"What Sort of Man is This?" Matthew 8:23-27 Sunday Morning Worship Service

It was June 29th, 2012, when Deidre and I were leaving dinner, dinner at the Hollies, actually.

We had dinner at them that night and left and got back to our car and checked our phones.

And we received a message from one of our neighbors, Brian, who goes to Emmanuel, often sitting over there, uh, warning us that that night there was going to be a storm and that we should prepare to be without power for several days.

Now, Deidre and I had lived in Virginia for a few months at this time, which is enough to be familiar with the way Virginia normally operates with storms.

Like if the storm has a name, then suddenly loot the grocery store, stock up on toilet paper, fill the bathtub with water, and hunker down for weeks at a time.

School's canceled, you know, a chance of snowflakes tomorrow.

School cancelled.

So we had a grid for this, and so we kind of dismissed the warning.

A Virginia storm.

We were woken up in the middle of the night by the sound of a freight train hitting Alexandria, is what it sounded like.

Um it was uh a massive storm, lightning and thunder.

It was incessant.

The sky was lit up like not even like a strobe light, it was white outside.

Not even like daylight, it was just white.

It was like a constant lightning flash.

And it was unlike anything I had ever seen in my life.

Uh and we got the kids up and went down to the sunroom to watch it.

It was just unbelievable.

And this, of course, was the uh famous Derecho of 2012.

How famous?

Well, it has its own Wikipedia page.

That's how famous.

Brian's warning was correct.

We were without power for six days at our house.

We spent the first few powering our refrigerator with some gas generator, waking up every three hours all night to feed that until we realized we had put more money in gas than the food was worth in the refrigerator.

So that was that storm.

If you remember that, we uh uh did church in the atrium that Sunday because the church had no power and the worship center has no windows, and so we flocked over there into the atrium, and uh that was the Derecho of 2012.

Six days later, power returns.

And that's in my mind when I read this passage because that is typically how storms hit us.

That's typically where storms in life appear.

They appear out of nowhere, they appear unexpected.

You don't get that much warning with them, if warning at all.

I mean, with all the radar technology and weather predictive technology and FAA shenanigans and all that they have, there was six hours of warning that night before the Derecho came.

Six hours.

That's what our technology got us.

And for us, that came in the form of a text message from a friend.

Most trials in life don't even give you that much warning.

Sometimes you see hints, sometimes you see declining health, or sometimes you see relationship tensions or gospel opposition from within your family, but most of the time trials come out of left field, so to speak.

I'm sure there's many people here this morning who are going through trials and storms in your life, and I hope this passage is used by the Lord to encourage you through them.

Let's read it.

It's Matthew 8, beginning in verse 23.

When Jesus got into the boat, his disciples followed him.

And behold, there arose a great storm on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by the waves, but he was asleep.

And they went and woke him up, saying, Save us, Lord.

We are perishing.

And he said to them, Why are you afraid?

O you little faith.

Then he arose and rebuked the winds in the sea, and there was a great calm.

And the men marveled, saying, What sort of man is this that even the winds and the sea obey him?

This passage is given to us to describe the storm the disciples encountered in the middle of the night.

But I think it is helpful for us to read it through the lens of how Matthew wants us to prepare for the storms in our own life.

And to do so, I'm going to give you an outline this morning, and it's in the form of three questions.

First, first question to ask when you're going through a storm in life.

Three questions to ask when you're going through a storm in life.

Number one, what sort of storm is this?

What sort of storm are you in?

You find yourself in a trial in life?

Ask yourself this question: What sort of trial is this?

This is what the disciples are dealing with in the boats that night.

To start with, it's a poorly timed trial.

It's a poorly timed storm.

It happens at a time in Jesus' ministry where he is exhausted.

Mark lets us know that.

He was exhausted at this point.

He had been hounded for days upon days in his ministry.

The crowds had been thick on him.

He had preached the Sermon on the Mount probably the week before, and the crowds followed him back into Capernaum.

He they pressed against him there.

The hole was open in the roof, and the person was lowered down.

I mean, that's the environment we're dealing with.

