We are continuing this morning with our walk through the book of Matthew. Last week we saw the first set of responses to the healing miracles of Jesus. Three men who recognized that there was something special about Jesus, his teaching and his miracles forced them to the conclusion that he was no ordinary man. When Jesus forced their hand by deciding to head to the other side of the Sea of Galilee so that he could continue his preaching ministry, it forced those three men to make a choice whether or not to follow Jesus.
We saw something in each of those three men that is prevalent in the hearts of so many who claim to follow Jesus. When pressed for an immediate answer many will claim to follow Jesus, many will claim to have a desire to learn from him and to follow him, but when their devotion to him is stacked up against comfort or money or family, their priorities are revealed. Jesus sounds like a good idea; the healings, the show are exciting, the teaching may be inspiring, uplifting, but it is not enough to make them fully invest all of their life with Jesus. And one thing that Jesus makes clear over and over again in his ministry is that he is an all or nothing kind of guy. “No one, after putting his hand the plow and looks back, is fit for the kingdom of God.” “He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after me is not worthy of me.”
So in verses 18-22, we saw how Jesus began to separate the Fairweather followers from the true believers. He gave his disciples a verbal test of commitment and now in verses 23-27 he is going to give their faith a test. It seems strange. They saw all of these miracles happening, the leper being healed, the paralyzed servant getting up and walking, a woman overcome with fever recovering instantly. All who were coming being healed with the word. How could anyone not believe in the power of Jesus? Well apparently it was not enough. It is easy to believe he has power when there is no danger to you. The three men from last week did not even wait for the danger to come around, they just got a warning that life would be a little bit more difficult following Jesus and they hightailed it.
We face a lot of tests in our lives. It is very easy to make claims to something but until that claim is put the test, the truth is obscured. People claim to believe in being healthy, and yet struggle with being overweight and not getting enough exercise. It is hard to take serious someone who claims to care about being healthy and yet there overweight and out of shape. Tests and trials reveal a person’s true level of commitment, it reveals where their priorities truly are.
What is important about these tests is that they are not always a bad thing. When we face these tests they reveal things to us about ourselves and they help us to confront what we actually believe. They help us to realign our priorities, to evaluate where we place significance. Our passage this morning shows us the first real test of trust in the person of Jesus that the disciples would face. They showed their commitment, they followed Jesus after he warned them, after he laid out the warning labels on the narrow road in verses 18-22, now they are going to have to own up to it. Let us read our text for this morning. Read.
The way that we are tested in our faith in Christ, the way our claims to belief in the person and promises of Jesus are shown for what they really are often come through fear. Fear for our lives, fear for our comfort, fear for our families or friends. And fear is most revealed when our ability to contribute to the situation, to work against the problem, to fight, to struggle, is completely taken away from us. When you are put in a situation where you have no options left. When everything is taken out in a way from your control. That is when true fear sets in, the truest test of faith.
That is what happens to the disciples in this passage. They are forced to confront their ultimate fear as sailors. Being in a storm where they have no ability to control their vessel. Let us set the scene a little bit. First off, I believe that it is late in the evening or into the early hours of the morning. We saw back in verse 16 that the crowds really started to gather in the evening after the three miracles that are described in more detail in chapter 8. We know from the other synoptic Gospels that all this happened on a Sabbath day which meant that everybody wanted to wait until the day was over before they brought their sick and ailing friends to be healed. After spending several hours healing all of these people, Jesus becomes exhausted and decides to head to the other side of the Sea of Galilee. He wants to get some rest. Before they can head out, these last couple of disciples are questioned as we saw last week. And once that is taken care of they finally get in the boats and start to head out.
Jesus is exhausted, as we see by the fact that he was sleeping in the midst of this terrible storm. Now it is also worth noting a couple of things about this storm. First, the Sea of Galilee is not an actual sea but a large freshwater lake. It is about 8 miles wide by 13 miles long. So it is a big lake, but you can see the opposite shore from the bank. It sets several hundred feet below sea level and is surrounded by big hills that protrude just above sea level and so you have a large bowl filled with a deep Lake. On top of that, the area around the Sea of Galilee is very arid and flat is known for massive gusts of wind. All of these features can combine to create very sudden and catastrophic wind storms on the Sea of Galilee. Even though this lake is not very large, they have recorded waves breaking against the shore over 10 feet high. And in 1992 they recorded waves in the middle of the lake at almost 16 feet.
In the time of Jesus, the Sea of Galilee would be covered in fishing boats. At that time, the typical fishing boat was about 25 feet long by 7 feet wide and about 4 feet tall. When hauling in fish, it would be crewed by 3 or 4 men but could comfortably fit 8-10 being transported. These are not big boats, and when you picture them on the water with waves reaching 8 to 10 feet at least, you get a better idea of why the disciples were getting slightly scared.
