The Demon Possessed Man

This week for our Sunday Bible Class, I came to Mark 5, the Demon Possessed Man. I couldn’t find it in any of the 10 or so children’s Bibles that we had. Not exactly material for a preschool class, maybe. But, I still decided to teach it. It’s an important story to me, more so as we’ve lived in a culture where keeping the bad spirits appeased is a normal, daily part of life.

Every day at exactly 6 pm our neighbors ring bells to chase out the bad spirits. Every morning, they ring the bells again before opening up their houses for the day. My pregnant helper wore a safety pin on her shirt every day so the bad spirits wouldn’t hurt her unborn baby. You can ask a monk to get you enchanted water to drink if you are having problems and think there might be a demon inside you. These are just a few examples out of many others I could mention. Bad spirits aren’t questioned hypothetically here– They are real. They are powerful. And, they intend to do you harm.

So, back to Mark 5. Here’s a guy with “legions’ of evil spirits. He’s terrifying — naked, uncontrollable, his skin covered in blood wounds from scraping himself with rocks. He lives with dead bodies and he has a physical strength that no one can subdue. And yet, at just the sight of Jesus, he runs and submits himself to him, falling on his knees in front of him.

Jesus heals the man and restores him to his right mind— but not with magic potions, special amulets and jewelry or long chants and mystical concoctions. Jesus’s mere presence commands “every knee to bow.” And with his mere words, the spirits’s control over the man ended.

What power must he posses to be able to do such things? They’ve never seen such power and it is terrifying. They beg him to leave (vs 17).

There is no contest between Jesus and the forces of evil. Jesus is Lord!

In Jesus’s name we pray because He is our hope, strength, and protector. As Christians, we know he only has the power to save. We do not trust in other means to guard us from the powers of evil.