House Guests and Roommates

We're in a series right now that we're calling Cleaning House.

And week one, I kind of introduced I we had two different rooms on the stage, and one of them was the room was trashed.

Okay, it it looked like it was like Aerosmith's hotel room in the 80s, all right?

And then the other side was in order, and we used the the two rooms uh to compare and contrast a life that is in order and a life that's out of order.

If you look in Matthew chapter one, it says that uh Jesus came to save his people from their sins.

And we think about Jesus saving us from our sins, we tend to think of that moment that we bring our past and we give it to God.

And we we become aware of what Jesus did for us on the cross, that through his blood, the blood of Jesus, his death, burial, resurrection, he had the will to and the power to be our savior.

And so we think about like he shows up in our room and it's messy, and uh, you know, there's broken lamps and there's things that have been spilled.

And man, I just love our team.

They they they they did like arts and crafts, like I don't even know how they did that, right?

But but we show up the spills and what what it's like a room that's a mess, and when Jesus shows to save us from our sin, he shows up, um, he he forgives everything that's happened.

Like, because in a messed up room, there's a story behind it.

How did we get there?

Well, there was a fight over there, and we broke that piece of furniture, and somebody lost their temper over here and broke this, and somebody was irresponsible, or somebody did too much over here, and and there's a reason it smells like it does.

And and so when we think about coming to Jesus, we we welcome him in.

He's knocking at the door, and when he comes in, he says, you know what, I'm gonna clean this up.

I'm gonna pay for everything.

Okay, I'm gonna pay for the spill, I'm gonna pay for the cleaning bill, I'm gonna pay to replace the lamp.

And so it's it's um, you know, his blood that pays for uh the penalty of our sin and gets us back clean and right.

But then we kind of now have this clean house.

And what we know about real houses is there's a reason it got in the condition that it did.

And if we don't figure out how to reorder our habits, if we don't figure out how to think differently, to relate differently, to do conflict differently, to do stuff with our temper differently, to deal with temptations and addictions or whatever it is that got us to where we are, this new clean house will go right back to a house of brokenness.

And so when we think about Jesus saving us from our sins, it's not just all the things we did in our past, but it's teaching us and helping us to take a journey and a process to where we live, not in perfection.

I mean, come on, there's gonna be dust on the baseboards.

We're still gonna spill some stuff every once in a while, but to live a life that's different, a life that's in order.

And frankly, some of us who were born into dysfunction uh have gotten used to living in brokenness.

We've gotten used to living with stains everywhere and with stuff not working, and it's become familiar.

In fact, uh some of you can remember the time, the first time you walked into a house that was in order when you had grown up in disorder, okay, literally or figuratively, that it's like this is weird.

And what happens if we don't get this stuff figured out?

You'll think that cleanliness and you'll think that order is weird.

And God may send people in your life to help you get things in order, but you might push them away because it's unfamiliar.

And so we're we're looking at how do we live a life in order.

Uh, today's message, we're gonna call it house guests and roommates.

House guests and roommates.

Uh, not everybody that's a house guest should become a roommate.

There's some people in your life, it's okay to have them over to watch the ball game.

It's okay to have them over for dinner, but but uh they may not be the person, like if you're trying to live a life in order, uh, and they keep breaking your lamp and not paying for it, and they keep going around making a mess, and you've had some talks about it, okay, how are we gonna live?

And I'm using the metaphor here, you can uh extrapolate it out into your experience of uh somebody in your life who's continuing to make messes and you're trying to figure out what is the nature of this relationship going to be.

And I'm not just talking about romantic relationships, I'm talking about family relationships, friend relationships.

There's some people that you have a lot of uh a history with that you're trying to figure out right now what kind of future we are or aren't going to have.

And I think throughout our lives, especially as we're trying to make changes in our lives to live a life in order, we really have to work through uh how do we do relationships.

And so for some of you that are kind of trying to figure that out today, I think I've I've got something to help you.

I I want to use um Jesus in in Matthew chapter 8 and 9.

