TD Jakes - Don't Leave Like You Came (09/23/2022)
The preacher emphasizes that the demon-possessed man’s torment was spiritual, not physical, yet people tried to restrain him with chains, treating symptoms instead of the root cause. Drawing from Mark 5, he urges us to address the deeper "whys" behind our struggles and relationships, warning that misdiagnosis keeps us bound—until Jesus heals the spirit and sends us home whole.
Misdiagnosis: Treating Symptoms, Not Causes
The problem in the text is that they have been trying to fix a spiritual problem with physical restraints, and it has not worked. His problem is affecting his body, but it is not his body. Yet the text diagnoses it in the opening phrase that says, “There came to him a man with an unclean spirit.” How do you chain a spirit? They have chained his body through their misdiagnosis, but the reality is there is something wrong with his spirit. They had been misdiagnosing him for a while.
My father, for instance, died of renal failure, but he actually died from misdiagnosis. It took them so long to find out what was really wrong with him that his chances of being healed in his kidneys began to diminish, until his kidneys died while they were searching in the wrong place. They were treating his symptoms, but no one was treating the root causes.
I wonder, are we treating symptoms and not causes? Are we treating whats and not whys? Are we praying to be better in our symptoms or cured at our root? Many overweight people, for example, are being treated with diets, when in fact it may not be what you are eating that is making you fat; it could be what is eating at you, and the eating is only a symptom. When you treat symptoms, they always come back. You have got to get beneath the symptoms that are bothering you and get down to the cause, and you cannot cure what you misdiagnose.
Being Open to Our Own Misjudgments
Now, in order to receive this word in a personal way, you have to be open to the fact that you could be wrong about somebody you do not like. You could misdiagnose them as not being honorable or trustworthy because you are looking at what they did and not why they did it. And you might make them act the way they act because you are dominating and intimidating, and you say, “It is them that is wrong,” but you are treating symptoms and not causes.
The common theme in the text is four instances of being sent away. They sent the demonic man away from the village in the first place. Jesus sent the demons away, the villagers sent Jesus away; Jesus, after he had healed the man, sent the man away. And everybody in the text is being sent away, and God is getting ready to send you away.
Living Among the Tombs
When we step into the text, he is now homeless; and later in the text we will find out Jesus tells him to go home to his friends. If you have friends, how did you end up homeless? The man is living in the tombs, with friends. The truth of the matter is even friends get tired. You have done everything you can think of to help a person become who they are trying to become, and eventually, sooner or later, you give up because you find out there is nothing in your inventory that can successfully make them better; it is called compassion fatigue.
Be careful that you do not wear people out, always bringing them your problems and never bringing them a blessing, always bringing them your troubles—it is always you, you, you, you, you—because even love gets tired, even love needs a day off, even love needs a break. Even the most giving person in the world needs reciprocity. Do not ever let anybody out-give you, out-love you, out-bless you, out-sow you, because eventually they will get tired of you and send you away.
The man had his dwelling among the tombs, the place where we relinquish what we loved; graveyards, cemeteries, the place where we relinquish what we loved. And though he is not dead yet, they have sent him to the cemetery alive, but to die. If you send me to the cemetery chained, you want me to die. It is one thing to send me to the cemetery loose—at least I can scavenge around and get some food—but if you send me to the cemetery and tie me up, you are just waiting on me to become what I am around. And eventually, if you get around something long enough, you become it.
He is not dead yet. Do not be so quick to talk about, “Can I have your car? Can I have your washing machine?” All they have to do is find out you are sick, and eventually they will come around and start asking you for stuff. Tell them, “I am not dead yet.” There are some people that are just waiting on you to keel over so they can get what you have got; they are already picking out stuff they are going to have. There are some people that are just waiting on you to collapse; they are already making inroads to take over your influence, your family, your business, your husband, your wife. They are just waiting on you to finally fail. But I am not dead yet. Do not count me out.
Not Dead Yet!
I may be sick, I may be crazy, I may be confused, I may be tormented, I may be in trouble, but I am not dead yet. I came this morning to tell the devil, “I am not dead yet; do not rule me out yet. There is still another miracle, there is still another power, there is still another deliverance working down inside of me.”
