Jesus Calms The Storm

Hear now the word of the true and living God, Mark four, starting in verse thirty-five.

On that day when evening had come, he said to them, Let us go across to the other side.

And leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was, and other boats were with him.

And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that the boat was already filling.

But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion, and they woke him and said to him, Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?

And he awoke and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, Peace, be still.

And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm.

He said to them, Why are you so afraid?

Have you still no faith?

And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, Who then is this that even the wind and the sea obey him?

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Thanks for joining us this morning.

Thanks for this the hidden slide.

A secret round of applause is very kind.

Uh it's Pastor's Appreciation Month.

That's not just a new part of our liturgy.

Also, uh thanks to Tina for uh filling in for Zach today.

Yeah, round of applause is appropriate.

It's always wonderful when someone fills in for either of us because uh we either get to be out of town, which is fun, uh, or we get to attend church, which Zach is getting to do this morning.

And that's really wonderful uh for us.

It always feels really special to get to go to church.

And not like, you know, we're at church now, but you know.

You guys get it.

You know, I don't need anything.

Uh I'll uh uh share some announcements and then we'll go ahead and pray and get into today's text.

Uh, this upcoming Wednesday, we're beginning a class taught by Jacob Carr called Christianity Explored.

And the purpose of this class is to provide a space for people who are interested in the Christian faith uh or who have questions that they don't feel like they have a space where they can really honestly ask their questions about Christianity.

Uh, this class is designed for or it's designed with you in mind.

So we uh uh would ask that you would sign up for this class.

It'll I think it'll be a really wonderful six weeks.

It's basically dinner and discussion moving through the book of Mark, which we're also moving through together as a church.

Uh so if you know somebody who fits that description, or you yourself fit that description, you can sign up in our app.

Uh we we have an app.

We'll go ahead and announce that.

Uh and we we communicate just like everything through it.

So if you go to your app store of choice uh and type in Redemption Church Denver, you have to type in Denver because there's like a million redemption churches.

Wish somebody would have told me that.

Uh and there's uh uh search search that and it's the it has our little RC logo, and you can tap on that, tap calendar, and it explains everything that's happening in our church right now.

It's like what I build my announcements off of uh is that calendar.

So you too can do the same.

Give announcements to your family at home.

My wife loves it.

We'll see if yours does.

October 30th.

Uh we're having a uh Tennyson Street is having a fall fest on October 30th, and we're we get to be a part of it.

So our church is part of the Tennyson Biz Tennyson Berkeley Business Association, the TBBA.

Yeah, we're moving up in the world.

And we uh are going to have uh a tent there and a booth with just like information about the church, some crafts for kids, and it's a really fun event.

They close down Tennyson Street, and uh there's all sorts of different breweries uh, you know, and crafts and things like that.

Uh it when you mix the breweries and the crafts, both get better.

So uh we recommend coming and uh joining us for that.

That's October 30th, Saturday, October 30th.

It's a really fun uh way to connect with the community as a church.

And lastly, on November 7th, right after church, we're having a training for Redemption Kids volunteers.

So this is a training for all volunteers.

So if you're just starting Redemption Kids as a volunteer, and uh then you need to go to this training.

But also if you're a current volunteer, go ahead and plan on going to this training.

It will uh describe basically new policies and procedures and ways of going about things.

If you're interested in volunteering Redemption Kids, uh I really recommend it.

Uh so a thing to know is there's all sorts of uh rhythms that you can volunteer in.

You can volunteer monthly, quarterly, you know, once a year, pop in.

But we really, it's a space that we really need volunteers consistently.

So if you're looking for a place to get involved and helped out and help out in our church, Redemption Kids is a place to do it.

And you can sign up for that, guess where?

In the app, that's right.

Wonderful.

Yeah, give uh I like to say, I don't I've said this like twice, but uh give give your give your home church a place on your home screen.

That's probably enough for today.

Um if you'd like to hear more jokes like that consistently, um you can also give on the app so that we can keep so that we can keep doing this together.

All right, let's pray before I uh keep having too much fun up here.

Holy Father, we praise you for your word and for these rhythms that you've put into our lives, uh, that you've built into creation, this seven-day rhythm, and that we get to mark that by gathering together as a church in worship of you.

Lord, I pray that this space in our week would be rejuvenating just as the Sabbath is intended to be, and that our hearts would be aligned together in worship of you.

