Why are you afraid? How is it you have no faith? This is a faith lesson...this is a faith lesson. And yet, John, I wouldn't be surprised if many of our listeners still come away from this series stunned by what Scripture reveals about the scope of our Lord's power. But the stories are His humanity and how He interacted with people. And in the New Testament, He comes across just as much a victim as a victor.
And in the end, of course, you know, they take His life. That's all in the plan of God. But the Gospels themselves don't necessarily stress His complete sovereignty. Where you see that is in the epistles and in the book of Revelation. It begins to unfold that He is sovereign. And that becomes obvious after He conquers death. Because whoever conquers death is the source of life.
Whoever is the source of life is the sovereign over everything in the universe. This is going to be a great, great series, Jesus Over All. And it's a study from the fourth and fifth chapters of Mark as we look at Jesus' power over creation, demonic forces, sickness, and death. And you're going to see how these things that came into His life confirm His divine nature, His deity, while adding color, texture, perspective, and even scale to the incomparable authority and power of Jesus. You'll also get an up-close look at His sympathy.
He was moved to action by the needs of others. And this is a study that exalts Christ, shows our weakness by comparison, and should drive you to greater worship, wonder, and praise. You will be richer for examining what God's Word reveals about the superiority, the lordship, the power of Christ. So don't miss this look at Jesus Over All.
Thanks, John. And, friend, this study is going to give you a sense of what it was like to walk side by side with Jesus, deepening your faith, deepening your worship of Christ. So now, here's John MacArthur to begin his study, Jesus Over All. Open your Bible, if you will, to the fourth chapter of the gospel of Mark and we come to the final paragraph in this fourth chapter, verses 35 through 41...verses 35 through 41. Now remember that Mark's purpose in writing the gospel is stated in chapter 1, verse 1, the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Mark, like all the other writers, Matthew, Luke, and John, has as his goal and his objective to make it clear, unmistakably clear that Jesus is none other than God, that He is man, to be sure, but that He is God as well, the God-man. That will be demonstrated magnificently, unforgettably in the passage that is before us.
We will see a beautiful portrait of His humanity and we will see a staggering demonstration of His deity. Let's look at the story starting in verse 35. On that day when evening came, He said to them, Let us go over to the other side. Leaving the crowd, they took Him along with them in the boat just as He was. And other boats were with Him. And there arose a fierce gale of wind and the waves were breaking over the boat so much that the boat was already filling up.
Jesus Himself was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. And they awoke Him and said to Him, Teacher, do You not care that we are perishing? And He got up and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, Hush, be still. And the wind died down and it became perfectly calm. And He said to them, Why are you afraid?
How is it that you have no faith? They became very much afraid and said to one another, Who then is this that even the wind and the sea obey Him? Well the simple answer to that question is, He is God because only God has such power over wind and waves. We shouldn't be surprised about that since we hear the testimony of John in John 1, In the beginning was the Word, meaning Christ, and the Word was with God, the Word was God, He was in the beginning with God, all things came into being through Him and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. That is to say that Christ, the Word, is the Creator of everything that exists.
He has the power to create it, He has the power to control it. In Hebrews chapter 1, it speaks of God's Son who is appointed heir of all things, verse 2, through whom also He made the world. And then in verse 3, He upholds all things by the Word of His power. Here we are told that God made the world through the agency of Christ and Christ sustains it by His power. In Colossians chapter 1, there is a similar testimony from the Apostle Paul where it tells us in verse 16, By Him...that is by Christ...all things were created both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things and in Him all things hold together. He is the Creator and the sustainer of the creation. That is the testimony of Scripture and those are only samples of the kind of testimony that is repeated in the New Testament regarding Christ. Another one is 1 Corinthians 8 which tells us similarly that He is the One who has made everything that has been made.
There is but one God, one Father from whom are all things, we exist for Him and one Lord Jesus Christ by whom are all things and we exist through Him. He is the Creator of the universe, all things exist because He made them and all things are sustained because He sustains them. So that when we come to an occasion like this, what we are seeing anecdotally, what we are seeing in the incident that happens is this creative power. Creative power is demonstrated in every healing miracle. Whenever Jesus healed someone, it was a creative miracle.
