Jesus was going everywhere preaching and evangelizing, followed by the twelve, and not without the return of grateful hearts in the women who ministered of their substance. He came not a King as yet, but a sower; and instead of governing in righteous power, was but creating a light of gracious testimony as yet. He next disowns any association with Himself after the flesh, were it even His mother and His brethren. Whatever love to all, and even subjection to His mother, He owed, He most surely paid in full; but now it was a question of the word of God, and nothing else would suffice. Thus even before His death and resurrection there was a complete moral break. Flesh does not understand the things of the Spirit. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.” “It was told him by certain which said, Thy mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to see thee. And He answered and said unto them, My mother and my brethren are these which hear the word of God and do it.” Natural links were proving themselves to be nothing now: all must be of God and grace; and this exactly falls in with the tone of our evangelist.
Then we find the circumstances of those to whom the word of God and the testimony of Christ was committed. Jesus goes into a ship with His disciples, and tells them to go over unto the other side of the lake. “But as they sailed he fell asleep: and there came down a storm of wind on the lake; and they were filled with water.” Humanly speaking, they were in great jeopardy. This was ordered of the Lord, and the enemy was allowed to put forth all his resources; but it was impossible that man should overthrow God. Impossible that the Christ of God should perish. All the blessedness of the servants, if wise, would be seen to be concentrated in the Master; and all their security derived from Him. There was therefore no ground to faith why they should be alarmed. He fell asleep; He allowed things to take their course: but whatever might happen, the ship in which Jesus was could not be unsafe for those with Him. Jesus might be tempted of the devil, and might encounter all storms; but He came to destroy the works of the devil and to deliver, not to perish. It is true that, when the time came, He went down Himself into depths of sorrow, suffering, and divine judgment—far, far greater than anything that the winds or waves could do; but He went down to the death of the cross, bearing the burden of our sins before God, and enduring all God felt against them, in order that rising again He might righteously deliver us to God's glory. The disciples, knowing nothing as they ought, through unbelieving anxiety for themselves (for this it is that blinds the eyes of God's people), come to Him and awake Him with the cry, “Master, master, we perish.” They told the secret. Had their eye been upon the Master, according to what He was before God, impossible they could have spoken of perishing. Could He perish? No doubt, separated from their Master, they might, nay, must perish; but to say, “Master, master” to Jesus, and “we perish” was nothing but unbelief. At the same time they chewed, as unbelief always does, their intense selfishness. Their care was for themselves, not for Him. “Then he arose, and rebuked the wind and the raging of the water: and they ceased, and there was a calm.” Any other would have first rebuked them. He rebuked the raging of the wind and water; and when there was a calm, He asks them, “Where is your faith? And they being afraid wondered, saying one to another, What manner of man is this! for he commandeth even the winds and water, and they obey him.” It is evident that all depended upon the Master. The disciples were to be sent forth on a most perilous mission; but the strength was in Him, not in them; and they from the very beginning have to learn that even Jesus inquired, “Where is your faith?”
Then we find another scene: not the enemy's power shown in stirring up what we may call nature against Christ and His disciples, but the direct presence of demons filling a man. We have this desperate case set forth in one that had been thus possessed for a long time. He had broken with all social order; he “wore no clothes, neither abode in any house, but in the tombs.” A more dreadful picture of human degradation through the possession of demons could not be. “When he saw Jesus, he cried out, and fell down before him, and with a loud voice said, What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of God most high? I beseech thee, torment me not.” The demons had the consciousness of the presence of their Conqueror, the Conqueror of Satan. They dreaded to be bruised under His feet; for Christ “had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man;” and then we have a further description of this power of Satan. “For oftentimes it had caught him: and he was kept bound with chains and in fetters; and he brake the bands, and was driven of the devil into the wilderness.” Jesus was led of the Spirit there, but the devil led this man in misery; whereas Christ went in divine grace, and in order righteously to break the power of Satan.
That the awfulness of the case might be more fully brought out, Jesus asks him, “What is thy name? And he said, Legion: because many devils were entered into him. And they besought him that he would not command them to go out into the deep.” They dreaded their hour. There was the instinctive sense in these demons, that Jesus will commit them to the abyss. “And there was an herd of many swine feeding on the mountain: and they besought him that he would suffer them to enter into them. And he suffered them. Then went the devils out of the man and entered into the swine; and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the lake, and were choked.” This at once roused those who had the charge of them. “When they that fed them saw what was done, they fled, and went and told it in the city and in the country.” They come out, and finding the man out of whom the devils were departed, “sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed, and in his right mind,” they were afraid. Now the state of the people discloses itself. Had there been one particle of right feeling, they would have given thanks to God; they would have delighted in the presence of One who, though to be bruised by him, was to break Satan's power forever. But though they saw “the man out of whom the devils were departed, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed, and in his right mind, they were afraid,” though they knew how the demoniac had been healed, still their own hearts were not won, but the very reverse appeared. “The whole multitude of the country of the Gadarenes round about, besought him to depart from them.” Ah foolish Gadarenes! who bewitched you? They all had alas! a common interest; but the common interest of men was to get rid of Jesus. That was their one desire. After the certainty of His gracious power, after the plain overthrow of Satan's energy before their eyes, after the deliverance of their fellow, restored now, and sitting, clothed, and in his right mind, all their thought was to beseech Jesus to depart from them, for they were taken with great fear. What a proof of the delusion of men! Whatever might be their terrors in presence of the man possessed with a legion of devils, they had greater fear of Jesus, and their hope and object was to get rid of Him as fast as possible. He brought in all that was holy, true, loving. He fed, He healed, He delivered; but man had no heart for God, and consequently sought only how to get rid of Him, who brought in the power of God. Any other person was more welcome. What is man! Such is the world.
Not so with him that was healed. He besought Jesus that he might be with Him; and then stood in moral contrast with the whole multitude which besought Him to depart from them. He had been in far more awful circumstances than they. But such is the power of God's grace. It creates and forms what we should be. If any one, according to natural antecedents, might have been expected to keep far away from Jesus, it was this demoniac, so completely had he been led captive of Satan at his will. But he was delivered, and so perfectly from the first hour that his one desire was to be with Jesus. This was the first-fruit of the Spirit's action in a man whom grace had delivered—the untutored instinct of the new man to enjoy the presence of Jesus. The simplest soul that is born of God has this wish.
“But Jesus sent him away, saying, Return to thine own house, and show how great things God hath done unto thee.” He will have his desire later; meanwhile “Return to thine own house.” This is of price with the Lord, to show God's wonderful works, not merely to strangers, but to one's own house. Such as they would know best the shame, and sorrow, and degradation to which he had been reduced. Therefore Jesus says, “Return to thine own house, and show how great things God hath done unto thee.” The man in faith bows and understands; whatever might be his heart's desire, he is now to do the good, holy, and acceptable will of the Lord. “He went his way, and published throughout the whole city how great things Jesus had done unto him.” Mark, it is of Jesus he speaks. Jesus would have him to tell what God had done; and God would have him to tell what Jesus had done. This could not have been, had not Jesus been the Son of God Himself. Though the lowliest servant of God, He was none the less also God. The man was right. He was not contravening the will of God, nor breaking the command of Jesus. Its spirit was the more kept, even if in the letter it might sound somewhat differently. God is honored best when Jesus is most shown forth.