Mark 4:35 That day when evening came, he said to his disciples, "Let us go over to the other side." 36 Leaving the crowd behind, they took him along, just as he was, in the boat. There were also other boats with him. 37 A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped. 38 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?" 39 He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, "Quiet! Be still!" Then the wind stopped and it was completely calm. 40 He said to his disciples, "Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?" 41 They were terrified and asked each other, "Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!"
Introduction
How Do You Measure Faith?
If you had to rate your faith on a scale of 1-10, how would you rate it? What about God—how would he rate your faith? If you’re like most Christians, your answer to both questions is probably, “I don’t know.” One of the purposes of the book of Mark is to teach us what it means to have faith in Jesus Christ. At the beginning of the book of Mark it summarizes Jesus’ ministry by saying he went around calling people to repent and believe. And the way that Mark teaches about faith is not by giving explanations and descriptions of the concept of faith, but by showing us examples of people who have it and who don’t have it in various situations.
So far we’ve seen one of those examples, back in ch.2, with the guys who dug a hole in Jesus’ roof to get their friend to Jesus. And it says Jesus saw their faith and he was pleased with it. So the first thing we learn about faith is that it will drive you to get close to Christ, and to bring others to him.
Today we’re going to see another aspect. We’re going to learn how faith responds when life is out of control and nothing makes sense. And if you think the answer is, “Oh, true faith is relaxed in times like that,” that’s not what this passage teaches us. Let’s take a look.
The Storm
Mark 4:35 That day…
What day? The day Jesus was getting mobbed by so many crowds that he had to preach from a boat, and he gave them all those parables about the kingdom of God and the power of his word.
35 That day when evening came, he said to his disciples, "Let us go over to the other side."
So they are going to cross over into Gentile territory.
36 Leaving the crowd behind, they took him along, just as he was, in the boat.
Jesus is from inland, Peter, Andrew, James, and John were commercial fishermen, so they are the ones directing the boat, and they take Jesus along. “Jesus, we’ll take care of this. You can just relax in the stern.” “Which one is the stern again?” “The back of the boat.” “Oh yeah, right. OK, I’ll be back there.” And he grabs a cushion, lays down, and makes himself comfortable. And with the gentle rocking of the boat as they rowed, and the sounds of the water, Jesus rests his eyes a little bit, and…
Luke 8:23 As they sailed, he fell asleep.
The Peril
37 A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped.
The Sea of Galilee is known for its sudden, violent storms. Those were routine, professional fishermen like these guys handled those all the time, but this one was different. The language used here describes this as an unusual, cataclysmic storm. And the disciples are panicked. But look at Jesus.
Jesus’ Sleep
38 Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion.
That’s amazing, because this was probably a fairly small boat. In 1986 they dredged up a boat from the bottom of the Sea of Galilee that is dated to Jesus’ time. It’s 26.5 ft. long, 7.5 ft. wide and 4.5 ft. high. There was a place for oars as well as a mast. It took a crew of 5 and could carry about 10 people. How could Jesus be sleeping in a storm like this, with waves crashing over him and all the chaos of the storm and the panicked disciples? I’m going to go way out on a limb and give you my theory: he was really tired.
Back in v.36 it says they took him “just as he was.” How was he? Exhausted. Getting up before sunrise to pray, dealing with relentless, frenzied crowds, preaching to crowd after crowd, being out under the sun all day—eventually the fatigue catches up to you. The human body can only do so much before it shuts down.
When God became a man he didn’t become superman. Just regular man. He had the normal amount of physical strength and stamina--just like you and me, and so Jesus knows what it’s like to work so hard that you are practically dead on your feet with exhaustion.
Jesus’ Calm
But beyond that, there’s also a contrast here between the disciples’ panic and Jesus’ complete lack of anxiety. When everyone else is asleep, Jesus is up praying. And when everyone else thinks they need to be awake, Jesus is fast asleep.
The Disciples’ Panic
Well, the disciples are going to put an end to that. Nothing irritates a panicked person more than a calm person, because they assume the calm person must not care. So they wake Jesus up.
Mark 4:38 The disciples woke him and said to him, "Teacher, don't you care if we drown?"
Matthew 8:25 … "Lord, save us! We're going to drown!"
Luke 8:24 "Master, Master, we're going to drown!"