He had to give the person new limbs, or new organs. That's creation. But here on a grand scale, He demonstrates His power over the inanimate world, the wind and the waves. He has displayed His power over demons. He can control the spiritual world. He has displayed His power over disease. He can control the human world, even in its physicality. And here He has power over the natural creation. This demonstration is really unique in the New Testament. There are some other physical miracles like the feeding of the five thousand and the feeding of the four thousand where He creates food virtually out of nothing, speaks it into existence, clearly an indication of His creative power.
But this is on a grander, if you will, and more powerful scale. And the Lord couldn't have picked a better place to demonstrate His power over His creation. This lake that is in view here is the very familiar Sea of Galilee.
It isn't mentioned here, but it doesn't need to be because we know the context. Jesus' ministry is being carried on in Galilee. His basic headquarters is in Capernaum at the northern edge of the Sea of Galilee. He has been moving in that area and teaching in the villages and towns of Galilee. On this particular day, He has spent the whole day in that area on the edge of the sea. If you go back to chapter 4 verse 1, He began to teach again by the sea, that's the Sea of Galilee. Such a very large crowd gathered to Him that He got into a boat in the sea and sat down and the whole crowd was by the sea on the land and He was teaching them many things.
The scene was repeated on a number of occasions. The crowd was so massive that they pressed Him all the way to the water's edge and the only way He could get some space between Himself and the crowd and say what He wanted to say would be to get in a boat and get off the shore, into the water a little bit. The water would act as a little bit of a reflection of His voice and the hillside surround could create very much of an amphitheater and so it would be easy for Him to be heard in that way. So in the very familiar territory of the Sea of Galilee, which isn't really a sea, it's a fresh water lake and today it's known as Lake Kinneret in Israel, but it's to us called the Sea of Galilee. It is the lowest fresh water lake on the planet. It is 682 feet below sea level. It isn't as low as the Dead Sea but the Dead Sea is not fresh water.
It is highly mineralized content and the salt in the Dead Sea is so thick that you can float on the top of it rather easily. But this is the lowest fresh water lake in the world and as a result of that, it has been much studied for its unique properties. It has a stratification of water. There are literally three stratifications of the water that go down 150 feet and those stratifications have a lot to do with the surface of the lake at various times of the year. They have a lot to do with the content of algae which has a lot to do with the content of fish.
In 1896, one fishing boat alone brought in 9200 pounds of fish. It is a prolific lake for the production of fish and having that kind of water and that kind of resource in Galilee was a great blessing to the people who lived there. It is surrounded by mountains, essentially on the west and the northwest, mountains rise to 1500 feet. On the northeast and the east, they rise to 3000 feet to the Golan Heights which runs 42 miles in length and the lake is only 13 miles, so it goes far past the lake.
The lake is 13 by 8. So it sits in a bowl and the water that comes into the lake comes partly from some hot springs, but primarily from the Jordan River which flows out of Mount Hermon. Mount Hermon is up in the north on the Lebanon border at 9200 feet, so the water flows about 10,000 feet down to fill up this lake in this bowl. It is such pristine fresh water that it provides even today about 50 percent of the water for the nation Israel. So it was a tremendous resource to them for water as well as for fish. Now that's why so many of the disciples were fishermen, up to seven of them.
We know James and John, Peter and Andrew and there may have been three more who were also fishermen on that lake. Because of its unique location, because it's only 30 miles from the Mediterranean and it sinks so low, it has very special properties. Because it is surrounded by these mountains, that adds to the uniqueness of the lake and as a result, scientists have done research on this lake through the years to study it. It is different than all other bodies of water in the world and what particularly makes it unique is the fact that it is subject to very, very severe winds. And both in the summer and the warm part of the year and in the winter and the cold part of the year, it experiences these kinds of winds. The winds that come in the summer are the Scirocco winds from the east.
They typically come every day from noon to six o'clock, they're pretty predictable. The wind comes down hard off the Golan Heights and a little north of that and it comes down and it turns the lake into a boiling cauldron. And it's pretty much the routine every day during the summer. These make it a very treacherous place to be in a boat at the wrong time. The winter is even worse because the winter winds are cold winds that come from the north and the northwest. And when the cold air comes down and it hits the warm air that naturally sits in the bowl, it creates turmoil. The cold air goes through the warm air and causes tremendous turmoil on the lake.
