Speaker: Margo Martin

Passage: Mark 5:1-20

CHOSEN TO STAY

Well, good morning. I have been looking forward to this morning for a really long time, and I thought about opening with a British accent, so I could be a little bit cool, like David Mitchell, but my girls made me promise not to do that, so I won’t embarrass you all. 

So, here we are. How many of us in this room like being told no? If you raised your hand, you’re probably lying. Being a mom to four girls, I can testify that nobody likes being told no. 

Just recently, one of my daughters really wanted to go on a bike ride, and it was getting close to dark, and I said, No, and she said, Why? In my mind, I had a million reasons why I didn’t want her to go out at night. We have construction going on near our house, there’s a lake nearby. What if I can’t find her? She’s only eight. I don’t want her to be out by herself. I love her. I want to protect her. 

And in this case, I had really good reasons for my no, but I said to her, It’s getting dark, and I don’t want you to be out there by yourself. And her response was very obedient and compliant, and she said, Why? 

And I don’t blame her because I think many of us, when we’re posed with these why questions, or questions of things we don’t understand, our response to the Lord is Why? As her mom, it’s my job to look ahead for her, it’s my job to think future-forward in ways that she can’t yet see or understand yet on her own. I love her, and I want her to be safe, even if I don’t always fully explain my reasons. 

My girls are always asking why, and often my answers don’t still feel like enough for them, but if I’m being honest, I have a lot of why questions too, and sometimes God’s answers don’t quite feel like enough. 

Has anybody ever felt that way? Sometimes our questions look a little bit like this: Why didn’t God answer me when I called out to Him? It’s a good thing it says He’s near to the brokenhearted, but He’s not answering me. 

Why isn’t God fixing my marriage? He says His design is for wholeness, but nothing is happening. Why isn’t God providing me with a job? If He says He’s a good Father that wants to provide, why isn’t He providing one right now when I need it? 

Why isn’t God healing my body from this autoimmune disease? If He says that He’s the healer and He desires healing in the here and now, why isn’t He doing it now? Why is God asking me to do this, or go there, or stay right here? 

I think we could all come up with our own why questions, and a big one that I’ve wrestled with personally, and with a lot of you, is this: why does God stay silent or allow us to remain in hard seasons or hard moments? 

I think that we’d fundamentally agree, if I asked each and every one of us, for most of us, we would agree that God never does anything without purpose, but if that’s true, why does He work the way that He does? 

And an even bigger question becomes: do we truly actually trust Him when things don’t go our way, when life looks different than we had hoped, dreamed, or expected? 

MARK 5:1-20

I want to take a look at a passage today. We’re going to divert from 1 Peter. We’re going to be in Mark 5. If you want to turn there with me, we’re going to see two different scenarios where people’s desires or comforts take a turn that they didn’t personally hope for, and we’re going to consider together why the Lord sometimes allows these things to happen. 

So, we’re going to be in Mark 5, and we’re going to start in verse 1. We’re going to go through verse 20. “They came to the other side of the sea, to the region of the Gerasenes.” This is referring to Jesus and His disciples. “As soon as he– Jesus– got out of the boat, a man with an unclean spirit came out of the tombs and met him. He lived in the tombs, and no one was able to restrain him anymore– not even with a chain– because he had often been bound with shackles and chains, but had torn the chains apart and smashed the shackles. No one was strong enough to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains, he was always crying out and cutting himself with stones. When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and knelt down before him. And he cried out with a loud voice, ‘What do you have to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you before God, don’t torment me!’ For Jesus had told him, ‘Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!’ ‘What is your name?’ Jesus asked him. ‘My name is Legion,’ he answered him, ‘because we are many.’ And he begged him earnestly not to send them out of the region. A large herd of pigs was there, feeding on the hillside. The demons begged him, ‘Send us to the pigs, so that we may enter them.’ So he gave them permission, and the unclean spirits came out and entered the pigs. The herd of about two thousand rushed down the steep bank into the sea and drowned there.” Wouldn’t that be a sight to see? “The men who tended them ran off and reported it in the town and the countryside, and people went to see what had happened. They came to Jesus and saw the man who had been demon-possessed, sitting there, dressed and in his right mind; and they were afraid. Those who had seen it described to them what had happened to the demon-possessed man and told about the pigs. Then they began to beg him to leave their region. As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been demon-possessed begged him earnestly that he might remain with him. Jesus did not let him, but told him, ‘Go home to your own people, and report to them how much the Lord has done for you and how he has had mercy on you.’ So he went out and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him, and they were all amazed.” 

