Luke 8:22-25
Please turn in your copy of the
scriptures to Luke’s gospel chapter eight. Today’s reading is from
verse 22 to verse 25. One of the things you may remember
in your studies of the four gospels is that each writer gives us
different accounts for different reasons. And Luke, when he writes,
he gives us a thematic account. And so when Luke gives us Jesus
calming a storm, he’s no longer speaking really to the masses. He’s no longer preaching and
teaching evangelistically here and hoping that crowds would
come. He’s speaking to his disciples, because what does he know about
us? What does Jesus know about us who follow him? He knows this,
that when the storms of life come, we will falter. We will fear and our frailty
will get the best of us. And so he asked a wonderful question
to his disciples, and he’s going to ask it to us today. Where
is your faith? So let’s hear God’s word together.
This is Luke’s gospel, chapter eight, beginning at verse 22.
One day Jesus 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 and as they sailed, he fell asleep and a windstorm
came down on the lake and they were filling with water and were
in danger. They went and woke him saying,
master, master, we are perishing. And he woke and rebuked the wind
and the raging waves and they ceased and there was a calm.
He said to them, where is your faith? They were afraid and they
marveled, saying to one another, who then is this that he commands
even winds and water? And they obey him. Let us pray
together. Our Lord, we have learned from
your scriptures in recent weeks that we should be good listeners.
So we pray that today our attention would be on your word. We have
learned from your scriptures that we should also be doers
of the word. And so we pray that your word
would sink deep into our lives. that it would take root, take
nurture and moisture, that it would take food and that it would
reap a harvest. And so we pray your help and
blessings now as we think on the Lord Jesus, as we think on
his humanity, his deity, but also as we reflect on our frailty
and our need for faith. And so hear us and help us now
we ask in Jesus name, amen. Ministry is exhausting. If you
read any good biography of a Christian minister, you’ll understand that
ministry is exhausting physically. It’s exhausting emotionally,
but it’s also exhausting spiritually. Physically, a minister has to
stand, he has to speak, he has to listen, he has to process. A lot of ministers, you may not
know this, about maybe three o’clock on Saturday afternoon,
they have this fear and this dread that Sunday is coming. They prepare, they get ready,
they wake up early, if they slept at all the night before, they
minister. And if a minister is worth his
salt and he labors hard on the Lord’s day, he’s by 9 p.m. on Sunday, put in a 24, 28 hour
stretch of physical work, emotional work, and spiritual work. It’s
emotionally exhausting as you lean into the passage that you
are going to preach or teach that week as it affects your
life and then you reflect on how it may affect the lives of
those who will hear the message. As we’ve learned in the last
few weeks from Jesus’ parable of the soils, you understand
it’s emotional when a sermon, when a teaching falls on the
path and it is snatched by Satan or when it has quick growth,
but no root and it dies away or when It’s choked by the cares
of the world. But what a joy it is for a minister
when the word takes root and there is fruit, there’s rejection
of your ministry, there’s acceptance of your ministry. It’s physically
exhausting. It’s emotionally exhausting,
but it is also spiritually exhausting. This is a battle between the
seed of the serpent, the seed of The Lord Jesus Christ, there’s
a war going on when God’s word is presented. There’s a war going
on in the life of the church when God’s word is brought to
bear. Ministry is exhausting. And we
see here in the life of Jesus that he is exhausted. Jesus, at the end of the day,
is weary. worse than weary, who’s worn
out and weary, as some of you may say. Jesus wants to go across
the lake and maybe it’s just the boat ride for rest that he
needs. He wants to go across where a crowd is not gathered
and where they can’t possibly get there before he does and
meet him and again, bring him exhaustion. So he needing a break
from the people, he gets in the boat, the disciples, they cast
the boat from the shore and The word tells us that Jesus is asleep
in the stern on a cushion. I’ve been fishing before, I’ve
been in a fishing boat and the bottom of a fishing boat is no
place for a nap. So you can imagine that if Jesus
is asleep in one of these disciples boats, he really needs some sleep. This shows us the humanity of
Jesus. We remember that he was born,
he is a human, he grew, he learned, he was sick. He had the sniffles. He had moments of sadness. There
were times where Jesus wept. And so you can imagine these
24 and 27 hour stretches that maybe our modern ministers may
endure were something of the norm for Jesus. But every day
he was exhausted. He was weary. He had been fighting
demons. He had been healing diseases.