So whether you're in the summer or the winter, it is subject to this. I have been there on a number of occasions and I have seen these kinds of winds come out of nowhere. I remember one time we got in this metal boat and we were going to go across the Sea of Galilee and we were up in the bow, standing on the bow and enjoying the ride and all of a sudden out of nowhere the lake began to foam and the waves began to rise. And pretty soon we had to run to the stern to avoid the water splashing over the bow, only to be drenched by the water that went over the wheelhouse and hit us all the way in the stern. So it can be a very troublesome place if you're there at the wrong time. Between November and April, that is the most dangerous, treacherous time. And in very unexpected ways, those winds can come, those cold winds and the waves can get anywhere from five to ten feet. That just doesn't happen on a lake, but it happens there and it can be a very terrifying experience.
In fact, one historian gives the record of the fact that on one occasion they were in Tiberius on the western shore of the lake and the waters, the waves were coming so high that they were coming 200 yards into the city of Tiberius off this little lake. This is the basic product of the wind. So that's the place where this happens. And so it couldn't have been a better place for the Lord to demonstrate His power over nature.
And that's exactly what He does here. Let's start with a calm before the storm. We'll call it the calm before the storm, then we'll look at the calm during the storm, and then we'll look at the calm after the storm, and then we'll look at the storm after the calm. Okay?
We'll work our way through the whole deal here. All right, the calm before the storm, verse 35, on that day when evening was come. That day means a very specific day.
What day? The very day that started in verse 1, when the Lord went down by the Sea of Galilee and began to teach and a huge massive crowd, as always, came and He had to get in a little boat and when He taught on the soils and then pulled the disciples aside and explained the meaning of the parables to them while not explaining to the crowd. And then He told the parable, as you remember, of the lamp and the basket. And then He told the parable of the seed planted at night that grows, the farmer knows not how. And then He told the parable of the mustard seed. And it's been a long day and those are only representative of the parables that He gave. He most likely gave many more parables than just these.
And there was a full day of teaching. We can assume as well that people had brought the sick and the needy to Him and there was healing going on as well. We would assume then that it was a typically exhausting day for the Lord. Teaching itself can be very, very exhausting and He did it day after day after day after day with tremendous demands being made on Him. So we can assume that He's somewhere on the northwest edge of the Sea of Galilee, off in a little boat near the town of Capernaum.
Evening comes, dusk, the people will kind of dissipate now and go to their homes. He said to them, that would be to His disciples who are referred to in verse 34, His own disciples. He said to them, let us go over to the other side. Now we might assume that He was going over to the other side just to get a bit of a rest and that would be to one degree or another reasonable to get away.
There were many occasions when He did that, when He tried to escape the crushing crowd. We could assume that because there were no large cities on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee, all the large cities and towns were on the western shore, that maybe He was just going over there to get away from things where He could get a bit of a break and a little bit of rest. But if you understand what comes next in the book of Mark, you know that that was not the point because in chapter 5 verse 1, when they came to the other side of the sea into the country of the Gerasenes, when He got out of the boat, immediately a man from the tombs with an unclean spirit met Him. He comes to an encounter which has been ordained by His Father with a Gerasene maniac who is full of demons and He ends up sending those demons into a herd of pigs who take a dive off the hill and end up in the sea itself. So while it may have been assumed that this is a way to get away and get a bit of a break, it turns out to bring Jesus into one of the most formidable, one of the most dramatic encounters of His entire life with this demonized maniac on the other side.
Jesus always operated on a divine appointment. Rest was perhaps somewhat incidental to Him. But nonetheless, at the end of a long, long day, it would be good to get a calm ride in the boat to the other side and perhaps a few hours break. So, verse 36 says, leaving the crowd, and remember He's in a boat already, teaching, may well have been the same boat because it says they took Him along with them in the boat. That boat perhaps belonged to Peter, or John, or Andrew, or James, one of those fishermen. And they took Him just as He was, which indicates that He didn't go anywhere, He didn't go to change, He didn't go to eat, they just took Him the way He was and headed off in the water and then other boats were with Him. The word boat, by the way, Ploion doesn't tell you anything about the size of a boat, it's a very generic word, doesn't say whether it was a large boat or a small boat, but we know it was a relatively small boat because the kind of boats that were used for fishing on the Sea of Galilee were relatively small boats.
