I believe it was Scott Richardson
once said, every time that the gospel is preached, the comfortable
are disturbed and the disturbed are comforted. I pray I'm able
to bring that good news to you this weekend. I'm excited every
time I get to preach as much as I'm nervous because there
will come a day when the last elect child of God will hear
the gospel. We'll see this more tomorrow.
They'll be brought to know Christ. And in that day, we'll all be
taken home. We're going to see cross face
to face. We'll see him without sin. And we will be able to worship
him in the way that he deserves to be worshipped, the way that
we desire that we could now. So I'm motivated to preach to
you. And I'm also thankful that the
Spirit makes all these words effectual to you. I don't have
that responsibility on me. So if you will, turn to Mark
chapter 4. Mark chapter 4, beginning verse
35. And the same day, when the evening
was come, he saith unto them, Let us pass over into 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. And there arose a great storm of wind,
and the waves beat into the ship, so that it was now full. And
he was in the hindered part of the ship, asleep on a pillow.
And they awake him, and say unto him, Master, carest thou not
that we perish? And he arose, and rebuked the
wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind
ceased, and there was a great calm. And he said unto them,
Why are ye so fearful? How is it that ye have no faith? And they feared exceedingly,
and said one to another, What manner of man is this, that even
the wind and the sea obey him?" I'm going to start off with what
seems like bad news. It's true, and I'm pretty sure
that every believer will agree with me. It's not easy to hear. But we're in a mess. But after I tell you what kind
of mess we're in, I'm going to hopefully tell you the good news.
And I'm hard to understand, and so I'll be real clear about whenever
we switch over to the good news part. So we'll start with the
bad news. In this passage, we see an example
of what the experience of the believer is often. Often. Daily. We're faced with a trial. It's either large or small. We
look to ourselves or we look to the situation, but we don't
look to Christ. And that's where our problem
lies. Then we become fearful. We get stressed, we get worried,
we get down, angry, depressed, bitter, or just plain mean. I
do. But why do we get that way? Why
don't we look to Christ? Why should we look to Christ?
And how does He deal with us when we do? So let's take us
one verse at a time, and we're going to see what these apostles
experienced during that storm. In verse 35, it says, In the
same day, when the evening was come, He saith unto them, Let
us pass over to the other side. Now after preaching all day long
into the evening, Christ said, Let us pass over to the other
side. And he's gotten our classroom instruction, and now it's time
for the practical. He's going to take us out and
show us what he's been telling us. He said, I'm going with you.
I'm going to take you over the water. You're going to have a
trial. And we're going to end up on the other side. Now, he
knew what the providence of the Lord was. He knew what was to
come, what the trial would be. And he knew they would not go
under the water. They'd go over. None were going to be lost. And he knew that they'd be on
the other side together. and safe. And he says, let us
pass over. There's another time the Lord
speaks this way. In Matthew 3.15, when John the
Baptist went to baptize the Lord, and he said, I can't baptize
you. I need you to baptize me. Christ said, for thus it becometh
us to fulfill all righteousness. That's too much for me to handle.
I could probably preach on that for three or four years. Verse
36 says, And when they had sent the multitude away, they took
him even as he was in the ship, and there were also with them
other little ships. So the apostles would just listen
to preaching all day long. And it was their responsibility
to send the multitude away. So they're probably a little
big headed. They're a little proud. They're
a little boastful. And how often do I get proud
and I get boastful and I'm, well, my faith's strong and I'm pretty
confident I can take on anything, especially Sunday evenings, Monday
mornings, a whole nother story. So I get taught a trial often. I would imagine you do as well
as these apostles did. And it says, even as he was,
he was in the ship. There was such a multitude there,
they couldn't see Christ clearly, so he stepped onto a ship there
at the dock so everybody could look at him. He used the ship
as his pulpit. And so he was standing there, he stood on a
boat all day long. That boat rocks. And it wiggles. And you
don't realize you have muscles in your legs that are used until
the next day. They get sore. So he was tired
and he fell asleep in the boat. Why? He was a man. He was fully
man and fully God. And he was already in the ship.
