Amen. Please have a seat.
Church going to ask you to open your Bibles to Luke chapter 8,
verse 22. I'm also going to ask you to
pull out your phone. That is those of you who aren't
already secretly watching underneath, and I want you to
turn off the game and put on your calendar app.
OK, so pull out your phone, grab your calendar app and go to May
30th. And on May 30th, I want you to
write this in there, the big surf, because that is going to
be our date for the big serve this year.
And we would love to have all of you engage in that as we go and
serve our community. And if you're looking and you
say Derek, May 30th, I've already got plans.
I've got good news for you. You can go to May 29th because
we're going to do it on May 29th as well.
So you can choose one of those two days to put it in, but I'm
hoping that all of you will choose to be a part of going out
and serving our community in the name of Jesus.
It was a great day when we did it last year.
It's going to be better this year, Lord willing, because
we've moved it later. And I'm hoping the weather is
going to be a lot nicer, especially if we're doing any
gardening or litter pickup or anything like that.
All right, let's read this passage together from Luke
chapter 8. Luke chapter 8, starting at
verse 22. Love this story.
We're going to dive into this today.
One day he and his disciples got into a boat and he told them,
let's cross over to the other side of the lake.
So they set out and as they were sailing, he fell asleep.
Then a fierce windstorm came down on the lake, and they were
being swamped and we're in danger.
They came and they woke him up, saying, Master, master, we're
going to die. Then he got up and rebuked the
wind and the raging waves. So they ceased.
And where? And there was a calm and he said
to them, where is your faith? They were fearful and amazed,
asking one another, who then is this?
He commands even the winds in the wave and they obey him.
The Lord bless the reading of his word.
Just want to confess. There's a lot of things that I
personally struggle with. Sometimes I care too much.
Sometimes I work too hard. Now there's a there's a whole
lot of real things that I struggle with.
I can be impatient. I can be selfish and
self-centered. I struggle with pride at times.
I want to be right, I don't. I hate to lose an argument, but
fear is not something that I regularly find myself struggling
with, probably to a fault. I'm going to throw a picture up
on the screen back here. It's a it's a picture of
paragliding just outside of Beirut.
I've been to Beirut 4 times and every single time I have gone I
have pleaded with the people that I'm with to allow me to go
paragliding in Beirut. I want to run off of that
mountain and jump out into the air and just sail over the city
and out to the Mediterranean. And every time, for some reason
they tell me no. And I was there again in
October. So I pleaded again.
And one of my friends who is much wiser and smarter than me,
he said to me, Derek, have you ever Googled paragliding in
Beirut? And I said, no, why would I do
that? He said, just how about you just
just do that? Just do a quick Google of
paragliding in Beirut. And then I saw that I was there
in October. Between May and August, they had
suspended all paragliding because they had, in a number of
weeks, three people die. That did not change the fact
that I still wanted to go because I saw people up in the
sky and I thought, well, it must be OK.
Now they're going again because I amongst the other things I
struggle with, I am dumb. There are a couple times,
however, where I found myself legitimately scared and and
interestingly, a lot of those have involved water.
One time we were in the Backcountry of Algonquin.
I was a teenager, I was probably about 15 at the time and I was a
male 15 year old teenager. So I was even Dumber than I am
now. And there was an island out in
the lake across from our campground and I thought, hey,
let's swim out to it. Now I am actually a pretty good
swimmer, but I am heavy and I think I am a good swimmer and a
even better sinker. And I got about halfway there
and I started to get very tired and I did not wear a life jacket
to do this. And I thought, I'm halfway
there's, I can't go back and I can't go forward either.
Is is going to be just as difficult.
And I did start to panic a little thinking this is my end
in Algonquin in the Backcountry, swimming out to an island. 10
years ago, we were out on Lake Erie doing a family get together
with my parents and my sister and her family, all of my my
niece and nephew, all of our kids.
We were on a pontoon boat and we were heading out.