Mark lets us know that Jesus went back out to the sea to teach back out the sea again, like he had done at the Sermon on the Mount, but the crowds were too thick this time.

On the Sermon on the Mount, he was able to sit down and project his voice along the kind of natural amphitheater there, but he can't do that anymore.

Mark says he takes to a boat to get a little bit off the shore so he can project his voice to the crowds.

The crowds don't even give him that.

They get their own little flotilla of boats and they start crowding around him on the water.

He barely gets any time alone.

Mark 1 describes this scene.

People are so thick against him during this time that he's praying and healing people all day long.

He sneaks away by himself at like two in the morning to go pray by himself in some solitude.

The disciples don't even give him that.

They send out a search party, go find the missing Jesus.

They track him down, and I mean he's exhausted.

This has been day after day, and he, I mean, he says, Can't I just pray out here?

And they say, No, there's people that need to be healed.

Come back.

And Jesus says, No, let's go, let's go across the sea.

Let's go, let's get out of here.

Let me go somewhere where I can preach because that's why I came.

He's not able to teach anymore.

The crowds are so thick.

And so that's when they decide to head to the boat.

He's going to get out of town in the middle of the night and get across the sea.

He has been spent.

Jesus is exhausted at this point.

You look at the Mark and even John's account of this, it seems as if it's likely he hadn't slept in two or three days.

And so this is his chance, and they're on the boat getting out of there.

There's no good time for a storm in life, but this is particularly bad.

I mean, had it come a week earlier before the Sermon on the Mount, then he would have had some margin in his schedule.

A week later, all the crowd would have, all the crowd's going to leave him next week.

He'll be back by himself again.

Why not the storm come then?

But that's the way storms and trials in life are.

They're never appropriately timed by our schedule.

Moreover, this storm is particularly dangerous.

I don't want to bore you with the geography lesson here about the Sea of Galilee, but I'm going to bore you with the geography lesson about the Sea of Galilee.

I mean, there's no other body of water like this in the whole world.

You have to appreciate that to get this severity of the storm in your mind.

First of all, it's more of a lake than a sea.

Picture Lake Anna, really.

I mean, it's 13 miles long, seven or eight miles wide.

So a little bit wider than Lake Anna, but that's the scope we're talking about.

Don't picture the Mediterranean Sea.

Don't picture like the Aegean Sea or anything like that.

This is a lake.

But it is a lake that has its own cyclical tides.

It's the only lake in the world that has the kind of tides the Sea of Galilee has because it's 700 feet below sea level.

You can go surfing on this.

What lake do you go surfing on?

The Sea of Galilee is one.

700 feet below sea level.

And beyond that, 30 miles to the west is the Mediterranean Sea.

30 miles to the east is the Arabian Desert.

The Mediterranean Sea, one of the coolest places in that area, the cool ocean breeze, funneled in off of the Atlantic Ocean through the Mediterranean.

And then on the other side of the Arabian Desert, the hot desert winds are out there.

And then this gully in the middle, 700 feet down to the sea.

Usually the cool air is siphoned off of the Mediterranean Sea.

It comes in through the Valley of Armageddon and Mount Arbel, and it's got its own wind tunnel there.

And the winds can get extreme, up to 70 miles an hour on a typical afternoon when the wind is being pulled off of the Mediterranean.

Sometimes the year the wind goes the other way, and it's the hot air, depending on the pressure.

The hot air comes off of the desert and it goes over the sea.

And so you get these winds that are clashing.

Normally in the world, wind goes west to east of, of course, but here sometimes it goes east to west as the hot air is pulled in.

This can create huge breezes in the afternoon.

And if you've been to the Sea of Galilee, you know this in the afternoons the winds can get very, very high, and then they die down, of course.

Since the afternoons, the sun starts to set and the ocean is cooling, and the hot air in the desert also cools and as it's risen above the sea and it creates this huge confluence of air.

But every now and then, every now and then, this turns into a massive storm.

Not normally, probably once every five years or so is what I've read in books.

About every five years ago, they'll have something that they just call a superstorm.

