Sermon Transcript
Mark 4:35-41. 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, and a great windstorm arose and the waves were breaking into the boat so that the boat was already filling. But he was in the stern asleep on the cushion. And they woke him and said to him, Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?
And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. He said to them, why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith? And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, who then is this that even the wind and the sea obey him?
Mark 6:45-52. Immediately he made his disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side, to Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd. And after he had taken leave of them, he went up on the mountains to pray. And when evening came, and the boat was out on the sea, and he was alone on the land, and he saw that they were making headway painfully, for the wind was against them, And about the 4th watch of the night, he came to them walking on the sea. He meant to pass by them, but when they saw him walking on the sea, they thought it was a ghost and cried out, for they all saw him and were terrified.
But immediately he spoke to them and said, take heart, it is I. Do not be afraid. And he got into the boat with them, and the wind ceased. And they were utterly astounded, for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened.
One of the greatest certainties in life is that we will face storms.
We will face fears, threats, situations that we can’t control that might even end our lives. We will face storms, all of us, no exception. No matter what family you came from, no matter what your education is, no matter how far you’ve climbed up the corporate ladder, none of us will have clear skies from here on out. We’ve had storms in our past, there will be storms in the future, and I’m sorry to break it to you, but the biggest storm that you will have to face in your life might not be behind you, it might be in front of you. Even if you’ve faced dozens of Category 5 hurricanes already, it does not mean that you have paid your dues, so to speak, to guarantee that you will have smooth sailing from here on out.
None of us have a get out of future storms pocket or card in our back pocket, right? Fear and uncertainty are the greatest certainties in life, and therefore it makes sense that Jesus and his disciples faced storms as well. If we all go through them, and we do, then of course they went through them too. They didn’t somehow escape the inevitable that all of us face. They also had to deal with it.
But one of the benefits of Jesus’ incarnational training model with his disciples, you know, he was living amongst them while he was teaching them. One of the benefits of that is that as all the normal situations in life happened, they happened in a setting where then Jesus could process them, process all of those situations with them. So as all these different kind of life events popped up, Jesus used those moments as teaching opportunities, and those included storms, of course, because those happen in life. We’ve been going through the book of Mark for the past several months, and today we’re looking at passages where disciples faced storms. Mark records really 2 different storms, chapter 4, chapter 6, and as we take a look at these, we will observe the image of the sea, what the sea represents, why the disciples encountered the storm, and then the fear that can eliminate fear.
So, the image of the sea, why they encountered the storm, and then the fear that can eliminate fear. So first, the image of the sea is that storms are overwhelming and yet at the same time obedient. Storms are overwhelming, they’re daunting, and yet at the same time they are really, really small and obedient to their master. We’ll look at those individually. First, overwhelming.
The disciples encounter not only a storm but a storm at sea. Which is the most terrifying and unpredictable type of storm. It is max fear, max uncertainty, max not being able to control the outcome. The sea in many ancient cultures often, if not always, symbolized this kind of violent chaos. The sea was overwhelming and uncontrollable.
Many people were lost at sea. Storms could come out of nowhere as they do in this passage. You couldn’t tell what what was lurking under the water. You couldn’t see down there, but you knew there was something. So people’s imaginations would just run wild, right?
Many cultures have some terrifying sea monster that can’t be stopped. It’s Norse mythology that dreamed up the Kraken, which has now made it into pirate movies. But the Kraken is this, you know, totally unstoppable, fearsome creature. It’s supposed to be a representation of the sea itself. It’s wild, it’s unpredictable, it’s massive, it can take down entire fleets of ships.
And that’s what the sea does. The sea is chaotic, uncontrollable. And Scripture paints those same kinds of themes as well. It’s not just mythology, right? Like, right here in Mark, we see the futility of the disciples struggling against the sea.
It’s the same thing with the sailors in Jonah in the Old Testament. They are terrified of the storms they encounter. In Job, we find these unstoppable beasts, the Leviathan and the Behemoth. And then all the way back in Genesis 1, before much else happened, water was over the surface of the earth, and the water and the earth is described as formless and void. In other words, the earth was chaotic.
It was turbulent. It was formless, maybe explosive, unpredictable. So, it’s not just like pagan cultures that ascribe power to the sea. Scripture acknowledges, right, both the literal sea, it’s really there, really in a boat. Jonah was really in a boat.
So, both the literal sea and what the sea can represent are just— it’s totally overwhelming, which means if you’re in a storm right now, that feels overwhelming. The Bible sees you.
Scripture conforms— I mean, confirms we are not just masters of our own destiny. We are subject to forces that are beyond our control. We are tossed and turned around, right? And it is unsettling. The storm you are facing right now might be way too big for you.
Paul writes in the New Testament, 1 Corinthians 1:8, Paul says he was so utterly burdened beyond his strength that he despaired of life itself. He writes he thought he had received the sentence of death. What he was going through, it was too much. And you may feel that way. If you do, I want to affirm you.
It’s a real and justifiable feeling. The sea is overwhelming. You can say so. The Bible says so.
But it is not the only thing the Bible teaches us about the sea. The Bible also teaches us that storms, as big as they are, they are not ultimate. They still have to answer to the one who created them. Them. They are big, that’s very true, but they are also obedient.
And this is where other ancient cultures that are not formed by Scripture often fall short because many ancient cultures, I mean, rightly recognize the sea as overwhelming, but then they go too far believing that the sea is primary, ultimate, or that it has no rival. There are some Hindu gods who are born in the sea or floating on top of the sea, or Babylonian culture believed the sea gave birth to gods. And therefore, in those cultures, in some sense, the sea is more primary than God, like it was there first, and then it could have power over God, or at least God needs to struggle with the sea somehow like we do. But Scripture never says that, never once. Scripture paints the sea as obedient to God always.
The storm is not ultimate. God is. The sea did not create God like it does in some mythologies. God creates the sea. God did not arise out of the chaos in the primordial world.
He was there already and he’s the one that brought order to that chaos. He made light, he made land with just his voice. It was effortless for God to speak and the calm all the turbulence of what appears in the early world. So, in Scripture, no matter how big the sea is, no matter how scary it is, no matter how overwhelming, it still has to answer to God. It is still totally obedient to Him.
Yes, compared to us, the sea and storms are totally overwhelming beyond our ability to endure, 1 Corinthians But in relationship to God, they are submissive. Compared to us, powerful. Compared to him, powerless. Compared to us, enormous, uncontrollable. Compared to him, tiny, docile.
And this is what we see here in Mark. In one of the narratives, the disciples are fighting against some moderate winds, it seems. It says they’re having a painfully hard go of it. But then in the other narrative, the disciples are totally outmatched by the storm. The sea is not just difficult, it is crushing.
The boat will sink in a minute and their lives along with it. The sea has the power to do with them what it wants to do. So we see the sea is big, but then the sea is also small. The sea is only part of creation, it is not Creator, and the gap between creation and Creator is infinite. And when Creator walks on the scene, literally on top of the water, Jesus walks on the scene, the big scary sea doesn’t stand a chance.
It’s a powerful image of chaos and uncertainty, right? The sea is Behemoth, it’s Leviathan, it’s Kraken. We see that. But then it sits down like a little puppy when commanded by its Lord. When Jesus speaks, it’s the same voice that spoke to the waters at creation.
It’s the same voice that calmed the chaos in Genesis. And so, the sea is once again powerless against the Creator. And that is a story that repeats itself over and over throughout the Bible, right? Like in Jonah, God instantly calms the sea when the sailors throw Jonah into it. In Job, the point of Leviathan and Behemoth is that God can really do anything he wants to with them.
God leads them around by the nose, as fierce as they are. So again, yes, storms are big, overwhelming for us, but they are also small and obedient to their Lord, which means whatever your storm is, you are not facing anything that is not obedient to God. No matter how big it is, it has no power over him. It can only do exactly what he says to do. He is in charge, not the storm.