We were in the Long Point area. We were going to head out to the
tip of Long Point, which is just an absolutely beautiful spot if
you can get out there by boat. And one of the things with Lake
Erie, if some of you are boaters, you know this, like
especially in the inner Bay, there is when it's still, it is
just awesome. It's like glass, you're gliding
out there. But things can change quickly on
the lake. And so we got out, we had a
wonderful time out at the tip by the lighthouse.
But on our way back, a storm started to roll in.
And pontoon boats are great, but they're not great in big waves.
And so the waves started coming over the Bower, the front of the
ship, and they were splashing on.
And, and I don't often get scared on a boat, but I was
starting to get a little legitimately worried about
whether this boat was going to make it all the way back to
where we were going. And what, after what seemed like
a long couple of hours of waves splashing over the boat and
trying to keep everybody calm, we did make it back.
But I realized that when you're in a storm like that, that type
of situation, that type of fear reveals some things.
It reveals some assumptions. I had to start it.
I had assumed that that the weather we had started with that
morning in the calm, lovely day was going to carry on all
throughout the rest of our day. I just thought, hey, we're out,
we're starting. It's going smoothly.
I assumed it would finish smoothly.
It revealed not just assumptions, but it revealed to
me what matters most. At no point while I was out
there and starting to fear, feel some fear build up did I start
to think about my To Do List at work.
I didn't think about any chores that needed to get done around
the home. Now all of my thought started go
to especially Amanda and my kids who are on the boat with me.
What matters most to me in that moment?
And then the question of who or what do you trust that It
revealed that because there were three of us on that boat with
pleasure craft operator licenses.
And I thought, who do I trust to take this boat back to shore
safely? I realized it wasn't me.
I only boated like a few times. I had my license, but I am not
the guy my dad was boating. And I thought to myself,
actually, I kind of wish my brother-in-law was sailing the
ship right now because he has the most experience out on the
water. He had the most experience
guiding a boat. Dad, I'm sorry if you listen to
this. Never told him that before.
But that's what storms do. That's what crises do.
They reveal things. They they unmask our
assumptions. They reveal our priorities.
They show in what or in whom do we actually place our trust?
And in today's passage, Jesus disciples, as we saw, they find
themselves in the midst of a storm and it's going to reveal
some things about them. But also and more importantly,
this passage is going to reveal some things about Jesus and the
Jesus who is in the boat with them.
And so I just want to say, if you're here today or you're
watching online or you're listening at some other time and
you're in the midst of a storm right now, here's what I've been
praying for you this week. I've been praying that this
message will do some of that revealing work in your hearts
and lives, that you'll be able to see where there's some things
that are being exposed. But I'm also praying that you
will be deeply encouraged and strengthened as we reveal some
things about the Jesus who can be in the boat with you.
And if you're here today and some of you, I'm praying many of
you are in a spot where it's clear skies, sunny skies, blue
skies, water is calm, that I pray that this message would act
as preparatory work for you to prepare you for the times and
the realities that will inevitably come where you're
going to find yourself in the middle of a storm.
So let's just walk through this passage together and see what
God wants to reveal to us about our hearts and what he wants to
reveal to us about who Jesus is. One day Jesus and his disciples
get into a boat and he told them, let's cross over to the
other side of the lake. So that's what they did.
They set out and as they were sailing, he fell asleep.
Then a fierce windstorm came down on the lake and they were
being swamped and were in danger.
So Jesus and his disciples, it says we're out on a lake.
What lake were down? They were on the Sea of Galilee.
I'm going to throw a picture up there on the screen behind us
just so you can kind of get a picture of the Sea of Galilee.
It's a geography. It's 21 kilometers longish.
It's about 13 kilometers wide. So it's a Big Lake.
But for those of us who live in southwestern Ontario, not a Big
Lake, right? We're used to much, much bigger
lakes. But this is still a large lake.
It's surrounded, as you can see here.
It's kind of a bowl. If you can see on the map around
it, the topography that the the sides of the lake go up steeply
and quickly around it. Some of you have been blessed
enough to be in Israel to see it and to see how the lake kind of
sits down in this bowl. And so they're up in kind of the
northern part, just north, northwest and Capernaum.