And Lord, that you would show us through your word how you have called us to live and a clear picture of who you are.

Lord, we pray that we might see you, Jesus, this morning in your word, and that that might transform our hearts.

We lift this up in Jesus' name, amen.

So we're continuing moving through Mark, and this morning, after uh, you know, about a month and a half of looking at the parables, we're moving into uh a narrative that comes right after Jesus' parables on all the seeds and farmers and sowing.

And so we finally get to uh get to see uh a story with some action in it, and this story has a lot of action.

This is where Jesus calms the storm.

Him and his disciples are on a you know, a Galilean fishing boat, and they are moving through the sea and a in a uh huge storm ramps up and begins to swamp the boat.

And in the midst of that, there's deep anxiety and nervousness, and Jesus is asleep on a cushion.

Uh, he's in the sleep in the back of the boat.

Uh, while we're still a little jokey right now, um we came up with this earlier while we were praying.

A good sermon title would be Jesus Take the Keel.

Yeah.

I thought that was worth sharing.

Uh, and that's the story that uh we're we're seeing today.

Now, a boat in a storm is a wonderful picture.

It's a it's a wonderful analogy that even us in a landlocked locked state like ours, uh, we can easily relate to because we know what it's like to be in a small place of safety, surrounded by vulnerability and surrounded by unknown and difficulty and a sort of swirl of chaos.

We all know what that feeling is like.

Uh a boat in the midst of a storm captures something in this, although very specific experience, it captures something that is really universal to being human.

We are deeply vulnerable creatures.

Another example of a boat in a storm type of story is something that you all likely experienced being in elementary school, and you go through the lunch line and you get your lunch, and then you turn around and there's a whole lunchroom.

And you wonder, where will I sit?

What are you walking with your little tray through that lunchroom?

You're a boat in a storm.

You're surrounded by potential and chaos, and uh, and there's this little little you're you're so exposed by your own vulnerability, where you as a child need to navigate in order to find a place of safety.

How will you make it through the waters of the lunchroom?

And the crazy thing about that experience that we all have as children in elementary school is that it doesn't end.

We don't outgrow that type of experience.

And so we find these little cocoons of comfort, and then we realize that we are surrounded by chaos and vulnerability while we're in the midst of those.

You're in a job that works for a little while, and then you consider, I think I'm gonna change jobs, which I think like everybody's deciding to do all at once right now.

The great resignation.

Isn't that what they call it?

Yeah, so uh so everybody, what are you deciding to do there?

I'm going to leave this little, you know, cocoon of safety.

I'm going to go off into the chaos and the waters of I don't know if I'll get a job or where it is.

Many of you are likely in that position right now.

It is a boat in a storm.

We are vulnerable.

And this story shows it.

Throughout scripture, this picture is used over and over again of uh a boat in the midst of the waters, being able to somehow navigate a life through the chaos.

And we see this picture even from the very beginning.

Noah, that's the story, right?

It's a boat in a storm.

Noah builds the ark, and the ark becomes this safe space that moves through the chaos that's swirling around them.

Likewise, we see this in Moses' life, like in lots of aspects of Moses' life.

Everything that Moses does has to do with water.

You notice that?

Not everything, but like a lot of things.

Uh there as he as a baby, he uh is uh hidden in a little boat uh that is hidden in the Nile.

And what is the chaos that's swirling around him?

Well, it's the river, and it's also the political environment that he's in that is literally seeking to kill him as a child.

And so he's navigated through these waters.

And then later on in his life, things don't seem to change.

He has his back up against the ocean with the Israelites that he's led out of Egypt, and that same, he's between the water, and that same political force is coming to kill him.

The shape of his life barely changes as he goes.

And we see that the Lord parts the water so that they're able to be brought through the waters on dry land, like a boat in a storm.

Likewise, we see this picture in the story of Jonah, which is really relevant to the story we're looking at today.

Remember Jonah, what's he famous for?

Yeah, well, running away, okay.

Most people go to the whale, but Sebastian, it makes sense.

Uh the uh uh yeah, he's he's famous, of course, for getting swallowed by a whale.

And what is the the whale doing?

What's the whale rescue him from?

Remember, he was on a boat in the middle of a storm, running away from God.

