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    Mar 08, 2020

    Altered State

    Altered State

    Passage: Mark 5:1-20

    Speaker: Patrick Lafferty

    Series: House Calls

    Modern people question the reality of evil but cannot fully account for what appears to be more than mere monstrous human behavior. Jesus not only believes in evil but has authority over it and seeks to deliver from it those in its clutches.

    *Due to untimely technical difficulties, this recording is not available.

    Order of Worship

    PRE SERVICE: Mark 5:1-3
    CALL TO WORSHIP: Psalm 57:1-3 & 66:16-17, 20
    PRAYER: Mission of the Church (adapted from The Book of Common Prayer)
    OLD TESTAMENT READING: Isaiah 61:1,3,10-11 ESV
    PASTORAL PRAYER, The Lord’s Prayer
    CENTRAL TEXT: Mark 5:1-20
    MESSAGE: Altered State
    BENEDICTION: 1 Peter 5:8-10 & I John 4:4
    POST SERVICE: I John 4:4

    Illustrations

    The Outsider - Right to Believe

    Two Towers - Healing Theoden

    Readings & Scripture

    PRE SERVICE: Mark 5:1-3
    1 They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes. 2 And when Jesus had stepped out of the boat, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit. 3 He lived among the tombs. And no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain,

    CALL TO WORSHIP: Psalm 57:1-3 & 66:16-17, 20

    LEADER: Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me, for in you my soul takes refuge; in the shadow of your wings I will take refuge, till the storms of destruction pass by.

    PEOPLE: I cry out to God Most High, to God who fulfills his purpose for me. He will send from heaven and save me; he will put to shame him who tramples on me. . . .God will send out his steadfast love and his faithfulness!

    LEADER: Come and hear, all you who fear God,

    PEOPLE: and I will tell what he has done for my soul. I cried to him with my mouth, and high praise was on my tongue.

    ALL: Blessed be God, because he has not rejected my prayer or removed his steadfast love from me!

    PRAYER: Mission of the Church (adapted from The Book of Common Prayer)

    ALL: Everliving God, whose will it is that all should come to you through the finished work of your Son. Inspire our witness to Him, that all may know and extend the power of Christ’s forgiveness and the hope of His resurrection; who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, One God, now and forever. Amen.

    OLD TESTAMENT READING: Isaiah 61:1,3,10-11 ESV
    1 The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound

    3 to grant to those who mourn in Zion—to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes,
    the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit; that they may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified.

    10 I will greatly rejoice in the Lord; my soul shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation; he has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself like a priest with a beautiful headdress, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. 11 For as the earth brings forth its sprouts, and as a garden causes what is sown in it to sprout up, so so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to sprout up before all the nations.

    PASTORAL PRAYER, The Lord’s Prayer

    ALL: Our Father, who are in heaven,
    Hallowed be your Name.
    Your Kingdom come.
    Your will be done on earth, As it is in heaven.

    Give us this day our daily bread.
    And forgive us our debts, As we forgive our debtors.
    And lead us not into temptation,
    But deliver us from evil.

    For yours is the kingdom
    The power, and the glory
    Forever and ever. Amen.

    CENTRAL TEXT: Mark 5:1-20
    1 They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes. 2 And when Jesus had stepped out of the boat, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit. 3 He lived among the tombs. And no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain, 4 for he had often been bound with shackles and chains, but he wrenched the chains apart, and he broke the shackles in pieces. No one had the strength to subdue him. 5 Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always crying out and cutting himself with stones. 6 And when he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and fell down before him. 7 And crying out with a loud voice, he said, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me.” 8 For he was saying to him, “Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!” 9 And Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” He replied, “My name is Legion, for we are many.” 10 And he begged him earnestly not to send them out of the country. 11 Now a great herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside, 12 and they begged him, saying, “Send us to the pigs; let us enter them.” 13 So he gave them permission. 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. 14 The herdsmen fled and told it in the city and in the country. And people came to see what it was that had happened. 15 And they came to Jesus and saw the demon-possessed man, the one who had had the legion, sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, and they were afraid. 16 And those who had seen it described to them what had happened to the demon-possessed man and to the pigs. 17 And they began to beg Jesus to depart from their region. 18 As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed with demons begged him that he might be with him. 19 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.” 20 And he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him, and everyone marveled.

    BENEDICTION: 1 Peter 5:8-10 & I John 4:4
    LEADER: 8 Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. 9 Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world. 10 And after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.

    ALL: Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.

    POST SERVICE: I John 4:4
    Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.

    ADDITIONAL SCRIPTURES:

    • Matthew 8:28-34
    • Luke 8:26-39
    • Luke 11:14-26
    • John 10:10
    • Ephesians 6:10-20
    • 1 Peter 5:6-9
    • 1 John 4:4

    Media:

    3.08.20 Album

    DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

     

    1. How would you define “evil”? How is it similar but different from “harmful”?
    2. The passage locates the source of evil in the presence of an “unclean spirit” affecting the man among the tombs. What effects does that presence have? What is your first thought about a presence like that? Belief? Skepticism? Fear? Why? What knowledge or experience shapes your answer? What challenges your perspective?
    3. In what other ways do you see those evil effects--even if they don’t arise from a discernibly personal evil presence?
    4. What would you suppose is Mark’s main reason for including this episode? An approach or an assurance?
    5. Does Jesus ascribe all evil in the world to personal, spiritual forces? Where else does evil lie? 
    6. Both this astonishing moment and the passage just preceding it (the storm) both end with witnesses to the events expressing fear. Fear of what? What do those expressing fear in each passage do next? What does that reveal about what they believe about Jesus?
    7. What are the two desires--one deferred, the other encouraged--that proceed from the man delivered? Why do those sound like natural consequences of what happened? (cf. Mark 3:14)
    8. How is what Jesus does for this afflicted man related to what Jesus does at the cross? In other words, does what happened in this passage near the Decapolis in any way anticipate what Jesus will do later outside Jerusalem? 
    9. What does Mark mean for us to believe? What might that belief “look” like?

    QUOTES:

    • We are lived by powers we / pretend to understand….W.H. Auden
    • An atrocious event like the Aurora massacre brings us up sharply against something that for the most part we ignore: that, for metaphysical reasons, our explanatory reach exceeds our grasp and will do so forever. We seek a final explanation, but cannot reach one because, as Haitian peasants say, "Behind mountains, more mountains." Anthony Daniels
    • It is inherent in our entire [Western] philosophical tradition that we cannot conceive of a ‘radical evil’…Hannah Arendt
    • There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight. C.S. Lewis The Screwtape Letters 
    • Evil rejects reason and contemplation, and it is fundamentally unreflective. Elizabeth Bruenig
    • Jeffrey Lieberman, the chairman of Columbia’s psychiatry department, told me that if you conducted a survey of the population seeking exorcisms, a great majority would likely suffer from a known psychiatric condition, and dissociative identity disorder would be “at the top of that group of conditions.” But Lieberman also acknowledged the possibility that a small percentage of these cases could be spiritual in nature. Over the course of his career, he’s seen a couple of cases that “could not be explained in terms of normal human physiology or natural laws.” Mike Mariani
    • Little children, you are from God and have overcome them, for he who is in you is greater than he who is in the world. I John 4:4

    BOOKS / DOCS

    SERMONS / TALKS: