Today we come to a story in our ongoing study of Luke, that
at first glance seems so simple and straightforward that it hardly bears
discussion. And yet, like so many
of the incidents Luke has recorded in his gospel, there is much more to it than
readily meets the eye, and it has been placed here very strategically on the
part of Luke in order to help illustrate a Biblical doctrine.
And the doctrine that we consider today is that of
faith. Faith is essential in a
Christian’s life. Hebrews 11:6 says that “without faith, it is impossible to
please God.” And Ephesians 2:8
says, “For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it
is a gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast.” So faith is essential to be found
pleasing to God, and vital for salvation. We have already seen several instances of faith in our
studies, and today it will be examined within the context of this story of
Jesus calming the storm.
The subject of faith is one that has been misunderstood quite
frequently in our modern day church.
As with every doctrine found in scripture, the devil is quick to try to
twist it, or subvert it, in order to deceive and get you off track
spiritually. And I believe that
faith happens to be a favorite of Satan’s deceitful strategy today. He has orchestrated the modern word of faith movement that sees faith as a
mechanism by which one is able to manipulate God into doing what they want Him
to do. That is a gross
misunderstanding of faith, and it is not only an affront to God, but it is also
a dangerous error that brings about the ruination of many naïve Christians.
The difference between truth and error is usually very
subtle. It is usually Satan’s strategy not to completely bring in an outrageous
lie as doctrine, but to simply take a standard truth and either add to it, or
take some from it in such a way that there is still some truth there, but the
emphasis is unbalanced. We must be
careful then not to come to scripture with a preconceived notion, or with an
agenda, or a theory, and then look for scriptures whereby we may find
validation for our theory. But we
must come to scripture honestly, with a sincere heart, humbly seeking what the
Lord would teach us from the whole counsel of His word, and prayerfully asking
God to provide the Holy Spirit to guide us, and then being willing to be obedient
to the truth revealed.
Let’s look first then at the context of the story. As with some of the other events
recorded by Luke, there is not an effort to be exactly chronological as much as
to use this event to illustrate a doctrine that he wants to make at this point. And I really think that the point to be
illustrated is found in the preceding sections of scripture, where he has shown
that the character of a Christian is revealed in what he does with the word
which he has received. That is the
case in the parable of the soils, that person who hears the word and receives
it in a good and honest heart, and then holds fast to that word, bringing forth
fruit. It is reaffirmed in the
story about Mary and Jesus’ brothers, when Jesus says that those that are his
family are those that hear the word and do it.
Romans 10:17 tells us, “So faith comes from hearing, and
hearing by the word of Christ.” Hearing the truth is of paramount importance,
but simply having a head knowledge is obviously not the desired result. To hear with faith is also to apply
that faith to action. Abraham was
found faithful because he believed God and acted on that belief by going out to
a land that God showed him.
Obedience is proof of your faith, and that fruit is the characteristic
of a Christian.
So not only is this story an illustration of true faith, it
is also an illustration of those who are truly in the kingdom of God. The nature of the Kingdom of Heaven is
the primary teaching of Jesus during this period, starting with the Sermon on
the Mount. He gives message after
message describing the characteristics of those that are in the Kingdom of God
as opposed to those who are not.
So this ship the disciples get into with Jesus to journey across the
lake can be readily be seen as a metaphor of the kingdom of heaven. We will look at that more later.
So as Luke records, Jesus told the disciples to get into a
boat and go to the other side of the lake. The synoptic gospels of Matthew and Mark fill in some of the
details that Luke leaves out. It
was at the end of a very long, eventful day. It was evening.
And the lake was called the Sea of Galilee or sometimes the Lake of
Genessaret.
And as they launched out in the boat, Mark says there were
other boats as well. It must have
been a quiet, still evening. Many
of the disciples present were commercial fishermen, who had spent their lives
upon the Sea of Galilee. In fact,
the boats likely belonged to James and John and Peter, who had left their
fishing business to follow the Lord, but still had their boats in
Capernaum. These men routinely
fished at night. You remember when
Jesus came to Peter in the boat and told him to cast on the other side and
Peter said, “We fished all night and caught nothing.” So this was a routine journey on this boat on a still,
moonlit night, on a Lake that was merely 13 miles long and 8 miles wide. It was a something that would have been
considered by these men to be completely routine. A daily experience.
