[Machine transcription]
In the name of Jesus, amen.
Dear saints, you should have no other gods.
This means that you should fear, love, and trust in God above all things.
Now, whenever I think about that, the emphasis in my mind always goes to the fearing and
loving and trusting.
It’s like, I used to wait tables at the seminary and this is how I think of it, like, God’s
sitting at the table and what does he want?
What is he ordering?
Fear, love, and trust.
I better get that and bring it to him.
That’s not the picture at all.
You are already fearing,
and loving, and trusting.
It’s what it means to be a human being.
You’re afraid of things, and you love things,
and you trust things.
It’s what it means to be created
in the image of God.
You are already doing these things.
The question, it’s like you have fear,
love, and trust already in your hands,
and the question now is,
who are you going to give it to?
you? Where are you going to deliver it? What are you going to trust in? What are you going
to be afraid of? What are you going to love? And the Lord says that if anything is on that
list ahead of me, then you are an idolater. If you love anything more than me, if you
trust anything more than me, if you fear anything more than me, then you are an idolater. You
are a godless and deserving of God’s punishment for the sin.
This is why this question, what do you love and what do you trust and what are you afraid
of, just simply, it just pulls open your heart to see where it is, that where are all those
things directed in your own life?
I remember, and I think I’ve told you this story before, but I can’t remember, I’m getting
now to be an old man preacher telling stories again, you know, so you have to put up with
it or tell me afterwards. You’ve told us that before. But I remember I was going out on
the streets in Colorado and I was videotaping people asking them this question. What are
you afraid of? What do you love? And what do you trust? The trust and the love is pretty
easy. What do you love? I love my family, was always the answer. What do you trust?
The answer was, and this gives you maybe a sense of where I was asking these questions,
And the question was, I trust myself or I don’t trust nobody, man.
But it’s what are you afraid of?
That’s where this really starts to show what’s in the heart.
What are you afraid of?
One guy said, one guy said, I’m afraid of going to prison.
And the guy next to him said, yeah, I’m afraid of going back.
Or this kid who had, I think he was a high school kid and he was skipping school and
and he was doing drugs with his friends,
and he said,
I’m afraid of growing up poor.
That was an honest answer.
One guy said at the bus stop,
he said,
man, I just got back from my dad’s funeral,
and nobody had anything good to say
about my dad at his funeral,
including me.
I’m afraid of that.
What you’re afraid of,
This shows you, this really shows you what you’re worshiping because fear and love and
trust are all different aspects of worship.
What are you afraid of?
You’re afraid of something, probably lots of things.
What is it?
The basic human fear is a fear of death.
That’s bondage to the devil, Hebrews 2 tells us.
Sometimes we’re afraid of trouble in this life.
We’re afraid of suffering.
We’re afraid of pain, afraid of poverty, we’re afraid of rejection, we’re afraid
of being alone, we’re afraid of shame, we’re afraid of all the afflictions that could come
our way.
The Lord in the text, and this is, I think, what the Holy Spirit wants to do with us
this morning.
He’s going toâ¦
He wants to redirect our fear.
He’s going to say, you know what you should be afraid of is me.
It’s the change in the Apostles that we want to notice.
Because the Apostles are afraid when they’re there in the boat, but their fear changes.
They’re still afraid at the end of the text, but they’re afraid of something different
than the waves.
Now, let’s just look at the text, Mark chapter 4.
It’s a beautiful text.
It says, on that same day, it’s curious that Mark wants us to know that this is happening
the same night that Jesus had told all these seed parables to all the crowds.
The parable of the sower who goes out to sow seed.
The parable of the seed that grows in the night, the farmer doesn’t know how.
The parable of the seed that turns into a mustard tree, this big thing.
And then the crowds go away and then Jesus gets on the boat with His disciples and they
go across to the other side of the sea.
They’re headed to, they’re headed to Gabbatha, to the, to the graveyard.
guard. That’s where we’ll be with Jesus next week when the demonized man comes and
Jesus rescues him.
