Power over Storms
Well October is almost finished which means its time to start preparing for White Saturday. Every year we have four big vision events that we do to reach out to the community and show them the love of Jesus. Last year for White Saturday we took bags of cookies to over 200 hundred houses in the neighborhood around us. We gave out about fifty Christmas presents to families in need and really impacted the lives of a number of people. Well this year we are going bigger and better. On December 4th we are going to bake as many cookies as we can and take them to all the families of the neighborhood. With those bags each family will receive a ticket with a note just telling them that Jesus loves them and letting them know that if times are tight and they need some presents for their children that we have some donations available. I want to see us impact way more people then we did last year so what we are going to need are lots of toy donations. We need toys for boys and girls from toddlers to teens. I want us to fill up that back room with gifts so that we can really show this community around our church that Jesus loves them and not just in an emotional way, but in a practical one. Christmas holiday is such an important time as we prepare to remember the birth of our Lord, we have an opportunity to show the love of our Lord to those who do not know it; something as simple as cookies and gift could really open the eyes of so many people to the love that God has for them. Let’s start getting these presents ready, they can be new or gently used but please make sure everything is in good condition.
This morning we are in Luke 8:22. We saw Jesus last week in a boat teaching about the kingdom of God through parables. Jesus is a busy man. He has been traveling around the Sea of Galilee which is twelve miles long by seven miles wide going from town to town preaching, teaching, casting out demons, and healing the sick. As such huge crowds of people start following Him everywhere He goes.
This is hard for us to understand because in most cities now drawing a crowd of thousands isn’t that difficult. If you have something exciting and you advertise it well people will come. Jesus is not traveling into big cities. We are talking about small towns of between 50-100 people scattered all across the Sea of Galilee, so imagine like your neighborhood or just the street you live on separated from the next neighborhood by several miles. They don’t have vehicles, they don’t have a lot of shade, they don’t have hotels these people would have to walk for miles in the heat of the desert just to hear Jesus speak. They are just marching through the desert without air conditioning listening to Jesus. Some of us complain about waking up early on Sunday mornings these people were laboring and exercising just to get to Jesus to hear Him teach. Just walking from one town to another could take several days.
We know that Jesus is God. We don’t always appreciate that Jesus is also human. He has limited Himself in every way that we are. He gets hungry like we do. He gets thirsty like we do. He gets tired like we do. His muscles get sore and achy like ours do. Jesus is not superman. He has been traveling from town to town for a long time. He has been teaching and healing people. Now He is tired. I’ll tell you on a Sunday morning after service I am exhausted. Preaching is tiring. When I get home I crawl into a nice warm coma for as much of the afternoon as I can. But one hour is nothing compared to what Jesus does. Jesus has been teaching all day in the desert, in the heat. He finishes His sermon and comes ashore but the crowds don’t leave. Jesus is tired. He needs His beauty sleep. Jesus heads back to Peter’s house and the crowds follow Him. Like fans at the end of a concert they just sort of stand around waiting awkwardly until someone starts shouting: Encore! Encore!
As much as He might want to there is a limit even with Jesus, to what you can do. You can only push yourself so hard for so long before you break. Even in ministry, even when you love people and you want to help them you only have so much to give before your battery runs out of juice. If you don’t take time to rest and recover it will catch up to you. Not even Jesus went non-stop. Jesus is running on empty. He is exhausted. Jesus has thousands of people following Him wherever He goes. Now it becomes readily apparent that if they stay in town no one is going to get any sleep. So they decide to hop on a boat and head across the lake where most of the crowds won’t be able to follow.
Lk 8:22 One day Jesus said to his disciples, “Let’s go over to the other side of the lake.” So they got into a boat and set out. Lk 8:23 As they sailed, he fell asleep. A squall came down on the lake, so that the boat was being swamped, and they were in great danger.
The Sea of Galilee sits 685 feet below sea level and is surrounded by hills 2000 feet tall. The winds come across the hills the sweep down with great force. It is late evening time and Jesus and the disciples are on a boat crossing the Sea of Galilee. During certain hours of the day in Galilee the wind picks up. You have to be very careful during those hours because if you get caught in the middle of the lake during one of those bursts of wind your life is in serious peril.
This is what happens to the disciples. The disciples are in the boat sailing across the lake when a furious storm comes up and threatens the safety of all on the boat. This storm is described as a hurricane. You really don’t want to be in a little row boat when there is a hurricane churning the waters creating violent winds and massive waves. Now don’t forget most of the disciples live on this lake. They are familiar with the winds and the dangers. They have worked on this lake, some of them, all their life. They are not amateurs. They are not just panicking because the wind starts blowing and they don’t know what to do. This storm could be fatal to all of them, and they know it. To make matters worse by this time it would be dark so they cant really see, the waves will have tossed them around so it would be difficult to get their bearings and now water is crashing over the edge of the boat and starting to fill it up.