And they're going to head across the lake east to the story part
that we're going to be in the area that we're going to be in
next week in our story. But they're heading towards the
Gargessa, which is right there on the right hand side on the
border of modern day Syria. That's where that sits, just so
you can kind of place yourself there because of the topography,
because of the way in the geography, that of the Sea of
Galilee and the way that it sets.
Storms can come up really quickly because wind can come
down through the River Valley, through that Upper Jordan River
and come and it brings cool air down and it just stirs
everything up as the cool air hits the water.
And actually, in 1992, I was reading this this week, there
was a storm, maybe like the storm that the disciples
experienced, where all of a sudden out of the blue, the sea
generated 10 foot waves that just crashed into the port in in
the city of Tiberius, causing a huge amount of damage.
And so this is a reality on that lake when it says a fierce
windstorm came down on the lake and all of a sudden they're in
this boat and it is being swamped and they're in huge
danger. Now, think back, we've just read
through the passage. How did the Israelites there,
how did the disciples, they were Israelites, by the way.
How did the disciples find themselves in this danger?
How did they end up in this situation where they were on a
boat that was about to go down anybody because Jesus told him
to go there? They ended up in the storm
because of Jesus. And I think this is really
important. It was actually by following
Jesus's lead in instructions that these guys find themselves
in this predicament. It says Jesus told them, let's
crossover to the other side of the lake.
Great, let's go do that. And they say, yes, Jesus.
So they set out. The first thing that we need to
see when we look at this passage, when we look at this
story is obeying Jesus won't keep you from experiencing
storms. I just think this is so
important that following Jesus is is not going to keep storms
from hitting your life. If you think, well, as long as
I'm following Jesus, as long as I'm doing what Jesus asked me to
do, life should be calm seas and blue skies.
You're going to find yourself in a spot where you're going to be
so disillusion, so disappointed, because that's just not what
life with Jesus looks like. Now, Are there times where we
find ourselves in the storms of our own making?
100%, absolutely. We do a lot of really dumb
things that bring storms on us. All of us do.
We do it where there's a lot of times where we find ourselves in
a storm because we ignore the words of Jesus, because we
ignore his commands, because we refuse the leading of the Holy
Spirit in our life. It it's never wrong when you're
in a storm to to take the moment to do a little introspection and
say, how did I end up in this storm?
Was this a me ignoring Jesus or is this a me following Jesus
storm? But you can't assume that
because life got hard or things got difficult because you find
yourself in the middle of a storm right now, that either you
misheard Jesus or Jesus got it wrong and didn't live up to his
end of the bargain. Because there is no bargain that
says follow me and life gets easy.
If you assume that following Jesus guarantees a smooth ride,
then one of two things is going to take place in your life.
The 1st is you could end up in a spot like I just said, where you
just assume, you know, you must have messed up Jesus's
instructions along the way. You must have misheard him.
You must not be doing what he wants you to do.
And you take guilt and shame and blame on you that you shouldn't
take. You start to think you're being
punished. The second thing is that going
to happen is you assume that God got it wrong.
But Jesus, Jesus, how could you do this?
You called me into this and this is what happens.
You really messed this one up, Jesus.
But sometimes obedience is exactly what leads you into the
middle of the storm. And Jesus didn't get it wrong.
And you didn't get it wrong because that's what happened
here. The disciples, by doing exactly
what Jesus had told them to do, have found themselves in a
hugely dangerous, difficult, scary position.
Their boat, and some of you feel this right now, this is what
your life feels like. Their boat feels like it's going
down. So what are they going to do?
Verse 24, they came and they woke him up saying, master,
master, we're going to die. So I would say this to you, if
you're in the storm, run to Jesus.
If you're in the storm, run to Jesus.
I said that storms reveal, One of the things that storms reveal
is just how vulnerable and weak and small every single one of us
is. Listen, there's at least four
guys in this boat who are professional fishermen who have
grown up, spent their whole lives on this body of water.
