My Name Is Legion
Here is a note of the hymns we shall read in our service tomorrow, God willing. There is a link to our YouTube channel here You will find us broadcasting live from about five minutes before the start of the service (5:30pm BST, 10:30am MDT).
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Dear Friends,
As we prepare for tomorrow’s worship here are some thoughts that might help to open up the passage before us. In tomorrow’s service we will continue our series in Mark’s Gospel by moving into chapter 5. Sunday’s hymns for reading are below. I hope you have opportunity to look at them beforehand. Our verses are:
Mar 5:1 And they came over unto the other side of the sea, into the country of the Gadarenes.
Mar 5:2 And when he was come out of the ship, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit,
Mar 5:3 Who had his dwelling among the tombs; and no man could bind him, no, not with chains:
Mar 5:4 Because that he had been often bound with fetters and chains, and the chains had been plucked asunder by him, and the fetters broken in pieces: neither could any man tame him.
Mar 5:5 And always, night and day, he was in the mountains, and in the tombs, crying, and cutting himself with stones.
Mar 5:6 But when he saw Jesus afar off, he ran and worshipped him,
Mar 5:7 And cried with a loud voice, and said, What have I to do with thee, Jesus, thou Son of the most high God? I adjure thee by God, that thou torment me not.
Mar 5:8 For he said unto him, Come out of the man, thou unclean spirit.
Mar 5:9 And he asked him, What is thy name? And he answered, saying, My name is Legion: for we are many.
Mar 5:10 And he besought him much that he would not send them away out of the country.
Mar 5:11 Now there was there nigh unto the mountains a great herd of swine feeding.
Mar 5:12 And all the devils besought him, saying, Send us into the swine, that we may enter into them.
Mar 5:13 And forthwith Jesus gave them leave. And the unclean spirits went out, and entered into the swine: and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the sea, (they were about two thousand;) and were choked in the sea.
‘My Name Is Legion’
Too much religion begins with man. You and I shall never understand the way of grace, mercy and salvation until we see it as God’s work, performed in God’s way, according to God’s will. Millions who meet for worship today are no closer to grace than the legion of demons who possessed the Gadarene of Mark 5 – you can be in Christ’s company and heading for hell. If we are not to be among the legion of the damned our only hope is that the Lord Jesus Christ will come and deliver us from the bondage of our nature and the deserved condemnation of our sin.
When Jesus left the coast of Capernaum and headed out into Lake Galilee He was on a mission to find one of His elect. These two did not stumbled upon each other by chance! Like the Good Shepherd the Lord went looking for His lost sheep and knew to find him amongst the tombs. The Gadarene, driven by demons, had no awareness of the transformation that was about to happen, but when God Almighty comes to deliver His people there is no resisting His will.
Throughout the Bible God the Holy Spirit speaks of ‘My covenant’. A covenant is an agreement and this agreement of which God speaks is His own. God made this covenant, this agreement, with Himself to the end that He would save a people, redeem them from their sins and fit them for everlasting life with holy perfection and divine righteousness; righteousness He personally would supply. Those He chose to save were elected from the people of this world as a definite number which has never changed. No one is added and none are lost. These are God’s covenant people.
The Lord Jesus Christ as part of this covenant left heaven, took our flesh, and came to secure the liberty of the elect by redeeming their lives with His life’s blood; interposing and substituting Himself for them. He took their guilt under the broken law of God and He supplies their righteousness according to the gracious gift of God.
God called this great transaction salvation and He freely gives the privileges and benefits of this salvation to those chosen to it. These benefits are eternal life, forgiveness of sin, peace of conscience, acceptance and fellowship with God in Christ. There is consistency in God’s will to save. Christ’s accomplished salvation, and the dispensing of the blessings of salvation by God the Holy Spirit are for God’s chosen ones alone. Election, redemption and conversion unfold in perfect harmony
The Gadarene was one of those whom God chose in eternity, and for whom the Lord Jesus Christ died in time. Now, in order that God’s outpourings of grace be experienced in the vessels of mercy, the Saviour Himself travelled to meet this poor creature and deliver Him from the bondage of sin and Satan. A Gadarene demoniac was to be the very next citizen of the Kingdom of God upon earth.
There, amongst the hillside tombs that ran down to the sea of Galilee, Jesus Christ sought one of God’s elect, cleaned his soul, brought peace to his heart and preached good news in his ear. He whispered, as it were, “I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee”.
A short time before this meeting the Lord Jesus Christ had stilled the wind and stopped the waves as He and His disciples were crossing the sea of Galilee. Now He stilled the heart of a wild man and brought peace to a troubled soul. Such is the power and authority of our King.
It is my prayer that the Lord Jesus Christ will find you, too, in the place of your need, in your lost and helpless state, and whisper peace to your soul. May He, in the preaching of the gospel, rise as the Sun of Righteousness rose that morning upon the Gadarene shore, with healing in His wings when the long night of darkness is over.
Our hymns for tomorrow are below.
Hymn 1
Gadsby’s selection 94
Redemption and Protection. Ps. 40. 2, 3; 116. 8
I. Watts C.M.
1
Arise, my soul, my joyful powers,
And triumph in thy God;
Awake, my voice, and loud proclaim
His glorious grace abroad.
2
He raised me from the depths of sin,
The gates of gaping hell;
And fixed my standing more secure
Than ’twas before I fell.
3
The arms of everlasting love
Beneath my soul he placed,
And on the Rock of Ages set
My slippery footsteps fast.
4
The city of my blest abode
Is walled around with grace;
Salvation for a bulwark stands,
To shield the sacred place.
5
Satan may vent his sharpest spite,
And all his legions roar;
Almighty mercy guards my life,
And bounds his raging power.
6
[Arise, my soul! awake my voice,
And tunes of pleasure sing;
Loud hallelujahs shall address
My Saviour and my King.]
Hymn 2
Gadsby’s selection 297
The Trial of Faith. Ps. 11. 5; Mal. 3. 3
J. Kent 104th
1
Jehovah has said, ’tis left on record,
“The righteous are one with Jesus the Lord;”
At all times he loves them; ’twas for them he died;
Yet oftimes he proves them, for grace must be tried.
2
When faint in the way, or lifeless and cold,
Or sunk in dismay, and none to uphold;
Yet firm to his promise thy God shall abide;
But grace, though the smallest, shall surely be tried.
3
[Temptations and sins in legions shall rise,
As spears in thy side or thorns in thy eyes;
And oft, to thy sorrow, his face he shall hide,
For God has determined his grace shall be tried.]
4
With him on the mount today thou shalt be,
Indulged by thy Lord his glory to see;
There he may caress thee, and call thee his bride,
Yet grace, though he bless thee, shall surely be tried.
5
[The tempest shall blow, the billows shall swell,
Thy soul, full of woe, shall pass as through hell;
And all this to prove thee, to stain thy cursed pride;
Yet still he will love thee; but grace must be tried.]
6
He’ll ne’er thee forsake, but surely perform
His word, though he take his way in the storm;
Yea, oft in the clouds of dejection he’ll ride,
For he has determined his grace shall be tried.
7
He’ll cause thee to bring thy griefs to his throne,
But answers of peace to thee shall send none;
Then sorrow and sadness thy heart shall divide,
Because he’s determined his grace shall be tried.
8
As gold from the flame, he’ll bring thee at last,
To praise him for all through which thou hast past;
Then love everlasting thy griefs shall repay,
And God from thy eyes wipe all sorrows away.