Jesus Storm

Stu Epperson here. One of my favorite things to do is to break down a passage of Scripture that has been widely misapplied, maybe over-allegorized and misunderstood, and make sure that we give the clear teaching. And that's what happened with this Jesus calming the storm at sea in Mark chapter 4, verses 35 through 41. Today's Truth Talk Live, we're jumping right in that boat with Jesus and his disciples, and we'll discover that it wasn't the storm at sea that they were truly afraid of, it was the storm after the calm.

When they were exceedingly afraid and paralyzed, like one pastor put it—and I'll quote this in today's show—"What's more scary, the storm outside your boat or the living God on the inside of your boat?" And so you're going to hear the whole thing right here on Truth Talk Live. Stay tuned, be encouraged, and share this with everyone you know to encourage them as well. All right, let's talk. A daily program powered by the Truth Network. This is kind of a great thing, and I'll tell you why. Where pop culture, current events, and theology all come together. Speak your mind.

And now, here's today's Truth Talk Live host. What is the greatest storm in your life right now? What is the greatest storm that God has brought you through? What is that thing that you are most afraid of, and have you ever seen your life flash right in front of your eyes? It's vivid.

It's graphic. You can taste it. You were there, and you thought, I'm gone. I'm on my way to heaven.

Or maybe you didn't know Christ, and you were on your way to hell at that moment. I'm Stu Epperson. Welcome to Truth Talk Live. It's the Wednesday in the Word edition of Truth Talk Live. Every Wednesday, we jump in deep into the Word of God.

This week, we are going to one of the most sermonized, read about, spoken about, sung about, one of the most popular kids' Bible stories in all of Scripture, where Jesus calms the storm. And I don't want to break your heart, Dr. Carson. Date the Word. Good to see you, sir.

Yes, sir. You are dating the Word. You wake me up every morning with your emails.

You wake me up every morning with those texts, and then I listen to the Truth Network this morning, and I heard two Thessalonians, two-nine, one Thessalonians, two-seven. Be a comfort. Be gentle. I love it. Every day of the year, whatever your birthday is, this guy's got a verse for you. I love it.

It's a verse day. Happy birthday. And whether it's your spiritual birth, whether it's your anniversary, whether it's your basketball number, your football number, whatever it is, whether you're my buddy Jay Jerome, who just sent me some amazing swag, I'm wearing his hat right now.

If you go to our YouTube channel, you can watch me with this hat on. I love it. Love the brand. Love the swag. Oh, my. The swag bag arrived.

We love hosting national radio, and we love our listeners. I want you to call and tell us what is the storm that God has brought you through in your life, what is that scary, fearful moment, because the disciples thought they were dead. They thought their life was flashing in front of them. And these were some seafaring guys. These guys were used to deadly storms at sea. These guys were, you know, at least six or seven of the twelve were fishermen, well acquainted with the legend and the swells and the tsunami-like quells of waves and beating battering against the ship that happened on the Sea of Galilee, which is like the teacup for the perfect storm. You know, over 678 feet below sea level, the lowest freshwater body of water in the world is the Sea of Galilee.

And of course, the lowest saltwater body of the water is the Dead Sea. So this happened. This happened in Mark chapter 4. This happened after Christ had preached and all that. Dr. Carson, will you read these verses? I want everyone to hear what's going on in the Word of God, and then we're going to jump right in. We'll take some of your calls, and we'll talk about the real meaning, which, by the way, I hate to break your heart early on, but the real intent and the real purpose of this passage is not, Jesus will calm your storms. That is true.

But there's a bigger storm that happened after the calm when they encountered the God of the storm. And we want the goal of this show, the goal of this network, the goal of everything we do is to expose you to the one who will radically change your life. So call everyone you know, tell them to tune on this radio station right now, and I'll give shout-outs to everyone that I bump into during the day. Hello, thank you for listening, thanks for putting up with this loud, loquacious talk show host who told you to tune on that radio station wherever you are, whether it's 96.9 FM in Greenville, South Carolina, or 106.5 FM in Toledo, or 97.7 FM in Greensboro, 99.1 High Point.