He had helped the heartbroken. He had reversed death. And he had been teaching the
crowds and he was exhausted. He was asleep in the stern of
the boat. Maybe it was night. The air was cool. And with the
rock and the pitch of the boat, it lulled him into a deep sleep. And then the Bible tells us a
storm came. A storm came on the sea. Now,
the Sea of Galilee, you understand, is a sort of a rectangular shaped
lake. It’s seven miles in length. It’s 13 miles the other way,
and it’s surrounded by mountains. And so when the air pressure
comes down upon it, it can really be a tempest in a teapot, we
might say. The storm on this little inland
sea was dangerous. It was a great storm, worse than
whitecaps, worse than wind and waves. It was swells and swamping. And the boat, as the disciples
tell us in the word of God, was it was swamped. They were perishing.
And yet Jesus sleeps. Jesus sleeps in the back of the
boat. He was secure. trusted the father. He trusted
his sovereign father, but his disciples, oh, they came unglued. Master, master, we are perishing,
they said. They came to the right man, didn’t
they? They came to the Lord of heaven
and earth, who when he awoke, he said to the wind and said
to the waves, at least as Mark records it for us, peace, be
still. And the tempest settled. The
tempest settled and there was instant calm. It wasn’t that
the storm eased down and the clouds dissipated and the sea
slowly calmed to peaceful glass. It was instant. It was the same
voice that had spoken and the world came into existence. It
was the same voice that raised Lazarus from the dead. It was
the same voice that called Levi the tax collector. It was the
same voice that healed leprosy. It was the same voice that cast
demons out. It was the same voice that sent
unclean spirits out of those They tormented the same voice
that healed the centurion’s number one servant, the same voice that
healed a paralytic, that healed a man with a withered hand, the
same voice that forgave the sinful woman, the same voice. that raised
from the dead the only son of the widow of Nain. What does this say to us? What
does it say to us? It may sound a little cheesy,
but this is the message of the passage. Jesus comes into the
storms of our lives. Jesus comes into the chaos and
the storm tossed days when the tempest are raging the most.
And you fill in the blank, your tempest, your storm, you fill
in the blank with what the Lord has placed upon you that is hard. And Jesus can come make sense
of it. This week, many of you studied Romans chapter eight
in our monthly Bible study, and we read in chapter one of verse
one of chapter eight, there is therefore now no condemnation
for those who are in Christ Jesus. Our sins are forgiven and we
cannot stand accused. But as you make your way through
Romans and you see or chapter eight, you make your way through
that and you see that we are to live by the spirit, not the
flesh. We are to choose life and not death. We come to verse
28. And we know that for those who
love God, all things work together for our good. Not everything
may be good, but everything does work together for our good. And we understand that nothing
Nothing that can happen in this life can snatch us from the Savior’s
hands. Now, Jesus can calm storms, but
sometimes he doesn’t. Jesus can heal diseases, but
sometimes he chooses not to. Jesus can raise from the dead,
but sometimes he leaves you in your grave. Jesus can heal you
from what harms you, but sometimes he lets it run its course. Not
everybody is healed. Not everybody is raised. Not
everyone makes it through the storm alive. We know that we’ve
experienced in our lives. We see it on the news. And Jesus. is the second person of the Trinity.
