Have Mercy

Photo by Viktoriia Ananeva on Unsplash‍ ‍

“Lord, have mercy!”

If you ever say that or think it, be sure you mean it. If you never say it, maybe start saying it after you read this:

In Mark 5, we read about a horror-film type of individual dashing up to Jesus in foaming defiance. This man lived in the tombs. He burst every chain and shackle anybody ever put on him to restrain him. He wailed all day and all night. He was all disfigured and bloody and scabbed and scarred from all the self-harm he did. And all this because he had a legion of demons living in him!

A legion was a troop of four to five thousand men. How did four thousand demons take up residence inside of one poor man? Did he open up his heart to all of them at once? Did he open up his heart to one at a time? Was it increasingly easier and easier to let in each subsequent demon? We’ll never know.

Here’s what we know, when Jesus cast those demons out of that man, and they went into that herd of pigs, and those pigs stampeded over the cliff and into the sea—when all of that happened, we got a picture of what was going on inside that man. It was utter chaos in his mind and heart.

And Jesus had mercy.

You can have four thousand demons inside of you, and Jesus will have mercy. You can be utterly crazy, and Jesus will have mercy. You can do all the things you have done, and plenty more that you can’t even predict at this time, and Jesus will have mercy. It can make no sense at all once you get some objective distance, and Jesus will have mercy. His resurrection is more powerful. He has taken on all the things we have done and worn our guilt on his cross. He didn’t do that for nothing. He did that for mercy. Cry out, for yourself or for someone you know, “Lord, have mercy!”