And he departed, and began to publish - not only among his friends, to whom Jesus more immediately sent him, but "in Decapolis" - so called, as being a region of ten cities. (See the note at Matthew 4:25.)
How great things Jesus had done for him: and all men did marvel. Throughout that considerable region did this monument of mercy proclaim his new-found Lord; and some, it is to be hoped, did more than "marvel."
Remarks:
(1) Nowhere, perhaps, in all the Gospel history does the true humanity and proper divinity of the one Lord Jesus Christ come out in sharper, brighter, and, if we might so say, more pre-Raphaelite outline than in this section. Behold here the Prince of preachers. He has finished those glorious parables which He spoke from His beat to the multitudes that lined the shore. The people are dismissed; but though early evening has come, He rests not, but bids the Twelve put out to sea, as He has work to do on the other side. They push off, accordingly, for the eastern side; but have not gone very far when one of those storms to which the lake is subject, but of more than usual violence, arises; and the fishermen, who knew well the element they were on, expecting that their little wherry would upset and send them to the bottom, hasten to their Master. As for Him, the fatigues of the day have come upon Him; and having other occupation awaiting Him at Gadara, He has retired to the stern-end of the vessel, to give Himself up, during the passage across, to balmy sleep.
So deep is that sleep, that neither howling winds nor dashing waves break in upon it; and in this profound repose the disciples find Him, when in their extremity they come to Him for help. What a picture of innocent humanity! Why did they disturb Him? Why were they so fearful? Was it possible that He should perish? or - "with Christ in the vessel" - could they? How was it that they had no faith? They were but training. Their faith as yet was but as a grain of mustard seed. But He shall do a thing now that will help it forward. He wakens up at their call; and He who but a moment before was in profound unconsciousness, under the care of His Father, looks around Him and just gives the word of command, and the raging elements are hushed into an immediate calm. This sleeping and waking man, it seems, is the Lord of nature. It feels its Maker's presence, it hears His voice, it bows instant submission! The men marvel, but He does not.
He is walking among His own works, and in commanding them He is breathing His proper element. 'What aileth you?' He exclaims, with sublime placidity amidst their perturbation: 'Have I been so long time with you, and yet ye have not known Me? I have stilled this tempest with a word: Doth that amaze you? Ye shall see greater things than these.' And now they are at the eastern side. But who is that who, descrying Him from a distance as He steps ashore, runs to Him, as if eager to embrace Him? It is a poor victim of demoniacal malignity. The case is one of unusual virulence and protracted suffering. But the hour of deliverance has at length arrived. Demons, in frightful number, yet all marshalled obediently under one master-spirit, combine to inflict upon their victim all the evil he seems capable of suffering, in mind and in body. But the Lord of devils, stepping forth from that boat, has summoned them to His presence, and in their human victim they stand before Him.
Ere they are made to quit their hold, they are forced to tell their number, and while uttering a reluctant testimony to the glory of their destined Tormentor whom they see before them, they are constrained to avow that they have not a spark of sympathy with Him, and utter forth their dread of Him, as if the day of their final doom had come. But with all this-the malignity of their nature nothing abated-they ask permission, if they must quit the higher victim, to take possession of victims of another kind, thereby to gain the same end on even a larger scale and to more fatal purpose. What a spectacle is this! That legion of spirits that were able to defy all the power of men to restrain and to tame their victim, behold them now crouching before one man, who had never been in that region before, trembling as in the presence of their Judge, conscious that His word, whatever it be, must be law to them, and meekly petitioning, as servants of a master, to be allowed to enter a lower class of victims on letting go their long-secure prey! But the majesty of that word "Go!" - what conscious power ever the whole kingdom of darkness does it display! Then their instant obedience, the perfect liberation of the poor demoniac, and the rage and rout with which they rushed upon the creatures they had selected to destroy-all at the word of this man, newly arrived on the shores of Gadara! But this display of power and majesty divine was crowned and irradiated by the grace which brought the grateful captive, now set free, to the feet of his Deliverer.
