Turn again to that fourth chapter, verse 35. That last verse of
that chapter says, What manner of man is this? What kind of a man is this that even the wind and the sea
obey him? What kind of a man? It must be
more than a man. It must be more than a man. can make the wind and the sea
obey him. Well, that's what we want to
find out here, if we can, this morning. What manner of man is this? and good to be acquainted with
the various doctrines and principles of Christianity. That's well
and good. To know those, the doctrine of
God's sovereignty, unchangeableness, that's a wonderful, wonderful
doctrine. whatsoever God doeth, he doeth
forever. That's a wonderful thing to know.
It's a wonderful thing to know about God's justification, that
as He is, so are we in this world. As the Lord Jesus Christ is,
that's the way we are. Whatever He is in glory, we're
in Him and like Him. Wonderful, wonderful thing to
know. A wonderful thing to know about
tracing our redemption and salvation to its source. That in the beginning,
God the Father has chosen us in Him. And I've told you that
election is not salvation. But it's unto salvation. Salvation
is in Christ, in Christ alone. Wonderful thing, isn't it, to
know these doctrines and principles of Christianity. But it's far better. I'm not minimizing in any sense
of the word these great doctrines of the faith. So don't think for a minute that
I am. But it is better to be acquainted
with Christ Himself. It's good and wonderful to be
acquainted with these fundamental doctrines and principles of Christianity. That's good. That's good. But
it's better to be acquainted with Christ Himself. because
all the blessings of God are in Christ. It is good to be familiar with
faith, grace, justification, sanctification, election, and
sovereignty. These are particular matters
concerning the The King of kings, the Lord of
lords, the only potentate, the bright morning star, the maker
of light and the giver of light. But it is far better to be familiar
with the Lord Jesus Christ himself, to see the King's own face, to
see the King in his beauty. is far better than all of these matters pertaining
to doctrine and so forth, although they're very important and wonderful
things. Now, if we are to become Christlike,
and that's certainly the express command that's revealed in the
Scriptures, that we're to be like Him. Strive to be like the
Lord Jesus Christ. Love your neighbor as yourself. Love God with all your heart
and all your mind and all your strength. Do unto others as you
have others do unto you. All these things. Be like Christ. Be like Christ. And if we're
to do this, We must be constantly spending
more time than we have previously spent in our lifetime studying Christ and who He is,
if we're to be like Him, to be familiar with Him, and to grow
in knowledge. of God in Christ. Well, the Gospels
of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were written, I believe, to make
us acquainted with the Lord Jesus Christ. They tell us the story
of His life and His death They tell us of his sayings, of his
doings, and they're told to us by four different inspired hands,
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. That in itself signifies the
importance of reading these four Gospels and studying these four
Gospels that we might become more acquainted with Him who
is the King of Kings. The Gospel tells us of His wisdom,
of His grace, of His patience, of His love, and of His power. And as I've already said, These
are unfolded and revealed to us by four different witnesses. They wrote what they seen and
felt concerning the Lord Jesus Christ. So I say in light of
that, ought not the patient be familiar with the physician? I don't think I'll go to the
Fairmont General and have my operation. I think that I will
go to the Ruby Memorial or the Monongahela General Hospital. There is a specialist there that
I don't know really personally, but my friends have told me so
much about him and his skill. in my situation with my problem
that he has done so many things for so many of my friends that
I think I'll contact him and have a session with him and explain
to him what my trouble is and listen to him a little bit, become
familiar with him. Ought not the patient? be familiar
with the surgeon, with the physician. Well, ought not the sheep be
familiar with the shepherd? We all agree that we ought to
be familiar with the great shepherd of the sheep. Ought not the bride
be familiar with the bridegroom? You're certainly not going to
marry someone you don't know about. I mean, if you are, you've
got some problems. And you're asking for trouble.
