Throw Down In The Synagogue - Series

Mark 1:21 They went to Capernaum, and when the Sabbath came, Jesus went into the synagogue and began to teach. 22 The people were amazed at his teaching, because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law. 23 Just then a man in their synagogue who was possessed by an evil spirit cried out, 24 “What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God!” 25 “Be quiet!” said Jesus sternly. “Come out of him!” 26 The evil spirit shook the man violently and came out of him with a shriek. 27 The people were all so amazed that they asked each other, “What is this? A new teaching—and with authority! He even gives orders to evil spirits and they obey him.”

Introduction

Why Did He Do It?

At about 10pm on Oct 1 a security guard in a Las Vegas hotel went to check on an alert about a door on the 32nd floor that was left open. He gets up there and a guy in a nearby room suddenly shoots 200 rounds into the hallway, and hit that guard in the leg. Then that guy started shooting out his room window at a large crowd below and shot 500 people. He tried to blow up some jet fuel tanks near the crowd, and his car was full of explosives. Evidently, he had more plans for more killing and injury, but his plans fizzled out, and after 10 minutes of shooting, he put the gun to his head and entered eternity.

And everyone is asking the same question: why? This guy was rich, he was living the way he wanted – gambling millions of dollars, staying in luxury hotels, eating at nice restaurants, doing whatever he pleased. He went on 40 some cruises. No history of violence, no ties to terrorism that we know of. Why would a guy like that suddenly try to murder hundreds of people that he didn’t even know?

I’ll tell you exactly why. The talk shows and TV pundits are so predictable. They always say the same thing. They speculate about motive, but they always start by saying, “Obviously, anyone who would do something like that has to be mentally disturbed. Obviously this was a deeply troubled individual who was mentally sick.” And they always use the word obviously. That conclusion is so accepted in our culture that it’s like an axiom. By definition, if you commit mass murder, you have a mental disease.

And whenever I hear that I just want to ask, “Why is that obvious?” Maybe I’m just slow, but it’s actually not obvious to me. Not only is it not obvious to me, but I don’t even see any connection at all between mental disease and mass murder. 50 million people suffer from insanity – how many of them commit mass murder? I don’t know if any of them do. And the people who do commit mass murder – how often do they show signs of mental deficiency? When you read about the Vegas guy and all his planning, it sounds to me like his brain was working just fine.

The definition of insanity is a detachment from reality. When you hear things that aren’t there, see things that aren’t there, feel things that aren’t there – you’re unable to interact with the real world. That’s insanity. There’s no evidence that I’ve heard that this guy had a detachment from reality. It’s not like they went into his room and he said, “What? I’m shooting people? I thought I was playing poker!” No, all evidence shows that he was interacting with the real world and knew exactly what he was doing. They actually examined the shooter’s brain in the autopsy, and they didn’t find any abnormality.

If we want to use the word obviously, I’ll tell you what seems obvious to me. Here’s why the guy did it: evil. I don’t know if he had a mental problem, but I know for sure he had a moral problem. Is that an outrageous thing to say? Am I out on a limb when I say people do things like this because they have way too much unrestrained evil in their hearts? It’s not a brain problem; it’s a heart problem.

Almost all these cases of mass shooters, they find out the shooters were on psychotropic drugs and mood medications. Why don’t those medications prevent the shootings? Because the problem is not chemical; it’s moral.

People call for gun control, but is it guns that are out of control? Or is it evil that’s out of control? It’s evil that’s out of control, and so the only solution is evil-control. We’ve got to do something about the problem of evil in people’s hearts.