Mark 4:35

New International Version

That day when evening came, he said to his disciples, “Let us go over to the other side.”

For Meditation

The call came in. It was an SOS call. A man needed deliverance, and nobody could help him within the entire region where he lived—the region of the Gerasenes. His problems started when a legion of demons took residence in him and claimed him as their own. They tortured this man with reckless abandon, sending him from his home to live in the tombs—from the place of the living to the place of the dead. This man cried out for deliverance, but who could bind those wicked spirits and send them away from him? The people’s attempts to help ease his pain failed. Chains could not restrain him, and when the demons activated their control over him, he acted violently like an erupting volcano, crying and cutting himself (Mark 5:2-5).

After teaching, Jesus responded to the man’s SOS call by crossing the lake. He provided what the crowd needed and turned to the demoniac’s needs.

Dark forces gathered against the Lord’s mission. They convulsed the sea, churned its waters into wild waves, and sent them crushing against the boat to capsize and drown the Lord with his team of disciples. It is foolish when the created raises itself against the Creator. He peacefully rested in the boat’s stern. However, the disciples had not learned enough to trust in Him. How could they when they had not fully comprehended His being—God with them? So, they panicked. Does it sound familiar?

“Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?”

The Master got up and, in a three-word command, quieted the sea. The winds and the waves obeyed like dogs at their owner’s feet.

That is the power and majesty of the Lord—He who created everything, including the sea and all the forces of nature. They hear His voice and respond in absolute obedience (39). O, that we will obey Him that way!

Upon arriving at the scene, the demon-possessed man immediately prostrated to Jesus’s feet. The demons recognized Him and His mission. Trouble had arrived. Their defensive team had failed to thwart the Lord’s deliverance mission and left them to Jesus. They did the only thing they could before their Creator, plead for mercy (5:6-7). Jesus commanded the demons to come out of the man and they had to obey. To Him who alone knows why, Jesus consented to their plea and sent them into the herd of pigs on the slopes nearby, and they drowned (13). Just as the sea had calmed at His command, the demoniac of Gerasenes received his deliverance and had calmed down. They clothed him, and he sat with Jesus. Mission accomplished!

Jesus crossed the sea against every opposition of the dark world to free one tormented soul. What a compassionate Savior! He sent the delivered man to carry the message of hope and deliverance in Jesus to the people in the Decapolis. From torture to freedom and on a mission for the Lord. What a story!

The story of the demoniac is your story and mine of how Jesus came into our convulsed world to save us from sin and death against the backdrop of the opposition of all satanic and demonic forces that confronted Him from His incarnation to His resurrection and ascension. Let us rejoice in our deliverance (Colossians 1:13-14) and go tell the world “how much the Lord has done for [us], and how He has had mercy on [us]” (Mark 5:19).

How are we doing it?