All kinds of stations nationwide are listening to this program right now. Dr. Carson, read the Word of God to us. Hey, we're in Mark chapter 4, verse 35. We're going to go down to verse 41. The waves beat into the boat so that it was already filling, but Jesus was in the stern asleep on a pillow. And they awoke him and said to him, Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing? Then he arose and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, Peace be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. But he said to them, Why are you so fearful?

How is it that you have no faith? And they feared exceedingly and said to one another, Who can this be that even the wind and the sea obey him? That's God's Word.

That's God's Word. Powerful. May it be a lamp to my feet, a light on my path. Dr. Carson, question number one, the context. What's going on?

Talk to us. Well, Jesus has been out ministering. It's been a long day. He has been preaching. And now he wants to go to the other side, which is really going to where the Gentiles are. And he's going to take in their boat across the Sea of Galilee.

And he's not taking the side route. He said, Let's go straight across, straight across to the Gentile territory. To the Gentile territory. Because it says here, it says in the scripture, on the same day. On the same day. Toward the evening. So it's getting darker. And they've been working, ministering, starting to get dark. Miracles, teaching, you know, he's busy. He said, Let us cross over to the other side.

Now this interesting statement, we missed that little verse there, but Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, says, We're going to the other side. So there's a promise there. That's crucial.

That is. It's a promise right here. This is where we're going. In the first verse, they're told they're going to make it. They're going to go to the other side.

He tells them that. But things change. All of a sudden, the wind starts blowing. I think about that old TV show Gilligan's Island.

That's right. The storm. All of a sudden, the storm and everything's falling apart.

And these guys who are supposed to be so calm, no matter what, because like you said, they're fishermen. Ask question number two, quick. Number two, why would Jesus be asleep in the boat? And someone tell me that.

Call in the number 866-34-TRUTH, 866-348-7884. How could Jesus sleep? Why would he be so tired? How does this brilliantly show the human side of Christ? He's 100% God, 100% man.

The God-man. And why could he be sleeping when there's a raging storm, which we'll see here in verse 37, a great windstorm arose. But Jesus, it says, was asleep in the stern, asleep on a pillow. Fast asleep. The pillow speaks of intentionality.

That was something he had playing. Yeah, he had a pillow. If you have a pillow, you're going to sleep. And he's going to sleep because he's had an exhausting day.

Yeah, so why is he asleep? We want to hear from you on that. 866-34-TRUTH. Dr. Carson's with me. It's Truth Talk Live, Wednesday in the Word edition, going through Mark. What is the greatest storm in your life?

When were you scared to death? Someone testify of that right now. The lines are open.

866-348-7884. Yeah, you think, well, what kind of storm story do I have? Well, everyone, if anyone is living and breathing and listening, you have a storm story. And if you think the storm's not bad now in our country, it's about to get a lot worse. Yes.

And so what do you do? How do you handle it? And could it have gotten any worse for the disciples? They literally were scared for their life.

For their life. And then suddenly, in the last verse, we find out they were even more afraid. They were even more afraid of another storm after the calm, which is fascinating. We're talking about the storm story, the most popular storm story, arguably in the Bible. There's a storm story, Christ walked on water.

There's other storms. You know, Jonah had one himself. Jonah slept in the bottom boat like Jesus did. Jonah did all kinds of things, and there's a lot of comparisons contrast. He was in disobedience, and he was sleeping in a false sense of tranquility and peace.

Jesus slept in full obedience and completely surrendered to God's will, so on and so forth. So there are times we would have storms of correction. That was Jonah. And then I call this one a storm of transformation. Okay, yeah, storm of transformation. Very good. And so what about the whole storm after the storm with Jesus?

We'll get to that. There's a third question here that's really important, and let's go through the scripture. I mean, the great windstorm arose, the waves beat the boat, so that it was already filling. So there's a, you know, literally in the Greek language, great windstorm, waves beating the boat, those kind of things are extremely tempestuous.

In the Greek language, it's like the words like whirlwind and literally earthquake, the same word for earthquake. So you're shaking. Anyone ever been in a boat like that? Anyone ever in a storm? We had some weathered Navy sailors in our thing this morning who had very much gone through some stuff like that.

