Jesus Calms the Storm

Mark 4, verse 35.

That day when evening came, Jesus said to his disciples, Let us go over to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, in context.

Leaving the crowd behind, the disciples took him along, just as he was in the boat, and there were also other boats with him.

Stage one of this story, I think, is the disciples in charge.

The disciples are portrayed as the active agents in this part of the story.

It's the disciples who take Jesus to the other side of the lake.

That's because most of them were pro-fishermen.

They know boats.

They know the Sea of Galilee.

They've probably done that trip hundreds, thousands of times.

This is their thing.

It's like that moment when someone asks you a question that's like perfectly in your expertise, and you're just like, I'm ready to answer this question.

Jesus says, let's go to the other side.

And the disciples are like, okay, this is what we can do.

We are good at boats.

I think the disciples have that feeling that they are in charge of the story at this stage.

Do you relate to that feeling of being in charge?

You might be a boss or some kind of manager, and you were literally in charge.

But just the sense that we can all have that we are in charge of our own lives.

We get to call the shots and do what we want.

It's, I think, quite a human feeling to feel in charge.

If you take the word human and add an ism, you get humanism, which according to one definition is a system of thought centered on the notion of the rational autonomous self.

The autonomous self being, I can control myself, I can do what I want, no one tells me what to do.

And within this broad concept of humanism, there's a whole lot of other isms, such as secularism, rationalism, romanticism, materialism, expressive individualism.

All of these ideas are coming from the book The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self by historian Carl Truman, who if I could badly paraphrase his argument across the whole book, he says that the modern self, meaning the modern understanding of who I am, who you are, the way that we relate, the modern self is dominated by this idea that we are in charge.

We are in charge of the world, we are in charge of our own lives, and in a sense, we are in charge of each other in community.

The modern self is all about I am in charge.

I was in Melbourne earlier this week, and you enter into a new city or a new context, and your eyes are wide open to how that city is different from your home city.

Melbourne is full of a lot of weird people.

Sorry if you are from Melbourne, Sydney is the same, but you walk around Melbourne, there is a lot of really different types of people.

I look around this room, we are all different, we all look different, but in Melbourne, you have the Goths who are like Goths, and they are full emo Goths.

You have the Cowboys, and they are full Cowboy.

You have the artsy people, and they are like, people are so different.

In Melbourne and in Sydney, I'm sure, but my eyes are inoculated to see it.

People are just expressing themselves.

They think that they are in charge, and they are in charge of the things that they wear.

In a similar way, the technological advancements we've had over the past few decades have seen lots of the things which used to kill human beings taken out.

Humans are, there's this sort of sense that we are in charge, and we will, through technological advancement, break down all the barriers that are limiting us as humans.

I think if we say by the age of 18, if we have not experienced significant suffering, we probably inherit this default factory setting that we are in charge.

We are in charge of our lives.

We can control our steps.

We can control the narrative of our life.

Maybe you relate to that feeling of being in charge.

I relate to that for sure.

When we go back to the disciples, I think that's sort of a drawn out sense of what they are feeling.

They feel in charge.

They are the pro-fishermen.

They are on the boats.

They are on the Sea of Galilee, portrayed as the active agents taking Jesus across the Sea of Galilee.

So stage one of our story, the disciples are in charge.

Mark 4.37.

A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boats so that it was nearly swamped.

Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion.

The disciples woke him and said to him, Teacher, don't you care if we drown?

The disciples realize they are not in charge.

The storm is in charge.

They come to that realization.

The author of our story is Mark, who has, I think, brilliantly woven this story around the repetition of three words.

Well, it's the same word, repeated three times.

And that word is megalay or great in English.

Great as in huge, great.

That word megalay appears three times at very significant points in this passage.

And the first of the three times is right here.

When it says, a furious squall, it's translating what is literally a great storm.

A great storm comes upon them, and these professional fishermen are terrified.

You imagine how bad the storm would have to be to terrify people who have lived and worked on the Sea of Galilee their whole life.

They are terrified.

If I can take a brief excursus to talk about the geography of the Sea of Galilee by reading this quote from George Smith.

The atmosphere of the Sea of Galilee, for the most part, hangs still and heavy, but the cold currents, as they pass from the west, are sucked down in vortices of air or by the narrow gorges that break upon the lake.