He gets thrown in, the sea's calmed, but then he's trapped in the waters, and God sends the whale to rescue him out of the waters.

He's brought through the chaos of the waters by the providence of God.

And uh likewise, we see this in Paul, his missionary journeys frequently.

Uh it's uh three times he's shipwrecked, uh, which is encouraging because it means if you've only made a shipwreck of your ministry a couple of times, you still got a third and you just catch up to Paul.

But there's a he's he frequently experiences this uh this vulnerability of a boat in the midst of a storm.

Now, this story is Jesus' boat in the midst of a storm story.

You see that we're entering like a this is like a genre that we're entering in scripture of the boat in the midst of a storm, because we have to understand what Jesus means to us in the midst of our vulnerability, in the terrible storms of our lives, because if we don't understand him there, then for much of our life, he won't mean anything.

Because that's where we live.

We live in the midst of storms, surrounded by a swirling chaos.

We're absolutely vulnerable there.

So we have to see what Jesus means in that space.

In this story, there are three things that are called great, that Mark calls great in this story.

There's a great storm that's followed by a great calm, which is followed by a great fear.

So as we move through the text, we're going to move through looking at those three things: a great storm, a great calm, and a great fear.

Let's start off with a great storm.

Mark 4, 35 to 36.

We'll get some context.

On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, Let us go across to the other side.

And leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was, and other boats were with him.

Now, you may remember, and it it stood out to actually just my wife this morning was reading this, and she says, Why does it say just as he was?

Why does it say they took him just as he was?

Well, you may remember, it's been like six weeks now, but at the beginning of Mark chapter four, the way, the place that Jesus was when he was sharing all those parables and teaching to the multitudes is sitting on a boat, and the crowds were gathered around the shore, using the shore like an amphitheater.

They were on the banks around him, and he's sitting on a boat.

So when it says that uh they took him just to the other side, just as he was, he was already sitting in the boat.

He was just like, okay, let's let's get out of here.

We're done teaching for the day.

And it's Jesus' idea to go across to the other side.

He says, All right, well, it's time now, we're done teaching for the day.

Let's go across to the other side of the sea.

The other side of the sea that uh they're referring to is a place that has uh multiple different words to describe it throughout scripture, multiple different names.

Um, but uh one of them is called Gar Garays Garasa, uh, where the Garasenes are, um, garada are where the Garodines are.

Um and what's important about the other side is that it's a Gentile city.

So up until now, Jesus had only been teaching and preaching in Hebrew-Jewish areas.

Now they're going across to the other side for the first time to go minister to the Gentiles.

This is a this is a big deal uh geographically and for the shape of Jesus' ministry for where he's headed.

So they take Jesus just as he was, and it's Jesus' idea, and we're gonna head over for the first time to minister to the Gentiles.

There's a real shift in our narrative happening.

We're gonna get some some new sort of adventures on this new side of the narrative.

And one starts right away, Mark 437, and a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat so that the boat was already filling.

So though this sea uh is 200 feet below sea level.

So, which is weird because it's a sea, isn't it wherever it is, sea level, but it's below sea level, and it there it's surrounded by these huge mountains.

And you know how on the front range we get crazy wind.

Uh, it's like one of our best kept secrets.

I remember thinking in Boulder, it's like this is like Boulder's best kept secret, that like 80 out of 100 days, it's incredibly windy.

Uh well, that's because coming down off of the mountains onto this plane, we get these Chinook winds that are extremely severe, extremely powerful.

And it's the same sort of geographical setting for the Sea of Galilee.

These winds rush down from the mountains, down into below sea level.

And so you can get these storms that are incredibly intense that uh ramp up really quickly.

And one of these storms is what arrives.

And the waves start breaking into the boat, and so that the boat was already filling.

So what we get here is a picture of their vulnerability, and one that we can relate to in our own lives.

You know, we we've got these little we've got these little boats of this life that you've crafted.

And you're able to maintain a sort of barrier between your life that you've crafted and the chaos of potential that you move through in the world.

But then what can happen is some of that chaos can start to breach into your boat.

And when it does, you it's like a positive feedback loop because all of a sudden you've got water in your boat and your boat sinks a little lower.

And that makes it a little easier for more water to get into your boat, and so you sink a little bit lower.

And so you lose a job, and then when you lose the job, all of a sudden you you become emotionally vulnerable.