So our Lord gets these apostles alone after they set the multitude
away. Christ reveals himself to the
sheep individually and internally. Like the woman at the well, He
meets us where we are, meets us as we are, and He comes to
us, and He makes us willing and able to come to Him. Matthew
16, 13, it says, When Jesus came to the coast of Caesarea of Philippi,
He asked His disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I, the Son
of Man, am? That's when Peter answered Him
and said, You are the Christ. But where was that? That was
about 30 miles north of the Sea of Galilee. They got way out
to the mouth of the Jordan River. There was no one there. That's
when He dealt with them. That's when He comes to us. He
comes to us individually and where we are internally. But
after He's called us to Himself and He saves us, and He brings
us together into a church with other believers, He will also
deal with us as one body, a local assembly. So they're separated
from the multitude, separated from the world. And those that
you're gathered with, you have fellowship with. You are fellows
in the same ship. You have fellowship. So that's
how He deals with us also. So those apostles, they had the
same pastor, didn't they? They worshiped together, they
ate together, they observed the ordinances together, they prayed
together, and they were taught together. The Lord will not only
send personal trials, but he will send congregational trials
as well. To put us through those trials,
the local church draws us together, and it gives us the grace to
strengthen our brethren, and the grace to be strengthened
by our brethren. To lean on one another. Clay
brought this up a while back. Your brethren, and that's why
it's so sweet me visiting with you today, your brethren is the
closest thing that we have to Christ in the flesh on this earth. Whenever we get to experience
each other, glory in the Lord, what He's done, we get to share
those times immediately. I never mentioned my life. That's
the closest we have. So we learn to lean on each other
because we're learning to lean on Christ. And He teaches us
to be comforted by each other only by pointing one another
to Christ, to the Savior. So after the experience is over,
collectively and personally, we look to Him. That's what He
teaches us. So with us, we have a young girl,
she's the same age as my young son named Chloe. We found out
last year, it brought to her attention that she had leukemia. And that was a trial for that
little girl, six years old. That was a trial for her parents.
And that was a trial for our congregation. We all suffered
through that. The things that she's went through
over the last year, losing her hair, being sick and weak. I
see my children, the son is the exact same age, they have the
same birthday. And they'd play together. And we suffered with
those parents. I know what those parents had
to go through, what that child has to go through. It wasn't my trial,
but I suffered with them. That trial was for her, her parents,
and our church. But did anyone else feel that
sorrow? Read on. Verse 36. It says, "...and
there were also with him other little ships." This portion has been commented
on because Christ preached the parable of the sower right before
they took off on this boat ride. And so many times this has been
referenced as the stony ground. These people heard a little bit.
They didn't consider themselves part of the multitude. They wanted
to stay close to the brethren, but they didn't persevere. They weren't part of the multitude.
part of the elect. But our text doesn't tell us
any more about those ships. We don't know who was on the
ships. We don't know what they were doing. We don't know if
they made it to the other side, but what do we know? We know
that they were not part of the multitude because the multitude
was sent away. We know We do know that their
ships were with the ship that Christ was on. We do know that
they were on the same body of water. We know they were affected
by the same storm. So what does this mean? Why would
Mark be inspired to write this and include this in there, what
we would easily look over? Many times in the scriptures
we look over small portions because there's more that we don't understand
than there is that we do understand. And it's easy to brush over small
sentences like this, but later on, when it pleases the Lord,
it'll come on like a light bulb. So I was practicing my sermons
out loud on my children. I don't, I can't gauge how long
it's going to be. We may be here 15 minutes. We
may be here 45. I don't know. But I think I got
a good idea. But I practice on them. And one,
if I can explain it to them, I hope I can explain it to you,
if they understand it. And it gives me, so I can understand
it. So I was telling them, going through this message with them,
I got to the part of Chloe. I said, do you remember that?
I said, we were sad. I said, even Grandma's church
in Ashland was sad. There was that light bulb. Those
other ships. are the same as local churches
that we know of. There's many that we know of.
And so when Chloe was first beginning her treatment, there were many
other congregations that prayed for us, and they felt the same
heartache that we felt. They were on the same stormy
waters that we were on. When one of the other churches
goes through a trial, we know about it, and we suffer with
them. Years ago, we prayed for the saints at 13th Street as
they went through their trials. My family was there. I wasn't.
But we prayed for them. We felt that pain that they went
through. We pray for the churches in Mexico now, after Brother
Cody passed away, that the Lord gives them pastors after his
own heart to stand there and declare a cross to those brethren
that we have. We feel for them for their loss.
Not for Brother Cody, but for those churches there. We pray
for the pastors in New Guinea as they're suffering illnesses
right now. The Lord heal them, comfort them. We prayed for you. We don't know details of things
in Mexico or New Guinea or here. We know that there's brethren
that are suffering and we pray for them. We hurt with them.
