Note: Devotion taken from last Sunday's sermon on Mark 5:1-20:
Mark 5:1-20 records Christ’s casting out a Legion of demons from a man “dwelling
among the tombs” in the country of the Gadarenes (vv. 1-2). After Christ cast
out this legion, sending them into a nearby herd of swine, the man was found “sitting,
and clothed, and in his right mind” (v. 15).
When Christ came to the ship to depart from that land, the former
demoniac asked if he might go with the Lord, that “he might be with him. Howbeit
Jesus suffered him not” (vv. 18-19).
There is a spiritual lesson here, no doubt. The Lord Jesus acquiesced to the demonic
request to be sent into the swine (v. 13).
He agreed to the populace’s request that he leave town (v. 17). The only request he denied was the one that
came from the former demoniac who had become his disciple! Does it not often seem to us, from our human
perspective, that God allows the desires of the wicked to prosper while the
simple requests of the saints are denied?
How much greater is his wisdom!
The Lord Jesus tells him, “Go home to thy
friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath
had compassion on thee” (v. 19). Perhaps this man had
exotic dreams of traveling with Christ to faraway places to preach the gospel,
and the Lord sent him instead into his own patria, to his own household, family,
friends, neighbors. The Lord Jesus tells some men to go and follow him. He
tells others to stay and follow him.
Mark reports the man’s obedience, “And he departed,
and began to publish in Decapolis how great things Jesus had done for him: and
all men did marvel” (20).
These final verses (vv. 19-20) offer a striking Christological
statement. Christ told the man to go and tell what the Lord (God) had done for
him (cf. Luke 8:39). The man went and told what (the Lord) Jesus had done for
him.
The man who had dwelt among the tombs was now confessing, “Jesus
is Lord.”
Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff Riddle
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