And so you uh participate in some of your old coping mechanisms.

And then when you're in those old coping mechanisms, then it becomes harder to become motivated to go get another job, and then you sink lower and lower.

That's the way our vulnerability works as people.

When the chaos of potential of the outside world starts to breach in to what we have created as our normal, as our homeostasis, as the place that where we think we can thrive and we're protected.

Our true vulnerability is exposed.

Now, that's what happens here, and the boat is already filling.

So it's sinking lower and lower.

And here's the response of the disciples, along with the response of Jesus.

In Mark 4:38, it says, But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion.

Mark 4:38

Jesus in the midst of the storm is in the back of the boat, and they're it Mark is the only gospel writer to mention the cushion, but I think he just wants to rub it in.

He's asleep on the cushion in the back of the boat.

And so the disciples woke him, said to him, Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?

Now, the disciples are angry with Jesus.

They're angry because he's sleeping.

And you can tell they're angry just by the sarcastic tone of their reaction to him.

Do you not care that we are perishing?

But then you you consider the situation, and it's almost as though it was crafted by Jesus to provoke the disciples.

It's as though it was crafted by Jesus to elicit this type of angry response.

Because consider, he is the one, at least at a human level, who said, Hey, let's go across the sea.

It's evening, let's go across to the other side.

They're in the middle of Jesus' idea.

Okay, it's his idea to go across.

They're being obedient to Jesus.

And it's in the midst of their obedience that the storm wells up and they're surrounded by it.

And in the midst of obedience to Jesus, i in the midst of this storm, with his this is Jesus' idea, Jesus himself seems to be absent.

As though he's taking no responsibility whatsoever for the position that he's gotten his disciples in.

They must have been thinking, we're fishermen, it's evening.

Why did we listen to the carpenter?

Who, by the way, is doing nothing to help us in this situation.

Do you not care that we are perishing?

Now, if you remember the story of Jonah, Jonah is told by God, go minister to actually Gentiles.

Jonah is the first prophet in the Old Testament who sent specifically to a Gentile city.

It's one of the many parallels between this story and the story of Jonah.

This is Jesus' first trip across the sea to minister to the Gentiles.

And Jonah was sent to minister to the Gentiles, and he sent to minister to the city called Nineveh.

Nineveh was a part of an empire that had destroyed Israel.

Israel before and was full of non-Jewish people, Gentiles.

And so Jonah, out of a sense of national pride and prejudice, doesn't want to go minister to the Gentiles, especially the Ninevites.

So Jonah disobeys God and gets on a ship headed in the opposite direction towards Tarshish.

Now, in the midst of him heading away from God, running away from God, God hurls a storm at the ship as a means of drawing Jonah back.

Now that is the type of storm that we can more easily understand.

It's easy for us to understand storms that we cause in our own lives.

In fact, we expect them.

We anticipate those storms to be there in our own lives.

But there's a particular type of confusion for the Christian who was seeking to be obedient to God and then finds themselves in the midst of a terrifying storm.

What does it mean when you thought you were being obedient and yet your life is just a storm of chaos?

And Jesus, the one who got you in this mess, seems to be asleep and have abandoned you.

This is the type of moment that many Christians don't make it through.

That instead it we just turn on Jesus.

And this is the true vulnerability of our faith that gets exposed in these types of moments.

And this is exactly the type of situation that Jesus has brought the disciples into.

He's highlighting, he's bringing them to a moment of crisis in every direction, physically in what they're surrounded by in the storm, and also bringing them to this moment of a sort of crisis of faith by Jesus sleeping.

Because you know what Jonah did when he got on the ship in the midst of their big storm?

He went down to the bottom of the ship to sleep and ignore what was happening around him.

So this looks to the disciples like that same type of move.

And you can hear it in both what they ask Jesus and in what they don't ask Jesus.

And take a sip of water.

Notice they don't say, Jesus, Jesus, we can't believe how heavy of a sleeper you are.

Would you mind start baling water?

Or Jesus, Nathaniel, you know he's terrible at rowing.

Would you take his place and grab an oar to see if we can navigate this thing?

No, they don't ask Jesus for any practical help.

And remember, they don't think that Jesus can just stand up and calm the storm.

They don't think he can do that.

So they don't ask him for any practical help.

They know that he's not the experienced fisherman.