Now, with that idea in place, let’s ask, Because this is our question, isn’t it? Why did the disciples encounter the storm?
It’s because Jesus sent them into it.
Jesus sent them into the storm, both instances. Mark 4:35, Jesus says, quote, let’s go across to the other side. It was His idea. Like, get in the boat, guys. Let’s go.
They didn’t know it was coming, He did. Then in Mark 6:45, it says, Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go before Him. So, both instances, Jesus initiated the journey into the storm, one storm much more severe than the other, but Jesus sent them into both, which is a bit troubling, isn’t it?
Because if we’re thinking about our storms, we wonder, would Jesus really direct us toward dark clouds? And why would he do that? Isn’t it like his job to make our lives as stress-free as possible? Actually, no. But then our hearts, as soon as we ask that, we quickly run to the biggest question we ask What if he— doesn’t he love us?
Doesn’t he care about us? Right? Whenever we hit a bump in the road, we say things like, I thought I could count on God, but I guess not. Or, God, if you’re good, how could you have let this happen to me? All right, so he must not be good.
He must not love me. Our hearts just run there so quickly. And notice the disciples asked the exact same question. Question. Mark 4:38, Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?
Don’t you care about us, Jesus?
We probably have to give them a little bit of a break because it makes sense why they ask, doesn’t it? Jesus is asleep, for crying out loud, right in the middle of their storm, which might be a pretty good description for how we feel when we’re having trouble. We’re like, God, are you asleep at the helm? My ship has drifted off course. Have you noticed?
I’m in a storm and you’re not doing anything about it. So, you must not be paying attention to what’s happening in my life. Are you asleep? Or maybe you don’t care about me. Or worst case, God must want to hurt me.
Like some kind of abuser, especially since he is the one who’s in control of the storm and he sent me into the storm. Conclusion, he must be evil.
Have you ever thought that?
Those questions, those doubts, whether we are bold enough to say them out loud or not, they circle around in all of our hearts. Just like the disciples here. Do you care about us, God? Do you love us? And the reason those questions circle in our hearts is because it is the lie that entered our hearts all the way back at creation.
The serpent in the garden told Adam and Eve, do you remember? He said, that tree that God tells you not to eat, it won’t really hurt you. That tree is actually good for you. God’s withholding something from you that could help you, so he must not love you. He must not really care.
That is the deception that humanity swallowed at the beginning of time. It is prototypical. It’s in all of our hearts, and it often comes to the surface when we have storms in our lives. We think, if this is happening happening, God must not love me. He must not care.
But let’s ask ourselves, let’s question our questions, doubt our doubts. Could it be possible that God has reasons to send us into storms that we can’t really comprehend? Could it be possible that God is up to something good even in the middle of tragedy, disappointment, and loss? Could God have reasons that we don’t know about and those reasons really be good and loving? Could that happen?
Like, for instance, has it ever happened in the history of the world that a loving, good parent withheld or did something to their child that made the child horribly upset in the child’s child couldn’t understand. Has that ever happened in the history of parenting? And I know this illustration is going to sound trite on the front end, but hang with me. The parent says, no, we can’t go to Disneyland. No, you can’t have the dessert.
Or even maybe more traumatic, have parents like brought pain into their kids’ lives? Lives because they loved their kids. And again, the kid can’t understand, like getting vaccination shots as a 1-year-old. The kid doesn’t know. The needle pierces the skin, kids start screaming, right?
And full disclosure, I have no idea how infant psychology works. One of you can tell me later. But let’s just imagine that the kid thinks something like, why did my parent who was supposed to love me, why Why did my parent send me to see this evil doctor? Like everything was totally fine in my life and then all of a sudden here is this awful pain in my arm or my leg. Like parent, why did you bring this pain into my life?
Infants are not going to understand why. They will not fully comprehend the need for the needle. Same with toddlers or elementary school kids will not fully comprehend why they can’t go to Disney. Disney. Parents will never be able to answer those questions to the total satisfaction of the kid.
