When Your Boat Starts to Sink

I can't help but wonder if somebody in the boat had this psalm from Psalm 89 memorized and they connected the dots. This great messianic psalm, who is as mighty as you, O Lord. You rule the raging of the sea. When its waves rise, you still them.

Did anybody connect the dots there? God rules the waves and he can still them. Wait, what did Jesus just do? Wow, he must be this messiah, this creator, God. When Jesus essentially asked his followers, are you listening to me?

He was serious. And to prove his point, Jesus gave his disciples a test. Would they still trust Jesus when hope seemed lost? What if they were in a crisis, but Jesus was asleep?

Would they still trust him? If you've ever felt like Jesus was sleeping when you were struggling, or if you ever found your faith lacking, you'll take heart from today's message. There are two lessons for you to learn from Jesus on the Sea of Galilee. This message is called When Your Boat Starts to Sink.

Here's Steven Davey. One of my favorite devotional authors, now with the Lord by the name of Warren Wiersbe, writes, academic truth doesn't change our lives, active truth does. It's one thing to learn some new biblical truth, but another to put it into practice.

It's true, isn't it? Truth you learn must become truth you live. In fact, one of the best times to discover if you're really living what you're learning is when something unexpected happens in life. You could call those unexpected events spiritual pop quizzes that take place. Just like in class, when you were in school, when the teacher finds out if you were listening or doing your reading assignment, the teacher suddenly announces, okay everybody, put your book on the floor and take out a sheet of paper and terror strikes your heart. So you, as slowly as possible, lower that book to the floor, turn to that page of assigned reading and that's where you learn to skim read, fast, you know, speed read, and then you take that quiz. You can kind of feel the tension rising.

Put your books down, take out a piece of paper. You slowly enter that season of unexpected events. That's about to happen in the lives of the disciples, by the way. They've been listening to Jesus preach for several hours and during his sermon he has repeatedly asked the question, are you listening? He who has ears to hear, let him hear. That's a nice way of saying, are you listening?

Or is it going in one ear and out the other? How many of you were here last Lord's Day when I told the story of the preacher who shot the buck and the bullet went in one ear? Yeah, you enjoyed that, didn't you?

Way too much. In fact, a couple of days ago I got a picture from a guy who watched the sermon, evidently from another state, and he's posing beside a buck he had just shot and he wrote underneath it, the bullet went in one ear and out the other. I love it when the main point of my sermon is so memorable.

But that really, really was the main point. Is the audience of Jesus really listening? Is the message taking root? Jesus has been preaching several parables from a little fishing boat. They pushed it offshore just a few feet and he's using that boat as a pulpit. It's probably the largest crowd he will preach to.

And they've sort of huddled there en masse on the seashore. The Gospel of Mark informs us that this day is coming to a close. And now Jesus wants to get to the other side of the lake. He's going to deliver, we call him the mad man of Gadara. We'll get there in our next study, but that's where he wants to go. So he finishes preaching and he says farewell to the multitude.

They push away from the shore and head out across the lake. Now, they don't know it yet, but Jesus is about to give them a pop quiz. He's about to take them into an unexpected event to find out if they've been listening.

So let's watch it happen. Go to Luke's Gospel now. We're in chapter 8 and we've arrived at verse 22. Luke chapter 8 verse 22. The Bible says, one day he got into a boat. Luke just sort of condenses it into one event. He got into a boat with his disciples and he said to them, let us go across to the other side of the lake. So they set out. Now, the Sea of Galilee is in mind here.

It's only about 13 miles long, seven miles wide. This is home to several of these disciples. They know this lake like the back of their hand. And you'll notice Jesus said, let's go to the other side. And keep in mind he didn't say let's go to the middle of the lake and drown. He said, let's go to the other side.

Were they even listening to that? Now, verse 23 gives us the interesting perspective here. As they sailed, he fell asleep. He's exhausted. He's eternally divine and yet at the same time entirely human. He gets hungry. He gets thirsty.

He suffers pain, stiff joints, weariness, the need for a nap. And by the way, Jesus is not faking this nap. He's not lying there with one eye open saying, I'm going to watch the guys respond to this. No. He's out. He's out. He's not pretending.

He really is worn out. He really does feel our infirmities because he was fully human. Hebrews 4.15. Now, Luke's account gives us one of the most interesting displays then and I don't want to go too quickly here of his two natures, human and divine. A human nature though unfallen, sinless and divine. So his physical weariness here is a picture of his manhood. And we're going to see a picture of his omnipotence, his divine influence over nature. So here we have in this text an insight into his incarnation. In a moment, he's going to still this storm with a display of divine power.

But first, he's asleep in a weary body. One author writes on this text, weakness and omnipotence do not clash, they coalesce in perfect harmony. What a mystery. Verse 23 again, and a wind storm came down on the lake and they were filling with water and were in danger. Let me stop and tell you that every time a fisherman got into a boat on this lake, they knew the risk. This lake was 700 feet, nearly 700 feet below sea level.

