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Luke 8:22-25

Rabbi Rev. Dr. Michael H. Koplitz

Luke 8:22 Now on one of those days Jesus and His disciples got into a boat, and He said to them, “Let’s cross over to the other side of the lake.” So they launched out. 23 But as they were sailing along He fell asleep; and a fierce gale of wind descended on the lake, and they began to be swamped and to be in danger. 24 They came up to Jesus and woke Him, saying, “Master, Master, we are perishing!” And He got up and rebuked the wind and the surging waves, and they stopped, and it became calm. 25 And He said to them, “Where is your faith?” But 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?”

In chapter 8 starting on verse 22 and going to verse 25 in the Gospel of Luke, we have the story about Jesus and his disciples getting in a boat so that they could cross the sea of Galilee. While they were crossing the sea, a storm came up and the disciples thought they were going to die. Jesus happened to be napping in the boat. So, the disciples woke him up and he rebuked the storm. We're then told that the disciples looked at one another in amazement and said who is this man that even the wind obeys him.

This is a famous narrative that appears in the Gospel of Mark and Matthew because it is quite significant. One way to view this narrative is to understand that the storm is a metaphor for Satan and evil. When the men took off in the boat to go to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, they doubted that a storm was going to form. Now, I should take a moment to tell you that storms do frequently develop in the middle of the Sea of Galilee. Because of this, when one traveled from one side of the Sea of Galilee to the other, they would actually follow the coastline and not travel out to the middle of the sea.

People in those days also believed that in the center of the Sea of Galilee was an entrance into hell. The reason they thought that was several boats trying to get across the sea and will very unsuccessful. Therefore, a superstition developed that if you go directly across the sea, you would get swallowed into hell. Therefore, you begin to wonder what reaction the disciples had when Jesus told them to go straight across the sea, no big deal? So that’s precisely what they did.

Naturally, they get to the center of the sea as a storm develops. Obviously, they got scared because they thought that they were going to die. Since most of them were fishermen, they knew not to go into the middle of the sea because of the superstition behind traveling in that manner. Therefore, they had to trust in Jesus because that’s what he asked him to do.

So, there they are in the middle of the sea with the storm raging around them, and they didn’t know what to do. They thought they were going to die. They also must’ve wondered how Jesus could sleep through the whole thing, and perhaps he wasn’t sleeping through the whole thing, but he was waiting to see what reaction his disciples were going to have to the situation. The narrator tells us that they woke Jesus up, and they said they were going to perish. Without very much dialogue, Jesus gets up and stops the wind, the rain, and the storm.

So now let’s take a look at that story as the storm being a metaphor for evil.

Jesus rebuked the evil that came to attack His disciples. Satan wanted to scare the disciples to the point that they would abandon Jesus. The disciples were shocked that Jesus was asleep. Was He asleep or waiting to see what His disciples were going to do? It did not take long to realize that they panicked. They were confident that they would die. Jesus rebuked the storm, and all became calm. A lesson is that faith in Jesus will take you through any storm.

We will all have storms that will appear in our lives. Many, if not most of the time, these storms are going to appear without any precursor or warning. The question is what you're going to do when this occurs. But the disciples learned from their experience is that regardless of the situation, if they put their trust and faith in Jesus to protect them, then he will do it. Therefore, the lesson for us is, regardless of what happens in life, we should put our faith in Jesus and God to take care of us.