Life Walk Lesson 85 When a Bad Thing Turns out Good
Years ago, when our children were quite young, we watched a movie for one of their school assignments called, The Best Bad Thing. It was about a teenaged girl, living with her parents in China who spent the summer with her grandmother in another part of their country. It was difficult for her at first because she thought it would be a boring summer away from her friends, however, by the end of the summer she found the experience to have been invaluable.
I can identify with this scenario, how about you? I am certain everyone can think of a time in their life when it seemed like the worst thing they had ever experienced, and yet God turned it around and did something good with it for their benefit and His glory. Not all bad things turn out good for everyone, I realize this, however let’s look at some Scriptures together to see how God turns things around for those who trust Him.
As recorded in Matthew 8:1-17 [NASB] Jesus had just completed His Sermon on the Mountain, where He taught His disciples, and anyone else who would listen, how to please His Father in Heaven and live well in the earth, [Matthew 5-7] and He was on His way back down the mountainside.
When Jesus came down from the Mountain He healed a Jewish person who had leprosy, He spoke to a Roman Centurion about his servant who was paralyzed, sending His word to heal him because of the faith of the Centurion, and He healed His Disciple Peter’s mother-in-law.
When evening came, many people brought to Jesus those who needed healing and deliverance from demons. Jesus healed those who were sick, and Jesus cast out the demons, setting the oppressed free.
The Desire to Follow Jesus is Costly
Let’s begin with Matthew 8 and verse 18, were Jesus speaks to those who wanted to follow Him.
Matthew 8:18-22
18 “Now when Jesus saw the crowd around Him, He gave orders to depart to the other side of the sea.
19 Then a scribe came and said to Him, ‘Teacher, I will follow You wherever You go.’
20 Jesus said to him, ‘The foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.’
21 Another of the disciples said to Him, ‘Lord, permit me first to go and bury my father.’
22 But Jesus said to him, ‘Follow Me, and allow the dead to bury their own dead.’”
Jesus desires total Commitment from His followers and disciples. Jesus also knows our comfort zone. He tested the scribe to see if he could handle a travelling ministry, and Jesus tested His disciple’s commitment to leaving his family to walk with God, even as Abram was asked to do [Genesis 12].
Abraham’s son, Isaac, also experienced the reward of total obedience to God in this way, and sowed seed on his own property during a famine as commanded, instead of going to Egypt for sustenance like his father had done in a previous circumstance, and he reaped an hundredfold what was sown. [See: Genesis 26:12 and Matthew 13:8, 18-23]
Jesus desires that we follow Him with wholehearted obedience, in love and by faith, wherever the Holy Spirit sends us, even to the uttermost parts of the earth, or to our own sphere of influence. [Acts 1:8]
Matthew 19:29
“And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for My sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life.”
Sometimes Life-Threatening but Worth It
Matthew 8:23-27
23 “When He got into the boat, His disciples followed Him.
24 And behold, there arose a great storm on the sea, so that the boat was being covered with the waves; but Jesus Himself was asleep.
25 And they came to Him and woke Him, saying, ‘Save us, Lord; we are perishing!’
26 He said to them, ‘Why are you afraid, you men of little faith?’ Then He got up and rebuked the winds and the sea, and it became perfectly calm.
27 The men were amazed, and said, ‘What kind of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?’” [Luke 8:22-25]
Sometimes Frightening but Worth It
Matthew 8:28-34
28 “When He came to the other side into the country of the Gadarenes, [Mark and Luke record “Gerasenes”] two men who were demon possessed met Him as they were coming out of the tombs. They were so extremely violent that no one could pass by that way.
29 And they cried out, saying, ‘What business do we have with each other, Son of God? Have You come here to torment us before the time?’
Let’s look at Luke’s record of the event:
Luke 8:26-27
26 “Then they sailed to the country of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee.
27 And when He came out to the land, He was met by a man from the city who was possessed with demons; and who had not put on any clothing for a long time, and was not living in a house, but in the tombs.”
Mark records it this way in Chapter 5:1-5
1 “They came to the other side of the sea, into the country of the Gerasenes.
