By Pastor Tony Cirigliano
Preached at Boone, NC Christmas Day 2004
"Go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compassion on thee."—Mark 5:19.
HE CASE of the man referred to in this verse is a very extraordinary one.
It was a very memorable experience in the life of our Savior.
Perhaps one of the most memorable as anything which is recorded by either of the evangelists.
The man Jesus spoke these words to was being possessed with a legion of evil spirits which had been driven to something worse than madness.
He made his home among the tombs, where he dwelt by night and day, and he was the terror of all those who passed by that place.
The authorities had attempted to contain him by binding him with chains and fetters.
But in his madness he had torn the chains apart, and broken the fetters in pieces.
Attempts had been made to reclaim him; but no man could tame him.
He was worse than the wild beasts, for they might be tamed; but his fierce nature would not yield.
He was a misery to himself, for he would run upon the mountains by night and day, crying and howling fearfully, cutting himself with the sharp stones, and torturing his poor body in the most frightful manner.
One day Yahshua the Messiah whom we know today as Jesus Christ passed by.
He said to the devils, "Come out of him" and the man was healed in a moment.
He fell down at Jesus' feet and he became a rational being—an intelligent man!
What’s more, he became a follower of the Savior.
Out of gratitude to his deliverer, he said, "Lord, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest; I will be thy constant companion and thy servant; permit me so to be."
"No," said the Lord, "I esteem your motive; it is one of gratitude to me; but if you would show your gratitude, 'go home to thy friends and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compassion on thee.'"
Now, this teaches us a very important fact, namely, this, that true religion does not break the bonds of family relationship.
True religion seldom encroaches upon the sacred institution called “home.”
Christianity does not separate men from their families, and make them aliens to their flesh and blood.
False Christianity has led men to become hermits, to live in caves or to be cloistered away from their family.
But Jesus said, “Go” to that place called “home” and those who reside there what great things Yahweh has done and how He had compassion on you!
If we are what we say we are, servants of God, then we are to go home to our friends, and our neighbors and our families and tell that what the Lord has done and how He had compassion on us!
Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today and forever!
And He says to us today, "Go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compassion on thee."
Today men and women don’t go to monasteries and converts as in the days of old, instead they make monasteries and nunneries out of their homes.
Many feel that if they could just be rich enough to stay at home with their computers, and TVs and never have to go out of their comfort zone, then life would be perfect.
But really it is a diseased spirit that sees that as the perfect life.
We are not to be without natural affection, especially are we to go to those at home whom we are knit to by nature and design!
True religion never can demand that I should abstain from weeping when my friend is dead.
"Jesus wept." It cannot deny me the privilege of a smile I can give to tell others that the Lord has been good to me.
The religion of Jesus does not make a man say to his father and mother by words or actions, "I am no longer your son."
That is not Christianity, but rather it is something worse than what the animals do.
The animals stick with those that are at their home.
The devil would love us to alienate ourselves from our friends, neighbors and family members.
He would love for us to walk among them as if we had no kinship with them.
Christianity makes a husband a better husband, it makes a wife a better wife than she was before.
It does not free me from my duties as a son; it makes me a better son, and my parents better parents.
Instead of weakening my love, it gives me fresh reason for my affection.
When we have Christ within – the hope of glory we can love Father better, mother better, son, or daughter better, husband or wife better!
At the holiday season we go to see our friends and relatives, or they come to see us.
We should make it a point to “tell your friends what the Lord hath done for your souls, and how he hath had compassion on you."
For my part, I wish there were twenty Christmas days in the year.
Families visit each other, they can be united with old friends, and it affords us a great opportunity to share Christ with their friends.
It’s a wonderful opportunity as inspiration tells us to take advantage of the season and witness for the Lord.
Even in the modern world, it is the great Sabbath of the year, when the businesses close down, when the din of business is hushed, when the mechanic and the working man can be with his family.
I hope those who own a business pay their workers for Christmas-day as if they were at work.
I am sure it will make their houses glad if you will do so.
When we go home to see our friends, and our neighbors, and our relatives Jesus told us what to tell them.
He said "Go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for them, and hath had compassion on thee."
First,
here is what they are to tell; secondly, why they are to tell it; and
then thirdly, how they ought to tell it.
I. First, then, HERE IS WHAT THEY ARE TO TELL. It is to be a story of personal experience. "Go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compassion on thee."
Notice that the Lord didn’t tell us to go and preach to them.
He didn’t tell us to take up doctrinal subjects and preach the doctrines to them.
