Mark 5:19-20 (ESV Strong's)
And he did not permit him but said to him, “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 away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him, and everyone marveled.
Proclaim what Jesus did for you!!
In the above passage the demon possessed man of the country of the Gerasenes has been healed by Jesus. A man once controlled by demons is now a man in his “right mind.” Jesus has changed the man’s life forever. He now wants to go with Jesus. Jesus and his disciples are going into a boat and Jesus did not permit him. Imagine this man’s plight. For years it says he tormented the people around him.
Mark 5:3-5 (ESV Strong's)
3 He lived among the tombs. And no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain, 4 for he had often been bound with shackles and chains, but he wrenched the chains apart, and he broke the shackles in pieces. No one had the strength to subdue him. 5 Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always crying out and cutting himself with stones.
Even in his healing he caused harm to the local pig farmers:
Mark 5:13-14 (ESV Strong's)
13 So he gave them permission. And the unclean spirits came out and entered the pigs; and the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the sea and drowned in the sea.
14 The herdsmen fled and told it in the city and in the country. And people came to see what it was that had happened.
Now Jesus was telling him to go back to his home and tell others what good things Jesus had done for him. This is what God wants from us. We are to go out into the world and show the good work that God has done for us, in us and to us. We are not to fear what we were, but to rejoice in what and who we are. God wants us to proclaim His work in our lives. He does not want us to live in the fear of the past or the fear of the present ... of what people might think of us. The above passage says the man left and “began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him.” Note, later in the book of Mark, what happens when Jesus arrives in the land of the Decapolis:
Mark 7:31-32 (ESV Strong's)
31 Then he returned from the region of Tyre and went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. 32 And they brought to him a man who was deaf and had a speech impediment, and they begged him to lay his hand on him.
The minute Jesus shows back in that area, the people are aware of who Jesus is and what He can do. How did they know that? Because a man with a bad past lived in the present based upon what God did for him for the future.
No comments:
Post a Comment