SEE (head)
Having traveled to an area populated mainly by Gentiles (= non-Jews), Jesus is immediately confronted by a madman possessed by many demons. Jesus heals the man, allowing the demons to move into a large herd of pigs which then rushes down the steep hillside and drowns in the lake. The townsfolk, more concerned with the swine than with the Savior, beg Jesus to leave. He does, leaving behind the former demoniac as a witness to his divine power.  

A man possessed (v. 2). While the exact location of this incident is uncertain, the point is that Jesus had crossed over into Gentile territory. [ref] This has been described as "the eeriest episode in the life of Jesus. The description of this possessed and tormented man is shocking and disgusting." [ref] There are several disturbing images here: a lunatic; demons; a cemetery; and unclean swine. Evil spirits were associated with cemeteries in popular thought, and it was considered a sign of insanity merely to spend the night in a cemetery. [ref] The cemetery ("tombs" NASB) was most likely a series of "cavelike rooms cut into the rocks of nearby hills which served as tombs and sometimes as haunts for demented people." [ref] (Matthew writes of two demoniacs, whereas Mark and Luke mention only one. It is possible that one was Jewish and one was Gentile, with Mark and Luke choosing to focus on the latter [ref] and/or that they mention only "the leader and spokesman." [ref])  The demon-possessed man's actions included cutting himself ("perhaps in a demonic form of worship" [ref]), demonstrating that the ultimate intent of demon-possession is "to distort and destroy God’s image in man." [ref] 

The demons recognized Jesus for who he is: "Jesus, Son of the Most High God" (v. 7). Isn't it interesting that while "men will at times do their utmost to deny Jesus' deity, the demons do not"? [ref] The head demon responded to Jesus' inquiry by stating that his name was "Legion" - which pictures "an army, emphasizing power and fierceness." [ref] [ref] A Roman legion was comprised of as many as 6,000 soldiers. [ref] [ref] The term "a legion" was used as shorthand for "a great number of any thing" [ref] (compare MATTHEW 26:53), and in popular usage it was associated with uncleanness/impurity. [ref] 

Why did Jesus ask the man his name? Possibly: [ref] [ref]

• As a sign of Jesus' superior authority.
• So that the onlookers, including Jesus' disciples, would realize that Jesus was dealing with a great many demons at once.
• To reveal to the demon-possessed man the seriousness of his condition.

Why did the demons want to go into the herd of pigs? "Was it simply a yearning to destroy? Was it perhaps a sinister hope that the owners of the herd, seeing their property destroyed, would be filled with antagonism toward Jesus?" [ref] [ref] 

Possessed (v. 2). The demon-possessed man in this story is an apt illustration of what it means to be lost in sin and separated from God. He is completely cut off from his family, his community, and even himself, and tormented to the depths of his soul. He makes his home among the dead, and his only companions - the demons inside him -are those living in open rebellion against God. His life is completely void of peace, meaning, and purpose. He suffered both "bodily agony" and "distress of mind." [ref] He gave no thought to his physical well-being, for "in the possessed, even the law of self-preservation ceases." [ref] Salvation means going from being "restless, naked, and crazed" [ref] to being at peace with himself, God, and other people. Following his deliverance, the man "went off and did as Jesus told him. He heralded or published the story till all over Decapolis men marvelled  at what Jesus did, kept on marvelling (imperfect tense). The man had a greater opportunity for Christ right in his home land than anywhere else. They all knew this once wild demoniac who now was a new man in Christ Jesus." [ref]   

Legion (v. 9). The demons present a picture of what it means to live in open, deliberate rebellion against Christ. Notice that "they did not come of their own accord into the presence of Christ, but were drawn by a secret exercise of his authority. As they had formerly been accustomed to carry men off, in furious violence, to the tombs, so now a superior power compels them to appear reluctantly at the tribunal of their judge. ... [T]heir rebellious complaints testify that their confession [regarding Jesus' true identify] was not made from choice, but was drawn from them by force." [ref] While Jesus "remains the sovereign 'Son of God' in the deliverance of the demonized man," this episode serves as a stark reminder "that while the kingdom of God does come in Jesus, it is not yet the time of final judgment when evil will finally and totally be put down. Demons remain and act like demons, tormenting and killing what they inhabit, but they are limited in that Jesus could and still can free people by his power." [ref] 

A crowd (v. 15). And the crowd that asked Jesus to leave is an apt illustration of the world. "It would seem that all they ever thought of was their own safety and protection." [ref] Repeated efforts to bind the demoniac fail, and in the end all they can do is to separate themselves from him (see Matthew 8:28). When Jesus uses the power of God to set the suffering man free, the townspeople react not with joy but with fear. In the end, they are more interested in their lost pigs than in their once lost neighbor who is now saved.  This story helps to highlight the fact that Satan and his demons are all about death and destruction, whereas Jesus is all about life and deliverance. [ref] 

