Mark 4, verse 35, and it's a
well-known story. On that day when evening came,
he said to them, let's go over to the other side. Leaving the
crowd, they took him along with them in the boat, just as he
was, and other boats were with him. and there arose a fierce
gale of wind and the waves were breaking over the boat so much
that the boat was already filling up. Jesus himself was in the
stern, asleep on the cushion, and they woke him and said, Teacher,
do you not care that we are perishing? And he got up and rebuked the
wind and said to the sea, Hush, be still. And the wind died down
and it became perfectly calm. And he said to them, Why are
you afraid? Do you still have no faith? They became very much afraid
and said to one another, Who then is this that even the wind
and the sea obey him? And so we have another of Jesus'
miracles. He's spoken parables and now
we have Him acting out. The parables so often speak of
the Lord Jesus and His deity and the fact that in the previous
parable as something that seems insignificant, a man from Nazareth
A carpenter from despised Galilee seems like a man, but he's a
man who is much more than a man. And now, at the end of this day,
when he's tired, no doubt tired from all of the pressing crowds
upon him, tired from ministering to people all the time. And he
says to his disciples, let's go over to the other side. So there are seven elements of
this story that I would just like us to look at. briefly today. The first one is of course that
the Lord Jesus is the one who leads his disciples. It's Jesus'
decision to go over to the other side, not the disciples' decisions. There's a wonderful verse in
John 12 that I love and it says of his sheep, he says, where
I am, there my sheep will be also. So often we think of Christian
life as being around the other way, that we wander off like
sheep and the Lord Jesus comes and chases after us. But he says,
where I am, there my sheep will also be. The other thing of course
is that the Lord Jesus is always about His Father's business.
So even though He was tired and no doubt needed rest from all
the crowds, He was crossing the sea with a purpose. Because on
the other side of this sea, was one that he had loved from eternity,
a man living a desperate life among the tombs of the Gadarenes.
And this next day was the time of love for this poor man. So
the Lord Jesus must gather all that the Father had given him.
And so the journey is a journey of purpose led by the Lord Jesus. And the Lord Jesus secondly leads
his disciples through stormy seas and troubled waters. So often in life, we seek ease
and often seek the easy way out. And I heard from someone who
recently said one of the chief sins of middle age is that we're
actually seeking comfort all the time. But comfort in this
world is not always God's way. And the way that seems most peaceful
in this world may very well be a way of compromise and tolerance
and lukewarmness. The Lord is going to take His
people through stormy seas. Most of us appreciate times of
peace, but the reality is that times of peace are rare in our
lives. Most of our lives are troubled
in one way or another. And also, faith in and obedience
to the Lord Jesus does not exempt God's saints from the storms
that all the other people in this world face. We have to go
through the same trials that all the rest of this world goes
through. And sometimes the storms are stilled, but in Acts 27,
Paul goes through a massive storm, and the storm is not stilled
at all, it just runs its course. There's a comment that's been
really impacted me by an American pastor called Eugene Peterson
and he was talking about the fact that in this world today
people are hurting just as much as they were in previous generations. In fact, we don't have to think
very far back in our history to know that the people, our
ancestors, our fathers and grandfathers, and way beyond that in all the
generations, suffered far more than we do today. Just think of a world without
antibiotics and modern medicine and paracetamol and all sorts
of other things. And so they suffered illness
from death in childbirth, plagues, infant mortality. How many people
sitting here would not be here if it wasn't for modern medicine?
My dear wife being one of them. But the big difference, Peterson
says today, is that we have a mentality that says that if it's wrong,
you can fix it. You don't have to live with discomfort. You don't have to experience
frustration. And so Christian leaders are
often in the business of being called upon by people to make
me happy, make me feel good, solve my problem. And the church
has advertised itself as a place where you get your problems met.
