They begged him because demons had become the norm
READ v 28-29
Demon possession is real - Job 2:2the Lord said to Satan, “From where do you come?” Satan answered the Lord and said, “From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking back and forth on it.”
in this town- its clear that the people had gotten used to the demons and just avoided them
It says “exceedingly fierce, so that no one could pass that way.”
To me- that says- you know, we know that there is a place in the city that is overcome with demons- but we’re not going to go there and do some spiritual warfare and fix it- we’re just going to go around it.
Eph 4:27 nor give place to the devil.- and these people had given place to the devil.
Forwhatever reason- they thought it better to just avoid the problem instead of facing the problem
To them- just let the demons demon- let them have their way- we’ll just learn to live with them
visit this old lady when I was kid- house had cockroaches- she’d name them- better to clean?
So in part- when these people come to Jesus at the edge of the city and beg him to leave- its because Jesus had upset their norm. what they were used to- how they did business
Its like when an addict gets clean and goes back to the house- they house knew how to deal with addiction- don’t know how to deal with healthy- it can create problems.
So they beg him- Just leave Jesus- we didn’t want you to deal with this possession- we didn’t ask you to fix our issues- just leave- we liked our pet demons- Maybe it created a distraction so they wouldn’t have to deal with their own issues- liked having issues to blame their problems on? Who knows
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