You can try to explain it all day long. Kid might still be upset at the end of the day. Even though we know, like as grown-ups, we know there are perfectly good loving reasons, aren’t there? There really are. Parents being good and loving.
But often those reasons will never fully address the emotional response of the kid, will they? There is no answer that will fully satisfy children who don’t understand why they must get a shot, why they can’t go to Disneyland.
There are, there are times that logic and reasoning just really won’t help. So then the kids have a choice. They probably won’t process it like this, But they have a choice. They can either see their parents as hateful and they make all the accusations, right? They ask the parent, don’t you love me?
I thought I could count on you. You must not care about me, right? Kids can go that route. That’s a choice. Or the kids can trust the parents are still good, the parents are still in control, the parents must have reasons for what they’re doing that, you know, toddler me doesn’t understand, but I do know that they love me.
So yes, this hurts a lot and I don’t like it, okay, but I, I believe the one who is in control sent me into this storm for a good reason. They have that choice. We have the same choice. We can believe God is evil, he’s out to get us, he’s abandoned ship himself, he doesn’t care about us. We can go that route.
Or we can say, I don’t get it. Hey, like, there is no reason in the universe God could tell me for why I am suffering that would fully satisfy me, right? Like, there is— this, it’s just unjustifiable what I’m going through. But God, I know you. I know your character.
I know you’re good. I know you’re in charge, and I know you love me. Me, so I am going to trust you. We can make that choice. Now, the reason that might sound trite, if you think it does, I get it.
The reason that might sound trite is because our grown-up problems are way more serious than getting a measles shot or not going to Disney. We have real problems, don’t we? So you may be thinking, hey, Hey, don’t minimize what I’m going through by trying to compare it to a shot that hurts for like 10 seconds. What I’m going through is orders of magnitude greater than that. That’s why it sounds trite.
That’s a fair rebuttal. But the reason the comparison between us and infants is not trite is because whatever distance there is between a parent and a child, in terms of the child not being able to understand what the parent is doing. Okay, however great that distance is, assign it a number. However great the distance is between a child and a parent that makes it so the child can’t understand, whatever that distance is, the distance between us and God is infinitely greater.
So yes, our problems are much bigger than a child’s problems, much, and the world’s problems even more so, absolutely. But God’s understanding is so far greater than our understanding. So if a parent could have reasons the child doesn’t understand, then of course God could have reasons that we don’t understand. Of course. If a child can’t comprehend everything a parent is doing, then of course we can’t comprehend everything God is doing.
Obviously. And just because the child can’t think of a good reason for the parent doing whatever the parent is doing. The child doesn’t know. That doesn’t mean that the parent doesn’t have a good reason. And just because we can’t think of a good reason of what God is doing, it doesn’t mean that there isn’t one.
So, conceptually, He could have good reasons to send us into the storm, no matter how big the storm is, out of love for us, out of care for us. Therefore, the best question in a storm is not, Why is this happening? Because you might not get a satisfactory answer. You notice Jesus does not tell his disciples why he sent them into the storm. He doesn’t address that at all either time.
And even if they were flatly told the reason why he sent them into the storm, it may not have satisfied them, okay? Might not have, just like the toddler isn’t satisfied when you can’t— when you explain why you can’t have the dessert. Assert. Okay, so asking, why am I suffering? Not the best question to ask.
The better approach is to remind yourself of God’s love for you, because if he loves you, if he loves you, then he has a good reason. You may not understand the reason, but you do not need to understand the reason in order to feel safe Think about what makes infants feel safe when they get a shot. It’s mom and dad holding them while they get the shot. The kid is thinking, I don’t know what’s happening. There is no answer that could justify the pain that I’m in right now, zero possibility of a good explanation for this needle, but I know that I’m loved because I’m being held.
And that’s enough. I’m okay.
