Restoring Grace

One of the many hymnists from whom we could take an entire year of devotions would be Isaac Watts.  He is known as the Father of English Hymnody.  By the time he was in his early twenties he had written an entire hymnal.  One of those hymns, “Sin, Like a Venomous Disease”, relates to the encounter of Jesus with the mad man of the Gadarenes found in Mark 5.  It is an encounter of great grace both on the part of Jesus and also His disciples.

The third stanza of Watts’ hymn gives us a picture into our own nature bound up in the demon possessed man. “Madness by nature reigns within, the passions burn and rage, till God’s own Son, with skill divine, the inward fire assuage.”  As lost people we are always casting about for something to give us peace within.  The number of seminars given for that purpose and the amount of money spent on them reflects the great desire of mankind for inner peace.  That was the problem of the mad man of the Gadarenes.  All the self help books, societal gimmicks and legal restraints placed upon him had done nothing to alter the inner turmoil he had.  He had demons within and only Jesus could cast them out.

In Watts’ sixth stanza (yes, they used to sing hymns with many more stanzas than that) he describes both the problem and the cure.  “The man possessed among the tombs
cuts his own flesh, and cries; he foams and raves, till Jesus comes, and the foul spirit flies.” Then what happened?  He sat down at the feet of Jesus and listened to Him preach.  There is a great lesson for us all.   When we are in our right mind we will sit at the feet of Jesus and learn from Him.

But the grace in this story was not just demonstrated by Jesus with His healing of this needy man.  Grace was also demonstrated by His disciples.  The man must certainly have terrified them when they first encountered him.  He was violent, scarred, naked and raving.  But we find him sitting with THEM after he was cured.  They graciously accepted him into their circle.  There was no shunning him for his past.  How much we need that grace in our churches today.  We don’t have to elevate them to leadership right away, but we must welcome them as a child of God to share His witness and the blessings of His sacraments.  That was a grace they had learned and we need to apply it, too.  

  The Friday Benediction

Until Monday, my friends, may the good God envelop you with His grace; may you prove the common confession of faith, “I believe in the holy Christian church and in the fellowship of the saints”, and may you be enriched with joy and hope as you exercise that confession this weekend.  Amen

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