Matthew 8 · chapter mention

Uh, we're gonna look at two case studies of Jesus where um He brings one of them in as a roommate and the other he just has as a house guest.

Um the first person is uh a guy named Matthew, by the way.

So you have the book of Matthew, Matthew chapter 9, we'll start there.

Matthew 9 · chapter mention

Uh Matthew chapter 9 is uh this is one of the coolest scriptures in my mind because um this is Matthew giving an autobiographical account.

Matthew 9 · chapter mention

He's he's remembering from firsthand experience when he and Jesus became friends.

And so it says in Matthew 9, uh verse 9, it says, as Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at a tax collector's booth.

Okay, let me explain real quick.

So Matthew was a tax collector, and this was a very despised person.

And the reason is the way that the tax system worked where he lived was the Roman government would use Jewish men to tax their own people.

And the way that the system worked is that you would bid on a tax contract.

So if we all lived in Galilee and you and I were both tax collectors, we would bid to the Roman government.

And how do you get the bid?

Well, you get the bid if your bid's better than mine.

So if you say, hey, I'll give you 85% of the taxes, and I was only going to give 80%, they're gonna give it to you.

And so then where are you gonna get that, you know, 5% or whatever, you're going to take it out of the people.

And so because they had the teeth of the Roman government behind them, they could tax you for anything.

If you're walking down the road with your cell phone, all right, they could go tax you for your cell phone, they could tax you for things you were carrying in your bag, and and so there were very little parameters put on these people.

And so, in order for them to make a profit, and some of them were wildly rich, we're gonna look at this in a couple weeks, but wildly rich, folks, at the expense of their own people.

These are these are community pariahs.

You're exploiting your own people with the teeth of the Roman government, and and and you're taxing us to the edge of our capability.

These are very despised people.

And so um Jesus shows up, he sees Matthew at a tax collector booth, and he invites him to be a roommate.

He says, Follow me, he told him.

And Matthew got up and followed him.

And while Jesus was having dinner at Matthew's house, okay, so now Jesus goes to Matthew's house, which to eat dinner at someone's house is to say, I'm good with you, and you're good with me.

It's not just like us where we eat and it's just food.

It's like this is a statement of relational connection.

And so um, so he's at his house with a bunch of tax collectors and sinners, and and he ate with them and his and and his disciples.

And verse 11 says, When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?

If you have the NLT, it says, Why does your teacher eat with such scum?

Which really summarizes, you know, how this looked.

And it says in verse 12, on hearing this, Jesus said, It's not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.

But go and learn what this means.

I desire mercy, not sacrifice.

Now, if you have your Bible in front of you or the Bible app, you probably see a footnote there.

And if you click that footnote and you go to the bottom, it says Hosea 6, 6.

All right.

This is um what's called a remes or it's a hint.

Basically, it's like Jesus quoting a movie line.

Right?

So if I quoted a famous movie line to you, you'd go, oh yeah, I remember that's from that movie.

And if you're really going to get the point of what I said, you'd need to go back to the movie or go back to the episode and watch the whole episode.

So this is just a little nugget for you when you're studying your Bible.

You come up on a remes, you come up on a movie line with the footnote, go all the way back, man.

Watch the whole episode of Hosea 6 so that you know what Jesus is saying, what point he's making.

And the point that he's making here is he's making it to the uh in Hosea 6, God is making a statement to the religious people who are in fractured relationships and they're rooting for the demise of bad people.

And he says, you know, you think that you're good with me because you offer rituals and sacrifices that you think please me, but he said, I would actually rather you not do the sacrifice and offer mercy.

In other words, I would rather you be a part of a relational reconciliation.

I would rather you find it within yourself to go get reconnected with somebody instead of all of this fracture and fragmentation of relationship.

And so Jesus is putting this out to these religious people who would have seen this movie, they would have known Hosea 6.

And when he says that, he's going, look, you're on the wrong side of this story right now.

You want this tax collector.

You're not seeing how he got to where he is, and I'm at this table trying to restore relationship.

And so he says, I've not come to call those who are righteous, but those ultimately who know that they're sinners.

