Why You Should Be Scared of Jesus

Well, good morning Summit Church at all of our campuses. Mark chapter four, if you got your Bibles with you this weekend, and I hope that you brought them.

Mark chapter four. While you are turning there, you just in the video heard about a conference that we are going to put on right here at the Summit Church on October 18th and 19th. We are calling it Centered and Sent. The idea is that the more centered we become in the gospel, the more sent we are in our day to day lives as believers. It is kind of encapsulates sort of the discipleship and the mission philosophy of our church.

We are going to be talking specifically there about how the church can be radically distinct from the culture and still be very relevant and challenging to the culture around it at the same time. I'm really excited about this conference for a couple of reasons. One, we are going to have church leaders literally from all over the country that come to be a part of this. But number two, the speakers that we are going to have are going to be absolutely phenomenal. Some of our own pastors will be contributing. One of my favorite guys, some great speakers, Brian Loritz, who you know was just here a few weeks ago. A friend of mine I've never brought before you, a guy named Joby Martin from down in Florida, who is one of my absolute favorite people and favorite speakers. Ed Stetzer, who has been here a number of times. And Yoda himself, as we would like to think of him around here, Tim Keller. This is how we see Tim Keller around here. I think I've showed you that before. Tim Keller does, I'm telling you guys, he does like one conference every three years.

Seriously, it's just very, very rare. The fact that he is going to be at the Summit Church is a very significant thing. And so I'm telling you about it because it is a leadership event, but we want to invite you to be a part of it. We're going to offer a special discount for Summit people who want to come and attend. $90 off, which is a crazy good deal for what you're going to get over these couple days.

You can go to centeredandcent.com and just sign up with the promo code SUMMIT and you'll get that discount. Of course, access it off of our church website, summitrdu.com as you can, everything. Okay. All right. So I wanted to tell you about that. That ends our public service announcement.

You still with me? Mark chapter four. You found it yet in your Bible?

Mark chapter four. We come today to what has to be one of the most underrated miracles of Jesus' ministry, in my opinion. I say it is underrated because it reveals an essential element of our relationship with Jesus. But one element that I think most people overlook and that is the fear of Jesus. And I know that sounds strange because we think, one, that Jesus is supposed to be meek and mild and tossing children up in the air and petting lambs and looking pensively off into the sunset with his permed hair kind of blowing softly in the breeze. And yes, the tenderness of Jesus is amazing.

We discussed that last week. But this weekend, we're going to see a different side of Jesus, one that is every bit as important in your relationship with him. And that's fear. In fact, without the fear of Jesus, you'll never find the tenderness of Jesus that precious or that comforting. Many people today in our culture, Christian culture also, assume that a God who should be feared would be a God that was guilty of some kind of fault.

That the fear of God is some kind of leftover relic from an oppressive, archaic view of religion that's way outdated. But anytime you are in the presence of true greatness, you feel a sense of fear. Last year, I told you about the moment that I achieved. My lifelong dream of meeting Michael Jordan. I was nine years old when he hit the game winning shot against Georgetown to win for UNC their second national championship.

Think last year's national championship, but in reverse. OK, from that point on in that moment, 1982 Air Jordan became more than just my favorite basketball player. He became my role model. I wanted to be like Mike. And I was convinced that if I just work hard enough, I could dunk like he dunked.

So my friends and I, we lowered our goals. To seven feet and we spent endless hours practicing our our our split leg tongue extended dunks while blasting Whitney Houston's one moment in time from our our jam box. Y'all, those dunks, they felt so right when I was doing them. But when I would watch the videos later, they just didn't quite look like Mike's. And when I watch those videos now, I can think is Lord Jesus.

What was wrong with me? I do not look I look like a wounded duck coming in for a crash landing, not some kind of athlete honing. Then on perfection. Well, you can imagine how excited I was when during my eighth grade year, I found out that the great MJ was going to be in a charity golf tournament not far from my house and that my dad could get tickets. Now, I could have cared less about golf either then or now.

But I but I got tickets. My best friend and I set out that morning with one agenda. And that is, we were going to meet the man, the myth, the legend himself. So for eight hours, we followed his little caravan around the golf course. golf course, we never even got close. His bouncers clearly had experience with people like me.

Well, that is until the very end of the day. I was standing toward the exit, pretty discouraged, near the exit of the golf course, waiting for my parents to pick me up, when I saw a purple Porsche Carrera 944 winding its way down the road toward the exit, and I was enough of a groupie to know it immediately. That's Michael Jordan. So I turned around and yelled to my best friend, who was several yards behind me.

