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Counting the cost

This weekend I heard a great message from Mark 5 where Jesus heals the man with a legion of demons in him and cast the demons into a herd of swine and 2000 pigs plunge of a cliff into the lake and they drowned and I was so enthralled by the thought that I’m about to share here that while the message was great I spent more time focusing on this idea and seemed to have forgotten the purpose behind the whole message.

I get engulfed by the idea of counting the cost from time to time, especially when it comes to discipleship (or being a biblical follower of Jesus) and reaching the lost. Thinking about the account in Mark 5 brought it back into the front of my mind on Sunday. I think when we look at Mark 5 and see Jesus cast this group of demons into the pigs we merely glance at it and think the Jews weren’t allowed eat pork nor did they have a high very of swine so not much loss to have the herd drowned in the water. But someone owned the pigs and had to pay for them and probably would have sent them off to market, so for the farmer there was great cost in losing the pigs. I look online to see if I could find what a pig would have cost in the first century and couldn’t find anything so I’ll take some numbers I know and you wrap your mind around those. A kid in my last youth ministry would raise one pig for the county fair each year and this last year we went to fair to see it the night it was judged (pretty interesting actually) and then two nights later there was an auction for the animals at the fair and my friend’s pig went for over $1000. Now if you take the $1000 dollar figure and multiply it times the 2000 pigs you are talking about $2,000,000 dollars.

Jesus place a high value on the soul of the man with thousands of demons in him (to the tune of $2,000,000 dollars today). This man was now free from the bondage of demon possession and went on to further the Kingdom by telling anyone who would listen in the Decapolis on the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee.

How many times have we not counted the cost of reaching the lost and what they will do for the Kingdom? The price is way higher than we think or can even imagine?

What do you think?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 27th, 2008 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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    Great thought, Ben. An excellent job of thinking outside of the box and beyond the text. It reminds me of leaving the 99 to rescue one. I imagine that in the first century one sheep was worth more than one pig (perhaps 99 sheep were equal in worth to one pig) and yet Jesus basically told us that we need to abandon many so that we can search out and save one.


    Jesus calls us to throw caution to the wind so that we can seek out the one. 100 is only an illustration, for I believe that Jesus would also tell us to let go of 1,000, 10,000, 100,000 or more so that one can be saved. I'm willing to put money on the belief that shepherds were not willing to jeopardize 99 sheep for the sake of saving one because of how much 99 were worth. Well, in both of these stories Jesus tells us to not look at the monetary or materialistic dimensions, but instead the eternal and spiritual.


    Great thoughts.

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    Hey Ben
    Like the new look. How is your family?
    With the pigs and Legion, I think it's interesting that the pig owners(?) valued their pigs more than this person Legion. I can't remember if this was an original thought (since I have so few) but how many times does the church value their pigs more than people. Pigs such as- programs, location, comfort, convenience, etc.

 
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