That's the technical term for it.

A superstorm.

Think of a better name, but that's what they got.

And this is where the cold air it's sucked in off of the Mediterranean.

It goes down into the water, and then it can escape because the hot air from the desert acts as a ceiling, and it churns and it churns and it churns, and the waves grow greater and greater and greater.

And so I liken it to the Direccio that we had out here.

The Direccio is not a once-in-a-lifetime kind of event.

But if you were here seven years ago, you remember it.

You don't expect to be in another one anytime soon.

It's that level of weather phenomenon that we're accounted here in this chapter.

It's the kind of storm that would happen maybe once or twice a decade.

These disciples, they grew up on the Sea of Galilee.

Of the 12 disciples, 11 of them are from Galilee.

At least three of them are professional fishermen.

They know what this storm is like, and they know how dangerous it is.

They know that if you're out there on the water during this kind of storm, it is over.

You're dead.

There's no getting out of one of these storms.

The best way to survive this kind of storm is not cross the lake in the middle of the night when it's windy.

There's going to be no daylight out.

Of course, the storm is going to block the moon and the stars.

That being said, Luke lets us know a little bit more about the weather here.

Luke lets us know that there was a calm breeze, like a steady breeze, which meant it's a perfect night for sailing.

These boats would fit about 12 or 15 people in it.

A lot of these boats have been excavated.

You know exactly what they were like.

15 people is the normal capacity.

They'd have one or two sails, they'd have oars.

Luke tells you the wind was such they didn't need the oars.

The wind blowing from west to east, so it's the cool breeze that's blowing across.

This is perfect sailing weather.

You don't need to fight with the wind, you don't need to kind of tack across the sea.

You just flow up your sail and put in the oars and you just cruise an autopilot as you go to sleep.

That's what they're doing.

But then the storm hits.

Was it wise to cross in the middle of the night?

I mean, I don't know.

These guys grow up on the lake.

But aside from that, Jesus told them get in the boat.

So there they are.

Middle of the night.

What kind of storm is this?

Well, it's a big one.

It's an unexpected one.

It's an ill-timed one.

It's a life-threatening one.

To call this an inconvenient storm would be minimizing it.

To call it a dangerous storm is to not grasp what they're going through.

I mean, swimming in Burke Lake is dangerous.

Kayaking over Great Falls is dangerous.

This isn't dangerous.

This is bungee jumping without a cord.

You see how it's a different category?

This is climbing without a rope.

This is swimming while holding a plugged-in appliance, kind of dangerous.

That's what this is.

And the disciples are aware.

Or to borrow Matthew's words, this is the boat is being swamped with water, kind of dangerous.

You don't need to know much about boats to know that when it gets swamped with water, that's bad.

Now normally, when you're going through a trial like this, you're going through a storm like this, your first attitude is to wonder, does God know what you're going through?

And that's a fair question with these guys out on the lake.

Is God aware of what their struggle is?

Is God aware they're caught in some hurricane-style winds here?

Out on the sea.

Is God aware?

Well, of course he's aware because Jesus is in the boat.

And so they don't have an escape clause in their mind.

They can't say this is a storm that is catching God off guard.

This is a storm that God was not prepared for, not expecting, or didn't want us to be in, because Jesus is on the boat, and moreover, Jesus told them to get on the boat.

And so they're out there at the command of Jesus and stuck in this storm.

And so whatever you say about the storm is as dangerous and as life-threatening as it is.

It's also a storm that's happening on the watch of God.

God is certainly sovereign over this storm.

Moreover, the disciples were not out there doing something bad when the storm hits.

It's not like they were out there on a party on the lake.

It's not like they were out there fishing at night and poaching, so to speak, to avoid any limits.

They weren't doing illegal fishing and the storm hits.

It's not even like they were doing something morally neutral.

It's not just like they were commuting to work and got stuck in a storm.

No, they were doing the best thing possible.

They were obeying Jesus, serving Jesus while with Jesus.

Jesus said, let's go from this side to this side.

I can't preach and heal here anymore.