Then arise those sudden storms for which the region is notorious.

It is thought that the cold air coming from the mountains in the east interacts with the warm Mediterranean air to create these swirling systems, and so storms would come up on the Sea of Galilee very quickly, and they would be very powerful.

And these pro-fishermen, who once thought that they were in charge of the story, now realize the storm is very much in charge.

I think many of us probably know what it's like to feel like the storm is in charge, to feel like you're in a storm, whether it's a death or a diagnosis or a failure or a redundancy or a broken relationship.

Many of us might be in a storm right now, or know what it's like to enter into a storm.

And when you go into the storm, you realize we are not in charge of our life.

Life can change in a moment.

I think of phone calls.

Often life changes with a single phone call.

I think back on lots of phone calls in my life.

I can remember exactly where I was, what I was doing, who I was with, the moment that I received a phone call that changed my life.

When my great grandmother died, my grandfather died, when my sister got engaged, that was a good thing.

When my dad was diagnosed, I remember exactly where I was when my life changed in a moment.

I'm sure all of us relate to this feeling of feeling like we're in charge, and then the storm hits you and life changes in an instant.

In storms, we learn we are not in charge.

In fact, in my experience of storms, and I haven't experienced nearly as many storms as I'm sure many of you have, the notion of the rational, autonomous self becomes a joke.

It is a joke that we are fully in control of our lives, and nothing bad will ever happen to us.

When the storm hits you, you realize you are not in charge, and the storm is in charge.

And throughout this whole story, where is Jesus?

Asleep on a pillow in the back of the boat.

Which in one sense, you know, if we are inoculated by the story, we read that part and we think, oh, that's so cute.

The storm wasn't that bad, because Jesus is still asleep.

But if you are on the boat, that is deeply disconcerting, that Jesus is asleep, maybe unconscious, in the back of the boat, while this life-threateningly great storm is upon you.

They were worried that they were going to drown, and Jesus is asleep.

That's not cute, that is terrifying, when they come to realize the storm is in charge.

And so the disciples say what many of us would say in our storms, do you not care if we drown?

Jesus, are you awake?

Do you see me?

What is going on?

Do you care about me?

Where are you?

Those are the questions we ask in our storms.

It's the question the disciples ask.

But then Jesus wakes up in verse 39 of chapter 4.

Jesus got up, rebuked the wind, and said to the waves, quiet, be still.

Then the wind died down and it was completely calm.

Stage 3 of the story is Jesus is in charge.

The disciples thought they were in charge, and then when the storm came upon them, they realized the storm is in charge.

But Jesus, with two words in the Greek, two words, silences the storm, showing that He is really in charge.

This is the second appearance of our best Greek friend Megale, meaning great.

Mark has chosen to tell this story by repeating the same word three times in really significant places.

And this is, when it translates completely calm in English, is, in Greek, a great calm.

It is a great calm.

What Mark is doing, I think, in repeating the same word, is he's saying in the same way that the storm was great, the exact same way the calm that came afterwards was a great calm.

And all because Jesus spoke.

Jesus spoke and a great calm happened.

We read in verse 38 that the disciples, when they're shaking Jesus to wake him up, they call him Teacher, which when I came across that, I thought it's an odd title to call Jesus.

The Gospels record many titles that Jesus is given.

Son of Man, Messiah, Teacher, Rabbi, Master, Lord.

But the disciples in this moment choose the title Teacher, which actually I think makes a lot of sense because we read at the start of Mark 4 in verse 1 that the morning of this very day, so earlier this day, says in verse 1, again Jesus began to teach by the lake.

The crowd that gathered around him was so large that he got into a boat and sat in and out on the lake while all the people were along the shore at the water's edge.

He taught them many things by parables and in his teaching said...

Last week John O-1 packed for us what Jesus did teach.

He taught four parables, which was the first time that Jesus has taught parables in the Gospel of Mark.

So I think the disciples, to the disciples, Jesus is very much in teacher mode.

He's been teaching all day, so their dominant conception of who he is is a teacher.

Now I got a lot of teachers in my family.

My wife's a teacher.

I know teachers can calm the storm of a class, but normally teachers can't calm a literal, natural storm.

And yet that's what Jesus does.

The disciples call Jesus teacher, and yet they're surprised when that teacher has the authority to silence a storm.

