Go home to thy friends and tell them

Sermon notes from Sunday 5 January 2020 pm
Mark 5 verses 1 - 9, 18 - 20
"Go home to thy friends and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee."

The commission the young man was given

A testimony is what the Lord has done for us.  Someone stands in a court of law and is asked to give an account of the things that have happened, not what they think has happened.  January is the beginning of the year, a new beginning, a fresh beginning.  Testimonies are to tell about a new beginning in a life.  A new life of faith in Christ.  When Jesus does something special in your life.  This young man must have had a wretched life but the Lord delivered him from that life.  He wanted to follow the Lord but the Lord told him to go home and tell his friends what the Lord had done for him.  Can you tell others of what the Lord has done for you in your life?

The experience this young man had.  Salvation is a life changing, life transforming experience.  Not found in a church but the Lord himself.  The Lord came into the world to seek and to save that which was lost.  We were born as sinners, born into this world lost in our sin.  The Lord set aside the glories of heaven to step down into the world to die on the cross to save our souls.  Each of us has an experience if we have been saved.  Each of us have a different experience of the Lord speaking into our lives.  A personal experience that is real, genuine.  This young man before this experience, his life must have been in a real mess.  We are not told his age in this passage but can see him being born into the home with his parents who loved him with so much love.  They nursed and fed and nurtured him, passed from one to the another.  See him growing up, learning to walk, talk and eat for himself.  As he grows up and gets older now he is going out into the village and meeting with others his own age.  Somewhere in his life his life was opened up to the powers of the devil.  He became possessed of these devils.  We are told there were a legion of them, meaning 1000 devils reigned in his life.  That reminds me of the prodigal son.  He was not content with what he had, with the home he had, the father he had, the money he had.  He knew he was coming into money.  The world was beginning to play on his mind.  Not long after he set out into the world and found friends that would take him on a different pathway.  This young man of Genessaret probably had good parents just like the prodigal.  Soon his life took a downward spiral.  He was eating the very pigs food.  He realised he had to go back.  That is a turning away from the life he was leading.  He needed to return to his father and ask for his forgiveness.  The devil was a hard taskmaster to this young man possessed of devils.  They tried to chain him, tie him up.  They tried to help him in every way possible.  There was help in no other than Christ.  "There is no other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved."  He needed a reality of Christ in his life.  No church can give you that reality.  Remember the woman bound and fettered.  The devil had bent her double until Jesus one day saw her sitting in the temple under the reading of God`s word yet the devil had her bound.  Jesus called out to her and he healed her. 

There is the evidence this man had.  He couldn`t have gone home and told without that.  Verse 19 "go home to thy friends and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee."  This young man was going into the very village he had left, the very home he had forsaken.  There were those who would recall what he was like.  Verse 14 those who fed the swine had witnessed what had happened.  They went back to tell all and sundry what had happened in the wilderness.  People came out to see if what they said was true.  They found the man sitting clothed and in his right mind.  This was the evidence before them.  One time he was naked, one time he was tormented, cutting himself, abusing himself.  There was a peace in his heart.  Can you imagine the father and mother coming out to see him.  In Acts 16 Paul and Silas were in the prison house.  The old jailer came in and asked them "what must I do to be saved?"  Paul and Silas led him to salvation.  The jailer went back to his home and what a difference that home was now.  He had everything going against him but now his whole life had changed.  The children wanted to hear more about what had happened to him.  Paul and Silas went into that home and everyone in that home was baptised.  As a result when this man walked out of his home his life was in disarray.  That was the evidence of the change.  "If any man be in Christ he is a new creature."  Nothing else.  There is no growing into salvation but rather a stepping into it.  We grow in grace.  We are however changed.  The old things are passed away and all things have become new.

The expresssion - verse 19.  Jesus said to this young man "go home and tell them."  It has got to be something personal.  A honest expression.  Not asked to explain it but tell. How could he ever tell how it had happened.  How could he ever go into the depths of it.  He never could.  He accepted it as it was.  That was enough.  The blind man in Luke 11.  The Lord gave him his sight back.  The Pharisees and religious leaders were up in arms.  They couldn`t understand what had happened.  He was chased and followed around the town.  They brought the parents in and questioned them.  The blind man looked into their eyes and said "listen, there is only one thing I know, once I was blind but now I see, don`t ask me to explain it, I have accepted it."  You cannot explain God`s salvation tonight.  Jesus shed his blood on Calvary for your sin.  A free gift for you.  He will save you if you only will accept it for yourself.