And they talked about it. I mean, I was surprised how many people opened up admitting the storms they'd been in. And you don't have to call in and spiritualize it. You don't have to call in and sound like super Christian.

You may have blown it in a storm. But tell me about your storm when you thought you were going to die. Feel free to call in. It's a national radio show. You can change your name if the storm was that embarrassing, or maybe you're afraid of mosquitoes, and you have a phobia of that, and you overdid it and fell off the ladder trying to dodge a mosquito.

86634truth, 866348, 7884. And no doubt the greatest fear a sailor or a fisherman could experience would be the fear of dying at sea. And the Sea of Galilee was a graveyard because of the nature of where that rests and because of the cold winds coming off those peaks thousands of feet in the air. You've been on the Sea of Galilee. You've been on a storm, haven't you, Doc?

Talk about it. Those storms can come up so quickly. As I was growing up, I could see a storm coming here on the Sea of Galilee. All of a sudden, it's upon you.

And you've got to be ready. And so again, that's what makes it so amazing about the disciples being so afraid. They were used to storms coming. This must have been an incredible storm that caused them to be that fearful, where they're realizing, I don't think we're going to make it.

Yeah. And so he was in the stern, Christ is fast asleep. They're wide awake. We had a storm not long ago here in Winston-Salem where it was really, really bad. And I woke up during the night. So in the morning, I asked my wife, I said, did you hear how bad the storm was?

She said, I never heard a thing. I said, you slept right through the storm. That's Jesus.

He's sleeping right through the storm. It hasn't been an airplane, you know, 10,000 feet of the air and it's shaking. And you're like, this could be it. And you're like, I got to share the Lord with this person next to me because this may be the last gospel they ever hear.

This thing could be going down. So this great windstorm, Christ is asleep. And then ask this next question, Doc, right there, number three.

How could the disciples rebuke the master in verse 38? Remember that they said, teacher, do you not care that we are perishing? Wow. Yeah.

So there's a lot going on there. First they call him teacher. Then they said, do you not care? So they questioned his love for them. Here they've heard him teach. They've seen him do miracles. They've seen him cast out demons. Even the demons obey him.

What kind of man is this? The scribe said in the temple. Even the spirits are subject to him. And yet they don't think he cares for them. They think that he's going to lay there and sleep while they die. Because he has told them, we're going to go to the other side.

So they're thinking now, hey, you are not a good guide for us. And you know, Stu, when you think about people going through storms, trials, James chapter one, here's what I have found. People will either turn away from God when trials come, when these storms come. Or they'll turn to God. Praise the Lord for that. But you know, many times we do, we turn on God. We begin to blame God for the storms we're going through when he's taking these storms and he's going to be using it to develop us and grow us. Here's the disciples.

And now we know the end of the story. They're going to know more about God than they ever knew before this storm. But as they're now getting ready to deal with it, they're like, God, you don't have my best interest in mind. And I just wonder, we may have some listeners right now. You're going through a storm right now and you're wondering, does God have my best interest in mind? I thought he wanted me to go to the mission fair. I thought he wanted me to go into the ministry. I thought he wanted me to go to work at this place.

But it's become an incredible storm. God's got you right where he wants you so that you could learn more about him. Don't turn on him. These disciples have turned on.

They're going to have to learn. He cares about them. Well, let's put that in the form of a question. When have you questioned Christ in the storm? When have you looked at God and said, why did I lose my dad? We're best friends. We're hanging out.

He's my mentor, my leader. Why did I total my car? Why did I dodge a deer and get hit by someone else coming down the road in the middle of Virginia and nearly face death? That was my moment. I thought I was receiving Jesus. God, I'm serving you.

Why was I sitting there with our... domestic terrorists cut our towers down. You want me to get real? I'll get real. You want me to get graphic? You want to call in?

You can call in at 866-34-TRUTH. I may not take your call if I'm on a rant. I'm sorry. But I'm sitting there in a field.

