use that Bible to follow us along
in our text this morning. And I want to read again verses
19 and verse 20 in Mark chapter 5, because this is the title
of my text this morning. The Lord Jesus had crossed the
ocean and faced the storm and came here to the other side where
this maniac possessed with many devils was living in the tomb.
The Lord Jesus cast the devils out, and this man asked if he
could go with the Lord. Can I go with you? I don't know
what his motive was. I'm sure one great motive was
love. I want to be near you. I want
to know more of you. Probably another motive may have
been some concern with these devils' return. I couldn't stop
them before. How am I going to stop them this
time? Lord, I want to be with you. It's strange to me, and
I heard someone say this one time, that everybody in this
incident got their prayer answered but the child of God. The devil
said, don't cast us out into the deep, let us go into that
swine, and he answered the prayer. These people came here and said,
Depart out of our coast. And he did. And here his child
was and said, Let me be with you. And he said, No. No. I've
got something else for you. And here's what it was in verse
19. Albeit Jesus suffered him not, but said unto him, Go home. Go home to thy friends. I'll tell you one thing, brothers
and sisters. If we had more genuine Christians, There wouldn't be
near as many broken homes as there are now. The Lord Jesus loves the home,
doesn't He? Go home. Go home. And I'll tell you something else.
If more people were genuine Christians, the friendship would be deeper
and abiding amongst friends. Go home to thy friends. And look at this. how great things
the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compassion on thee.
And he departed, and began to publish in Decapolis how great
things Jesus had done for him. And all men did marvel." And
this is my text this morning. This is the title. He told them
what great things Jesus had done for him. And I want to give you
these things this morning. It will just take me a few minutes.
But as he went, he did exactly what the Lord Jesus told him
to do. He simply told what great things
Christ had did for him. And here are these things that
the Lord Jesus did, and here's what he would tell us if he was
here this morning. He would tell you much plainer
and with much more power and simplicity than I'm going to,
but here's what he would say, because it's here in my text. What did he tell the people that
the Lord Jesus Christ had done for him? The first thing he told
them was this, the Lord came to me. right where I was. Isn't that what the text tells
us? The Lord Jesus crossed this sea in verse 1 and came over
unto the other side of the sea into the land of the Gaddafrians. The Lord came where I was. If you ask me this morning, brothers
and If there was one critical thing to salvation, if I had
to define one thing and pin it down to just one thing, what's
necessary for a man to be saved? You know what I'd begin with?
The Lord Jesus Christ must come to you. And this man wasn't able
to go to Him, and he had no desire or will to go to Him. This was
the only hope this poor man had that the Lord Jesus Christ would
come to him. And I just about imagine this
is where he began his story. Ain't that where you begin yours? Jesus Christ came to me. And how does He come to us, brothers
and sisters, today? If He comes to you this morning,
I'll tell you how He'll come to you. He'll come to your conscience. He'll come to your heart. And
He'll come by His gospel. He'll come by His Word. He may
come warning you. He may come convicting you of
your sins. He may come showing you your
misery. But if He comes to you to save
you, I tell you, He'll wind up showing you the gospel. How He
saves sinners. And then when you leave here
this morning, your testimony will be the same thing that this
man was. He came to me. He came to me. When I could not go to him, he
came to me. You know Christ is still coming
to men today. Paul was going to the Thessalonians
to preach. And the Lord saved a bunch of
those people, men and women. And Paul wrote an epistle back
to tell them just exactly how it happened. And he said, here
you were worshiping your dumb idols, dead in trespasses and
sins, and the gospel came to you in power and in much assurance. That's the way the Lord Jesus
is coming to us this morning. We don't see visions of Him.
We don't hear His audible voice. But He comes in His gospel. He
comes to you. And this is my hope for you here
this morning that don't know Him, who are yet living in the
tombs of this world among the dead, that Christ will come to
you in His gospel by His Holy Spirit. And there's two things
about this, and you're just almost certain that this poor man told
everybody this. Not only did the Lord Jesus come
to him, but he says, He came to me on purpose. You say, Bruce, how do you know
that? Well, look back in chapter 4, and look in verse 35. The same day, when the evening
was come, the Lord Jesus said unto his apostles, his disciples,
Let us pass over unto the other side. He didn't come here by
accident. He came here on purpose. And
you know, when he came here, this was the only man that he
saved here in Gadab. Nobody else was saved but this
man. He came here especially and in particular to save this
poor Gadarene. And you know He rejoiced in that,
don't you? And I tell you, brothers and
sisters, the Lord is still doing the same thing today. He saves
people on purpose. He doesn't save by accident.