Is that a contradiction? No, it’s a lot of people yelling, which is exactly what you would expect. In the pandemonium of that moment they were shouting and peppering Jesus with all kinds of different things.
Trust During the Storm
When Life Makes No Sense
And it seems understandable, doesn’t it? I mean, what was happening here made no sense. These seasoned fishermen, who know exactly how much these boats can handle, are certain that it’s sinking. And Jesus isn’t waking up on his own. The entire Christian movement is in this boat. If Satan can drown the whole lot of them in one shot, the movement is over before it even starts. Why would God allow this?
He Has Reasons You Can’t Imagine
So they assess the situation and use all their powers of logic and decide, “If Jesus isn’t rescuing us from this trouble, it must be that he doesn’t care.”
38 … The disciples woke him and said to him, "Teacher, don't you care if we drown?"
This is a typical response to suffering. “I cried out for help, God didn’t do anything, therefore either he doesn’t have enough power to help me, or he doesn’t care.” Talk about a false dilemma. Either he doesn’t have the power or he doesn’t care? Really? Those are the only two possibilities? How about this: he has infinite power and he cares more than you can imagine, but he’s got some other reason for why he’s allowing this to go on. “What?!? Another reason? You mean, like something I haven’t even thought of? Impossible!”
Why do we think this way? Do we think we know more than God? Think about the arrogance that’s required for a person to decide that Jesus doesn’t care. We will accuse the most compassionate being in existence of not caring before we will admit that maybe there’s something we don’t know. If we can’t imagine how this hardship could be a good thing, then we will question the character and love of the one who gave his life for us before we will question our own knowledge.
Cowardice
I would call that arrogance. But Jesus calls it something else—something surprising. He calls it cowardice.
40 He said to his disciples, "Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?"
The word for afraid is not talking about the emotion of fear. It’s talking about the response to fear. A better translation would be, Why are you cowardly ? Do you still have no faith? This word always refers to cowardice, not just fear.
It wasn’t wrong for them to be afraid of drowning. God gave us adrenalin for a reason. It’s not cowardice to have your pulse rate increase during a cataclysmic storm that is sinking your boat miles from shore. Courage is not feeling indifferent about danger. Courage is when you’re scared to death, but you still behave in admirable ways even when you’re scared. Cowardice is when you respond to fear in shameful ways.
So the question isn’t whether you feel fear; it’s whether your response is controlled by your feelings, or by your faith. Jesus rebukes them for cowardice, but when he puts his finger on the cause of their cowardice, it’s not lack of courage; it’s lack of faith.
40 He said to his disciples, "Why are you cowardly? Do you still have no faith?"
They questioned his love because they were going by feelings instead of faith.
Fearing the storm without fearing the Lord
This shows how important your attitude is in prayer. Two people can both say the exact same words, “God, save me!” – and one of them is exhibiting faith and the other one is being a faithless coward. And the only difference is their attitude. Anger toward God, or questioning his love, or fearing something else more than you fear God—that’s evidence of a faithless heart. The disciples were deathly afraid of the storm, but they weren’t one bit afraid of questioning Jesus’ love.
Before the miracle
Did they do the right thing asking Jesus for help? Of course. But the test of faith isn’t whether you cry out to Jesus for help. The test of faith is whether you trust him before he gives the help, while things still aren’t making any sense. The issue isn’t how you feel after the miracle, it’s whether you believe before the miracle, or without any miracle. There is a popular song titled Jesus take the Wheel. It’s about a woman who loses control of her car on the ice and Jesus takes the wheel and gets her safely to the shoulder. That’s great if Jesus decides to do that, but the test of faith is while you’re still spinning out of control.
Don’t ever think that the point of this miracle is to tell us that Jesus will always jump up and calm the storm in your life. Most of the time he won’t. The vast majority of storms just play out. Jesus stopped this one, not to teach us that he will always step in and stop the storms and bring calm. He did it to prove that he is always in full control, no matter how much chaos he allows to take place. No matter how horrible and chaotic and dangerous the storm, no matter how impossible it is for you to imagine why he would let it happen, at any split second he could bring it all to a complete, instant stop with just a “shh” from his lips. And so if that storm is still going, then you’d better believe there is a good reason for it to be going on. And you can trust him with that reason.
Very often Jesus allows the car to spin off the road and get hit by oncoming traffic. Jesus Take the Wheel is a heart warming story, but it’s not a song about faith. If she had written a song about how she crashed and her little baby was killed in the accident, and she still trusted Jesus even then—that would be a song about faith.
