"Great Things He Hath Done".......Boasting in the Lord!

"And when he was come into the ship, he that had been possessed with the devil prayed him that he might be with him.
Howbeit Jesus suffered him not, but saith unto him, Go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compassion on thee.
And he departed, and began to publish in Decapolis how great things Jesus had done for him: and all men did marvel." (Mark 5:18-20)

In this account of the demoniac of Gadara who was delivered and set free by Jesus, I am confronted with the mandate for the recipients of God's amazing grace.

It is certainly understandable that this man who had previously lived such a nightmare existence would want to cleave to Jesus, his rescuer and deliverer, but this was not to be his calling at this time.

No, Jesus would have this one whom He had shown such mercy to testify to the mighty act of a gracious God on his behalf.

His instructions were simple.....Go and tell how great things the Lord hath done for thee.

What of us? Do we not have the same charge? Has God not done inummerable great things for us and has He not not shown unspeakable compassion to us?

We tend to make our calling as followers of Christ a complicated matter instead of simply boasting in the person and work of Jesus in our stead.

As believers we have so much in Christ to glory in and brag on! It is my desire and prayer that my mouth might be full of the testimony of the great things He hath done for me and His daily compassions toward me, and in so doing, see men marvel!

"Awe and Admiration"

We have so much to meditate on and glory in with regards to the majesty of Christ!

In my current readings I came across these contrasts that reveal the beauty of the person of our Savior. We are able to behold some of the many facets of God manifested in the flesh.


*"we admire him for his glory, but even more because his glory is mingled with humility;
*we admire him for his transcendence, but even more because his transcendence is accompanied by condescension;
*we admire him for his uncompromising justice, but even more because it is tempered with mercy;
*we admire him for his majesty, but even more because it is a majesty in meekness;
*we admire him because of his equality with God, but even more because as God's equal he nevertheless has a deep reverance for God;
*we admire him because of how worthy he was of all good, but even more because this was accompanied by an amazing patience to suffer evil;
*we admire him because of his sovereign dominion over the world, but even more because this dominion was clothed with a spirit of obedience and submission;
*we love the way he stumped the proud scribes with his wisdom, and we love it even more because he could be simple enough to like children and spend time with them;
*and we admire him because he could still the storm, but even more because he refused to use that power to strike the Samaritans with lightning(Luke 9:54-55) and he refused to use it to get himself down from the cross."

"The list could go on and on. But this is enough to illustrate that beauty and excellency in Christ is not a simple thing. It is complex. It is a coming together in one person of the perfect balance and proportion of extremely diverse qualities. And that's what makes Jesus Christ uniquely glorious, excellent, and admirable. The human heart was made to stand in awe of such ultimate excellence. We were made to admire Jesus Christ, the Son of God."
(excerpt from "God is the Gospel" by John Piper)

Our Great Salvation

I never grow weary of being reminded of the great salvation that we have in Christ as he condescended to our low estate!


"The brazen serpent was not lifted up because of gnats, but because of the stinging of fiery serpents. And Christ came to save not only the least of sinners, but the chief of sinners. Christ brought no petty cures, but such as physicians could not do, as we see in the case of the woman with the issue of blood and the man's son whom the disciples could not cure (Matthew 9 and 17). Where sin abounds, Christ's righteousness is ordained to superabound. The way is opened to Christ for all sinners who come weary and burdened to Him. He bids none of them stand back. "Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out" (John 6:37). There is more danger of their missing this righteousness who have something of their own to trust in than of theirs who have nothing. Christ sends the rich away empty. Fewer scribes and Pharisees believed on Christ than publicans and sinners (Luke 1)"
(Obadiah Grew)