It's on purpose. Spurgeon asked this dear lady,
in his congregation one time, he said, Dear Sister, has the
Lord saved you? And she said, Yes, Mr. Spurgeon,
I believe He has. And he said, Let me ask you a
question about that. Did He save you by accident?
Or did He save you on purpose? And she said, Well, I don't think
my Lord would do anything by accident. So it must have been
on purpose. Ain't that wonderful? That the
Lord came to you in particular? And He came to you because He
had already purposed to do it? And when did He purpose to do
it? Before you was born. Before you ever got in the mess
that you're in now. He had already purposed to save
you. I tell you, this national election
and group salvation, that wouldn't do this man, would it? No, sir. He purposed to save me. Me. That's wonderful. And you can
say that too, can't you? And not only that, but something
else this dear man had to know. Not only did the Lord come to
him on purpose and save him, but the Lord Jesus Christ came
through this tremendous storm to get to him. You go ahead and
read here in this fourth chapter. Verse 37, There arose a great
storm of wind, and the waves beat upon the ship, so that it
was now full. And there was in the hinder part
of the ship a sleep, he was on a pillow. And they awaked him
and said unto him, Master, fearest thou not that we perish?" The
Lord Jesus came to this man, but he came to him through this
awful, awful storm. You know something, brothers
and sisters, the Lord Jesus comes to us to save us. But you know what had to happen
before He could get to us to save us? He had to face an awful storm.
Not a storm like you and I think of, of wind and waves, but the
storm of God's wrath. The waves of God's billows and
justice rolling over his soul. For thereupon the cross of Calvary,
he took our sins. And our sins and the judgment
of God met in this man. And here is what he said, Oh,
all your wrath has gone over me. Your waves and your billows
afflict me. I will tell you what Jonah had
to go through before he could go preach to the Ninevites. He
had to be thrown overboard and go down to the bottom of the
mountains. And when the Lord Jesus comes
to us this morning, brothers and sisters, remember this, He
comes to us in His blood. Don't you see that through the
eye of faith? Every visit He pays us. Not only that original
visit when He came to us and awakened us from our death and
sin, but every visit He pays us now. Look at Him. He's in His blood, isn't He? His garments are stained with
His blood. What did He face? He faced the
storms of God's wrath. And I tell you one thing, if
we had to face what He faced for us, We'd have been saying
like these apostles, Lord, we perished. If we'd have went to
the cross instead of Him, we couldn't have stood there. Angels
could not have bore up under that. He would have crushed them
down to hell. But the Lord Jesus endured it.
He faced the storm of God's wrath. And now He comes to us out of
that and through that. Okay, here's what he said. First
of all, then, the Lord came to me. He came to me. And secondly,
you find it in my text here, in chapter 5, in verse, well,
you can read it here, starting in verse 3. And here's something
else that this man would have said that the Lord Jesus did
for him. He cast the devils out of me. He cast the devils out of me."
What a great thing. Tell them how great things the
Lord has done for you. Well, here's something great
that He did for me. I was bound by all these devils,
and He cast them out. Luke tells us a marvelous thing
about this man and these devils. These devils drove him into the
wilderness. Let me read what Luke said about
it. seized him, and he was kept with
bounds and chains and fetters, and he broke the bands asunder,
and was driven of the devil unto the wilderness." Now, I tell
you, brothers and sisters, you and I are depraved enough. We're ruined enough by our sin.
But I tell you, the devil makes it worse. Do you know that? Man is bad, but I tell you, the
devil will make him worse. Man will do some awful bad things,
but boy, when the devil begins to take control and seize on
a man, he'll drive a person to do things that he wouldn't ordinarily
do. What would make a man leave his
family and go off and live in a graveyard among the dead? That's not natural, is it? We
go in those places and get out of those places as quickly as
we can. Nobody would want to live in a graveyard unless he
was possessed with the devil. What would make a man want to
do himself harm? This man laid his arm upon those
tubes and took a huge stone and cut his arms and cut his body
and abused himself. What would make a person do that?
