Introduction

We’ve been looking at the book of Mark, which details the life of Jesus. This time of year, with Easter approaching, there will be many stories in the media about the historical Jesus and who He is. To my surprise, for almost 20 years, the number of those stories and the amount of attention in the general culture about the historical Jesus just keeps getting greater. 

What I’m trying to do in this series on Mark is to give you the tools to sift through all that information you’re going to hear. We are going to the book of Mark, which is the oldest of all written accounts we have of who the historical Jesus really was. We are looking to see who He truly was, which will help you navigate what you hear.

Tonight, we get to this short little incident, and it’s all about the power of Jesus. It tells us four things about His power: He has real-world power, infinite power, unmanageable power, and costly power—power that is costly, more to Him than anyone else. 

Real-World Power

Let’s take a look. First of all, what I call real-world power. What do we mean by that? If you take a look at the beginning of this passage, it’s short but packed with details. For example, we’re told that this happened in the evening (verse 35). Next, we’re told that Jesus got into this boat to go across the Sea of Galilee, but He got in this boat, notice what it says in verse 36, “just as He was.” 

What does that mean, “just as He was”? This is actually a reference back to the beginning of chapter four, which, of course, was four weeks ago. Even if you were here every week, you might not remember. At the beginning of chapter four, Jesus, in order to address this huge crowd on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, got into a boat and let the boat go just offshore. He spoke from the boat to the people on the shore. 

What is this verse saying? It’s saying that Jesus got from that boat into this boat without going back ashore to get anything. He took it just as He was. He didn’t go back to shore; He switched from one boat to another. 

We’re also told that when He first started out across the Sea of Galilee, there were a whole bunch of other little boats around Him. That’s also in verse 36. Then we’re told He went to sleep on a cushion—not just to sleep, but on a cushion. On top of that, we’re told it was in the stern, which for us landlubbers means the back part of the boat. 

Now, what’s the significance of all that? It’s very significant. I was reading one of the commentaries by a major scholar at Cambridge University, a significant historical scholar, and she said in the book that she would be prone to believe this was a legend, considering all that happened, except for the details. 

What she meant by that is, look at the details. Why would you, if you’re writing up a legend, include that there are all those other little boats around Him when they don’t contribute anything to the story? It doesn’t tell us anything; it doesn’t move the story along; there’s no meaning involved; it’s just there, and then they’re never brought up again. 

Then why does it tell us that Jesus didn’t go back to shore before He got into the other boat? Why these details? They don’t help the story; they don’t tell us anything about the story. The answer is these are the memories of somebody. The only reason these details would be here is if someone remembered them. They’re eyewitness, first-hand memories. They’re there only because someone remembered that it was true—that’s the way it was. 

Back in those days, unlike today, when we can write fiction, sometimes we write fiction and we put little details in it just to make it realistic. That’s not the way legends were written back then at all. The conclusion is this has to be eyewitness reporting. This isn’t a legend; it’s not written like a legend; it couldn’t be a legend. There’s no other reason for these details to be in here unless they actually happened. 

The Importance of Eyewitness Accounts

Why is it important to say that? In New York, I think the average smart New Yorker deals with the claims of Christianity like this: they say, “Look, we don’t have the original Jesus. We really don’t know what the original Jesus was like. All we know is that many years later, the church came up with these legends and put forth the Jesus they wanted us to believe, but we really don’t know who the real Jesus is; we just have these legends that came along much later.” 

The only problem with that theory is the gospel accounts just don’t fit into that theory at all. We talked about this three weeks ago, but I’m preparing you for what you’re going to be hearing soon in the media about what always happens every year at Easter. 

The Bible Gospels were written way too early to be legends; they were written within the lifetime of the eyewitnesses. But most importantly, they’re too detailed to be legends. We talked about this three weeks ago. Either these are reports—eyewitness reports—or Mark, 2,000 years ago, without any predecessors or successors, suddenly anticipated modern narrative realistic fiction and then stopped. Nobody else followed him up. 

