Conquering Your Demons

Dr. Tony Evans emphasizes the necessity of addressing spiritual issues when confronting overwhelming challenges. Join him for this look at how Jesus can deliver us from the grip of darkness and restore hope and healing.

If you have a problem with roaches, stepping on one roach has not addressed your problem.
You need somebody who’s going to look for the cause and not merely step on the symptoms.
When there is unresolved sin, you have amplified the uncontrollers in a life and in a culture.
When you’re facing a a medical challenge that won’t go away, and where over the counter remedies are not working.
That will drive you to the doctor.
Because you need a professional analysis of your crisis and your cure.
Inevitably, the doctor will look much deeper than you can see.
Through the MRIs, the CT scans, the X rays, they’re going to delve deeper into the issues that are causing you the pain, struggle, stress, difficulties that you are facing.
He’s going to look or she’s going to look in places that you can’t see because the problem is deeper than you are able to fix.
In Mark chapter 5, we have an electric story of demonic oppression.
We look at The demoniac in the whole chapter is the whole first half of the chapter is dedicated to a man gone wild.
The first five verses describe the crises facing this man.
We’re told that Jesus, when he gets out of the boat in verse 2, having crossed the sea of Galilee, comes to a man from the tombs with an unclean spirit who met him.
He dwelt among the tombs we’re told.
That is he didn’t live in the vicinity of life. He lived in the vicinity of death.
Because the tombs were his home.
We’re told that he was a man out of control.
Verse 3, no one was able to bind him anymore even with the chain.
So the powers that be couldn’t stop the chaos he caused.
We’re told that because he often had been bound to shy and chains.
And the chains have been torn apart by him, and the shackles broken in pieces, and no one was strong enough to subdue him.
Consistently, night and day, he was screaming.
Among the tombs and in the mountains and gashing himself with stones.
You are now looking at a person out of control.
Our human designation for him, some would say he’s crazy.
Others would say that man has lost his mind.
When Luke tells a story in Luke chapter 8 in verse 27, it says that he lived without clothes.
So he walked around in-depth, annuity out of control.
When you look at our world today, it’s made up of a lot of the money acts.
People who are out of control.
And you know that something deeper is wrong because the powers that be can’t make it right.
Verse 2 says a man from the tombs with an unclean spirit met him.
What we have told is that this man was being influenced and controlled by something other than what you see.
There was something deeper going on in this man’s life than just mental instability.
He was being informed and defined by an unclean spirit that is a demon. Amen.
This man had been demonized. Now if you saw him, you didn’t see demons, If you saw him, you didn’t see devils.
You didn’t see red jumpsuit and a pitchfork. All you saw was a crazy man.
So you just would think he is mentally deranged, but when we look deeper, the passage tells us that this man was under the influence of an unclean spirit that is demons was controlling his mental instability.
Now before I go on, I do not wanna be misunderstood.
All mental illness is not tied to demonic oppression.
How do you determine whether it’s purely a mental illness, a chemical imbalance, that needs to be addressed as many do through the professional mechanisms that god has allowed us to erect in our culture or whether something is much deeper.
We’re told that this man’s were controlled by an unclean spirit that is unresolved sin operating in his life.
Unrighteousness that had not been addressed.
When there is out of control ness.
This man is out of control.
You want to be able to identify any spiritual issues that have gone unresolved or else you could be trying to address a problem with over the counter medicines and not with spiritual causation.
Demonsons are at home with unresolved, unaddressed, unrighteousness in our lives.
When there is unresolved or refusal to address unrighteousness, What you have done is you have invited demonic attention to make a bad thing worse.
When there is unresolved sin, you have amplified the uncontrollers in a life, in a family, and in a culture.
So we are now living in a culture gone mad.
Where people don’t care about life, where people don’t care about property, where people don’t care about how they talk to one another, where people don’t care about abuse, where people people have lost their minds, but don’t know demons are helping a brother out.
Helping a sister out.
He says this man’s uncontrolling as was being amplified by an unclean spirit.
That’s what was making him act mad. Yeah.
You may be saying, well, I’m a Christian. And the Holy Ghost lives in me.
So the demons came mess with me.
Well, in 1st Corinthians chapter 10, verse 2224, he’s writing to the Christians at Quran, and he says, many of you are eating at the demons tables.
When we finish our sermon and have communion, Many folk will be having communion with demons in the name of Jesus.
So even Christians can fellowship with demons.