If you don’t trust until after the miracle, that’s not faith. If you can’t rest in him until after he calms the storm, that’s not faith. If you can’t trust him until you can think of some kind of answer to the question of why would God allow this?, that’s not faith. Faith is when you say, “Oh yeah, Jesus is the one who can give orders to a storm, and so if he’s that much more powerful than me, maybe he’s smarter than me too. Maybe he knows something I don’t know. Maybe he knows ten billion things I don’t know.” Everyone wants a God who is powerful enough to get them out of a jam, but they also want a god they can fully understand and who is predictable and who operates exactly like they would operate if they had the power. You can’t have it both ways. If God is infinitely more powerful than you, then he’s also going to be infinitely smarter than you, which means he’s going to frequently do things you don’t understand. If you want someone who does all the things you would expect, that will be a being who is about the same level as you, and he won’t be powerful enough to help you when the storms break out on your life.
Jesus Cares
Never let any hardship make you question whether the Lord cares. He cares about you more than you care about yourself. He cares more about your pain than you do. He cares more about your safety than you do. He cares more about the things that threaten you than you do. He cares about everything in your life more than you do. What matters to you matters to him because he loves you, and he loves you even more than you love yourself.
Messianic Qualification
So yes, Jesus does care. But what about the other side of it—does he have enough power to protect you from real harm? There are a lot of threats out there that are way beyond our control—especially the forces of nature. God created mankind to rule over the creation, but that’s not what we see happening, right? This creation rages out of our control. An earthquake hits, a volcano, a hurricane, and we can do absolutely nothing to stop it. We are never more helpless than when we go up against nature. The power it would take to subdue this world and get it under control is not only beyond the reach of man - it is utterly inconceivable to man. But the promise of God’s Word is that someday a man would come who had that power, and that Man will fix everything that is wrong with the creation. When He comes, this is what He will do:
Isaiah 65:17 Behold, I will create new heavens and a new earth. … 25 The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox …They will neither harm nor destroy
If you’re running for the office of Messiah, one of the qualifications is you have to be able to reverse the curse and take full control of this creation. And that requires staggering power. In fact, for the pagans in the ancient near east, not even the gods had that kind of power. They believed the gods had fought against the forces of chaos, and had finally succeeded in pushing the frontiers of chaos off the land into the sea. So the gods were able to bring some kind of order to the land, but not even the gods could control the sea. The chaos of the sea is the most extreme example of mankind’s inability to control the creation.
So then Jesus comes along and says, “I can do it. I can pull off a new heavens and a new earth. I can establish the kingdom of God just by the power of my word alone.” That’s what he was saying in the parables—that he had that much power, but it was hidden power, like the kind in a seed. Well, anyone could make that claim, right? “Yeah, I have the power, but it’s all hidden for now.” How do we know his claims are really true?
We’re about to see. Jesus Christ is going to go up against the full fury of nature—head to head.
The Miracle
39 He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, "Quiet! Be still !"
It’s a present and then a perfect tense, so it means, “Be quiet and stay quiet.”
39 … Then the wind stopped and it was completely calm.
He rebuked the wind and it stopped. The word translated calm refers to a still, flat, placid sea. And Mark says it was a great calm. Calm is calm, right? But this is, like scary calm. The word great is the Greek word megas, an it’s used three times in this passage. The first time it describes the storm—it was a mega-storm. And Jesus gave an order and turned it into a mega-calm.
Imagine It
The way that Mark uses the present tenses in this account indicate that he’s presenting it in a dramatic way. He wants the reader to imagine this scene and to put ourselves in the disciples’ shoes. So let’s do that. Let’s go back 2000 years and put ourselves in that boat. Jesus says, “Let’s go over to the other side,” so you get the boat rigged, grab and oar and begin rowing out into the sea while Peter and James work on getting the sail up. It’s been a long day, it’s already getting dark, but that’s okay—you have been out here before at night. It’s calm, but you start to notice storm clouds gathering, so you brace yourself.
Jesus is already conked out in the back. That’s fine – He’s not a sailor anyway. This is your area of expertise, so you’re glad to see Him finally get some rest.