I'm like, it's him, that's Jordan. And a couple dozen people heard me also, and they ran over to where I was standing. And so I got this little crowd behind me, and as Jordan approaches, he rolls down the window. He's going real slow because he's looking for somebody. Now he's not looking for me, I can assure you, but he's looking for somebody. As he gets right where we are, I'm kind of leaning down, looking in his car, and my best friend sees this opportunity. So he grabs me from behind and shoves me into the car. So I'm now waist deep in his passenger window.

I am this far from that man's face. I could have licked him. I could have licked him. And one of my lifelong regrets is that I did not, right? Because how cool of a story he ends with, I licked Michael Jordan.

But I didn't do it. I was right there, and I said, hi, Mike. And he has his hand on the wheel, and he kind of cuts his eyes over at me, and he says, get out of my car. And I said, yes, sir, Mr. Jordan. And I pulled back, and I turned around to the crowd, and I was like, he talked to me. He talked to me.

I had a conversation with Michael Jordan. So it was a great moment in my life. But the presence of greatness has a strange effect on us. Whenever you encounter greatness, you feel this curious mixture of, let's say, desire and terror. You know what I'm talking about? You're not sure whether you want to draw close or run away. That's the effect that greatness has on you.

Here's my question. If being in the presence of human greatness makes us feel that way, what would it be like to be in the presence of infinite greatness? If I were that starstruck in the presence of somebody whose glory consists of the fact that he can jump 36 inches higher than the average man, what's it like to find yourself in the presence of the one who spoke the universe into existence?

Have you ever thought about how big and how powerful God has to be? This summer, my family and I, when we were out in Africa, we were in the Zulu, the African bush. We were amazed at how many more stars you could see at night. We were miles away from the nearest electric light and so there was no light pollution and it looked like you could see millions of stars. Of course, astronomers tell us that on the clearest night, there's only 9,096 stars that are available to the human eye, to the naked eye. It looks like millions of them and what's amazing is that there's even so many of them that you can't even, I mean, most of them don't even have names. They just have number names. Isaiah says that God not only created all those stars, each of which, by the way, puts out the same amount of energy every second as 500,000 megaton bombs.

Not only does he create all that with a word, Isaiah says he knows all of them by name. I forget the names of people whose wedding ceremonies I performed. I ran into a couple not long ago at the mall and I'm like, have I, yeah, they start talking. I was like, have I ever met y'all? And they're like, yeah, he did our wedding ceremony three years and I'm like, oh. So, I mean, I can't even, he will know. We walk out and we're like, look at all the stars and he's like, hi, Bob, Pegasus.

Oh, that's T.314159er. You know, I don't know what he calls him, but he knows every single one. What is it like to be in the presence of that kind of greatness? What are you supposed to feel in the presence of that kind of greatness? Watch, Mark chapter four, verse 35. When evening had come, Jesus said to them, let us go across to the other side. Now, the other side, he's talking about the Sea of Galilee. The Sea of Galilee was the little body of water that separated the Jewish territory in Palestine from the Gentile territory. So Jesus is heading from the Jewish side to the Gentile side. He could have taken the land route, but he chooses to take the sea route. And that's an important detail that I'll come back to later, verse 36.

Leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was, and other boats were with him. Now, I need to stop here, even though it's gonna break the train of thought of the sermon, because this little textual thing counters an objection that I hear people make more and more often about the Bible. And so even though it breaks the train of thought here, I gotta stop and just at least show it to you. The thing that I hear more and more often on campus about the Bible is that it's really a collection of legends. The idea has been a popularized by things like the Da Vinci Code or people like Bart Ehrman.

And the basic gist of the theory goes like this. The first disciples saw Jesus as a great prophet with a special connection to God who taught and did some great things. But over time, the stories about him got stretched to kinda include his divinity because that made the stories more compelling. So for example, Jesus prayed for somebody and they got better, and that turned into he healed them.

Or Jesus said, I hope it's good weather tomorrow for our picnic, and there was, and that turned into he controls the weather. The reason this idea became popular is because people realized that the idea that the disciples just made all these stories up and lied about it, it's just not that compelling of an explanation mainly because it's hard to establish a sufficient motive for why they would do so. You see, usually if somebody just directly lies, they've got a motive for it. You know, they're trying to get power or money or trying to stay out of trouble. But these lies, they didn't gain the disciples anything. They didn't get them money, it got them poverty. They didn't get them power, it got them persecution. It didn't keep them out of trouble, it got them into trouble. So what would be the motive for them just making up all these stories?

