When Obedience Leads Into the Storm

Audio Transcript

This morning we continue in Mark chapter 4. We covered about the first half of that last Sunday. And we’re continuing in our Through the Bible study called Unravel, where we’re trying to untangle some of the things that may have been confusing and put pieces together and make sense of it as much as we know how. We’ve been now for about a year and a half in the New Testament studying the four Gospels together.

And today we’ll be in Mark chapter 4, verses 35 to 41. And as we come to this text today, let me quickly remind you that Jesus has been teaching by the Sea of Galilee. He has endured a long, exhausting day of ministry. This is the longest, most exhausting day that I know of that’s recorded in the Gospels. We’ve been on this same day for several weeks now. And Mark, typically Mark is a very fast-paced writer, but he slows down on this day and shows us tremendous detail of what’s going on.

We remember now Jesus has cast out demons on this day. He was then accused of doing so by the power of Satan, and He had to deal with that whole crowd and that mess. He’s gone for days now without even eating. He’s been ministering to people from sunup to sundown. His family has come to get Him, to take Him home, because they are convinced that He has lost His mind. And despite all that, Jesus has continued teaching the people, and the crowds were so huge that last week we saw they were pressing in on Him, about to crush Him, and so He got into a little boat and pushed back from the shore just a ways. And from that boat, He taught these massive crowds that were lined along the shore.

Last week from that boat, we saw He taught the parable of the soils, and then He went on to teach a few other short parables. All of that has happened now on this day.

And so we pick up now in verse 35. The sun is setting, Jesus is in the boat, and it says, “On the same day, when evening had come, He, Jesus, said to them, the disciples, ‘Let us cross over to the other side.’

“Now when they, the disciples, had left the crowd, they took Him with them in the boat just as He was, and other boats were with Him.”

Now I want to just insert this very quickly. That last sentence I just read has nothing to do with anything, and yet it’s in the Bible. Why would someone put that in there? You know what this reads to me like? It reads to me like an eyewitness account, not something made up, where someone’s just recounting things and say, “Yeah, yeah, I remember that day. We got Jesus in the boat, and we were pushing off, and there were some other boats going with us.”

There it is. “And other boats were with Him.” There’s never another mention of this. Verse 37, “And a great windstorm arose, and the waves beat, or broke, into the boat, so that it was already filling.

“But He was in the stern, asleep on a cushion. And they awoke Him and said to Him, ‘Teacher, do You not care that we are perishing?’ Then He got up and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, ‘Peace, be still.’ And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. But He said to them, ‘Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?’

“And they were filled with great fear, and said to one another, ‘Who is this that even the wind and the sea obey Him?'”

There’s something in verse 35 we should not miss. Jesus was the one who said, “Let’s go across the sea.” It wasn’t the disciples’ idea. It was a direct instruction from Jesus. And so, the disciples found themselves in the middle of a terrifying storm because they obeyed Jesus.

Storms and trials are not a sign that God has abandoned you. In fact, storms will sometimes be the very path He chooses for you so that He can teach you something you couldn’t learn any other way.

We’ll get more into that in just a moment. First, let me mention quickly, because it’s important to this event, the geography of the Sea of Galilee. It’s a unique body of water in all the world. The Sea of Galilee sits about 700 feet below sea level, and it’s surrounded on multiple sides by mountains. It sits down in a bowl.

Show that map, if you would. There on the right, the Sea of Galilee, and you can sort of see around the west and the north and the eastern sides, mountains all around. And at certain times of the year, cool winds rush over those mountains, down into the sea, and they collide with the warm air that’s hovering above the sea. And they create these sudden, explosive weather conditions.

First-century fishermen called these katabatic storms. It just means going downhill. And it was a way for them to express these winds that descended with sudden violent force and clashed with the air on the sea and created massive storms. The text says a great windstorm came up and the waves beat against the boat. Matthew’s account in the Greek, he uses the words seismos megas. Does that sound like anything that we might know about? Seismos megas. It’s a term to describe an earthquake.

Matthew on the boat saying, “Man, it felt like the whole earth was shaking in this storm.” Now remember, Mark said they left the shore in the evening, so by now they’re most likely facing this storm in the dark, which only adds another dimension of fear. Have you noticed there’s places in your house or in your yard that are perfectly fine in the day, but you go there at night and you just get a little creeped out? You’re not sure why?

Imagine this storm coming up out of nowhere in the dead of night in the middle of the sea. And while this storm wailed and His disciples panicked, Jesus was in the back of the boat asleep.

