The holy gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to Mark,
on that day, when evening had come, he said to them, Let us go
across to the other side, and leaving the crowd, they took him
with them in the boat, just as he was.
And the other boats were with him, and a great windstorm
arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that
the boat was already feeling. But he was in the stand asleep
on the cushion. And they woke him, and say to
him, Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?
And he awoke and rebuked the wind, and say to the sea, Peace
be still. And the wind ceased, and there
was a great calm. And he said to them, Why are you
afraid? Have you still no faith?
And they were filled with great fear, and say to one another,
Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him, the
gospel of the Lord? Let's pray together, Lord, we
pray now that we would be given the eyes of faith and even more
so, Lord, than the eyes of faith, give us the heart of
faith, a deep level confidence that you are the Lord and that
you know what you're doing and that we can trust you in our
life and in our death. We pray this all in the name of
the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.
Well, please be seated and hello, good morning, happy
Easter tide. We're back in our series called
simply Jesus as we are going through the Gospel of Mark, the
Gospel of Mark, one of the earliest gospels to be written,
and we're today in Mark 4, verses 35 through 41.
You can turn them your Bibles or your bulletins.
Well, on January 15th, 2009, Captain Sully Sullenberger and
First Officer Jeffrey Skiles, we're piloting U.S.
Airways Flight 1549. Everyone on board the flight
expected a routine flight from New York to North Carolina.
Shortly after takeoff, the plane reached an elevation of 3000
feet and at that point a flock of birds flew directly into the
engines. And the engines died instantly
and immediately the plane had no power whatsoever, and it began
to free fall back toward the ground.
Captain Sully at that moment uttered 2 fateful words.
My aircraft. And in the next 208 seconds, he
steeled his nerves, he focused his mind, and he guided his
plane towards the only available run runway to him, which was the
Hudson River. Seconds before the plane landed
on that watery runway, he spoke. He got onto the cabin speaker,
and he said, brace for impact. And the plane landed where he
had been planning for it to land, which was in the exact
spot he knew, the New York City area, the exact spot where the
rescuers could get to the plane in time so that the passengers
would not freeze to death and drown in the cold water.
And they were all rescued. 155 passengers survived, all 155.
And it was interesting after this happened, after 42 years of
being an ordinary obscure, you know, playing captain, Captain
Sully became this phenomenon. He became this global hero.
And the only difference was the crisis.
It was the crisis that raised everyone's confidence in the
captain. Now, many of us have pretty
limited ordinary expectations for Jesus Christ.
In theory, he's Lord. In theory, he's savior.
But when it comes to our actual problems that we deeply care
about, we don't trust him. Not specifically, not
practically. You know, you think about the
things that Christians confess. He's Lord over heaven and earth,
but not over our flooding basements.
He's going to raise us up in the last day, but he probably
doesn't care about our back pain.
He's the wisdom of God who created all things, but he can't
really help me with his final exam.
We might be familiar with the word Christology.
Familiar with that word Christology.
It's the doctrine of Christ. We confess Christology every
every time we confess the creed. I believe in Jesus Christ, his
only Son, our Lord. He will come again to judge the
living and the dead, and his Kingdom will have no end.
What a high Christology we have as Christians in theory, but
sometimes we have a low Christology in practice, and
sometimes it takes a crisis to close the gap between our high
Christology in theory and our low Christology in our heart.
Sometimes it takes a crisis to reveal how much we should have
confidence in the captain. Sometimes it takes a trial to
raise that confidence. And that's really what faith is.
Faith is practical confidence in Christ.
It's turning to Jesus in situations that traumatize us,
that perplex us, that annoy us, that overwhelm us.
That's what faith really is. You know, sometimes I wish there
was another way. I really wish that sometimes
that the way to faith wasn't so storm tossed.
Maybe you wish that too. And I think that's why we can't
miss the opening details of the story from the Gospel of Mark
today, because these first couple verses in Mark 4, verses
35 and 36 show us that the Lord Jesus leads his people into
storms. Don't miss it.
Sometimes the Lord Jesus leads his people directly into the
storm. Let's look together at verses 35
and 36 as Mark the evangelist tells us this.
On that day when evening had come, he said to them, let us go
across to the other side, and leaving the crowd, they took him
with them in the boat, just as he was, and other boats were
with him. Some context here is that Jesus
has just completed a teaching day.
He was in the boat probably most of the day teaching, and this
was the day, according to Mark, that he was teaching a lot of
the parables, especially the parable of the sower, parable of
those four different soils. It was that kind of ministry
that he was doing and crowds were coming to him and the boat
was kind of helping to keep some distance between him and the
crowds all day ministry. And when evening had come, he
needed a rest. Jesus is ready to turn his
pulpit, as it were, into a cot, sort of going to double as a as
a cot for him. But the other thing too, is that
he has other plans for the disciples, plans to grow their
faith, plans to test them. The disciples obey.
They have no idea what's ahead. You know, Jesus sneakily says,
let us go across to the other side.
They don't know what's in store, but they push off from the
shore. Maybe they kind of exhale deeply
as they sail off into the beautiful pink and blue sunset.
Watch the crowds grow smaller and smaller in their line of
sight. And they're like, all right, now
it's time for a break. Someone once said God's
appointments are sometimes our disappointments.
But I think we could adjust it to say that sometimes God
navigates us into agitation. You know, Jesus Christ sometimes
sails us into storms, and he's not the author of chaos, He's
not the author of evil. But in his wisdom, sometimes he
leads us straight into storms, straight into the storm.
That's exactly where he wants us.
He knows the storm is coming. He knows we're going to get wet,
but he also knows that we're going to see him as the Savior
in practical detail, in vivid detail, that he's sovereign,
that he's the captain now, someone who is on this very boat
ride wrote years later these words quote.
Don't be surprised. Don't be surprised when the
fiery ordeal comes among you to test you as if something unusual
were happening to you. Don't be surprised, this veteran
of the boat ride says, When a fiery ordeal comes upon you to
test you, don't be shocked at storms as if they aren't
supposed to happen. He goes on to say this.
Rejoice as you share in the sufferings of Christ, so that
you may also rejoice with great joy when His glory is revealed.
If Christ is in the boat with us, He's got good purposes for
us in it. Thus let us go across to the
other side, come what may, and as they sail into the open
waters, here's what the people in the boat discover that the
storm we're in is bigger than the boats we've got.
The storm we're in is much bigger than the boats we've got.
Verse 37. And a great windstorm arose and
the waves were breaking into the boat so that the boat was
already filling. Now, Mark, he's using a really
interesting eclectic mix of Greek words to sort of paint the
picture of a like mini hurricane.
And these would happen sometimes in the Sea of Galilee because of
where it was located. It was actually in a valley
surrounded by cliffs. You've got you've got some warm
air. You've got cold air mashing
together like in Chicago, but even worse when you're in a boat
and it's not very large. Picture black clouds splitting
Thunder, waves the size of walls, and they're coming up
upon you and they're crashing down on you.
When you're sailing, wind is usually good, but you've got to
be in control of it. The minute you're not in control
of the wind, you're in trouble if you're on a boat.
About 40 years ago, archaeologists discovered a 1st
century fishing boat from the Sea of Galilee, and it was very
likely the kind that Jesus and his disciples were in.
This boat was not long. It's about 27 feet long.
It's about 7 feet wide, and it's about four feet deep.
About yay deep. That's not a lot of room for
water, and when you've got 13 men in a 27 foot boat and it's
only about EA deep, that is not very much boat for a huge
miniature hurricane. The storm they were in was
bigger than the boat they had. The storm they were in was more
powerful even than their training as fishermen who were
on the Sea of Galilee all the time.
Now, often there is a gap between the size of our storm
and the equipment we have to handle the storm.
For example, when we become parents, we are sailing into a
storm. Storms are going to hit, and
they're going to hit our kids, and we're going to have no idea
as to what we're supposed to do at every stage of their life.
Sometimes the problem that we'll encounter and that our kids will
encounter are going to leave us feeling helpless and afraid.
Our finances can be a storm, expenses can be as vast as the
sky and our financial resources about yay high, or the problems
are as big as a miniature hurricane.