Go to my Facebook page and I'm sitting there. Our domestic terrorists cut our towers down. FBI was looking at it. They dropped the ball. They left. They disappeared. No more interest in it. Local law enforcement, no more. They dropped the case. Someone took a specific tool to cut three of our towers down systematically over three weeks' time. We're off the air.

It costs us a ton of damage, no insurance. And I'm sitting there thinking, why am I doing this Christian radio? I go to deliver pizzas, asking God those questions. I thought God, you would protect me. And he's like, where is he?

Did I sign up for this? Did John Bunyan sign up to be in prison? You know, and his little blind daughter has to come to him every day and bring him food and care for him.

And he can't even raise his children. He's in prison for preaching the gospel! The storms of life.

Here Jesus is asleep. The disciples are besieged by fear. They're upset, and they're like, teacher, why do you want us to perish? You know, what are you thinking?

They think they can teach the teacher. So what happened in verse 39? Just a remarkable story. And if you want to share your storm story, jump on in. There's room for you at 866-34-TRUTH, 866-348-7884. The talk show where no caller, no question is a dumb question. We'd love to hear from you.

866-34-TRUTH. Then he arose and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, peace be still. And the wind ceased.

And there was great calm. That's verse 39. So he spoke to the storm right there, and he said, peace be still.

One of the greatest things you brought out this morning, and I'm pretty sure you're going to bring it out again, but I'm going to jump out with it right now. Jesus did not pray. Yeah, he didn't go to the Father. He didn't say, I'm going to fast and pray, I'm going to get on my knees, I'm going to do seven trips around the stern of this ship, you know, and he just spoke. So we see his humanity in this story, but we see in his deity in this story. We're seeing he, the one who could raise the dead, heal the sick, he also will calm a natural storm. He spoke.

Wow. Colossians 1. All things were created by him, he holds all things together. Coming back, why don't you hear your storm story? Did you feel like God was neglecting you? Where was God?

Why was he silent, or was he? We're about to meet him in this story at 866-34-TRUTH. More on Truth Talk Live, coming up.

Hang on. This is the Truth Network. I'd love to hear your storm story, and forgive me for getting a little graphic and raw there, Doc Carson.

You know how to push my buttons, man. I'm a talk show host, and it all came out. Sometimes we let it hang out, don't we? But we've all been in storms, we've all struggled. You look at life, you look at, you know, life is rough. You think your life is rough now? It's going to get rougher.

Even in our country. Job says that man is born of woman and full of trouble. Yeah. That's going to be life. Yeah, so you have the storm at sea. We've got callers on the line, tell us your storm story, and how did Jesus Christ get you through the storm. And we're going to talk about the storm after the calm. I love how John MacArthur, John MacArthur outlines this whole passage, Mark chapter 4, 35-41, as basically the calm before the storm, like when they're getting in the boat, 35-36, the actual calming of the storm, when Christ calms the storm, and then the storm itself, then Christ calming the storm, and then the final section, the final two verses, 40 and 41, are the storm after the calm. So there's a storm after the calm. You thought, oh it's fine. No, they encountered something in someone so powerful, they were more afraid when the storm was ceased than they were before. And that's the whole point of encountering Jesus Christ, and the question they asked. But we want to take some calls, we want to thank Vine-Tastic, our friends. These guys, they're keeping us going through the show, aren't they?

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Get a case, get a bottle from La Blue Bottle and from our friends at Mighty Muscadine. Now, Dr. Carson, the question is, what's your storm story? How has Christ brought you through the storm?

Why did the disciples rebuke the Master? We're going to get to the rest of the questions, but we've got some callers on the line. If you want to weigh in and try to answer those questions, maybe share a testimony that could encourage someone else. 866-348-7884 to phone in on this Wednesday in the Word edition of Truth Talk Live. Mike is our caller on the line right now from Ohio. Mike, you're on the air. Welcome to the show.

Well, thank you, sir. I was about 12 years old, and I went through a tornado. It's kind of a long story, but I'll try to make it as short as possible. My dad was sitting on the couch reading the Bible because somebody from the work was testimony with him, and he was searching the Bible.