You're asking for a lot of trouble. If someone comes along and you
become infatuated with his personality or infatuated with his body beauty
and decide that you'll do all that you can under the sun to
convince him to have you for his bride. You better know more
about him than that. Ought not the bride to be familiar
with the bridegroom? Ought to be. There are many broken
hearts of families. that have become the effect of
the bride or the groom, not becoming familiar with the individual
that they commit their life to. When you get married, you commit
your life to your wife, and your wife commits her life to her
husband. But sometimes that's a short life, and most, well,
not most cases, but a lot of cases. I read in the paper the other
day, there must have been a list of them that long getting divorced. Some of
them don't even get married anymore. That is a Christian marriage.
They're not familiar with the individual in whom they say they
commit themselves to, because if they really commit themselves
to one another, they'll follow through and make it a Christian
marriage. Well, ought not the sinner then
become familiar with his Savior, if what I have already said be
true? Ought he not become familiar
with the Savior, the King of kings, the Lord of lords, one
whom he will spend thousands and thousands of years in the
glory of the King and spend eternity with him. Ought not the sinner
be familiar with the Savior? I think so. It ought to be so. Beyond doubt it ought to be so. Beyond a shadow of a doubt it
ought to be so. If we expect to build our souls If we expect and are even now
accepted by God in Christ and plan on building our life and
our soul on the Christ of God, certainly we ought to be familiar
with it. To build on the rock, to build
on the rock, the solid rock, Thou art Peter, and upon this
rock, Christ is the rock. We build on the rock, the rock
of our salvation. On whom must we look for sympathy
when earthly friends fail us? Where can we look? And to whom
can we look to that is only flesh and blood. We must look to our
elder brother, the Lord Jesus Christ. He is our brother, our elder
brother, and that will never change. The relationship will
never get to the place that he will disown us as his brother. We're brothers in Christ forever
and forever and there is no end to that relationship. Nothing
can separate us. There cannot be any quarrels
that come between us that will separate us. I remember when
I was a junior in high school and We had a teacher, she was the algebra teacher,
and the librarian, maybe taught some other things, I don't know.
But anyhow, she lived in, or originally came from down around
where Carl is, down around Calhoun County, in a little town called
Reeder. And she asked my good friend, she said, well, she had
found out that my good friend and I was going down to that
reader area to take his mother down there. And she found that
out. She said, could I ride with you?
Said, that is where I was born and raised. And so we said, yes. And she said, why are you going
down? She said, I'm going down to see
my family. Why are you going down? I said, well, take this
woman down. She said, her brother died. A friend of mine who's
driving the car, his mother's brother died. And we took her
down there. And after we got down there,
we found out what the circumstances was. There's two brothers. They had farms side by side. And they fell out over nothing.
They become separated over nothing. Hated one another. And one told the other, said,
when you come down off of the hill there, don't you cut through
my field to get to the road? He said, if you do, I'm going
to shoot you. Well, the one that lived over
here, I had to come to town or something. He'd come down the
road and come through the field. This other brother that warned
him not to come through was so separated by enmity from his
brother and hatred in his heart, grabbed up his gun and ran out
there and shot and killed him. Separated! They know separation. There is nothing that can happen
that can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ
Jesus, no matter how great the rift is. Oh, my soul. Whom must we look
to for sympathy when earthly friends fail us? Our elder brother. It's by him must our prayers
be presented to God the Father through our elder brother. We
ask these things, Holy Father. in his name. Well, what is in
his name? He's our elder brother. We're
in fellowship with him. We're not out of fellowship with
him. We are in fellowship with him.