THE DISCIPLES CROSS THE SEA

Now, verse 18 through 20 is where I want to camp out for a little bit today, but before we kind of can get there, we have to understand a little bit about the background of the story. Verse 1 says, “They came to the other side of the sea, to the region of the Gerasenes.” 

Why is this important? They in this story is referring to Jesus and his disciples sailing across the Sea of Galilee. What had happened in the chapter before was people were pressing Jesus from the other side, the western side of the shore. 

They wanted to be healed, they wanted to touch Him, they wanted to talk to Him. I’m sure they had many questions. They were pressing in on Him. So, Jesus ends up getting in a boat to teach, and it says in the text that as nighttime came, Jesus told His disciples to also get in the boat, they were going to cross to the other side. 

This would not have been good news to the disciples, for a couple of reasons. The Jews were not water people. You and I, we love to go to the pool, we love to be in the rivers, we love to be in lakes, we love to be in the water, right? 

For the disciples, this was not a, Yay, we’re going to Water World type of moment, because to the Jews, deep waters were something that they feared. We see in Old Testament references that they referred to these deep waters as the abyss, and it was something that was terrifying to them. And now, here they were, Jesus was asking them to cross over the abyss in the middle of the night without any reasoning explained. 

Second of all, and the most important reason why this journey across the sea is significant is because of what lay ahead of them on the eastern side of the shore in the region of the Gerasenes. 

This area was called the Decapolis, and maybe you’ve heard this terminology before, but the Decapolis, at this time, was a place where only the Gentiles lived. The Decapolis was made up of a league of about ten cities that were the center of Hellenistic or Greek culture and philosophy. 

And in this Greek culture and philosophy, they worshiped many gods, which the Jews were told not to do, and their culture was based around wild sexuality and this idol worship. These were people that the Gentiles were not, that these people were Gentiles that the Jews were not to associate with, and Jesus was taking them straight over to a place that they considered unclean. 

Not only that, but as we talked about, we see in the chapter before that, when they’re crossing the lake to this other side, which is about eight miles across, and they didn’t have motorized boats at this time. So, this would have been a long, tedious journey. 

When they’re crossing over, this is the famous story where Jesus falls asleep in the boat, and the disciples are what? They’re afraid because a huge storm comes up, and Jesus is just there sleeping in the boat. 

Have you ever felt that way? That you’re terrified, and you’re like, What is God doing in this situation? Why? And I’m sure they were all wondering, Why would He be leading us through this and to the other side? Jesus gets up, and with His voice, He calms the sea, He says Peace, be still, and they continue on their way. 

Have you ever felt like how the disciples felt in this situation? Where you know you’re called to follow Jesus, and you just keep encountering these storms and these fearful situations along the way, and you just don’t understand why? That’s exactly what the disciples were feeling. Sometimes we look at these stories, and we think they’re far-off stories, but the disciples felt a lot of the same things that we still feel today. 

Now, if this wasn’t enough, this fearful situation of the sea and crossing the abyss and all the things, when they get to the shore, a crazy, unclothed, cut-up man comes running straight at them. 

And I love this story, and I want to encourage you to study it further because there’s so much here, but for the sake of time, I’m not going to go too much into the middle of the story today, but it says that Jesus cast the demons out of the man into the nearby pigs, who went off the cliff. And in a short amount of time, this man has an amazing transformation, and he’s restored to not just physical wellness, but mental wellness by the Son of God. 

This story probably took place in a matter of hours, but here’s the part that I want to zone in on: verse 18 says, “As he–” this is referring to Jesus–  “was getting into the boat, the man who had been demon-possessed begged him earnestly that he might remain with him. Jesus did not let him…” 

Now, this kind of begging is not the kind of, Oh, please let me go with You. This implies that he was on his knees, begging, I really want to go with You. Can you picture it? Like, I really, really, really want to go. It’s a good thing, Let me come with You. 

He begged Jesus, and Jesus did not let him. He wanted to go with Jesus, with the disciples. This is a good thing. He wanted to be with them. He wanted to continue on the work that had been started in him, and he wanted to go to do it, but Jesus told him to stay. 

Not only did He tell him to stay, but He told him to stay with his own people. These were the people that probably had ridiculed him, doubted his transformation, seen him at his worst, and were likely probably still pretty afraid of him, and wondering, Could this all really be true? 

Instead, Jesus continues on to say this in verse 19: “Go home to your own people, and report to them how much the Lord has done for you and how he has had mercy on you.” So, he threw a fit right then and there, and said, No, I want to go with You. I’m not doing it. Is that what the text says? No. It says, “So he went out and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him, and they were all amazed.” 