After this unbelievably demanding stretch of ministry, thousands of people clamoring after Him, many just trying to touch Him, as we’ll see next Sunday, I believe it is. Crowds pressing in, the demands of ministry, people constantly needing something from Him, criticism being launched at Him. He’s teaching and healing people from sunup to sundown. He’s going without food. He’s exhausted. You ever been so tired that you felt like you could sleep through anything?

Maybe you did. Years ago, we were at a client site in Los Angeles, and it was maybe the worst week we had ever had. It was one of those weeks where we slept at the office, and we were working around the clock, and then just taking a side office and curling up on the floor and trying to get a few hours sleep and coming right back to it for the whole week.

And we flew out of LAX on Friday night, and the guys on our team said that I fell asleep before the plane took off, and they had to wake me up after we landed in Charlotte. Now, I don’t sleep on planes. I never have been able to, but there are times when you are so exhausted that you could sleep on a jagged rock. You could sleep anywhere. This is Jesus now.

The storm is raging, and the disciples come and they wake Jesus up, and notice specifically what they said. “Teacher, don’t You care that we’re perishing?” “Do You not care that we’re going to drown?” That’s not just a question, that’s an accusation. They’re literally implying that Jesus doesn’t care whether they live or die.

Before we’re too harsh on them, I think it’s probably fair to say we’ve all been there, haven’t we? We’ve all been in storms that beat down so hard for so long that we begin to say things like this to Jesus. “Do You even know who I am, Lord? Do You remember me? Do You care at all about what is going on?”

Can I just say, look, that shouldn’t be the pattern of our Christian life, but God does understand those moments. We’ve seen that in the last few weeks. John the Baptist, the greatest man who was ever born, according to Jesus, reached the end of his life in that horrible dungeon, about to get his head cut off, and he sent word to Jesus, saying, “Are You really the One, or should we look for another?”

Job, lashing out and questioning, demanding answers from God. God understands. He does understand. I think all of us have been here, where our questions sound more like accusations. “Do You not care?”

Jesus got up. I mean, I don’t even know what to make of these three words. “Rebuked the wind.” What did that look like? He rebuked the wind? Did the wind go, “Oh man, we are in trouble”? He rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Peace, be still.” How did He say that? Did He say, “Peace, be still”? Or did He simply say, “Peace… be still”?

And the wind died down, and it was completely calm. It’s interesting. The Greek word megas is used here again, but instead of it being a mega storm, it’s now mega calm. I know I sound like your teenager. Now this mega storm has become mega calm.

I’m sure we’ve all experienced the calm after a storm. There was a time, in, I think it was down near Charleston, where Sandy and I and some of her family were in a car when this massive storm came in, and we didn’t have anywhere to go. We were kind of out in the middle of nowhere, and we pulled off in this space. And I remember the wind blowing from the back of the car, and it was lifting the back of the car up a little bit, like that, as we sat there. We rode that out, but it slowly started to calm down. The wind slowly calmed down, and we were fine. We’ve all experienced that calm 10 to 15 minutes after the storm when things slow down and get quiet and peaceful.

But the tense used here in the original language doesn’t mean this storm gradually subsided. It means there was instantaneous calm. Like that.

Try to imagine, can I just say it, how freaky that must have been? Jesus says, “Peace, be still.” And in a split second, the howling winds are replaced by complete silence. The violent, thrashing waves are gone, and the sea becomes as smooth as glass in an instant. That alone would have knocked your senses sideways. It would have been one of those moments like, “Am I dreaming? What just happened?” Just imagine. Perfectly calm at the word of Jesus.

And this is the moment that this whole passage has been building toward. What Jesus just did wasn’t just impressive. It was impossible. No human being goes around telling storms to stop, and they stop. There’s only One who can do that, and it’s God.

These disciples knew their Old Testament Scriptures very well. And I know that because as you look at their lives, you’ll see they quoted the Scriptures often just from memory. Now the Jews in that day, not so much today, but still to a very large degree, are far more disciplined than we are here in the West. Remember, they didn’t have copies of the Old Testament like this. They couldn’t go to their shelf and pick up the Old Testament and read it. And so the scrolls that they had in the synagogue and so on, they were committed to memory by these people from childhood.

So these disciples on this boat, they knew their Old Testament Scriptures, the Scriptures that make it unmistakably clear that only God can command nature and have it obey.