Instead, they don't try and bring him into any solution.

They don't think he's capable of that.

Instead, they accuse him of not caring that they are perishing.

So what are they actually doing here?

They're saying, see this storm that surrounds us that has broken into the boat.

Our anxiety is informed by this storm.

And you need to prove to us that you care by being as anxious as we are.

That's all they want.

They don't want help.

They don't ask for it.

They don't think he can calm the storm because they don't understand him to be that powerful, to be truly God lying there asleep.

Instead, what they're asking him to do is to match their anxiety to prove his care for them.

You must not care because you aren't as anxious as we are in the midst of the storm.

The only thing that was off limits in that moment was peace.

That's what they thought abandonment looked like.

They want Jesus to join their anxiety.

They are offended that he won't.

This is a picture of the normal workings of our culture and our world.

You're constantly being told there's a storm swirling.

Join my anxiety.

If you aren't anxious right now, it's because you're not paying attention.

You're not allowed to have peace in a moment like this.

Because if you have peace in a moment like this, it just means that you don't care and you aren't paying attention to the way the world is, to the way the storm is.

Don't you can't you tell the water is breaking in?

And the ship that we're in is sinking, and everything's going to be lost.

You must be anxious about this.

You must show me your fear.

That is the command of our culture.

That is the command of us to each other.

Here's a couple of self-reflection questions.

Are you in the midst of a storm or have you become the storm?

The disciples were in the midst of the storm.

And in response to the storm, they became the storm.

They had completely internalized the terror of the situation that they were in.

And so they act like the storm.

They're rushing around, and when they go to Jesus, it's not for help, as though they stand apart from the storm.

They're just saying, like, Jesus, there's a crazy storm out here.

Come be a part of it.

If you aren't a part of the storm like we are, it means you don't care and you've abandoned us.

Are you in a storm or are you a part?

Have you become the storm?

That's right.

Do you want help or do you just want others to share in your anxiety?

What do you want?

Do you want help to get out of a difficult situation?

Or you do you just want others to hold your anxiety, to validate it back to you?

Oh, oh, uh, what's his name?

Friedman.

The does anybody know who I'm talking about?

Edwin, thank you.

Uh Edwin Friedman, I quote him like every other sermon.

And I didn't last week, so here we are.

He says that you can tell the amount of anxiety in a family or in a congregation, or you know, pick your community, nation, county, whatever.

You can tell the amount of anxiety in that system by the amount of diagnosis of each other that takes place in that system.

And what that means is we we look at the anxiety that's in the system.

And rather than saying, we're a part of an anxious relationship, and we've got some relational dynamics, instead, we diagnose the anxiety in the other person.

And what that creates is uh a polarized enemy states.

And the way that that comes across is we become really nervous around each other.

You know, I meet with other pastors frequently, and uh this is a time, you know, the first couple of coffees, there there's a lot of anxiety in Christianity right now.

Sizing each other up, sharing our chibeleths.

What are you guys doing about masks in your church?

Because I need to know if I can trust you or not.

I need to be able to diagnose you.

We're surrounded by storms.

We desperately want to validate our own anxieties by saying, if you're not anxious, you must not care.

So there's someone else in the boat, the one that they're yelling at.

This is the second thing.

We've seen the great storm.

It swirls around us, it swirls inside of us.

We become a part of it.

But there's a great calm also in the boat.

Mark 438.

But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion, and they woke him and said to him, Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?

Okay, let's switch perspectives.

Jesus is asleep on the cushion.

He is the only place in the story that isn't a part of the storm.

Just look at the picture.

How strange it is.

You know, I mentioned it before, but it's worth noticing again.

Mark, Mark mentions the cushion, you know?

He's asleep, he's he's comfortable.

He's asleep in the midst of the storm.

The storm swirls and mounts around Jesus.

It pours into the boat, it becomes embodied by the disciples around Jesus, and yet he is at peace, asleep even in the midst of the storm.

Now, just before they set out, Jesus was telling those parables.

And you may remember, one of those parables sounded like this in Mark 4, 26 through 27.

And he said, The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground.

He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows.

He knows not how.

Jesus is the farmer.

He scattered the seed, he he preached all morning or day, because it's evening.

Scatters the seed, the word of God, honors what the Lord had called him to in his daily life, honors what he, the particulars of what he was responsible for.