The Bible doesn’t imply that there is any hesitation, just obedience. But I have to guess, if I’m thinking about human nature and about myself in situations like that, there had to be some sort of initial disappointment in that man. 

He was earnestly begging, he wanted to go with Jesus, but God had something different in mind. Have you ever felt this way? Have you ever begged God for something, begged Him, like we said earlier, to save your marriage, or begged Him for a job, whatever it is, begged Him for something that’s a really, really good thing? 

Or maybe you’ve begged Him for something, for a spouse, for healing, for provision, for Him to just show up in a way that you can feel, for an answer why He’s allowed things to happen, but His current answer to you is, Stay right here, this is where I have you. 

Maybe you haven’t talked to God about your situation at all. Maybe you’re just here because your mom wanted you to come for Mother’s Day, and I’m so glad you’re here. But maybe you’re sitting here thinking, I don’t even know how to talk to God about my situation. 

And I want to encourage those of you today that are sitting there thinking that He’s coming out of the boat towards you. He’s always been for you. He loves you, and just like He wanted to heal the demon-possessed man, He wants to heal you of anything that you’re holding on to today. 

There’s nothing that’s too small for Him. There’s nothing that He can’t restore. There’s nothing that He can’t do in you that you think is impossible. There’s nothing that He can’t do in you to heal what’s going on inside or on the outside. 

Maybe some of you have talked with God about your current situation for so long that you’ve just given up and you’ve accepted that this is just the way that things are. 

I want to remind you, like we talked about at the beginning, I think we’d fundamentally all agree that God never does anything without purpose, but we have to start believing it here, and I believe that God wants to renew our mindsets today, wherever we find ourselves, to not stay focused on the why things are happening, but on the Who is in control of the situation that we’re currently in. Then we can ask a why question. 

If we truly trust His character and who He is and who He’s going to be forever and ever, ever and ever, amen, right? If we can trust and know Who we are placing our trust in and Who is walking with us in these situations, then the why becomes a little bit easier to walk through. 

HE IS WORKING THROUGH YOU IN YOUR SITUATION

So, I want to look today at three different reasons why I think there are times when God allows us to sit in seasons that feel unknown, hard, or unanswered, and three reasons why He might ask us to stay in those seasons. 

The first one is that He’s working through you in your situation. He sees the bigger picture of your story that’s in line with His glory. Like I said, I love this story in Mark 5, and one of my favorite reasons is because last year I was studying this passage, and the Lord showed me something so neat that I want to share with you today. 

There were only two recorded times that Jesus ever went over to the other side of the sea. Two. One was when He went to heal the demon-possessed man and to provide healing for him. The other one took place in Mark 8, and this is at the feeding of the four thousand, the miraculous feeding. 

This is different than the feeding of the five thousand. The five thousand took place on the western shore, on the Jewish side. The feeding of the four thousand took place in the Decapolis. Four thousand people, that count is likely not counting women and children. So, there could have been upwards of eight thousand people there. 

My question is, how did all those people know about Jesus? Because one man chose to stay and tell his story right where he was at. He didn’t let his personal disappointment become a hindrance to the story that God had for him to tell, he became the first missionary to the Decapolis, to the Gentiles, and this was a huge way that the good news started to be shared over to that side of the sea. 

What if your story, maybe the one that you wish wasn’t your story at all right now, is the exact place that God wants to work through you to reveal His love and His nature to those around you? 

HE IS AT WORK IN YOU AND YOUR SITUATION

And the second reason why I think sometimes God allows us to stay in these situations that can feel hard or unanswered is not only is He working through our situations, but He is at work in you and in your situation. 

God often allows us to stay in hard situations because He cares more about our sanctification than He cares about putting a band-aid on an internal work that He’s doing within us. 

Now, some of you might be asking a question now: What is sanctification? I know last week David Mitchell touched on it a little bit, and this was a really hard concept for me to understand when I was younger, and so I want to make it really simple for some of you that feel confused by it, because it’s a big word, but it’s actually pretty simple.

Sanctification is the process of becoming more like Jesus over time. When we choose to give our lives to Jesus, we don’t stay the same. We’re constantly being molded by God into who He wants us to be day by day. 

And I see sanctification as this two-fold process. Yes, it’s done one hundred percent completely by grace through the Holy Spirit. It’s done completely by the grace of God. When we say yes to Jesus, the Holy Spirit, He’s immediately at work to transform us into His nature, because we’ve said yes to Him, and we’ve given our lives to Him. 