And that’s the same thing that we need. We need to know in the middle of our pain, I am loved. God is holding me right now. He cares about me right now. And if we know that, if that’s down in our hearts, we will actually be able to face our storm no matter how big it it.
Which brings us to our last point, the fear that eliminates fear. There is a fear that can lead us to understanding how much God loves us, and it is seeing how Jesus uses his power.
Both of these texts, the big storm and the little storm, when Jesus takes action, the disciples’ fear actually increases. More afraid of Jesus than the boat. On the boat, when they think they were going to sink, when they thought their lives were about to end, of course they were afraid of the storm. But then Jesus stands up and he only says, shh, basically, to a hurricane. He didn’t say anything else.
He didn’t call on the name of the Lord to stop the storm. He didn’t kneel down and pray. There seems to be no effort in involved whatsoever, and the wind and the waves stop.
Ocean looks like glass immediately, like turning off a light switch. And if you go from, we’ll say, thunder, lightning, hail, 50-foot waves, and then you blink and it’s a perfectly clear sky simply because someone said hush, Suddenly, your internal alert systems that were focused on the storm are now focused on the one who was able to stop the storm. Verse 41, the disciples were even more afraid after Jesus said, hush. Not afraid of the storm anymore, that wasn’t even there, but they were afraid of who Jesus was. Same thing later, Mark chapter 6, disciples were struggling against the wind and then they see Jesus walking across the water as if it were easy.
The sea, and they were terrified. Verse 50. In both cases, they were afraid because there was someone greater than the sea standing next to them. You know, the sea is Kraken, it’s Leviathan, it’s the great chaos of the world, but now here is someone even more powerful than it. So if we have been afraid of the sea, how much more afraid are we of him who is standing next to us?
Throughout Scripture, there is only one who can bring order to that level of chaos, and now He is in our boat.
They are grappling with the magnitude of who Jesus is, and they don’t quite have it yet. Chapter 4, verse 41, they ask, who is this? Chapter 6, verse 50 says they did not understand, says their hearts were hardened. And then Mark, as the narrator, adds, says they didn’t understand what Jesus was doing when he gave bread to the 5,000, which happened right before this. And if you weren’t here last week, you remember we talked about the parallel of Jesus feeding the 5,000 to how God fed the Israelites in the desert in the Old Testament.
But if you weren’t here, over and over again, Jesus is showing himself to be God.
And they didn’t— that hadn’t quite clicked yet. It’s in our text today. As God’s Spirit hovered over the waters in Genesis 1, so Jesus hovered over the waters when He walked across it. As God in His glory passed by Moses, remember God put Moses in the cleft of the rock and then passed him by, Exodus 33, if you want to look it up later. But so here, Mark 6:46, Jesus was going to pass by His disciples.
As God calmed the storm in the book of Jonah, So, Jesus calms this storm. And then, of course, Jesus makes the I Am statement again. In English, it’s usually translated it is I, but it is I Am. Verse 50, take heart, I Am. Don’t be afraid.
I Am being the name of God. Over and over again, Jesus reveals himself to be the very Creator of heaven and earth. He can’t be contained. He’s totally free. He’s the holy fire himself, the one from the Old Testament who said, you can’t see my face or you’ll die, and now he’s standing in the boat with the disciples.
So they become even more terrified, way more terrified than they were of the storm, but only because they didn’t yet understand.
That’s why our last point is the fear that can eliminate fear. It might. It might not. Depends on if you connect the rest of the dots. The disciples were still afraid because they didn’t understand what Jesus was doing with all of his power.
But Jesus is very consistent in all of the biographies of Jesus, how he uses his power. Every miracle, we talked about this last week, Jesus is bringing order to the chaos. He uses his power to feed the hungry, heal the sick, make the world as it should be, stop terrible storms. He’s restoring what was broken. In other words, he doesn’t use his power for himself.
Jesus uses his power to make a good world for us.