2,000 pigs ... drowned (v. 13). What about the herd of pigs? "In the age of Greenpeace and animal rights the idea that Jesus of Nazareth sentenced two thousand pigs, one of the more intelligent mammals, to death by drowning by allowing demons to invade and terrorize them raises problems for most readers. ... And even if Jesus did not care about pigs, shouldn’t he have cared about the livelihood of the swineherds and the owners? He certainly did not ask anyone’s permission." [ref] Besides the fact that it was the demons, and not Jesus, who caused the death of the pigs, we might first of all recall the perspective of the gospel writers: they saw animals in practical terms, as a source of food or forced labor; religiously motivated animal sacrifices were an everyday occurrence among both Jews and Gentiles; and the destructive behavior of demons was of far more concern than the destruction of a herd of unclean pigs. [ref] Their alleged enlightened intellect notwithstanding, modern skeptics and critics are not very far removed from the townspeople, who "miss the point when they see only their loss of pigs and fail to see the delivered man." [ref] Several points help to relieve any concern for the pigs:

• The pigs were destined to die anyway. [ref]
• God is free to do with his creation as he sees fit. [ref]
• In this particular instance, the pigs served to glorify God by providing "tangible evidence to the man and to the people that the demons had actually left him and that their purpose had been to destroy him even as they destroyed the pigs." [ref] [ref]
• Possibly the pigs' destruction was also God's way of reprimanding their owners for their being more interested in their livelihood than in the wretched condition of their demon-possessed neighbor. [ref]
• If the owners were Jewish, the death of the pigs would have been understood as God's rebuking them for their dealings with an unclean animal. [ref]

While Jesus' usual response was to tell the healed/delivered person to say nothing, in this case he did the opposite. Why is that? Since Jesus was in Gentile territory, he allowed "more open discussion of his ministry. ... [W]ith few Jewish religious representatives present, there would be less danger of misunderstanding Jesus' ministry as political." [ref]  In the final analysis, Jesus sent a missionary to the very people who had rejected him, thus proving his love for them. [ref] 

HEAR (heart)
Devilish Thoughts

I call’d the devil, and he came
And with wonder his form did I closely scan;
He is not ugly, and is not lame,
But really a handsome and charming man.
A man in the prime of life is the devil,
Obliging, a man of the world, and civil
A diplomatist too, well skill’d in debate,
He talks quite glibly of church and state.
- Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) [ref]

The pig's owners and the townspeople may not have been possessed by the Devil's demons, but they had allowed themselves to be persuaded by the Devil's arguments.  

In the Devil's hands, persuasion can be as deadly as possession.

DO (hands)
John Calvin: "Thus at the present day, so long as men believe that the kingdom of God is opposed to their interest, either of a public or private nature, they are prepossessed by a depraved and carnal fear, and have no relish for his grace. Accordingly, when he comes, they think that God does not regard them with favor, but rather with anger, and, so far as lies in their power, they send him to another place. It is a mark of shameful insensibility in those men, that the loss of their swine gives them more alarm than the salvation of their soul would give them joy." [ref]

??? How was this true in your own life before you surrendered to Christ? 

SEE (head)
A crowd is following Jesus and pressing in upon him. A woman sneaks up and touches the edge (= fringe) of his robe in order to be healed of the hemorrhage from which she has been suffering for the past twelve years. Having spent everything she owned and gotten no better, her last resort is Jesus, the one who has power over both diseases and demons. 

A woman ... had suffered (v. 25). The woman seeking Jesus had been suffering from "constant bleeding" for twelve years - possibly "a chronic menstrual disorder or a uterine hemorrhage." [ref] Treatment of the woman's condition would have included "various and manifold kinds of medicines" in combination with elaborate rituals/ceremonies [ref] that amounted to little more than "superstitious remedies" [ref] Her incurable condition "made it impossible for her ever to feel strong and healthy." [ref] (In his account, the physician Luke refers to the woman's incurable disease but, "with professional sensitiveness, omits Mark's statement that she had suffered many things from many physicians, and was not bettered but made worse." [ref]) Along these lines, we might note that the term used to describe the woman's "terrible condition" ("affliction," NASB) literally refers to a whip, connoting the type of excruciating pain endured as part of a scourging. When used in reference to a disease, often there was an implication of divine punishment. [ref] [ref] To add insult to injury, aside from the physical suffering she had been forced to endure, "the woman's condition would have kept her in a perpetual state of impurity," [ref] thus greatly restricting her contact with other people. In spite of this fact, she pressed through the crowd, making impure/unclean everyone with whom she came in contact (see Leviticus 15:25-27; a woman with an issue of blood "defiled every one who touched ... her" [ref]). [ref] [ref] "Many teachers avoided touching women altogether, lest they become accidentally contaminated." [ref] 