And he said, if you ask in the name of your elder brother anything
you ask, he said, I'll do. You ask in my name. Isn't that
what he said? Well, if we come to him, we must be
represented by our advocate. We must be represented by our
lawyer in whom we have the utmost confidence that he will represent
us right. We have an advocate with the
Father, even Jesus Christ our Lord, our elder brother, one
who sympathizes with our case. Not only in this life does the
lawyer, the advocate, if he's a good one, he agrees with the
man that he represents, He has some reasonable understanding
about his situation and he sympathizes with it. And he presents his
case the best that he can. But our case is a little different
than that. We have an advocate with whom
we hope to spend eternity with. He loves us. He's given himself
for us. And even in the after eternity,
of all that glory when we go home to be with Him, the King
of kings. Surely then, in light of what
I have said this morning, surely we cannot know this man, our
elder brother, this Christ, too well. We cannot come to the place
that we say, I know all about Him. I know everything. It would
be wonderful if good, but I doubt seriously if we'll ever reach
that height by way of knowledge. Surely we cannot get along very
well as believers if we don't know all that's possible for
us to know about him who loved us and gave himself for us. Surely there's not a word There's
not a word or a deed or a step or a thought in the record of
his life which we ought not to be familiar with. Every thought, and I've said
this many times, from the manger to the cross and to the crown,
there's not a word or a thought or a saying or a doing of the
Lord Jesus Christ that was not done in the behalf of the people
that he represents. Surely we ought to labor to be
familiar with every line that is written about him in this
book, everything that is said here that pertains to him. do
our dead-level best to be familiar with. Here in this portion of Scripture
that I have opened to in verse 35, we have this narrative of
the Lord Jesus Christ. It says, And the same day, after he began to teach by the
seaside, there were gathered unto him a great multitude. And he began to teach and preach,
was tired and fatigued. The same day, I think it was
the end of that day, He had spent all day, you can see that by
reading the previous verses, that He had spent all of His
time in teaching and preaching. And that same day when the evening
was come, He saith unto them, He saith unto His disciples,
His followers, Let us pass over unto the other
side. I think what he had in mind was,
let's get away from this crap. I'm tired. I'm tired. I need to have some rest. It's evening time now and I'm
growing weary. I've been talking, teaching,
concentrating all day long here, this great multitude Let's pass over onto 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. But he wasn't in the other
little ships. He was in the ship with his disciples.
And this is what took place. There arose a great storm of
wind, great storm of wind, like in a hurricane where the wind
is so fierce that it takes the water and rolls it up and goes
over the top of anything and everything that's in front of
it. tears the houses down, sweeps the automobiles off of the street,
the occupants thereof, all that. Well, our Lord Jesus is asleep. That's it. Got in that boat. storm of wind, the waves beat
upon the ship, so the little old boat was full of water. But
our Lord Jesus was in the hinder part of the ship, asleep on a
pillar. He is asleep on a pillar. And a sudden storm came up. It wasn't sudden to Him. He's
the ruler of the storm. But it was sudden, humanly speaking, to the disciples that was in
the boat with him. And it was sudden to the people
whom he left and had spoke to. But it was not sudden to him. And I'll tell you why here in
a little bit. Here you see the Lord Jesus Christ crossing this
lake, Sea of Galilee, in a boat with his disciples. A sudden
storm comes up while he is asleep, and the waves beat into the boat
and fill it with water, and death seems close at hand to these
that are in the boat, the disciples. And they were scared. They were
frightened. frightened disciples. And immediately, when that wind
just almost blew them out of the boat, and the boat was filled
with water and about to be upset, they got to the hinder part of
the ship as fast as they could, and they aroused and awoke their
master and cried unto him for help. He arises from his sleep and
he rebukes the sea and he rebukes the waves and all at once there
is a calm that has settled upon this sea. Calm. And he mildly rebukes his disciples,
faithless disciples for their fears. So He rebukes His companions
here. They say, Cherish not thou that
we perish. He arose and rebuked the wind
and said unto the sea, Peace be still. And the wind seized
and there was a great calm. And He said unto them, Why are
ye so fearful? A mild rebuke, faithless disciples
in the ship with Jesus. If you are in the ship with Jesus,
you are never going to sink. If you are in the boat with Him,
if you are connected and joined to the Lord Jesus Christ, you
are never going to sink. They was afraid, scared. Said,
how is it that you have no faith? How is it? You ought to have
some. Oh, listen. There's a calm. Well, what is
it that we can learn here from this narrative? Well, there's
many things to be learned. here, I'm sure. We learn this,
first of all, that following the Lord Jesus Christ will not,
I say, prevent us from having earthly sorrow and trouble. If we follow Him, that is no
guarantee whatsoever that we will not have any trials and
troubles and afflictions from now on in. No guarantee that
we'll never have no sorrow. Here's this faithful little flock
which believed when the priests and the scribes and the Pharisees
refused to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. This little group
of fishermen, fishermen without any great titles, without any
advanced higher learning, poor, poor, unnoticed men who were
considered of no value or of little value, They believed in the Lord Jesus
Christ when the priests and the scribes and the Pharisees were
all alike unbelieving. And the fear of death comes upon
them like an armed robber, like a man who steps out from behind
the building and puts a gun in your ribs and says, give me your
money or I'm going to blow you to kingdom come. These are the pillars of the
Church. These disciples, they're the
first Christians. There was no such thing as Christianity
until Christ came. And these were his first followers. Well, they're the pillars of
the Church. And even the pillars of the church
experience the fear of death. Don't you care if we perish?