The disciples didn’t get it, that that’s what he was doing when he was feeding the 5,000. They didn’t get it, but that’s one sign that he uses his power out of love for us. But even more than that, we know that he loves us because ultimately he lays down his power in order to save us. At this point in the story, the disciples didn’t see that yet. But what Jesus would eventually do in the crucifixion is actually foreshadowed in this very story.
You probably noticed some similarities between this narrative and Jonah. We’ve mentioned some of them already. But Mark almost seems to want to go out of his way in his account in chapter 4 to make it nearly identical with the Jonah narrative because as Jonah was sleeping in the boat when the storm came, so Jesus was sleeping in the boat. As the sailors in Jonah were terrified, so Jesus’ disciples were terrified. As the sailors had to wake up Jonah, so the disciples had to wake up Jesus.
As Jonah’s storm instantly calmed, so Jesus’ storm instantly calmed. But it’s at that point that we see a difference, don’t we? We see a difference in how the storm was calmed because Jonah told the sailors, you must throw me overboard in order that you may be saved. That’s what Jonah says. Jonah says, my life for yours, essentially.
I’ll take the wrath of God so you can be free. And Jesus, of course, doesn’t say that. He only says, So, the stories are different. But you have to ask, why would Mark make all those obvious parallels to Jonah and then just drop it? Right?
Would we think Mark’s point is, hey, there are many similarities between Jesus and Jonah, but in the end, they’re actually totally different types of narratives? Would that be his point?
No. His point is they are the same story, and we actually see him connect it later because at the end of Mark’s biography of Jesus, we do see Jesus thrown overboard, so to speak. We see him cast into the ultimate storm, the biggest oblivion of the biggest sea in order to save us. It was Jesus’ life for ours. Just like Jonah.
That’s what Jesus ultimately does with his power. On the cross, he lays it down that we might live. He takes the wrath of God that we deserve in our place for our sin. He takes the suffering of this world on our behalf so that he can defeat it through his resurrection and we can be free of it. We, we are free from the penalty of sin now.
Now, we just sang about that, we will be free from the presence and consequences of sin later. Jesus gave up everything he had out of love for us to restore largely what we have broken, which means we know, we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that he loves us when we see what he does with his power. We can be very confident in the middle of our storms that we are being held, because if he didn’t love us, he wouldn’t have gone to the cross. We’ve said this in here before, we will keep saying it again and again. Credit to Tim Keller, of course, because he said it better than anyone else did, and he passed away this week.
So, if you happen to think of it, pray for his family. But Tim Keller says, the cross doesn’t show us what the reason for suffering is.
The cross does not answer the question, why suffering? The cross doesn’t show us what the reason for suffering is, but the cross does show us what the reason for suffering isn’t.
Our suffering isn’t because God doesn’t love us. It isn’t because God doesn’t care. Of course he loves you. Of course he cares. Otherwise, he would not have gone to the cross.
Jesus, like Jonah, chose to be thrown into the violence of the stormy sea on your behalf. So whatever we’re going through, we can’t say he doesn’t love me. We can’t, like the disciples ask, don’t you care for us? Because he has already answered that question definitively The lie of the garden that he doesn’t love us, it— that has been addressed and disproven unequivocally forever. He loves us, period, guaranteed.
And if the one with all that power, which Jesus has shown himself to be over and over again, right? That’s who he is. If the God of the universe loves you like that, that he’d go to the cross for you, then there’s nothing for you to be afraid of. There’s no suffering you can’t face. There’s no storm you can’t walk through without, you know, total confidence that he is holding you tight like you’re a little infant.
And that’s what we actually need to get through it, is that answer. Not why it’s happening, but who is holding us.
Let’s pray. Father, thank you for holding us so tight.
Thank you for having tears in your eyes when we have tears in our eyes, Lord. Thank you for taking the pain of this world, the pain we’ve caused, the pain— and the pain that was done to us. Thank you for taking the penalty of our sins that we can be free of all of it, that you are writing a future where there is no suffering, where there is no sin, where there is no pain, and where we can be with you in unrestricted joy forever and ever. We pray those things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