I wonder if in that moment when Jesus said, “Peace, be still,” and there was complete silence and calm, I wonder if their minds recalled verses like this, Psalm 89:8 — “O LORD God of hosts, who is like You? O mighty LORD, Your faithfulness surrounds You. You rule the raging sea. When its waves mount up, You still them.”

Psalm 107: “Those who went out to the sea in ships, conducting trade on the mighty waters, they saw the works of the LORD and His wonders in the deep. For He spoke and raised up a tempest that lifted the waves of the sea. They mounted up to the heavens, then sunk to the depths. Their courage melted in their anguish. They reeled and staggered like drunkards, and all their skill was useless. Then they cried out to the LORD in their trouble, and He brought them out of their distress. He calmed the storm to a whisper, and the waves of the sea were hushed.”

I want you to look at that word “LORD” in those verses. Capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D. Whenever you see that in all capitals, it’s referring to Yahweh, Jehovah God.

These disciples had no doubt heard these Scriptures from the time they were little boys. They knew that the only One who could do such things was Jehovah God. But hang on a second. That’s what Jesus has just done, right here in front of them on this boat. Were they standing there thinking, “Are you telling me Jesus is… could He actually be…?” This is why they weren’t just amazed. They were terrified.

Throughout Scripture, we talked a minute ago about forgetting Memorial Day, I’ll tell you something else we’ve forgotten as a culture and perhaps as a church. We’ve forgotten the fear of God. I mean, it is a lost term. The holiness of God. You look through Old Testament Scripture, New Testament as well, by the way. Anytime an ordinary man encounters the presence of God, he’s not standing there chewing his bubble gum going, “What’s up?” That’s how people treat God today. It’s horrific. Sick.

You want to know what happened every time an ordinary man encountered the presence of God? They fell on their face like a dead man in fear. You say, “The fear of God doesn’t mean fear.” It means fear. Also reverence, that’s true, but we’ve lost the fear. God’s our buddy now. He’s our pal.

Why were these men so terrified at the realization of what they had just witnessed? This is interesting. There are two different words used here in Mark 4 for fear. In verse 40, in verse 40, Jesus asked them, “Why are you afraid?” The word is deilos, D-E-I-L-O-S. It means cowardly or lacking courage. That’s how they felt when the storm was raging. But in verse 41, after Jesus calms the storm, when they should have been relieved, the text says they were greatly afraid, very much afraid. But that word afraid, fear, means awe or reverence. It’s the awe that comes from being in the presence of the holy. They were scared of the storm, but now they are in awe of the One who is with them in the boat, and they are terrified.

Can’t you see them standing there? It’s dead calm now. They’re in the middle of this sea. No sound whatsoever, I imagine, except maybe for the creaking of that wooden boat every time they shifted their weight nervously from one foot to the other, wondering, “What in the world do we do now?” Their hearts must have been pounding in their chest as they try to comprehend, “Are we in the presence of God?”

That’s precisely what they’re wondering. Verse 41 says, “They were terrified and asked each other, ‘Who is this?'” Watch this now. It’s very important. “Who is this that even the wind and the sea obey Him?” That’s a key word. “Who is this that even the wind and the sea obey Him?” They’re looking at Jesus, but they know that the only One who can calm storms is God.

Their heads must have been spinning. They can’t even conceive of such a thing. They’ve seen Jesus do miracles. They’ve seen astounding miracles. But this is a different category. They’ve seen Jesus heal the blind, heal a leper, cast out demons, even raise the widow’s son from the dead. Already happened, they’ve seen it. And yet they say, “Who is this that even the wind and the sea obey Him?” This is a different category.

What is Mark showing us here? You know, some Bible critics say, “Mark never points out the deity of Jesus.” It just wearies me so much. I feel so embarrassed for them. They should just stop. Mark is getting at something here. He’s trying to point out something very important, and it’s not about the storm.

Remember back, I think it was around the end of March when we were in John 5, and we looked at Jesus speaking to the religious leaders, and He made the most outrageous claims anyone could ever make. He said to them three things that we looked at. He said, “I am equal with God in power, I’m equal with God in authority, and I’m equal with God in honor.” If you missed that sermon, you need to pick it up because it’s going to be important to everything that we’re building to in the life of Christ. I think it was called “Another Great Sermon by Phil” or something like that. What was it called? Maybe “The Unavoidable Claims of Jesus” or something like that, back around the end of March, if I remember correctly.