So some of the things that we can’t get rid of in our lives in our families, in our addictions is because demons have grabbed them, amp them up.
That you’re not just fighting the problem, you’re fighting the demonization of the problem.
An unclean spirit And when they come in, they take over because demons have relatives.
And that’s first Timothy 4 verses 1 to 5 says They come with a lot of false information.
Paul calls them doctrines of demons with a lot of false information.
They may be sounding good talk and sweet acting nice, but he says they are doctrines of demons because there’s information contrary to the truth and knowledge of god.
So what I’m starting off saying here is that if your life is being ruled, authority, by something illegitimate.
Have you checked out whether the problem is deeper than you are aware of?
Whether there is inflammation in your soul because the demons have been invited in the uncleanness of the environment.
So Day night, we’re told in verse 5. That means it’s your lifestyle.
Day night, 24 hours a day, 247, if if something if something is illegitimately holding you hostage day and night, all the time.
You’re living in the realm of the illegitimate and there is unresolved unrighteousness connected to your life and you can’t get rid of it.
It won’t go away. You can’t defeat it.
And what you need to know is the thing that’s keeping that addiction is alive is the demons who have attached themselves to the addiction.
And so you’re fighting something deeper than you realize than we realized.
Seeing Jesus, verse 6, from a distance.
He ran and bowed down before him.
And shouting with a loud voice.
He said, What business do we have with each other?
Jesus, son of the most high god I employ you by god. Do not tortment me. Okay.
Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Verse 9. And he was asking him, what is your name?
And he said, My name is Legion for We Are Many. Okay.
I don’t know I don’t know if you caught that.
He runs the Jesus in Versace, bowels down before him.
And he said, what business do we have? With you.
He’s singular says, what business do we plural? Have with you.
So we have a confused individual here.
He says the he is also A week. Yeah.
You can’t make sense of reality because your humanity has been messed up tow up from the flow up.
Doctor Evans will be right back. After this important announcement.
So this self identity is is confused.
But the man in his confusion comes to Jesus’ wife.
Because his problem was not merely mental. It was spiritual affecting the mental.
Again, Not all mental illness is tied to demonic possession.
But when there is unresolved unrighteousness, there is a high degree of potentiality that the problems that do exist have created inflammation in the soul that has resulted in the uncontrolled nature of the life.
Many people have demonized attitudes about themselves.
That’s why they can become racist day and night because their evil has become a demonized.
Have drawn the roaches and the rats.
So This man comes and the spiritual confronts the spiritual.
Because he’s dragging the demons to Jesus.
Now He bowels down recognizing Jesus’ position. He humbles himself.
The bow down is to enter into a posture of worship. He recognizes Jesus.
The son of the most high god.
Please notice a word here. The word is found in verse 7.
The word is found in verse 10. The word is found in verse 12. I implore you.
Verse 10, he began to employ him. Verse 12, the demons employed him.
Okay. So you have a man and demons begging to employers to beg.
So the man says he employed them, but then it comes right around and says, the demons employed him.
Both of them, the human and the spiritual, were begging Jesus, which means the man that has humanity needed Jesus, but the demons couldn’t even do anything without Jesus permission.
So the devil, demons, had to get permission from Jesus, even to be demons.
We employ you.
He says, You are some of the most high god.
Do not torment me.
You know, when a person is an alcoholic or a drug addict, you go through a period of torment in order to become whole.
You go through a period of discontinuity where things are not flowing in concert 1 another because you want this evil that’s controlling you to get off your back, which means you are going to be torment.
Things are gonna get worse before they get better. And so you have this request.
Don’t torment me because I know for this thing to get resolved, it’s gonna cost me some inconvenience and pain.
Jesus said in verse 9, what what what is your name?
In the Bible, your name is your identity. Who are you?
Now Jesus is not asking because he doesn’t know he’s asking for you to affirm.
What is your name? Who are you? What is your identity?
And the voice says, I am legion. A Roman legion was 6000 soldiers.
Roman Legion is 6000 soldiers, so we got a man here with 6000 demons in it because demons running crowds.
The reason why the wilder you get, the more demons you have.
We are living in a world now.
Where people are not only been demonized, but we have a society that’s demonized. So you got demons running everywhere.
My name is Legion, for we are many 6000 had consumed.
No man. No. No. No wonder the man’s life is operating in madness.
And so The demons say we are many.
We own this place. We call the shots. Now Right there, that tells you a bunch.
Number 1, it tells you demons can talk. They can communicate.
That means they can think in order to put together language. So they have a mind.