They have discovered one of them which they were able to dig up from the bottom of the lake and they have sort of the rib cage of that boat still remains and from what I could tell in looking at it, it would probably hold comfortably fifteen to twenty people. Well that wasn't going to transport all the Apostles and Jesus and all the disciples who were following Him across, so there were other boats. Everybody else who had a boat and was a follower of Jesus joined and you had this little flotilla going across the north end of the Sea of Galilee, headed to the other side. Other boats were with Him. Luke tells us they were sailing along and Luke uses a very specific verb. The verb is pleo and it means to sail, not alono which means to row. You row when there's no wind, you sail when there's wind.
So it was an ideal situation. The water was calm, they were sailing along, those boats had the capability of being rowed, they had oars, but they also had a mast and a sail and when the breeze came up, they would sail. They launched from the shore and they were sailing along with a gentle breeze and the calm waters of dusk pushed toward that eastern shore.
Off they go. At this point, we check in with Luke and Luke says, as the boat began to sail, Jesus fell asleep. He fell asleep. Mark 4.38 says He was asleep on the cushion, literally the pillow.
It contains the word...that word for cushion contains the word kephale which is the word for head, something to put your head on. So that's the kind of cushion it was, it was a pillow for His head, some kind of pillow that sailors used when they needed to lie down and get a bit of a rest. So He lay down in the boat and immediately fell asleep.
This is a beautiful picture of the truly human Jesus who is exhausted, who is weary. He is the very one who created the water. He is the very one who created the sky. He created the wood the boat was made of.
He even created sleep. And now He employs these things for His own benefit and He goes to sleep in the boat. Trailing along behind that boat are all those who were followers of His. Turns out that they aren't all true followers. Some of them are rocky soil, some of them are weedy soil, as we saw in the parable earlier in the chapter because John 6.66 which comes later says that many of His disciples walked no more with Him.
So they're not all going to be the real deal, but they were at least for now following Him. This is what we'll call the calm before the storm, a beautiful picture of Christ, totally exhausted and asleep in a comfortable place. The calm before the storm leads to the calm during the storm because the storm breaks out, according to verse 37, and there arose a fierce gale of wind and the waves were breaking over the boat so much that the boat was already filling up...a fierce gale of wind. Fierce gale is the term for a hurricane. We're talking about...we're talking about a huge wind. We could be talking about a 70 mile an hour wind. They all were familiar with storms on the lake, they lived around the lake and they were in one now that was over the top.
Here was a God-ordained storm, we could assume that these were specially chosen winds to accomplish this miracle, to put our Lord in the position to demonstrate that He is in fact the one who controls His creation. This is...this is to be a lesson. What's it supposed to teach? Look at verse 40.
Why are you afraid? How is it you have no faith? This is a faith lesson. This is a faith lesson. The point here is that our Lord wants to teach His disciples that He can be trusted in the most threatening of circumstances.
That's an encouraging reminder from John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. The title of his current study here on Grace to You is Jesus Over All. Now as John mentioned before the lesson, you can download this entire study from the Gospel of Mark, all five lessons in audio and transcript format. You can also watch the videos of each sermon.
The title again, Jesus Over All. To download the lessons, go to our website today. The web address, gty.org. The messages are free of charge at our website and in fact all of John's sermons, that's more than 3,600 sermons in all, all of them are free online. So if you'd like to review a broadcast that we aired recently, or if you want to listen to one of the thousands of sermons that have never aired on radio, it's all available for free at gty.org. And keep in mind, our website, gty.org, is designed to be a one-stop resource for answering your theological questions. Perhaps someone has asked you about creation, or why trusting in Christ is the only way to salvation, or an apparent contradiction in the Bible, and you haven't known how to answer. You are sure to find the help you need at our website. You can search by topic for sermons, blog articles, and more to help you find the answers you're looking for.
Our website again, gty.org. Now for John MacArthur, I'm Phil Johnson. Thanks for joining us today and be back tomorrow as John helps you get to know and glorify and enjoy the Jesus Christ of Scripture. It's another 30 minutes of unleashing God's truth, one verse at a time, on Grace To You.