2 When He got out of the boat, immediately a man from the tombs with an unclean spirit met Him,
3 and he had his dwelling among the tombs. And no one was able to bind him anymore, even with a chain;
4 because he had often been bound with shackles and chains, and the chains had been torn apart by him and the shackles broken in pieces, and no one was strong enough to subdue him.
5 Constantly, night and day, he was screaming among the tombs and in the mountains, and gashing himself with stones.”
You can read the rest of the story, however I wish to focus on one thing in particular, and that is the fact that the man, now delivered, clothed and in his right mind asks to follow Jesus. Let’s see what Jesus asks of the man.
Sometimes Unexpected Outcomes
Mark 5:18-20
18 “As He was getting into the boat, the man who was demon-possessed was imploring Him that he might accompany Him.
19 And He did not let him, but He said to him, ‘Go home to your people and report to them what great things the Lord has done for you, and how He had mercy on you.’
20 And he went away and began to proclaim in Decapolis what great things Jesus had done for him; and everyone was amazed.”
To me, that phrase “and everyone was amazed” is as much of an understatement as when Moses records in Genesis 1:16, “and He made the stars also”.
This man, was set free from every side effect which came with demon possession, made completely whole, and sent back into his city, in fact all of the Decapolis, to preach the Gospel of the good things Jesus had done for him in the whole region.
For a moment let’s look at what that might have included. In Matthew 12, Jesus is discussing the concept of casting out demons with the Pharisees, who have questioned His authority to do so, and by whose authority He does so.
Let’s look at verses 43-45, however, to consider the severity of this man’s possible predicament.
Matthew 12:43-45
43” Now when the unclean spirit goes out of a man, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, and does not find it.
44 Then it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came’; and when it comes, it finds it unoccupied, swept, and put in order.
45 Then it goes and takes along with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there; and the state of that man becomes worse than the first. That is the way it will also be with this evil generation.”
To illustrate the point, Jesus then travels [Matthew 18] through a demonically powered storm in order to set a man free who has been filled with enough demons to send 2,000 pigs diving into the Sea instead of wandering into dry places looking for other people to occupy, at their request.
Mary Magdalene herself had been set free from seven demons, so it begs the question — how many times did this man have an encounter with God’s way of living and, for whatever the reasons, was thwarted each time, becoming worse, and more wicked, because there was no one to intervene and set him free until Jesus came personally to help him?
Certainly this is why Jesus gave His Disciples authority to heal, deliver, and set people free as part of preaching the Gospel and filling them with the truth of Who God is, and Who they are in Christ. There would be no reason for this to happen to anyone ever again because the authority to drive out demons had been granted to the believer, once filled with the Holy Spirit.
Always Equipped and Sent
Let’s look at Luke 19:17 for a moment, where Jesus declares to a faithful one in the parable, “And he said to him, ‘Well done, good slave, because you have been faithful in a very little thing, you are to be in authority over ten cities.”
In this very little thing, the unnamed man, sent back to his home, simply obeyed God.
According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, “The Decapolis was a league of 10 ancient Greek cities in eastern Palestine that was formed after the Roman conquest of Palestine in 63 BC, when Pompey the Great reorganized the Middle East to Rome’s advantage and to his own….According to Pliny the Elder (Natural History 5.74), in the mid-first century AD the 10 cities of the league were Scythopolis, (modern Bet She’an, Israel), Hippos, Gadara, Raphana, Dion (or Dium), Pella, Gerasa, Philadelphia (modern Amma, Jordan), Canatha, and Damascus (capital of modern Syria). Damascus lay the farthest north, while Philadelphia lay the farthest south. Gadara was the original capital of the league, but it was replaced by Damascus.”
As the Gospels use both cities as his origin [Gadara, and Gerasa] central to a total region, it is safe to say that he came from the general vicinity somewhere near both of these areas. From Christ’s viewpoint, his new jurisdiction spanned an area from Philadelphia to Damascus, to which Jesus sent him, much like Abraham was given from the Nile to the Euphrates in his promised jurisdiction to be a blessing.