So he employs them. These they have the qualifications of personhood.
They’re not human beings, but they are persons.
Verse 12, the demons employed him saying send us into the swine so that we may enter them.
Send us into the swine that we may enter them.
Luke 11 verse 24 to 26 says that demons need a place to reside.
So when the demons were exercise, exercise from from from him, they said, can we go to another unclean location?
And please notice what happened There was a large herd of swine feeding nearby.
The demons employed sent us into the swine verse 13.
Jesus gave permission because even the demons have gotta get an okay from Jesus and coming out of the unclean spirits into the swine and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the sea about 2000 of them So that means that 2000, there were 6000 demons, and they were drowned in the sea.
So what is the goal of demons to kill you?
But the beautiful thing is when Jesus spoke the demons left because the spiritual had to be addressed before the personal could be changed.
Now stay with me just a little bit longer.
They asked for permission because they didn’t know whether Jesus was gonna give it or not.
But the man had positioned himself. Now watch this. The herdsmen ran away.
Ones who had the pig farm, they ran away and reported in the city and in the country.
Okay. And they came to Jesus and observed the man who had been demon possessed.
Why’s this? Sitting down instead of roaming, clothed in his right mind instead of crazy.
The very man who had Legion and they became scared. They got scared.
Why are they afraid?
Those who had ceded, described to them verse 16, how it had happened to the demon possessed man and about all the swine, and they began to employ him to leave their region.
Why did they ask him to leave Jesus was messing with their money?
They made their living with the swine.
And because their business was being interrupted, because their economics was being interrupted.
We don’t wanna hear no more about Jesus.
And the reason Jesus is being kicked to the curb and our culture today is if you follow Jesus, He’s gonna mess with your lifestyle.
He’s gonna mess with your no. No. If you follow Jesus, he gonna mess with big pharma.
If you follow Jesus, he gonna mess with drug prices.
If you follow Jesus, he ain’t gonna just let you make a prophet off of the back of the pool, off of the back of the oppressed.
Off of the back of those who are being misjudged.
If you follow Jesus, he ain’t gonna let you mess folk up in the name of money in your pocket.
He’s not gonna tolerate crooked politicians.
He’s not gonna tolerate messed up economic systems He’s not gonna tolerate the evil and society.
So what do they do? They gotta get rid of Jesus.
They gotta dumb down the church They got to shut the mouths of Christians because if we let Jesus stay in this country, he’s gonna mess with how our capitalistic system operates.
People mess it up.
He got to leave here, which is why in most cases of Socialism and Communism, you got a dumb down religion or cancel it altogether so that man can rule instead of god and place mandates on everybody else, how you should function in spite of what god said.
And watch this.
Now I have time available but the bigger demand dates the more satanic the system.
Now the Bible bleeds in safety, the government responsible for safety, but when you control through mandates, something that god has not allowed, the Bible says in Revelation 13, it is the system of the anti Christ.
And so in conclusion, the man says, man says, He’s imploring him.
The man that demon possessed man said, look, he says I want you to let me go with you.
Verse 18. He says, can I go with you? But look at verse 19.
He did not let him, but he said to him, go home to your people.
And report to them what great things the lord has done for you and how he had mercy on you.
He says, I want you to tell it.
They won’t let me stay, but you live here. I want you to tell it.
And he said verse 20, He went away and began to proclaim in the De Capolis.
What great things Jesus had done for him, and everybody was amazed.
Wherever you go, I want you to talk about what Jesus has done for you.
So if you ain’t telling nobody, what you’re saying is Jesus ain’t done nothing for me.
But if Jesus has met you along the way, if he forgave your sins and gave you eternal life, if he has kept you going when you wanted to throw in the time.
If he has kept you in your right mind when you thought you were gonna go crazy.
I’m here to tell you, you better go tell it.
You better let it be known that Jesus is in my life. Jesus has changed my life.
Jesus has resurrected my life. Jesus has empowered my life, and I’m not gonna be ashamed of Jesus.
I’m gonna go tell it. In the 10 city region. So I challenge you.
I challenge us. Don’t leave Jesus in the sanctuary.
Don’t leave him in your private time.
You let it be known and the reason of this church and then the reason of whatever church you are a part of, that I belong to Jesus.
I believe in god, but I follow Jesus. And I’m not ashamed to say it.
Because I know what he’s done for me.
And if you’re here today and you need some demonic deliverance, he still casts out demons.
He’s still cast out, dude.