And all of a sudden, over the phone, over the TV, it says, Xenia, take cover. And my dad looked out the window and seen a huge tornado. We all ran into the Volkswagen bug, drove down the street, and got into a cauldron. And my dad held us in the cauldron, and the tornado went right over top of us.

We couldn't believe that we were alive. We were praising God and everything. And my mom says, I hope our house is still there.

Please, Lord, we're walking back to the house. And sure enough, our house was still there, and all our belongings were still there. God took care of us. What a story. You all read the Bible, just like the disciples were hearing Jesus teach the Bible all day long. They were listening to the living Word teach the Word of God, the author of the Word teach the Word of God, and suddenly they find themselves in their own version of that, all huddled up with him, except he was crushing a power nap, and they were scared to death. That brought our whole family to God, I mean, real close to God, because my dad was witnessing to him at his word. And so he started looking up the Bible and looking, trying to seek God. And then we had that tornado, and then God saved us, and I mean, literally did. And we never forget it, you know what I mean? It's amazing.

What is it about storms that caused you to get closer to God? Mike, thank you for your call. Thank you for sharing that. Wow, if you want to join Mike and share a testimony about this, 866-34-TRUTH, we've got a line open, 866-348-7884. I heard Pastor JD at one of our North Carolina Truth Network pastors, who's on a lot of our stations.

You guys hear Summit Life across the Truth Network. He said something fascinating about this specific passage. He said, every miracle in the Bible is preceded by a major problem, a major crisis, a major storm. And so at the end of preaching at Southeastern Seminary in Wake Forest in North Carolina, he said, maybe instead of having you come down here and we get together and pray for you for a miracle in your life, maybe we should get together and pray for problems.

Wow. Let's have a prayer for problems. Let's pray for major problems in your life. Because when you're in a tornado, you heard what Mike just said, suddenly he's closer to God. And I was angry about the whole tower thing, our towers getting cut down and all that, in a moment. But then in that moment, I also felt a closeness of God. It didn't hurt that I had like 2,000 Facebook comments from people saying, I'm praying for you and quoting Scripture. And that just fed me, the Word of God. The love of God, the prayers of the saints kind of buoying you up. People coming to my dad's funeral, shaking my hand and just pouring grace into me and sharing testimonies. I'm following Jesus because that man right there in that box up there, because he shared Christ, I'm following the Lord today.

I'm like, wow. I mean, this is a funeral. That guy's dead. I lost my dad. But look at the souls that heaven gained because of his witness.

So it's tough. The storms are tough. 866-344-TRUTH, if you want to share your storm story, maybe how God met you in the storm, and how could something so just awful that the devil meant for evil, that's just catastrophic, how could that bring you closer to God? How can that draw you near to him? How could that bring you closer to him?

And this next question takes us even deeper, Doc, if you want to ask that, but you were going to make a comment to the above. Well, when you said that about JD's comment, praying for problems, well, when you think about what's happening here and we're talking about it, these guys got to experience God's power. They got to experience God's presence. They got to experience God's peace.

Had to get it in a storm. So if you say, hey, I want to know God's power, get ready for a storm. I want to know God's peace, get ready for a storm. I want to know God's presence where he's up close. With Psalms 23, as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death, he says, I will be with you. So it's in these storms that God's going to do some of his greatest work in our lives. Yeah, and there's something more awesome and awe-inspiring than the storm.

Yeah. And that is what we're going to get to in this last segment. Before we do, we've got Gerald calling in. 866-34-TRUTH, you want to share your storm story. How could a storm bring you closer to God?

How could these trials get you closer? And Gerald, let's let you weigh in. Thanks for calling in at Truth Talk Live. It's the Wednesday in the Word edition of Truth Talk Live, dealing with this popular story in Scripture in Mark 4, 35-41.

Gerald, you're on the air. Well, 2020, I had just recommitted, well, I just committed totally to God, and within a week and a half, my motorcycle fell over on me in three miles an hour in the driveway and broke my ankle. Oh, wow. I was at my daughter's, and she nursed me back to health, and then the next year I'm working on cutting wood, and my right knee freezes up due to bone-on-bone knee condition. So I had to get a knee replacement back at my daughter's again.