We pray for them that the Lord's will be done and that they are
given the grace to look to Christ at the end of that trial. So
what do we know about the apostles? Apostles are on the sea and traveling
with Christ. We know they were His. We know
all is well. And just like our lives, things
were going good and everything's sunshine and rainbows. We were
riding on a hearty high after listening to our Savior being
exalted. We're pumped up. And then what happens? A storm
comes. So verse 37, And there arose a great storm
of wind, and the waves beat into the ship, so that it was now
full. Everything was going great in the daytime, but now it's
dark. We're away from that light of Christ. And problems start. The wind kicks up. You heave
too. That's a sailing term. I learned
that in San Diego. When the wind's too strong for
a sailboat to go with the wind, you adjust your sails just right
and you lock that boat in because there's just too much. You can't
even go with it. The waves come with the wind.
beating on everything that we trust in, hitting the ship so
hard they crest over the rails and they fill the ship up. You
are no longer on the water, you're in the water. We'll cover this
tomorrow, I hope, Lord wills, but the water in the scripture
represents the father's judgment and his wrath against sin. An
interesting side point, Revelation 21 says, I saw a new heaven and
a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth were passed
away, and there was no more sea. When we get to glory, and we're
not there yet, there will be no more wrath, no more fear,
and no more judgment for us. It's over. The cross took that
burden from us. A false teaching says if you're
a true Christian, your life will not have any sorrow. If you accept
Jesus, your troubles will go away. That's a lie. If you're
in a marriage, a wise man told me this one time, he said, if
you and your wife don't have any problems and everything's
hunky-dory, he said, you're probably going to hell. He said, the Lord
teaches us through these trials and these struggles. If you're
not experiencing these things, He's not dealing with you. So
this trial came upon the apostles the same as we encountered them.
The Lord brings us down until we're completely hopeless and
helpless. We can feel like we're being
dealt with harshly and that the wrath of Almighty God is coming
down on us. But we are afraid because of
what we're looking at. We're looking at us. I was in Las Vegas a few years
ago. It was the first time I'd ever been there. And I was in
the daytime, and I was walking around. I found a hard rock cafe.
I was like, look at that big guitar. And man, I was looking
at the sights, and there was a casino. And look at this. My
buddies were with me. And they know I'm scared to death
of snakes. And there's a guy there. You can take pictures
with him. He had a big, long, python or boa constrictor or
something. And I almost touched him. I walked right past him.
But I wasn't looking at that. what I normally am afraid of,
I was looking around at all the good things. And they made fun
of me for it, but I saw that and I thought, well, if I'd looked
across more often, I wouldn't be scared of anything, would
I? But what do these trials look like that we go through? It's
easy for us to get our noses up in the air and look at other
believers and say, well, I know you're going through a trial,
but it ain't that bad. He thinks he's going through
a trial or she thinks she's going through a trial. It's easy for
us to get high-minded about that and look down on others. Don
said this once, he said, puppy love is real to the puppy. We
all think that's young children falling in love. Yeah, you're
all right. You ain't heartbroken. You don't
know what heartbroken is. To them, it's real. That's all they
know. So what kind of trials can we go through? It could be
classmates bullying you. You can be worried about your
grades, worried about getting your first job, worried about
getting fired from your first job. Be afraid of getting married. Be going through a divorce. Be
having a child. You could be losing a child.
Illness, cancer. Your church family hears suffering,
you suffer with them, either locally or away. And the other
churches, you feel for them. There could be division in the
church. You could be asked to preach
in another town. I've experienced that one. Rough
two weeks. But when we get worried and we
get full of fear, we're looking to ourselves. We're looking to
our circumstances. We're looking to the world. We're
not looking to Christ. We get afraid. There's three
types of fear I wanted to mention. The first one's unjust fear.
We're afraid of situations, airplanes. You're afraid of your finances
losing all your money. You're afraid of being alone.
You're afraid of physical death. You're afraid of superstitions.
That's black cats and walking under ladders and I don't even
know all of them. You know what the scriptures
say, interesting point about superstitions? The definition
of superstition in the scriptures is overly religious. That's your
religion. You're looking to those things.
You're looking to the world as your religion. That's the unjust fear. The just
fear was Adam was the first to fear God. He was the first man
to ever be afraid. He was afraid the Lord was going
to kill him. He said, if you eat of that fruit of the tree, you shall
surely die. Well, he ate of it. He wasn't
dead yet, but he believed God. And he thought, it's coming.