That's interesting because often in the New Testament, in the Gospels, the teaching of Jesus is connected with authority, with his authority.

We read at the very end, just after the Sermon on the Mount, which is the best part of the whole Bible in my opinion, in verse 28 of chapter 7, when Jesus had finished saying the Sermon on the Mount, the crowds were amazed at his teaching because he taught them as one who had authority.

The connection between the teaching of Jesus and the authority of Jesus is made here.

It's also made in Mark 1 verse 27, which says, the people were also amazed that they asked each other, what is this, a new teaching and with authority?

The authority of Jesus to teach is the same authority that he has to command nature, to calm the storm, and yet the disciples don't see it.

You and I, if you're gathering on site, not online, but on site, we're gathered in this ministry center, and this building has been keyed a certain way, meaning all the locks and the keys have a cool like hierarchy of access.

So if you have a key that has L1, that means you can unlock any door on level 1.

L2, level 2, L3.

If you have a sound room key, you could get into that room.

If you have a different key, if you have a MK, that's a master key, that can unlock nearly every room, but not every room.

In my pocket is what is called a GMK, Grand Master Key, which I need.

Don't take it away from me.

I really need this key to do my job.

But the GMK, that can access every door in this building.

It has authority, as it were, over the entire building.

What I think is happening in this moment is the disciples are realizing the authority of Jesus is greater than they thought it was.

They thought he was a teacher who had great authority to teach amazing things, but that same person, by the same authority, calms a storm.

So his authority is far greater than they thought it was.

Multiple times in our Mark series, we've been coming back to this one particular verse, which I think is the thesis statement of Mark.

It's Mark 1, 14 to 15, which says, The time has come, the kingdom of God has come near.

Repent and believe the good news.

The kingdom of God has come, meaning the king of the kingdom has come, meaning if Jesus is the king, that means that the authority, the realm, the reign of Jesus has come and is coming in the world.

And what we see throughout the Gospel of Mark is kind of the ever-increasing range of Jesus' authority.

It started out in chapter 1 with Jesus casting out a demon, authority over demons, then over sickness, over uncleanness, over sin, over the Pharisees, over the Sabbath, and now at the end of chapter 4, the authority of Jesus extends over nature itself.

And so the Gospel of Mark kind of has this narrative arc of the ever-increasing range of Jesus' authority.

And we know how the story ends.

We looked at it at Easter, that by the end of Mark, the range of Jesus' authority extends even over death itself, where Jesus in the resurrection showed that He has authority over death.

Mark is showing us that the range of Jesus' authority is greater than we think, because Jesus is in charge.

Jesus is greater than the storm.

He is in charge.

And yet, the disciples are still in the boat, and we're still in the boat, metaphorically, as we enter the story through the eyes of the disciples.

So verse 40, we read, Jesus said to his disciples, Why are you so afraid?

Do you still have no faith?

They were terrified, and asked each other, Who is this?

Even the wind and the waves obey him.

Imagine you're in the boat, in the actual storm, and then Jesus calms the storm.

What the disciples are coming to realize is, the only thing more terrifying than that life-threateningly great storm is the man sleeping on a cushion in the fetal position at the back of the boat, who has more power than that storm.

And so, the fear that the disciples felt, rightly so for the storm, the fear is transferred onto the one who is greater than the storm.

The disciples were terrified of Jesus, because they come to realize he is greater than the storm.

With two words, the man sleeping at the back of the boat commands the storm to be still, and it was still.

The text says, literally, they feared a great fear.

That is the third and final repetition of this word megalay, meaning great, which Mark has woven throughout our story.

They feared a great fear, not at the storm, but at Jesus, the one more powerful than the storm.

What I think Mark is doing with the repetition of these three words is he's saying, in the exact same way that the storm was great, then the calm was great, in the same way the fear in the hearts of the disciples was great toward Jesus.

A great storm, a great calm, and a great fear at Jesus.

And it's a great fear because he is in charge.

And so the disciples ask the logical question, who is this?

Who is this man who would be so tired from a day of teaching that he would sleep in the back of the boat who can command a storm to be still with his word?

Who is this?

But Jesus asks them, why are you so afraid?

Do you still have no faith?

I think Jesus is saying that there are two responses we can have to realizing Jesus is in charge, fear or faith.