Followers of Christ saying to him, don't you care if we perish?
Well, if you're a believer here this morning, and I think most
of you are, You must reckon on having your share of pain and
sickness and troubles and sorrows in this life. Rest assured, put
it down. Put it down, you're going to
have it. This little flock had it. They
feared for their life. They awoke to Master, Lord, don't
you care anything about us. We're going to drown. So just reckon on having your
share of sickness and pain and sorrow and tears and losses and
partings and separations and disappointments. Just reckon
you're going to have it. There's Linda, Nancy, Robin,
Barry, children, Karen, all of them. Yesterday that's the funeral
home. The day before they was in the
funeral home. The day before they was concerned about their
dad. He didn't respond. Looked like he was warmed over
dead. Pale. Grey. not conscious of what's going
on in their surroundings. And it bothers them, flesh and
blood. Flesh and blood is thicker than water. They have trouble. They know what I'm saying here
this morning. Just because you're a follower of the Lord Jesus
Christ, you are not exempt from trials and troubles and pains
and separations and partings. Oh, no. Oh, no. And disappointments. How many
of you have been disappointed in something or somebody? Why, there's not enough paper
to fill the names of those that I feel like I've been disappointed
in. and you have to. But I tell you
about Him. I tell you about Him and eternal
life, the Lord Jesus Christ. But by telling you about eternal
life that's in Him, I certainly will not offer to you or guarantee
to you that world prosperity and long life and
increased income and freedom from pain will be yours because
you're a follower of Him. Because it wouldn't be so. It
wouldn't be so. And that's why I detest, I detest,
I hate these television programs with these preachers on, these
big full of wind and pride, obnoxious. That's all for people. God wants
to give you money. He doesn't want you to have pain
and sorrow. You're not doing right if you're
having these troubles. If you're poor, there's something
the matter with you. God's rich and He wants to give
you riches. I don't believe that. And if
I talk to anyone, say something about that, if they don't have
any understanding of who the Lord Jesus Christ is, they immediately
turn you off real quick. They don't want to hear that.
Oh, you think you're better than someone else and you're criticizing
someone else's religion. God, I'll criticize until the
day I die if this is what criticism is. to rob God of His glory. That's a terrible, terrible thing.
Rob Him by saying, telling people, God wants to do something for
you, but He can't do it because you won't let Him. I'll tell
you this. Oh, listen. I can't promise the
man who takes up the cross, who receives and bows to the Lord
Jesus Christ, that he shall never meet a storm in his path. We all have storms. Storms that cause us sometimes
to fall before God and say, Charis, not thou for me. These come and they are for our
good. They are for our good. Oh, listen,
but I can tell you this, that He does all things well. The winds may howl and the waters
may swell, but fear not, He's leading you in the right
way, and He'll never leave you, nor forsake you. And we'll talk
some more about it this evening. Let's stay.