Tell Your Friends

“And when He was come into the ship, he that had been possessed with the devil prayed Him that he might be with Him.  Howbeit Jesus suffered him not, but saith unto him, Go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compassion on thee.  And he departed, and began to publish in Decapolis how great things Jesus had done for him: and all men did marvel.”  Mark 5:18-20

Jesus and His disciples had entered the country of the Gadarenes, a Jewish community which was a few miles from the Sea of Galilee.  There was a cemetery there wherein a man (Matthew states there were two men) who was possessed by a legion of demons, meaning a very large number of them.  The poor man was seen as crazy by the townsfolks and would have nothing to do with him.  He was a wild man who cut himself with stones and thus was, of all men, most miserable with no hope.  But then so is the man or woman without the Spirit of God dwelling within his or her heart.

When Jesus and His disciples arrived at the cemetery, I suppose the disciples wondered why they were visiting a cemetery, but Jesus was about to do another miracle there.  This pitiful man came out to meet Jesus likely because he was desperate for someone, anyone, who would pay some attention to him.  Mark tells us that the man ran to Jesus to worship Him.  Logic and basic Bible knowledge tells us that it was not the demons’ desire to worship Jesus.  The man did not speak; it was the demons who spoke to Jesus, asking (paraphrasing), “What do You want with us, Jesus, Son of God?  Did You come here to torment us before the time?”  They recognized Jesus as God’s Son and they also recognized that they had no relationship with Him, thus no hope of heaven.  Jesus then called the demons out of the man and asked them their name.  The chief demon told Him that his name was Legion because there were many of them.

The demon begged Jesus to not send them out of the country, but into the swine who were feeding nearby.  Jesus obliged them, but the demons entering the swine caused them to go crazy and run down a cliff into the sea wherein they drowned, all two thousand of them.  The keepers of the swine saw what happened and ran back into town to tell everyone who immediately came to the cemetery.  When they arrived, they saw the man clothed and in his right mind which made them afraid.  They began to beg Jesus to leave their country.  They were Jews who were forbidden to eat pork yet they were raising pigs.  This One had destroyed their livelihood and their food.  They should have been rejoicing over the man who was healed and made whole by Jesus.  He was certainly rejoicing.

Jesus complied with the wishes of the Gadarenes.  He and His disciples headed for the Sea of Galilee to board a ship.  The man who was now experiencing a joy like he had never known before followed Jesus, desiring to go with Him.  But Jesus told him to go home and tell his family what the Lord had done for him.  That’s what a witness does:  they tell what they have seen or experienced.  Ray Stedman in “The Servant Who Rules” wrote that there is a distinction between witnessing and evangelizing.  “A witness says, ‘Here is how God changed my life’, whereas an evangelist preaches the good news and says, ‘Here is how God can change your life.'”

In telling about my salvation experience, I’ve written that went I was saved my life didn’t change a lot.  I was a shy and reserved young woman who had tried not to do anything that would hurt my parents.  I was still that way after I was born again.  We hear stories of how people were living in the “gutter” but was gloriously saved and changed overnight.  That wasn’t my testimony.  However, even though my experience was rather quiet and non-earth-shattering, it was still just as meaningful and important to me as anyone’s.  Over the years, it has made a dramatic difference in how I live my life as opposed to how I might be living today if I had not made the single most important decision of my life.  Absolutely everything hinges on a person’s relationship to God through His Son, Jesus Christ.  No matter what happens in life, we can have the joy that comes from knowing Christ, or we can have the heartache that comes from not knowing Him.