She took care of me, nursed me as well. But then, during the recovery, God said, okay, you've given everything to me. Now, can you trust me like you trust your daughter, the physical therapist, and the surgeons and the doctors? Wow. Can you trust me that week?

So I had to not only commit totally to God in one year, but then two years later, during medical storm, God got my attention and asked me if I could trust him like I trusted all the ones that I've been involved with the last two years on medical procedures. Wow. That's something. Yeah.

So these other physicians are just getting you closer to the great physicians, is what you're telling me. There you go. All right. How about that?

All right. I raised my brother in the church. She went away. I gave her a whole bunch of devotionals.

She came back to church. So you never... God bless you, Gerald. Yeah.

We've got to take a break. What a testimony. Coming right back on Truth Talk Live. This is the Truth Network. This is the Truth Network. This is the Truth Network. This is the Truth Network. This is the Truth Network. This is the Truth Network. This is the Truth Network. This is the Truth Network. This is the Truth Network. This is the Truth Network. This is the Truth Network. This is the Truth Network.

This is the Truth Network. What do we learn about Jesus from this account? He's a teacher.

He wants this storm to be a teachable moment. It's intentional. Every second he slept was intentional. Every waking moment. Every word he said. He spoke directly. Peace be still.

I heard one commentator said, Be quiet. Be still and know that I am God. Muzzle yourself, which is what the Greek language literally means, to muzzle yourself, because I'm in control, and I'm working, and I'm making it happen. So, here you have Jesus saying that to the storm. The storm is quiet. Then he says to them, Why are you so fearful?

How is it that you have no faith? And then, look at verse 41. Now, this is the storm after the calm. You think this story's over?

I'll tell you why. This story, the end punchline of the story isn't, Oh, Jesus is just going to calm your storms, okay, and make your life nice, because their life was more devastated after the storm. You thought they were afraid of the storm, looking death in the eyes? No. They feared exceedingly, verse 41, and said to one another, and go back to your question, Who is Jesus?

What did we learn from him? Who can this be? What a question, doc.

Everyone, as you're driving, think about that question. Who can this be? That is the perennial question of the whole Bible, of all of life.

Who can this be? Who is Jesus, ultimately? He's using the storm so they could know more about him. There are things that we think we know about Jesus, academically, maybe.

We can give the right answer on a test. But then, in the real test, where it gets very practical, now I can say, I know what God can do for me. I've seen God do this. When those towers had to be replaced, God began to provide in ways you never knew before. I love it when I see God at work, and I'll make a statement many times. God was working when I didn't even know he was working, and didn't even know I needed him to be working. That's our God.

But unless I'm in the storm, I don't see those kinds of things. So the difference between the fisherman in the boat, sitting with a teacher, listening to him teach, listening to the orthodoxy he was teaching, suddenly, when they're in that same boat, the teacher's not teaching, he's sleeping, suddenly their orthodoxy becomes orthopraxy. And suddenly they're now fleshing out those lessons in that soil, and the seed of the word of God is now taking root. And suddenly they're not just becoming hearers, but they're becoming doers. In this case, not becoming doers, because they were fearful, they were afraid, they were doubting, they were impugning motives on Christ, you know, care for me, the one who cared and made their intricate, woven them in their intimate parts, you know, intricate parts, Psalm 139. Here they're saying, you don't care for me. The question, verse 41, that we leave you with today on Truth Talk Live, and thank you for being with us, thank you, Dr. Duane Carson, for being with us.

Date the Word, we'll talk about that app here in a second, but who can this be? The disciples asked. They said this to one another, that even the wind and the sea obey him. Listen, universal across every paradigm, across every religion, across every belief system, is the central fact that only God can command the weather. You can complain about the weather, you can prognosticate, I think it might or might not snow, you can speculate about the weather, you can be frustrated, you can curse the weather, but you, my friend, cannot command the weather. By the way, this is not telling you to go start commanding the storm.