In other words, 2,000 years ago, no predecessors, no successors. Suddenly he starts writing the way we write fiction today. It never happened before; it never happened again for 2,000 years. Did you think that happened? Either this is eyewitness reporting, or that happened. That didn’t happen. This is eyewitness reporting. 

What that means is everything. This really happened. The power of Jesus is not just the power that comes to you internally when you read an inspiring story. This is power that happened in the real world, in real time, in real history. 

The Significance of Jesus’ Power

Why does that matter? People still, I hear all the time, say, “Well, I’d like to be a Christian, but I have problems because some of the things Jesus says I like, but some I don’t. And some of the things the Bible teaches I like, but some of them I don’t.” 

Now wait. Either Jesus was not raised from the dead in real time and real space and real history, or He was proven to be the Son of God because He was raised from the dead, and this power happened in real time, in real history. It really happened. 

If that’s the case, then why are you saying, “Well, I like this that He says; I don’t like this that He says,” so what? Whether you like it or not. Who cares? If this actually happened, then you have to deal with Him as He is. There’s no negotiation. That’s remarkable. This is real power in real time. 

If, as I think the purpose of this passage is supposed to show, we are supposed to learn to trust Jesus in the storms of our life—which I think is the purpose of the passage—we need to know this really happened. He really did this. 

Infinite Power

Secondly, Jesus’ power is infinite. The last of the three questions in this passage is, “Who is this?” The answer is someone who has virtually infinite power. The Sea of Galilee is 700 feet below sea level, and just 30 miles to the north is Mount Hermon, which is 9,200 feet high. 

So, believe it or not, within 30 miles, you’ve got a 10,000-foot drop down to below sea level. What that means is you’ve got constant clashing of the cold air from the mountains and the warm air coming up from the Sea of Galilee. As a result, the Sea of Galilee was a place with lots of storms, lots of squalls, lots of thunder boomers. 

Of course, any fishermen like these disciples, who were professional fishermen on the Sea of Galilee, were used to them. But this must have been an incredible storm because experienced sailors thought they were going to die. They don’t say, do they, down here, “Master, we might die.” No, they say, “Master, we are dying. We are drowning. It’s happening.” It must have been an incredible storm. 

Jesus wakes up, and there are two things that are just amazing. The first is the astonishing simplicity of what He says. We’ll get back to this in just a second, but notice He doesn’t get up, roll up His sleeves, stand back, or get His wand. There are no incantations, no “in the name of,” no. It’s very, very simple. 

Two verbs, the second of which is actually kind of unusual. It’s sort of present, progressive, imperative. Here’s what He says: “Be quiet and stay quiet.” That’s it. “To a hurricane.” That’s how you talk to a child, you know. “Sit down and stay there.” “Be quiet and stay quiet.” That’s how you talk to a child. Jesus takes a hurricane and simply says, “Be quiet and stay quiet.” 

That’s the first astonishing thing. The second astonishing thing is that it did. Like a child. Like that. Because, notice if you read real carefully, it says, “He rebuked the wind, said to the waves, ‘Quiet, be still.’ And the wind died down, but that’s not all. And it was completely calm.” 

It sounds like redundancy unless you realize He’s talking about the wind and the sea. The second phrase, where it says “completely calm,” is actually, literally, the word “mega calm.” Mega calm? It’s a word for dead calm. It’s talking about what happens—well, not what happens. Have you ever seen a dead calm? Have you ever seen water that was smooth as glass, no waves at all? At all. Smooth as glass. You can almost see your face in it. 

Do you know what happened? Jesus said, “Be quiet and stay quiet.” The first thing we see, of course, is the wind stopped. But that could have been a coincidence. If you’ve ever been on the ocean, or if you’ve vacationed or lived on the shore, you know that even when the wind stops, even when the storm goes away, the waves keep pounding for hours and days afterward, do they not? 

But when Jesus said, “Be quiet and stay quiet,” not only did the wind suddenly die down—that could have been a coincidence—but the ocean, the waves suddenly went dead calm. So here’s Jesus: hurricane, wind roaring, waves pounding. “Be quiet and stay quiet.” And suddenly, everything stopped. 