So we have this story of Jesus who shows up in a messy guy, okay, Matthew, who is doing things that aren't right, and yet Jesus invites him, even in his mess, to become a roommate.

All right, let's look at another case study.

This is going to be in Matthew 8.

So if you if we backtrack to one uh chapter, we looked a few weeks ago at um the story of the demoniac from the Decapolis.

Okay, so uh real quick rehearsal of this story if you weren't here.

Um in Matthew 8, Jesus is going to the east side of the Sea of Galilee.

And this is a part of town, okay.

This is a place that Jesus' disciples had probably never gone and never wanted to go.

Okay, the the the Decapolis, the ten towns, this was a place uh where pagans lived.

This is the type of thing like when they're in the boat on the way to the Decapolis, they're looking at each other like, have you ever been to that part of town?

Like, no, man, I've never been to the east side of the Decapolis.

Yeah, man, if my mom knew I was in this boat, I would be dead.

Like, we're not supposed to go here.

This is okay.

And a storm kicks up on the water, which again, they they associated um, you know, probably with God not wanting them to go there.

And Matthew does an amazing job of laying the Jonah story over this story with Jesus and his disciples.

And so now it harkens back to like Jonah, who was called to go to Nineveh, which is the capital of the Assyrian Empire, the people he despised and hated, and yet he goes and and God spares the city of Nineveh because even though they were bad, they were repentant, they were willing to admit it, and and they were willing to change.

And at the end of the story, you know, plot twist, Jonah is completely depressed because he's like, God, I knew it.

I knew you were gonna be gracious, I knew you were slow to anger, I knew you wanted to redeem these people, I wanted them to fry, you know.

And so so, you know, Matthew lays this story over uh to show that the disciples are on their way to the Decapolis, and they want to see redemption for the pagans about as bad as Jonah wanted to see the Ninevites and the Assyrians, you know, be spared and given grace.

And so they land uh on the shore.

Now, here's what we're gonna do again.

This is another Bible study tip for you.

When you're studying in the Gospels, so Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the first three are what's called the synoptic gospels.

So, synonym, they're fairly similar.

The authors probably borrowed from each other a little bit, and you see a lot of the same stories.

They're not outlined and constructed identically, but they're very similar.

So, like this story of the demoniac is in all three of the synoptic gospels.

It's in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

And if you want to spice up your Bible reading a little bit and you come across one of these stories in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, go look for it in the other books because when you look at all the stories together, you get an even better picture, right?

So that's what I'm gonna do super quick for you here.

All right, so in Matthew 8, they land at the Decapolis, and who's waiting for them but the freakiest uh guy you've ever seen?

It says in Matthew 8, 28, uh they came out of the tombs and were so violent that no one could go through that area.

So these guys are known for violence, and they began screaming at him.

Uh Luke 8.27 says, for a long time this man had worn clothing or lived in a house, but he had lived in the tombs.

And so you're starting to get an idea of this guy.

He's he's he's he's not wearing clothes, he's homeless, and he's he's living in a graveyard essentially.

Uh Luke 8.29 says, though he was chained hand in foot and kept under guard.

He had broken his chains and been driven by the demon into solitary places.

And so he's possessed, he's scary, he sounds scary, he looks scary, he's physically powerful, so he's breaking chains, and he has isolated himself, and people are like, you know what, that's fine.

You you you're antisocial, why don't you just go, you know, hurt yourself in private.

Mark 5, 4, and 5 says, No one was strong enough to subdue him.

Okay, so at night and day, look at this.

Night and day among the tombs and in the hills, he would cry out and cut himself with stones.

Okay, so you imagine you're out just at night, you know, a nice fall night in Columbus, Ohio, and you're sitting around your fire pit and you're roasting marshmallows, and you hear this like wailing, and you hear this moaning, and it's this demon-possessed guy who's stronger than everyone, who's isolated himself, but is reminding you I'm not far away.

And so he's making these sounds, and he's cutting himself with stones and and and again, you know, making a lot of noise.