So you turn your eyes back to those clouds. It’s coming fast. Peter: “Get ready guys. A few more minutes and it’s going to get violent.” Sure enough—not 5 minutes later everyone scrambling, trying to keep the bow into the massive waves, strong windsYou think, Not another one of these. These storms are scary, but we’ve handled lots of these.
But a few minutes later this storm has accelerated and exploded into something you have never seen before, and you find yourself gripped with fear—fear for your life.
Now it’s getting even worse! All your efforts are doing nothing, the boat is getting jammed around like a cork, and you realize, “We are completely out of control. Our efforts are doing nothing. This is too much. There is too much wind. These waves… we’re getting swamped...” Suddenly bam!—you get hammered by a huge wave out of nowhere. You’re choking and gagging and trying to get some air and you open your eyes just in time to see Peter get blasted off his seat by another wave.
You’re under water – choking, but you can still feel the oar. You think, “I’m still in the boat!” But you look around and you see the boat’s starting to go under. There is no coast guard, no life jackets – you’re miles from shore. And you realize, this is it. We’re going to drown out here.
And you look at there’s Jesus, and he’s asleep! And it kind of makes you mad. And so you go over to wake him up. But He’s really out of it. You start shaking him, “Jesus, we’re sinking! We’re going to die! Don’t you care? What are you doing? WAKE UP!”
And Jesus opens His eyes and sees all the chaos and the yelling and panic and stands up, takes one look around and says, “Quiet!” And the next sound you hear is “drip” as a drop of water drips down off the bow of the boat into the water. And you see the little ripples go out in circles. And it’s silent. The boat’s not even rocking. It’s like it’s in cement. There’s not a gentle breeze against your face—just dead stillness like you have never felt in your life.
A chill runs down your back. You have never seen stillness like this. You look down at the water and it’s like glass. And the only sound you hear is the disciples’ breathing, and your own heart still pounding. And you look over the side into the water, and you see a perfect reflection of your face like a mirror.
Most paintings that depict this miracle show Jesus standing up with his hand raised in the middle of a raging storm. I love this painting because it shows the actual miracle—the storm is gone and all is still. Jesus did something no other miracle worker has ever done. And he doesn’t pull out a magic wand, no incantations, he doesn’t even call on a higher power. He just gave the word. Is there enough power in his word to subdue the creation? Just look at how easy this was for him. He doesn’t have to go to the back of the boat and spend 10 minutes working up the power. You might expect He would at least put a little drama into it: “Wow! This is a bad one – I can handle this - STAND BACK!...GRUNT” None of that – no effort. No strain. He just delivers an ultimatum. Effortless.
Proof
I guess Jesus qualifies as one who has enough power to bring the creation under his direct control and eliminate the chaos. People always talk about the weather, but no one ever does anything about it. Well, Jesus did something about it, and that puts him in a class by himself. Bertrand Russel was a famous atheist who wrote a book titled “Why I’m Not a Christian.” Someone once asked him, “What if you’re wrong and you end up facing God on Judgment Day? What will you say to God?” Russel answered, “I’ll tell him, ‘Not enough evidence’.” Not enough evidence? Given things like this that Jesus did, somehow I don’t think that excuse is going to fly on Judgment Day. I could see some angel, just for fun, playing the tape of this event for him. Not enough evidence?
Great Fear
So there you are in the boat. You look up from your reflection in the water and look over at Jesus. And you can feel the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. This man just gave an order to a storm. He told a storm to shut up, and it did. And you are terrified. You realize you are in the presence of something you don’t have a category for. If you watch some really scary horror movie, and a spiritual power makes a door slam and a book flies off a shelf by itself, and you think, “Man, if that happened to me I’d be so scared.” Why? Because something is strong enough to move a book? No, because you know there is power there, a being that’s beyond your understanding.
It doesn’t take much power to slam a door or throw a book. A normal human being could do that. It really doesn’t take that much power to create chaos. Even a storm—man can do that. Just set off a nuclear bomb.
But how much power does it take to undo a storm? The human race could put all it’s combined knowledge and power together and we can’t so much as stop a gentle breeze. This man stands up in the middle of a hurricane and says, “Shh—shut it,” and everything stops, both the wind and the waves.
Notice what it says about how the disciples respond to this miracle. They don’t give him a bunch of high fives. They don’t say, “Oh, when Jesus is in the boat with you, everything is fine—he took the wheel, he took it from my hands…” No. They don’t celebrate, and they aren’t at peace. What do they do? What Isaiah did when he saw God. They do what every righteous person does when they are in the presence of Almighty God: they shake in fear. It says during the storm, when they thought they were going to die, they were afraid. That’s normal fear. But after Jesus stopped the storm..