This is incomparable power. The reason it’s incomparable is if there’s one thing that all the ancient cultures believed together, if there was one consensus point amongst all ancient cultures, it was that the sea was uncontrollable to any power but God. The sea was the ultimate symbol in ancient cultures and legends and literature of uncontrollable destruction. The ocean in full fury was uncontrollable, inexorable power. Only God could control the sea. 

So it’s across all the cultures. For example, remember the story of King Canute, the Danish king in the 11th century? He thought people were actually giving him divine accolades. He just said, “Am I divine?” He walks up to the sea and he says, “Stop.” And of course, the ocean kept coming. What’s he saying? He’s saying, “Only God can stop the sea. I couldn’t stop the sea. I’m not God.” 

In 2 Maccabees, which is one of those writings we have in what’s called the Apocrypha, it’s writings about what happened in Israel between the Old and New Testament. There’s a very interesting passage in 2 Maccabees, chapter 9, where it’s talking about Antiochus Epiphanes, the Syrian dictator who was quite an evil man and a tyrant, and he invaded and oppressed Israel. 

At some point, Antiochus Epiphanes said that he had the power to calm the waves. All the Jewish rabbis and all the teachers and the prophets got together and said, “Blasphemy.” That’s not just overreaching; that’s blasphemy. Because only God can control the waves. 

And here’s Jesus exercising the power that only God has. Total consensus: only God has this power, and here’s Jesus exercising it. You realize, let’s go back to this. Jesus does not conjure. He does not call on a higher power. Like everyone else who ever does any of these things, if you read any of the miracle stories, the great healing stories, any of the stories and legends, they always call on a higher power. 

They say, “In the name of this or in the name of that, I say unto you…” Jesus says, “Sit down and shut up,” to a hurricane. Do you know what He’s saying? Do you know what it’s saying? Jesus is saying, “I’m not calling on a higher power because I am the higher power. I am not someone who has power; I am power itself. I am power itself. And anyone and anything in the whole universe that has any power has it on loan from me.” 

That is an amazing claim. And you know, that pushes you to the brink. See, this happened. The disciples remembered it happening. This has got all the earmarks of eyewitness reporting. But if that happened, who is this? And what does this mean for us? There are really only two options. 

The Dilemma of Faith

You know who put it incredibly well is a character in Flannery O’Connor’s great and shocking short story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” If anybody says, “Oh, I ought to read that,” and picks it up this week to read it, you’re going to say, “It’s going to be so shocking.” By the way, this is not inspirational literature if you ever read it. 

The main character, there are two main characters: the grandmother and the misfit. The misfit basically says a lot of very interesting things during the short story while he’s murdering people, one after the other. At one point, the misfit basically puts it like this. He’s absolutely right. He says, “Jesus has thrown everything off out of whack.” 

He seems—the misfit says, “Look, either this world is just the result of a storm. Either all there is is nature. We’re here by accident. We’re just—we’re here because of forces of nature, blind forces of nature. We’re here because of volcanoes. We’re here because of storms. We’re here because of the Big Bang. We’re just here by accident, storm.” 

When you die, you’re going to go to dust. When the sun goes out, there won’t even be anyone around to remember anything that anyone’s done, which means in the end, whether you’re a cruel person or a loving person makes no difference at all. 

So either that’s the case—all we have is storm—or if Jesus is who He said He is, if He’s Lord of the storm, then there’s safety, then there’s meaning in life. See, if there’s just a storm, nothing means anything. But if Jesus is real and He is who He said He is, then there’s all the meaning and all the hope and all the security you could possibly want. But then you lose control because then you have to throw everything over and give everything to Him. 

So the misfit puts it perfectly when he says, “Jesus has thrown everything off balance. If He did what He said, then there’s nothing to do but throw away everything and follow Him. But if He didn’t, then there’s nothing to do but enjoy the few minutes you have left by killing someone or burning down his house or doing some other kind of meanness, and there’s hardly any pleasure in that.” 

That’s the only two things there are to do. If you think that Flannery O’Connor is sort of drawing the options a little too starkly and too strongly, well, go argue with her; go read her fiction, and you’ll lose the argument. 