And then what does he do?

He goes to sleep.

And then he'll wake up the next morning and he'll he'll do what God had given him to do then.

Jesus is this picture of absolute trust in the Lord's providence.

Absolute trust in the Lord's ability to bring the growth.

What we see in Jesus, in his rest in the midst of the chaos, is this almost unthinkable, this shocking, uh frustrating even picture of an absolute trust in the Lord.

Now, what does this tell us about becoming the type of people who will seek to cultivate an absolute trust in the Lord?

How do you think that will be received by the world?

Yeah, not well.

It might even look like you must not care.

But actually, it looks like trust.

And what we see here is this type of ultimate example.

Because what we'll do is we'll think something in our mind of like, yeah, but man, if you understood the situation that we were really in, you know, if you really got the particulars of my situation, then you'd realize that a peaceful existence like that, just grounded in trust in the Lord, is foolish.

It's abandoning the responsibility that we have and that we've been given in the world to move forward from a place of just trust, of peaceful resting trust like that in the Lord is just foolishness.

Well, compare your example, your life circumstances, to the water is crashing into the boat.

You are sinking right now.

This example, this is an ultimate example of a time where it's like, we should, we should probably panic.

You know, this is a this is a time that just justifies it, justifies that type of panic.

And yet, even there, in that ultimate example, where it seems so tangibly evident that it's just a wrong time to sleep, a wrong time to rest and trust in the Lord.

It's time to take things into your own hands, Jesus gives this picture.

He gives this picture as a rebuke to any other situation that we find ourselves in.

Say, it's still a time to trust.

It's still a time where we find our ultimate rest, our grounding in this fact that the Lord is in control.

And what happens next?

Mark 4, 39, and he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, peace, be still.

And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm.

Notice he doesn't answer their question.

You can tell so much by the questions that Jesus doesn't answer.

You're you're uh do you not care that we are perishing?

All right.

Peace, be still.

The waves listen.

The wind, oh man.

In uh the little children's Bible that we read, the Jesus Storybook Bible, I love this little phrase uh that she says, she says, uh they they the the wind and the waves calmed because they uh recognized the voice.

It was the same voice that had made them.

Yeah, I know.

It's pretty wonderful.

Suddenly, everyone is forced to reinterpret the situation because Jesus just calmed the storm.

So we have to reinterpret what his sleep meaned.

Now, remember Jonah, he's the picture of what we'd expect.

Jonah, what did his sleep mean?

The crew on Jonah's ship, they're in the midst of a storm that's there because of Jonah's actions.

And the crew on the ship is running around trying to save their own lives.

And Jonah is asleep ignoring them.

Why?

Because he doesn't care about his own life and he doesn't care about the lives of the people that he's with.

He has completely resigned himself.

He is hopeless.

He has given up on hope in the Lord and abandoned the prospect that God could have a goodness for him, even in the midst of something he doesn't understand.

And so what does Jonah do in that situation?

Resigns himself to it and goes and sleeps.

Sleep can look like that.

Sleep can be ignoring, sleep can be just sitting in our own depression.

Sleep can be a sign of such a hopelessness and discontentment.

And that's what it was for Jonah.

It was abandonment.

And that's what the disciples thought Jesus' sleep meant.

They thought, look, he either doesn't know what we know because we're sailors and we know, look, people die in storms like this.

Or he doesn't care.

And so he's just abandoned us.

But they hadn't considered this other option.

Perhaps Jesus wasn't asleep on the ship because he didn't know what they knew.

Perhaps he was asleep because he knew far more than they knew.

Perhaps he was asleep not out of resignation, but perhaps he was resting in his absolute authority and control over the situation.

See, his sleep looks like different things.

Now consider this in your own life.

How often has it felt like God must not care?

Because I don't see him demonstrating the same anxiety about these situations in my life as I would want him to, to let me know that he really cared.

Perhaps his apparent absence is him resting, not because he doesn't care, or not because he doesn't know as much about the situation as you do, but because he knows far more.

And he's not joining your anxiety, and that's not because he doesn't care, but instead because he is calling you to join him in his peace.

They have to reinterpret what it meant for him to be asleep.

It wasn't resignation or abandonment, it was his absolute control.

You see, Jesus is who we would have hoped Jonah would have been.

Jonah was like us.