He didn't know he died spiritually inside, but that's the result
of it. He was looking to himself. He was fearing himself. And he
was afraid the Lord was going to kill him. We see that. We
see a just fear. The justice of the law, after
we see our sin, we know what we owe the law. We know what
the Lord's wrath is. My dad told me, he said, how you train a
child, how a child fears is much like how we fear the Lord. You
start out physically afraid. My children were physically afraid
of me. They were afraid I'd spank them. And as they got older,
now they're not so afraid. They're just in that transition
stage. They're not as afraid of me spanking them as they are
of disrespecting me, bringing a reproach on me. They know that
they represent me. They want to honor me. It's an
honoring fear. That's the last type, the honoring fear. After
a trial comes, when we have a respect for the Lord, we don't want to
bring reproach on Him. We have that respect because
of what Christ has done for us. He sent Christ. He was the first
elect. Alright, let's look at Mark 4,
38. And he, speaking of Christ, was
in the hindered part of the ship, asleep on a pillow. And they
awake him and saying to him, Master, carest thou not that
we perish? And the men waking him up being
afraid are commercial fishermen. That was their job. They grew
up on boats. They've been through one or two
storms. And it was bad enough they were afraid. Now, what they
did was right. They came to Christ with their
problem. But as we say, it's a good plan, poor execution,
right? Clay brought this up a few sermons
ago, and he said, we always do the opposite of what Christ does. He was asleep. They should have
been asleep, but they weren't. They were awake and they were
looking out, not looking in. And they were afraid, they were
worrying. And when he was in the Garden of Gethsemane, he
prayed unto the Father that if it was possible to take that
cup of atonement, that cup of wrath from him. He told Peter,
James, and John to sit and watch. And the Lord went and prayed,
and he came back to them, and they were asleep. And he said,
couldn't you make it an hour? And he said, now I want you to
sit there, and I want you to pray while I pray. And he went
again. And when he came back, they were asleep again. They
should have been awake. But we do the opposite. We do the opposite
of what's right every chance we get. I've had a few trials
in my life deep enough that I assume that Christ didn't care for me.
I didn't think I was in His thoughts. How horrible that is of me. What
unbelief that is. Now here's where the good news
starts. I told you I'd warn you. Peter
told us, cast all your cares upon Him for He cares for you.
If you would turn to Psalm 77. Psalm 77. Again in verse 7. Will the Lord cast off
forever, and will He be favorable no more? Is His mercy clean gone
forever? Doth His promise fail forevermore?
Hath God forgotten to be gracious? Hath He in anger shut up His
tender mercies? Let's pause and think about that. That's Christ speaking. We can
see the prophecy of His atonement. God separating from God. Christ
being made sin for us. The Father's countenance hid
from Him. We can't understand these things. But what did Christ
do? Did he panic? Did he worry? No, he trusted
the Father. Did he? Look in verse 10. And
I said, this is my infirmity. My infirmity. He took our infirmities. It was His personally. He said,
this is my infirmity, but I will remember the years of the right
hand of the Most High. I will remember the works of
the Lord. Surely, I will remember thy wonders of old. I will meditate
also of all thy work and talk of thy doings. Thy way, O God,
is in the sanctuary. Who is so great a God as our
God? Thou art the God that does wonders.
and hast declared thy strength among the people, thou hast with
thine arm redeemed thy people, the sons of Jacob and Joseph.
Now the Master cares, brethren. He bore the full punishment of
God the Father for us. And when we consider our seasons
a lot of affliction, the trials we're going through, if you want
to feel better about it, look at the trial that Christ went
through. God separated from God. I never
will be able to explain that. Sometime in the next, I'd say,
60 years, I'll be able to tell you all about it. But that ain't
happened yet. That's why we'll have eternity
to worship the Lord. That's how long it'll take to extinguish
it. We can't. You don't have to turn there
in Psalm 22.1. It says, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken
me? Why art thou so far from helping me? And from the words
of my roaring, O my God, I cry in the daytime that thou hearest
not, and am not seasoned, and am not silent. And he didn't
stop there. But thou art holy, O thou that
inhabitest the praises of Israel. He praised the Father. That is
our righteousness. The cross believed the Father
always. That means that we did. He lived
perfectly. That means that we did too. The
Ten Commandments are just that. They're commandments. People
like to make a work out of them, but they're commandments for
His children. They're not a suggestion, but a commandment. It's a declaration,
not a recommendation. I'm going to read them to you.
Exodus 20, when you get home, you can read it. And God spake
all these words, saying, I am the Lord thy God. which hath
brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of
bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods
before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee
any graven image. Thou shalt not bow down thyself
to them, nor serve them. Thou shalt not take thy name
of the Lord thy God in vain. Remember the Sabbath day, keep
it holy. Six days shalt thou labor and
do all thy work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord
thy God. Honor thy father and mother. Thou shalt not kill,
thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not steal, thou shalt
not bear false witness against thy neighbor. That is completely and wholly
what Christ did, fully. He did it from the cradle to
the cross. It's not a recommendation, it's
a commandment that He fulfilled. He obeyed every Levitical law,
every commandment, and He did it without unbelief and with
a willing spirit. The cross gives us all things.
