1412 - "The Power of a Changed Life" Luke 9:26-39

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Each weekday, Dr. Crisp will be discussing biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Tune in daily to start your day right and deepen your understanding of how to better walk the way and enjoy the journey. Here's your host, Dr. Tony Crisp.

SPEAKER_00 0:20

Welcome to On the Way. This is Tony Crisp, and this is Podcast 1412. Today we're going to be in Luke chapter 8. And we're going to look at the demon-possessed man who was healed and delivered by Jesus. The scripture says in the Gospel of Luke chapter 8, you can see parallel passages also in Matthew chapter 8 or in Mark chapter 5. The reason I'm using Luke today is simply because he gives a more detailed account and it helps to illustrate what I'm wanting to get across to you in our time together. The Scripture says in verse 26, Luke 8, then they sail, talking about Jesus and his disciples, to the country of the Gatarenes. Now we're going to come back to that. And he says this country of the Gatarenes, or this area of the Gatarenes, is opposite Galilee. Now what on earth does that mean? Opposite Galilee, all of that is the Galilee. Well, everyone in that day knew what that meant. Now remember what I've taught you about understanding the Bible. Every Bible writer, every Bible writer, from Moses to John assumed, believed that the people to whom they were writing understood the language. They understood the historical setting. They understood the geopolitical setting. They understood the geography of a particular passage and a time. And they understood the cultural concepts and context of that day. When it talks about the land of Gadarenes, which is opposite Galilee, that means on the opposite side of the Galilee. The Galilee, what's called the Sea of Galilee in our English Bibles, is actually a freshwater lake. It is in the great Syrian African Rift. This lake, this beautiful freshwater lake, 150 feet deep, is only 14 miles long, and it's about seven and a half to eight miles wide. It is seven hundred feet below the level of the Mediterranean, below sea level. And so it is around this village, especially the northwestern quadrant of the lake, where you have the Jordan River coming in, and the town that is closest to that is Beth Sida, the house of the hunter. Beth, which means house, Sida, which means hunter, not game hunting, but game fishing. That is, they did it for a living. The house of the hunter. And that's where you also had Capernaum, which was a fishing village. You had the area where many of you know as Togbah. All of that is where Heptachon is, the seven springs, where these shoals and these fish were, that's where the seining was done. That's where the net fishing was done. And that's on the western side of the lake, the side of the Mediterranean. The eastern side of the lake is opposite the Galilee. As a matter of fact, the Jews lived from Beth Sida, which was just on the western side of the Jordan River as it ran into the Sea of Galilee, all the way down to Migdal. Migdal, or Magdala, as it's called, is where the fishing villages were. As a matter of fact, Magdala was such a fishing village that it was known for its manufacturing. And the archaeologists have found a place where the fish were salted down. It was almost like a place, a packing house, so to speak. And so all of that was on the western side of the lake. And the opposite side is not where primarily the Jews lived, but that was a whole different area. And that area was mostly made up of the cities of the Decapolis. On that side, Decca means ten in Greek. Polis is the word for city. So it was ten city-states. They were Greek city-states. And all of them were on the eastern side of the Jordan River and the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee, except one, and that was Betshan, which is Schetopolis in the New Testament. But it was called Bet-Shan in the Old Testament. That's where the bodies of Saul and Jonathan, remember, were hung. The men of Ramal Gilead across the Jordan came and got their bodies and took care of them. But it's near Mount Gilboah, near the Jezreel Valley. That's the only city of the ten cities of the Decapolis that are on the western side. Now I'm giving you geography because this story, you can get the plot, you can get the meaning, the main characters, everything, the great work that Jesus did with the demoniac who had a legion, 6,000 demons. They were cast in the swine and they ran down a steep, all of those things. I wish I could have you there and teach it on the eastern side, and from the western side you can see it. Opposite Galilee meant on the other side on the eastern side, opposite from the perspective which the gospels were written. It's always on the other side. And so the Bible says that when Jesus stepped out onto land, there met him a certain man from the city. Now notice it says from the city, and you're going to see all the way through the last verse, verse 39 of this story, that the city is mentioned three different times. But it never tells you what city that is. That is the city of the Decapolis called Hippus. Now that's the word, the Greek word for horse. And you put the word potamas with that. Then you have, and that's the word for river. Mesopotamia is the word land between the rivers. Well, you put hippus and potamia together, you get