to go. And Jesus says, “Uh-uh.” He says, “I want you to go back to this
community that’s just rejected me, to this community that’s just begged me to leave, to this community that just chose
pigs over people, and I want you to tell them what God has just done for you.”
And this man doesn’t want to do this. He wants to be with Jesus. But Jesus says, “Go back to your friends and tell them
what God has done for you, what the Lord has done for thee.” Says my version here. And so in the eyes of Jesus, a
first refusal is never a final refusal. And a second refusal to hear the gospel is not a final refusal. Nor is a third
refusal. These people have been repeatedly begging Jesus to leave. And Jesus’ response to those people is,
“Yes, I may be leaving, but I’m going to send you a witness into your community. And that person is going to witness to
the goodness of God in your community. And we may leave this place today and
return to homes or workplaces or marriages or schools where Jesus is not
recognized, Jesus is not honored, and Jesus is not welcome. And how are they going to know about God if we are not
going to be witnesses to his goodness in our lives? And so Jesus says to this man, “Yes, they’ve asked me to leave.
They asked me to leave once, twice, and thrice. But that is not the end of the story because where there is life, there is hope. And so I’m asking you to go
back to this community that just rejected me and you tell them what goodness and mercy God has shown you.
Notice this. Jesus did not say go back and give them a systematic Bible study on the 28 fundamentals. He said go back
and tell them what God has done for you. And why does he ask this? Because people will dispute your theology, but they
can’t dispute what God has done for you. If God has healed your body from cancer,
that is the that is a connecting point with every cancer victim out there today. And when you say, “This is what
God has done for me,” it brings them hope and lets them know there is one greater than us who can bring healing.
If God has healed your marriage, if God has healed your body, if God has healed your mind, if God has brought um peace
instead of war into your home, if God has brought hope into your heart instead of the existential despair of the modern
philosophy of despair in which we all live here in the West, if God has brought hope instead of despair, if God
has brought comfort in the in the p place of pain, if God has brought peace in the in the place of strife into your
heart, into your home, into your marriage, into your life, that is what you share with people. I discovered when
I was pastoring in Minnesota where there were many Lutheran that in the sermon the preacher preached them into heaven
and by the graveside he said they’re waiting for the resurrection and you kind of wonder well where are they exactly? Are they in the ground or
they’re in heaven above? Because in the sermon the ser the preacher preached them straight into heaven but in the by
by in the committ by the grave they were reading that we’re waiting for the the trumpet call of God. And so you you
leave those funerals thinking well where is God? And then when you discuss with your Lutheran friends there in Minnesota like well what happens then? Is your is
your husband in heaven looking down at you or is he in the grave waiting for the call of Jesus? And people didn’t
know. And what I found then was that yes you may share truth and some people accepted it. Most people dispute um
biblical truth but if you share what God has done for you or what go what has God done for me?
He’s given me the hope that one day I’ll see my loved ones again. He’s given me the hope that one day I’ll
be raised with an immortal, imperishable, incorruptible body. That’s what he’s done for me. It’s another way
of expressing truth, but it’s much more personal and it’s what God has done for
you. And so in verse 20, my time is almost up. Our last verse, it says, “And
he departed, that is the the demoniac, and began to publish in the decaps how great things Jesus had done for him. and
and all men did marvel. So Jesus says go and tell them what great things God has
done for you. And verse 20 says he began to say what great things Jesus had done for him. So at the end of verse four
when the disciples say what manner of man is this that even the wind and the waves obey him in this part the next
story we get the answer. Jesus says go and say what God has done for you and the man goes and says what Jesus has
done for him. And that so those two verses together let us know that Jesus is God among us.
He’s God on earth. He’s Emanuel. And he’s come to this earth to seek and to save that which was lost. And you may
say, “Well, was this missionary successful?” Yes, he was. We won’t look at the text now, but the next time Jesus
crosses the Sea of Galilee from the Jewish side into the Gentile side, that’s the end of Mark 7, there’s a
crowd of 4,000 men waiting to meet him. 4,000 men were waiting for Jesus the
next time he came into the region of Capus because this one man had been telling what God had done for him.
So I want to challenge you all here today. Our time is up. I need to finish.
We still have religious liberty in the United Kingdom. Use that liberty to shine for Jesus
Christ. And if you’re not sure what you can do, then simply prepare your testimony. Your
testimony has three components. Before you met Jesus, how you met Jesus, what
Jesus has done for you. Prepare your testimony. It can be 2
minutes. It can be 30 seconds. It can be half an hour. You may want to write on the back of a business card and put it
in your Bible all the key points listed out there. But prepare your testimony. and with the liberties we enjoy yet in
this country and praise God for those liberties and they won’t last forever but then while we have the light of
liberty prepare your testimony this week and be praying from Sunday or Monday onwards that Lord give me somebody in my
life this week who I can share my testimony with bring me somebody into my life who will ask me a question and the
conversation will will reach that junction point and you know it’s happening and you can steer the weather
the conversation how bad the weather is or how great the cricket is or you can steer the conversation to what God has
done for you. And in that moment and you sense it coming coming to you and you you’re going through the day praying
Lord when am I going to have this conversation when are you going to bring this person into my life you’re praying Lord may it happens today and may it
happen today and when that moment comes you offer up a silent prayer and say Lord I claim the promise of Jesus Christ
that in that moment words will be given me from on high from Mark 13 and then you share your testimony.
You plant the seed of the word of God. Faith comes through the hearing of the word of God. Tell people what God has
done for you. Use the liberty we have not to en enrich ourselves in the
British economy, but to grow the kingdom of God. Be intentional about sharing
your testimony. Being share intentional about prayerfully preparing your testimony, praying for opportunities to
share your testimony. When that moment comes, share what God has done for you. They may argue with your theology, but
people can’t argue with what God has done for you. And by God’s grace, when Jesus comes again, there will be 4,000
people for each one of us waiting for Jesus who will be worshiping the lamb on the sea of glass. So, may God guide us
in this process. May God give us divine appointments to share our testimony. Um, may God give us a testimony to share and
may he give us the opportunity in this coming week to share what God has done for us. Go home, said Jesus, and tell
your community what God has done for you. May that be our experience in this coming week. Amen.