Go and Tell what God has Done

​Mark 5:19-20 ~ “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.”
 
We know very little if we do not know the great deliverance the LORD Jesus has given us. By His grace and His sacrifice, we have been set free from our sins and set in our right minds. The encounter of the man possessed of a legion of demons is illustrative of our great rescue as well. I would encourage you to read Mark 5:1-20 and let your heart be drawn into the moment that Jesus delivered this man.
 
This was a man of two conditions. He was a man desperate and a man despicable. We see in Mark 5:6-7 this dichotomy, “And when he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and fell down before him. And crying out with a loud voice, he said, ‘What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me.’” He was man desperate, for he ran and fell at the feet of the LORD. This was pleading behavior in his coming to Christ, a desperation for rescue that could only come from the One who had the authority to deliver him. He was also a man despicable, for he was filled with all manner of unclean spirits who tried to invoke God’s name to keep Jesus from tormenting them. The demonic intruders already knew who Jesus was, and surely the man did as well, for he came to the feet of Jesus. And there the LORD commanded the deliverance of the man and the demons departed and drowned a herd of pigs (see Mark 5:10-13). When the crowd came out to see what happened, the demonic man was changed, transformed from a violent and dangerous man to one who was set right as we see in Mark 5:15, “And they came to Jesus and saw the demon-possessed man, the one who had had the legion, sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, and they were afraid.”
 
The demons were gone the man’s mind was clear—perhaps for the first time in his adult life. And now we come to our text today, for the man wanted to travel with Jesus wherever the LORD would go (see Mark 5:18). I fully understand the desire of the man, and I am sure that as you’re reading this you do as well. Yet the LORD tells the man, “Go home to your friends.” I would venture a guess that it had been a very long time since the man had experienced true friendship. Yet, the LORD knew that there were those who loved the man, were friends with the man and now that the man was set right, would welcome him and listen to his testimony. Not unlike the Philippian jailer who brought the message of the gospel to his entire household, “And they said, ‘Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household’ And they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house.” (Acts 16:31-32). And so, the man freed by Jesus went back to his city.
 
Yet the LORD did not send him without a purpose. We find in our text for today that Jesus commanded, “tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.” What a joy it is to declare to those we know and love, and to those who know and love us, that the LORD has been so very merciful to us. And such was the man’s desire to do as the LORD commanded that he not only went to his friends, our text tells us that he, “went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him, and everyone marveled.” The Decapolis was a group of ten cities that occupied the region where the man lived. He did not contain his gratitude at what Jesus had done, but spread the news across the region that the LORD had delivered him and shown him mercy.
 
Dear Christian, do you know how much the LORD has done for you and how He has had mercy on you? Most who are reading this probably do not know what it is to be delivered from the insanity that this man experienced, but all who belong to Christ know that from their sins they have been set free. In John 8:36 the LORD declares, “So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”
 
If you know the salvation of Christ, let us take upon our own hearts and lives the charge laid by Jesus to go and tell all that the LORD has done and how He has had mercy on us. They may marvel at you, but let them. In hearing the gospel from you, they may themselves find the LORD to be merciful to them as well.
 
In His Grace,
Pastor Michael

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