The situation gets too much, and we run and we hide and we become crushed by it, and we abandon God, and God doesn't match us in the things that we think he should be concerned about.

And out of a fear of that, we run away from God.

And then we resign ourselves to everything around us, our own lives, and then the lives of the people that are closest to us, like Jonah did.

Jesus is the perfect opposite of Jonah.

But the strange thing is, if you were to just videotape it, it might look the same.

He's resting out of absolute control.

He's resting in his goodness, his authority over the situation, not out of abandonment of it.

We have to have our eyes trained to see Jesus as he presents himself to us and even be surprised by it.

Now he turns his rebuke from the wind and the waves to that storm, and he turns it to a rebuke of the storm that is uh raging in the boat, in the disciples.

And he said to them, Why are you so afraid?

Have you still no faith?

John Calvin makes a great point about this particular uh phrase.

And there's this there's this qualification that I didn't pick up on because I I know like 50 Greek words, because I'm like halfway through my first semester of Greek.

And uh, but John Calvin uh knew a lot of Greek.

So he picked he picks up on this phrase that we can't see uh in the English, but it basically qualifies the way that the afraid uh works together with the faith.

And basically he's saying that it's not it's not as though it's sinful to encounter situations that elicit fear.

That's not what's sinful here.

What's sinful is when the fear becomes the most substantial reality that we're willing to engage with, and then it renders our faith useless.

What's wrong is when our faith becomes destroyed by the fear, becomes absent, doesn't play any role in our thinking in the situation.

Or maybe the better word is displaced.

It's when the fear displaces our faith.

And you can tell that this is what happens to them because, like we mentioned earlier, they they don't turn to Jesus to ask for any help.

They don't turn to Jesus expecting him to be able to call.

The storm as he's able to.

Instead, they just say, Prove to me that you care by joining me in my anxiety.

That's the command that they give to Jesus.

And so what they mean is, I'll believe in you so long as you join me on my terms.

That's what they said.

And then Jesus, in this rebuke, says, He says, I'm not even going to entertain your terms.

I'm not going to even engage with the question that you've given me.

Instead, I'm going to say, look, you need to join me in faith.

You have to come into Jesus' terms in order to see the story as it's really unfolding.

And this brings us to our last great thing, which is the great fear.

This is what the disciples say afterwards in Mark 4, 41, and they were filled with great fear and said to one another, Who then is this that even the wind and the sea obey him?

Look, notice their great fear comes after the storm has calmed.

Because all of a sudden they're sitting in the boat with something more powerful than the storm.

To them, they had two powers that they were dealing with.

There is one power which is loud and scary and washing into the boat right now.

It feels deeply urgent.

And then there's another power that's asleep in the stern.

Now, which one gets their faith?

Which one says, I'm gonna uh I'm gonna give you the greatest weight, I'm gonna ascribe to you the most power here.

We can see, of course, that the true power that was next to them was Jesus.

Now, this is what we're inviting you to believe.

Your life, our culture, you're in the midst of great storms.

We're asking you to believe in the midst of them that Christ holds the true authority and to have a life that is grounded in His peace.

Now it's frightening, and it puts us in this situation where we have to ask the question that the disciples ask, which is, who then is this that even the wind and the sea obey him?

We have to see the lordship of Christ over everything, even in ways that we can't understand it at the moment.

Like a storm in the midst of a trip that was Jesus' own idea.

Well, it turns out those types of things can happen.

And what matters is that Christ is with you.

He is the one who is in absolute authority in the midst of the storms.

We have to face that same question.

Who then is this Jesus?

Is he worth laying down my anxiety for?

You know, we we want to be anxious.

It's reinforced in us.

Is Jesus worth laying that down for?

To rest in his peace as Lord?

I'll give you good reason to.

Jesus is this unthinkable authority, this unimaginable power.

The wind and the waves listen to him.

He is God.

It was his voice that made them.

That is who we're talking about when we're talking about Jesus.

But what does he, how does he use this authority to demonstrate his most the greatness of his glory to us in the world?

We can see it in the parallel with Jonah.

Remember, in the story of Jonah, the wind and the waves are crashing down, and the sailors come down, and they say basically the same thing that the disciples say to Jonah.

They do not care that we are perishing.

Come up above, pray to your God.

Perhaps your God might give a thought to us and rescue us in this situation.

They say, Who are you?

