Luke chapter 8, and we're going
to read from verse 22, just a few verses, very familiar, I'm sure,
to us. Luke chapter 8, verse 22. And this is the Word of God.
Now it came to pass on a certain day that he, that is the Lord
Jesus, went into a ship with his disciples, and he said unto
them, let us go over unto the other side of the lake, and they
launched forth. But as they sailed, he fell asleep,
and there came down a storm of wind on the lake, and they were
filled with water and were in jeopardy. And they came to him
and awoke him, saying, Master, Master, we perish. Then he arose
and rebuked the wind and the raging of the water, and they
ceased, and there was a calm. And he said unto them, Where
is your faith? And they, being afraid, wondered,
saying one to another, What manner of man is this? For he commandeth
even the winds and the water, and they obey him. Amen. May
the Lord bless to us this reading from his word. This little passage
is surely very familiar to us all. Well, those of us who came
up as children through Sunday school or Bible class will be
familiar with this narrative. We've probably read about it,
heard about it, sang about it, may even have acted it out at
different times in our experience. But the incident of Christ being
in this ship, weary, asleep during this storm and then being roused
and the calming of the wind and the waves and his rebuking of
the wind and the waves is recounted several times in our scriptures. Matthew, Mark and Luke all give
this account some prominence. So here we've got a few thoughts
that I hope will not just be a recounting of the story, but
a few thoughts that we can employ by way of benefiting our hearts
from the reading of this passage and meditation on it. Luke tells us that it was evening
when this event took place. Matthew says that there was still
a large crowd gathered in Jesus' company, whom the Lord then sent
away. And it seems as though this had
been a very full and tiring day for the Lord. It was the day
in which he had preached parables, the parable of the sower, and
it seems also to have been at this same time when He was in
a house and his family came to him as well. And it reminds us
that Jesus knew what it was to be tired and to be needing rest
in his human nature, just as we do. He is the eternal, the
omnipotent God. And yet the Lord knew weariness
and hunger and thirst and sorrow and loneliness and pain. And this is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh. He was touched with the feeling
of our infirmities. He was in all points tempted
like as we are, yet without sin. And as we grow older, life does
not get easier. Well, perhaps in some ways it
does, but definitely not in others. And yet our Saviour understands
and he sympathises with us, not just because of his omniscience,
but because of his experience. And brothers and sisters, you
will never overestimate the Lord's awareness and his understanding
of your predicament, whatever it may be. And surely, the lengths
to which the Gospel writers go here and in other places to explain
the Lord's physical needs, His physical exhaustion as sleep
overtook Him, though He was sleeping through a ship-sinking storm,
that that is designed to reinforce His empathy with us. as well
as calling us to re-examine and consider our faith as no doubt
this narrative does. And let me note something else
here as we go through these verses. It was Jesus who initiated the
journey across the lake across the sea. And it was Jesus who
sent away the crowd. And I think that's interesting
too, especially in the light of so much of our modern day
religious presumption about what it is to preach the gospel and
what it is to be attracting people to the gospel and attracting
people to Christ. By dismissing this crowd of people,
By dismissing this crowd of people, the Lord showed that they were
not true seekers, but they were merely curious spectators of
his ministry. The Lord never turned his back
upon those who came to him for help. He always gathers those
who come weary and heavy laden. with a soul hunger, with a spiritual
thirst. He gathers in those who are broken
hearted. He accepts the sick with sin. But he has no compunction about
passing by or bidding farewell to those who come to him purely
on selfish and sensual and fleshy grounds. Now a large crowd can
gather for religious activity But if there are none of the
Lord's little ones amongst them who are gathered in the name
of Jesus, then the Lord will not be among them. And we should
remember that when we see big unruly congregations with their
presumptuous religious professions and all the activities that go
on in the name of Christian outreach and Christian service today,
Christian worship today. The Lord was happy to send these
people away because he had a little group that he was getting ready
to teach a spiritual lesson to, and that was what was much more
important to him. And again, another aspect of
this, the fact that the Lord initiated this journey is that
No doubt, as they were sailing, they were in relatively small
craft. Remember, this is the Sea of
Galilee. These were not big galleons or
sizeable constructions. These would be small craft, appropriate,
no doubt, for the purpose. And interestingly, Mark tells
us that there were also with him other little ships. So he
made this journey to test and to try the faith of the disciples
and to teach them a lesson about his own divinity and to demonstrate
his power in their presence. And likely the attendance of
the other ships was part of that general experience as well, and
a lesson for them all, though they were not all in the same
ship as the Lord. I wonder, and it's just mere
speculation, if these ships were small, then perhaps with all
the disciples, and as well remember we learned about the women who
travelled with the Lord, it may well have taken several ships
to convey the whole group to their destination. But of course, at the heart of
this little incident is the ferocity of the storm that arose and threatened
to destroy the ship or the ships. And the seriousness is emphasised
by the reaction of the disciples, many of whom well knew the nature
of the sea and the danger that it held. And I suspect that everything
that they could have done to bail the water from the vessel
and to preserve the ship had been tried by the time they went
to the Lord. They would not have roused him
had they not felt the necessity to do so. And if this ship contained
all of the Lord's disciples, plus the operators of the vessel,
then there was no shortage of hands to do all that could be
done. But that's the point of a trial. Our personal trials only start
when we come to an end of ourselves. We need to have exhausted all
