FAITH UNLOCKS HIS PEACE – Mark 4:35-41
Last week we look at 2 disciples walking towards Emmaus, downcast and hopeless, and how Jesus joins them in their walk and transformed them. TODAY we’re seeing another journey – a BOAT RIDE across the Sea of Galilee.
What the disciples experienced is not new. We had similar experiences, or probably are in it now.
… Have you ever felt like you were in a STORM?
… Have you ever FELT like God was asleep?
… Have you ever felt you’ve DONE all you can and nothing has changed?
… Have you experience a life-threatening situation?
Then you need to take a close look at the BOAT TRIP. There is something for you.
The first thing we realized is that this trip was Jesus’ idea. “Let us go over to the other side.” Mark 4:35. The disciples were following Jesus’ order. It was not a wrong trip, taken at a wrong time – they were right in the center of God’s will. Yet they were led into a storm.
We have to set our perspective right. Facing a trial does not necessarily mean God is punishing you. You can be led by God and yet experiences hardship. It does not necessarily mean it will always be “smooth sailing”. This is where our expectations of God and reality clash. We expect God to IMMUNE us of all harms but He did not. This is a misconception.
Reality check - 3 things we learnt about this storm (and the storms of life)
(A) Expect it – it is inevitable. James 1:2 “WHEN you face trials…” not IF… You will face storms in life.
(B) it is impartial – happen to good pp and bad pp. Matt 5:45, “He sends the rain on the just and the unjust.”
(C) it can come as a surprise – it is unpredictable. You can make plans, but we cannot control the future.
One phone call, one event, one mistake – may be all it takes to rob us of peace. To the point your life is threatened, or your livelihood threatened.
In fact, the truth is that storms strengthen us – there are some things we’ll never learn in THEORY.
The real test of someone who can swim is to have him in the waters. Throw him down and you’ll know whether he swims or drowns. And to have someone learn swimming, you need to get him into the waters!
Storms are ALLOWED as test or challenges to our faith in God – Jesus could have prevented the storm EARLIER. He allowed you to get into the storm and then expected something else – the RIGHT RESPONSE. Jesus is looking for the right responses to our problems.
We often ask WHY this happens. Jesus is looking at HOW you respond to your problems.
(1) WHAT IS IMPORTANT IS YOUR RESPONSE TO PROBLEMS
It is not enough to just HEAR the Word of God; we must also ACT ON IT.
It is very easy to think we are spiritual because we LISTEN to one preacher after another, we attend a few churches on one Sunday, take notes and mark our Bibles. BUT THE REAL TEST OF SPIRITUALITY IS WHEN YOU ARE TESTED IN REAL-LIFE SITUATIONS.
We can only glorify God when we trust and obey Him in REAL-LIFE situations. LIFE is that classroom where I learn to grow spiritually strong. We can’t achieve that sitting down, writing out answers in a Bible Knowledge test. It is in the tests of life that faith grows and you get closer to Christ.
Dear friends, storms will come to you at SOME POINT and in different DEGREES.
Learn from this story how to handle them the RIGHT WAY.
THE DISCIPLES TRIED TO HANDLE THE STORM THEMSELVES. It reveals their inadequacy.
These disciples were fishermen - they were used to WIND and WAVES. They have both the EXPERTISE and EXPERIENCE for such problems. Yet this storm was MORE INTENSE than all that they’ve ever experienced. It was the one experience that both EXPERIENCE and EXPERTISE and KNOWLEDGE cannot help.
Sometimes (maybe often times) it takes a storm to force us to LOOK somewhere else – we can be so caught up by our own intelligence, experience, skills that God is sidelined. Storms wake us up to our true selves – our limitations, our finiteness… and then you start CRYING OUT to God.
“When you have no where to look – not front, not back, then LOOK UP!”
Isa 62:6-7 I have posted watchmen on your walls, O Jerusalem; they will never be silent day or night. You who call on the LORD, give yourselves no rest, and give him no rest till he establishes Jerusalem and makes her the praise of the earth.
This alludes to the parable Jesus spoke about in Luke 18:1-5
1 Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. 2 He said: "In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared about men. 3 And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, `Grant me justice against my adversary.’ 4 "For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, `Even though I don’t fear God or care about men, 5 yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually wear me out with her coming!’"
Jacob’s desperate plead in Gen 32:24-26
24 So Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him till daybreak. 25 When the man saw that he could not overpower him, he touched the socket of Jacob’s hip so that his hip was wrenched as he wrestled with the man. 26 Then the man said, "Let me go, for it is daybreak.“ But Jacob replied, "I will not let you go unless you bless me."
DO YOU PRAY WITH SUCH A PASSION? Storms in life can do that for us!
“Anyone can awaken Jesus if they want Him BADLY ENOUGH.”
IN THE MIDST OF OUR STRUGGLE, WE REALISE THAT He was THERE throughout the ordeal. There will be nothing I will face the rest of my life that I face alone. Jesus and you are in the SAME BOAT. We tend to forget that in storms.
JESUS: “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matt 28:20)
LORD to Joshua and Israel: “No one will be able to stand up against you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you.” (Josh 1:5)
How did Jesus handle the situation? He SPOKE to the storm. We see the power of Jesus – He commands natural forces. There is power in the words of Jesus. God spoke things into existence in creation (Gen 1-2).
Isa 55:10-11
10As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, 11so is My Word that goes out from My mouth: It will not return to Me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.