Jesus said, “I’m equal with God in power.” Are You now? That’s quite a thing to say. He said, “God has given Me the power over life and death.” Wow. He said, “I’m equal with God in authority. God has entrusted it to Me to judge the world.” Goodness. “And I’m equal with God in honor,” He said. Now, this is the one that really blows my mind. “I’m equal with God in honor.” He’s claiming equality with God. He said, “All should honor the Son,” speaking of Himself, “just as they honor the Father,” in equal measure. “He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him.” Those are crazy words, unless they’re true.

Now, the disciples heard Jesus say that, but now they’ve just seen Him prove it. We must understand what has happened on this boat. The disciples needed that storm. It was the very thing that opened their eyes to who Jesus really was.

Listen, I’m sure I speak for you. None of us want to go through storms, do we? I don’t like them at all. I mean real storms and just the storms of life. I don’t like them at all. But we must remember: God uses storms. He uses trials. He uses pressure. He uses fire to shape us into what we need to be. I don’t know if clay has feelings. I don’t know if clay can talk, but if clay could talk, it would say, “Ouch, that hurts. Quit pressing on me that hard. Quit molding me and moving me.” And the potter could say, “Hang on just a minute. Just a minute, I’m forming you into something spectacular. Your value is going to skyrocket after this.”

The blacksmith in his shop has heated up that piece of metal, and he’s got it on the anvil, and he’s pounding it with all his might. Sparks are flying. And the metal’s saying, “Stop it, stop it, this hurts,” and he’s saying, “Give me just a little while longer. I’m forming you into something that is going to be absolutely beautiful.”

God allows us to go through storms because He is more interested in our character than our comfort. He’s more interested in our holiness than our happiness. Philip Yancey wrote this, “Most of the things I want God to do, you know, make my life easier and more comfortable, are far less important to God than what He wants to do in shaping me to reflect the image of His Son.”

That storm, as awful as it was, was the very thing that revealed the deity of Jesus to those men. And that’s often how God works in the storms of our lives.

Now let me give a quick caution here, about this text, but it applies to other texts as well. Usually the only lesson drawn from these verses is, “Jesus calmed the storm for the disciples, and He will calm the storms in your life too.” Is that so? That’s generally the only lesson drawn when you hear this text preached.

The fact is, Jesus does not calm every storm. Let’s be real careful here. Just follow the lives of these very disciples through the Scriptures to the end. They endured beatings and slander and hunger and imprisonment and ultimately execution for following Jesus. Oh, Jesus did deliver them from many things, but He did not deliver them from everything. He doesn’t always immediately calm our storms. Sometimes He allows them to continue. Let’s be careful turning this text into a rubber stamp that we can go through our life and go, “Boom, boom, boom, boom. He’s going to fix all that.”

It’s like hearing this preaching from the Old Testament, “Everywhere the sole of your foot treads I will give you.” I’ve heard that preached to people today. “That’s God’s promise to you.” No, it’s not. It has nothing to do with you. At all.

Sometimes the illness doesn’t go away. Elisha became sick with an illness that killed him. You don’t think he prayed about that? You don’t think he said, “Maybe, hey, God, I could be a lot more useful to You alive if You’d heal me from this”? God said, “No, no, son, this is your time. You will die of this sickness.”

Sometimes the job doesn’t come through in the way that you hoped. Sometimes the relationship never heals. Sometimes the prodigal doesn’t come home. That’s hard to hear. Let’s not pretend it’s not. That’s hard. But even in those storms we must remind ourselves that God knows what He’s doing even when we don’t yet.

Yes, of course we look to Jesus, and we run to Him and we call to Him when we’re in the midst of a trouble or a trial or a storm. But listen to me, please hear this carefully. The calming of the storm is not the main point in this passage, and the calming of the storm is not the main point in your life.

The main point for those disciples was to discover the identity of Jesus. That’s what Mark is showing us here. Deliberately showing us. He’s not just telling us about a storm that was calmed. He’s screaming to us what he said in the very first verse of his Gospel. Mark chapter 1, verse 1: “This is Jesus, the Son of God.” And now he’s showing us all these things to give backup to that, to give credibility to that. This is not just a man, this is God in the flesh.

That question, “Who is this?” “That even the wind and the sea obey Him.” That’s the question that this storm was designed to produce. Not “Why didn’t He stop it sooner?” Not “Why did He let it happen at all?” God uses storms so that you will look to Him, and in doing so, you will see who He is more clearly, I’m telling you, than you ever could in the comfortable seasons.

Jonathan Edwards wrote, by the way, I’m doing my hair like that soon. Listen to this. This is, I believe, back in a time when the average person understood what we’re talking about today. He said, “The main business of the Christian life is not the removal of afflictions, but the knowledge of God gained through them.” That is so true.