our efforts and we need genuinely to feel our helplessness before
we ever begin to ask the Lord for help. And so it proved here. It's a perfect storm in that
sense. It rendered the men helpless
and hopeless so serving its purpose of testing the disciples' reaction
under the severe circumstances they found themselves in. And
what they learned was that their faith, though loudly professed
just a short time before, was a lot weaker than they imagined
now that they were in jeopardy for their lives. They were far
from the shore, they were buffeted by a storm of wind and high waves
and their ship was filling with water and it was sinking in the
darkness. And we all like to think that
we can hang tough. We all like to think that we
can face our troubles with determination and resolve, that we can be brave
and stoic and resourceful. But remember, the purpose of
our trial as a believer is not to assess our human resolve and
our strength of character. It's to give us occasion and
opportunity to exercise our trust in the Lord. It's the opportunity for the
Lord to grow our faith, to share our burden and to enhance our
familiarity with him. You know, I like quoting Robert
Hawker when I get an opportunity to do so. And he has a lovely
little statement on this point. He says this, it is blessed to
be brought into difficulties, when those difficulties afford
a better opportunity for the larger display of divine strength
made perfect in human weakness. When nature is unable to help,
grace becomes more sweet and valuable. And I think that there's
a lot of wisdom in that observation. The Lord demonstrated his omnipotence
here on the water. He demonstrated his divinity
by standing forth on this ship and rebuking the wind and the
waves and calming the sea. It's astonishing to read just
the power that's in these few words that the gospel writers
can convey in the shortness of this paragraph and yet it is
astonishing and it's more astounding to all those present who declared,
what manner of man is this? The lesson for us is that no
set of circumstances is beyond our saviour's knowledge and no
predicament is beyond his ability to resolve and deliver us from. The fruitfulness of our trials
is when he does not give us the relief we might desire, but he
keeps us patiently leaning and relying on him. Faith was tried
in the storm and it was vindicated in the calm. but it's the trial
of the faith that's noted and recommended in scripture. Peter, for example, speaks of
the honour and the glory of the saviour, or the honour and the
glory that comes to the saviour by the trial of his people's
faith. Let me just read, it's a bit
of an extended, it's an extended reading but then Our earlier
paragraph was just a few verses. Let me read what Peter says in
1 Peter 1, verse 3. He says, Blessed be our God and
Father. Blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ. which according to his abundant
mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection
of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible
and undefiled that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for
you. I wanted to read that verse because
it's the foundation of what he then goes on to say, which is
the application of our point here. who are kept by the power
of God through faith unto salvation, ready to be revealed at the last
time, wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need
be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations. that the
trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that
perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto
praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ. so that Peter understands here
what the Lord was showing his disciples. So maybe Peter drew
this lesson expressly from this moment. He understood that our
faith will be tried, must be tried, because it's in the trial
of our faith that it will emanate, it will result in praise and
honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ. Christ's question
to his disciples, where is your faith? It's an interesting question. It clearly was intended to confront
the disciples with their evident lack of faith. I spoke to a man
recently who was asking about faith and he was asking what
happens, how we should react and respond when people say that
they have faith, they say that they believe in Christ. But then
they say they have not had that surge of peace and joy and victory
that they were hopeful of and perhaps they had been promised
and led to believe would be their experience when they committed
their life to the Lord. The truth is, conversion is only
the very beginning of faith. like a baby's first cry when
it draws breath. I don't know if midwives still
smack babies on their bottoms to get them to cry when they're
born. Maybe you don't do that any longer.
But our life is like that. Our life of faith is like that.
It's often a process of ups and downs, highs and lows, that sometimes
even leave us fearful if we have faith at all, and other times
joyful that Christ should have been so merciful and gracious
to someone like me. The point is that faith isn't
a shiny new gift that we get to help us negotiate and overcome
the troubles of life. Faith is the muscle at the heart
of every born again soul that must be fed and exercised and
strengthened as we go through life. Now our natural muscles
in our arms and in our legs, they're strongest when we're
young and that's when we're most confident in our own strength.
But it's as we get older, that our spiritual muscles have to
get stronger because then our human muscles and resources have
grown weary. The Lord says, why were you so
fearful? Well, at one level, because the
trial had been designed by our loving God to test their faith
almost to breaking point. but not quite, not quite. The
trial of our faith causes us to draw close to the Lord. And that is what is designed
in the difficult troubles that we face in our lives. It is the
means by which we, in our need, draw nearer to him in earnest
prayer and in trust. I dare say we never visited the
Lord in prayer with such earnestness and urgency than when we feel
completely overwhelmed and desperate. So here's the conclusion. Our
Lord will test our faith to strengthen our dependence and union on him
or with him. Yet he will not test us beyond
what we can bear. He will prove himself faithful,
he will show himself powerful, and he will supply such solace,
such support in the midst of our struggles, as will demonstrate
beyond all doubt what manner of man he is and what manner
of saviour he is. Our tests in life are real. but so are Christ's comforts. And when we experience the one,
we should expect the other. May the Lord bless these thoughts
to us today. Amen.