The Demonic Economy: Why Jesus Cast Out the Pigs

So I'm standing on the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee at the place long remembered as the setting of one of the most dramatic confrontations in all of the Gospels.

This is the very place where Jesus drove demons out of a man and into a herd of pigs that then jumped off of this very cliff into the water.

And I need you to feel this and see this with fresh eyes because this is not a random story about some like, you know, crazy spiritual experience.

This is actually a courtroom, right?

This is a clash of kingdoms.

This is Jesus stepping onto enemy ground on purpose, showing us exactly how the demonic works, what its goal is, and what happens when the Son of God meets a human life that's been turned into a battlefield.

Come on.

So when you open your Bibles to mark chapter five, verses one through 20, you're going to see something.

And I want to weave in Luke chapter eight and Matthew chapter eight as we go.

So I want you to follow along.

So I'm going to answer the question, why did he cast the demons into the pigs?

Okay, so Mark chapter five, verse one begins like this.

They basically came to the other side of the sea, to the country of come on the other side here.

So if you were a first century Jew and you were hearing this, you would immediately understand what this means.

It would make sense to you.

Jesus is leaving the familiar Jewish side and stepping into the region associated with the Decapolis, a gentile heavy area, basically.

And you can, you can already feel it in the details.

So here's what we have described.

There's tombs, there's death and uncleanliness, pigs, unclean animals.

Under the Jewish law, a man living among the dead, okay?

Spiritual violence, even social exile.

These are all the, the details that we get about this situation.

It's a deliberate movement to come to this other side.

Jesus is not just preaching sermons in safe places.

Come on.

That'll preach to somebody.

He's crossing boundaries to prove something.

And so the kingdom of God is not a social club.

It's an invading reign of a kingdom.

It's not intimidated by darkness.

It's light that goes into the very darkness.

Come on.

And so this is, this is just setting the scene for what happened.

So if you look now at Mark, Mark says, and when Jesus had stepped out of the boat, so just look at the waters, and immediately there met him out of the tombs, a man with an unclean spirit.

So let's talk about this phrase, unclean spirit.

So in the New Testament, basically, demons are described as unclean.

You'll see that Phrase, because they defile and they degrade what God wants to make holy.

They don't create, they corrupt, they don't build, they break down.

And so the man, he's basically living in the tombs here.

And you'll see this obsession with death, this is not just creepy, it's theological.

So in Israel's story, death is not neutral.

Death is actually the sign of the curse and a life that's fractured and separated from God.

So this man is living.

We're human.

They're not meant to live.

He's surrounded by the symbol of separation, exile and even decay.

And then Mark goes a step further and he adds a detail.

It says he lived among the tombs and no one could bind him, anyone, not, not even with a chain.

And he had been bound with shackles and chains.

But listen, he literally wrenched the chains apart and no one had the strength to subdue him.

We know that this is demonic influence, right?

Then it goes on to say, night and day, among the tombs and on the mountains, he was always crying out and he was even cutting himself with stones.

Come on.

Demons are still enacting this same behavior today.

It's a pattern that we see in scripture.

Isolation, Demons drive you away from people, away from your family, away from community.

Then you see dehumanization.

He's not treated like a man.

He's.

He's treated like a problem that they need to restrain.

Come on, we're seeing this in society today.

We also see torment.

Not just bad habits, but inner torture, night and day.

Then you see the cutting, the self destruction.

He's literally cutting himself.

The demon does not stop at oppression.

He's actually moving towards death.

Right?

This is the pattern that you see.

But Jesus says in John, chapter 10, verse 10, the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.

Come on, that's not poetic, it's diagnostic.

If you want to discern spiritual warfare, I want you to watch for the fruit.

What?

The fruit that is discernible.

What does it isolate?

Does it degrade someone's identity?

Does it torment and does it push towards self destruction?

That's the smell, the aroma of the demonic.

That's the visible, outward manifestations of the demonic.

And you need to increase in your discernment.

Come on.