He didn’t even ask us to try and convert them to our viewpoints on certain things.
He told us to go and tell them what we know, what we have felt, what is our own testimony of what great things the Lord has done for us.
About how He had compassion for us!
The Lord wants us to tell others that He is a compassionate God who has compassion on us!
Tell them what He has done for you personally!
Don’t tell someone else’s story – tell your own!
There is never a more interesting story than that which a man tells about himself.
“Thousands can be reached in the most simple and humble way. The most intellectual, those who are looked upon as the world's most gifted men and women, are often refreshed by the simple words of one who loves God, and who can speak of that love as naturally as the worldling speaks of the things that interest him most deeply. Often the words well prepared and studied have but little influence. But the true, honest expression of a son or daughter of God, spoken in natural simplicity, has power to unbolt the door to hearts that have long been closed against Christ and His love.” – COL, p. 232.
Our confession of His faithfulness is Heaven's chosen agency for revealing Christ to the world. We are to acknowledge His grace as made known through the holy men of old; but that which will be most effectual is the testimony of our own experience. We are witnesses for God as we reveal in ourselves the working of a power that is divine. Every individual has a life distinct from all others, and an experience differing essentially from theirs. God desires that our praise shall ascend to Him, marked by our own individuality. These precious acknowledgments to the praise of the glory of His grace, when supported by a Christ-like life, have an irresistible power that works for the salvation of souls. – DA, p. 347
There is always a great deal of interest excited by a personal story.
Tell them how you were once a lost abandoned sinner, how the Lord met with you, how you bowed your knees, and poured out your soul before God, and how at last you leaped with joy, for you thought you heard him say within you, "I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for my name's sake."
Tell your
friends a story of your own personal experience.
Next, when you tell that story, it must be a story of free grace.
It is not, "Tell thy friends how great things thou hast done thyself," but "how great things the Lord hath done for thee."
When we tell that story, we are to say nothing about our doings, or willings, or prayings, or seekings, but we are to ascribe it all to the love and grace of the great God who looks on sinners in love, and makes them his children, heirs of everlasting life.
Go home men, and tell the poor sinner's story!
Go home, women, and open your diary, and give your friends stories of grace.
Tell them of the mighty works of God's hand which he hath wrought in you from his own free, sovereign, undeserved love.
Make it a free grace story of Christ’s righteousness – what the Lord hath done!
Also, the demoniac’s story was a grateful story.
No story is more worth hearing than a tale of gratitude.
The Bibles says in Mark 5:20, “And he departed and began to publish in Decapolis how great things Jesus had done for him; and all men did marvel.”
I wonder what he told them when he published the good news?
“I was insane, I was in bondage, I used to be chained up because I was possessed, a cut myself, but then I met Yahshua, and He set me free. He gave me back my life! And He is the Messiah – the Lord who can help you too!”
And lastly, when we tell our story – our testimony, it must be a tale told by a poor sinner who feels himself not to have deserved what he has received.
"How he hath had compassion on thee."
It was not a mere act of kindness, but and act of free compassion towards one who was in misery.
As I have traveled around the country doing the gospel worker training, I have heard hundreds of people tell the story of their conversion.
I really, truly get a blessing when I hear a conversion story.
But I have heard some tell their conversion story in such a way that my was not blessed.
They tell of their sins as if they boasted in the greatness of their crime, and they don’t mention the love of God.
There are no tears of gratitude.
Missing is the simple thanksgiving of the really humble heart, and it seems they exalt themselves as much as they have exalted God.
When we tell the story of our own conversion, we should do it with deep sorrow, remembering what we used to be, and with great joy and gratitude, remembering how little we deserve these things.
God is good – all the time!
I was once preaching about conversion and salvation, and I was feeling that the sermon was dry.
Then I remembered, “Hey, you were a poor lost sinner yourself, tell what the Lord did for you!
And as I began to tell of the grace of God that I had experienced myself, my eyes began to run over with tears.
The hearers, some who had been nodding off began to brighten up, and they listened, because they were hearing something which I had felt, and experienced, and they recognised as being true.
Tell your story as lost sinners.
Do not go to your home, and walk into your house with a proud air as a saint come home to the poor sinners.
Rather, tell them like a poor sinner yourself; and when you go in, your mother remembers what you used to be, you need not tell her there is a change—she will notice it.
One day you will be with her; and perhaps she will say, "John, what is this change that is in you?" and if she is a Christian, she will put her arms round your neck, and kiss you as she never did before, for you are her twice-born son, hers from whom she shall never part, even though death itself shall divide you for a brief moment.