I have to believe that the devil knew the impact the man would have once healed, and set free, and came against him with the very same level of opposition in order to deter him. But it is written in the Book of Isaiah that no weapon formed against us shall prosper. [Isaiah 54:17]
What the devil didn’t count on was God Himself coming in the flesh, in human form, stepping in and saving the man and sending him right back to where he came from, with more influence over an even larger area than before, in order to deliver others.
I digress for a moment and ask, What did this man suffer that made him decide to live in a cemetery? The loss of multiple loved ones perhaps, so as to be near them; or the ostracizing of society by reason of his violent behavior, and super-human strength? But even this would not drive him to live a cemetery, or wander around in the mountains gashing himself with rocks. Perhaps we can consider the psychological reasons behind not wanting to be clothed or covered, and protected from the elements; the nerve disorders that make one feel pain when it isn’t there, or the touch that is painful even from that which comes with clothing?
How many times was he rejected by the religious for his weaknesses, and accepted by the criminals for his strengths, so that he succumbed over and over again, until Christ set him free and sent him with a new purpose?
All these things are not foreign to us in modern times either. No one could imprison him, so they avoided him. Consider for a moment the anguish and the loneliness that comes with being shunned by one’s own neighbors, relatives, and loved ones; the outcry of inner turmoil because the demons inside him knew their destiny, torturous as it was, so they inflicted it on this man with great vehemence in the cemetery adjacent to the city which, like the prodigal son’s experience, raised pigs.
And yet, all these things deeply troubling as they are, are no match for the Healer Himself, our Sovereign Lord, Jesus, before Whom he fell that day and was saved.
It is not so different in this decade to find people bound by addictions who have felt rejection, loss, fear, and the need to be loved and accepted by someone, anyone, walking a path that is harmful to them. What makes a person self-inflict pain to relieve pain, and what makes them think that it will help at some point in their lives when it never does, yet there is no will to stop? They need help. God’s help is the only answer. Can you even imagine 2,000 screaming pigs committing suicide? That had to be frightening. No wonder the people of that area begged them to leave. It hurt their economy no doubt, but it also scared them to see such a miracle. I just can’t get over the size of the miracle God did for this man and his whole “footprint” as we say now in modern vernacular.
Sometime it Takes Time
Many years later, Jesus appeared to John, His Disciple, on the Isle of Patmos where he was exiled for the preaching of the Gospel for no one could kill him because all such attempts were unsuccessful. Jesus dictated to the Apostle John the letter He wanted him to write to the Philadelphian Church. [Revelation 3]
God had placed for them an open door which no man could shut, not even Paul, who on his way to Damascus with a letter of permission from the high priest in Jerusalem, was determined to bind, and to kill or imprison the Christians from Damascus, the northernmost region of the jurisdiction given to the one sent with the Gospel by Jesus Himself.
God stopped Saul in his tracks, blinded him, and sent someone from Damascus to pray for him, and teach him the Gospel of the Kingdom of God, as we will see shortly.
A little backstory: Stephen had been martyred while Saul watched and held the garment of the executioner. Philip, the Apostle, was healing the sick and casting out demons [Acts 8]. In verse 7, it says, “ For in the case of many who had unclean spirits, they were coming out of them shouting with a loud voice; and many who had been paralyzed and lame were healed.” Another translation says they came out of the people with screaming, much like the man Jesus healed.
Back to our story:
During this time, Philip is sent to teach an Ethiopian man in the service of Queen Candice, about the Scriptures, and Philip baptizes him. And in chapter 9 verse 1, we find Saul “still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord. 2 He went to the high priest and asked for letters from him to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to The Way, both men and women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.
3 As he was traveling, it happened that he was approaching Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him;
4 and he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?’
5 And he said, ‘Who are You, Lord?’ And He said, ‘I am Jesus Whom you are persecuting,
6 but get up and enter the city, and it will be told you what you must do.’”
Let’s drop down to verse 10, “Now there was a disciple at Damascus named Ananias; and the Lord said to him in a vision, ‘Ananias’. And he said, ‘Here I am, Lord.’
