Peace, Be Still Series

OPEN: A mother and her young daughter were at home alone. The father was gone on a trip for his company and night was coming on. Outside, it became increasingly dark and disturbing. The moon was out, but the wind howled menacingly in trees and the branches of some of those trees brushed ominously against the house. As old houses will in a fierce windstorm, the wood creaked and moaned as the house was nudged by the wind.

It was kind of scary, and the mother and daughter were both uneasy.

As the mother was putting her daughter to bed, the young girl looked out the window at the bright moon and asked her mother “Is the moon God’s night-light?”

The mother smiled and replied "Well, yes, you could say that".

Her daughter thought about that for moment – then asked: "Does God turn out his light when he goes to sleep?"

"Oh, no honey, God never sleeps."

"Oh," said the child quietly. "Well then, if God’s going to stay up all night, there’s no sense both of us staying awake." And with that, the little girl turned over in bed, pulled her blanket up to her neck and fell asleep.

APPLY: Now, why was that little girl able to go to sleep?

I mean, the night was still dark.

The wind was still blowing.

And she and her mother were still all alone in that house.

Everything was still the same…

Except something had changed.

What was different?

(wait for a response from the crowd).

That’s right…God was the difference.

GOD changed everything for this little girl.

Once she brought God into her bedroom, her fear faded and her faith grew. Once she thought about WHO God was, and WHERE He was, and what He was capable of, she reasoned: If God was going to be up all night anyway… she knew she’d be safe, and she could sleep.

In our text this morning, we find this simple verse:

“Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke him and said to him, ‘Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?’” Mark 4:38

Jesus was sleeping???

To understand how bizarre this must have seemed to the disciples, visualize this with me:

Their boat is half way across the lake and a fierce storm begins to beat against their boat. The waves are so high they wash over them and begins to swamp their little ship. In other words – they’re beginning to sink. They’re bailing as fast as they can, but more water’s coming in than going out, and it’s obvious that if the storm doesn’t die down… they will die.

Many of the disciples are seasoned fishermen. They’ve known of boats that have gone down in this kind of weather. They’ve known of sailors who never came home. And they’re frightened. And they’ve got good reason to be frightened.

And here is Jesus… asleep.

How can He do that???

Well, two reasons:

Jesus knows WHO He is.

And He knows WHERE He is going.

So, Who was Jesus?

He was the Son of God.

And Where was He going?

He was going to the Cross. Jesus was not going to die until He’d fulfilled His destiny.

Because of those two facts - that ship wasn’t going down as long as Jesus was on board.

But the disciples were frustrated because they weren’t thinking that way. They weren’t thinking of Jesus as the Son of God. They weren’t thinking about Him about His going to the cross, to die for our sins and to rise from the grave.

As far as they were concerned…

• He was a great teacher

• He was a powerful healer…

• And He was a good friend.

But… that’s about it.

And now… here they are in the midst a dangerous storm and they had been bailing for hours for all they were worth.

They’re gonna go down.

They’re gonna die.

And here is Jesus … asleep.

The disciples wake him up and cry, "Teacher, Don’t You Care…?" Mark 4:38

Don’t you care???

And at that Jesus got up and He 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 wind and sea obey him?”

Now what just happened there?

Well, let’s start from the beginning.

Mark 4:35 says “On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.”

Whose idea was it to go to the other side of lake?

(Wait for the audience to reply)

That’s right. It was Jesus’ idea.