I want to go preach and heal over there.

And so they are very literally serving Jesus in his life.

And they're stuck in a storm with him.

From this, you can deduce this very basic principle, and you need to remember this.

Serving Christ does not make you exempt from storms.

Serving Christ does not make you exempt from storms.

What kind of storm is this?

One that comes upon people who are serving Jesus.

There's no out on this.

Oh, if I would have lived my life differently, or if I would have parented differently, this would have gone differently, or if I would have loved my wife differently, then this would have happened differently, or if I would have worked harder at work, then this storm wouldn't have come.

Nonsense.

They are stuck in this storm through no fault of their own, but only because they were listening to Jesus.

That's what kind of storm this is.

Second question.

What sort of faith is this?

What sort of faith is this?

What kind of faith did they have while they're stuck in the storm?

Well, verse 24.

The great storm comes on the sea.

The boat was being swamped by the waves.

Jesus was asleep.

I mean, that's you're broken if you don't at least chuckle at this scene.

Jesus is asleep.

Mark lets you know he's asleep in the captain's chair, on the cushion, they call it.

The back row of the benches where you'd steer from, there's one seat with a cushion on it.

That's the captain's chair.

Jesus is asleep in a storm while sitting in the captain's chair on their boat.

I mean, this is funny.

You can't make this stuff up.

You know, you think of the, you hear a strange sound in your house at night, and that wakes you up.

But if it's a sound that you know often happens, it doesn't wake you up anymore.

You're expecting it, so to speak.

Here, Jesus is exhausted from all of his ministry, but also this storm has not caught him unawares.

He's asleep through it.

And the boat is swamped.

He's being doused with water while he's asleep in the captain's chair.

You think, I my mind goes to that Air France flight that crashed in the Atlantic from Brazil so many years ago, five, seven years ago, however long ago, and you know, the black box recordings are recovered, and the captain was asleep in his sleeping room up there.

It's the crew restroom.

Sound asleep, and the plane starts diving, the autopilot disengages and they can't recover it.

They're trying to pull it up and it doesn't work, and the turbulence wakes the captain up and he comes into the cockpit and he begins yelling at the co-pilots.

Like, what are you doing?

They're giving conflicting instructions, and he's rebuking them, and the plane crashes.

You'd almost expect to see that kind of scene here.

You would expect this to end with a boat crash.

Same starting point, the captain's asleep, only here.

The captain doesn't wake up.

He sleeps through the turbulence.

Instead, it's the disciples that wake him up.

They come running over to him and they're yelling at him.

Matthew says they're shouting, Save us, Lord, we're perishing.

Now, Matthew, you're going to see that here and then later on, Matthew is being as nice as he can to the disciples.

He's numbered among them, and so he's presenting them in a very as positive light as possible.

Mark's gospel gives you a little bit more insight because Mark, you know, Mark wasn't there.

Mark is getting his account from Peter, so there's that.

Mark says that they wake Jesus up shouting at him.

Do you remember what they're shouting?

Lord, don't you care about us?

That's their question.

Don't you care, Jesus?

And that shows you right away what I meant earlier with what kind of storm is this?

Our normal attitude going through a trial is that God must not know about this because if God knew about it, he would fix it.

And then our heart right away, when you start thinking like that, notice where your heart goes.

Your heart right away goes to, God, don't you care about me?

Don't you?

Don't you know what I'm going through?

And we treat God as if he's unaware of our trial.

Well, Jesus himself is in the boat.

He's there.

And he has woken up, and he wakes up with a question.

He says, Why are you afraid?

And just pause there.

That's the good thing about reading it, is you can pause.

If you're there in real life, you don't get to pause.

You don't get to think about it.

You just get dragged along the rest of Jesus' sentence there.

But reading it, we can pause.

Why are you afraid?

Jesus asks.

And that is the question, isn't it?

The disciples have panic written all over their faces.

They don't know what's going on.

Maybe the disciples were thinking of Psalm 107.

Psalm 107, verse 28.

Psalms 107:28

They cried out to Yahweh in their trouble.

He brought them out of their storm.