Come to us and we'll show you how to be successful in life
and family and meet a lot of good friends. But the church
has abdicated, says Peterson, its primary role to worship. That's what we are called to
do, to be witnesses and to be worshiping people. We are to
be a place where people are introduced to God as he really is in the
scriptures. And then in that meeting with
God, God will deal with their issues and problems. And so the
Bible's not to be read, as so many people do, as a handbook
to solve problems, to fix me up and to make me better. We
actually go to the Scriptures to meet God through the Lord
Jesus, to come face to face with the reality of the God who is. And so the Lord Jesus leads his
disciples and leads us through stormy and troubled seas, and
always for our good. And the Lord Jesus leads his
people, thirdly, even when he seems absent and uncaring. And there the disciples were
despairing of the fact that the Lord Jesus was asleep and seemed
not to be caring that they were perishing. but there are no random events
in God's universe. God says that he is a God who
hides his face at times and he has a purpose of love in hiding
his face so that when his absence is relieved with the glory of
his presence again, we delight in him in a way that we would
never have delighted in him if he'd been with us all the time. But also we live on the basis
of promises. The Lord Jesus promises that
He'll never leave us nor forsake us. He promises He's working
all things for the good of those who love Him and are called according
to His purposes. When the Lord Jesus seemingly
hides Himself from us, from His beloved, it is always with the
intention of doing them good. So the Lord Jesus leads, leads
his people through storms and is seemingly absent and uncaring. But the Lord Jesus brings peace
only when the storm has done all of its good work for God's
children. These disciples were about to
embark on ministry for the Lord Jesus. They had some incredibly
important things to learn. And in this story, we have these
disciples who were sailing along in the good ship of their confidence. and all of a sudden this ferocious
storm comes. The Sea of Galilee is 682 feet
below the level of the Mediterranean Sea, so it's a deep part of the
earth. The deepest part of the earth
is just down the river at the Dead Sea, another 600 feet deeper
again. And so in this sort of desert
land you have this sea in a deep, deep valley. And so these desert
winds come down and they come from Mount Hermon and meet winds
from the deserts and so fierce and ferocious storms come into
that particular lake again and again. But when this storm came,
the storm was a storm as we saw in the Psalms, a storm that was
of the Lord's making and of the Lord's doing. And it had a purpose
in the lives of these men. It had several purposes. It causes
these men to cry out to the Lord. It causes them to realise that
they have no strength. They have no hope in themselves.
They can have no confidence in their flesh. The storm reminds them and reminds
us of how weak and frail is our faith so often. And it's a great
reminder that our strength and our hope lies in the resources
and the power of the Lord Jesus and not in the hands of men.
It's about the faithfulness of the Lord. He made a promise to
them. Let's go over to the other side. There was absolutely no
way in the world his word was going to fail. They were going
over to the other side. And he reminds them that when
he speaks, he creates. And his word brings peace in
troubled seas. The winds and the waves obey
their creator perfectly. He just speaks and they respond. It's just another reflection
of his deity. And so the Lord Jesus uses these
difficult circumstances, these troubles, these storms, to reveal
more of who He is. By this stage, the disciples
had seen many of the miracles, the effortless healings, the
wonderful words that the Lord Jesus had spoken. They'd known
of the word from heaven when God spoke and said, this is my
beloved son in whom I am well pleased. They'd heard John the
Baptist speak of him. They'd seen the Lord Jesus do
things that no man could do. They had heard the Lord Jesus
proclaim His deity when He said that the sins of the paralytic
man are forgiven. God alone can forgive sins. So
they had seen much of the Lord Jesus, but there were still many
lessons to learn. And it's a great lesson for us,
isn't it? That we have seen much of the
Lord Jesus, we have heard much about the Lord Jesus, but there
is more and more to learn of Him. And so they'd seen that
the Lord Jesus is a real man as well, that he was tired, just
as we are tired, and he needed sleep. He was just a real man. But the fact that the wind and
the sea obeyed His Word showed His complete deity. This man,
this weary, tired, sleeping man is God. The wind and the waves
knew the voice of their Creator. And the Lord Jesus reminds them
of the power of His word. His words are spirit and they
are life. His words are power. I think
also the Lord Jesus shows that He's a tender and compassionate
and a forgiving Savior. Why are you so fearful? How is
it that you have no faith? Where is your faith? The Mark's
Gospel, as I've said so often, is a book where the Lord Jesus
does all of his activities to bring faith, to grow faith, to