He works out everything in our lives for His glory and for our
good. We sang just a little bit ago,
Be Still My Soul. This dear German lady who wrote
this hymn some 300 years ago, she got the message of this passage
right. Whatever we endure, whatever
we face, Jesus will get us through it. Jesus will make it plain
what he is teaching us. Jesus sometimes, dear brothers
and sisters, is grabbing us by our little cheeks like our parents
did and saying, look at me. You’ve been looking this way
and that way. And sometimes the storm tossed days are so that
we will look again at our Savior. And we will trust him. But we
must remember this in Christ. We are kept in Christ. We are
secure in Christ. He who keeps Israel does not
slumber or sleep. But he keeps us by his powerful
hand. We remember the providence of
God. God governs all his creatures and all their actions. It’s for
his glory and it’s for our good. Whatever he ordains is right. Even if the waves come crashing
over us and the difficulties are great, it is God at work
in us. Here we have a story of the disciples. They’re in a storm tossed boat
that’s filling with water. I don’t know if you’ve been out
on the ocean, but you get in those swells and you go up and
you go down and it’s it’s not a little. wake from a boat passing
you by, it’s deep and you’ve maybe been on a fishing vessel
and you’ve ridden up the 40 foot wave and down the backside of
it, but they’re taking on water. They’re in the midst of death. And it seems as if God is not
in control. They come unglued. It’s as if
God is dead. And what does Jesus say to them
after he calms the storm? Where is your faith? Sometimes we let circumstances
write God out of the script. We get a diagnosis at the doctor
and we say, God can’t possibly be in this. Or something terrible
happens and we ask that question, how can bad things happen to
good people? Or we watch the news and we see
a storm rage through Alabama, or we see a tragedy at a school,
we watch the atrocities of persecution across the world, and we say,
where is God in all this? And we quickly forget, don’t
we, two important things. One is God is sovereign. He rules
and reigns over the universe. There’s not a maverick molecule.
There’s not a moment in time where God is not king of the
universe. But we also forget that sin because of Adam and
Eve sinning against God, they brought curses not only on themselves
and all their generation after them, but they brought curses
on this world. Some of you who studied Romans
8 this week, remember that all creation does what? It groans
under the travail of the sin and the curse. to which it was
unwillingly subjected. And it eagerly awaits the adoption. It eagerly awaits the redemption
of the sons and daughters of men. And so all creation is under
the travail of sin and its effects. And so we forget those two truths.
God is sovereign, but we live in a sin-filled world. And Jesus
has to come make all things new. And until he comes and makes
all things new, there’s death, there’s darkness, there’s waves,
there’s swamped boats, there’s sickness, there’s heartache.
There are struggles. There are even irreconcilable
wars in our life with sin and darkness. And we let circumstances
unglue us. We come apart at the seams because
we forget that God is, that he is in control. Our faith gets
weak. Think about Abraham for just a moment. Remember in chapter
22 of Genesis, Abraham was called by God to sacrifice his only
son, Isaac, the one whom he loved, not Ishmael, but Isaac. And you
read in chapter 22 of Genesis that after a night of, I’m sure,
wrestling with God, it says Abraham arose early in the morning. He
saddled his donkey. He gathered the firewood. He
gathered his servants. He made his way on the two day,
three day journey to Mount Moriah. And as they approached the mountain,
he looked at his servants and said, you wait here. The boy
and I will go worship. He made his way to the top of
the mountain. He bound his son. He placed him on the altar and
was in the act of sacrificing him. And Hebrews chapter 11 says
he was willing to give up his only son because he believed
that even God was able to raise him from the dead. That’s the
kind of faith that Jesus is speaking of here. This isn’t saving faith
where we recognize ourselves to be sinners and need a savior.
That’s saving faith. This is kind of ongoing maintenance
faith. This is the faith we nurture
as we sit under the word. This is the faith that is nurtured
today as we sing Be Still My Soul, as we read Psalm 121. This is the kind of faith that
comes as we mix together and say, how are you doing today?
