The Servant Son of God: Power Over Demons, Disease, and Death

Mark 5 shows the Servant Son confronting three impossibilities — and conquering all three.

A man no chain could hold. A woman no doctor could cure. A girl already dead.

In each, the Servant's authority is total. There is no enemy too strong for Him, no condition too chronic, no situation too final.

The man among the tombs

Jesus crosses the sea to the country of the Gerasenes. A man with an unclean spirit meets Him from the tombs.

"He had often been bound with shackles and chains, but he wrenched the chains apart and broke the shackles in pieces. No one had the strength to subdue him."

He lived among the dead. He cut himself with stones. Day and night he cried out.

This is what sin looks like when its tyranny is unmasked. Self-destruction. Isolation. A strength that destroys.

"What is your name?"

Jesus asks his name. The man answers:

"My name is Legion, for we are many."

A Roman legion was six thousand soldiers. This is not exaggeration. This is the truth of demonic occupation when it is fully manifest.

The demons beg Jesus not to send them out of the country. They ask to enter the herd of pigs. He gives them permission.

The pigs — about two thousand — rush down the steep bank into the sea and drown.

The Servant Son does not negotiate with darkness. He commands it. And one word from Him is enough.

A man in his right mind

When the people come, they find the man sitting at Jesus' feet, clothed, in his right mind.

They are afraid. They beg Jesus to leave.

The man begs to come with Him. Jesus refuses, and gives him a different commission:

"Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you."

He becomes the first missionary to the Decapolis. The Servant Son does not always call us to leave our home. Sometimes He sends us back to the very people who knew us at our worst, to tell them what He has done.

The synagogue ruler's daughter

Back across the sea, a crowd gathers. Jairus, a ruler of the synagogue, falls at Jesus' feet. His little daughter is at the point of death. He begs Jesus to come.

Jesus goes with him. But on the way — an interruption.

The woman who only touched the hem

A woman in the crowd has had a discharge of blood for twelve years. She has spent everything on physicians. She is worse, not better. By the Law she is unclean — anyone she touches becomes unclean.

She comes up behind Jesus and touches His garment, thinking:

"If I touch even his garments, I will be made well."

Immediately the bleeding stops. She feels in her body that she is healed.

Jesus stops. He turns. He asks: "Who touched my garments?"

The disciples are bewildered. The crowd is pressing in. Many are touching Him.

But Jesus knows the difference between the press of a crowd and the touch of faith.

"Daughter, your faith has made you well"

The woman comes trembling and tells Him the whole truth. He does not rebuke her for breaking the rules of cleanness. He does not chide her for the indirect approach.

"Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease."

He calls her daughter — a term of intimate belonging. The Servant Son does not despise the trembling, the unclean, the exhausted. He calls them daughter and sends them home in peace.

"Do not fear, only believe"

While He is still speaking, news comes from Jairus's house: "Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the Teacher any further?"

Jesus overhears. He turns to Jairus and says five words that have carried the saints through every dark night:

"Do not fear, only believe."

He takes Peter, James, and John. They arrive at the house, where mourners are weeping and wailing. He tells them: "The child is not dead but sleeping."

They laugh at Him.

"Talitha cumi"

He puts them all outside. He takes the child's father and mother and goes in. He takes her by the hand and says, in Aramaic — the language of home:

"Talitha cumi" — "Little girl, I say to you, arise."

Immediately she gets up and walks. She is twelve years old.

Mark adds a tender detail: He tells them to give her something to eat.

The Servant Son does not perform a spectacle. He raises a little girl and tells the parents to feed her.

The same Christ who silenced the storm, who commanded a legion of demons, who healed a chronic disease — also raises the dead with a tender word. No power is too great for His authority. No need is too small for His care.

Closing prayer

Father, thank You that no chain, no disease, no death can resist the word of Your Son. Reach into our isolation, our exhaustion, our hopelessness, and speak Your "Talitha cumi" over us. Save us from fear. Increase our faith. And send us, like the Gerasene, back home to tell what mercy has done. In Jesus' name, amen.