They would have had zero fear heading out onto the lake that
day until the moment where they got hit in the face with the
reality that they can't control or tame this lake, that the
storm is so much bigger than them before running to Jesus.
What seems evident in both the text and what you can imagine
happening is I'm sure that they would have done everything in
their power to try and solve the situation.
Again, they they knew what they were doing out there.
They felt like they had some modicum of skill to be able to
navigate this, and it wasn't until they were at their wit's
end that they came running to Jesus.
Because they say master, Master, not hey, we're having a little
problem here. Hey, you think you could help us
out with it? No, Master.
Master, you better wake up because you're going to die.
We're going to die. We're all dead.
That was the message. We are out of solutions.
The only hope left is that Jesus, you could do something
that we couldn't figure out. Now how often?
Do we find ourselves in situations where we try and
manage the situation, control the situation, apply our skill
to the situation, do everything we can on our own until there's
nothing left for us to do, And then we throw up our last minute
prayer and hope that Jesus may be like, I don't have a lot of
faith because if I couldn't figure it out, you probably
can't either. But maybe you could jump in,
right? Some of you today you're in
storm management mode, like the disciples were there for a
while. You're trying to navigate it.
You know, I think I've kind of I've lived enough life, I should
be able to handle this. You're you're calling on your
friends. You know, it's getting tricky
here. Could use some help guys.
So calling them to assist you act like you're worry can steal
the waves. You ever done that?
Maybe if I just stay up all night thinking about the same
thing over and over again, that'll fix it.
It's worked so well in the past that maybe my worry will really
work this time. You try and self medicate the
storms away. She's asleep and maybe I maybe
the goal is to just sleep through this thing and hope we
get out the other side. You just act by as if your own
effort and your own skill, you will be able to calm the waves
and navigate the storm. And here's what I think Jesus.
Jesus says run to me. Run to don't leave him as the
desperation moment of last resort.
Because look at what happens when the disciples finally get
to the point where they wake Jesus up.
It says he got up, rebuked the winds and the raging waves, and
so they ceased and there was a calm.
The storm came to an end. If you are in a storm right now,
run to Jesus. Not when you've exhausted
yourself or exhausted your options.
Call out to him now. Then he says this to them.
Where's your faith now? There's something before we dive
into what Jesus says there that I want you to notice in terms of
the ordering of how Jesus does this, because I think this is
important. It's it was important for me
this week. Jesus calms the storm before he
calls out the deficiency in their faith.
What I love about Jesus is he's kind before he's corrective
because I'm not always that way. I don't know about you, but I, I
could do to be a little bit more like Jesus in this.
I think there's a lesson in this for a lot of especially probably
for a lot of us who are parents on how we love our kids, how we
love people in the midst of the storm.
Let's let's walk with people in the midst of the storm before we
try and point out the deficiencies, OK?
But at the end of the day, this will be a message for some of
the rest of you who just want to do The Walking part.
Loving people requires more than helping them just manage their
way through the storm. It requires confronting them
about the object and the reality of their faith, he says.
Guys, where is your faith? Because storms reveal the depth
of our faith, fear is a natural protective response.
It's a God-given gift. Like if you are in the mountains
of BC or Alberta and you are walking on a path or a trail and
all of a sudden it's you and a grizzly bear, it is right and
proper to get away from the grizzly bear.
That is a good move. It is not a good move to be one
of the six to seven percent of American males who think they
could take a grizzly bear on in a fight bare handed.
OK, I'm I am hopeful that in the reality of the moment when that
takes place, that number goes down to like 0.60 point 7% of
men. I'm hopeful.
Not convinced, but hopeful. Some of us do.
We have an irrational level of self-confidence.
That's what we talked about in our home.
And sometimes the mercy of God, the grace of God, is he puts us
into storms that we can't handle to humble us and help us, help
show us how small we are, how incapable we are.
The problem that Jesus had with the disciples is not that they
believed the storm was too big for them to handle.