11 And the Lord said to him, ‘Get up and go to the street called Straight, and inquire at the house of Judas for a man from Tarsus named Saul, for he is praying,
12 and he has seen in a vision a man named Ananias come in and lay is hands on him, so that he might regain his sight.’”
God changes Saul’s name to Paul, he appoints and sends him as an Apostle to the non-Jewish nations, to which Paul travels and preaches the Gospel until he is executed for doing so. His travels and his ministry are all recorded by Luke in the Books of Acts, and Paul goes on to write many Books and Letters which are now in the New Testament of the Bible, some written from a prison cell. There are other letters and documents attributed to Paul, some authentic and others spurious, even as he professes in Scripture. His meeting with Dionysius and his wife Damaris was significantly important to the furtherance of the Gospel in Europe as is articulated in his own writings to his fellow Presbyter, Timothy, on the subject.
There is one document which was found in 1871 by French Naturalist, Sonnini de Manoncourt which is thought to be the missing last chapter in of the Book of Acts, Chapter 29, which details Paul’s travels to Spain, as he had desired to do, and all the way around to Illyricum, even as he says he did accomplish. Chapter 29 has been included in the purchasable App translation of the Book of Acts, [In the App for the Eth Cepher translation of the Bible.]
I find it particularly timely that in this Chapter 29:11 it states, somewhat out of the character of the narrative of Paul’s record of his travels, a prophecy for the “latter days” in which it is written:
11 “And in the latter days, new tidings of the Besorah [Gospel] shall issue forth out of Yerushalayim, [Jerusalem], and the hearts of the people shall rejoice, and behold fountains shall be opened, and there shall be no more plague.
12 In those days there shall be wars and rumors of wars; and a king shall rise up, and his sword shall be for the healing of the nations, and his peace-making shall abide, and the glory of his kingdom a wonder among princes.”
In the Book of Zechariah God speaks through the prophet of a time when “a fountain will be opened to the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from sin and impurity.” And Paul speaks of bearing the sword, part of the armor of God, of the Spirit, which is the Word of God in a matter.
Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil, and to open the way for all of mankind to come to know God as our Father, through the forgiveness of our sins. He did this by dying in our place, giving His Own blood as a sacrificial offering on the Heavenly Altar, when He ascended after His physical resurrection from the dead, paving the way for direct access once again to God, even as Adam and Eve had in the Garden of Eden.
Promised Blessings
This fountain of the word of God for all nations is available to everyone who comes to know Jesus as the Lord and Savior of their lives. I say it is timely because we live during a time of wars and rumors of wars, global pandemics, strife, famines, and pestilences, and all manner of troubles which Jesus prophecies in Matthew 24. It does not mean that we will not encounter these things once we accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior, but it does mean that if we have to go through “the best bad thing” Jesus will help us through it, and bring us out victoriously, and to our heavenly dwelling place at our death.
This is true for the persecuted Christians in all the nations which reject Jesus as Messiah, and for those who live in peace, yet are surrounded by the hardships in their sphere of influence, of whatever kind it may be.
Scripture calls us to pray for our leaders that we may live in peace, to love all people, and to mind our own business, and work so that we may eat and not be a burden to anyone. That sets us up for a life of relative peace in the turmoil, and protects us from an otherwise worse circumstance. We pray for those in countries where they are imprisoned for their faith, killed, or tortured for their beliefs until they comply or die. For those who give the ultimate sacrifice for their faith there awaits a heavenly crown unmatched to those whose life and faith is not challenged.
Encouragement:
One man’s worst experience ever, and his strategic deliverance from it by Jesus Christ, impacted not only his region, but everyone who has read about it for the generations to come. This ongoing impact goes on to transform people for all eternity, for those who are saved, healed, and delivered, and come into the Kingdom of God, and for those who reject God, and join the devil in hell.
It is our choice. God makes it simple and asks us to “choose life” [Deuteronomy 30:19], “that your children may live.” Whatever God has given you to do in your sphere of influence, never again underestimate what God can do through you. If it is to change a nation or plant trees, like The Man Who Planted Trees, do it with all your heart unto Jesus, and you will be rewarded richly.