You just can't come up with one. So the new theory suggests that they didn't grossly lie. It's just as these stories got repeated, they got exaggerated until you got this supernatural son of God, and the legend is indistinguishable from the facts.

Now, there are a number of problems with that theory, but here's one small, really subtle one. These stories just don't read like legends. They claim to be eyewitness accounts, and here's the thing.

They read like eyewitness accounts. And one of the many evidences of that are spurious little details, like the one in verse 36, and other boats were with him. What's that got to do with anything? How does that tie into the plot?

It doesn't tie in at all. It's just a guy remembering what he saw. And so you got these little evidences that show this is an eyewitness account. It reads like an eyewitness account. It doesn't read like a legend, so don't make statements that don't make literary sense. There are verse 37, 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 up and said, teacher, do you not care that we're perishing? Now, y'all, this must have been some kind of storm, because these were experienced fishermen, and they've been in lots of storms. The Sea of Galilee, even today, is very prone to really bad, ferocious, really quickly onset storms. The sea itself is 700 feet below sea level, and the mountain range that surrounds it is 9,200 feet above sea level, which means the air in the mountains is really cold, and the air in the subterranean sea is really warm, and so the hot air and the cold air, that combines for some pretty quick and bad storms.

I've been there. Even today, if you go to the little restaurants along the west side of the sea, they're always up on stilts, 15 or 20 feet high, and there's little signs in the parking lot that will say, if a storm comes, you better get your car out immediately, because in the course of an hour, the parking lot can flood by up to 10 feet. And so by the time you finish your meal, your car might be floating in the sea.

You see, this is one of those kind of storms that comes on suddenly and destructively. Meanwhile, Jesus, who is tired from a tough day of ministry, he's got a pillow over his head trying to catch some sleep. We know that his sleep is intentional because he has a cushion, and when you have a cushion, you intend to sleep.

When I see you come into the service with a neck pillow, I know that you've already decided you're not gonna make it all the way through. So we know that Jesus was planning to sleep, and here's the question. Why would he be intending to sleep if he knows a storm is coming? Right, I mean, surely, y'all, if he controls the weather, he knows the weather. So he knows it's coming, and yet still he is planning to sleep through it.

You see, this is all a big setup. So the disciples, in fear, wake him up with a question. Don't you care that we're perishing? Which has to be one of the dumbest questions ever asked, but Mark puts it in here because it's exactly how you and I feel throughout life. Isn't that right?

There are times you go through storms and it seems overwhelming, and you feel like, I'm about to die. Do you even care? Are you there? Are you sleeping?

I'm not sure you even exist at all. Mark records this story because it is often how we feel as we go throughout life. Verse 39, and he awoke, and he rebuked the wind, and he said to the sea, peace be still. Rebuke is a word that means in Greek exactly what it means in English. It is a word that you use for somebody that's underneath you that you have authority of. You rebuke an employee who has done a bad job. You rebuke a child. No, ma'am, you will not talk back to your mother. No, son, you will not pee in the sink.

I have to give you a little glimpse of how things go down in the Greer household. Jesus stands up and he rebukes the weather like it's nothing more than a rowdy kid. No incantations, no loud invectives, no expecto patronums or magic wand. He just stands up and calls it down like it's a rowdy toddler or something else. Be still in Greek is what they call a verb of continuing action, which means that literally what he's saying is be quiet and stay quiet. In other words, he put the storm in time out.

He's like you, in the corner, you shut up and don't you come out until I tell you it's okay. And the storm kinda tucks its head and goes slinking off or over in the corner. The wind ceases and there was a great calm. Not only did the storm die down, immediately the waves died down. Y'all, even if you could stop the wind immediately, it would take a couple hours for the sea itself to die down.

He does it all in the space of a second. Then my favorite part of the story, he turns to the disciples and says, why are you so afraid? Well, we thought we were about to die. And then you stood up and you rebuke the wind like it was an angry toddler and it shut up. I feel like we got caused. Jesus continues, well, have you still no faith?

Watch this. Then they were filled with great fear and said to one another, who then is this that even the wind and the sea obey him, great fear. When they were in the storm and thought they were about to die, they were filled with just plain old regular fear. The kind of fear, regular boring fear like you fear when you're about to die.

That kind of fear. But after Jesus had stilled the storm, oh, then that fear went to great fear. In other words, the rescue scared them more than the storm. Seeing Jesus' power over the storm was more terrifying than thinking they were about to die in the storm, so they graduated from death fear to great fear. And they asked in amazement, who is this that even the wind and the waves obey him? You see, Jews believe that nobody but God could command the weather. Other prophets throughout history had possessed the power to heal, but only God, they believe, could control the weather.

