Jesus and his followers went to the other side of the lake to the area
of the Gerasene people. When Jesus got out of the boat, instantly a man with an
evil spirit came to him from the burial caves. This man lived in the caves, and
no one could tie him up, not even with a chain. Many times people had used
chains to tie the man's hands and feet, but he always broke them off. No one
was strong enough to control him. Day and night he would wander around the
burial caves and on the hills, screaming and cutting himself with stones. (Mark
5:1-5)
Here’s a trivia
question: Who was the first missionary Jesus ever sent? Someone well trained, perhaps?
You know, someone who had an intimate relationship with Christ; a devoted
follower; a close disciple; a thorough knowledge of Scripture and sacrifice.
Right? Wrong. Here’s a hint: to find this guy, you don't have to go to the
Great Commission. He’s not even on the short list of apostles, or one of the seventy-two
disciples sent out by Jesus. The epistles, then? No. Long before Paul picked up
a pen, this preacher was already at work. Okay, so where did Jesus go to find
his first missionary? A cemetery. And who was the first ambassador he
commissioned? A raging lunatic. The man Jesus sent out was a madman turned
missionary.
“When Jesus got
out of the boat, instantly a man with an evil spirit came to him from the
burial caves. This man lived in the caves, and no one could tie him up, not
even with a chain. Many times people had used chains to tie the man's hands and
feet, but he always broke them off. No one was strong enough to control him.
Day and night he would wander around the burial caves and on the hills,
screaming and cutting himself with stones.” (Mark 5:2-5)
He's the man
your mother told you to avoid. He's the guy police put away on a §5150 hold. He's
the deranged lunatic who stalks neighborhoods and murders families. His fearsome
face and behavior fills television screens nationwide during the nightly news. And
this guy is the first missionary of the church. Terrific. Palestine didn't know
what to do with him. They tried to restrain him, but he broke the chains. He
ripped off his clothes. He lived in caves. He cut himself with rocks. He was a
rabid dog on the loose, a menace to society. He was absolutely no good to
anyone. No one had a place for him. Well, no one except Jesus, that is.
By today’s
standards, the best that modern medicine could offer a guy like that would be a
ton of psychotropic meds, and years of psychotherapy. And maybe, with time, thousands
of dollars and a legion of professionals, his destructive behaviors could be kept
in check. But that would take years, and there’d be no guarantee of success. With
Jesus, it took seconds and the man was permanently healed.
The encounter at
the lakeshore was probably pretty explosive. The disciples' boat had just beached
by a graveyard and a nearby herd of pigs. The disciples are exhausted from the
previous nights’ events – when they’d almost lost their lives until Jesus
calmed the storm on the Sea of Galilee. Now, they’re in Gentile country where
graveyards and pigs are ritually and culturally unclean for Jews.
So you can
imagine their astonishment when they’re met by a crazy man sprinting toward
them from the graveyard. Wild hair; bloody wrists; arms flailing and voice
screaming; naked bedlam. The apostles gawk, then they gulp, and then they put one
foot back into the boat. They’re horrified. But Jesus isn't. And the next few verses
provide a glimpse into unseen warfare where, for just a moment, the invisible
conflict becomes visible, and we, along with the disciples, are offered a
position overlooking the battlefield.
Jesus speaks
first: "You evil spirit, come out of the man." (v. 8) The spirit
panics: "What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?"
(v. 7) Jesus wants the man back, of course. And the demons muster absolutely no
challenge whatsoever. They don’t even offer a threat. They've heard this voice
before, and when God demands, the demons have only one response: they plead. So,
they "begged Jesus again and again not to send them out of that area."
(v. 10) Jesus' mere appearance humbled the demons. Though they had dominated this
man, they cower before God. Though they had laced an entire region with fear,
they now beg for mercy. Jesus’ words reduce them to sniveling, groveling
weaklings. So, feeling safer in a herd of pigs than in the presence of God, the
demons ask to be sent into the swine. Jesus consents and two thousand demon-possessed
pigs hurl themselves into the sea and drown. All the while the disciples do absolutely
nothing. While Jesus fights, the followers stare because they don't know what else
to do. Can you relate? Do you watch a world out of control and don't know what
to do? If so, do what the disciples did: when the fighting gets fierce, stand
back and let the Father fight. Here’s what I mean.
In 1963, my
father and I were in the back of an ambulance racing the two of us, including
my unconscious mother, to the hospital. We’d just been involved in a head-on
collision with a VW Bug driven by a woman who’d crossed over a double-yellow
line as she turned to hand her kids some McDonald’s hamburgers over the back
seat. We were driving in my parents brand new car: a sea-foam green, Ford
Falcon. One minute I was coloring Lassie with a silver crayon; the next I was
slammed into the back of the front seat so hard that it broke my arm. Mom and
Dad weren’t quite as lucky. Mom was unconscious with a broken jaw, and Dad,
among other injuries, had a huge gash in his shin.