And he says, I'm Jonah, I'm a prophet of the God who created the heavens and the earth and the sea and all that lives in them.

And the and and they they say, What?

That's who you know?

We know Baal.

He like makes crops grow.

So they're in the midst of this intense, intense fear, and what occurs to Jonah is this storm, I know it's about me.

And the wrath of God rightly lays on me.

And you all are right now experiencing this curse that's falling upon me.

So the storm will stop when you throw me into the storm.

When you throw me off the boat into the ocean.

And they throw Jonah off, and immediately the sea becomes calm.

And it says that the sailors were exceedingly fearful when the sea became calm because of what they'd encountered.

Jonah is thrown into the wrath of God, and the sailors receive the peace.

Is that not what Jesus does on the cross?

On the cross, Jesus demonstrates his ultimate authority by taking on the chaos and storms of our sin.

By taking on the pain and the anxiety of a world that's fallen into sin and of our own hearts.

Jesus takes that upon himself.

Although he had lived perfectly.

And we, by him doing that, get to experience his peace.

Now, hearing that, consider the disciples' question.

Do you not care that we are perishing?

Yeah, he cares that you are perishing.

But he's different than you.

He's an absolute control, he's an absolute authority.

He's not going to reinforce your anxiety by matching it.

He's going to call you into his peace.

That may feel offensive at first.

But you can have no doubt that he cares.

Because he took the very pain upon himself.

Because he knew that he could stand up and calm the storm.

He could rescue them in the midst of it because he knew that he would be thrown into the storm so that we might be saved, so that the disciples might be spared.

Do you see that this unthinkable authority that Christ has is most greatly demonstrated in his incomprehensible grace towards us?

So I call to you.

Come to Jesus and rest in him.

Consider what do you use in your life to cultivate and justify the anxieties that you carry around?

And how can you call Jesus, call upon Jesus as Lord over those?

I can already feel myself gripping things that I don't want to let go of.

We have to come to Christ as Lord over the storm.

Until we do, we won't even be able to understand his rest in the midst of it.

But he calls you to it.

I challenge you in this, Christians.

I call you to this challenge.

To rest in him.

Okay, let's take a question, and then we'll close in communion.

How do we know when trust moves into ignorance, laziness, or lack of wisdom?

Not taking cancer medication because you trust God to bring healing if he wants.

Yeah.

I mean, that's the that's the question of this.

And the question is when is it Jesus?

When is it Jonah?

Jonah, what is his rest?

It's laziness, it's abdication, it's it's uh uh resignation.

Uh it's it's it's like an ostrich.

He's burying his head in the sand of issues that are real and bad.

And and what does it look like from the outside looking in?

It looks like sleep on a boat in a storm.

And then Jesus is the other side of that.

And so how do you how do you know you you're going, you you put the pressure right where Jesus does, which is am I doing this action out of faith or am I doing this action out of fear?

And the actions might look the same.

You know, it might look like a nap or a letter to your congressman.

And one of the both of the both of those, depending on the circumstances, might be out of, might be acting like Jonah and resigning yourself to the fear, or they might be acting like Jesus and moving forward in rest.

So it the what m this is this is an issue just like Jesus' issues, this is this is an issue of the heart.

Which is, is this being driven by faith or by fear?

I pray that the Holy Spirit would give us discernment to know that.

Uh, he hasn't left us alone.

He desires us to be moving in faith.

Oh, so I mean, the question that you asked is a wonderful question.

It's the question.

Oh, let's pray to God.

Let's ask him to reveal that in our hearts.

Those places where we're moving out of fear, let's repent.

Trust his grace to restore us.

And those places that we're moving out of faith, let's pray that the spirit fans into flame by giving us that discernment.

Now, one of the ways that we remember, oh, sorry, gotta pull up the text.

One of the ways that we remember the sacrifice that Jesus made is by taking communion each week.

Paul wrote, For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body which is for you, do this in remembrance of me.

In the same way also he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

Holy Father, I pray that you would bless this meal.

Lord, that as we come together that we might rest in the sacrifice that you have made, that you would give us the courage to rest in you, while the whole world shouts that that's foolish and naive, or it's callous and wicked.

Lord, that we might instead look to your cross and see the depth of your love towards us, and see that the true foolishness would be to ignore you and to not rest in you.

Lord, we lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.