In fact, here's another nerd moment for you. Some of the rabbinic literature at the time, like 2 Maccabees, record stories of a prophet who claimed to be able to control the weather and they accused him of blasphemy. They said, only God can control the weather. Jesus here does not even call on a higher power to change the weather. He's not like, oh, Father, would you control this storm?

He's like, hey, you shut up. He possesses the power in himself. Who is this that even the wind and the sea obey? And Mark's very clear answer is, it's got to be God. This is one of the three stories that Mark tells right in a row about amazing and bizarre things that obey Jesus. You got the story of Jesus who heals the disease and raises the little girl from death that we saw last week. You got this story where he commands the weather. When he gets over to the Gentile area, he's gonna throw out a whole legion of demons. And Mark puts these three stories together asking this question. The demons, disease, death, and the weather all obey Jesus.

Why don't you? Disease, death, weather, all of it obeys him. Who are you to defy him? Three important implications from this story. Number one, there is a good and necessary kind of fear. There's a good and necessary kind of fear. As I mentioned at the beginning, a lot of people think the concept of a God that you should be afraid of is outdated, but that's just foolish. How could you understand anything about the power of Jesus and not feel fear? Whenever anybody glimpses the power of Jesus in the Bible, they're overcome with fear.

One of my favorite examples of this is Revelation 1 where the Apostle John sees Jesus, gets a glimpse of Jesus for the first time after he has been ascended from earth into heaven and he is now glorified. Now, keep in mind, Jesus and John had been BFFs when Jesus was on earth. In fact, John rather confidently describes himself in the Gospel of John, you know this, as the one that Jesus loves. I've always thought that taught a lot of nerve to put into print in the Bible. You know, like I'm the one that Jesus really liked. I thought about signing my emails that way, J.D.

Greer, the one that Jesus loves, you know. John must have been pretty confident. In fact, we know at the Last Supper that John kept leaning his head back on Jesus's chest. Now I've got some guy friends, but I'm gonna tell you, not many of them do that.

In fact, by not many, I mean not any. It's just not, it's not a, we're talking a very close relationship. So what's this kind of reunion gonna look like? What would you act like if you'd seen a cherished friend and they left and you're getting together with them for the first time?

A warm embrace, high five, you know, how you doing, tears. Well, I'll let John himself describe it. Revelation 1, verse 17, when I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead.

That's not a figure of speech, by the way. When he laid his eyes on the glorified Jesus and finally saw him in all of his power, John literally thought he was gonna die. You know, I feel like we have lost all concept of this in our churches and our worship services. Jesus is our homeboy, our pal, our shepherd snuggling with the lost sheep. We glibly sing these sentimental songs about wanting to be in his presence. Y'all realize that if Jesus did what we were asking and just showed up here on stage with me, all of a sudden, we would all, like John, think we're gonna die.

They would not be good for church attendance. You see, maybe, you see, maybe the reason that so many people are so casual and unmotivated in their obedience and so sluggish in their worship is because they have no fear of him at all. Y'all, he rebuked the weather and it obeyed. He commanded disease and death and they yielded. He spoke to demons and they fled.

Who are you? Who are you to disobey him? Who are you to disobey him?

We have people listening to me each weekend who treat the commands of Jesus so casually. Oh, I'll get to it one day. It's just not a good time of life for me. I just can't make this a priority. There's too much going on at work. Oh, you know, it would just be so inconvenient to obey these commands. I prefer my sexual preferences to his will. It doesn't fit in with my lifestyle.

I'll do it later. Do you know the one to whom you're speaking? Who are you to defy the one who commands the winds and the waves, the demons, disease and death itself? More trembling and less sentimental swaying might do our worship services some good. Number two, fear does not exclude love. Number one, fear is, there's a good and very important kind of fear. Number two, fear does not exclude love. Whenever we talk about the fear of God, people begin to object like, well, wait, wait, wait. We're not supposed to be afraid of God, right? Perfect love casts out fear. I heard that verse, or isn't God the meek, tender, soft brown haired savior that plays with kids?

Yes, yes. But then you get pictures of Jesus like this that make that tenderness much more amazing and much more comforting. I'm reading C.S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe right now to my two youngest children who were eight and six before bedtime. And a couple of days ago, we came to the section where the four children hear about Aslan. For the first time, Aslan is the lion who represents Jesus. They hear that he's coming back to Narnia and that he wants to meet the children. So when the children first hear Aslan's name, they feel this mixture, Lewis says, of mystery and loveliness.

