May the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Love of God, and the Fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
“And on that day, when evening had come, He said to them, ‘Let us go over to the other side.’ {36} And leaving the multitude, they took Him along with them, just as He was, in the boat; and other boats were with Him. {37} And there arose a fierce gale of wind, and the waves were breaking over the boat so much that the boat was already filling up. {38} And He Himself was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they awoke Him and said to Him, ‘Teacher, do You not care that we are perishing?’ {39} And being aroused, He rebuked the wind and said to the sea, ‘Hush, be still.’ And the wind died down and it became perfectly calm. {40} And He said to them, ‘Why are you so timid? How is it that you have no faith?’ {41} And they became very much afraid and said to one another, ‘Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey Him?’” Mark 4:35-41 (NASB)
The event recorded in the Gospel lesson this morning took place early in Jesus’s public ministry. Even though it was early on, the disciples had seen a lot. They saw Jesus heal a great many people. They saw Him cast demons from a lot of people. They knew He had power—divine, supernatural power. They knew He was not the everyday ordinary rabbi. He was in their eyes at least a prophet like some of the prophets who came before.
Jesus had appointed the twelve disciples and had given them authority to cast out demons by the power of His words and in His name. They went out and did as instructed. They cast out demons, healed people, and called them to repentance. By virtue of the Word of God, they stood in the stead and place of God doing the works of Christ. They could do the same things Jesus had been doing. There was something else that distinguished the miracle in this morning’s Gospel lesson and what had been done by Jesus and His disciples before that storm on the Sea of Galilee. Jesus and His disciples had been dealing with human beings or unclean spirits, demons.
When Jesus said to the storm, ‘Hush, be still’ He was doing something different. Jesus wasn’t speaking to another human being. He wasn’t addressing an unseen spirit. Jesus was issuing a command to and over creation itself. By the power of His words, Jesus overruled the laws of nature, the laws of cause and effect.
Only the Creator Who stands over creation has the power to do such a thing. The fact that Jesus spoke “and the wind died down and it became perfectly calm” meant that the Rabbi was in fact the Creator of the heavens and earth. The man who spoke to the storm is the One who spoke to Job in our Old Testament lesson.
The men in that boat seasoned fishermen. They knew what their boat could handle. They knew when they were in over their heads. They were not cowardly men, but this storm was really something. Based on what they knew of their boat, the force of the wind and waves, and their own skill they believed that everyone in that boat were going to drown.
As the storm raged and the disciple panicked Jesus slept in the back of the boat. That in itself is testimony to Jesus’s two natures. According to His human nature Jesus was exhausted. So tired from His day’s work that He slept like a rock. According to His divine nature, He slept like a baby knowing in the midst of the wind, waves, and all that water splashing into the boat. He knew that time had not yet come. His heavenly Father would deliver Him and His disciples to the other side of the sea.
The disciples were in sheer panic so “they awoke Him and said to Him, ‘Teacher, do You not care that we are perishing?’ {39} And being aroused, He rebuked the wind and said to the sea, ‘Hush, be still.’ And the wind died down and it became perfectly calm. {40} And He said to them, ‘Why are you so timid? How is it that you have no faith?’”
Jesus wasn’t afraid. He knew what His heavenly Father had set in place. He knew the Old Testament Scriptures and what the prophets had said of Him. He trusted that His Father would make good on all those promises.
Jesus put His finger on the problem– “Why are you so timid? How is it that you have no faith?” The disciple had a faith and understanding problem. It’s a common problem among Christians. Job had the same problem and we know how God addressed it. He asked Job, “Who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb, when I made clouds its garment and thick darkness its swaddling band, and prescribed limits for it and set bars and doors, and said, ‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stayed’?” (Job 38:8-11)
Faith and understanding is always a problem for the Christian, all Christians. Trouble times come and we worry, are gripped by fear. Troubled times come to everyone, Christians included, sometimes especially Christians. Peter wrote this about the nature of Christian suffering. “In this [suffering] you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials, so that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”
We are easily shaken. Jesus on the other hand, He sleeps knowing all the time that His Father will shall be done. Luther, “It also happens today that it appears as if the Lord does not see us, and had entirely forgotten about us, as He does here in the ship, and sleeps. He lets the waves overwhelm the ship, He lets the devil and the world rage against the Christians so that it appears that we will certainly sink and drown. In His own time, however, the Lord awakes and shows His might, rebukes the littleness of our faith, the fear and fright of His disciples . . .”
Jesus diagnosed the problem right away. It’s fear, not faith that had possession of the disciples. When Jesus sleeps, they’re afraid He won’t save them. When He acts, they’re afraid He’ll destroy them. No matter what Jesus does, they’re afraid—afraid for themselves, afraid of the storm, afraid of Jesus on account His power.
The disciples see the storm that surrounds them, then they look at Jesus asleep in the stern. They see a Jesus who is a very sound sleeper and one who does care if they live of perish. They don’t see a Jesus who is trusting God the Father to bring them all safely to shore. They wake Him in panic and ask, “Teacher, do You not care that we are perishing?”
That’s not what faith does. Faith looks at Jesus and says, “Jesus is my Savior, and He’s at work to save me even when I don’t see it. “All things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.” (Romans 8:28) When the Lord turns His power toward you, it is sent to you in mercy and grace, not terror and harm. When He sends or permits a storm, it is for your good.
