Have you ever felt this before? If we’re being honest, this is one of the most common feelings among Christians of all ages. We doubt our knowledge, compare ourselves to others, and when we can’t answer a question about Scripture, or don’t know where a book is, it leaves us feeling inadequate. It makes us feel like we don’t have enough to offer.
Many people in our congregations struggle with this mindset. They compare their knowledge to someone who has been studying the Bible for decades. Or they doubt and minimize the knowledge that they do have.
In Mark 5 though, Jesus meets a man who had nothing going for him, and still calls him to go and do great things for the kingdom.
We read of the Gerasene man. When we meet him we learn that he can’t be bound by chains and breaks them. He’s living among the tombs, and is feared by everyone in the surrounding region. Jesus meets him, asks him his name, and heals him. He casts the demons into a herd of pigs, restoring him to a normal state. After the healing all this man wants to do is go with Jesus, to walk with the Man that just changed his life. That was not Jesus’s plan though. Instead Jesus gives him this mission: “Go home to your people and report to them what great things the Lord has done for you, and how He had mercy on you.”
Jesus told him to go and share his experiences. Go back into the town of the people that were afraid of you. Go and share what you are like now. This man had no classical education, no knowledge of the prophets, no teaching experience. The same man who a day prior was in a state that would have caused you to run away from him. Yet Jesus looked at him and said: you have everything you need, go and share.
All the Gerasene man needed to know was that Christ had saved him. He could tell people what he used to be like. What it was like for people to come by and try to bind him out of fear, but how he would break them. How he would scream all night, how he cut himself with rocks, how he was alone, how he was possessed by demons. Then he could tell them about the day he met Jesus. How Jesus asked him his name, how Jesus cast the demons into the pigs, how Jesus saved him. This man headed straight to Decapolis and shared his story. The text says that everyone was amazed.
Now, knowledge is important. From Exodus, God made clear that His people were to know and meditate on His law. The Bereans in Acts 17 were commended because they searched the Scriptures daily. Jesus calls us to be students of His word and we must never neglect that. But James reminds us that faith without works is dead, and the same is true of knowledge without action. May we never let lack of knowledge become an excuse for lack of action in the kingdom.
The Gerasene man had no formal training and no theological background, yet he became an effective evangelist to an entire region, simply sharing what Jesus had done in his life.
What a challenge the Gerasene man is to all of us, that we do not need perfect knowledge, but we do need action. What an opportunity this creates for us in our lives, that we don’t need perfect knowledge to talk to our coworkers, our friends, and our family members that do not believe or know about our Savior. May we be like the Gerasene man this week and go tell people about how our Savior has saved us, redeemed us, and blessed us more than we can imagine. So, “Go and tell the great things the Lord has done for you and how He has had mercy on you.”
—Daniel Collins