Mark 5, 7 says, He sh when he saw Jesus, he shouted at the top of his voice, What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?

In God's name, don't torture me.

And and this is a powerful moment because to this man who is so obviously in bondage, he's he's not even in control of himself.

He's harming himself, he's harming other people, he's in total isolation, he's living like a dead person in a graveyard.

It's just the picture of bondage.

And yet Jesus shows up with freedom in his hand, and to the to the man, it looks like Jesus has showed up to torture him.

So are you here to torture me?

And so kind of dramatically, Jesus casts the demons out of this guy, and this is where they're in a region, in the region of Susita and Hippos.

It's basically a region that is um has a lot of pig uh herders.

And so actually, one of their big exports economically were pigs.

And so Jesus cast these demons into these pigs, which is it's kind of an interesting image to imagine in your mind, a bunch of demon-possessed pigs.

That might be scarier than the guy, right?

Terrifying, okay.

But these uh demon-possessed pigs go and basically drown themselves in the water.

And the story gets a little more complicated because this now creates an economic hardship to that region, right?

You have this guy who's now free.

Okay, let's actually jump back into the story in verse 34.

It says, When those tending the pigs saw what happened, they ran off and reported this uh in the town and countryside, and the people went out to see what had happened.

Uh, when they came to Jesus, they found the man from whom the demons had gone out sitting at Jesus' feet, dressed and in his right mind, and they were afraid.

So now you have this moment where this guy who everybody just kind of wished would go away and disappear.

Frankly, they probably wished that guy would have drowned, versus all of their now business.

Now a person who is just out there herding sheep, their business is is is dead ultimately.

And so now these people in the community have a guy who's in his right mind, but then this dramatic story.

And so, and then people start to um it says they were afraid.

Like, what in the world happened?

This is not a normal series of events.

Verse 36 those who who had seen it told the people how the demon-possessed man had been cured.

So they there was eyewitnesses, like here's what happened.

It said, all the people of the region of the Garrisons that were there asked Jesus to leave them because they were overcome with fear, and so he got in the boat and left.

So you have these this interesting situation.

You have this guy who's been really bad in his behavior, he's been very antisocial, he's been a menace.

And now Jesus has encountered him, and Jesus has set him free, and yet it was at the expense of their economy, and they're afraid and they don't understand it, and it's weird, and they don't know who they can trust.

They don't they don't know Jesus, they can't trust him.

Of course, are we just gonna trust this demoniac who's he's been terrorizing us?

And so Jesus is about to leave, and look at this verse 38.

The man from whom the demons had gone out begged to go with him, but Jesus sent him away saying, Return home and tell how much God has done for you.

So the man went away and told all over town how much Jesus had done for him.

A lot of times when we're reading the Bible, we just stop thinking about it then and we just read on to the next thing.

But I I like to sit with it.

I like to think about like that moment, you know.

And a few things come to mind.

One is, man, it just aren't you rooting for the guy to be on Jesus' team now?

Like you kind of want him to be one of the roommates, right?

You're kind of hoping Jesus is like, Peter, slide over.

All right, we're gonna bring Damien on the team now.

You know, he was a demon guy and now he's free, and so this is gonna be a great testimony.

Like, we're gonna take him back over to uh you know the other side.

We're gonna go back home and we're gonna take him with us, and and um and and he and he doesn't.

And we we don't have any uh evidence that Jesus had a real long conversation with the guy.

It seemed fairly brief.

He's like, look, you were in bondage, and now you're free, and you might be the most popular guy in town, but you're uniquely positioned to go back and be a testimony.

So Jesus, instead of making him a roommate, he was more of a house guest.

He sat with him, he got right with him, he had an encounter with him, but they he didn't move him in.

He sent him off.

You can imagine in this situation, the journey back into town was probably a little choppy.

Not everybody's happy to see you coming back in your right mind.

In some ways, I'm I'm sure the man felt this incredible gratitude to Jesus.

Like, I was in so much bondage.

It felt like torture in the moment, but on the other side of freedom, I just want every person in bondage to experience this freedom.