And if she is not a believer, you might tell how the good Lord had compassion on her son and what great things He hath done for you!
It might just help mother be a follower of the Savior!
"Go home, then, and tell your friends what great things the Lord hath done for you, and how he hath had compassion on you."
WHY SHOULD WE TELL THIS STORY?
Many can give their testimony at church, but feel
they could not tell their friends, or their father, nor their mother, nor their relatives, nor their brothers and sisters.
We told Celeste Cirigliano, and she did not at first want to hear about our faith!
The the Pepperoni Pizza story how we picked the pepperoni off the pizza that Celeste - my Catholic Charasmatic sister-in-law brought over with a plan to show us where we were wrong.
How that led to a Bible study, and her joining the Adventist Church, and how she is a great worker for the Lord and now her son –Joe’s an evangelist today – Prophesy Again in Atlanta, Georgia!
The Lord would want you to go home this Christmas day as missionaries to your friends, your neighbors, your relatives and your co-workers looking for an opportunity to tell the story of how the Lord has done great things for you, and how He had compassion on you!
Tell if for your Master’s sake.
I know you love the Lord. I am sure you do.
For his dear sake who loved you so much, go home and tell it.
If you love Jesus, young people, tell somebody!
Never refuse to tell the tale of his love to you.
Never should our lips be dumb when we have an opportunity to tell somebody about Jesus – what do you say?
What a privilege it is that wherever we go, we can tell of the God who loved us and died for us!
This man who was possessed by devils, and whom Jesus healed "Departed and began to publish in Decapolis how great things Jesus had done for him, and all men did marvel."
So with you. If Christ has done much for you, you cannot help it—you must tell it.
When I was first converted I told everyone I could.
I told my wife!
My sister, Rosalie who cried when I told her we all are sinners.
I told my brothers and their wives – Angela heard a sonic boom . . .
I told evangelist Joe Cirigliano’s mother who told her son!
What made me want to tell them.
It was because the Lord had changed my life!
He had converted my soul. He had saved me!
He had done so much for me!
Let me tell you a story of what happened to one of the Van workers who are missionaries in New York City.
He was witnessing in the street one day when a young lady walked up to him and began to tell him her tale of woe and sin.
She told how she had been lured away from her parents' home in Georgia, and been brought to New York City where she lived a life of sin to her soul's eternal hurt.
This street missionary told her his story of how God had done great things for him and how He had compassion on him.
He was brave for the Lord and asked her to give her heart to Jesus, and he prayed with her.
She gave her heart, and she was converted!
And what was the first thing she did, when she returned to the paths of godliness, and found Christ to be her Saviour?
She said, "Now, I must go home to my my family and friends."
She wrote them and told them she was coming home!
Family and friends came to meet her in New York City and you can just imagine what a happy meeting it was.
The father and mother had lost their daughter, they had never heard from her; and there she was, brought back by Jesus!
Because the young man told his story to her, she was restored to the bosom of her family.
If she were here today, I am sure she would be glad to tell you and I her story!
"Go home to thy friends, and family", before father totters to his grave, and before mother's grey hairs sleep on the snow-white pillow of her coffin.
Go and tell them all how the Lord had done great things for you, and how He had compassion on you!
Can you imagine the scene, when the poor demoniac mentioned in my text went home?
He had been a raving madman; and when he came and knocked at the door, don't you think you see his friends calling to one another in affright,
"Oh! there he is again," and the mother running up stairs and locking all the doors, because her son had come back – the one that was raving mad.
The children crying because they knew what he had been before—how he cut himself with stones, because he was possessed with devils.
And can you picture their joy, when the man said,
"Mother! Jesus Christ has healed me; let me in; I am not lunatic now!"
And when the father opened the door, he said,
"Father! I am not what I was; all the evil spirits are gone; I shall live in the tombs no longer. I want to tell you how the glorious man who set me free and did this miracle!
How He said to the devils, 'Get ye hence,' and they ran down a steep place into the sea, an I am come home healed and saved."
Oh! if that demoniac was here this morning, he would tell you his story!
If you have a story, go and tell it.
If you need a story of conversion, of a life-changing experience, Jesus wants to give it to you today!
It’s Christmas day! Like Scrooge who woke up and rejoiced that his life had been changed.
He was glad because it was Christmas day – he could redeem the time!
It’s not too late! It’s Christmas day and Jesus is still in the sanctuary in heaven changing hearts – empowering lives – writing joy and His law in the hearts of men, women, boys and girls!