However, the speed and the depth of our sanctification is directly tied to our obedience and our willingness to regularly put on His nature. He is a good Father. He’s a really, really good Father. He who began a good work in you will be faithful to what? To finish it. 

But if we dig our heels in on this process, and we say, No, I don’t want it this way, I don’t like it this way, I wish You’d do it another way, God. Change my situation, I don’t want this, the sanctification process can often become a lot slower and a lot more painful. 

But this is why your situation matters more than you think. This may sound simple, but it’s super important. God meets us where we are, not where we aren’t. Right here, where you are today, whatever situation that you are walking through, God is with you in it. He hasn’t left you to deal with it on your own. He’s with you, and He’s for you. 

Philippians 2:13 says for it is God who is working in you, both to will and to work according to His bad purposes. That’s not what it says, right? As Philippians 2:13 says, “For it is God who is working in you, both to will and to work according to His good purposes.” 

I don’t know about you, but I want to be where He’s most at work, and often that work isn’t just around me, that work is happening in me right here and right now. But that feels a lot more painful, and sometimes I don’t want to deal with it. Oftentimes we’re looking for a solution to our problems while God is focused on our sanctification and on the bigger picture that we can’t yet see. 

HE IS LOOKING TO PROTECT YOU IN EVERY SITUATION

That leads to the third point. Oftentimes God allows us to stay in these situations because He’s looking to protect you in every situation. And you might be saying, My situation does not feel like protection, and I hear you. 

I’ve had many times in my life where that protection felt more like a rejection of God, but I want to let you into a little story fourteen years ago that changed my perspective when it comes to how God protects us and doesn’t answer our prayers necessarily the way that we want Him to. 

So, fourteen years ago, I was pregnant with our first daughter, and we were living in Los Angeles, California. And I was, as Belinda said, I used to be a music teacher. I’ll preface this with saying Lyla was due on August 10, so just remember that for a second. 

And I knew that I was going to be taking a year off from teaching, but I had it all planned out perfectly in my head of how it was going to go. I was going to have her on August 10. Because it was going to go exactly according to plan, I would watch my students go back to school, and everything would just be perfect along the way. 

My husband and I had prayed continuously for two things– well, I prayed for one very specific thing– we both prayed for protection over our daughter, that God would protect her as she was in my belly, and also during delivery prayed for protection. 

And I also had a prayer that I really wanted to go into labor on time and naturally. My mom had trouble going into labor, and she ended up having some minor complications, and I had just said to the Lord, Hey, God, I’ve been really obedient, I don’t ask for much, but can You just make her come on time and have everything go super smooth, and this will be a great process? 

Well, like I said, it was August in California, and it was a week of a record-breaking heat that week of August 10, so it was literally 106 to 107 degrees, and our air conditioning broke, and as you can imagine, I was, as I like to say, I was large and in charge. Actually, God was, but I was large and in charge, and I just was miserable. 

If you can imagine sitting in our house with that heat, waiting for people to come take care of a situation. We were renting at the time, it was attached to another house, we were renting from the renter, the lady who owned the house behind us, and we had, over the course of twelve days, August 10 to August 22, we had three different people come and look at our air conditioning. Three different people, because it kept breaking over and over and over again.

And I don’t know if you noticed, but my plans did not happen, August 10 to August 22 was twelve days. I was twelve days overdue. All my stretch marks started to appear, and I was thinking, Lord, what are You doing? I didn’t ask for much. 

So, we asked when these people came, and they were fixing our air conditioning, we asked multiple times, Hey, is there anything going on up there? Is there anything happening? They’re like, Oh no, we just had to replace the drip pan, no big deal. We fixed it. We fixed it, no big deal. 

Well, like I said, August 22 happened, came about, and we went to the hospital to be induced. And if I’m being honest with you, I was dealing with a lot of excitement because I couldn’t wait to meet our daughter, but I also had a lot of inward disappointment that I was dealing with. 

I was wrestling with the Lord. Lord, I don’t know how this is going to look. I asked for something simple, and I feel like You kind of failed me. Well, we got to the hospital, and we’d been there about thirty minutes, and we were trying to figure out how they were going to induce me, and all those different things. 

And my parents were staying at our house while we were at the hospital, and my mom, who can sometimes be a little bit of a joker, called my husband, and we thought she was just calling about a question about the house. And she said, Hey, Tim, did the roof collapse before or after you left? 

And what had happened was a six-by-six-foot part of our roof literally collapsed, and I’m not kidding when I tell you it was exactly where her bassinet would have been, right by our bed. And I just thought, Lord, forgive me because my plans felt a whole lot better than Yours before that actually happened. 