Devils. Devils. A man told me one time,
he said, you know, I've raised a lot of pigs, herds of pigs,
down in the mountains of Kentucky. And he said, you know, it's not
natural for pigs to run downhill. He said, they're not made right.
They're just not made to run downhill. And when the devil
went into all these swines, what did they do? They ran down a
steep slope. And they all ran and jumped in
the ocean and committed suicide. What made them do that? Devils. Devils. I don't know who this poor man
was. I don't know when this awful thing came upon him. He may have
been a businessman. He may have been well-known in
the community. It seems like a lot of people knew him and
were concerned about him. But I tell you, when these devils
got a hold of him, they controlled him. that controlled him. And he couldn't get away from
them either. Don't you imagine that he tried? When these first
came to him, don't you think he said to himself, man, I can
overcome this? I can get beyond this? And he
goes to the psychologist and he gives them some good counsel.
That don't help him? He goes to his friends and they
can't help him? And he gets so bad, finally they
just tie him up and wrap him up and bind him up. with chains
and fetters, and he just breaks them all asunder, and back to
the cemetery he goes, crying and cutting himself, living in
despair. And here the Son of God comes,
and all he says is, come out of him. You come out of him. And what this man couldn't do
for himself, and what all of his friends and loved ones couldn't
do for him, the Son of God did for him. And you may be here this morning,
dear soul, and you may not be living in the graveyard. You
may not be abusing yourself physically. But you know something? If you're
here this morning and you're without Christ, you're possessed. You're possessed. Devils are in you. The scripture
teaches that, doesn't it? That that's the problem with
man. Not just his own depravity, but he's being led around by
the prince of the power of the air. He is possessed. And he's unable to deliver himself. Until the Son of God comes and
says, you come out of him. And boy, when that happened,
you'll just be a-telling everybody that. He cast the devil out of
me. He cast the devil out of me.
The Scripture says, given thanks unto the Father who hath delivered
us from the power of darkness. The power of darkness. What is
that? That's devils. That's demons. Blind in a person's mind. Brothers
and sisters, there's no sense for us to get mad at lost people.
There's no sense for us to get mean and hateful with. I tell you, there's something
deeper than just themselves involved here. And I tell you what it
is. It's demons. It's demons. And when man has done just as
bad as he can do and he has Down just about as low as you can
go, the devils will take you just a little bit lower. And
they'll hold you. And you can't get away until
the Son of God says, Come out of it. Come out of it. Thirdly, this man went telling
what great things the Lord had did for him, and we find it also
here in verse 15. And this is the first time anybody
ever seen this man do this, and they marveled at it. They came
here, and what position was this man in? He was sitting. He was
resting. And don't you know that when
he went and told what great things Jesus had did for him, he told
them this, He gave me rest. He gave me rest. I'm amazed how
this man's poor body held up under such exhaustion, aren't
you? The Scripture tells us right there in my text that always,
day and night, he was in the tombs and in the mountains. He
didn't ever sleep. If he got so exhausted that he
fell down for just a few minutes of rest, the devils would wake
him up and he would be screaming, and up he'd go and be running.
And he'd sit down, and here comes somebody through, and he'd jump
up and go try to fight them. They were terrified of this man.
I'm amazed how his body held up under such weight. Always. Don't you think rest
meant something to this man? For him just to sit down, Bill,
and not be disturbed. Oh, don't you know he valued
that rest? And everywhere he'd go, he kept
telling people, you guys know me. Charlie, you know me. You come by the cemetery. I ran
you off. I throw rocks at you. I was screaming
at you. You know me, Martha. I came by
your house and woke you up every night. I had no rest. While you were sleeping, I was
in the mountains screaming. You know me. Look at me now. Now we see you. There's a difference.
What's the matter with you? He gave me rest. Oh, isn't rest
a precious thing? And I tell you, it wasn't just
a physical rest. These devils were in this man.
And they kept saying this. They kept saying this to Christ.
Have you come here to torment us before the time? Boy, I tell you what, the devils
tormented this man's conscience. They knew that the Lord had set
a day that He was going to torment them. So they tormented this
man with the thought, you're tormented in this world and you're
going to be tormented in the world to come. So he not only
did he have no rest in his physical body, he had no rest in his conscience. Torment. That's all that's left
for me. Torment in this life and torment
in the life to come. Waiting for the judgment. until
the Son of God came and gave him rest for his conscience.