But in the meantime, they get in the boat and there’s a⦠there’s a⦠there’s
a fleet of boats that are traveling with them to go across the sea. Now, we’ll remember
that Jesus called, oddly enough, all these fishermen to be His disciples. Peter, James,
John, all these guys were fishermen. In fact, they were⦠they were accomplished fishermen
fishermen, and they come from a family of fishermen. It seems to us, and this is kind
of trying to put all the pieces together, that James and John, you know, their father
was Zebedee, and that it seems like Zebedee himself had a⦠had a fleet of fishing boats,
whatever, you know, a kind of group of them. So⦠so we think that it’s⦠they’re
on Zebedee’s fleet of boats as they go out into the ocean. But the point is that these
men, most of these men together with Jesus, would have been very, very familiar with the
sea, very familiar with the troubles that you can encounter at night by sea because
remember that’s when they would go fishing at night. They were, in other words, these
were not like me getting in a boat and, you know, that’s the last thing that you want
is me trying to cap. These guys knew what they were doing. And the storm comes up in
the middle of the night and all of a sudden they’re terrified and afraid. In other words,
they are able to recognize that this storm is a supernatural storm, that this storm is
worse than the normal, average, everyday storms that they experience on the sea.
In fact, when we see that this storm is coming in so bad, it tells us the words in Greek
are even more emphatic in the English, that there’s these huge waves and all this wind,
and that the waves are breaking into the boat, so that the waves are coming over the edge
and they’re filling up the boat and the boat is starting to sink.
We start to wonder, we start to remember that we’ve seen this before with Jonah, and that’s
confirmed when we find Jesus asleep, like Jonah also asleep.
that this storm seems to be something extra going on.
The disciples come and they find Jesus asleep in the stern,
and they’re astonished with it.
They wake Him up, and they say to Jesus,
Teacher, Rabbi, don’t you care that we are perishing?
They’re afraid.
In fact, Jesus tells them, He asks,
Why are you so afraid?
They’re afraid. They’re afraid of the boat sinking.
They’re afraid of the waves, they’re afraid of the storm, the thunder and the lightning
and the wind.
They’re afraid of death.
So Jesus wakes up, and it’s quite amazing that like all the adjectives in the text are
used for the storm and the resulting weather and the disciples.
This is just very kind of normal.
Jesus wakes up and He rebukes the wind like it’s a bunch of naughty children, and He says
to the waves, to the sea, shalom, peace, be still, and instead of waves breaking into
the boat, there is a great calm. Instantly, instantly the sea is like glass and the stars
in the moon are reflected in it. It’s the perfect great calm. And Jesus looks back at
the disciples and says, why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith? And Mark tells
us, they were filled with great fear. They started out afraid of the waves. They started
started out afraid of sinking. They started out afraid of dying. And now, they’re afraid
of Jesus. Their fears at first were outside the boat, but now their fears are standing
right there before them. And this is right. You should fear love and trust in God above
of all things.
There are a lot of frightful things in this world.
There are a lot of things that would have us be afraid.
There are a lot of things that come to us and said,
you know what you should fear?
You should fear me.
That’s what the devil does.
He says, look at me.
I’m scary.
You should be afraid of me.
And death comes and says, look at me.
I’ve killed everybody so far.
Be afraid of me.
And sin comes and sickness comes and poverty comes
and affliction comes and pain comes and says,
you should be afraid of me.
And Jesus says, nope, you should fear love and trust in God above all things.
God is the one, the only one that we should fear.
God is the one that will stand before on the day of judgment.
God is the one who matters.
We don’t worship any⦠we don’t give any of these other things the honor of our fear.
It all belongs to Jesus.
Now, this is especially important, it’s especially important when we’re in the boat and the
waves are filling the boat and the waves want us to be afraid that we know who we are supposed
to be afraid of.
And this is the point, maybe there’s four points that I think we can take home from
this text.
This is going to be the main point, but here’s one.
Number one, this text teaches us how to pray.
day. We see Jesus saving the disciples. We see Him there in the boat. We see their prayer
waking Him up, and this is how we pray as well.
Oh, Lord⦠This is all the way through the Psalms. Oh, Lord, how long? Oh, Lord, how
long will we cry out to You and You not hear us? How long will You be silent to our prayers
to You? So when we’re praying to the Lord, we’re praying that He would wake up and
come and bless us and keep us and deliver us and help us in every way. Oh, Lord, help
us.
The second point, and we should remember this, especially in the midst of all the turmoil,
I mean all of us are in the boat right now, right?
And it seems like Jesus is asleep.
Jesus is with you.
Listen, no matter what you’re going through, no matter what your trouble, no matter what
your affliction, no matter what your sorrow, no matter what, Jesus is with you.
