Sermon Tone Analysis

Text: Mark 5:1-20

Theme: One person – under the authority of Jesus – can make a difference.

Did you know that God’s first missionary was a demon-possessed man?

The very first individual to obey the Great Commission — even before Christ had taught it to His disciples — is the central character of our text.

The initial encounter Jesus has with this man is explosive.

The disciples' beach their boat near a graveyard and a herd of pigs.

Both are ritually and culturally unclean for Jews.

As Jesus steps out, a crazy man storms out of the graveyard.

Unkempt hair.

Wild eyes.

Bloody wrists, and ankles.

Lacerated skin.

Screaming wildly.

Naked. .

Arms flailing.

The apostles gawk and gulp and put a foot back in the boat.

I don’t think Jesus even flinched, because I believe Jesus knew where He was going when He asked the disciples to row Him across the lake.

The picture Mark draws is filled with terror.

It describes a man who is the victim of demonic malevolence coupled with human indifference and impotence.

But in the end divine omnipotence and benevolence come to the rescue and triumph.

The helpfulness of Jesus is strikingly contrasted with the heartlessness of demons and helplessness of men.

We see from verse 8 that Jesus first commanded the demons to come out of the man.

Through this we get a glimpse into the unseen world of the spiritual war going on all around us.

For just a few minutes the invisible conflict becomes visible and we are offered a position over looking the battlefield.

The victory belongs to the Lord.

This evening, I want us to consider the ministry of a unique individual after Jesus touched his life.

We do not know his name.

We do not know about his family or even what he looked like.

We do not know what he had done for a living.

We do not know how he came to be in the spiritual condition the Lord found him in.

We do know that he was at one time demon possessed, that he met Jesus one day and was healed and saved, that he had a vibrant testimony and that his testimony was effective.

This one man made a difference.

He made a difference because he was willing to follow Jesus and be a disciple.

There are three qualities of discipleship we can glean from this man’s life that explain why he made a difference in his community.

I. HE MADE A DIFFERENCE BECAUSE HE WAS WILLING TO BE A DISCIPLE OF JESUS

“When they came to Jesus, they saw the man who had been possessed by the legion of demons, sitting there, dressed and in his right mind; and they were afraid.”

(Mark 5:15, NIV84)

1. Luke’s Gospel adds a detail that Mark leaves out

a. Mark simply says that the town’s people found the former demoniac sitting down

b. but Luke tells us that he was sitting at Jesus’ feet

2. if you are going to make a difference in your community, you’ve got to be willing to sit at the feet of Jesus

a. what does that imply?

b. sitting at another’s feet was the position that a learner had with his master

1) it implied that the Master had authority over his students

2) it implied that the students eagerly sought their master’s knowledge and wisdom

c. the Bible has a word for this student/teacher relationship

1) the student is the disciple

3. unfortunately we have a lot of believers in the church today, but we seem woefully short of true disciples

ILLUS.

In his book, Evangelism: Christ’s Imperative Commission, Roland Leavell (one-time president or New Orleans Baptist theological seminary) gives some interesting statistics about church members.

Listen to a few of these:

5% do not exist

10% cannot be found

20% never pray

25% never read the Bible

30% never attend Church services

40% never give a dime to Christian causes

50% never go to Sunday School or Bible study

60% never attend Sunday evening worship

70% never give to missions

80% never go to prayer meetings

95% never lead anyone to faith in Christ

3. if these statistics are correct, they indicate that we have a lot of people in the Church who are not making any difference for Christ in the community in which they live

A. A DISCIPLE IS FIRST AND FOREMOST, A LEARNER

1. where did the villagers find this man when they came out to see what was happening?

a. the Bible says they found him ...

1) sitting at Jesus’ feet

2) dressed

3) in his right mind

2. let me take a few moments to glean out of this passage some devotional thoughts that apply to all of us

3. FIRST, the man was ‘sitting at the feet of Jesus’

a. in those few moments after his exorcism, this man becomes a devoted learner of the will and ways of our Lord

1) between the time he is delivered and the townspeople arrive, he gets a crash course in Discipleship 101 from Jesus

b. you will never make a difference in this world if you do not learn from Christ

ILLUS.

William Barclay, the great Scottish preacher, once said: “It's possible to be a follower of Jesus without being a disciple; to be a camp-follower without being a soldier of the king; to be a hanger-on in some great work without pulling one's weight.

Once someone was talking to a great scholar about a younger man.

He said, "So and so tells me that he was one of your students."

The teacher answered devastatingly, "He may have attended my lectures, but he was not one of my students."

There is a world of difference between attending lectures and being a student.

It is one of the supreme handicaps of the Church that in the Church there are so many distant followers of Jesus and so few real disciples.

c. to sit at Jesus’ feet means you will be a life-long learner of Christ

4. SECOND, this man was ‘dressed’

a. in His Sermon on the Mount Jesus told his disciples: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

NIV)

b. disciples dress themselves in the righteousness of Christ alone by imitating the life of Christ

“You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; 23 to be made new in the attitude of your minds; 24 and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.”

(Ephesians 4:22-24, NIV)

ILLUS.

BB.

McKinney was one of the truly great hymn writers of the early part of this century.

One of those hymns was, Let Others See Jesus in You.

Listen to these stanzas:

While passing through this world of sin, And others your life shall view,

Be clean and pure without, within, Let others see Jesus in you.

Your life’s a book before their eyes, They’re reading it through and through;

Say, does it point them to the skies, Do others see Jesus in you?

Then live for Christ both day and night, Be faithful, be brave, and true,

And lead the lost to life and light; Let others see Jesus in you.

(Chorus) Let others see Jesus in you, Let others see Jesus in you;