Sinner, He cares for you. Mark 4.39. Verse 49, He arose and rebuked
the wind and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind
ceased, and there was a great calm. So here comes peace. He calms our storms for our benefit,
His glory, and He's fully able to do so. In this case, He fulfilled
the Scriptures. If you look back to Psalm 107,
for our text in Mark. Psalm 107 says, in verse 23,
they that go down to the sea in ships that do business in
great waters, These see the works of the Lord and his wonders in
the deep for he commandeth and raises the stormy wind which
lifted up the waves thereof. They mount up to the heaven,
they go down again to the depths, their soul is melted because
of trouble. They reel to and fro and stagger like a drunken
man and are at their wits end. So when we are brought to our
wits end, what are we given grace to do? Verse 28 says, Then they
cry unto the Lord in their trouble, and He bringeth them out of their
distress. He maketh the storm calm, so that the waves thereof
are still. Then they are glad, because they
be quiet. So He bringeth them unto their
desired haven. What's our desired haven? Looking
to Christ and praising the Father. Our salvation is a person. There's so many people worried
they want to go to heaven. They think heaven's a place.
Heaven's not a place. Heaven's a person. That's our Savior. It goes on in verse 31 and says,
Oh, that men would praise the Lord for his goodness and for
his wonderful works to the children of men. Let them exalt him also
in the congregation of the people and praise him in the assembly
of the elders. Exalt to the congregation. When
we go through a storm, Christ shows himself to us and calms
us. And then you tell your brethren
about it. It'll do you good. It'll do them good. Talk to one
another. Tell each other, you know what
the Lord did for me today? I was having this, and the Lord
just sorted that right out. I did that today. I told you. I was worried about these messages,
and I was fearful, and I was looking to me, and I thought,
oh, I'm going to forget my notes. I'm going to get lost in them,
and I'm going to drink too much water. Clay's always telling
me about drinking water. And I got worried, and we talked
today, and I thought, man, this goes right along with what I
already had. So why should we lay our cares
on Christ? He's able, He's willing, and He's worthy. So back in Mark
4.40, He said unto them, Why are ye
so fearful? How is it that ye have no faith? The trial's over,
everything's calmed down, now we can pay attention. Now is
when we can learn. I don't know if you've ever experienced
that, but I've read a bulletin. I went to my pastor and I said,
man, I wish I'd have read that six months ago. I was right in
the mix of that trial it's talking about. I needed that for comfort.
But if I'd have got that when the trial was going on, it wouldn't
have done me no good. I wouldn't have been receptive. I wouldn't
be able to digest it. I'd have been still looking at
me, still looking at the world, still looking at my situation.
But after the Lord calms those seas, He comes back to us and
says, why are you fearful? And He teaches us to look to
Him because He's already done the work. And that's systemic
throughout the Scriptures. If there's something that needs
to be done, Christ has already done it. He's already completed
it. So Christ has patience and He
has tenderness whenever He deals with us. He asks us why we fear.
He asks why we don't trust Him. The Lord's brought His people
through every trial. He's given us faithful watchmen,
pastors to continually point us to Christ. He provides every
need, he reminds us of his provisions. And regardless of our inability
or our fears, he provides, he's consistent. So after every large
or small trial, I feel so embarrassed, I'm ashamed. What was I thinking? Why didn't I, I know better than
this. Why don't I just look to Christ the whole time when the
trial starts? So that's alright. The Lord sent
this. It's going to hurt for a little
while, but I should be calm and steady the whole way. I'm not.
I wish I was. What do we see at the end of
it? I don't see my faithfulness or my ability or my strength.
I see Christ's faithfulness, Christ's ability, and Christ's
strength. Verse 41, it said, And they feared exceedingly and
said one to another, what manner of man is this that even the
wind and the sea obey him?" That's what we're left with when our
storm is over. We see another attribute of Christ
the Savior. The apostles had seen Him heal
the sick, seen Him give sight to the blind, raise the dead.
They hadn't seen Him control the winds and the waters yet,
but that's one more thing continually We're going to keep learning.
So time after time and day after day, we're going to fall and
fall and fall and have trials and discomforts and worries. But thank God that each time
we do, we're turning from ourselves and we're pointed to Christ.
We repent. I learned a lot about repentance.
I'll study them for tomorrow. This is a quote in a book. I
couldn't find out who it was, but from at least 1920 or before,
it said, Repentance is the pilgrimage from the mind of the flesh to
the mind of Christ. And that's what the believer's
desire is, to be made like Christ. That's salvation in that. I hope
that's been a blessing to you.