And so, Jesus, I'll carry your water.

Jesus, I'll follow you wherever we go.

Jesus, I'll be on your security team, Jesus, I'll be your wingman.

Jesus, just you use me as a testimony.

And I want to walk where you walk, and I want to live a life of purpose.

And so I'm sure there was a lot of purity in his request to follow Jesus.

And yet there probably was more to it.

Because when you've been wailing and harming yourself in front of everyone in the decapolis, and you've hurt people, and you've violated people, and you've blown up some relationships, and you've created quite a reputation in your community, there's a part of you that wants to just avoid that place and to go start over in some new place instead of going back to face the people of the village who you hurt.

And so Jesus recognized, you know, this isn't torture, but this was part of his calling to go back into the place, to go back to the people as someone who had been saved from their sin past tense, but to be able to live in a sustained state of change future tense, to be able to live differently, not just this guy who goes right back to his demons, not just a guy who goes right back to violence, and and so you have to think for this.

Demoniac for this guy.

He had to be willing to walk through and to not have everybody buy the story right away.

Like there's going to be some folks who are never going to root for you again.

There's going to be some folks that are never going to welcome you back in.

There are some houses that won't even have you back as a house guest, much less a roommate.

But there are some people who are in bondage and God is going to use you in your testimony of somebody who went from living in disorder to being able to sustain a life of change.

If you walk it out faithfully, slowly, not just this flash in the pan, but if you can sustain it and you walk in that freedom, continuing to see Jesus not just as your savior in the moment, but your Lord who is helping order your life moving forward, God can use you in a special, special way.

And I think we have to think of this all the way through because some of us, um, when you think about the demoniac, and some of you can go, man, I I have made messes and I have burned some people, some good people who cared about me.

I was, I was, I was violent and I hurt myself in front of them, and there was nothing they could do.

I went to solitary places.

I pushed everyone away.

People were reaching out to me, and I wasn't reaching back.

And so you created this, like, I'm living among the tombs and and I'm wailing, and I'm, you know, all of this.

And so you understand that to walk back in, I'm gonna have to give grace to people.

I'm gonna have to give grace to people, especially if you've come out of the tombs a few times and declared that I'm good and then went back to harming people.

Like, like you've got to be patient and you have to settle in for the long haul to allow Jesus to not only forgive you from what you've done, but to help you go through a painful process that might feel kind of like that torture you were worried about, to get in a place where I no longer live like this.

But what about the village people?

Like the people of the village who, many of whom like maybe wanted to forgive, but like I think we've all been in that spot where you're like rooting for someone, but maybe you're rooting for them more than they're rooting for themselves.

Like you're hoping that they sustain and you've gotten pump faked a few times, and you you've gotten juke out, and you you've trusted and you believed and you've forgiven, and it's like, man, how long is this like a pattern that I just I I you know what?

Sorry.

Um okay, here's here's here's why I want to give you a piece of advice because I uh I I want to give you a kind of a tool that I'll use when I'm trying to forgive someone, I'm having a hard time forgiving, and but I'm not wanting to get suckered into foolish patterns just because I care about someone.

Okay?

So so think of it like this.

Um, if someone is uh hard to forgive, someone that's hurt you, like the demoniac, and you're trying to figure out what to do with them, you have to take them out of the emotion of the story, take them out of the story and look at them in a vacuum so that you can humanize them and forgive them, and then you're gonna have to put them back in the story so that you can figure out what are your next steps and what proximity are they gonna have in your life.

Let me let me give let me give an example.

Um, let's say somebody really hurt someone I love, uh, abused one of my family members, or abused one of my kids, or they they did something horrific, and some many of you have have experienced something where somebody did something horrible to someone you love, which is like the worst.

You you'd almost rather it be done to you, and some of you it was done to you.

But but when you think about like someone doing something that feels like it's beyond your ability to forgive, okay, how how do I not just get totally locked into bitterness and and become vindictive and and go down that abyss?

Okay, you have to take them out of the emotion of the story.

And so you take this person out and you go, okay, this is a demoniac.