As they launched out into the lake, the gentle rocking of
the boat and the strain of the day’s activities caused Jesus to fall asleep on
a cushion in the stern. Remember
how his mother and his brothers had been concerned for His health, that He had
no time to Himself because of the constant crowds, to the point that He could
hardly eat or sleep. This story
shows us a picture of a sleeping Jesus.
Exhausted in His humanity.
Worn out by constantly traveling and preaching and ministering to the
sick and oppressed. And now He falls
into a deep sleep. It is a great
mystery how the divine and the human both exist in His being. He was subject to all things just as we
are. He hungered, He thirsted, He
grew tired in His human body. And
yet He was God in His Spirit, the Eternal Creator of the Universe, who subjected
himself to the frailty of a human body just like ours. And being exhausted, He
fell fast asleep.
But as Jesus slept in the stern, a sudden storm came upon
the Lake. This Sea of Galilee is a
very unique body of water. Living
near the ocean, we are familiar with the winds and waves of the Atlantic. We have storms such as this nor’easter
that can be fierce and do a lot of damage. We are familiar with hurricanes and the terrific power that
they can have. But this lake is
quite different than our sea. For
one, it is over 600 below sea level, and ringed by mountains which at one point
are almost 10,000 feet high. And
on the other end is a plateau which crests at 3000 feet. And perhaps due to the great variances
of elevation, the cold air can come rushing down the mountain passes and crash
against the warmer temperatures near the Lakes surface and the result is like a
tempest in a teapot. The Sea of
Galilee is known for the fierceness and suddenness of it’s storms. Seas can quickly go from calm to over
ten feet in just a few minutes when the winds come rushing down the mountains.
I can imagine that Peter and James and John were not overly
concerned at first. After all,
James and John were called the Sons of Thunder. Peter was not afraid of a little storm either. All of them had handled the worst that
this lake could throw at them in their fishing careers. And yet this time it seemed that the
gates of hell flung open and everything was coming against them. The boat began to take on water as
waves were breaking over the bow.
And suddenly, what started out as routine turned to absolute panic. Their ship was half underwater and was
going down.
They came to Jesus in the midst of the storm and Jesus is
still asleep on the cushion in the stern.
We don’t know how big the boat was, but it must have been a pretty good
size. It was a sailing vessel, and
was big enough to hold a dozen or more men. And in the back of the boat, or the stern, may have been a
shelter of some sort, and Jesus is lying there on a cushion, blissfully asleep.
Luke’s gospel says they called out, ““Master, Master, we are
perishing!” Mark’s gospel adds, ““Teacher, do You not care that we are
perishing?” They obviously thought
that they were going to die.
Jesus gets up and it says He rebuked the wind and the waves
and said, “Peace, be still.” And
suddenly everything became calm.
Not just the wind became calm, but the sea became calm. As surfers we look forward to a wind
event, because it kicks up the waves.
The energy from the wind is transferred to the water and causes
waves. And then we look forward to
a cessation of wind, or at least the wind going offshore which cleans up the
face of the waves. So even though
there is no more wind driving the waves, the energy continues to push the waves
in for quite some time, sometimes days afterward. And this is when we like to surf. But in this case, the wind died out immediately, and so did
the waves, something which is an impossibility under normal circumstances.
When the wind and the sea became calm, vs. 25, Jesus says to
them, “Where is your faith?” And
the disciples became even more afraid at the calm, they were fearful and amazed
and said, “Who is this man that even the wind and the waves obey Him?”
Now let’s look at the application, or what the significance
of this story is for us. And I
think it can be expressed by looking at the three questions in this story. The first question is that of the
disciples, “Master, do you not care that we are perishing?” The greatest danger to a wrong view of
faith as we talked about earlier is false expectations. We listen to some false teachers
proclaim that faith is a mechanism by which you can get God to provide you with
health, wealth and happiness. They
tell us that God wants us to be healthy.