It's surrounded by mountains. They create these ravines, created funnels as it were, where that air would rush down those mountainsides and onto this lake. That cold air rushing down would collide with the warm air on this lake and it would create hurricane conditions really without warning. Every time they got into a boat on this lake, they knew that. Matthew's Gospel account, if you compare it, says the boat was covered with waves.

Mark's Gospel account lets us know that in no time their boat is swabbed. I have, in Israel, seen the remnants of one of these typical first century fishing vessels that was really surprisingly, remarkably preserved. I couldn't believe how small it was, how primitive the construction. I would not have gotten in that boat to go across the swimming pool at the YMCA, frankly. I can't imagine getting that on the lake.

Don't get this picture. They're not out here on the Mayflower. They're out here in a glorified rowboat, a glorified canoe. It's riding low.

You've got all these men here. They're caught unexpectedly in the night, in hurricane conditions, and it's all a surprise to them. Jesus is asleep. By the way, that's what we tend to think he's doing when we're out in the middle of our storm. He must be asleep. We wouldn't want to say that aloud, certainly in church, but we pray like he needs waking up, like he needs some details that evidently he's overlooking. Or maybe he doesn't know what we're going through. I mean, the Bible says that he knows every sparrow that falls to the ground, so maybe he's so busy counting thousands of sparrows that are dying, he doesn't realize we're about to. Maybe worse yet, he knows, but he doesn't care. He doesn't care. In fact, in Mark's account, that's exactly what the disciples say to him. Master, do you not care?

We are perishing. They said it out loud. Do you not care? You know, it's easy to criticize the disciples, isn't it?

In a nice, comfortable room like this for failing this pop quiz. You know, where's their faith, their trust? Come on. But what's our faith and trust doing in the unexpected, difficult, dangerous, painful, life-threatening situations of life? Lord, do you know? Are you aware?

Do you even care? These are the haunting words of the poet inspired by this text. He writes, does anybody know where the love of God goes when the waves turn minutes into hours? Finally, in desperation, verse 24 says, and they went and woke him saying, master, master, we are perishing.

In other words, we're as good as dead here. And he awoke and rebuked the wind and the raging waves and they ceased and there was a calm. Now, let me point out a couple of key words here. Although there was a tremendous amount of superstition in the rabbinical teaching, to bind every storm was a devil or a demon. On this occasion, it may very well have been true. Satan may very well have been behind this. He may have been at work. And that's because the word rebuke is the word the Lord uses every time he encountered a demon in the Gospel of Luke.

It's quite possible, we're not told for sure, but it's quite possible that Satan wanted either to destroy the disciples or perhaps at least hinder Jesus from getting to the other side where that man needed deliverance. One author put it this way, that this word for rebuke is the perfect word to describe an authority figure bringing a subordinate back into line. That's the word here. You don't rebuke an inanimate object. They don't have a mind.

You don't get onto the wind or the waves. So the indication here is there's something going on behind it. The other gospel accounts tell us that Jesus stood and they actually give us his words and he says, be still.

Literally, you could render it hush, be muzzled, stop it. And the response is immediate. In fact, the tense of the verbs for this response means that the wind immediately stops blowing. Jesus effectively says to the waves, play dead. And like an obedient dog, immediately lies down.

So get the picture. Here are the disciples in this little boat. These storms will create waves some 20 feet high and there's another 20 footer coming toward them and they crouch down and they cover their heads and their arms but then that wave doesn't crash over them. They look up and the sea is like glass. Everything is immediately still.

Think of it this way. If somebody took a paddle over here to the baptistry and got in there and sloshed it around and moved all around and got the water all moving and then we all said, stop. Well, that water would remain moving for some time but not here.

If we had somebody turn off the air conditioner in here because we evidently do not believe in heat in the winter. But even when it's turned off, it's going to take a while. We're going to feel it moving, right? No, the miracle of this isn't just that the storm is gone. The miracle includes that everything settles like that. Sea of glass.

No wind. Now in verse 25, the Lord looks at them and he said to them, where's your faith? Now, I want to give you this perspective here. This is a gracious response.

First of all, they've just awakened them from a nap. How gracious are you? Well, we won't go there but at any rate, he's gracious after he gets up.

And then he doesn't scold them. He doesn't say, you have no faith. You flunk this quiz. Faith 101, start over.

No. He just asks them, where'd your faith go? Not you don't have any but where did it go? See, the problem with the unexpected tests in life isn't that Jesus goes missing. Our trust in Jesus goes missing. The problem isn't that Jesus stops looking after us.

The problem is we stop looking unto Jesus. With that response, the Lord is going to allow the disciples to marvel not at their lack of faith but at the demonstration of his power. Verse 25 says, and they were afraid that is in awe, marveling, saying to one another, who then is this?

I haven't seen something like this yet. Who then is this that he commands even winds and water and they obey him? Beloved, every time I read this verse, I'm convicted all over again that the wind and the waves are better disciples than me. They obey immediately. It's as if they recognize the voice of their creator and immediately obeyed.

