Bruce Collins, Evangelist

The personal website of Bruce Collins

Musings on the Lord’s Commands

 

 

Luke 8:39  "Return to your own house, and tell what great things God has done for you." And he went his way and proclaimed throughout the whole city what great things Jesus had done for him.

 

Do We Tell People What Great Things the Lord has done for us?

A great miracle had been done for this man.  He had been tormented and imprisoned by a legion of demons.  It had left him with super human strength and he was dangerous to others.  The demons knew who the Lord was and apparently spoke through the man who was demon possessed.  When the Lord freed the man from the demons, they wanted a body to inhabit so the Lord let them possess a herd of pigs who then promptly committed suicide by running down into the lake and drowning.  The people who saw this were afraid and told everyone in the city what had happened.  A multitude came out of the city and asked the Lord to leave.  One would think they would be rejoicing in the fact that the man who had the demons was now clothed and in his right mind.  But it appears that they were more concerned about the loss of the pigs which no doubt was a great financial loss than they were about the healing of the man who had the demons.

 

The man with the demons wanted to follow the Lord, but the Lord said, “No!”  Now is the time to go back into the city and tell people what great things God has done for you.  He did just that and it should have been obvious to anyone who had known him that the Lord really had done something great for him.  This man paved the way for the Lord to come back to that area and to be welcomed by the people.  Likely some of those people had previously wanted him to leave.

 

Times Not to Speak

When lepers were healed, the Lord told them not to say anything but to show themselves to the priest.  Likely this was because in that day only a priest could declare a leper clean.  Having the priest declare the leper clean would be proof that the miracle of healing was real.  When Jairus’ daughter was raised from the dead in Mark 5, the Lord didn’t want anyone to know that He had raised her.  Why?  I suspect it was because the girl was only twelve and I think the Lord wanted to protect her from those who would have made a spectacle of her and maybe even tried to make money by exhibiting her.  I think the Lord wanted her to have a normal life.

 

A Time when People can’t help but Speak

In Mark 7, the Lord healed a man who was deaf and had a speech impediment.  He told the man and those who witnessed this miracle not to tell anyone.  We read however, “the more He commanded them, the more widely they proclaimed it (Mark 7:36).”    Wouldn’t it be nice to be so full of joy about the things that the Lord has done for us that we just couldn’t help but tell others?  And if one had had a speech impediment, it would be a great joy to be speaking clearly. There are some things that are just too good to keep to ourselves and this was one of those things.

 

Lessons for Us

I have often pondered why sometimes the Lord has told those He helped to be quiet and sometimes he told them to tell others.  Sometimes when he told them to be quiet they didn’t seem to be able to contain themselves and they proclaimed what the Lord had done for them to their friends and neighbors anyway.  I am sure that there are other lessons to be learned from these passages but for those of us that have encountered the Lord and have trusted Him, He has done great things for us.  Our testimonies need to make it obvious that great things have been done for us and then we need to be so happy about being saved from the penalty that we deserve because of our sin, that we just can’t hold it in.  That would be true evangelism.

 

Today the Lord is absent.  He is in heaven.  But He is coming back and I hope that we who have been blessed by Him are telling others about the great things He had done for us.   Are we preparing people to be ready for His second coming or will they look at us and wonder why we just weren’t excited about sharing this good news?

 

Bruce Collins

 

Meditation for the week of February 28, 2016

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