I'm going to get to this question about the pigs, but we're going to kind of move through the Scriptures.

In Mark, chapter five, verse six, it says, and when he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and he fell down before him.

Notice the contradiction.

He falls down before him, yet he's not totally worshiping.

This is not real surrender.

It's actually forced recognition.

And when.

When the Spirit speaks, this is what the demon says.

What have you to do with me?

J, Son of the most High God, I adjure you by God, do not torment me.

So Matthew's account actually adds another line to that.

Have you come here to torment us before the time?

Notice the plural us.

That's loaded.

Demons have theology.

They know that there is a future judgment.

Do you know there's a future judgment?

They know that there is an appointed time.

Do you know there's an appointed time?

They know that Jesus is the righteous judge.

James, chapter 2, verse 19 says, Even the demons believe and they shudder.

So here's something that you need to hear right now, okay?

Correct spiritual language, it does not equal a surrendered heart.

These are people that they talk right, but they don't live right?

Come on.

The demons call him son of the most High God, and yet they still resist him.

There's something really important in all this.

Now, as the story continues, basically Jesus asks, and this is Luke, chapter eight, what's your name?

So he.

He asked that question.

And this is the reply that Jesus gets back.

Legion, for we are many.

Or in other words, many demons have entered him.

Now, a legion is a Roman military term that means thousands.

But whether it's literal, whether like a literal quantity or a terrifying way of saying, hey, we are many, there's a lot of us.

The point is clear.

This is not a small problem.

This man is.

Is occupied territory.

So I want you to notice this.

The demonic loves collectives.

They them, us.

Come on.

Loves collectives.

And God makes a person into a self, into an integrated identity.

So demons, they fragment the self.

They multiply the voices, multiple personalities, they fracture your will.

They turn a human being into, like an internal civil war demonically.

And that's why later, even after this deliverance, Mark says that the man is quote, unquote, sitting there clothed and in his right mind.

So deliverance is not merely, hey, a demon left me.

Deliverance is actually a human being come, becoming whole again.

And that's what God wants to do, is make you whole again.

If you're watching this right now, because demons will fragment you.

And we see this now in Luke chapter 8.

Luke chapter 8 says they begged him not to command them to depart into the abyss.

And many of you don't understand what that is.

And so the abyss is not just the ocean, right?

This is actually something else.

You.

In Jewish apocalyptic thought and New Testament language, the abyss is basically a Place of confinement for evil spirits.

An image of restraint, judgment, and even, like, incarceration.

So basically, the demons are saying, in essence, hey, don't imprison us, don't confine us, don't restrict our operation.

Think that's really good information.

They're not.

They're basically terrified by limitation because this is what demons really crave.

They crave, crave access, they crave embodiment, and they crave expression through that body.

This is why the story begins now to move to pigs.

Come on, we're getting there.

And you're learning a lot about the nature of demons and how demons operate because God's raising you up as a spiritual warrior.

Okay, now, Mark, let's go back to Mark.

He says, now, a great herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside just over my shoulder here.

And they begged him, saying, hey, send us to the pigs.

Let us enter them.

Now, first, remember where we are.

This is actually in the ancient world, a gentile region, and pigs are part of the economy.

Think about it.

Second, pigs are unclean under Leviticus.

That doesn't mean that gentiles are less than.

So don't hear me wrong.

It just means that Israel's holiness laws were symbols teaching Israel that God is holy and impurity spreads.

And here is what's happening spiritually now.

The demons are trying to negotiate a transfer.

It's a good way of thinking about this.

They're being expelled from the man, and they want into another host.

Okay, they want into another host because the demonic does not want to be disembodied and restricted.

So Jesus permits it.

And this is where a lot of people get confused.

And people are asking, well, why would Jesus allow that?

Why not send them to the spiritual abyss?

But here's a rich theological answer.

Jesus is not collaborating with evil.

He's actually exposing it.

If the demon simply left invisibly, the town could dismiss this miracle as like, oh, it's just some psychological trick that he did.

But when the herd literally rushes into the sea and drowns, the.

