This week we are continuing with last week’s theme on the Most High God, as the lunatic portrayed in this lesson recognises Jesus as the Most High God, the one to which we must submit if we desire inward change.
Will we come to Him and allow Him to strip away anything that holds us bound to our old selfish desires and prevents us from knowing the fullness of His presence working in our lives?
J.M Rowland
5, Tichborne Street,
Leicester
Lesson 4
To Leicester Central, C.E.M and J J’s
December 1st 1940
Matthew 8. 28 – 34
Mark 5. 1-17
There are two types of lunatic – harmless and dangerous.
The story we are going to hear is about the second type.
Nowadays we have special hospitals for lunatics, called asylums, and in these special arrangements for unsafe lunatics are made, but in the days when this story took place, no such places existed.
If a man in a village or town went mad his neighbours would capture him, chain him in such a way that he could do no harm to anyone and then drive him out from the town or village.
The usual refuge of these madmen was one of the caves which abound in the rocky hillsides of that part of the world.
To make their lot worse the people used to use these caves as natural tombs, and so the madmen of the land used to wander in and out of their tomb dwellings amongst the bones and skulls of dead men, yelling and shrieking, cutting themselves with stones, terrible dangers to both themselves and to anyone who happened to be passing that way.
The particular madman we are going to hear about today was of the most dangerous kind, for his madness gave him tremendous strength.
He was so strong that he had burst the chains that he had been bound with and was so wild that nobody dared pass through that district for fear of him.
He lived in some caves in a mountainside by a lake and one day a small party of men were seen to be approaching the shore of the lake in a boat.
Apparently they hadn’t heard of the madman, for they landed without any signs of uneasiness.
Unsuspectingly they pulled their boat in and then they must have had a tremendous fright for, bounding towards them, came a raving, dangerous madman.
Breathlessly they waited, expecting any minute to be their last.
And then a strange thing happened, instead of attacking them, the madman approached their leader and fell down on his face and worshipped him, saying:
“What have I to do with you Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I implore you by God that you do not torment me.”
In what way do we differ from maniacs?
Is it in clothes? Is it in food? Is it in speed?
No it is in self control.
A maniac cannot control his actions; we can to a certain extent.
But do you ever find, chaps that you do things that you don’t really want to do?
It’s easy, isn’t it to fly into a temper, to tell that lie that will get you out of a scrape, to have a peep at the next chaps paper during a test and then, as soon as you’ve done it, to wish you hadn’t?
Well, it’s the madman’s trouble – no self control.
We can’t control that evil spirit within us that makes us do wrong.
How can we gain self control?
Well, how did Legion gain his self control?
He came to Jesus and that is just our cure.
He alone has the power to give us mastery of the evils in our lives.
He alone can change us from chaps who are dangerous to others and to ourselves into useful servants of His.
He alone can give us victory over our sins
In short, He alone can give us that control of self that we all need.
As always a timely message.