This was the message I preached after the WTC and Pentagon attack.
I spoke of the fierceness of the storm. These were fishermen and were not going to be afraid of any ordinary storm. It’s interesting to not that in the passages before this story we don’t see the disciples being rebuked for anything or doing anything that God would have had to punish them for. They are simply going over to the other side and a huge storm comes up. That tells me something about difficult times in life:
STORMS HAPPEN
To the good and the bad. To the righteous and the evil. To the just and the unjust. The sooner we will get a grip on this truth the better off we will be. STORMS JUST HAPPEN. The Christian life is not all wine and roses. The Bible plus our own experience tells us that bad things happen to Christian people.
Joseph
Moses-had to put up with a bunch of grumblers for forty years
David-had to run from King Saul
Paul was left for dead, shipwrecked, beaten, thrown in jail, and even said that he despaired of life(2Cor. 1:8)
One verse of Scripture wraps all of this up. Jesus speaking in John 16:33 says, "In this world you will have trouble, but behold, I have overcome the world." Nothing else needs to be said. STORMS HAPPEN!!
Its also fascinating to me the questions that Jesus was asked. "Don’t you care if we drown.?" That was the same question that was asked on Tuesday. "God where are you. Don’t you care about us?" It’s amazing that Jesus does not answer this question. He simply gets up and quiets the storm. That’s amazingly similar to God reply to Job when Job demanded an answer from God about the storm he was going through. God doesn’t answer him of course. He just sets him in his place in chapter 38 and following. He answers the why question with Himself. That’s what Jesus does as well. He just gets up and exercises His authority over nature. That tells me something. We won’t ever have an answer to the why question so we better
LEARN TO BE AT PEACE WITH THE QUESTION.
There’s no answer to the question. The Bible does not answer it. Any answer any TV preacher gives you is too simple. God is not black and white. You cannot say that this happens so this must happen. God is not that small. He’s bigger than that. We must simply understand that we cannot understand His working and we flatter ourselves if we think we can.(Rom. 11:33ff) We will help ourselves in our Christian walks if we learn to be a peace with the question. It’s not wrong to have the question. We are human beings and we are thinking people. The question is the most human thing in the world. The question is not wrong unless it leads to doubt and unbelief.
That leads us to a third lesson we learn from this passage:
IT’S ALL ABOUT FAITH
Jesus asks the disciples, "Do you STILL have no faith." It’s like Jesus was saying after all you have seen and after all the miracles I have worked, you still don’t believe. That spoke to me. Last week I was on the mountaintop. I was praising God for his blessing and telling people how he had touched my life and renewed me in my Spirit. I was full of His goodness and then Tuesday happens and I say God where are you. I believe He turns to me as He turns to the disciples and says, "Do you STILL have no faith." The Christian life is all about walking by faith and not by sight. It’s all about seeing the unseen through eyes of faith. It’s all about looking for a city whose builder and maker is God. It’s all about knowing He is the God of the mountain as well as the God of the valley.
