What is your chain — and whose voice has been doing the naming?

Some of us are in chains nobody can see. For some it is what we have said about ourselves. You made a mistake, and somewhere along the way the mistake became your name. That is who I am. That is what I did. You cannot change the past, so you settle for it. For others it is what somebody else said. You're beautiful. You're ugly. You're smart. You're not. You're in. You're out. You're going somewhere. You're not. And if we are honest, at some point we started believing it. The man in these verses had both. The whole town said he was out of his mind, and they were right. He also said things about himself, and the text shows you what those things had done: night and day among the tombs, crying out, cutting himself with stones. Read verse 4 slowly, because it is the saddest line in the pass

Who is in a place you would consider not on the way?

Look at where this man is, because Mark is stacking the categories on purpose. Gentile territory — unclean. Living in the tombs among the dead — unclean. Surrounded by a herd of pigs — unclean. And possessed. Unclean. On every count available to a first-century reader, this man is dirty, isolated, cast out and torn apart. And that is exactly where Jesus sails. It was not on the way. It was not convenient. It was not comfortable. He crossed a lake in the dark, through a storm that nearly killed the boat, to reach one man in a graveyard on the wrong side of the water — and after this scene he gets back in the boat and leaves. The entire trip was for him. That is what love looks like every time. Not sentiment. Distance travelled, at cost, toward someone who cannot come to you. There is a

Where has your belief stopped short of surrender?

Demons have good theology. That should unsettle you. In Mark 5 they know exactly who Jesus is — Son of the Most High God — and they say it out loud before any disciple in the Gospel manages it that clearly. They know God exists. They know he is sovereign. They know judgment is coming and they are not ready for it. James puts it plainly in today's verse: you believe God is one, and you do well. The demons believe, and shudder. What they never do is surrender. So correct belief is not the finish line. You can hold every true sentence about God in your head and still be in rebellion, because the distance between knowing and yielding is the whole Christian life. Plenty of us learned the right answers early and have been coasting on them since. Notice too what spiritual attack always does i

What have you asked God to leave alone because changing it would cost something?

Watch one word move through this chapter. Begged. The demons begged Jesus not to send them where they were headed. Then the townspeople came out, saw the man sitting there clothed and in his right mind — and begged Jesus to leave. And at the end, the man himself begged to go with him. Sit with the middle one, because it is the strangest. The only person who could have set any of them free is standing on their beach, and the evidence of what he can do is sitting right there dressed and lucid and calm. They ask him to get back in the boat. They were more comfortable with that man out of control than with him changed by the power of God. Why? Partly the pigs — there was a cost, and they had counted it. Partly because a transformed man is an accusation. As long as he was howling in the tom

Who knew you before? Tell them one true thing this week.

The man who was healed begged to go with Jesus. He is the one person in the whole chapter who actually wants him. And Jesus said no. Not never. Not yet. Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you. And he went out into the Decapolis — ten cities — and would not stop talking. That is a harder assignment than the boat. The boat would have been an adventure among strangers. Home is where everyone remembers the chains. Home is where people have a category for you already, and it is not this one. He was sent back to the exact town that had just asked Jesus to leave. Notice what he was given to say, too. Not a doctrine. Not an argument. What the Lord has done for you. He had roughly one day of material and it reached ten cities.

Read Mark 5:1-13 out loud. James pointed out that the man is unclean on every possible count — a Gentile region, living among the tombs, a herd of pigs on the hillside, and the spirits themselves. What does it say that this is the shore Jesus deliberately sails to?

A man no chain could hold, a woman who had spent everything on doctors, and a father whose daughter was already dead. James Drake on the authority of Jesus over what binds us.

James counted three times somebody begs Jesus in this chapter: the spirits beg to go into the pigs, the townspeople beg him to leave their region, and the healed man begs to come along. Jesus grants the first two and turns down the third. What do you make of that?

A man no chain could hold, a woman who had spent everything on doctors, and a father whose daughter was already dead. James Drake on the authority of Jesus over what binds us.

James said the town was more comfortable with the man out of control among the tombs than with him sitting there clothed and in his right mind. Why do you think a person actually changing unsettles the people around them?

A man no chain could hold, a woman who had spent everything on doctors, and a father whose daughter was already dead. James Drake on the authority of Jesus over what binds us.

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Breaking Free: When Jesus Breaks Every Chain · Group Guide

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Mark 5

James Drake Sunday, September 21, 2025

Icebreaker

What is a label you picked up growing up — a nickname, a reputation, a thing people just said you were? Where did it come from, and does any of it still stick?

Discussion Questions

1
Read Mark 5:1-13 out loud. James pointed out that the man is unclean on every possible count — a Gentile region, living among the tombs, a herd of pigs on the hillside, and the spirits themselves. What does it say that this is the shore Jesus deliberately sails to?
2
James counted three times somebody begs Jesus in this chapter: the spirits beg to go into the pigs, the townspeople beg him to leave their region, and the healed man begs to come along. Jesus grants the first two and turns down the third. What do you make of that?
3
James said the town was more comfortable with the man out of control among the tombs than with him sitting there clothed and in his right mind. Why do you think a person actually changing unsettles the people around them?
4
James said the demons in this story "have good theology" — they name Jesus correctly, they know exactly how this ends for them, and they still do not surrender. What does that say about the difference between knowing the right things and following?
5
James named three kinds of chain: what you have said about yourself, what other people have said about you, and what the enemy whispers when you are alone. Which of the three is loudest in your life right now?
6
Jesus told the man, "Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you" — he did not get to sail away, he got sent back to the people who had chained him. Who at your home or work would have to be told, and what is the shortest true version you could actually say to one of them this week?

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Breaking Free: When Jesus Breaks Every Chain · Group Guide

Mark 5

Discussion Questions

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