It was too big for them. It's not, that's not Jesus's
issue here. It's that they were worried that
the storm was too big for him to handle, and so they thought they
were all going to die. I mean, it's easy to trust Jesus
on those beautiful days where life is calm and everything is
going great and everything is going well and everything is
coming up roses. The wind is gentle, the seas
like. I love those days.
I hope, I hope you have many of those days.
The question is though, when the storm comes up, how do you who's
Jesus to you, not on the on the beautiful days, but who is Jesus
to you on the stormy days? See our response in those
moments in the midst of the storm.
Those are what reveal what we truly, honestly in the depths of
our being believe about Jesus, not the nice words we can utter
when everything is going well. So if you had asked Jesus, if
you, if you had asked the disciples when they were just
getting ready to go on the boat and it was nice day and they
say, hey, guys, just a question. Do you think Jesus could raise
somebody from the dead? Well, they've already seen him
do it. So they say, of course Jesus can
raise somebody from the dead. Then why are they so worried
when they think they're going to die?
Because it wasn't their lives on the line then, was it?
It was all hypothetical and theoretical storms force us to
reckon with what we believe. Deep down on the inside.
When everything is on the line about Jesus, do we really
believe that He is good? When nothing good seems to be
going on in our lives, do I really believe that Jesus can be
trusted? When the rain and the and the
wind is blowing so hard that I can't even see the hand in front
of my face to try and navigate out of this, do I really believe
that he will provide when the bank account is at 0 and the
bills are coming due to keep a roof over my head or food on my
table? Do I really believe that Jesus
is the one who has conquered death?
When I'm staring death in the face?
Do I believe that the Jesus who's in the boat with me is
more powerful than the storm that is overtaking me?
Do I really believe that the Jesus who's in the boat with me
won't get out of the boat when the storm comes?
I said earlier, if you assume that following Jesus will be a
smooth ride, then when life inevitably gets hard, you're
either going to feel like you've messed it up or Jesus has.
But the reality is that Jesus often leads us into the storms
in order to build our faith. It's when you're put through the
Crucible of having to actually step out onto the things that
you say. You believe when when everything
is going well, that your faith gets solidified.
It gets solid. That's what the result was for
the disciples that day because it revealed some things about
the disciples, but it also revealed some things to the
disciples about who Jesus really was, right?
And it says they were fearful and amazed, asking one another,
who then is this? He commands even the winds and
the waves, and they obey him. And just a moment ago they were
terrified of the storm. Now they're like, man, we were
scared of the storm. Jesus way scarier than the
storm, it says. It says they were fearful and
amazed because they saw one who was bigger than the storm.
I mean, in the storm they were in, it was a big one.
Again, they were experienced guys out on on, on a boat.
They know what a bad storm. They know when their boats about
to go under. But now they understood it
wasn't just them in the storm. They had the creator of the wind
and the waves in the boat with them, and they saw it in a way
they hadn't been able to see it before with all the amazing
things they had seen Jesus do. This built their faith again.
Oswald Chambers says that the remarkable thing about fearing
God is that when you fear God, you fear nothing else.
When, when you actually see God for how big he is, nothing's
bigger than him. Nothing's more powerful than
him. You realize, hey, I really, if
I'm with him, I got nothing to fear.
If I'm not with him, I got some problems, you know, as as devout
Jews, these guys would have known the Old Testament.
They would have known the Psalms very well.
And I'm sure in this moment at least one of them had this
Psalm. Psalm one, O 7, This section of
the Psalm come to mind. So what the psalmist writes here
and put it up on the screen. Then they cried out to the Lord
in their trouble, and he brought them out of their distress.
He stilled the storm to a whisper.
The waves of the sea were hushed.
They rejoiced when the waves grew quiet.
Then he guided them to the harbor.
They longed for this man who they called Teacher, who they
called Master, the one who just minutes ago was asleep.
Because he is in fact man. He was human, was not simply
human. He was no mere man.
He's Lord over the storm. He's ruler over all things.