Don't take this away, my friends. My friends that may be leaning a little more Pentecostal, this text is not telling you. I'm not saying God may be able to lead you and somehow work through you in a situation. Of course, God still works miracles. But this is not an application of this text. It's not to say, okay, now you go speak to storms. You did not make that storm. You are not the Creator. You are not the author of the universe. You are his son.

You are subject. You call upon the Lord to do things. You don't even bind Satan. You call upon the Lord to do that, okay? Because he is God, and you are not. But you are his son. You are a joiner with Christ, and you are a prince of the king if you're his. But even the wind and sea obeys him.

Hit us the final question, Doc. What storms has he carried you through? Yeah.

And I love the way you asked that question. Carried you through. You know, there's times he's gonna calm the storm, but more often he calms his son to get them through the storm.

That's right. And if you're going through that storm, now will you begin to learn he is the great physician. He is the great shepherd. He is the one that provides the light that I need to make decisions. I don't know all I need to know about God.

I don't know even what I need to know about God. And all of a sudden, I'm in a storm, and now I'm having to call on him, rely on him, and he shows me things about him that I never would have known before. We were talking about how Mary and Martha called on Jesus to come and heal Lazarus. They knew he could heal Lazarus. That's why they called on him. But then Jesus didn't heal. That seems so foreign to them.

What's the deal? Why didn't you heal? Well, he wanted them to learn he could do something more than healing. He could raise somebody from the dead. So he took them through the storm, Lazarus dies, breaks their heart, but now they got to see God do something so special, so incredible, their lives would never be the same. And that's what's happening here.

Yeah, that's right, exactly right. So the question is how have you encountered the God of the storm in the storm? And there's really something we don't talk about a whole lot. I don't know if there's been a book written about this in a century, The Fear of God. Proverbs says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. So don't go tell the disciples you're not supposed to fear God. But the fact is, they were more afraid and paralyzed with fear when the storm was calmed. Because like John MacArthur said, what is more fearful? What is more scary?

The storm outside your boat or the God of the universe inside your boat? And that was devastating to them. And they were devastated. What did Peter say when Jesus did that great miracle?

He said, put your nets on the other side, and they were kind of questionable and skeptical and all that. He just falls on his face before the Lord and says, depart from me, I'm a sinful man. John the Revelator, who laid his head on Jesus' breast in Revelation chapter 1, it says when he encountered the living God in the Revelation, here's a weathered, living apostle. Everyone else had died and been martyred.

He is living still on Patmos. He says he fell on his feet as he was a dead man. Ezekiel, same thing. Isaiah, anyone that's encountered God is never the same. And so this whole storm story is to encounter a great... Let me tell you what. What does one of the great Puritans say? If you fear God, you'll fear no man. That's right. And so let me just remind you on this story to quote whoever said this. Jesus is not your homeboy.

No. He's not your little buddy. He's not your cozy little friend.

He's not this little, you know, Rembrandt or this little, you know, blonde-haired, blue-eyed Renaissance painting. He has eyes of fire, and he will throw you into hell. He is to be feared, but that is an awesome, loving Jesus who loves you so much that it'll do anything to draw you close to him.

Right, Dr. Carson? So there's this thing called grace, which we don't deserve, but he brings to us. Tomorrow's verse is Ephesians 2-8 for February the 8th. By grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourself. It is the gift of God.

And what a Savior we have. He steps into our world so that we can be a part of his world. So call upon him, and don't ask me. Ask him, why are you going through this? Why are you hitting with a C-word?

And how can he use what you're going through? And open the Bible, because when you open the Word of God, you expose yourself to the will of God. Dr. Carson, what's the website for Date the Word? Folks want to get your daily devotion. They want to donate to your amazing ministry. A lot of our listeners hear your day.

I listen to it every day. Your verse of the day, they want to give a birthday verse to an unsaved relative. What's the website? www.datetheword.com. We have an app now, Date the Word. You can go to Apple or to Google, download the app, Date the Word. All right, Date the Word. Thanks for jumping in the shotgun with me on Wednesday in the Word edition of Truth Talk Live. We'll be back again. Follow me on Facebook at stew.ephesian, and we'll talk to you next time, right here on Truth Talk Live!