The cemetery is a place of memories and mourning, and that is exactly what he was tormented with—his memories and mourning. It is a place where we visit and not where we live. And Jesus comes to rescue him; in fact, he comes to rescue us from living among what should be buried. It is one thing to visit the cemetery; it is another thing to live there.
All of us visit the cemetery sometime; we go down in the graveyard and think about things—things that we buried, things that we lost, things that did not work out. That is normal; it is a human proclivity to rehearse your past; it helps you to have wisdom for your future. It is one thing to visit the graveyard; it is another thing to live there. Some people live in the cemetery of their failures and their mistakes and their problems. Once you start living in the tombs, it is a sign that you are completely dysfunctional.
Do not start living among dead things. Have you ever had somebody that brought up stuff you did ten years ago, twelve years ago, fifteen years ago? You moved on with your life, and they are still talking about what you did fifteen years ago—they are living in the cemetery. They have got a pillow and a mattress among corpses; they are living in a dead place because they are tormented by a spirit.
Breaking Free from Constraints
Only a spirit can see a cemetery as a castle. Only a spirit will try to handcuff you to your past and leave you stuck in your memories and bound by your mourning, and cause you to succumb to death and wait on it to kill you. Because if you stay around dead things long enough, you will become like your friends; if you hang out with the dead, you will become dead. That is why the angel told Mary, “Why seek ye the living among the dead?” Jesus visited the grave, but he did not stay there; he arose with all power in his hands.
And they constrained him because that made them comfortable. I am not denying the fact that the man had problems, but I also recognize that he had a promise. And when you are trapped between your problems and your promise, people want to move you out of the way because the lack of clarity makes people uncomfortable.
Every time they constrained him, he broke loose. Look back over your life—many times people tried to constrain you and tell you how far you could go and what you could do. They were all wrong; no man can constrain you. Anytime people oppress another people, the chain will eventually break because no man can chain what God has liberated.
Do not get me wrong—you do not have to like me, but you cannot hold me. You do not have to invite me to your birthday party, but you cannot hold me. We do not have to go golfing, but you cannot hold me. I may not be in your inner circle, but you cannot hold me; I will make my own circle.
Seasons of Crying
And the Bible says every day and night he cried. I want to talk about seasons of crying. I do not know how you were raised; I was raised not to cry, so I have to climb over everything I was taught to cry because I was denied permission to cry. So crying hurts, and when crying hurts, my soul has no way to irrigate itself from the stress it has incurred. Grief does not leave if tears do not flow.
I need to be able to release; I need to be able to cry. Hear me, brothers—I need to be able to cry. Not crying does not make you stronger; it makes you sick. There are seasons in your life where you are mourning, and nobody has to be dead. You can be mourning the job you lost, the house you did not get, the age you are at, the stage you are at; you can be mourning the lack of companionship.
Tears are a gift from God to ventilate the soul when you have ingested too much pain; tears are a sign to God, “I need you.” There is a cry that will get God’s attention, that will arrest him and stop him in his tracks. If you do not believe it, ask blind Bartimaeus, who sat by the highway begging, but when he heard Jesus was passing by, he began to cry. And he cried till he got on people’s nerves, and the more they told him to shut up, the louder he cried—until Jesus stood still.
Running to Jesus and Going Home
When the boat docked and Jesus stepped off, before he could get both feet on dry ground, the man came running to Jesus. Run—run away from self-sabotage, run away from self-destruction, run away from the way you talk to yourself, run away from canceling out your pain with more pain.
Legions of demons are in this man—massive multitudes of demons. And all the legions, in a concerted effort of agreement, could not stop him from running. If you get ready to get to Jesus, nothing can stop you from running.
The man, who was naked and bruised and bleeding and cutting himself in the tombs, when Jesus got through with him, he was sitting clothed and in his right mind. He had one fear left: “Will this work when I am out of this atmosphere?” And he says to Jesus, “Can I go with you?” Because in thy presence is fullness of joy.
The man did not want to leave Jesus, and Jesus said, “No.” The only thing that stopped him from going home was being home, and once I got him whole, he could go home. The hardest thing for a man to do is go home. Even if he goes physically, getting him to go mentally—where he can really be home at home—causes many men to circle the house before they go in the house, because they see the house as another kind of job. But the Lord said, “Go home.” You will know you are free when you can be home at home.