That same idea I was talking about, desire and terror. I don't know whether to draw close or run away. And Susan, one of the older kids says to Mr. Beaver, who's telling them about Aslan, says, so wait a minute, who is this Aslan? And Mr. Beaver says, why, who is Aslan? He's the king. He's the great lion who is the creator of Narnia. He is Narnia's rightful ruler and he's on the move and he's coming here. And Susan says, a lion? A lion, I thought he was a man. Is he quite safe?

I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion. Safe, said Mr. Beaver, who said anything about safe? Of course he isn't safe, but he's good.

He's the king, I tell you. So my daughter, Raya, at that point, eight years old, says, wait, that he is safe or he's not safe? And I said, well, he's not safe because he's a lion, but he's good. She's like, so he is safe. I'm like, no, you're not listening. He's not safe because he's a lion.

He could eat you, but he's also good and you can trust. That doesn't make any sense then. We went back and forth for 10 minutes on this, with her being frustrated, me being frustrated, and her more confused than when we started. So let me try to do a better job of explaining it to you.

Let me switch and use a different analogy. They say that in really high altitudes, like Mount Everest, that storms can come on suddenly and fiercely. Storms that kill because that's how people die on Mount Everest usually. And so the temperature can drop up to 40 degrees in the space of like five seconds. Gale force winds come out of nowhere and just sweep people off the mountain.

You don't even see it coming. Imagine you got caught in one of those storms. You feel the temperature drop by 40 degrees. You watch as your stuff is just blown away and you are clinging for dear life to the side of the mountain.

And you know that death is only moments away. And just when you are about to despair, you notice this little opening in the side of the mountain. And as you look in, you see it leads to a regressed cave. And in that cave, somebody has built a fire. And they're sheltered from the storm.

And they are preparing a meal. And so you work your way in there. And it's perfectly safe. And as you sit by the fire, you are warm, you are fed, but you're able to look back out the extra exit of the cave and you're able to see this ferocious power of nature all around you. Even though you are now safe from all of its threats, you still feel this sense of hushed awe before its power. That's the kind of fear the disciples feel before Jesus. You see their experience of salvation actually makes them more afraid of the God who was doing it. Our forgiveness is supposed to in many ways intensify our fear, not lessen it.

That's why you see strange verses in the book of Psalms like this one. But with you there is forgiveness that you may be feared. What, forgiven so that we might fear? Isn't the point of forgiveness to take away our fear?

If we've really been forgiven, what's there left to be afraid of? When you see what Jesus had to go through to save you, it makes you realize the holiness and the perfection of the God that you have rebelled against. You see, it is the bloody cross that gives you the greatest earthly picture of what the wrath of God actually looks like. People say, why was the cross so bloody?

Why was it so terrible? It was because it was exactly, exactly the price that your sin deserved. How you have lived, how I have lived was displayed for us on the cross of Jesus Christ. You got a glimpse in the cross of hell itself. Yet in that same sacrifice, I also see that I am safe within God's love.

It is no longer a threat to me and there is no more condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. And that experience of awe and fear combined with tenderness and salvation, that moves me to worship. Because see true worship, true worship is a mixture of awe and intimacy, or maybe even intimacy that grows out of awe, awe at the size and the power of God and the holiness of God, intimacy and realizing that he has paid your full sin debt and brought you close.

One without the other will lead you to a deformed spirituality. And there are some of you that have the fear of God, but no intimacy and therefore you have no warmth or love in your relationship to God. Some of you have the intimacy without the awe and so you are lazy or casual in your obedience.

There are all kinds of areas of compromise. You are sluggish in your worship. You show up late, you put your hands in your pocket, you don't engage. And the reason for that is because you have no awe of God. True worship, life-giving worship, worship that pleases God is awe that is mixed with intimacy.

Here is number three. We see from this story, Mark shows us, that those who fear Jesus really need fear nothing else. Because when you realize how powerful Jesus is and you realize that he's in the boat with you, well then you won't be afraid of anything else. In this story, Jesus rebukes the wind and the waves and then he turns around and he rebukes the disciples for being afraid.

Now if he's rebuking them, then that means that they're doing something they shouldn't have been doing. But, if I can be honest, it seems to me that their fears are legitimate. They thought they were going to die. I feel like that is the time for fear. Jesus says, yeah, yeah, yeah, I understand that but when I'm in the boat with you, even that fear is irrational. We all know what it's like to see somebody with an irrational fear.