He caused the storm to be still so the waves of the sea would be hushed.

It's possible they were thinking of that psalm, and that's why they woke him up.

I remember getting woken up in the derecho, and I forget if I woke Deedra up or she woke me up, but either way, you know, if she woke me up, what did she want me to do about the storm?

If I woke her up, what did I want her to do?

Are we gonna we walk down and watched it?

Oh, there goes the patio furniture.

Find the trampoline the half mile down the creek, kind of thing.

I'm not gonna go out there and hold on to it.

I mean, you just watch it and admire.

And what were the disciples doing waking Jesus?

What did they want him to do?

And I think it's just a natural human reaction to fear.

Come on, Jesus, help! We're dying out here.

And Jesus' response to them is so insightful.

He sees the fear on their faces, he sees the doubt all over them.

And his question is perfect for the occasion.

Why are you afraid?

And so I want you to wrestle with that question in your hearts right now.

You're going through a trial in life.

I mean, you understand this story is not, it's given to you to describe what happened to Jesus that night on the, but that's not where its importance comes from.

Its importance and its application to you doesn't come from this storm with the meteorological cycle of the Arabian desert in the Mediterranean Sea.

This story is to help you come to grips with how you respond in trials and storms in your life.

You feel like your marriage is falling apart.

You feel like your kids are rebelling.

You feel like your job is not appreciating you and you're getting passed over.

You feel like just trial after trial, and maybe life is one disappointment after another disappointment.

You can't handle another one, and then another one comes and you say this.

You say, God, don't you care about me?

God, don't you see this?

God, are you asleep at the wheel?

And the response from God is this question to you: Why are you afraid?

Now it's a very interesting question in this scene right here on the boat that's being flooded with water.

I mean, is that not an obvious question?

It's not obvious to Jesus.

He's asking it.

Just by the nature of the fact, he's asking the question.

You have to come to grips with the answer to that.

What is the answer the disciples would give?

They're afraid of drowning.

They don't think Jesus knows.

They are so consumed about protecting their own flesh, their own life.

They've lost sight of God's sovereignty over the storm.

They think that Jesus is not in control.

They think that their life is precious to them and they don't want to lose it, is the bottom line, and they don't trust God with it.

Okay?

That's the answer.

I mean, that's the honest answer.

Why are you afraid in a trial?

Forget the storm for a second.

Ask yourself that question.

Why are you afraid of the trial you're going through?

Why are you afraid of what's happening in your family?

As awful as it is, why are you afraid?

Is it because you don't think God knows?

Is it because you, like the disciples, don't think God cares?

Is it because you care more about your own life than you think God does?

And what's the answer you're going to give him?

He's asking the question.

Why are you afraid?

And it follows with a rebuke.

Oh, you have little faith.

And don't try to get the disciples off the hook here by saying, oh, if you have faith the side of a must-size of a mustard seed, you can move mountains.

This is not that sermon, okay?

Oh, you have little faith.

It's not meant to be good to them.

It's in contrast, of course, with the centurion.

We saw, what, 15 verses earlier?

Remember the centurion?

Jesus marvels at him.

Jesus' jaw drops looking at the centurion and then says, I haven't seen this kind of faith in anyone in Israel before.

Jesus says, You have such great faith to the centurion.

Now fast forward 15 verses.

Where's somebody with faith on this boat?

These boats would fit 15 people, as I said.

All 12 disciples are there.

Probably, I don't know, Judas might have been flying differently first class across the lake, but pretend all 12 are there.

Jesus is there.

They got room for one more.

You almost wish the centurion was there to see what that would be like.

Instead, Jesus says, Oh, you have so little faith.

The fact that they're afraid and fearing for their own life, I mean, let this hit you.

The fact that they are afraid and fearing for their own life, in Jesus' estimation, demonstrates an inadequate, insufficient, really a sad amount of faith.

It's so easy to write it off as a natural reaction.

You're going through a trial.

Of course I'm scared.

Of course I'm disappointed about how this is turning out.

Of course I'm sad about what's happening in my family.