Aside from a 5
year-old’s excitement riding in the back of an ambulance racing through red
lights, I kept asking my Dad if Mom was alright. But as the seconds passed into
minutes, the excitement of going through red lights with sirens blaring was
wearing off. It was beginning to dawn on me that Mom was more than just asleep,
and that Dad was struggling to remain calm while wrestling with his pain and
the safety of his wife and kindergartner. I was beginning to wonder if we were
going to make it.
So there’s my
Dad – one hand on his wife and the other clutching his leg which had blown up
to gargantuan proportions. I was in front looking back. Toward him. Tears are
starting to fall. The race against time seems to worsen as the sirens scream.
I’m headed to a location I’ve never been, experiencing a degree of pain I’d
never felt, talking with my Dad whose voice doesn’t sound the same, and a
mother who’s not talking at all. I grab both sides of the railing and hang on.
For dear life. Where’s that hospital? It's buried by a blur of traffic. So, I
look for my coloring book . . . . Oh, it’s still in the smoldering Falcon. I
look for something familiar and all I see is paramedic stuff. Everything I see
frightens me. There’s only one reassuring sight – the face of my father.
Pain-wrecked and
grimacing, he looks ahead with a steely stare. His shirt is stuck to his skin,
and his hands are stuck to his wife. And right then I made a decision. I quit
looking at the stop lights, the traffic, the medical supplies, my mother’s
unconscious face, and just watched my father. It just made sense. Watching everything
around me brought fear; watching my father brought calm. So I focused on Dad. So
intent was my gaze that almost six decades later I can still see him and hear
him say, “It’ll be alright, Tiger; Mom’s going to be okay.”
God wants us to
do the same. He wants us to focus our eyes on him. What good does it do to
focus on the storm? Why study the enemy? We won't defeat him. Only God will.
The disciples can't destroy Satan; only God can. And that's what Jesus did. As
the stunned disciples look on, Jesus goes into action and God delivers a
lunatic. Pigs are embodied by demons. And a disciple is made in a cemetery.
Crazy story? Hardly.
You haven’t heard the half of it yet. Because if you think the reaction of the
demons is bizarre, just look at the response of the people who’d come to see
the train wreck in the graveyard: “The herdsmen ran away and went to the town
and to the countryside, telling everyone about this. So people went out to see
what had happened. They came to Jesus and saw the man who used to have the many
evil spirits, sitting, clothed, and in his right mind. And they were
frightened. The people who saw this told the others what had happened to the
man who had the demons living in him, and they told about the pigs. Then the
people began to beg Jesus to leave their area.” (Mark 5:15-17)
They did what? “The
people began to beg Jesus to leave the area.” You mean the people asked Jesus
to leave? Correct. Rather than thank him, they dismissed him. What would cause the
people to do that? Good question. What would cause people to prefer pigs and
lunatics over the presence of God? Better yet, what would cause an addict to
prefer stupor over sobriety? What would cause a church to prefer slumber over
revival? What would cause a nation to prefer slavery over freedom? What would
cause people to prefer yesterday's traditions over today's living God? The
answer? Fear. Fear of change.
Change is hard
work. It's easier to follow the same old path than to move out into uncharted
territory. And here it appears that the herdsmen didn’t know what had happened
to the lunatic; they only knew that their pigs tried to sprout wings and fly into
a lake. All 2,000 of them. Frightened, they go into town and tell others who
then, in turn, rush to the scene and see the crazy man they’d heard about now
seated, clothed and perfectly sane. They’re confused. So, they share their
story with the shepherds and, collectively, the townspeople conclude that
what’s just happened is sheer madness. Insanity. As a result, the people beg Jesus
to leave because, apparently, he’s the crazy one. And since Jesus never goes
where he isn't invited, he steps back into the boat. But then watch what
happens.
“As Jesus was
getting back into the boat, the man who was freed from the demons begged to go
with him. But Jesus would not let him.” (Mark 5:18) Kind of a strange way to
treat a new believer, don't you think? Why wouldn't Jesus take him along?
Simple. He had greater plans for him. "Go home to your family and tell
them how much the Lord has done for you and how he has had mercy on you."
(v. 19) And there it is. The commissioning of the first missionary. One minute insane,
the next in Christ. No training. No teaching. No nothing. All he knew was that
Jesus could scare the hell out of hell and apparently that was enough.
But even more
surprising than the man who was sent is the fact that anyone was sent at all. I
mean, I wouldn't have sent a missionary to a bunch of people who’d just given
me the bum’s rush out of town. Would you? A plague maybe, but not a missionary.
But Jesus did, and the instructions to that first missionary were pretty simple:
“Go home to your family and tell them how much the Lord has done for you and
how he has had mercy on you.”
Jesus still
sends the message to the unworthy. And he still uses the unworthy as
messengers. So, be a missionary. Tell your story to people you know. It’s not
that crazy.
Grace,
Randy
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