How did this person end up full of demons?

You know, how did that happen?

At one point, this human being was an infant that was then a toddler that grew up in a family.

And if I can look at that person as a human being and just put aside my emotions, put aside how upset I am for what you did to my daughter, or what you did to my son, or what you did to you know, my sister, or what you did to me, and I can look at you in a vacuum like I'd never known you before, but I'm learning about you, and I can understand how you got all those demons in you, and how you became so violent, and why you hurt yourself so bad and everybody else, and why you were wailing at night, and all of this.

And if you can do that, then you can humanize someone, and when you can humanize someone, you can empathize and sympathize with someone, and when I can do that, I can get to a place where I can give grace and I can forgive.

And it lit, I mean, that it really takes an intentional effort to take them out of the emotion because it's so much easier to get stuck in, they're just a dirty demoniac.

So if I'm not careful and I just always see them as a dirty demoniac, what I'll do is I I will operate out of vengeance and revenge and all of that.

If I take them out, I can forgive them.

Now, once I've forgiven them, I put them back in the story.

And when I put them back in the story now, without being, you know, hoping for vengeance and all of this, I can decide with a cool head, with a clear heart.

I can pray and think and discuss and figure out where does this person go in my life?

I uh it may be, look, I don't wish you any harm, but you're not gonna be a roommate.

Or you're not even gonna be a house guest anymore.

There's gonna have to be a long period of sustained change because of the amount of time you've been in the tombs and what you did before.

Okay, all of that.

I I'm gonna have to see this.

Now, this isn't because I'm rooting for your demise.

This is I've forgiven you, I've taken you out of the story, but I'm putting you back in, and I have to go, what is the wise relationship with this person?

I I shared this in a sermon in 2021, but nobody remembers back that far.

And so I'm gonna give you real quick, this is um, this is a progression.

Like if you're trying to figure out, you're in the process of forgiving, and you're like, I don't even know if I've forgiven the person.

Like I'm trying to, but I don't know.

Like I'm not sure if I've forgiven.

This is what I've noticed in my own challenges of forgiving, uh, kind of four phases.

Um, the the first is uh tearing them down.

So if somebody I'm like, I maybe haven't even started forgiving them yet.

I I just uh like I'm ticked at you because you're you're a demoniac and you're violent and you hurt me or you hurt people I love.

And so actually, I'm going to play offense in trying to destroy your life.

I want to scorch the earth.

I want to let everybody know how bad you are.

I'm gonna, you know, if if you start moving and shaking, I'm gonna be right behind you telling everybody who you really are.

Okay, and so I I really just frankly, uh I I want you to pay and I want you to suffer.

Uh, and I I want a chunk a chunk of flesh, okay?

Um, so that's tearing them down, that's aggressive, that's proactive.

The next is just hoping they fail.

All right.

So it's like, you know, I'm not attacking you.

I'm not actually trying to destroy you.

I I just hope you fail.

You know, I just hope it doesn't work out.

Like, you know, it's your ex and they treated you like garbage, but now they have a new girlfriend and she's the sun, moon, earth, and stars, and all of a sudden they they know how to buy flowers and and and they know how to be romantic again, and they're like, oh, it's just my earth.

Finally, I found the one.

And you're like, yeah, all right.

You know, wait till and and then they break up and you're like, that's so terrible.

You know, no, nobody, nobody saw that coming, you know, oh my goodness.

You you're just hoping that it blows up in their face.

Now you're not like going on and and and tearing them that you're just rooting in private for a for a nice failure.

And then and then the next is, you know, I I I work my way, uh, and maybe you start to see some change in this person, and there's some change in you, and your heart is becoming soft again, and and and you go, you know what?

I I just I hope they succeed.

I hope they succeed.

I I don't have it in me to go help them.

I just hope they I don't want them to be alone forever.

I don't want them to be in bondage forever.

I don't want them to be demon-possessed forever.

I don't want them to be living in tombs forever.

I don't want them to be cutting themselves with stones forever.

I don't want them to be wailing in the night forever.

