"And always, night and day, he was in the mountains, and in the tombs, crying, and cutting himself with stones" (Mark 5:5).
One
of our Christian hymns talks about God sending His Son whose name is
Jesus Christ to the world. His whole purpose of coming was to save, heal
and forgive mankind. He came to buy our pardon with His own life and
set us free from the things from which we could not deliver ourselves.
He came so that by reason of His coming and His abiding presence
thereafter, we may live forever, free from the shackles of sin and
Satan, free to serve the Lord our God in holiness and righteousness all
the days of our lives. That is the story of Jesus Christ, the Son of the
living God.
Our Scripture for today talks
about a man in the country of Gadara who was possessed with an unclean
spirit. That evil spirit made him do unto himself things that he should
never have done. For example, this full grown man moved about naked. He
was always cutting himself with stones day and night. He lived among the
tombs, sharing habitation with the dead. He did many other things to
himself that were not convenient. Gadara then becomes a symbol of
addiction. It can be defined as a state of being wherein a person is
powerlessly chained to what hurts him. One could be conscious of that
addiction or unconscious of it.
I have come to
discover that there are different types of Gadara. The man who is
chained to tobacco is in his own Gadara. Or how else would you describe a
man who reads "smoking is dangerous to your health" on one side of a
cigarette pack, and reads on the other side, "smokers are liable to die
young", and yet lights a cigarette and smokes again and again? That is
the power of Gadara at work! And just like the man in biblical Gadara,
there are adults in today's world who go about town virtually naked,
exposing their bodies all in the name of fashion. Surely, they can be
accounted as living in a Gadara of their own.
What
about those who are chained to prostitution, adultery and fornication?
That is another sort of Gadara where they continually cut their bodies
with the evil stone of sexual promiscuity and pollution. They surely
need help. And of course, people who are dwelling in the Gadara of
homosexuality, where men lust after each other's anus and women pursue
the abnormality of lesbianism really need to be saved from their own
self-imposed Gadara. I have been told that in today's world, there are
other types of Gadaras where a man may marry his cat, a woman could
marry her dog, etcetera. May the Lord Jesus Christ visit today's Gadaras
and set free the world's demoniacs!
One thing
is common to all who live in Gadara: they need a saviour. That saviour
has God sent to us in the person of His only begotten Son Jesus, who has
been made unto us both Christ Lord. He has come to the world to save
you and set you free. The story of Jesus is your story, the story of
your salvation, healing, deliverance and blessing. It is the story of
our joy, peace and eternal liberty. If the man of Gadara acknowledged
and embraced Jesus, why then should anyone refuse Him? Why should anyone
refuse the joyful news of Jesus Christ? O, that God almighty will open
our hearts unto the wisdom of the coming of His Son, Jesus Christ!
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