I tell you, conscience rest is a wonderful resting. Oh, it's
a wonderful thing, brothers and sisters, to have rest in the
soul. When you think, Lord, death is going to find me in a bad
way, and I could go at any time. I may be going back home, driving
on the road. Death comes. They may tell me
tomorrow, you've got three more months and you're out of this
world. I'm going to leave this world. I'm not ready. I'm going
to face God and I'm not willing. Why? I'm tormented over what
He's going to say to me. I'm tormented. You know what you need? You need
rest. And there's only one that can
give you rest, and that's the Son of God. And I'm telling you,
He gives you rest where it really counts, in your soul, in your
conscience. Come unto me, all ye that labor
and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. But listen to
this, take my yoke upon you and learn of me, and ye shall find
rest for what? I love what Isaiah said about
this. He said, there's going to be a root of Jesse. Who is
that? That's Christ. He's going to come to this world
and he's going to do everything that God requires for poor sinners.
He's going to bury their sins and satisfy for them upon the
cross. And Isaiah said, they're going
to seek unto Him and their rest will be glorious. I tell you
what will give you rest, dear soul, when you find out that
everything that God requires of you has been performed on
your belly. God required a perfect sacrifice. Christ offered Himself to God
a perfect sacrifice. And God has accepted that. And
when you see Him, you'll find some rest for your soul. And
you'll be going around telling everybody, I've got rest. I've
got rest. rest for my soul. And fourthly,
look at this, in verse 15 also. This was an amazing thing. They saw him there sitting at
Jesus' feet, and look at this, he was clothed. He was clothed. The scripture says plainly, Luke
says it too, that he lived in these tombs and he was naked.
He wore no clothes. If they put them on him, which
I'm sure they often did, he'd just rip it back off. He wore
no clothes. He was naked. Can you imagine
if the Lord had cast these devils out, and this man was sitting
here at Jesus' feet and still naked? I tell you, he wouldn't be sitting
here long, wouldn't he? He'd be trying to hide. One of
the most natural things in the world is to be ashamed of our
nakedness. Have you ever had a dream that you were naked and
you was out in public? Have you ever had that dream?
I've had that dream so many times. And I am so happy when I woke
up and was laying there in my pajamas. I am telling you the
truth. You know why? I tell you, we're ashamed of
our nakedness. There's something about since
the fall of man, since sin entered, that it's a natural thing for
us to clothe ourselves. And I tell you, if I had to be
up here in front of you this morning with no clothes on, I
wouldn't be here. And you wouldn't be here listening
to me either if you were here without any clothes on, would
you? Don't you think this man was
thankful? Don't you think he counted some wonderful thing
that he was now clothed? Oh, my soul. And I was reading
the commentary this week, and the fellow said, it's a mysterious
thing, where this man got his clothes. Where did he get his
clothes? Nobody knows, do they? He knew. The Lord Jesus knew. I don't
know where he got them. And here's a mysterious thing. Where do we get clothing to clothe
us? We're naked in our souls, aren't
we? Our conscience is naked. You know why we don't want to
go up this morning, be called up to heaven and face a holy
God? Will all of those holy angels
around Him, you know why we don't want that? Because our conscience
is naked. Our souls are naked. And you
cannot stand there without being absolutely ashamed of yourself
and say, oh, rocks and mountains fall on me and cover me from
His face because I'm ashamed. But there is a clothing. There
is garments that will clothe your conscience, clothe your
soul, and you can stand before God without any shame. Ain't
that wonderful? You say, Bruce, I never heard
of such a thing. Don't know where. That's a mystery to me. It is. But you know who that garment
is? That's Jesus. That's the obedience of Jesus
Christ. That's Him. And it will be a
mystery until you look to Him and find yourself clothed in
His righteousness. And then you'll say, Oh, my word! Now I see what you thought. Look
how beautiful! Look how holy I'm dressed! Now
I'm not afraid to stand before the court of heaven. I'm dressed
in the righteousness of the Son of God. Oh, He clothed me. Dear soul, you don't want to
leave this building unclothed. You don't want to continue naked
before God. And He's provided clothing. Christ
is your clothing. Look to Him. Believe in Him. Two more quick points, and it's
this. The fifth one also you find in
here, in verse 15, is this. And he was in his right mind. He was set in, clothed, and in
his right mind. If I asked you this morning,
what was this poor man's problem? You know what a lot of people
would tell us today? Well, his problem was that he
got real loose in his life and left his family. His problem
is that he's out there in the cemetery. He shouldn't be out
there in the cemetery anyway. If he had been right and come
out of that place, he'd solve his problem. You know what? That's the symptoms.