I I hope, I really truly hope that they find some peace.

I hope they get to a better place.

And then the fourth, and not everybody gets here, and not every relationship is it appropriate to do this, but the fourth is actually that you're building them up.

That you're actually lending your sword to the fight.

You're actually trying to help them out.

You're doing something verbally or or or or something to help them to get back on their feet or to help them move forward.

And again, not every relationship, like don't see that as necessarily the ultimate destination.

But I think sometimes it is.

I've seen it before where you have a demoniac who has gone from bondage to freedom, who was willing to commit themselves to the what feels like a torturous process of getting free and staying free.

And some of the people who they hurt, okay, going through sometimes a long, painful process of healing.

And I've seen people that used to scorch the earth on each other, eventually get to a place where they're willing to help each other.

I know every situation is unique, and so I'm not saying that's what you have to do, but I think this is the process that the people of the town were gonna have to walk through.

Here's how I end it.

I mentioned the synoptic gospels.

If you kind of look at a few of the stories together, you get a little better picture.

So this decapolis region where Jesus casts the demons out of this man and gets run out of town, he goes there twice.

The one we just looked at was the first one.

But there's only a second time that Jesus during his ministry goes back to the Decapolis.

And Mark 7, 31, I'll show you because this shows us, it identifies the uh geographic location.

It says, when Jesus left the vicinity of Tyre and went through Sidon down to the Sea of Galilee into the region of the Decapolis.

Okay, so this is identifying a series of stories that are about to happen.

And so Mark lets us know that Jesus went back to the Decapolis a second time.

When Matthew tells of this, it says he went up on a mountainside and sat down.

Look at this, verse 30.

So he's back to the Decapolis, he's back to the place where he met the demoniac, he's back to the place where they said they were afraid, and they said, get out of town.

Verse 30 says, Great crowds came to him, bringing the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute, and many others, and laid them at his feet, and he healed them.

The people were amazed when they saw the mute speaking, and the cripple made well, and the lame walking and the blind seeing, and they praised the God of Israel.

So think about this.

First time Jesus is there, demoniac, is set free, he's in his right mind, but he's got a lot of work to do.

He's just gone from a mess, a messy house to the forgiveness of sin and to the freedom from the bondage, and now he's got a clean house.

But his willingness to not just receive a momentary freedom, but to change habits, to not return to the demons, to give grace to the people that weren't buying the story until they saw sustained success.

His willingness to not be offended at Jesus, who denied him the opportunity to be a roommate.

You see, one of the reasons Jesus said, No, I just want you to be a house guest.

I don't want you to move on.

I've got something different.

Sometimes in a separation of relationship is where you ultimately find your purpose.

You don't move everybody in.

And so Jesus uses Matthew, his roommate, to write the story.

But the house guest, the demoniac, to go back and live in sustained freedom.

And when he did, over time, day in and day out, day in and day out, they realized this wasn't a one-time thing, and I'm going back.

This was the ability to sustain change.

And over time, people began to believe, and over time, it wasn't just like a one-time story.

It's if if he can do it for him, he can do it for me.

And I I and I thought I had to keep going back, but I see a guy who could sustain.

And by the time Jesus comes back, the same people that ran him off, who were afraid, had now, through the life of the sustained change of the demoniac, had seen a testimony of hope, and now they're bringing crowds of people broken, lame, blind, crippled, mute, everybody who needed Jesus' help.

And so, friend, I want to encourage you today.

Some of you, you go, man, I I've harmed myself in front of people.

I've been whitwailing.

I've been I I've I've been a menace.

And for some of you, you feel like you've done too much and it's too late.

And today I just want to encourage you to open up your mind and your heart to the hope in of Jesus that this isn't just about what's happened in your past, but what God can still do with your future.

And it's about more than just you.

It's about you living in freedom and sustaining it, but it's also more than you.

God will use even the things that you're most ashamed of, even some of the things that others will hold over your head, will never let you work your way out of.

There's some that will reject you, but there's a whole bunch of hurting people out there that need to see somebody who the Son has set free to remain free.