nurture faith, to encourage faith. In 11.22, he summarises it by
saying, have faith in God. So the miracles the Lord Jesus
does are a confirmation of the words he speaks and who he is. And the Lord Jesus uses these
troubling times to reveal more of who these men are. At least
four of these men were experienced fishermen on this lake. And no
doubt they'd experienced many storms. And they had by this
stage used all their skill to save themselves and yet nothing
had worked at all. And it's a place that God takes
all of his children. He must take us to a place, divine
love must take us to a place where we realize that we have
no resources, that all earthly hope is gone. And when we're
in a place of our nothingness, there is great room for the grace
of God. Grace and works can't coexist
in the covenant of grace, in the covenant of love, in the
covenant of peace. The Lord Jesus will get 100%
of the glory for the salvation of His people. And God will ensure
that He does this even if it means taking His chosen children
through the most intense pain. He will always act. in perfect
love to all his children. Our Adam flesh must be put in
its right and proper place and every refuge of lies that we
cling to for our security must be brought down and it's a painful
process exposing us for who we are. Also the greatest saints
in the world are still sinners and the strongest believers are
sometimes filled with unbelief. The Lord knows what we are made
of. He knows that we are dust. With the Lord we are in constant
need of being taught His majesty and our unworthiness. For Peter,
this is the second time, and it won't be the last time, that
he needs a reminder of who he is and who the Lord Jesus is. when Peter meets the Lord Jesus
in Luke Chapter 5 and there's a miraculous catch of fish. Peter's
response to meeting the Lord and seeing something of the glory
of the Lord Jesus was, Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful
man. Again, Peter is brought at this
instance down to a right and proper place for people. We are
to fall at Jesus' feet as Peter did. And as we saw last week,
faith that God gives his children is a constant miracle of grace. It needs to be constantly nurtured
and fed by God's work in our lives. It doesn't come from our
activities. It comes from God mercifully
and graciously exercising our faith and taking us through troubles
to do it. But lastly, and I think most
significantly, this story shows us something about why the Lord
Jesus did this. Why did he take these people
across the lake? Why did he create this storm?
Why did he bring them to the point where they knew, these
experienced fishermen, they didn't say that we might perish if nothing
happens, that we might perish unless, Thomas, you start bailing
even harder, or you do some more work, James, or you do something
special, John. They cried out, we are perishing.
Experienced fishermen cried out, we are perishing. They thought
this was the end for them. They feared the fact that they
were about to die. But the Lord Jesus brings them
through this story to something which is I think the whole reason
for this story being in our scriptures. And it says in verse 41, that
having feared the storm and then seeing the Lord Jesus perform
this amazing miracle by just speaking and there was calm and
so all of a sudden the fears of drowning had gone. But the
fears of drowning were replaced with a greater fear. In fact,
in verse 41 it says, in the Greek it says, they feared with a very
great fear. They had feared before, but now
they feared something even more. They had feared in stormy seas,
but now in calm seas with no wind, they had a greater fear. And this is the fear of the Lord. The Lord Jesus needed to reveal
more of himself to them, that they might know who he is. And so it was an experience that
led them to a knowledge, a greater knowledge of who the Lord Jesus
was. So he created and controlled
this storm that he might take these men from a natural fear
that all men have to a new dimension of fearing God. And he did this
with perfect skill and love. So there is a fear in the heart
of natural man, a fear of death, a fear of being exposed, humiliated,
brought low, the fear that Adam felt in the garden when he realised
his shame and hid from God. But there is a fear that is a
great fear and it's a gift from God. It's not like the fear of
a slave. It's not like the fear of the
natural man which is focused on people and focused on us and
our comforts. The scriptures talk often about
this fear of the slaves. The devils believe and tremble. Felix trembled. The sailors with
Jonah feared the Lord exceedingly. But Paul talks about a bondage
of that fear from which God's children have been released.
In Romans 8.5, for you have not received the spirit of bondage
again to fear. There is that fear that dwells
in all of our Adam flesh. But there is again in the scriptures,
there is a godly fear. And the difference between the
two is the difference between heaven and hell. One is a grace
gift of God. The other is the natural outworking
of our Adam flesh. It's the grace gift of God to
bring his people to fear him. It's a godly fear. It has God
in His true character at its center. And this godly fear is
a gift. It's part of the new covenant
gift that was promised the Lord Jesus would bring to his people.