Of course I don't want to go through this health trial.

Of course I'm afraid of dying.

Okay, of course I am, God.

This story is given to you to just calibrate that a little bit.

It may be the natural human reaction.

It is not the reaction Jesus is looking for.

It is the reaction that he describes as having very little faith.

So it's worth asking yourself, what is the difference between having little faith and great faith?

What is the difference between being rebuked by Jesus in a trial and having Jesus marvel at you in the trial, like we saw with the centurion?

What's the difference between these two?

And I'm telling you, get your mind around the answer to this question.

If your stability and your faith is dictated by circumstances, it is insufficient faith.

If your stability and your faith is dictated by your theology, then it is a mature and robust faith.

That is the difference.

Do you come into this storm trying to navigate by your experiences, or do you come into the storm anchored in the truth about God?

Theology.

One is shallow and one is mature.

Listen, it is easy to trust God when you're not in a storm.

It's easy to trust God when your kids are doing well.

It's easy to trust God when you're, you know, your kids are little kids when they're sleeping through the night.

Oh, praise Jesus, I trust him.

You know, older kids when they're behaving at school and they're not getting drawn into the wrong crowd, and they're just good kids, you know.

Older than that, they've got good degrees, and they're marrying good people, and they're having families the right way.

Oh, praise Jesus, he's in on this throne.

And later than that, oh, I've got a great relationship with my grandkids.

All is well in the world, and I'm healthy, and God is so good.

The cat is healthy, praise Jesus.

This is the kind of faith that the devil sees through.

You understand that.

God tells the devil, devil, look at Job.

And the devil tells God, of course, Job loves you.

He's got ten kids, and they're all following you, and he's got a good job, and he's rich, and he's healthy.

Of course he has faith.

You can almost hear the devil laughing.

Of course he's got who wouldn't.

And then it's all stripped away.

Ten fresh graves, no more crops.

And then he has faith.

And his faith is totally anchored in who God is.

That's the difference.

Theology is what you can root your faith in.

And then the storms of life come and it batters the boat, it tears the sails.

Of course, the sails get torn.

Circumstances hurt, they cause pain.

They rip sails, they fill boats with water.

I mean, just remember this.

You don't get to choose your trial.

You don't get to choose what boat you're in.

The disciples didn't choose the boat.

Jesus said, get in.

That's the nature of trials.

And so when you're there, you cannot fall back on, oh, if I would have done lived differently or done this or that differently, I wouldn't be in this trial.

No, God is sovereign over your trial.

You have to ask yourself, what is God like in this trial?

What's he doing here?

What do I know about God?

What is do I know to be true about him and his character?

That's how you get through a trial like this with maturity.

So ask yourself, what were the disciples doing out there in the middle of the night, in a massive, once-in-a-decade kind of storm?

What are they doing out there?

Well, Jesus told them to be there.

Great, great answer.

Why?

To expose their shallow, fickle faith.

That's why they're out there.

To be exposed before God.

And it worked.

They did get exposed.

What's the antidote to that?

Having a mature faith rooted in Christ.

Speaking of Christ, this leads to our third question.

What sort of savior is this?

We saw what sort of storm this is, we saw what sort of faith this is.

Thirdly, what sort of savior is this?

I mean, look at the response in verse 26.

Jesus rose, rebukes the wind and the sea.

I mean, who does that?

Who rebukes the wind and the sea?

Crazy people on the street yell at the wind and the sea.

In the Bible, weather is given to you to really, I know it's anthropomorphic, but weather is given to you to personify mankind's impotency, futility.

You cannot control the weather.

That's the way the book of Job ends with four chapters on the weather.

You think you're mighty, Job?

You think people are awesome, Job?

You command the storm.

You boss lightning bolts around Job.

Can't do any of that.

People cannot control the wind.

We shoot cannons at the wind, we seed the clouds to get it terena.

It's almost comical.

We cannot control the weather.

We can't control the winds.

We can't control the waves.

I've had friends that are into surfing and they, you know, they follow the surf report.