These are seasoned fishermen who spend their entire lives on the Sea of Galilee in these boats. They knew very well what was going on, they knew what they were into and they knew they were in real trouble. I am sure that as the storm increased, the sailors would have been doing everything that they could to take care of it but in verse 25 they come to Jesus in a panic. Now again remember, these professional sailors are asking in ex-carpenter what to do in a storm. You know there are a lot of trouble. In verse 25 they come to Jesus in this panic, and if you put together Matthew, Mark, and Luke, you can get the full idea of what they were saying “save us Lord; were all gonna die. Master, Master, do not you care? What are you doing? Wake up, wake up.” There is desperation and true fear in their voices.
They had tried doing their thing and they were out of ideas and so they turned to God. The fact that they turn to Jesus is interesting. What were they thinking he was going to do? What is this carpenter to do that the sailors cannot? I think at this point they are not so much convinced that he is God as they are hoping he is. And that is right where God wanted them.
God often has to bring us to the point of desperation to truly get our attention. He forces us to fear the little things of life like death and destitution. He rips all control out of our hands and when we run out of human solutions, we are forced to find a divine answer. And that was the hope of the disciples in this boat. Their hope was that this miracle worker who could handle sickness could maybe handle the Sea. There was a little bit of faith mixed in with that fear. If they had had true faith, total, complete faith, they would have been asleep just like him. They would have been fully confident in their Heavenly Father’s care.
There are two lessons that Jesus is going to teach them with this storm. Two lessons that we can learn from their predicament and salvation at the hands of their Savior. The first is the need for trust in God in the little things. God uses fear in this life to draw us close to him. To build our trust in him. And Jesus builds on that with his rebuke in verse 26. “He said to them “why are you afraid, you men of little faith?”
That sounds pretty harsh, but I think we should not see it as a rejection or complete disappointment on the part of Jesus. I think we can best see this like a sports coach who is trying to press his athletes on to further and greater things. In that moment he forces them to confront the question “why did you fail?” In Mark’s gospel, Jesus is question is phrased just a little bit differently “why are you afraid? Do you still have no faith?” The disciples had seen him perform many miracles. They knew about his power. They had watched him perform inexplicable miracles. Restore withered integrated parts of the body, cast out demons with the word. Miracle upon miracle upon miracle that showed without question the power of Jesus, the authority of this man over nature and spirits, but in that moment, when they were the ones put in danger, when they were the ones facing the difficulty they questioned not only his power but also his compassion.
That is where we so often fail when we give in to fear. It is those two areas that are most often revealed when we fail. When we give into anxiety and fear. It demonstrates a lack of trust in either the love of God or the power of God. It is amazing how we can see a demonstration of God’s power and his mercy and then as soon as we face a problem of our own, we begin to question it. As soon as the situation begins leaving our control we start to falter. You begin to doubt God’s ability or distrust his compassion. And that is all it is, it reveals your lack of faith. It reveals to what extent you believe.
So what do we do? When our lack of faith is revealed? First, I think we have to take the rebuke from God. We accept it for what it is and its truthfulness. “Why are you afraid, you little faith.” We accept it as a shortcoming on our part, we recognize it as a sinful shortcoming on our part. A sinful failure to fully trust in the person and promises of God. Then we recognize our need to grow in our faith. The best athletes are the ones who accept their coach’s rebuke and use it to fuel their desire to overcome that failing. They accept the deficiency and work to overcome it.
The next thing we do is ask for help from the one who gives us faith. Listen to Peter’s statement on overcoming anxiety in 1 Peter 5, “therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you.” Increasing our faith, shedding our anxiety begins by humbling ourselves before God, placing our trust in him by relinquishing control. “Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. But resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by your brethren who are in the world.” The key to overcoming anxiety is not closing your mind but opening it. Worry is not caused by too much thinking, it is the result of not enough thinking in the right direction. We need to be aware of the way the devil prays on our fears and we keep that from happening by meditating on the promises of God. “And after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you. To him be dominion forever and ever amen.”
After you have weathered the storm, in his own time and in the best possible way, God will complete your training exercise. It does not mean he will pull you out of the storm that free time, it means that he will use it in the best possible way to grow you, to strengthen you, and to confirm you so that he can exalt you at the proper time. The way we grow in faith, the way we fight sinful fear is not by begging God to get us out of this situation, not by questioning his compassion or his power, but humbling ourselves before him and asking for the strength to weather the storm trusting that he will take care of us throughout.
The second lesson that Jesus wanted to teach the disciples in this event was where their fear should truly lie. R.C. Sproul was a tremendous philosopher as well as a preacher. In his work “the holiness of God,” which is a series that every single one of you need to go through, he talks about this passage revealing something truly amazing. He described how in his philosophy classes he taught on the renowned atheists of the last two centuries. Understanding their arguments against the existence of God and explaining why religion was universally present within humanity.