What a spectacle was that, on which the eye of all heaven might have rested with wonder-the wild creature, "driven of the devil into the wilderness," whom no man could tame, "sitting at the feet of Jesus;" the man who walked naked, and was not ashamed-like our first parents in Paradise, but, ah! for how different a reason-now "clothed;" the frightful maniac, now "in his right mind," and in an attitude of mute admiration and gratitude and love, at his great Deliverer's feet! Blessed Saviour-fairer than the children of men, yet Thyself the Son of Man-we worship Thee, and yet are not afraid to come near unto Thee: we fall down before Thee, yet we embrace Thee. The Word is God, but the Word has been made flesh and dwells, and will forever dwell, among us; and of Thy fullness have all we received, who have tasted that Thou art gracious, and grace for grace!
(2) Observe the complicated evil which the powers of darkness inflicted on their victim. They deprived him of the exercise of his rational powers; they so lashed his spirit that he could not suffer even a garment upon his body, but went naked, and could not endure the sight of living men and social comfort, but dwelt among the tombs, as if the sepulchral gloom had a mysterious congeniality with the wretchedness of his spirit; they allowed him not a moment's repose even there, because "always, night and day, he was in the mountains and in the tombs, crying" - his ceaseless misery venting itself in wild wailing cries; nay, so intolerable was his mental torture, that he "kept cutting himself with stones!" - the natural explanation of which seems to be, that one in this state is fain to draw off his feelings from the mind, when its anguish grows unendurable, by trying to make the body, thus lacerated and smarting, to bear its own share.
One other feature of the evil, thus diabolically inflicted, is very significant - "No man could tame him; for he had been often bound with fetters and chains, and the chains had been plucked asunder by him, and the fetters broken in pieces!" And now suppose ye that this man was a sinner above all sinners, because he suffered such things? Nay (see Luke 13:2-3); but thus was it designed that on the theater of the body we should see affectingly exhibited what the powers of darkness are, when uncontrolled, and what men have to expect from them when once given into their hand! Human reason they cannot abide, because it is a light shining full upon their own darkness. Human liberty, which is one with law, in its highest state - "the perfect law of liberty" - this they hate, substituting for it a wild anarchy, that can submit to no rational control. Human peace they cannot endure, because they have lost their own - "There is no peace to the wicked." For the same reason, human comfort, in any the least and lowest of its forms, they will never leave, if they can take it away. And over the howlings and self-inflicted tortures of their maddened victims they sing the dance of death, saying to all their complaints and appeals for sympathy, with the chief priests to Judas, "What is that to us? see thou to that!"
(3) Is it so? Then, O the blessedness of being delivered from the power of darkness, and "translated into the Kingdom of God's dear Son"! (Colossians 1:13). Until then we are as helpless captives of "the rulers of the darkness of this world, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience," as was this poor demoniac before Jesus came to him. The strong man armed guardeth his palace, and his goods are in peace, until the Stronger than he doth come upon him and taketh from him all his armour, dividing his spoil (Luke 11:21-22). It is a deadly struggle between Heaven and Hell for the possession of man. Only, since demoniacal possession deprives its victims of their personal consciousness, rational considerations are not in the least instrumental to their deliverance, which must come by a sheer act of divine power, whereas the soul is rescued from the tyranny of Satan by the eyes of the understanding being divinely opened to see its wretched condition and descry the remedy, and the heart being drawn willingly to embrace it. "The God of this world hath blinded the minds of them that believe not, lest the light of the glorious Gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them. But God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, shines in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ" (2 Corinthians 4:4; 2 Corinthians 4:6). Thus are we in our deliverance from the power of Satan and of sin, sweetly voluntary, while the deliverance itself is as truly divine as when Jesus uttered His majestic "Go" to the demons of darkness and the demoniac was freed.
(4) In this grateful soul's petition to be with Jesus, we see the clinging feeling of all Christ's freed-men toward Himself; while in his departure, when Jesus suggested something better, and in his itineracy through Decapolis with the story of his deliverance, himself a living story of the grace and power of the Lord Jesus, we may read these words: The liberated believer a missionary for Christ!
(5) As Christ took those wretched Gadarenes at their word, when they besought Him to depart out of their coasts, so it is to be feared He still does to not a few who, when He comes to them in mercy, bid Him away. Will not awakened sinners dread this, and welcome Him while it is called Today?
The occasion of this scene will appear presently.