The storm and Jesus’s response to it exposed their weakness and unbelief. The disciples weren’t fully ready for the work and life that lay before them. Fear and panic would happen again, only on a worse scale. The disciples will see Jesus in weakness and trouble Himself. He would not be sleeping on the wood of the boat, but He would be bleeding and dying on the wood of the cross.
From the movement of Jesus’s arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, the disciples lived in and acted out of fear, until three days later the resurrected Jesus stood in their midst, in the middle of a religious and political storm and spoke peace to them.
Whether He’s asleep in the boat, or dead on the cross, or rising from the dead, or coming in glory, or coming in bread and wine, Jesus is the Lord God, your Savior and at work bringing you salvation from sin, death, and the power of the devil.
Listen to Paul describes the life of an apostle: “As servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: by great endurance, in afflictions,
hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love; by truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; through honor and dishonor, through slander and praise. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold, we live; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing everything.” (2 Corinthians 6:4-10).
The life of the apostle was frequently a life of hardship, conflict, and rejection. So how did they endure? By faith—faith in the promises of God. The apostle who wrote about the hardships, also wrote “now is the favorable time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2).
The disciples went from “Lord, don’t you care that we perish?” to the ones who “became very much afraid [of Jesus] and said to one another, ‘Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey Him?’” They became very afraid.
The disciples witnessed something truly awesome, something jaw dropping. Standing in that boat, they realize in that moment, the Jesus had a power that paled that of the prophets of Old. Even the laws of nature had to give way. Christ’s will and words cause nature to yield because the creation is not above the Creator.
In that boat the disciples came to realize that by the power of His words Jesus Modern could do anything, anything He wanted to do. Command demons and the laws of nature. Destroy or create.
Modern Christianity has lost this kind of reverence. Modern Christians suffer from the contempt of familiarity. Jesus their buddy. They don’t have an appreciation of They
Who then was this that stopped the wind and waves. It was Jesus the Christ, Who Himself became like Job, despised by men, called upon by the devil to denounce God the Father, the Man/God who had nothing, and who died to become Job’s Redeemer – the One that Job now sees in flesh. It was job who said and gave us that part of the funeral liturgy that says, “As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives, And at the last He will take His stand on the earth. 26 Even after my skin is destroyed, Yet from my flesh I shall see God; 27 Whom I myself shall behold,
And whom my eyes will see and not another.”
Who is this? The answer according to our Epistle reading, He is the God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ, and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.
Who was this man in the boat, He was God in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them.
Who then is this man we worship? It is Christ who is saving us from our sin.
Who is this God of ours. He is the One who made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
Who is this Christ of ours, “He is the one who rescued Job and the disciples, and is doing the same for you.”
AMEN.
May the peace that surpasses all understanding keep our minds and hearts in Christ Jesus. Amen.
And as
impressive as it is that Jesus can calm a storm with just a word or two, it’s a far greater deliverance that
He delivers you from sin and death and hell: with words, with water, with bread and wine. That is the
salvation you most need, and He showers it upon you generously, continuously, powerfully.
It is the same with the personal, metaphorical storms. You’ll have your share of tempests in the
form of disease, injury, violence, setback, emotional pain, financial woe and more—these are the socalled storms of life. And when the Lord permits them to remain for a while, you’ll be tempted to wonder
if He cares that you are perishing. If He sweeps them away and sets your life right miraculously though,
then thanks be to God. But remember: that still doesn’t get your sins forgiven. Grace does—the grace
that Christ has won for you by His death on the cross. And owing to our stubborn, sinful natures, it’s
often during the worst of those storms that we most appreciate His grace and mercy toward us.
That is the same basic question the disciples asked in the boat one stormy night. Who then is this. Same question, but this time the answer is very different.
When God got done asking Job the question, “Who is this that counsels Me?” Job got it. The Law did its job, so did the Gospel. When God had finished preaching to Job, Job responded in true repentance and faith.
42:1 “Then Job answered the LORD, and said, 2 ‘I know that Thou canst do all things, And that no purpose of Thine can be thwarted. 3 Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge? Therefore I have declared that which I did not understand, Things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. 4 Hear, now, and I will speak; I will ask Thee, and do Thou instruct me.’”
Who then was this that stopped the wind and waves. It was Jesus the Christ, Who Himself became like Job, despised by men, called upon by the devil to denounce God the Father, the Man/God who had nothing, and who died to become Job’s Redeemer – the One that Job now sees in flesh. It was job who said and gave us that part of the funeral liturgy that says, “As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives, And at the last He will take His stand on the earth. 26 Even after my skin is destroyed, Yet from my flesh I shall see God; 27 Whom I myself shall behold,
And whom my eyes will see and not another.”
Who is this? The answer according to our Epistle reading, He is the God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ, and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.
Who was this man in the boat, He was God in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them.
Who then is this man we worship? It is Christ who is saving us from our sin.
Who is this God of ours. He is the One who made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
Who is this Christ of ours, “He is the one who rescued Job and the disciples, and is doing the same for you.”
AMEN.
May the peace that surpasses all understanding keep our minds and hearts in Christ Jesus. Amen.