They approached Jesus and were healed. The demons were cast out. The demons begged not to be arbitrarily cast out and asked to be allowed to go into a heard of pigs that were nearby, likely a community herd since the whole town responded when the pigs, now demon possessed Ran down a cliff into the sea and drowned. One of the men begged Jesus to take him along, but Jesus told him to go to his home and tell his family and friends the good things that the Lord had done for him. He went into Decapollis proclaiming what God had done.
The accounts in the Gospels are different, and some who want to tear down the scripture as truth try to show this as a contradiction. They say the accounts, can't be true because they differ. This is not what I want to write about this morning, but I do want to quickly and briefly address it before moving on. Mark and Luke's Gospels were both written with a gentile audience in mind, while Matthew was writing his Gospel to the Jews. Audience matters, as it helps show the motivation of what and how a story was told.
Let's say I was sharing at some function with an audience with little to no experience with convicts. I might briefly mention something about how Jesus delivered a couple of felons in prison. It shows what He did, but that's not the aspect of Jesus that is going to help these people see the Savior they need. It might push them away. Matthew's account is sparse in detail and only a few verses long. It's almost an aside. This was a huge event; 2000 pigs died in Israel, but Matthew barely acknowledges it. The Jews wouldn't be most easily or best reached by reminding them of the occupation of their country, nor would they care much that some Greeks lost their pigs and a couple were set free.
But to a bunch of convicts, ex or otherwise, I might tell that same story in more detail. One convict had done the talking and after being set free asked to join the group that led him to Jesus, but was instructed to go back to his area and tell those people. Chances are that there were people receiving Mark and Luke's accounts that were familiar with the story and or the area, because at least one of the men spread the word throughout Decrapollis. Not mentioning a second man, who may not have spoken at all and may have gone quietly about the rest of his life instead of proclaiming what Jesus did for him, doesn't mean there weren't two people involved. It only means that one was important to the audience of the one telling the story. A Greek was set free by Jesus and he told his world. You may have even heard of him. It's only a contradiction if Luke and Mark said there was only one man. If I say a man was driving down the road and yelled at me, so I smiled at him, and then at the next light he hollered an apology, do you know if he was alone? Just because I don't mention the guy in the passenger seat doesn't mean he wasn't there, only that I didn't see him as essential to the point I was trying to make.
Enough of that. Something hit me this morning as I thought about this encounter with Jesus. It was how much like those citizens of Decapollis and the pig farmer I can be. Jesus had just made the area much safer, because two dangerous demoniacs were now of sane mind and no longer a threat. He had shown that it wasn't just a mental illness but true demon activity, because healing someone of mental illness wouldn't cause a herd of pigs to commit mass suicide. He showed His power over demons and His willingness to set all captives free, even the gentiles who had no business, in the minds of most Jews, living in the area, much less raising swine there.
None of that mattered. They knew that raising pigs was considered unclean by the Jews, but they were fine with it. This was a huge loss. These pigs represented their life and livelihood. These unclean animals had more value to them than the Life and Freedom who had come to them. They could have received something far better than what they had lost, but they asked Him to leave.
I have things in my life. you have things in your life, that we know are unclean. Jesus has come, and we have declared Him less valuable than those things we refuse to release, give up and sacrifice. Whatever we hold back from God is more important to us than He is. It has more worth in our heart than the King and Lord who created us. I look at this moment in the life of Jesus and feel sad for those who missed a chance to have a life changing encounter with Jesus because they saw Him as less precious than a couple thousand pigs. But the truth is that those pigs were probably worth far more than some of the things I've asked Jesus to move along without me over.
We have a chance today to have a life changing encounter with the Savior. He will make us free. He will secure our way. He will return us to sanity and give us a life worth living. He will destroy our pigs. It's a package deal. For every pig we hold onto we get that much less freedom, security and sanity and life worth living. Let's see those things that we've come to rely on and associate as part of who we are and define what we do as nothing more than perishable unclean things and not as something more precious than the One who created us and everything that has been created. Don't ask Him to move on without you. Give the pigs directions to the cliff.
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