Touched his robe (v. 27). The bleeding woman believed that Jesus had come from God and that he alone possessed the power to heal her. Here and throughout Scripture, we see fear and faith going hand in hand. She kept on telling herself that if she could only touch Jesus' robe, she would be healed [ref] - suggesting "that the woman was trying to muster up the courage" to do so. [ref] She was understandably afraid, but despite her fear she refused to give up until she had made contact with Jesus. Apparently the woman was trying to touch one of the tassels that hung from each of the four corners of Jesus' robe (cf Matthew 9:20-21). [ref] [ref] [ref] [ref] [ref]  As one source explains: "Like all true Jews, Jesus wore the shimla, a large, square cloth that was used as an outer robe and had tassels at the four corners according to the requirement stated in Deut. 22:12. The tassels were attached to blue cords, and the Pharisees loved to make these tassels large and prominent in order to display their compliance with the law. Two of the corners of the shimla were thrown back over the shoulder so that two of the tassels hung down behind. One of these, Matthew tells us, the woman touched." [ref] 

One source notes how the woman's actions reflect the common practice of a subject's kneeling to touch the king's robe in a demonstration of loyalty and submission prior to making a request. [ref] While such may indeed be the case, this woman desired to touch Jesus' robe and then slip away unnoticed so as to avoid bringing unwanted attention to herself. [ref] As one source puts it, "Her motive was not to steal healing but to keep her ailment hidden." [ref] 

Who touched my robe? (v. 30). In keeping with the fact that this miracle story is told from the perspective of the woman, we see Jesus' awareness of healing power having left him and asking who it was that touched him. We should avoid concluding that the power left Jesus without his knowledge or consent. As one commentator puts it:  

To say that this outgo of power from Jesus was without conscious volition on his part is to misconceive the entire operation of this power. It is always under the control of Jesus’ conscious will. To think of a somatic mediation of this power, to think that it required physical contact with Jesus, for instance, the touch of his hand, makes Jesus a magnetic medium or a magician. Jesus healed many without a touch, some even at a distance. Touch of hand or of garment is symbolic, an aid to faith and nothing more. The miracles were wrought by Jesus’ almighty will. The instant the woman touched Jesus he knew it, knew her ailment, willed her healing, and thus realized in himself (2:8, "in his spirit") the power that went out of him to work this miracle. [ref] (quoted verbatim)

The frightened woman ... told him (v. 33). Why did Jesus refuse to let the woman leave without acknowledging him as the source of her healing? Quite likely it was for several reasons:

• Jesus wanted to dispel any "quasi-magical notions" [ref] that she may have had. Hence Jesus' statement that her faith - and not Jesus' robe -  had healed her. [ref]

• Jesus did not want the woman to feel that she was wrong in her seeking healing from him. [ref]

• Jesus wanted to remove any lingering shame the woman may have felt over her disease. [ref]

• Jesus wanted to help the woman complete what one source refers to as "the circle": "When blessings descend from heaven, they must in the form of thanksgiving be returned to heaven by those who received them." [ref] Put simply: we ask God for help; we receive God's help; we thank God for his help. This "circle" both strengthens our faith and gives God the glory he richly deserves and rightly demands.

Notice the tender mercy of Jesus as he deals with this woman. Choosing to reassure rather than reprimand, he:

• calls her "daughter, a term implying "affectionate concern" [ref]
• commends her faith
• pronounces peace - that is, "freedom from anxiety and inner turmoil" [ref] - upon her
• reassures her that her time of intense suffering is finally over

HEAR (heart)
There the Entire Time

The story is told of an early American Indian initiation rite.

A brave would be taught how to hunt, scout, and fish. Then on his thirteenth birthday he would be blindfolded and, for the first time, taken from his family and deposited several miles away in a deep, dark forest where the blindfold would be removed and the brave left to spend the entire night completely alone.

It was a very long and very trying night, with fear magnifying the slightest sound. The boy was utterly relieved when the new day finally dawned.

To the young brave's utter astonishment, the sun would reveal the figure of a man standing very close by. The man, armed with bow and arrow, was the brave's father. He had been standing guard over his son the entire night. [ref] (paraphrased)

The bleeding woman must have felt very much like the young Indian brave: alone, afraid, and trapped in her condition.

Oftentimes our fears stem from an inability to see and understand what is immediately before us, coupled with a sense of being all alone. (Isolationism is a major tool of the Devil.) It is in those moments, however, that God can work most powerfully in our lives. As we turn to him, he will remove our fears and replace them with comfort, direction, and hope. Best of all, he will remind us that we are never completely alone: he is always standing close by.  

DO (hands)
??? Did you wait until you were at the end of your rope before turning to Jesus? Explain. What can the woman's example teach us about trusting Jesus?