When Jesus Changes Your Life

Introduction:

I want to take a moment and welcome all of you back home to Bethlehem. We are excited to be celebrating our 201st birthday as a church and it’s always a blessing to have everyone back home. That’s what a lot of us love about holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas, isn’t it? We love to be able to get back home to see our family and have everyone under the same roof......at least for a little while. (Pause)

How many of you still have family reunions that you go to? I’m not sure what the status of these types of gatherings is these days, but I imagine they will continue for years to come, because we all like to get together with family, no matter how crazy they may be.

But imagine if you couldn’t go home. Imagine if you couldn’t be with your family? How would you feel? Would you feel alienated and cut off? What you feel alone? Would your life be changed?

That’s exactly what happened to one poor man that Jesus met and what happened to him would change his life and his life’s mission.

Mark 5:18–20 ESV

18 As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed with demons begged him that he might be with him. 19 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.” 20 And he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him, and everyone marveled.

Pray

This man was a mess! He was possessed not by one demon, but by a whole legion of demons! How many of you would want that? I mean, one devil is bad enough, but then you have a whole army in this guy and it rocks his world.

This man is not able to live at home with his family. He’s not able to live in the town. He’s lost his mind, his job, his everything and is living in the tombs. He was bound and was so strong from his supernatural demonic power that he would break his shackles. He resorted to cutting himself and all kinds of terrible things due to the influence of this army of demons inside him.

But one day Jesus shows up. Jesus comes across to this region on a boat with His disciples. This was the trip they made where Jesus walked on water and Peter got out of the boat and began to sink. They had just responded with a question, “Who is this that even the wind and waves obey Him?” The answer is that He is the One that made them and He is also the One that the demons obey as well.

Jesus arrives on shore on the other side and this demon possessed man runs out of the tombs and falls down at Jesus’ feet. You can see the struggle going on. It’s like the man wants desperately to be healed but he can’t help himself against such a fierce enemy. The enemy wants to bind him and yet God won’t allow it. The man has just enough strength to get to Jesus and fall down at his feet, and then the demons take over.

The leader of the demons speaks and recognizes immediately that his company is in trouble. He begs Jesus not to send them into the abyss where they would be imprisoned until the judgment at the end of the world. They ask to go into the pigs and Jesus allows it and then reveling their destructive nature, they run the pigs headlong off the cliff to their deaths.

What Jesus did for this man was incredible and it is understandable that the man would want to follow Jesus wherever He went. But Jesus had a different plan in mind.

There are three things he told the man to do that I believe He is telling each of us as well.

Go Home

Go Tell

Go Do

We are going to take a brief look at each of these this morning.

1. Go Home

Jesus told the man that instead of following Him and His disciples, he had another mission for him. Go home!

Jesus told the man to go where home was. In telling him this, Jesus was restoring the man back to his family and his friends and his job. He was giving him back what he had lost. But more importantly, Jesus was giving this man a calling. He was giving him a mission to go where his people were and be a witness.

God has called each of us to do the same. We are called to go “home.” Home is wherever we are. Jesus said in the great commission,

Matthew 28:19 ESV

19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,

The phrase “go” really is best translated “as you are going.” But you might ask where. Well, Jesus answered that question in Acts 1:8,

Acts 1:8 ESV

8 But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”

For them it was near and far (Jerusalem and the ends of the world). It was to those they liked and who were similar to them (Judea) and to those they hated (Samaria). They were simply called to go and so are we!

But what are we called to go and do?

2. Go Tell

There are two things specifically Jesus tells the man to tell those back home.

How much the Lord has done for you

How He has had mercy on you

In other words, we are to tell people about God’s goodness to us and how He has saved us!

What has God done that was good in your life. This man had much to say. He had been saved from living in death. You know, God has saved each of us from a graveyard too, we just might not know we were living there!

God has saved us and blessed us. The greatest blessing is is our salvation. God saved us from the ultimate graveyard and from an enemy even greater than a legion of demons, eternal separation from God.

3. Go Do

Now, the man went and did what Jesus said. He obeyed. That is at the heart of all of our callings. We are called to obey and do what Jesus has told us to. No matter what that may be.