The Survivors

• If you would, please turn to the person beside you and tell that person, “I HAVE FAITH.”

• If you can not say that, turn to that person and say, “I am going to listen real close to this sermon because I do not have any faith.”

Life can be compared to the restless sea in many ways. How often have we all wished that life could be filled with mountain top experiences?

Instead, like the sea, life has its good and bad times -- up and down.

Illus: Every BUSINESS PERSON knows the frustration of operating a business. One month it looks as though sales are going through the ceiling and the next month they fall through the basement.

Every FARMER knows the frustration of farming. One year he has a bumper crop and the next year he has to borrow money to keep from loosing his farm.

Because life is this way, I believe our text, in Mark 4, can be an enormous blessing to all of us. Perhaps it will help us to know that in order for life to make any sense, we have to understand that God has a purpose for all that He allows to come our way. For example, the storm we read about in our text was allowed for at least THREE reasons for His disciples then, and His followers today.

1. IT DEMONSTRATES WHO CHRIST WAS -- THE SOVEREIGN LORD WHO HAS POWER OVER EVERYTHING!

2. IT STRENGTHENS THE FAITH OF HIS DISCIPLES.

3. IT UNVEILS HIS LOVE AND CONCERN FOR HIS DISCIPLES AS THEY FACE THE STORMS OF LIFE.

Illus: It might be some of you are saying today, “Preacher, I do not need this message because everything is going great in my life today."

My advice to you is, listen, and fasten your seat belt. I can promise you that you will face some severe storms. It may not be today, but it could happen soon.

Illus: Someone said this about life. When it comes to the “storms” of life we can all say one of the following:

-We have just come out of one.

-We are in the middle of one.

-We are about to face one.

Every person who has been living very long can vouch for the truthfulness of that statement.

Let me show you TWO things in this passage of scripture that will reveal to us how we can be SURVIVORS through the storms of life. Look first at...

I. THE SITUATION.

Look at verses 35-36, “And the same day, when the even was come, he saith unto them, Let us pass over unto the other side. And when they had sent away the multitude, they took him even as he was in the ship." And there were also with him other little ships.”

As we look at these verses we see...

A. The Savior.

The Savior we see is completely exhausted. Many people do not realize that Jesus became tired in His body the same way we become tired in ours.

Jesus was 100% God, and He was also 100% man. In our text we can first see the human side of the Lord Jesus.

-He had been teaching all day long.

-He had been having to fight His way through the crowds all day long.

-His critics had been following Him for the purpose of listening to every word He said to try to find a contradiction.

-His body was tired.

-His mind was tired.

Jesus was completely exhausted!

You see, God became FLESH and dwelt among us. His body had the same limitations that any person’s body has. There were times He had to withdraw Himself from the crowd because if He had not, his body would have collapsed the same way ours would under such a load.

The reason I am making a point of this is because there are people today who feel that because a man is a preacher of the gospel he never needs any time off to rest.

I trust no one here would be so foolish as to believe that. Even Jesus had to withdraw from the people to find rest.

The disciples also often withdrew from the people to get some rest. If Jesus, and the disciples, had to find a quiet time away from the people for rest back then, why would anyone be so foolish as to think the minister of the gospel would not need some time to relax?

The disciples could look at Christ and tell that fatigue had set in. Look at these words in verse 36. We read, “...they took him even as he was...” It would almost seem as if they had to literally pick Him up and take Him to the ship.

In His work the Lord set the example for all of us. If you are going to be a follower of His you cannot be a slothful person. When He was taken aboard the ship He was so exhausted that He immediately went to sleep. In fact, He was so tired that even the severe storm did not wake Him up.