He says in Jeremiah 32, I will make an everlasting covenant
with them and I will not turn away from them to do them good,
but I will put my fear in their hearts that they shall not depart
from me. It's a gift of God to fear God. Hebrews 12 says, Let us have
grace whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and
godly fear. We know the psalm well, isn't
it? The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. It's actually the beginning of
a relationship with God, is to fear God. I don't know what's
going on in your hearts, But God's people have met God. God's saved children have met
Him. And to meet Him is to be in awe
of Him. To meet Him is to fear Him. The eye of the Lord is upon those
who fear Him. the angel of the Lord encamps
around those who fear him. Blessed is the man who fears
the Lord. The Lord will fulfill the desire
of all those who fear him. In fact, the scriptures give
us so many blessings that come with actual fear of God. And so this fear is a fear of
being in the family, a fear that is focused on who God is, not
on who we are. And it's the beginning of Christian
life. And it deepens and deepens all
the time. Peter feared the Lord in Luke
5. Now he was caused to fear the
Lord yet again. All of them are grace gifts. Anything that God does to reveal
himself to us is a grace gift. And so, Surprisingly, people
would think that as we grow in our Christian life, we would
grow away from those things. The scriptures show us that it's
exactly the opposite. As we make progress in our Christian
life, this fear is not weakened at all, because as we meet with
God again and again, it becomes a deepened and a strengthened
fear. but also this fear, like the
disciples went through in this boat, this fear is mixed with
God's comfort because it's out of the depths that we cry and
it's out of the depths that we are comforted. So in Acts 9.31,
if you can turn in your Bibles, it's a special verse. There was a time where the church
underwent persecution. But there was a time in Acts
9 where the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria
enjoyed peace. The church enjoyed peace. The
church was being built up. and it was going on in the fear
of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it continued
to increase. And so these two things are brought
together, the fear of the Lord and the comfort of the Holy Spirit. These are the things that the
church enjoyed and was being built up in. So true confidence, true assurance
grows and is strengthened as godly fear is deepened. Just as we saw in the parable
of the soils, the growing plant grows down that it might grow
up. The huge gum trees that we have around here grow so tall
because they have such amazing root systems. So as we grow in
our assurance, we grow in our knowledge of God. And in the
fear of the Lord is strong confidence, says Proverbs 14, 26. And so, contrary to what our
natural minds would think, we actually grow stronger as we
become more aware of how awesome God is. For the more we spiritually
know of the character of God, the more will godly fear of His
great majesty be experienced in our souls. And so wherever
you find people who have great confidence and call it assurance,
and you do not see a fear of God accompanying that, then we
need to be cautious for those people. There is a healthy fear
of God that the church needs to be aware of again and again. because in Acts 9.31 we are reminded
that the two go hand in hand, the comfort of the Holy Spirit
and the fear of the Lord. But in this miracle story we
actually have the source of this godly fear. True godly fear comes
from a real meeting with the Lord Jesus as He reveals His
true character to His people. We cannot fear God until we know
Him. And we cannot know God, says
J.C. Philpott, until in some measure
He reveals Himself with power to our conscience. So this then
is the beginning of all true Christianity, a meeting with
God where we see Him in His true character and we see ourselves
in His true character. And this can only happen as God
chooses to reveal himself to people. It must come from the
Holy Spirit. That beautiful verse in John
16, 14 where the Holy Spirit promises that when he comes he'll
take the things that belong to Jesus and he will reveal them
to us. In this particular miracle, He
reveals so much of His character to these people. But in revealing
His character and revealing who they are, there's a godly fear,
and then a godly fear which brings a godly comfort. So the Holy
Spirit must reveal to us, and He must reveal something of the
holy and spiritual and pure character of God. We cannot have knowledge
of God if we do not know about Him. And it's impossible for us to
fear Him unless we really know about Him. Which is why one of
the charges for our fellowship is that we faithfully witness
to who Jesus is as He is revealed in the Scriptures. We don't mess
around with the character of God and we don't mess around
with the Word of God. We don't modify the character
of God to make the message appealing. God is going to be feared. He
is an awesome God. He's awesomely holy. He's awesomely
sovereign. He's awesomely majestic. And
what a privilege it is for sinners like us to be able to know Him
and to love Him. And so this fear is not a fear
that stops activity. Noah, in Hebrews 11, built the
ark in godly fear. But this fear of the Lord is
a fear because it comes from His character, causes us to hate
evil. and the evil that's within us.