But money's capacity, even if we have enough of it, are like it
can do about this much to stop the problems from happening, not
what we were told. Our health challenges can be
larger than the resources we have to fix it, larger than the
resources that our doctors have to fix it, larger than our
strength to fix it or to even to endure it.
The chronic pain, the acute injuries, the diseases that
outpace the medicine, the storms sometimes are just overwhelming,
painful conflict, threats, lawsuits, physical attacks on
our safety. What are the storms, friends of
your life, and how deep and wide is the boat that you have to
navigate it? There's probably too much storm
and too little boat, and I like the disciples in these
situations. It appears that Jesus doesn't
care. It appears that Jesus doesn't
care. Verse 38, we find that the boat
is swamped and the disciples are soaked and they Verse 38 He was
asleep in the stern. Jesus asleep in the stern.
How dare he asleep on the cushion?
And they woke him and said to him, Teacher, do you not care
that we are perishing now? What's the deal with Jesus
napping? Well, on a human level, the man
is tired. He's OK.
He's been ministering all day long.
There's no nap that I find like a Sunday afternoon nap.
On a divine level, the Lord is trusting.
He knows the Father will take care of him, and he actually can
sleep in the storm because, you know, at the very core of his
being, even his nervous system, he just trusts that the Father's
going to take care of everything.
He's in what some people call the easy yoke.
But this is offensive to the disciples because they're not
matching. He's not matching their level of
panic. And it reveals what they
actually believe. Notice that what they call him.
Notice what they say about him in verse 38, Teacher, they don't
call him Lord. They don't call him Savior.
They don't call him Son of God. They don't use any of those
honorifics because what comes out is what's actually in their
hearts. Teacher, do you not care that we
are perishing? Not only do they believe that
they're dying, we're perishing. They believe that they're dying,
but they also believe Jesus doesn't care.
And I find myself here. It's such a human moment that
when we suffer, we're tempted to believe that God doesn't see it
and that God doesn't care. He's either not close enough to
us or he's not. He's not able to help us or He
doesn't care. Before the storms grow our
confidence in Christ, my friends, they really do have to
reveal that we don't have that confidence in the first place.
And it's part of growing our faith is getting tested like
this. Is Jesus the Lord with power to
save? Does he care enough to save us?
Is he close enough to the situations to save us?
And can he redeem any losses past, present or future and make
good of the pain? Storms are going to test whether
or not we're going to say yes to those questions or no.
And I find, as you know, you look at those words, do you not
care? There's some accusation there.
There's some accusation in those words.
And we've all been there with those accusations.
God, if you're so good, why is life so terrible right now?
Don't you care about the assault?
Don't you care about the environment?
Don't you care about my kid? Don't you care about this
injustice? You're not fixing it enough.
We're perishing. I was pondering this week about
man, what's the difference between don't you care that
we're perishing from the disciples and my God, my God,
why have you forsaken me from the psalmist?
Like, what's the difference between the Psalms of lament and
what the disciples were doing? And on the surface, it's really
subtle. It's almost like you can't tell
the difference between the two. I think the difference really is
under the surface, you know, how much trust is there?
Is there, is there an, is there a wellspring of trust coming up
in the prayer? Because when there's no trust
and we're suffering, I think that's where the blame comes in.
We, it's just feels good to blame God.
It feels good to blame someone else.
It feels good to blame ourselves.
But if we can trust, we'll stop lashing out.
We'll start lamenting. And I think that's the
difference. I think the disciples are
lashing out and I think the psalmists, the prayers of faith,
are prayers of lament. We're just going, this is
terrible, I'm suffering, People I love are suffering.
Things aren't good, but I trust you.
I trust you. And that's where all these
psalms of lament eventually go to that these prayers of lament
really are. They're honest and they're raw
and they're trusting. And that's how Jesus went to the
cross and that's how Jesus went to the Father.