Isa 55:8-9
8 "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,“ declares the LORD. 9"As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
WHAT DOES THIS TELLS US – His PRESENCE and His POWER will see us THROUGH
Actually JESUS said right at the beginning - Mark 4:35 "Let us go over to the other side." (2)
He knows He will get through – He wanted to go to the other side – Gerasenes. What’s there – Matt 5 - man possessed with evil spirits – a Legion “for we are many” (5:10). Jesus cast them out – into herd of pigs (2000, the strongest demon-possessed man Christ dwelt with).
This region was Satan’s stronghold. The people in this place kept pigs, which were forbidden by Jewish law. It was possible that the devils wanted to prevent Jesus from reaching their stronghold. JESUS KNEW HE WOULD GET THROUGH.
"Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?" Mark 4:40
The real problem for the disciples was not the storm, but their UNBELIEF.
Actually our belief is more dangerous than the storm.
“A person does not drown because he has fallen into water;
He drowns because he is not able to get out of the water.”
Men have been known to drown in shallow water because they believed they were in deep water. FEAR crippled them. They panic. If they had only tried to stand up they would have realized that their heads would have been well above the water level.
The issue is not that they have taken the wrong route, or sailed at the wrong TIME. It’s not about the LACK OF EXPERTISE, EXPERIENCE. Jesus “REBUKE” them for the LACK OF FAITH in Him.
So here we have the Secret of Survival – FAITH. Jesus had TAUGHT these disciples and performed miracles before them, and NOW IS THE TIME to put what they KNOW into PRACTICE. This storm is a CHALLENGE to put their faith in Jesus.
Some things cannot be learnt simply by sitting by the shore and simply listening to Jesus. They FAILED.
Heb 11:6 “Without faith it is impossible to please God…”
Faith would have overcome their fear – Faith and Fear cannot co-exist in the same heart.
Faith is NOT simply saying that what God says is true – Faith is ACTING ON what God says because it is true.
And the object of our faith is Jesus. How well we know Him is crucial. Unfortunately, the disciples DO NOT FULLY KNOW Him.
• Mark 4:41 “They were terrified and asked each other, "Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!"
• Mark 4:38 “Don’t you care if we perish?”
It is not the amount of faith that you have. It’s what you put your faith in that makes a difference. Everyone has faith in something, in some people. The key is for us to put our FAITH IN JESUS (GOD).
If you believe He is powerful, you’ll have powerful results.
AS LONG AS YOU DO NOT FULLY KNOW JESUS, you will live in constant turmoil and fears.
Hos 4:6 My people are destroyed from lack of knowledge. "Because you have rejected knowledge, I also reject you as my priests; because you have ignored the law of your God, I also will ignore your children.
(2) EXERCISE FAITH AND CLAIM YOUR PEACE IN CHRIST
Isa 26:3 You will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in You.
Faith is not the belief that God will do what you want. Faith is the belief that God will do what is right. God is always near and always available. God loves us too much to indulge our every whim.
Let us do something that demonstrate faith – pray, refusal to give in… For faith with no effort is no faith at all. God will respond. He has never rejected a genuine gesture of faith. Never. He always calls for the ACTS of faith.
And the truth is, at the end of the day, we’ll GO THROUGH IT! Friends, all storms are temporary. They don’t last.
Mark Twain and a friend walked outside one day in the rain.
Friend asked, “You think it will stop?”
Mark Twain said, “It always does.”
God never allows anything to HARM us with no apparent reasons. The sun will shine again. He’ll get us through.
At the end of it, the disciples were able to SEE JESUS in a new light. They come to KNOW Him in a way they have never known before. They LEARNT something that they never have learnt, simply by listening to His sermons.
SAME FOR US – for some truth, the only way you learn it is by experience.
You will never learn them from a bible study, from a tape or a book.
It is when I RESPOND to the storms in life WITH FAITH that
I see His power most visibly and sense His presence most intensely.
SOMETIMES He calms the storm, sometimes He let the storm rage on and calms us
Rom 8:28 “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose.”
We have what it takes to GO THROUGH – the PRESENCE OF CHRIST, the POWER OF CHRIST, and the PROMISE OF CHRIST
What’s rocking your boat? What kind of storm are you going through?
Is it a strained relationship? Is it a financial worry? Is it a painful memory? Is it a secret storm – something on the inside? An emotional storm that’s overwhelming you? Maybe you feel like the circumstances are tossing you around and you’re thinking “I’M GOING UNDER! I’M NOT GOING TO MAKE IT!”
JESUS WANTS YOU TO KNOW – HE can calm the storm.
He wants to ask, “WHY ARE YOU SO AFRAID? DO YOU STILL HAVE NO FAITH?” (4:40)
John 16:33
"I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world."
There’s only ONE Person who can calm storms – Jesus Christ. No amount of knowledge, expertise, experience, or skills – can help you.
Yes, “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey Him!” He’s our Lord. He is our Saviour.
Let me close with Jer 17:5-8
5 This is what the LORD says:
"Cursed is the one who trusts in man,
who depends on flesh for his strength
and whose heart turns away from the LORD.
6 He will be like a bush in the wastelands;
he will not see prosperity when it comes.
He will dwell in the parched places of the desert,
in a salt land where no one lives.
7 "But blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD,
whose confidence is in him.
8 He will be like a tree planted by the water
that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
and never fails to bear fruit."
God says (v.8)… “when heat comes”, “in a year of drought.” There will be times of HEAT, DROUGHT… He did not immune us, but He promised that our TRUST IN HIM will see us through.
In fact, “we’ll still find the water and nutrient that we need to STAY GREEN AND BEAR FRUIT!
The challenge is for us to ACT ON WHAT WE KNOW and TRUST HIM completely.