It works in us to turn us away from the world because we've
seen something far more glorious. It causes us, in us, a separation
from those who are immersed in the things of the world. We have
the biggest concern of our lives is offending God. To have a godly
fear is to live as if God is present all of the time. There is nothing in our lives
hidden from God. He knows our thoughts, the wicked
ones and the good ones. He knows everything that we do.
And He works this godly fear to give us a soft heart, a heart
of flesh that sees the greatest thing, the greatest things in
this world concern Him and His glory. And it brings with God's
people a real sense that we live and we die to the Lord. He searches all our ways and
He will not clear the guilty. He is just, He is righteous,
He is pure and He hates sin. And so this godly fear is a means
for bringing God's people into a life that honors God because
they see they have nothing in themselves. Their faithfulness
must rest in the faithfulness of the Lord Jesus. They are deeply
grateful that this mediator stands between us and a holy God. And as Norm said earlier, He
perfectly represents us and He perfectly substitutes for us. And so this godly fear is a motivation
for holy living. The greatest motivation for living
for the Lord is not turning people back to a set of rules and moral
obligations, but the greatest, the most effective way of God's
children living for God is to know Him and to meet with Him,
to be humbled by Him, to be amazed by His majesty, to be overwhelmed
by His love. to be embraced by Him, to be
carried by Him, close to His heart. And that's the motivation
that motivated people like the Apostle Paul. And He says, I
pray that the eyes of your heart, having been enlightened, that
you will know the hope of His calling, what are the riches
of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and the surpassing
greatness of His power towards us who believe. These are in
accordance with the working of His strength and might which
He brought about in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and
seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places. So there
is a godly fear which motivates and prompts a life of love with
the Lord Jesus. but also in the Lord Jesus, we
not only have an example, we not only have God, but we have
a man who is filled with the knowledge of our infirmities.
In the days of his flesh, says Hebrews 5, he offered up prayers
and supplications with strong cryings and tears unto him that
was able to save him from death. And he was heard in that he feared. This is a precious thought, isn't
it? The Lord Jesus, who knew no sin, yet comes to us as a
man, and for sin, condemns sin in our flesh. And He knew what
it was to fear. He was touched with the feelings
of our infirmities. He knows how weak we are. He knows that without Him, we
can do nothing. Without Him, we are nothing. And so the Lord Jesus, rather
than being a harsh master, He sympathizes with His peoples
under their fears, in their heaviness, in their sorrow of heart. And so my prayer for us as a
church is that God would come and show Himself to us. The greatest
gift that we can have as individuals is that we would know God. This
is eternal life, says the Lord Jesus, that you'll actually know
Him, that you'll meet with Him. To meet with Him is to know yourself. To meet with Him is to see Him
in the awesomeness of His glory. To meet with Him is to be filled
with a fear, which is a gift from God. It strips away human
pride and worldliness and places us in a right and proper place. And so may the Holy Spirit renew
His promise in your hearts today as He takes what belongs to the
Lord Jesus and He makes it known, He declares it to you. And what
is it that the Lord Jesus claims to be His that He can give us
and reveal to us? His perfect, faithful, holy obedience
to God Almighty, His Father. His perfect, sin-bearing punishment
under God's holy law, until justice itself, holy justice, cried out
and said, it is finished. Enough, sin is gone. He will never remember the sins
of his people ever again. A perfect holy love to God and
to man and he did it for us. And a resurrection to newness
of life. immortal and a sovereign dominion
over all creation. The list goes on and on of the
things that are the Lord Jesus and He makes known to us. And
so the greatest way for us to be relieved of earthly fears
is to have them swallowed up and drowned in an ocean of who
God is. And when He reveals Himself to
us, all of a sudden everything in this world changes. Our priorities
change, our desires change, everything changes because we've seen Him. May He show Himself again and
again to us as He did to these disciples and keep coming back
to us and refreshing us with the knowledge of who He is. Let's
pray.