Unmanageable Power

Jesus, who is this? One with infinite power, which pushes us to the brink. So Jesus’ power is real-world power. Secondly, Jesus’ power is infinite power. But thirdly, that leads to this fact that Jesus’ power is unmanageable power. Oh, yes, it is. 

Can I show you one of the comedic elements in this passage? Look at the emotional life of the disciples. Before Jesus calms the storm, they’re scared. They’re so scared. But after Jesus calms the storm, of course, they’re more scared. You see, they’re terrified. It gets worse. 

Why? Here’s why. The picture of Jesus being aroused by these men, the picture of Jesus asleep in the storm, it says the boat was nearly swamped. Literally, it says the boat was almost full. Because of all the water coming into the boat, they were like good sailors trying to bail, but they couldn’t bail fast enough to get the water out. They knew they were just seconds from being totally filled, and they were going to die. 

So notice it says in verse 37, Jesus was asleep. They wake Him up and they say, “You don’t care. We’re dying, and you don’t care.” Now, any single person who’s ever tried to live a life of faith in this world, boy, this has got to go to your heart. Because everybody who’s ever tried to live a life of faith in this world has felt like this sometime. 

You feel like you’re sinking, everything’s going wrong, and God’s asleep. Or He just doesn’t seem to be around; doesn’t seem to be aware. So they wake Him up, and they basically say, “You have gone asleep on us in our hour of greatest need. You’re asleep in our hour of greatest need. And you don’t care. Because if you loved us, you wouldn’t be letting us go through this. If you loved us, we wouldn’t be going through storms. If you loved us, we wouldn’t be about to sink. Our boat wouldn’t be sinking. If you loved us, you would not be letting us go through deadly peril.” 

And what does He do? He calms the storm, but then He turns around, and what does He say? Well, I can understand how you felt. Oh, no. What does He say? “Why were you afraid?” What do you mean? They say, “Why were we afraid? We were afraid you didn’t love us. Because if you love us, you wouldn’t let these things happen to us.” 

And Jesus says, “Well, guess what? Your premise is wrong. You should have known better. I do allow people who I love to go through storms. I can love somebody and still let them go through a storm. You had no right to panic.” 

Now, in other words, you want to know why they’re so scared? Because Jesus is as unmanageable as the storm itself. The storm has got infinite power; you can’t control that. Jesus has infinitely more power, but you can’t control that either. 

So you say, “Well, what’s the difference?” There’s a huge difference. The storm doesn’t love you. And there are your only two alternatives. The misfit was right. You know, he said, “Oh, there’s no Jesus. I don’t believe in Jesus.” Fine. Jesus says, “You are at the mercy of the storm.” 

You say, “What do you mean? It’s not always storming.” Yes, it is. Because nature is going to wear you down. It’s going to destroy you. If you live a long time, eventually it’ll just wear you down. Your body’s going to give out. You’re going to die. Nature’s going to wear you down. Maybe it’ll happen sooner than old age. Maybe it’ll happen through an earthquake. Maybe it’ll happen through a fire. Maybe it’ll happen through something else that happens. 

I mean, nature is violent. Nature is overwhelming. It’s unmanageable power, and it’s going to get you. But you say, “Well, all right. But if I go to Jesus, who’s got this power, He’s not under my control either. He lets things happen that we don’t understand. He doesn’t do things according to plan. He doesn’t do things according to a way that makes sense to me.” 

Jesus says, “I’m God. And if I’m God, and if I have the power to do this, then I’ve got to be great enough to have some reasons to let you go through things that you can’t understand. So my power is unmanageable.” 

You say, “Well, what’s the difference?” All the difference in the world. Because Jesus’ unmanageable power—Jesus’ unmanageable power is filled with love for you. That’s the difference. 

So where are you going to go? If you knew that Jesus Christ loved you—this is what He’s saying to His disciples. If you really knew I loved you, you could have been calm during that storm. It could have been stormy out here; you could have been calm in here. If you really knew I loved you, I do. 