That storm stripped away every false assumption the disciples had carried onto that boat. It took a terrifying night at sea to reveal that they had only barely begun to know Him.

So what about us? Are we inviting God to transform us in our storms? We do have a choice in this, by the way. We do have a choice.

I’ve known a handful of people over the years who have left the faith because of some hardship that God allowed to fall upon them. And I’m telling you, I don’t stand here in judgment of them because none of us knows the depth of anyone else’s suffering. But I’ve known far more people who have grown sweeter and more loving and more Christ-like as a direct result of their storms. How does that happen?

Well, someone said this, and I believe it’s profound. “Two people can go through the same trial. One will come out bitter, and one will come out better.” It is a choice. The bitter person focuses on, “Why did this happen to me?” The better person focuses on, “What can I learn from this? How can I know Christ more through this?”

The apostle Paul had followed Christ for many years. He knew Christ intimately, he wrote half the New Testament. Yet his lifelong desire was to know Christ more. He wrote this at the end of his life, before he was put to death. Listen to this. He’s followed Christ for decades. He knows Christ more than we will ever know Him, I’m sure. And yet at the end of his life, he said this in Philippians 3:10, “I want to know Christ.”

And you go, “Paul, what are you talking about? You know Him, you’ve written about…” “No, I want to know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made like Him in His death.”

That question, “Who is this?” should never stop being one of our greatest pursuits in life. Can I say that again? That question, “Who is this?” must never fade into our rearview mirror. It should always be one of our greatest pursuits, regardless of how well we already know Him. We should always long to know Him more.

I’ve shared this with some of you. It’s one of my favorite things that my dad ever said to me before he died. It was in his office. We were just chatting about Bible things, and he looked at his old Bible. He said, “Son, it’s been my job to study this book every day for more than 60 years.” And he paused and said, “And I’m still not even close to finishing it.” 90 years old, he was hungry for God.

What’s your appetite for God? Is He the spare tire in your trunk? Oh, your life’s going fine, but He’s back there covered in dust, banging around. And you know, just in case you have a blowout, you can always run to God. Is that your relationship with Him? Heaven help us. May we long to know who He really is for the rest of our days. But just understand, He may have to use storms to teach us that.

So I close by asking, what storm are you in right now? And are you allowing it to make you bitter or better? It’s your choice. Don’t blame it on the problem. Don’t blame it on your family. Don’t blame it on your past. Don’t blame it on your boss. Don’t blame it on your finances. Don’t blame it on your health. It’s your choice.

“So Phil, you don’t know how I’ve suffered.” Man, give me a break. I could line 20 people up who’ve suffered a thousand times worse than you. And I’m not minimizing your struggle. I’m just telling you. Years as a pastor, I’ve met people who have hurt. Some of them sitting in this room, and they’re the most joyful people you will meet. You’d never know their painful past unless you got to know them and dug into it a bit. It’s a choice.

Are you asking God to use the storm that you are in to teach you more about who He really is? Because listen, this whole life thing down here is about becoming more like Him and bringing Him glory. That’s why you’re here. All the other stuff, secondary, if that. There should be a growing, maturing process our entire life. Do we come out of each storm having to go all the way back to the beginning because we failed to mature and grow and learn what we needed to learn in the storm?

The disciples—they left that boat different people. Not perfect people, but they had grown because of it. You want to know how I know that? Because later, these same men will be in a boat at night on this same sea when another storm comes up. This time, Jesus comes walking to them on the water. We know the scene. Peter says, “Lord, ask me to come to You.” And in the storm, Peter gets out and he’s walking, but then he takes his eyes off Jesus and sinks. Jesus saves him.

They get back in the boat. And when Jesus steps into the boat, the storm calms. But this time, the disciples didn’t have to ask, “Who is this?” This time they worshiped Him and said, “Truly You are the Son of God.” How could they respond that way in the second storm? Because they learned it in the first storm.

I’m going to tell you the storm you’re in right now. The main point is not about getting that storm calm as soon as possible. That’s not the main point. And I can tell you, I have days when I cry out to God to end my storm. I’m so tired. I’m so weary of it. But I must remind myself: the main point is not to get that storm to calm down. The main point is: “What am I learning about Him in the midst of it?” That’s the main point.

I encourage you this morning, get your eyes off the waves and look at Who is in the boat with you. He is Lord of all, capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D. Jesus is Lord of all, including every storm in your life. And that is the most important thing you could ever know.