I feel like everybody in my family has at least one irrational fear. My ally, my 10-year-old, when she, up to the age of six, was terrified of the movie The Incredibles. Oh, what is there about the movie Incredibles?

I don't know. I mean, she'd watch other movies that I thought were worse than that but she just like, I mean, she was terrified. I remember her bawling one night when we were about to come to our prayer meeting here because she thought they were gonna be showing The Incredibles in the kids' ministry. I had to call the kids' pastor and I was like, hey, could we show something besides The Incredibles?

Because my daughter is not coming because of The Incredibles. It just seemed irrational. My wife, I haven't gotten permission to share this story, is irrationally afraid of spiders. I mean, nobody likes spiders.

I understand that. They're creepy. But I mean, it's, I mean, I'll hear this scream that makes me think like she's seen a demon upstairs and I go running upstairs and I go, what's going on? You know, and she's like, there's a huge spider! You know, and I'm thinking like Frisbee size, like we run the microwave too much and it's mutant and it's like, you know, and I get my compound bow and I'm going in there and I'm like, where is it? And I'm like, and I look for, I can't even find it. And it's like a little tiny thing on the side and I'm like, where is that? She's like, that's it. And I'm like, I feel like that's irrational.

So we're, we all know what it's like to see somebody with an irrational fear. What Jesus is showing these disciples is, listen, every fear with the presence of Jesus in your life, every fear is irrational. Jesus was in their boat. Did they really think that God was gonna let the boat sink and let Jesus die? That would be dumb.

So here's the reasoning. If Jesus is in the boat, this boat ain't going down. And if I'm in the boat with him, I'm not going down either. But because they didn't understand the power of Jesus over the storm, they were afraid of the storm.

But had they really feared Jesus and understood his power, they would not have been afraid of the storm because it would look rather small in comparison to him. You see, I see it like this, Jurassic Park, like the original version, 1995. You remember the scene right at the very end where all the raptors have surrounded the people, the ferocious raptors, and they're about to eat them in that dome, do you remember this?

And then right as you think they're about to die, what happens? The T-Rex comes through the roof, smashes through the roof and gobbles up all the raptors. And so you're watching that and you're like, okay, so the T-Rex is really the one to be afraid of because the raptors ain't nothing compared to the T-Rex. And here's the question, what if you knew the T-Rex was on your side? If you knew the T-Rex was on your side, then you would not be afraid of the raptors. Because if the T-Rex is for me, who can be against me, right? If the T-Rex is on my side, what can raptors do to me? Jesus is the truer and better T-Rex.

That is how you should watch Jurassic Park, right? So what you've got is you've got a sense of of how large Jesus is suddenly make the waves and the storm that we're going to kill you. It makes it look rather small, which is exactly what is in Paul's mind when he says, if God is for us, who can be against us? Who is there to condemn? It is God who justifies, who is, I forgot how that verse goes.

Who can bring a charge against God's elect? It is Christ Jesus who died. And more than that was, didn't just die, raised again, and now makes intercession for you. If God is on your side, if he is for you, then there is literally nothing else that you have to fear. Worry in our lives comes, listen to this, from either A, forgetting the power of Jesus over the storm or B, doubting his commitment to you in the storm.

It comes from one of those two places every single time. You see, Mark tells this story because it depicts how we often feel in life. We sense these storms brewing around us and it seems to us like Jesus is sleeping if he exists at all. Or maybe we look around and we see the size of the waves and see how they're coming up over the side of the boat and they seem overwhelming and the water is filling up our boat and we feel like we're being drowned by bills or by concerns in our marriage or problems with our kids or issues at work or too much you're trying to balance with school or schedules or health problems and you ask, how am I gonna make it? And you look up at Jesus and say, do you even care? Well, where are you when my marriage is going through this and aren't you supposed to take care of me?

Do you even exist at all? Mark is telling you when that happens, three things you're supposed to do. First, realize that those feelings are natural. Even the disciples who were the future leaders of the church, that's what they felt.

But second, and just as importantly, don't listen to those feelings. Put your eyes on Jesus, put them on his power and his commitment and his ability over the storm. Salvation doesn't come from getting on top of your circumstances, it comes from believing God's promises.

So get your eyes off your circumstances and put them on the promises of Jesus. Third, when you feel like you're drowning, it's okay to wake Jesus up. He wasn't irritated by being woken up.

He was only angered by their lack of faith. He wants you to wake him up. He puts you in situations intentionally so that you will wake him up.

So wake him up and say, I know that you care. So I know that you're gonna work in this situation because you promised you would. Now you ask, well, if Jesus really loves us, why wouldn't he keep me from the storm?