Are you feeling better than last week? This is the kind of faith
that is nurtured as we suffer and realize this is God’s hand
in our lives, the dross to consume and the gold to refine. This
is the kind of faith that says, This is what life is. It’s ups
and downs and in-betweens, but all under the sovereignty of
God. This is the same faith that Job had when he lost it all. And he could simply give this
doxology. The Lord has given and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. You know, if we are in Christ
Jesus. If we are in Christ, we have
faith in him and hope in him and we receive and rest in him
alone for our salvation. The world may kill us. Disease
may steal from us. Injury and even death may come. But as we said together in our
Heidelberg catechism, again, a blessing of being together
in God’s house to nurture our faith. What is my only comfort
in life and death? That I belong to my faithful
savior, Jesus Christ. We say this at a lot of our funerals
at the graveside. We look at the casket. We look
at the body of the deceased as it’s about to be interred into
the ground. And we say this, the souls of
believers are at their death made perfect in holiness and
do immediately pass into glory. But their bodies, being still
united to Christ, do rest in their grave until the resurrection. Dear friends, things in this
life may get you. They may kill you. but you will
never be snatched from the hands of the Lord Jesus Christ. And
to die is to enter glory. To be absent from earth is to
be present with the Lord. And the apostle Paul knew this
so well, didn’t he? He knew that to be present was
to be a benefit to the churches. He knew that to be present in
this world was to preach, to be present in this world was
to minister, to be present in this world was to offer some
benefit to the saints who were near him or the ones to whom
he was writing. But he also knew it would be
far better to be. with the Lord and his presence
and glory. You may get sick and be healed.
You may get sick and it takes you to glory. You may have sorrow. And you may never get over it
in this life. But it will all be sweet when
we get to heaven. Remember the promise of the new
heavens and the earth, there will be no more pain, no more sorrow
and no more suffering, no more death, no more tears, no more
hardship. For the lion shall dwell with
the lamb. The saints will be with God forever. He will wipe
away every tear. And though there may have been
sorrows and sickness and hardship in this earth, it will all be
made sweet when we get to heaven. One thing also we must remember
that when we are enduring hardships, when we are storm tossed, God
is chastening us. He’s removing from us our desire
to sin. He’s drawing us closer to himself.
He’s putting our eyes back on him. He’s giving us a stronger
faith. So this question from Jesus to
us, to his disciples, where is your faith? Well, is it being
strengthened? Do you love to come together
in the Lord’s house? And do you say that Heidelberg
catechism number one, I really like that. I think I’m going
to take a handbook home and look at that again. You should do
that. Or be still my soul. That really spoke to me today.
I think I’m going to read it every morning until I have it
in my mind and my heart. Or Psalm 121. I never really
thought of that. And that blessed me today. I’m
going to memorize it. It’s just a few verses. And so
when I’m on my bed at night and the waves are tossing the Boat
is being swamped. I can say I lift up my eyes to
the hills. From where does my help come
from? It comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth
and the waves and the wind will cease. You’ll have peace in your
soul. Chaos will come into your life,
dear brothers and sisters, you will struggle, you will wonder.
Does he who keep Israel sleep? Is he in the stern of the boat
on a pillow? Is he snoring away? No, it is the one who keeps Israel,
who commands even the winds and the water obeys him. Where’s your faith? Is it in
him? Is it in your checkbook? Is it
in your health care policy, your life insurance policy? Is it
in your 401k? Is it in your ability to master
problems? Or is it in Jesus, the one who
alone? Did you catch that? The one who
alone. can command the winds and the
waves and they obey him. Let us pray together. Our Lord,
we give you thanks this day for a glimpse into our lives. We
would be in that boat with these disciples. Even more amazing
is it to consider that these were men of the sea. These were
fishermen. They had seen a storm or two.
Lord, that’s us. We’ve been through life. We know
it’s hard. Forgive us for when we forget that Jesus is at the
helm, that he’s in control, not only of the boat, but also the
wind and the waves, for he is the creator. He is the one that
spoke and they came into existence. And he is the one that can enter
into our life and take the chaos and make order. So strengthen
our faith, remind us of these true and precious things. And
we pray that as we go from this place this day, that we would
not falter, we would not be frail, but we would be men and women
of faith. who take on the world for the sake of Jesus. And we
ask it in his name. Amen. We want to respond to God’s
goodness to us by singing number 246, Though Troubles Assail Us.