It was trusting. He was able to nap on the boat
and he was able to lament on the cross, Showing us as the collect
for the day, show that godly way of living, that godly way of
trusting, that confidence, confidence that he cares,
confidence that he's competent, confident that he's close at
hand. My aircraft, that was the moment
when the captain takes over and the outcomes are in his hands,
not in the passengers hands. We can almost hear Jesus
uttering my aircraft in verse 39 where we see that the Savior is
Lord over the storm. The Savior is Lord over the
storm. Verse 39 of Mark 4 says, And he
awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, peace be still.
These are two Greek words. Peace be still, be quiet.
Hush. And the wind ceased, and there
was a great calm. They'd heard him teach and
they'd heard him preach, and they'd seen him heal, Heal, and
they've seen him cast out demons, but they'd never seen
this. Surely they've heard about the
ancient power of Yahweh parting the waters and delivering his
people through the storm, but they had never seen it with
their mortal eyes. Wind not just easing slowly in
the by and by, but evaporating in a moment.
Waves not just sort of like eventually dying down, but going
flat as a pancake in an instant. One moment.
Nature is like this wild beast, chaotic, deadly the next minute,
snapping to attention like a trained soldier obeying A lordly
voice with a lordly look in his eye, speaking commands into
creation like a war general speaking 2 words into the
hurricane. Instant calm, instant peace.
A holy hush. Now maybe there's a moment or
two that passes in the holy hush.
Everyone catches their breath, looks around, looks at Jesus,
and he turns to them and asks verse 40.
Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?
Poignant questions. It's a humbling thing for what's
inside to come out in the presence of Christ, who sees all
and knows all. And now they see it.
They feared the storm way too much, and they feared Jesus not
enough. And truth be told, it took a
storm for them to see it. Jack Miller was a Presbyterian
pastor and missionary author. He mentored many well known
Christian leaders like Tim Keller and Johnny Erickson Tata
and many others. His son Paul Miller wrote the
book of Praying, Life of Praying Church.
Really talented guy, 15 years into his ministry, kind of had
to come to the end of himself. And then he began to see that it
was in his own helplessness that God's power really began to work
through his ministry. At one point while serving in
Uganda, he actually was caught in a storm while on a boat in
Lake Victoria. And he said this about the
experience, quote. The whole thing seems senseless,
going from bad to worse in the blackness and in the rain and
the utter misery of the cold. My last comfort was the sound of
the outboard motor. I asked God to keep it going and
hardly asked for it when off it went.
We were adrift, powerless, directionless, exposed to
pirates who prowl the seas of the lake.
There was just God seemingly battering us, and there was a
kind of message in it. It was simply that God was still
a God of infinite love and compassion, and I had to see
that I was not in any way in the same league with Him.
Only as I submitted my proud heart to his bigness and majesty
and will could I really experience his love for the
disciples, for Jack Miller, for us.
I think there's this beautiful, fitting humility that comes
through a crisis where we see Jesus as Lord, and I am not.
I am not the captain of this crisis and I think this humility
opens us up to awe and wonder that the Lord has always wanted
us to be ready for. In verse 41, we see this storm
tossed disciples get to stand in awe and wonder at the Lord of
the storm. Storm tossed disciples are the
ones that get the privilege of standing in awe and wonder and
worship at the Lord of the storm.
Verse 41 says they were filled with great fear and said to one
another, Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey
him? Who then is this man?
That is the central question of the Gospel of Mark.
The readers of this gospel already know the answer from
Mark, one verse one, Jesus Christ, Jesus Messiah, the Son
of God. Readers know it.
The disciples don't yet know it. It's slowly dawning on them,
crisis by crisis, whom exactly they are following around.
And here we've seen they they have made this critical leap
forward together because their fear of Jesus has now become a
little bit greater than their fear of the storm.
They've witnessed a power that they hadn't witnessed before,
and it left them in awe and wonder.
And they have seen, like Jack Miller saw, that they are not
any way in the same league with Jesus.
And now they know him as Lord over the storm.
And the thing about tests from God is that if we fail them the
first time, we get to take them again.
And you could say that they failed this test.
You could say that they're being developed by this test, maybe
both. But it's going to, they're going
to have other storms, other tests.