He says, why are you so afraid?

You've opted for the fear option.

Do you still have no faith?

It is right that they would fear Jesus.

It's a correct response.

But also faith in Jesus, based on everything that they've seen in the four chapters that we've read of Mark so far.

Faith is also a correct response in the one who has more power than the storm.

Fear or faith?

What I think we see is the three stages of the story, disciples in charge, storm in charge, Jesus is in charge, are not just the stages of the story, that's the stage of our lives.

That's the stages of every one of our lives.

And it's not quite linear in the sense that you go one, two, three, and never move backwards.

But all of us are somewhere on that spectrum, stage one, stage two, or stage three.

And for all of us, there is an option when we come to realize Jesus is in charge, will we have fear or will we have faith?

Those are the two options.

The disciples, they probably didn't choose fear.

They naturally felt fear at this one who is more powerful than the great storm.

But I want to give you a few reasons why we who follow Jesus can have not fear, but faith when we realize Jesus is in charge.

Jesus was asleep in the boat.

And while Jesus was asleep, the disciples were awake in terror in the middle of the storm.

We see the exact opposite, the reversal of the roles at the end of the Gospel of Mark, where it is in the Garden of Gethsemane, the disciples who sleep weary from a full day.

But in that crucial moment, Jesus does not sleep.

Jesus stays awake.

He is alert in the middle of the storm that was around him.

Jesus was awake.

And Jesus remained awake and alert all the way from Gethsemane to Golgotha, where he hung on the cross.

And Jesus took the full storm of the wrath of God against our rebellion against him.

Jesus took that on himself and he actually let the storm crush him.

He sunk beneath the waters of death.

He drowned under the weight of our sin.

But then, as Mark has been teasing from the start of his Gospel, the ever-growing range of Jesus' authority extended even over death.

And in the resurrection, Jesus showed that he has authority over death.

He triumphed over the storm, came back out of the waters again.

And all of that to show us that the Father loves us and cares about us.

He would not abandon us on our own in the middle of our storms, in the middle of our death.

But God sent His only Son that whoever would believe in Him should not perish and die from the storm, but have eternal life instead.

And so, because of the fact that Jesus took the storm on Himself and then triumphed through the storm, we can make it through our storms with fear, not faith.

Because we know He is in charge.

Jesus is in charge and He is good.

That's the difference between fear, knowing that Jesus is in charge, and faith.

It's only fear if Jesus is all-powerful but not all-good.

But it's faith if we know that He has all the power and He is good.

And we know He is good.

The Gospel shows us the love of God, that He who has all the power in the world gave His only Son unto death in order that we could be with Him and have eternal life.

And so I don't know which stage of life you are in.

You might be in stage one thinking you are in charge.

And if that is you right now, I would say from this passage, take caution because there's probably a storm coming.

You will realize you are not in charge.

The storm is in charge.

But if you are in the storm of life right now, whatever that looks like, a death or a diagnosis or a breakup or whatever the storm is that we go through, then you can not take caution, take comfort, knowing that as big as the storm seems, Jesus is bigger.

And He is with you in the middle of the storm.

And we can have not fear, but faith knowing that He is in charge.

And if you are in stage three, then you've already made it.

Well done.

Hopefully, the wiser, more experienced ones among us have reached stage three.

Or more quickly get to stage three when we start to wander.

If you are in stage three, you know Jesus is in charge and He is good.

And that is a very good place to be.

So let us, NorthernLife, as a church, as a community, but then as individuals as well, let us rest in the very comforting knowledge that Jesus is in charge.

He is all-powerful and He is all-good.

Let's stay in that place.

Let me pray.

Our Father in heaven, we thank You that You loved us so much that You didn't want to abandon us.

You didn't leave us to die alone in the storm, but You gave Your Son who became like us, who slept in the boat.

He was human and at times weak, but we know He's all-powerful.

Thank You, Jesus, that You died for us and You rose again, showing that You have authority over every storm that we go through.

So I pray for my brothers and sisters in this room or listening online.

For those of us going through the storm of life right now, whatever that looks like, would You comfort us with the knowledge that You are with us, You are in charge, and You are good?

Help us to rest in that.

And for those here who probably are in stage one, feeling like they are in charge, would You humble us and bring us to the foot of the cross and receive the mercy that we need?

We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

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