That's a great question. In verse 35, I showed you it was his idea to cross the sea to begin with. It wasn't a bad situation they got themselves into that he's now trying to fix.

The whole thing was his idea. He could very easily have had them avoid this situation. Why did he knowingly send them into the storm? Why does he knowingly send you into the storm? Now you've seen people celebrating how God healed somebody from cancer, but your question that you didn't wanna ask was, well, why did God give him cancer to begin with? Why did he let him go through cancer? If he really loved him and he could heal him, why didn't he just keep him from it?

Here's why. Because there's something more important than God keeping you from all storms. And that is God teaching you his faithfulness in the storm. And see, there are certain things about God that you can only learn in the storm. So God sends you into storms because storms are his laboratory in which he teaches you about himself. And the knowledge of God is the greatest thing you can ever possess on earth. It's even better than a storm-free life. So God says, let him go through storms so they can see my faithfulness and my power in those storms.

See, here's what I've learned. Everybody wants to see miracles. Everybody wants to see miracles in their lives.

Nobody wants to be in a place where they actually need one. Right? But until God puts you in a place where you need his sustaining power, you're never gonna experience it. Y'all, after a long, meticulous study of the New Testament, PhD-level study in the original languages, I have come up with this dazzlingly brilliant conclusion. You wanna hear it? Every miracle that Jesus ever did started with a problem.

Oh yeah, 13 years of school right there. Every single miracle that Jesus did started with a problem. That's good news and bad news. You want some good news? Good news is you got problems in here, you a candidate for a miracle.

That's good news. Bad news is you ain't got no problems, you ain't seeing no miracle. Maybe what needs to happen at the end if you got a problem for your life is you come up here and Pastor Chuck will lay his hands on you and pray that God will give you some problems. Because at that point, then you can experience the miraculous power of Jesus. You see, it is his intention to show you his ability so he allows you to go through them so that you will look upward to him and you will feel his sustaining and miraculous power. In a storm, Jesus will always do one of two things, always. He'll either show off his power by delivering you from the storm or he'll show off his power by his ability to keep you in the storm. Sometimes he'll look at the storm and say, peace be still.

And sometimes he'll turn around to you in the boat and say, peace be still. Because the peace that passes all understanding is not always nor is it usually his calming of the storm. The peace that passes all understanding is his sustaining presence in the storm. Jesus is the Prince of peace.

Peace is not a set of circumstances. It is a savior that unites himself to you. So worry in our lives or the storm of fear, that's the real storm in our hearts, that comes from either forgetting the power of Jesus over the storm or doubting his commitment to you in the storm, which leads me to the last and most important insight from this story, because it shows us why we never have to doubt his commitment to us. Because see, I know that there's some of you listening saying, well, maybe the disciples could depend on that. Maybe you as a pastor could depend on that. Maybe really good Christians could depend on that. But I just don't feel like that very good of a Christian. I feel like I'm really inconsistent and I don't think I'd be one of Jesus favored ones.

So how am I supposed to know that he's doing this for me? That's a great question. You see the story is told in such a way that it's supposed to remind you of another prophet who had another incident with the sea. And that prophet's name was Jonah. And see Jonah, just like Jesus had been on his way to the Gentiles.

Remember that? So Jesus is headed to the Gentiles, Jonah is headed to the Gentiles. Both Jesus and Jonah go into a storm and both of them are asleep in the storm. Both of them are woken up by scared sailors who say, don't you care that we perish? And when Jonah is thrown overboard in Jonah chapter one, and it calms the sea down, Mark uses the exact same phrase in Mark chapter four, the wind ceased and there was a great calm.

Here's where it gets really interesting. There's some differences. Jonah calms the storm by plunging himself into it. Jesus calms the storm however, by simply speaking to it.

Why the distinction? Here's why, because this was not the place for Jesus to plunge himself into the sea. You see the sea throughout the Bible represents God's wrath.

That's the image of the sea. That's why in the book of Revelation, all the evil empires arise out of the sea. Or it's why at the end of the book of Revelation, it says that there is no more sea in heaven, which I know has been totally depressing to some of you because you're like, I wanna go to the beach in heaven.

It's not that there's not gonna be a beach in heaven. It's that there's no more wrath of God. There's no more wrath of God. And so what you've got is the sea, which represents the wrath of God.

And at the cross, Jesus is gonna plunge himself headfirst into the sea of God's wrath, where he's gonna be swallowed up like Jonah by death for three days, so that when he is resurrected, he can preach salvation to the people. The wrath of God was terrible. It was like a raging sea. It was terrifying.