The invisible becomes visible and the town now sees this public of Christ's authority and power.

This was not therapy.

This was not suggestion.

This was real deliverance also.

Now watch this.

Jesus is revealing the true nature of the demonic as well.

So in wisdom, he did this.

When demons enter the pigs, they immediately drive them to their destruction.

There was no delay.

And again, In John, chapter 10, verse 10, I quoted it already, the demonic does not coexist peacefully.

It consumes and immediately destroys.

So you're seeing this Come on.

I want to go even deeper, though.

So Mark says that the pigs, this is the quotes, they rush down the steep bank into the sea.

I'm standing right at the precipice of this.

This steep cliff here.

And do you remember Israel's story in Exodus?

The oppressive power of Egypt is swallowed by the sea as Israel goes free.

The sea, in biblical imagination represents chaos, represents a threat and powers even beyond human controls, just like the Red Sea.

And here, as Jesus delivers a man from a legion, thousands of unclean animals plunge into the waters.

A mass of them, we don't know how many.

This is not random.

It's like a living, visible parable.

Jesus is the new Moses.

The final Moses is reenacting liberation.

Another Exodus, another captivity, broken, tyrant, drowned.

But this time it's not Pharaoh, it's the demons.

Come on.

I'm getting a little excited up here because I just.

I feel the power of God in this mark.

Chapter 4, verse 14 says that the herdsmen literally ran and told it, and then the people came and saw, which kind of confirms this theory.

It says the demon possessed man, clothed, and in his right mind they saw him and they were afraid.

Watch this.

Then they began to beg Jesus to depart from their region.

They told Jesus, you got to leave.

This is one of the most sobering verses, I think, in the entire New Testament.

They would rather have a demonized man in chains than a delivered man and a disrupted economy because they lost their pigs.

Now we know what the real God is.

Money.

Because deliverance is expensive to the systems that profit from bondage.

Ah, come on.

Sometimes people don't hate Jesus because.

Because he's cruel.

They hate him because he's free.

Think about what I'm saying.

And freedom threatens the local order when it's dependent on monetizing people's pain through addiction and bondage.

I mean, what Jesus does next is literally genius, though, and I need you to catch this.

The man begs to go with Jesus.

Mark says, hey, 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 he has had mercy upon you.

This is, like, absolutely stunning, like, mind blowing, to be honest with you.

Jesus makes a delivered man.

Come on.

This is what he does.

He makes a delivered man.

The evangelist.

Hey, they don't want me in this town.

You go tell everybody.

Listen, I'm just going to end it like this.

And I think I've unlocked the mystery of the question.

Why did he cast the demons into pigs right here?

I mean, geography doesn't lie.

This is the only spot that works for the story.

I'm standing in it right now.

But I want you to think about this.

Think about your town.

Think about your city.

Think about the way that they profit off of your addiction.

They think about the stores that sell the illicit drugs and alcohol.

Think about the strip clubs.

Think about all the places you can go.

Think about.

See, what happens is there's a whole economy of darkness, a whole demonic economy.

And here's one of the things Deliverance does.

Deliverance directly confronts the demonic.

And when it removes the demonic, it breaks that economy.

See, wouldn't it be incredible if right there where you live, businesses started shutting down because there's no longer a demand to get drunk, to get high, to gamble your life away, to go.

To go into sexual perversion?

Wouldn't it be amazing if you started seeing so much deliverance where you live that they started shutting down all those places because you're breaking the economy?

That's.

That's.

Come on.

Connected to this.

Let me, let me pray for you right now, actually, because I believe that God is even moving in your heart right now.

Father, I thank you that you are still a deliverer.

You are still breaking the chains of darkness and setting the captives free.

And heavenly Father, I thank that we are going to confront the works of darkness and we're going to see these places shut their doors as we disrupt and disturb an economy that's connected to it.

And Father, I thank you that you are the same yesterday, today, and forever.

And if you did it, then we say together around the world, do it again.

In Jesus name, amen.