And I told my daughter all the time, God has a special plan for your life. He saved you from the very beginning. And even if she had been on time and she hadn’t been in the bassinet, there was mold that fell, so we don’t know what it would have done to all of our lungs. 

And we ended up having to stay in a hotel for three weeks after that, so that was a joy, but the Lord gave me a glimpse into something that day that changed my whole faith perspective. There are many, many prayers and unanswered things in my life that I’m begging God for, but it’s given me a new level of trust to know that He’s for me and He’s not against me, and He’s looking to protect me in every situation that even I can’t see. 

Our unanswered prayers are not a rejection, but a protection that we might not see on this side of Heaven. 

Maybe this morning you feel a little bit like the disciples, you’re following Jesus, yet you’re walking through situations that just don’t make sense. Maybe you feel like my daughters hearing no, and you’re asking why. Maybe you feel like the demon-possessed man in the story, called to stay in a place you’d rather leave. Or maybe, like me, you’re pregnant, really pregnant, miserable in a season of waiting, where God feels silent, and your prayers feel unanswered. 

I want to remind you this morning that silence does not mean absence. Sometimes His quietness is an invitation into a deeper work that He wants to do within us, and sometimes that’s one that can only come through wrestling and trust. Sometimes the silence is preparation, and sometimes it’s protection. 

What if the very place that you are in, your season of waiting in unanswered prayers, is actually holy ground? 

SOFT HEARTS BEFORE THE LORD

The bottom line in all of it is this: none of this can be received into our hearts if our hearts aren’t soft before Him. Just a little bit later, after the story in Mark, Scripture tells us in Mark 5:52 that the disciples didn’t understand what was happening at the miracle of feeding the five thousand. This was on the Jewish side, this was on their side. 

They didn’t understand what was happening, not because God wasn’t moving, because their hearts were hardened. Understanding in the Kingdom, it doesn’t start here in the mind, it starts here in the heart. 

Hard hearts interpret God’s silence as absence. Soft hearts lean in, and they trust His character, even when it’s really, really difficult. We have to stay soft. We have to stay surrendered and open to what God is doing. What would happen today, if in your very situation, you softened your heart enough to choose surrender over understanding? 

So, I want to invite you, we’re going to head into bread and cup here in just a few minutes, but I want to invite you, as I was standing over there during worship, I feel like the Lord wants to do something different in us this morning. I feel like what the Lord wants to do in us is invite us into a moment of surrender. 

Whatever situation that we’re walking through, whatever He’s allowing us to go through, He’s at work in you, He’s at work through your situation, He’s looking to protect you, He loves you, but none of that can be received, like I said, unless our hearts are soft enough to be surrendered to who He is. 

So, I want to ask you to do something with me. Would you stand with me, please? And we do this often at the beginning of our gathering. We often ask you to lift your hands as a way to surrender to the Lord, and I want to invite some of you, before we head into bread and cup, to surrender in a new way. 

I feel really strongly from the Lord this morning that there are some people in here that your heart’s feeling tugged right now, and you’ve never really truly surrendered a certain area of your life to the Lord before, and you’re like that demon-possessed man– not that you’re demon-possessed, that is not what I’m saying, scratch that, that’s not what I’m saying– but you feel cut up, right? You feel like you have so much on you that you just can’t get off on your own, and coming to the Lord feels super hard. You don’t know how to do it, but you want to. 

Like I said earlier, He’s already out of the boat, He’s waiting for you to come to Him. What does it say the demon-possessed man did? He ran, and he knelt down before Jesus, and he was healed in an instant. Mental, physical transformation happened instantly. 

That is for you and for me this morning, He wants to take whatever situation that you’re walking through, as we surrender it to Him, and He wants to offer you hope and healing in the midst of it. 

So, would you join me in holding your hands up to Heaven as an act of surrender, right where you’re at? Lord, we thank You that You’re in our midst. We thank You that You’re at work in us, through us, and You’re for us. 

Lord, would You help us to surrender all the places that we really just want to close up our fists to, and say, Nope, nope, I don’t want to let go? Lord, would You help us literally, physically, and spiritually, to open our hands to You and surrender? 

We thank You that You bore it all on the cross, so that we wouldn’t have to carry it. You bore it all on the cross, so that we could be healed. By Your stripes we are healed. 

I want to invite us to go ahead and do bread and cup, and continue this moment of just, Hey, I think this is between me and the Lord. So, let’s go vertical today. There are tables in the front, the sides, all around the back, and let’s just take a few moments to just surrender what we have to the Lord.