The disciples are rightfully and understandably afraid and what is Jesus doing? He is sleeping. I don’t know if you have ever tried to sleep on a boat but it is not the easiest thing in the world to do even when the water is relatively calm. But when the boat is being tossed back and forth by huge waves sleeping is virtually impossible. Especially if you consider water splashing over the edges would have probably been splashing on Jesus. That is how tired He is. He is sleeping through the storm. This is the only time we are told of Jesus sleeping in Scripture. The waves crash over the sides of the boat filling it with water. The disciples are struggling with bailing out the water as the boat starts sinking deeper and deeper into the lake.
Lk 8:24 The disciples went and woke him, saying, “Master, Master, we’re going to drown!” He got up and rebuked the wind and the raging waters; the storm subsided, and all was calm.
As you can imagine the disciples are a little annoyed with Jesus at this point. They are working furiously to keep this boat afloat and keep everyone alive and Jesus is having a nice relaxing nap in the back. So they wake Him up. They don’t want a miracle they want Him to help bail water or row or something, but it is all hands on deck time.
Jesus hopes up and does something the disciples didn’t expect. He rebukes the storm. The same way He rebukes demons and the same way He rebukes illness, Jesus tells the storm to “be quiet” and the winds died down and the waves subsided. Just like that. Sometimes my wife wakes me up in the middle of the night because she thinks she hears something in the house. So I get up and search around to find nothing and then go back to sleep like: why did I get up? Jesus calms the storm and then looks at the disciples like: did you guys seriously wake me up for this? It’s almost like Jesus was annoyed with the storm. Like an alarm clock going off before you are ready to get up. Jesus just grumbles at it: STOP IT then lies back down and goes to sleep.
This is the first time in Luke where Jesus exercises power over inanimate objects. Jesus has demonstrated His authority over illness, over sin, over death and now over nature itself. Jesus has now demonstrated His authority over pretty much everything. This miracle is truly incredible. Jesus speaks and nature listens.
Parables are essentially tools that Jesus uses to reveal the kingdom of God to those who are truly seeking Him. Miracles are just visible parables. A parable is what Jesus says to reveal the kingdom of God, a miracle is what Jesus does to reveal the kingdom of God. Both have the same purpose. This particular miracle demonstrates the power of God gives us a further glimpse of His kingdom. Jesus has power over the storm. Notice He does not save the disciples from the storm but through it.
Lk 8:25 “Where is your faith?” he asked his disciples. In fear and amazement they asked one another, “Who is this? He commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him.”
Can you imagine the disciples sitting their jaws wide open? Who is this guy? He tells the wind and the waves what to do and nature obeys Him. Healing the sick, casting out demons are impressive, but telling nature what to do is pretty extraordinary. This is not something that just anyone can do. This miracles leads the disciples to the most important question anyone could ever ask: “Who is Jesus?” They are sitting in a boat with a man who tells nature what to do. It is only natural for them to wonder who He is. That is the focus of our series through Luke. We want to ask the question, “Who is Jesus?” This is the question Jesus miracles are designed to answer. Jesus is God revealed in human form.
This text is so powerful because it shows both Jesus humanity and deity at the same time. Jesus is tired, He is exhausted, He is passed out with no energy in the back of the boat. He gets up and reveals His divinity. He shows us He is the creator. For only the creator can command such obedience from creation. God spoke the world into existence. Jesus spoke and the storm obeyed Him. See the connection? Jesus can speak with the same power as the creator God because He is the creator God. The wind and the waves were created by the very voice that speaks to them here. They recognize the voice and respond to it. Calming the storm goes beyond Jesus just being a miracle worker and a man of God.
Then He questions the disciples faith not because they woke Him up, but because they woke Him up to bail water. They should have known. The reason they don’t yet, is because they don’t really understand who Jesus is, not fully. They are still thinking of Jesus as a holy man and a great teacher with some miraculous ability. They have not yet understood that He is God.
Here is the real problem. The disciples went to Jesus when there was nothing left to do. They had done everything else. He was their last resort. They had been rowing and bailing water. They had been fighting against the storm by their own strength trying to save themselves. Which is exactly what we do: we try to do it ourselves. We try to do it without Jesus. We turn to Jesus only after every other option has failed. We wait until we are desperate to call on Jesus. The disciples should have gone to Jesus when the storm started, not when they realized they were powerless because they tried everything else. What we should learn from them is to go to Jesus at the beginning, not at the end.
Some of us feel like the disciples. We are in the boat, we are rowing, and trying to bail water but we feel like no matter how much we do we get nowhere. We feel ourselves sinking. We are trying to find our way but we been tossed about so much we feel lost and alone. We feel like hope is running out and we are desperate. The only thing to do in the storm, is go to Jesus. Only He has the power to overcome the storm. Jesus doesn’t promise a life without storms. He does promise to deliver us through them if we will turn to Him. We need to learn to turn to Him before we do everything else.