He never wants us to suffer or die. That His will for us is to be successful by all that the
world considers successful. That
God just wants us to be happy. And
we want to believe these lies.
Then they tell us that we can have all these things that God wants us to
have, if we just have enough faith. So we muster up all our conviction, all our
desire, all our sincerity, and we wish really, really hard, we hope really,
really hard, and we tell ourselves that we really, really believe that our
desires will happen because we believe they will .
But what eventually happens is that the illness that you
really, really wanted to be healed of does not go away. The person that you spoke a word of
faith over actually died. God
doesn’t come through like you thought He was supposed to. And when that happens, the devil is
right there to whisper in your ear that God must not care. God really doesn’t love you. God really
can’t be trusted. And if you
aren’t careful, you will find your faith shipwrecked, because you listened to
the wrong message, and you believed something God never promised. Jesus said in the parable of the lamp
in vs. 18, “So take care how you listen.”
Be careful what you listen to.
The disciples found themselves at the point of panic, when
they cried out, “Lord, do you not care that we are perishing?” They were sure that they were going to
die and that didn’t jibe with what they thought they had learned from the
miracles of Jesus. Jesus healed
the sick, He raised the dead, but now it seemed they were going to die. So they panicked, because they listened
to the voice of Satan whispering in their fear, “Jesus doesn’t care.” He is over there sleeping, and we are
dying.
Listen, God never promised you a life without storms. He never promises you a life without
suffering. He never promised you a
life without death. No, the Bible
says that it is appointed unto man once to die, and after that the
judgment. Jesus said, “In this
world you will have troubles, but I have overcome the world.” The point is, that you will still have
troubles. The life we have been
promised is that of the Spirit, spiritual life, not a worry free, stress free,
trouble free physical life.
Every hero of the faith listed in Hebrews 11 Hall of Faith
chapter went through storms, many went through painful torture and even
death. Yes, some of those men and
women of faith came through storms and “by faith conquered kingdoms, performed
acts of righteousness, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched
the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, from weakness were made
strong, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Women received back
their dead by resurrection;” Yes, hallelujah! But it doesn’t stop there,
because it says “others were tortured, not accepting their release, so that
they might obtain a better resurrection; and others experienced mockings and
scourgings, yes, also chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were tempted,
they were put to death with the sword; they went about in sheepskins, in
goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, ill-treated, (men of whom the world was
not worthy), wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and holes in the
ground.” These destitute were
great men and women of faith too.
In fact, it may be argued that it takes more faith to go through trials
than it takes to go through blessings.
But the point I want to make is, that God doesn’t promise a lack of
storms, but that He will be with you in the storm. Peter, who became very familiar with storms and trials in
life, says in the first chapter of
his first epistle, that the purpose of these storms is to refine your faith
which will produce glory to God. “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.”
The second question Jesus asked. “Where is your faith?”
I think that the disciples had faith. But they had an immature faith that was overwhelmed by
fear. Their faith hadn’t
grown. It hadn’t been exercised.
It hadn’t been refined. They may
have had faith just the size of a mustard seed. It was small.
But it was faith. It’s
important that we make sure that our faith is founded on the promises of
God. Not on wishful thinking. The words of the old hymn say, “My
faith has found a resting place, not in device nor creed. I trust the ever living One, His wounds
for me shall plead. My heart is
leaning on the word, the written word of God. I need no other argument, I need no other plea, it is enough
that Jesus died, and that He died for me.”
See, faith is not just a head knowledge, but an
activity. Faith is action. Faith is when all around my soul gives
way, He then is all my hope and stay. Faith is not founded on feelings. Those disciples were humans just like
us. They were panicking. They were looking at the circumstances
around them and they forgot all the works that they had seen Jesus do just a
few hours or days before. Don’t we
do that? Hasn’t God proven Himself
to us over and over again, and yet in the pandemonium of a new storm, we panic,
thinking, “yeah, but this is worst that any of those!” “This is different! Where are you Lord?” Faith is steadfastly applying what you
know to be true when you want to panic.
