5:11
Now there was there nigh unto the mountains a great herd of swine feeding. 12
And all the devils besought him, saying, Send us into the swine, that we may
enter into them.
Devils
crave a body and animals will do. Obviously, not only humans, but animals can
be possessed by unclean spirits.
5:13
And forthwith Jesus gave them leave. And the unclean spirits went out, and
entered into the swine: and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the
sea, (they were about two thousand;) and were choked in the sea.
There
are possibly a thousand unclean spirits in a man or more.
5:14
And they that fed the swine fled, and told it in the city, and in the country.
And they went out to see what it was that was done. 15 And they come to Jesus,
and see him that was possessed with the devil, and had the legion, sitting, and
clothed, and in his right mind: and they were afraid.
Devils
like nakedness. Contrast the shame that a Godly person feels about his or her
public nakedness by the statements in Genesis 2 before the Fall and the
understanding of good and evil. People who insist on displaying their nakedness
to the world are not innocent little children who have no understanding. They
are adults possessed by an unclean spirit which somewhat explains pornography
and much of the activity at the beach, which, as I have heard, 95% of Americans
live within an hour of.
Genesis
2:25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.
5:16
And they that saw it told them how it befell to him that was possessed with the
devil, and also concerning the swine.
Devils
make a person hurt themselves, they want a body to inhabit, and they are drawn
to water.
5:17
And they began to pray him to depart out of their coasts.
Often,
when God’s power is manifest in a person’s life his family and friends want
nothing more to do with him because they want Jesus to leave.
Mark
5:18 And when he was come into the ship, he that had been possessed with the
devil prayed him that he might be with him. 19 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. 20 And he departed,
and began to publish in Decapolis how great things Jesus had done for him: and
all men did marvel.
Decapolis,
from the Greek words, Deka, for ten, and polis, for city, the ten cities, was a
region on the eastern side of what is now Israel. Some of the cities would be
in Jordan now, and the furthest north, Damascus, is in Syria. Most of them,
except for Damascus, were founded between the death of Alexander the Great and
the conquest of Palestine by the Romans. In their beginning, those cities
founded by Greek conquerors had a Greek culture in sharp contrast to the
surrounding Semitic people. The existence of a herd of pigs, forbidden to eat
under the Law given to Moses, shows how much this was a Gentile dominated
region. Until the emperor, Trajan, added Arabia to the official roster of Roman
claimed territories, Decapolis would have been the frontier area for the empire
in that particular part of the world.
Psalm
26:7 That I may publish with the voice of thanksgiving, and tell of all thy
wondrous works.
This
man who had been delivered of so much pain and anguish wanted desperately to go
with Jesus but Jesus ordered him to publish, to let everyone know, what had
been done for him in his home cities. There are many great preaching
illustrations from these verses but one might be how as much as we might think
it would wonderful to go home to be with the Lord as soon as we are saved we
are told to stay here and publish what a marvelous thing Christ has done for us
in our home city. Of course, there are Christians who are mighty witnesses for
God down the road but who don’t even know their own neighbors much less publish
what God has done for them to those folks.
How
many of your neighbors have you visited? Handed a gospel tract to or helped in
some way to show your love for them and Christ’s love for them? Does your
family know your testimony? Do you have a sound witness to them and those who
live around you? If the people closest to you in your family or neighborhood
aren’t drawn by you having the fruit of the Spirit of God flowing from your
life what makes you think God is going to give you the blessing of seeing
people saved twenty miles away? It’s possible the only way that your neighbors
and family know you’re a Christian is by your conspicuous absence on Sunday
morning or Wednesday night.
In
your day-to-day activities around the people you spend the most time with, at
work, at home, in your neighborhood, at the local market, what is your
testimony? Is it that of a person of character who is grateful to Christ for
His mercy and loves other people or are you known as a pain in the neck who
just likes to point attention to how different or weird they are? Maybe no one
who lives around you even knows what you are?
Publish
in (fill the town in which you live in the blank) how great things Christ has
done for you.
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