It would scare us to death. Jesus faces the terror and he silences it in love. You see what God did is the ferocious terror of his wrath that was directed at you and me, which we deserve, was poured into Jesus because God's love overcame his wrath so that if you and I are in Christ, we are safely sheltered from it. And we stand with a sense of hushed awe in it. And we put our hands up and say, with you, there is forgiveness that you may be feared. And we begin to worship and praise and sing. You show me somebody that's learned how to worship and I'll show you somebody that's in touch with the salvation that Jesus has given them. You show me somebody lazy in their worship and I'll show you somebody who has no concept of what they've actually been saved from.

You wanna know why your heart's so dry? Because you don't know what you've been forgiven of. Isn't that what Jesus said to the Pharisees? The prostitute comes in, starts weeping at his feet, taking her perfume, valuable, pouring it over his feet and all the Pharisees are like, what's she doing? Why is he letting her do that? And what's he turn around and say to him?

Leave her alone. Because those who are forgiven much love much. The fact that you don't love shows that you don't know what you've been forgiven of. You've never developed the fear of God, which is why the love of God doesn't move your heart to emotion.

You see, you got to have intimacy that grows out of awe. You got to have faith that grows out of fear. And see, once you know that and you're assured of that love, then you'll begin to look at the storms of your life and you'll say, well, if he didn't forsake me in that storm, if he plunged himself into the sea of God's wrath for me, then of course he's gonna take care of me in this one. I mean, he's united himself to you in your boat and he's not gonna let his own boat sink. Isn't that what Paul said in 1 Timothy? When we are faithless, he is faithful.

Why? Because he cannot deny himself. In other words, even when you're doing a terrible job in the boat, he's not gonna let that boat sink because he in it.

That's not good English, but that's great theology. He's in the boat. He's in the boat.

And that means that when he has united himself to you, if you have trusted him as savior and received him, that your life is now his possession and he cares more about your life becoming what it's supposed to be than even you do. Y'all, here's a question. Here's a question. Who really gets woken up in this story? Is it Jesus?

No. Jesus didn't get woken up. He knew it from the very beginning what was gonna happen. It's the disciples who get woken up, right? Psalm 121, four, "'Fear not, O Israel. "'He who watches over you will never slumber or sleep.'" If you recall, when Jesus went to the cross, it was Peter, James, and John, the disciples who slept on him, not he on them. So when he went into the real storm, they were asleep, not him, so that they could be assured that whatever storm they were going through, he was always wide awake to it. You see, so we know that as we go into these storms, we are awake to the love of Jesus. Who gets woken up in this story?

It's not Jesus, it's the disciples. Have you been woken up to the love of God? Because being woken up usually consists of a storm that rattles your foundation, and then you being aware of what God did for you on the cross. Have you been woken up to the love of God in your life? Why don't you bow your heads, if you would, at all of our campuses, bow your heads.

I'm thinking specifically right now of three kinds of people. There are some of you that have never trusted Christ as Savior, and I need you to wake up to God's love. I know you got reasons why you think you doubt it, but God's ultimate final demonstration was the cross. That's where he showed his commitment to you.

That's where he showed his power. Death and resurrection. Have you ever received it? It's a gift, you have to choose to receive it for yourself. Have you received it?

If not, you can do it right now. Lord Jesus, I receive you as my Savior. I surrender to you as my Lord.

If you have done that, you know that you have, you're in the midst of a storm right now in your life, circumstances overwhelming you, health problems that are gonna drown you, finances you can't make work. I feel like there's some people in here that just need to wake Jesus up. Call to me, he says, call to me.

I'll show you great and mighty things that you don't even know. Call to him right now. I need you, wake up, wake up. There's others of you in here that what you need to hear from him is peace be still, you be still, because the storm doesn't threaten me at all. And I'm gonna keep you in the storm.

Can you say to him right now, I trust you. I trust you in this storm. If you need to deliver me from the storm, that's what you'll do because you're powerful over it. But if you don't, I know that you'll keep me in it. You'll keep me in and you will never let me sink.

You're in my boat and we're not going down. And I trust that. Can you just say that you trust him? Lord, we're a needy people who are very afraid over so many things. Give us the spirit of wisdom and revelation to be able to see your power and your tenderness that grows out of your power. Let us be safe and secure. But fix our eyes on you in hopefulness, faith that grows out of fear. We pray in Jesus' name. You keep your heads bowed at all campuses and our worship teams will come and lead us.