That's not the cause of this man's problem. All his friends
could do was treat the symptoms. We've got something to straighten
you right out. We've got a new rope over here,
boy, and we can straighten you right out. We've just got a chain
that the blacksmith made, and we're going to chain you up,
and that will solve your problem. But what was his problem? His
mind. His mind. That was his problem. He couldn't think right. And I said it a while ago, but
I'll say it again. Brothers and sisters, there's
absolutely no need for us to get hateful and mean-spirited
and mad at lost people because they're not thinking right. Here's what they need. They need
to be put in the right mind. And ain't no one that can do that
for you. One of the greatest problems with man is he's just
not thinking right. He's just not thinking right. And that's one of the things
that salvation brings. It puts a man to thinking right.
And one of the best ways to know if a man's been put in his right
mind, I'll tell you where you'll find him. You'll find him sitting
at Jesus' feet. That's what Luke said about this
man. He was sitting at Jesus' feet. When He puts you in your
right mind, there's no place you're going to be but sitting
at His feet. And don't you imagine that this
man, he saw everything so clearly. He was in his right mind. Before,
he was all confused about everything. How did I get in this mess? What's
making me do this? How can I get out of this? He
was so confused about everything. He saw everything so clearly.
He saw how He got into this man. He saw who had held Him in bondage.
He saw how Christ came and delivered Him, and what it took to get
there, facing the storms, facing those devils in His place. Here's
what happens, dear soul, when the Lord saves you. He'll put
you seeing what you never saw before. You'll just think differently. I used to think, I used to think,
I can't live a Christian. I'll never be able to live a
Christian. I ain't got any sense. I can't escape my sin. I don't
understand. We were having a Bible study
back here and one lady quit coming. It just broke my heart and I
tried to talk to her about it. And she said, I just don't understand.
I just don't understand. You know what she needs. She
needs the Lord to put her in her right mind. The Lord changes,
you see. You'll start seeing yourself
as you ought to see. You'll start seeing your depravity.
You'll understand what happened. You'll understand why the Son
of God died upon the cross of Calvary. You'll know all of that. It will become so clear to you. And what you'll start saying
is, here's my greatest need. Here's my greatest desire. I
don't care if I have to drive through several counties. I want
to go sit at Jesus' feet. I want to hear His Word. That's
where I need to be. And here's my last point. It's
found here in verse 19 of chapter 5. And I'm sure he dwelt upon
this. In verse 19. He told about the
motives, the reason for it all. Why did the Lord Jesus face that
storm? To save me. Why did he challenge
these demons and drive them from me? Why would he do this? And He gives the answer here.
Go home to thy friends and tell them how great things the Lord
has done for thee, and look at this, and have had compassion
on thee. Why did He do all of this? I
tell you, the Lord Jesus gives the answer. He gives the cause
of it all. Compassion. Love. Goodness. Mercy. If you're here this morning,
and you profess to know the Lord, you profess to be saved, and
you're looking for the cause of it, the cause better be found in
God, and not you. The little article we have in
the bulletin this morning, I want you to read it. A gracious foreknowledge. where those men say that the
Lord has saved me and He did it all, what motivated Him to
do it was something He saw in me. That's faith in your pride and
not in His compassion. Why are you saved this morning,
dear soul, and a lot of your friends aren't? What do you attribute
that to? Do you attribute that to a chance
that you took advantage of? Do you trace your salvation up
to the very heart of God's love itself and nothing but that?
I'm saved because He loved me and chose me. I'm saved because
He loved me and gave Himself for me. I'm saved because He
loved me and drew me with His loving kindness. That's the motive he gives. That's
the motive the Lord Jesus tells this man, you go tell them why
I did it and the reason the cause is found in me. Thou hast in love to my soul
redeemed it from the pit of corruption. That's our testimony. May God
bless you. Let's pray.