Netherwood Park church of Christ -- Sharp(er) Focus |
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| VOL. 30 | FEBRUARY 1, 1998 | NO. 5 |
| TELL THE FOLKS AT HOME |
I can’t imagine what it would be like to be possessed by a demon, much less so many demons that they are called Legion. There was a man whom Jesus encountered who was experiencing just that. He wore no clothes, lived in no house, but among the tombs in the cemetery. Others had chained him hand and foot but the strength of the demons broke the chains and drove the poor man away from all other human beings at times. The life of this poor man must truly have been miserable beyond anything we can even imagine.
But Jesus entered this man’s life. It seems, from Luke’s account, that when Jesus met the man, the demons knew what the Lord was going to do even before He commanded them to do anything! They begged Him repeatedly not to order them to go into the Abyss, probably the prison prepared for the devil and his angels. They knew the power of Jesus, that it was greater than that of a legion of demons (remember, a legion in the Roman army was 6,000 soldiers!). Jesus permitted the demons to enter a herd of swine and the swine rushed down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned. Perhaps the demons were also destroyed.
What a relief for this man who had no control of his own life but was now in his right mind! And can we blame him for his reaction which was a desire to go with Jesus? Who wouldn’t want to go away with such a man who was more than a man? But Jesus didn’t allow him to! Instead He simply told the man, "Return home and tell how much God has done for you" (Lk. 8:39). So the man did just that.
Here is the simple message the world needs to hear from us today. It needs to hear from people who were just as bad off as the man from Gadara. Oh, we weren’t possessed by a legion of demons, but we were under satan’s bondage. We stood condemned before God because of our sins. We were lost! And when we came to Jesus, He saved us. He took away our sins. He gave us eternal life. He put us back into our right mind.
We can’t literally follow Jesus around because He has returned to His Father, but we can and must follow Him in every aspect of our life. And, we can do just what Jesus told the man to do. We can "go home" and tell what He has done for us. We can tell our friends how we came to be children of God. We can tell them that we are going to live forever with our Father and His Son. We don’t have to have answers to every religious question others may ask of us, we simply need to tell others about the hope we have in Jesus.
Do you think the demon-possessed man thought for a moment, "What if they don’t believe me"? I don’t. I think he was so grateful for what Jesus had done for him that he went and told everyone he could without worrying about other’s reaction.
Are we that thankful for what the Lord has done for us? Let’s tell the folks at home!
-- Wayne Sharp