No, waves are breaking at this place over here, this beach over here, and they all pile in their cars and race on over there and paddle out, and then surf report changes.

Actually, it's at this beach over here, and they all dry off and hop back in the cars, and that's the life of a surfer right there.

Can't control the waves.

Not only can Jesus control them, he rebukes them.

Rebuke is a word, I mean, it means rebuke.

It's a command you give to a moral actor.

You see somebody acting morally in an inappropriate way, you rebuke them.

That's what the word is.

And so Jesus rebukes the wind and the waves as if they were moral agents acting in an inappropriate way.

What are you doing?

He said, I don't know the content of his rebuke, but he says something to them.

The only thing crazier than rebuking the wind in the waves, by the way, is what happens in the next part of the verse.

The wind and the waves obey him.

The wind in the waves repent.

They get saved.

What are you doing?

Battering the boat with the savior in it.

Come on.

Ho.

And there was a great calm, it says.

Have you seen the word great before in this narrative?

Yeah, a few verses earlier, when there was a great storm.

The magnitude of the storm is eclipsed only by the magnitude of the silence afterwards.

You've heard of the calm before the storm.

This is the storm after the calm that we're going to get to in a second.

There was a massive calm, a great calm.

What makes a calm great?

Have you ever described a calm as great?

Oh, it's great lake calm.

Maybe.

If you like hear crickets across the lake.

It went from this, the water being churned and flooding the boat to just placid.

Not even a ripple.

You can hear the sound on the other side.

That would be unusual on any night.

Much less after the storm they were just in.

What do you do with that?

They say verse 27, the men marveled.

Notice how Matthew refers to them as the men.

Earlier, verse 23, they were the disciples.

Now they're not even called the disciples, just these men.

Out on the boat.

They marveled.

Again, Matthew is being kind.

Matthew calls it, says that they marveled.

Marvel is a positive word.

Jesus marveled earlier at the centurion.

Remember, Jesus saw the centurion's faith.

He marveled at them.

Now the disciples are just marveling Jesus.

Mark uses a different word, and the word Mark uses is great.

It's a great Peter word.

It's filled with fear.

Mark says they were terrified.

They were freaking out out there.

They were filled with fear about this.

Mark says that they were more afraid after the storm than before the storm.

They were blown away, not by the winds, but by the Savior.

They marveled, saying, What sort of man is this?

What an incredible phrase they use.

What sort of man is this?

They don't even have a grid for what they're experiencing right now.

And they have seen a lot this week, but this is over the top.

What sort of man is this?

What sort of man is this?

Didn't Moses part the Red Sea?

Yeah, but remember how Moses parted.

He had to use his staff.

Even earlier in the battle, they had victory, but he had to have help holding his arms up.

I mean, that's what we're dealing with here.

Moses needed to help the lead of his arms up.

When it came time to cross the sea, he needed his staff to plant in it.

Later on, he tried to plant his staff in the rock to get water to come out of it, which worked, but God cursed Moses for it and killed him for it, really.

And the point was that Moses was acting as if he and his staff had all the power.

He and his staff didn't have the power.

It was God's power delegated briefly to Moses for one particular act.

Jesus is not in that category.

Jesus is not operating with delegated power given by God and the staff for one moment while the disciples help him.

This is not this, not this scene.

Jesus is sleeping.

He's woken up, rebukes the wind and the waves, and they're silent again.

From all I know, Jesus fell back asleep.

This is very not Moses-like.

God is the one who rules the wind and the waves.

The earth was formless and void.

The Spirit of God hovered upon the face of the waters.

It is God who divided the water from the dry land.

It is God who hovers.

It is God who controls the wind and God who makes the waves.

God is sovereign over the weather.

He's sovereign over all kinds of things, but even, especially, particularly over the weather.

So here the disciples find themselves face to face in the boat with the one who's sovereign over the weather.

And they're terrified.

Your child will be the savior of Israel.

And the angel disappears and Manoah loses it.

Samson's dad loses it.

Says, Honey, close up shop, we're dead.

Roll up the curtains, it's over.

We're not gonna live.

She says, Why?

Why do you say that?