hippopotamus, a river horse. So the city of Hippus looked geographically like a horse's back. That's why it was called that. In Latin, the same word is Susida. So sometimes you'll see Hippus with its Greek name, Hippus, and then Susida. That's the city because that was the nearest city to where the demoniac was. We know where he would have been. He would have been in the tombs. There have been many tombs that have been discovered right along the road near a village called Kersi or Gergasa. Those of you who have been around the lake over there, you know where those tombs are. You know where Kersi is, you know where all of that happened, not far from Bethsida, where the real Bethsaida is. And it was in that area where the feeding of the 5,000 took place. Now I'm giving you all this geography to say that if you know these places and you've studied geography or you studied while in the land of Israel, then you know these places like the back of your hand. I've been going to Israel for 48 years this year, and I am so grateful to God that He's let me spend months over there where I could study long term, be taught long term, research long term, and then teach there thousands of people over the course of the years. And so you know the story. This man had been run out, no doubt, of Hippus. He was in no man's land, that was that area there of the tombs, and it was there that Jesus met him, and he was naked. Now I told my church that down through history of the last two thousand years, when people come to know Jesus in tribes, deepest, darkest continents of Africa and South America, New Guinea, wherever they are, when they truly come to know Jesus, the God of the Bible, then they want to put on clothes because many of them are naked. Many of you remember the story of Nate Saint and Jim Elliott and all of those wonderful people that gave their lives in the jungles of Ecuador in 1956, in January of 56. Elizabeth Elliot and Rachel Saint went back into those people, led the ones that killed their brothers and husband and the father of Elizabeth Elliott's children, led the very ones to Jesus that had killed her husband and the children's daddy and Rachel Saint's brother, Nate. And you remember in the movie through Gates of Splendor and the documentary and the actual footage that they were naked. But as soon as they were truly saved, they began to put on clothes. And this is true all over the world. Without anybody saying anything to them, they want to do that. And that's the way it is, and that's the way it was. This man was naked. As soon as he was saved, the Bible says that he was sitting at the feet of Jesus, and he was clothed and in his right mind. Now you can start reading at about verse 34 and just read a couple of verses, and you're going to see that. Now, what is all this about? Why am I telling you these things? I'm telling you because what I have shared with my church over and over again, and with people all over America and in Europe and in South America, here is what I want people to understand. Jesus came in to minister to real people. He came in to meet us where we are in our lives, at our jobs, in our professions. He came to fishermen, he came to tax collectors, he came to zealots, political people, he came to wherever they were, and he met them where they are and where they were, and he took them to where they needed to be. You see, that's what God does. This is not some pie in the sky by and by, oh yes, heaven is real. But God meets us right where we are and he redeems us right where we are. And it is in the variations and vicissitudes of life and the changes, the ups and downs, the round and rounds, that God meets us. And that's where he changes our lives. And so much did he change this man's life that this demoniac, this man who had been filled with demons, said, I want to go with you. And Jesus said, No, I want you to stay here. Go tell your family what has happened to you. Go tell the city and your friends what has happened to you. And remember, they ran Jesus out of the city. But you go to the next chapter of the Gospel of Luke, just right near where this happened, was Bethsaida, just north of where this happened. And it was there in that very vicinity that Jesus fed five thousand men. So there were thousands of people now gathering. When they had asked him to leave the city, now they were welcoming him. Why? Because this man, no doubt, had made a testimony. I mean, after all, he had been living in the tombs, he had supernatural strength. They had put him in chains and cuffs, and he had broken loose from them. He was filled with demons, and God changed his life. Jesus changed his life, and because of his testimony, God only knows how many will be in heaven because of him. And it's amazing. The annals of Roman history say that the first city to be declared Christian in the Roman Empire was Hippus, Sucida, the man's home, that it had a legion of demons cast out of it. Think about it. For on the way, this is Tony Crisp.

SPEAKER_01 12:25

Thanks for listening to On the Way with Tony Crisp. Tune in every weekday for information on biblical passages, people, places, and prophecies. Fridays are for your questions. Email your questions to questions at TonyCrisp.org. Then just listen for your question to be answered on Friday's podcast. That's questions at TonyC R I S P dot org. Thanks for listening and have a blessed day on the way.