They're going to see that Jesus is Lord not only over a Sea of
Galilee mini hurricane, but also 5000 hungry appetites with no
food supply. Jesus is Lord over that
situation. They're going to say that Jesus
is Lord over the death of his own cousin and the death of a
little girl. That Jesus is Lord over the
chronic illness of a woman with 12 years of bleeding.
That Jesus is Lord over rejection from his family
members and friends. That Jesus is Lord over false
accusation and abandonment and even his own traumatizing death.
That Jesus is Lord even after his ascension over a fledgling
church that doesn't know what it's doing with untrained
leaders. That Jesus is Lord even over
Peter's imprisonment. And I think by that time, Peter
kind of knew that that like, the Lord is going to be somehow over
this storm too. My aircraft, my crisis.
That's what Jesus says. That's what the Lord says.
And practical confidence in all of these storms going up and up
and up until they can finally worship him as Lord.
You know, as a result, almost all, if not all of the men in
these boats, you know, what eventually happened to them,
They all went down into the sea, you could call it of martyrdom
in different continents, in different places, they all went
out. Jesus said go, I'll always be
with you. He gave them the sacraments of
baptism in the Eucharist. He gave them the Gospel.
He gave them things to teach. They would have their own all
day teaching ministry followed by naps.
But eventually they would all go down in the storm and they went
down with confidence. They went down with trust.
Now that's a supernatural trust. That's a supernatural
confidence. And in fact, the early church,
when they read this text that we have today, you know what they
saw? They saw the boat as the church
storm tossed people freaking out, not knowing what to do.
The Lord over all of the the persecution that they
experienced, the loss, the uncertainty, and they prayed for
faith and they prayed for confidence, and the Lord gave it
to them. I wonder if we might apply that
ancient Christian creed this week to our storms.
Can you imagine doing that? Jesus is Lord, not just in
theory, but over my storm, my crisis.
Jesus is Lord over my stress. Jesus is Lord over my marriage
conflict. Jesus is Lord over my property
taxes. Jesus is Lord over my my future
plans, which feel murky and cloudy and I don't know what to
do with my life. Jesus is Lord over my
loneliness, and he's lowered over my sleepless nights and
over my kids and over my parents and over the scariest situation
that I've ever encountered in my life.
My aircraft. That's what he says.
That's what he intends. He's LED us into a storm.
We don't know why, we don't know why.
Why Lord? You?
Really. It's almost an unhelpful
question. At least we have the answer
here. He wants to reveal himself.
The waves are like mountains. Our boats are about yay high.
And as we declare Lord, you're Lord over those waves.
You're Lord over the storm. He's the Lord over the storm on
the inside too. So we say, Lord Jesus, I'm in
pain, I'm anxious, I feel angry, and I'm just giving this to you.
And I don't have the confidence I need.
I need you to give me that confidence.
I give you the heaviness. Lord of this situation, please
carry this for me. And that's when he does the
greatest miracle of all, friends.
He grows our faith. Hurricanes are going to go away.
This world's going to pass away. You know what's going to last
forever? It's the people of God who have
developed a confidence in Jesus Christ as the Lord who are able
to trust him in suffering that's going to last forever.
I was reading this week some some of the prayers written,
some of the reflections written by a man who started the Apple
Daily newspaper in Hong Kong. He was a a committed Christian.
He's now in prison in China because of how faithfully he
spoke the truth. And now he's in prison.
And his reflections are some of the most beautiful, faith
filled, peace filled reflections I've read all week.
Because they speak about a confidence that even even if the
storm never abates until the end of his life, he is at peace
knowing that the Lord is near, that the Lord cares and that the
Lord is going to fix it. He's going to make good of it.
And there's this trust and it's beautiful.
And the Lord wants that for us too.
He wants us walking in a confidence that we didn't have
before, even lamenting to him instead of lashing out at him
and really finding ourselves in awe and wonder, saying who is
this man? Finding ourselves in awe and
wonder, not at the size of the storm, but the might of the
captain. Friends, He is the Lord over the
storm, over the calm. And though He is a Lord of
infinite love and compassion, we are not in any way in the same
league with Him. So may blessing and glory and
wisdom and Thanksgiving and honor and power, and might be to
our God and his Christ forever and ever.
Amen.