Jesus said, where is your faith? Did you leave it on the pew last Sunday when you went home
to the storm that awaited you?
Have you learned so much and yet don’t apply it? Someone said once that courage is not
the absence of fear, but acting courageously in spite of fear. And I think faith is very much like
courage. It is believing in God’s
promises when circumstances tell you that there is no hope. And let’s give the disciples credit for
coming to Christ when their faith ran dry. That is always the answer. When you come to Christ for answers in your storm, then
Christ will provide the peace. He
may not still every storm, but He promises to quiet your heart in the midst of
the storm. Isaiah 26:3, “You will
keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in
You.”
The third question is by the disciples. Vs. 25, “They were fearful and amazed,
saying to one another, “Who then is this, that He commands even the winds and
the water, and they obey Him?” First
of all, remember that when the journey just started, Jesus was sleeping. Jesus
is our example of how we are to be in the storm. Even though in His humanity, in His body, He was tired and
worn out, He was so deprived of sleep and food that His family were concerned
for His health, and He was in the middle of a terrific storm, yet Jesus is
asleep. Jesus is resting. He knew that the storm was coming, and
yet He had absolute confidence in God the Father that His time had not yet
come. He knew that nothing could snatch
Him out of the Father’s hand. His
confidence is our example, as He told us in John 10:28, “I give eternal life to
them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My
hand. My Father, who has given
them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the
Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.”
Our confidence is that our days are set by God, not by circumstances,
not by accident. Psalm 139:16,
“Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; And in Your book were all written the
days that were appointed for me, when as yet there was not one of them.”
Who is this man whom the wind and the waves obey? He is Jesus, One with God, Creator of
the Universe, and yet He is seen in human flesh. He is our Savior.
He loved us so much that He gave His life for us. And though His body was human, yet His
Spirit was God. And this is our
promise as well. That we who are
dead in sin in our bodies, might be made alive in our Spirit. That being given eternal life, we might
never perish and no one can snatch us out of the Father’s hand. We have eternal security through the
blood of Jesus Christ which cleanses us from sin. This Jesus whom all of creation obeys, loves us so much that
He died for us.
Psalm 139 describes God’s never ceasing love for us. “O
LORD, You have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I
rise up; You understand my thought from afar. You scrutinize my path and my lying down, and are intimately
acquainted with all my ways. Even before there is a word on my tongue, behold,
O LORD, You know it all. You have enclosed
me behind and before, and laid Your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too
wonderful for me; it is too high, I cannot attain to it. Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or
where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend to heaven, You are there; if I
make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there. If I take the wings of the dawn, if I dwell in the remotest
part of the sea, Even there Your hand will lead me, and Your right hand will
lay hold of me. If I say, “Surely
the darkness will overwhelm me, and the light around me will be night,” Even the
darkness is not dark to You, and the night is as bright as the day. Darkness
and light are alike to You. For
You formed my inward parts; you wove me in my mother’s womb. I will give thanks
to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Wonderful are Your works, and
my soul knows it very well.” That
is the basis for my faith. My
faith has found an anchor and that harbor of rest is in God’s word, His promise
that He will never leave me nor forsake me because He loves me.
I said at the beginning that the disciple’s ship is a metaphor
for the kingdom of God. As
Christians, we are individually members of His body, the church. We individually are temples of the Holy
Spirit who dwells in us. And
corporately, we are each living stones, being built up, Peter says, into a
spiritual temple. Now what that
means is that the Spirit of Jesus Christ is living in you. If you are in the
kingdom of God then Jesus is in your boat. How can you fear the storm when Jesus is in your boat? You are going to have storms in this
life. And because you are human it’s
going to be stressful to go through these storms. But take comfort in this,
Jesus is going through the storms with you. He says, I will never leave you nor forsake you. Rest in Jesus, and rest in His
word. For by His word, the wind
and the waves obey Him. Jesus is
our peace in the midst of the storm.
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