Yeah, but Pastor, he’s asleep. He’s with you. He’s with you. And he will not depart from
you. He promised, Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. I do not leave
you as orphans. I will never leave you or forsake you. That’s the promise. Right now
he’s with you. And, point three, he is strong to save. It is an act of mighty power that
makes the disciples so afraid that Jesus could simply stand and speak the word and all of
the turmoil is over. It was the same in the beginning when the Lord spoke and the universe
leapt into existence. It’ll be the same on the last day when the Lord Jesus will return
in His glory, and He’ll say our names, and we’ll be up out of the grave, resurrected
forever. Jesus, with a touch, heals the leprous man. With a word, raises the dead. Jesus can
do all of this. He is, as we were studying in Bible class a few minutes ago, the Pantocrator,
the Almighty, the Lord of everything. Jesus can deliver you from whatever you’re praying
for now that the Lord would relieve you from. He has the power to do it. You do not have
to worry if Jesus is strong enough to fix the problem, if He’s big enough to make
it right. But that means, and this is the fourth point, and maybe the hardest point,
but the most important point, that means that if Jesus has not fixed the problem that you’re
praying for, if Jesus has not yet delivered you from the affliction that you’re in the
midst of, it’s because He wants you in the midst of it. If Jesus has not yet calmed
the storm, it’s because He wants you in the storm.
I know this is true from the Scriptures. I got to, if you guys would just indulge me
for just a little bit, I got to have this sink in a little bit last year. We’re coming
up on a year ago when I got sick, and I was brought fairly low by this whole disease,
and I lost a bunch in the middle of it. I think perhaps the scariest part is for about
three or four days, I couldn’t really talk. I mean, I could talk, but I would forget words.
I was stuttering. I would forget what I was saying in the middle of sentences. I was really
had a hard time with F’s and S’s. If words had those sounds in them, I would just stutter
them and I could hardly get past them. And I was frustrated that I couldn’t say what
I wanted. And I thought, maybe I’ll never be able to preach again. Maybe I’ll never
be able to talk again. And I realized that, as I was praying that the Lord would help
me, I realized that if the Lord Jesus wants me to be able to talk, then I’ll talk. And
if He wants me to stutter, I’ll stutter. And if He wants me not to be able to talk,
then I won’t be able to talk. That my life is in His hands, that things are how He wants
them to be. If the Lord wants me to be well, I’ll be well. And if the Lord wants me to
be sick, I’ll be sick, God be praised. That’s how it is for all of us. Now we’re praying
for things, we’re praying that the Lord would deliver us from things, but don’t think that
the Lord hasn’t delivered you because He can’t deliver you. Sometimes He hands us over to
these things for our own good and for His glory. Now we don’t know why, we don’t know
why bad things happen, we don’t know why sometimes we get sick, we don’t know why sometimes
the Lord gives us more than we need and sometimes we never have enough, we don’t know why it’s
Life is in sickness and in health and riches and in and in poverty in trouble and in good times
We don’t know why all of this comes from the Lord’s hands, but all of it comes from the Lord’s hands
He has you where he wants you so that he can bless you
Remember why Paul says it like this we rejoice in our suffering because we know that suffering produces
patience patience produces character and character produces
hope, because one day every storm will be stilled, every one of them. One day every
affliction will be buried. One day all sin will be forgot. One day all sickness will
be left behind. One day we will be in our resurrected body, standing before the glory
of the Lord, and we will be there forever. This is our hope, and our suffering makes
us long for that day, and hope for that day, and pray for that day, and rejoice that that
day is coming soon. Jesus is strong to save, which means that when He’s not delivering,
He’s doing it because that’s what He wants as well. And this is wisdom, to receive from
his hand, both good and
affliction, both joy and
sorrow in his name.”
Now, I don’t want you to
think that I did this right,
but the Lord will drag us
through these things because
he wants to bless us,
because he loves us, and he
He wants to bring us to the joys of heaven.
And so we thank the Lord that He is in the boat with us.
He sleeps when He wants to sleep.
He wakes when He wants to wake.
He says peace when it is His will.
But the whole time, the whole time He loves you.
The whole time He blesses you.
The whole time He keeps you.
May God grant us this peace, in the name of Jesus, amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding,
guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ, our Lord, amen.
