A Word in Season: The Hero of the Story (Mark 5:19)

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Who is the hero of your conversion story, the testimony, if you have one, and I hope you do, of how you came to Jesus Christ?

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The tendency, perhaps many of us have, is to throw the spotlight upon ourselves.

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We say with John Newton, Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.

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And perhaps we're inclined to emphasize our wretchedness, perhaps to give the impression that my grace is at least and perhaps more amazing than your grace.

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Indeed, we elevate and even idolize some people because of what seems to be an unusually dramatic conversion.

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We want the Damascus Road experience, as it were. We think that's what's most striking.

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Perhaps we're instinctively drawn toward the Philippian jailer, if you like, who's converted in the aftermath of that unusual earthquake, rather than Lydia, whose heart the

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Lord opened as she heard the truth preached there by the riverside in the same city of Philippi.

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You couldn't have, in some senses, a more dramatic conversion than that of someone who's often called the

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Gadarene demoniac. This was a man who was possessed by many devils.

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The Lord Jesus Christ delivered him. He desperately wanted to go with the Lord Christ, but he sent him home with these words in Mark chapter 5 and verse 19.

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Go home to your friends and tell them what great things the Lord has done for you and how he has had compassion on you.

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Now, who is, if you will, the hero of that man's deliverance? Where does the spotlight fall in the story of how he was saved?

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Tell them what great things the Lord has done for you and how he has had compassion on you.

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Now there's no doubt that this man's story is dramatic. There's no doubt that the contrast between what he was in his nature and under the oppression of the demonic and what he's become because of grace and mercy is vivid and striking.

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Everybody would have known what he was. Everybody would have known how he lived.

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Everybody's going to be shocked by the state that he's in, clothed and in his right mind.

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But when it comes to telling his tale, he's going to speak not of himself, not first and foremost of where Christ found him, but what

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Christ did with him. His is not the story so much of how I came to Christ, but of how

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Christ Jesus came to me. How he came to me in all my sin and misery, in all my darkness and distress.

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How he did great things for me. How he had great compassion on me.

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Now you may not feel like you have the most dramatic story of how the Lord Jesus saved you.

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But all of us are great wretches. All of us by nature are inclined against God.

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All of us have what the Bible calls enmity or antagonism in our hearts towards God.

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It's the natural state of our souls. How does Christ find us?

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He finds us dead in trespasses and sins. How does Christ find us? He finds us wandering and lost.

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How does Christ find us? He finds us rebelling and disobedient.

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And what does he do? He does great things for us. He has compassion on us.

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And the marvel of every story of salvation, the marvel of every conversion tale, is not so much what we have done or where we have been, but what

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Christ has done for us. And every conversion is a testimony of divine compassion.

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Every conversion is an example of the God of heaven and earth drawing near to bless an undeserving, indeed a hell -deserving sinner.

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You don't need then in that sense a particularly striking conversion story. You don't need a crisis, a

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Damascus Road experience. You don't need to have been the Gadarene demoniac. The Philippian jailer is no more saved than Lydia was.

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What you need is to be able to say that the Lord Jesus has done great things for you and that he has had great compassion on you.

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He then is the one on whom the spotlight falls. He is the saviour, he's the hero of every story of how sinners like me and you are brought from death to life, from darkness to light, from the kingdom of the evil one into the kingdom of the