He is God. There is no storm that he can't
come. There is no crisis that is too
big for Jesus to handle because there is no inch, no centimeter,
no millimeter in all of creation over which he does not rule and
reign. He's the Lord over the storm.
He's the ruler over all things. And what was true of Jesus in
that moment, in that day on the boat with those disciples is
true for us today as well, because Jesus is the Lord over
your storm. So let me ask you, what storm
are you in right now? Maybe it's a marriage that feels
like it is taken on water. Maybe it's the storm of a
diagnosis that's come out of nowhere.
I know for many of you have talked to you and I know the
pain of this, that you've experienced this.
Maybe the storm of a prodigal child.
Maybe it's the storm of financial pressure, that anxiety
that just won't let you sleep at night.
Maybe you got a storm of just a in your business and your work,
a leadership burden that just feels too heavy for you to be
able to carry. And some of you right now, man,
you're bailing water as fast as you can.
You are working to try and keep that boat afloat with all of
your might. You are so exhausted trying to
keep this boat upright. And Jesus question to you, I
think would be the same as his question to his disciples and
them of us. Where's your faith?
What are you going to trust? It's.
It's not. Did you know Jesus did not ask
the question? Do you feel calm?
No. Storms are scary.
We don't feel calm. He doesn't.
He doesn't say. Do you have it all figured out?
No. They didn't have it all figured
out. There's no one to do.
He doesn't even ask them. Have you stopped being afraid
now that the water is clear? You all.
You all stop being afraid. No.
Where's your faith? What do you where?
Where is your faith anchored this morning?
Is it anchored in your ability or your plan, your skill, your
wisdom, your reputation, your emotional strength to get you
through? Or is it anchored in the one who
speaks in the winds and the waves Obey you?
You don't. I just want to let you know you
don't need perfect faith. You just need to have faith in
the one who's perfect. A small grip on a strong Savior
is better than a strong grip on yourself.
Jesus is inviting you to come and to see Him today, to see him
for who He actually is, the Lord over your storm, to rest in Him
today. If you've never trusted in Jesus
as the ultimate object of your faith, if your faith is resting
in anything other than Jesus, as the one who can truly save you
not only from your storms but from your sins, today's the day.
Call out to Him, confess your sin, trust in his death on the
cross for your sins and His resurrection power to grant you
new life. Surrender your life to Him like
like the three gentlemen who were baptized this morning have
done, and confess their the reality that's taking place in
their life. You can join them.
It's open and available to anybody.
You can't control the storm of sin and death.
Good news, Jesus already overcame it.
If you belong to him, stop trying to try harder.
Stop acting like your worry is going to keep you afloat.
Stop acting like you're alone in the boat with nobody who can
help you. Instead, turn to him.
Cry out to Him. Run to Him, and even if the
storm doesn't immediately cease, you can be calm because he's in
control. See Following Jesus.
It doesn't prevent storms, but it does mean that the Lord of
the storm is in the boat with you through all the storms.
And if the Lord of the storm is in your boat, just as the
psalmist was able to say and to cry out, you can be certain that
he will ultimately lead your boat to safe harbor.
Let's pray God, I have no idea the storms that are represented
by those who are hearing this today.
I have no idea the depth, the severity, the strength, but you
know, you know every single individual who is here today,
who is watching online, You know everyone who will ever hear this
message, You know their storms, you're bigger than their storms.
You love them. You want them to call out to
you. I'm praying that you would grow
our faith. Help us to see you more clearly.
Help us to see you as not just Lord of storms, but Lord of our
storm today so that we could rest even in the midst of all of
the chaos that is going on around us.
We could rest knowing that the boat that we're in with you
safe, and we could rest knowing that no matter what happens,
you're going to see us through to safe harbor because that's
what you do. Whether that safe harbor is
going to come immediately or whether that safe harbor rests
for us on the other side of whatever life brings, help us to
anchor our hearts ourselves to you.
Help us to place our faith in you.
I pray in Jesus name, Amen.