My favorite observation of Sproul’s was on the explanation that the pioneering psychologist Sigmund Freud had for the universal presence of religion within humanity. Freud’s reasoning was that when mankind was faced with a threat they attempt to control it. If it is another human being is threatening us, to placate them, to neutralize the threat, we can try to reason with them, we can beg for our lives or safety, if that does not work we may try to appease them through complements or bribe them with gifts. Freud extrapolated from there that the reason early forms of animism became part of the human psyche and became prevalent throughout the world in all cultures was because humanity needed a way of placating the threat of nature. Nature is beyond our control, we have no ability to neutralize that threat and it is a threat far beyond any human one. We cannot reason with the storm, we cannot bribe the rain, we cannot beg disease for mercy, but if there were a spirit or a god of some kind behind those things, maybe we could reason with them, maybe we could complement or bribe them into giving us what we need. And that seems like a reasonable explanation for religion. It makes sense that people would come up with a system like that, especially one where they could define the parameters.
When the disciples were facing the storm, when they were sitting in their little fishing boats in the waves were towering over them they turned to Jesus in their fear looking for a way out. Jesus responded, he quieted the storm with the word.
And I want you to notice something even more amazing here in verse 26. “Then he got up and rebuked the winds and the sea, and it became perfectly calm.” Jesus stood up, and I like the translation in Mark 4:39 he just says to the winds and the waves “hush, be still.” And immediately all is calm. The wind stops, and the sea turns to glass. The picture would be astounding. This is not a gradual thing, the wind does not start to gently peter-out, and the waves do not slowly get smaller and smaller. One moment the wind is gusting violently and the boats are riding up and down waves taller than the men trying desperately to cling to life above the surface and the next moment all of the energy required to make this terrifying storm happen is gone.
Mark points out the flaw in Freud’s system. When the waves in the wind were threatening to crush these veteran sailors, they were afraid, they were fearful. But after this, Mark says “they became very much afraid and said to one another, “who then is this that even the wind and the sea obey him?” There is a clear progression of fear. They are afraid, they are worried, scared for their lives in the middle of the storm; but in the silence, they are terrified to a level far beyond. As R.C. Sproul points out, the real problem with Freud’s system are passages such as this. You see, for Freud’s system to work, the scariest thing has to be the threat of death or suffering.
You see this is what he missed. Yes, human beings are afraid of the storms, of the fires, of the floods, of tornadoes. But in the heart of every creature made in the image of God, there is a terror far greater than all of these things because there is a threat far greater to them than any storm can deliver. It is the threat of falling into the hands of the living God. It is the awesomeness of God; it is the holiness of God that terrifies men. It is the fact that he is all holy and you are not. And what unholy creatures fear far more than any storm is the presence of the holy God.
So, Sproul’s question for Freud is that if we are so creative in our imagination to create religion why would we invent a God who is more scary, more terrifying, than the things we have invented him to overcome our fears from? You are going to invent a God, and many people do as Paul pointed out in Romans 1, we cannot stand the true God so we invented our own. We invent religion to protect us from the God who is.
What the disciples came to realize in that moment was that the true God was incarnate and in the boat with them that day. And that fear was far greater to them than the fear of dying in a storm. “What kind of man is this?” When people come face-to-face with God, when they are presented with a full holiness of God, it is more terrifying than anything in creation. What is far more fearful than being a storm is realizing that you are standing the presence of the living God. When Isaiah saw God he said “I am a man of unclean lips.” When Daniel saw God he began to shake and quiver and fell into the dirt paralyzed. When the apostle Paul saw Jesus in his resurrected, glorious form he fell on his face in the dirt and was blind.
These disciples knew that God was there, and the awesomeness of it was terrifying. There is only two possible outcomes to this revelation. The first, as Paul explains in Romans one is to trade the truth of God for a lie. To build up some other sort of system around yourself in order to try and hide in your sin and darkness. To attempt to create a system ruled by a god or a system of gods or spirits that will allow you to appease them through bribes or works.
The second is to throw yourself on the mercy of God. There is no other choice. There is nothing you can do to escape his holiness. And what is great is that this extreme fear in the eyes of the disciples came with an act of mercy. Jesus saved them by combing the storm revealing his awesome holiness. It was just a glimpse of the fullness of deity, just a preview.
The Cross goes so much farther in revealing the fullness of the holiness of God. The true reason for fear. God the Father is so holy, so just, that he would pour out the fullness of his wrath against his own Son. And in that same moment we see an incredible act of mercy as the incarnate second person of the Trinity willingly accepts that wrath on our behalf. Thinking about the cross should cause us to tremble in fear far greater than any storm we could face in this life. And at the same moment it should cause us to see the greatness work of mercy and drive us to the feet of our Savior.