And he says, Because we saw God.

You can't see God and live.

Are you out of your mind?

That's in a sense the right response.

This is the response the disciples are happening in the boat here, only the angel didn't go away.

The angel went back to sleep.

They're sitting there face to face with the creator of the universe.

What do you do?

Would you rather be hit by a derecho or have to share a hotel room with the one who commands derechos?

That's the question the disciples have.

And it's one thing to say, oh yeah, it's okay to be hanging around with God in human flesh because it's nice to get to know him and he has good wisdom or whatever your answer would be.

You're not thinking adequately about his holiness and your sin if that's your answer.

His holiness is more extreme than you imagine, your sin more profound, and now your sin is exposed.

It's the old adage, you know, our kids used to ask the question, hey, can that person see me?

And it's a simple rule, simple principle.

If you can see them, they can see you.

That's their rule in life, right?

If you can see them, yes, they can see you.

The disciples are going through that right now on the boat.

If they can see God, that means God can see them.

Sigmund Freud, the founder of modern psychology, said lots of silly things.

One of the silliest is this quote People develop religion to help them cope with the fear of nature, storms, and disease.

What's missing from that analysis is that people fear holiness more than a hurricane.

It's more terrifying to be exposed as a sinner you are than it is to be stuck in a storm.

And that brings you back to this question.

What is the God man, God in human flesh, what is the God man doing with his storm-stopping, wind rebuking, hurricane-controlling power out there on the Sea of Galilee?

If God were to come to Earth, first of all, why would he go to Israel instead of Rome or to Alexandria or someplace?

So that would be a different sermon.

Granted, he's in Israel now.

Why would he end up on the Sea of Galilee?

That's in the far fung corner in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night, with eleven disciples and one traitor on a boat.

That's his lot in life right now.

With all of this power.

In the context of Matthew's gospel, what he's doing there is he's demonstrating, like all the miracles in the section are, that if he has the authority to heal lepers, if he has the authority to raise the dead or to cast out demons, if he has the authority to rebuke the wind and the waves, then he has the authority to do something more difficult than that, which is to forgive sins.

No one can forgive sins except God.

So that you know he has the unique authority to forgive sins, he rebukes the wind and the waves.

Ask yourself this.

Are you afraid of the storms outside of your boats?

Or do you trust the captain of the storm?

Is there a bigger storm in your heart than there is in the world?

Submit your life to Christ.

Place your faith in him, give your trust to him.

So when you go through a trial, you go through it as one whose sins are forgiven.

You have confidence the right person is in the captain's seat and it is not you.

Your beacon, your navigational beacon, is your theology, not your circumstances.

You are anchored in the word of God, not your happiness, and your confidence is high regardless of your circumstances, because Jesus Christ is the one who's forgiven you of your sins.

Lord, we're grateful that you came so that we would have life and have it abundantly.

We're grateful that you are indeed our captain.

Reminded of the words of the hymn, Be Still My Soul, that we take confidence that the waves and wind still know the voice who ruled them while he dwelt below.

We take confidence now this very day, knowing that you rule the wind, you rule the waves.

They obey your command.

I pray that we would as well.

Help us be as obedient as the wind and the waves.

We're grateful that you extend faith to us through the good news of Jesus Christ.

I pray for anyone who's here today that's going through a storm that doesn't trust you through it.

I pray that you would use this storm to wake them up.

You would use this storm to open their eyes to the truth, that you alone are the way, the truth, and the life.

We're grateful that you led your sinless life so that you could die a sinner's death.

You led a perfect life to die the death that we deserve.

You rose a new life to offer a new life to all those who would believe.

Thanks for this promise in Jesus' name.

Amen.

You have been listening to Emmanuel with Pastor Jesse Johnson.

You can find more resources like this at IBCBA.com.

Here is a parting word from Pastor Jesse.

If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, iBCBA.com.

If you're not a member of the local church and you live in the Washington, DC area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel.

We're located in Northern Virginia.

And for more information about when and where we worship, check out our church website.

I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service.

But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.

Now may God bless you this week.