Immerse: Messiah - Flipbook - Page 279
5:11-33
M ar k
267
There happened to be a large herd of pigs feeding on the hillside nearby.
“Send us into those pigs,” the spirits begged. “Let us enter them.”
So Jesus gave them permission. The evil spirits came out of the man and
entered the pigs, and the entire herd of about 2,000 pigs plunged down the
steep hillside into the lake and drowned in the water.
The herdsmen fled to the nearby town and the surrounding countryside, spreading the news as they ran. People rushed out to see what had
happened. A crowd soon gathered around Jesus, and they saw the man
who had been possessed by the legion of demons. He was sitting there
fully clothed and perfectly sane, and they were all afraid. Then those who
had seen what happened told the others about the demon-possessed man
and the pigs. And the crowd began pleading with Jesus to go away and
leave them alone.
As Jesus was getting into the boat, the man who had been demon possessed begged to go with him. But Jesus said, “No, go home to your family,
and tell them everything the Lord has done for you and how merciful he
has been.” So the man started off to visit the Ten Towns of that region and
began to proclaim the great things Jesus had done for him; and everyone
was amazed at what he told them.
Jesus got into the boat again and went back to the other side of the lake,
where a large crowd gathered around him on the shore. Then a leader
of the local synagogue, whose name was Jairus, arrived. When he saw
Jesus, he fell at his feet, pleading fervently with him. “My little daughter
is dying,” he said. “Please come and lay your hands on her; heal her so
she can live.”
Jesus went with him, and all the people followed, crowding around
him. A woman in the crowd had suffered for twelve years with constant
bleeding. She had suffered a great deal from many doctors, and over the
years she had spent everything she had to pay them, but she had gotten
no better. In fact, she had gotten worse. She had heard about Jesus, so she
came up behind him through the crowd and touched his robe. For she
thought to herself, “If I can just touch his robe, I will be healed.” Immediately the bleeding stopped, and she could feel in her body that she had
been healed of her terrible condition.
Jesus realized at once that healing power had gone out from him, so he
turned around in the crowd and asked, “Who touched my robe?”
His disciples said to him, “Look at this crowd pressing around you. How
can you ask, ‘Who touched me?’”
But he kept on looking around to see who had done it. Then the frightened woman, trembling at the realization of what had happened to her,
came and fell to her knees in front of him and told him what she had done.