41 They were terrified
Literally, they feared with a great fear—megas phobos—mega-fear. It was a mega-storm, then a mega-calm, and now a mega-fear. Why were they afraid after the storm was gone? That phrase, “they feared with a great fear,” is taken word-for-word right out of the story of Jonah. Jesus purposely styled this miracle after what happened to Jonah. A man of God is asleep in the storm, the boat starts to sink, the sailors panic, and then the storm is miraculously stopped, and in Jonah 1:15 it says the sailors feared the Lord with a great fear. Why? Because the God of Israel just did something they didn’t think any god could do—tame the chaos of the sea. And so they realized, “Wow, we’re dealing with the most powerful God there is.” And Mark borrows that exact language to make the same point: the disciples realized who they were dealing with. And so now they are more afraid than they were in the storm when they thought they were going to die. They have someone in the boat who is a greater threat even than death itself. Better to be in a sinking boat than face the glory and holiness of God unprotected.
When Jesus stood up and gave an order to the storm someone might have laughed and said, “Jesus, you’re acting like you own the place.” And Jesus says, “As a matter of fact, I do own the place. I made it. I own it. I control every square inch of it.” He can scold a storm like he’s talking to a little child: “Hey, shh shh—sit down.” And he has more ability to make the storm obey than we do to make a toddler obey. He commands the very laws of physics. Gravity and the laws of motion obey Him.
Do you realize what that means? It means when Jesus speaks, it’s not just another religious option for you to consider. He’s telling you the way it is. And if he’s the Creator, he’s also the final Judge. The storm has the power to kill your body; this man has the power and authority to consign your soul to eternal hell if he’s displeased with you.
Who Would Invent a Holy God?
Sigmund Freud was an atheist who lived at a time when atheists were really struggling to explain why mankind is so incurably religious. At that time in history, they thought they had disproved the existence of God with their primitive scientific theories, but they were left with the question, if there’s no God, why is there so much religion? And the theory Freud came up with was this: It’s so we can have a way of dealing with the fear of nature. If you face some kind of human threat, you can deal with that by trying to reason with the person threatening you. You can beg or plead or bribe or argue or whatever to get them to stop threatening you. But you can’t do that with an earthquake or hurricane. And so what mankind did was invent the god of the hurricane, or the god of the earthquake. Then they have someone they can reason with and try to influence to help deal with the threat.
Is that true? Possibly. Freud may have been on to something with most pagan religions. I think that may very well have been the motive behind the invention of a lot of those.
But how do you explain Christianity, where the God of the storm poses a bigger threat than the storm? No one in his right mind would ever invent a holy God.
Conclusion
What does all this mean for us? First, fear the Lord. Fear his displeasure more than you fear any threat in this world. Fear losing intimacy and closeness with him more than you fear any other kind of loss. Stand in awe of him, take him seriously, never take him lightly. Casual worship is a contradiction in terms.
Secondly, trust the Lord. When the storm arises in your life, you don’t need to panic. Where does the storm get its power? From the Lord. This world has no power of its own. Jesus is the power behind the storm, and he is in full control of it at every moment. The storm belongs to him, so you don’t have to be afraid.
Third, don’t ever doubt his love for you. He cares more than you care.
And fourth, put all your hope in the one who has the power to subdue this creation, establish the kingdom of God, reverse the curse, redeem the entire creation, and make a new heavens and a new earth.
Gentiles
There are so many similarities between what happened to Jonah and what Jesus did here.
Jesus purposely modeled this miracle after Jonah’s situation.
And I think there’s another point of significance beyond the fact that the stilling of the sea proved that the Creator himself was at work.
The other point has to do with why they were in the boat to begin with.
And here it’s a contrast rather than a similarity.
Why was Jonah in that boat?
God had called him to go offer salvation to a gentile nation.
And rather than going to preach to the gentiles, Jonah went the opposite direction and tried to escape on a ship.
What about Jesus?
Why is he in this boat?
He told his disciples, “Let’s go over to the other side of the lake.”
What’s over there?
Gentile territory.
The leaders in Israel had thoroughly rejected Jesus, and now he’s heading over to the Gentiles.