That's the challenge. That's one of the reasons the Lord gives us pop quizzes along the path to show us where we need to begin learning, listening, and living. So let's listen, let's learn, and let's prove that we did by the way we live. Now let me wrap it up with a couple of thoughts that I want to make here by way of application. First, the Lord uses desperate situations to demonstrate his deity, and frankly that's when we catch it most clearly.

We miss his care and power in the normal events of life. I can't help but wonder if somebody in the boat had this psalm from Psalm 89 memorized and they connected the dots. This great messianic psalm, who is as mighty as you, O Lord, you rule the raging of the sea. When its waves rise, you still them.

Did anybody connect the dots there? God rules the waves and he can still them. Wait, what did Jesus just do? Wow, he must be this messiah, this creator, God. Now don't misunderstand here, Jesus doesn't always quiet the storms of life.

Most of these men are going to die as martyrs. See, Jesus doesn't eliminate every storm, but he guarantees his presence in every storm. He might not calm the waves and the wind, but he's able to calm our hearts. The Lord uses desperate situations to demonstrate his deity. Secondly, the Lord uses desperate situations to develop his disciples.

Listen, I read this account and you know what I wonder? I wonder why the disciples didn't wake Jesus up 15 minutes earlier. I mean, why'd they wait? We're not told why, but that doesn't mean I can't guess. Could it be that they waited until the last minute because of the obvious?

It's obvious. Many of them were fishermen. They knew this lake. They'd experienced storms before. This was their turf. They're essentially saying, we got this.

We can do this. We'll let Jesus sleep. Maybe one or two of them might have thought, we don't know, but maybe they thought, you know, Jesus has been a carpenter. He hasn't spent a lot of time on the lake. We know boats. We know water.

He's worked with his hands with wood and stone. So, you know, we're on our turf. You know, James, John, keep bailing out water. We're going to get through this until they realize they can't. They can't. And the tense of the verb indicates that it is at that point when they're sure they are going to die that they wake him up.

Why'd they wait so long? Here's what I think the Lord is doing. Jesus is taking them to the place of their competency to teach them to trust in his sufficiency. Without me, Jesus says, you can do a few things you're good at. Oh, wait. Without me, you can do what?

Nothing. So I'm going to take you to the place where you've got it buttoned down. I'm going to take you to the place where you're in control.

I mean, these things over here are problems, but not that thing. He takes you right in the middle of that thing and swamps the boat so that we learn to trust in his sufficiency. Don't miss the graciousness of the Lord here, though, with his disciples, just like he is with you and me. When they woke him up and they said, okay, we're dead.

We're going to die. Did you notice that Jesus does not tell them to come back later when they have a little more courage? You know, let me keep sleeping and you need to go work on your Ohana verses and brush up on them.

You're forgetting some basic stuff. Wake me up again after your faith is stronger. Then come to me.

No, he didn't do that. Come to me at your weakest point and moment. And the Lord gets up and he graciously intervenes and then uses it as an opportunity to not only reveal who he is, but who they need to become as they've been listening and learning and living. Let's not miss one or two more things that are obvious.

If you happen to be in a boat like the disciples, and you probably are right now, some unexpected trial, tragedy, difficulty, some sorrow, something painful. When your boat starts to sink, here's the obvious. Go to Jesus. I mean, that's so obvious.

We miss it. And don't wait 15 minutes longer. Go to Jesus.

That old song says, tell them all about your troubles, your anxieties, your fears, your dead ends. You can even take that implied accusation that he must not care about you or you would not be in this fix. He can handle that. He did with them. He must not care. You can tell them that. Lord, we are perishing and you don't care.

And what do they learn? He does. He does. In fact, it occurred to me that when he's an old man, one of these fishermen was out here by the name of Peter, will write, casting all your care on him.

You can do that. Why? Because he cares. He does care.

He always will care for you. We're so glad you tuned in today. This is a nine part series and we'll be bringing you the rest of it in the days ahead. Wisdom for the Heart is produced by Wisdom International. If you're new to our ministry, welcome. We're glad you found us here on your local Christian station. Stephen Davey is our Bible teacher for these daily messages. In addition, Stephen is also the president of Shepherds Theological Seminary. Shepherds Seminary is equipping and training pastors and Christian leaders for a lifetime of service. But even if you don't feel called to full time Christian ministry, Shepherds Theological Seminary can equip you to better understand God's Word. You can study online right where you live. There's also a very unique one year program where you can relocate to this area for a year. During that time you would study God's Word, experience authentic community, grow in discipleship, take a trip to Israel and do some study there, and earn your master's degree in theological studies.

You can do all of that in one year. We've had college students come and participate right after college, but before entering the workforce. We've had retired people come and do this program.

If something like this sounds interesting to you, we'd like you to learn more. If you navigate to our website and then scroll to the bottom of the page, there's a link to Shepherds Theological Seminary where you can learn more. You'll find us online at wisdomonline.org. That's wisdomonline.org. Do that today, then join us next time for wisdom for the heart.