See, your premise is wrong, that if you loved us, you wouldn’t let bad things happen to you. Sorry. I can love somebody and still let bad things happen to them because I’m God, because I know better than you.  Because of course, if you have a God great enough and infinite enough and powerful enough to be mad at because He doesn’t stop your suffering, you also have a God who is great enough and infinite enough and powerful enough to have reasons to allow you to suffer that you can’t understand. You can’t have it both ways. 

Elizabeth Elliott put it beautifully in her very brief two sentences. She says, “God is God, and since He is God, He is worthy of my worship and my service. I will find rest nowhere else but in His will, and that will is necessarily infinitely, immeasurably, unspeakably beyond my largest notions of what He is up to.” 

Did you hear that? Storm. If you’re at the mercy of the storm, it’s unmanageable power, but it doesn’t love you. The only place it’s safe is in the will of God. But the will of God, the arms of God, the will of God is necessarily, because it’s God and you’re not, it’s necessarily infinitely, immeasurably, unspeakably beyond your largest notions of what He is up to. 

His power, of course, is unmanageable. He’s not safe, but He’s good. Jesus is saying, “I can let people go through things even though I love you, and if you knew I loved you, you’d be able to go through those things. If you were totally sure of my love, you could be calm even when it was stormy outside.” You had no right to panic. 

Conclusion

Well, now, where does this bring us? Where does this lead us? I think when I look at how the disciples responded, something unusual happens this week. The disciples are always screwing up, and almost always, when you see them screw up, you laugh and say, “What jerks!” But I don’t know that we feel that way this week, do we? 

I mean, aren’t we sympathetic? There’s a storm. Jesus acts like He’s not going to wake up. They’re sinking, and they freak out, and they say, “I just don’t think you love us.” He wakes up and says, “Well, if you knew I loved you, then you would have been able to go through the storm.” 

You say, “Well, I don’t know. That’s really, really hard. I don’t think I can handle storms like that either.” But we have something that they didn’t have yet. We have a resource that will enable you to have calm inside no matter what storms are like outside so that you can go through storms. 

What is that resource? Here. I think the secret to the meaning of this passage, the secret of what Mark is trying to get across to us in this passage, lies in the fact that Mark has deliberately laid out this account, this incident, using language that is almost identical and certainly parallel to the language of the famous account of Jonah in the boat in the storm in the Old Testament in the book of Jonah, chapter 1. 

If you compare these two, it’s amazing. Both Jesus and Jonah are out on the sea in a boat, and both Jesus and Jonah’s boats are overtaken by a storm. The description of the storm is almost identical. Both Jesus and Jonah are asleep in a storm. Keep on going. Fourth, the sailors come to the sleeper, and they say, “We’re perishing.” They even use the very same Greek word, “apollomai.” 

So they’re out in a boat. They’re in a storm in a boat. They’re asleep in a boat, both of them. The sailors come, and they say, “We’re about to perish,” and rebuke them and say, “Do something.” In both cases, fifth, there’s a miraculous intervention by God, and the sea is calmed. And sixth, in both stories, the last thing we read is the sailors were even more terrified than they were before the storm was calmed. 

So what we have here is an almost identical story. Oh yeah, there’s just one difference, isn’t there? Do you remember what that one difference is? There’s one little difference between the story of Jesus in the storm and the story of Jonah in the storm, because here’s the difference. Jonah, in the midst of the storm, says to the sailors, “There’s only one thing to do. If I perish, you survive. If I die, you will live.” And they throw him in. 

Yeah, you say, “Well, that’s different. That didn’t happen here, right?” That’s the one difference between the two stories. Or is it? I think Mark is trying to get across the fact that the stories aren’t actually different at all—not when you stand back a little bit—because in Matthew chapter 12, Jesus Christ says, “I am the true Jonah; a greater than Jonah is here.” 

He’s referring to Himself: “I am the true Jonah.” What does He mean by that? Ah, this is what He means. He calmed the storm and the wind and the waves and saved His disciples. But Jesus says that someday He’s going to calm all storms. He’s going to still all waves. He’s going to destroy destruction. He’s going to break brokenness. He’s going to kill death. All storms are going to be gone. He’s going to still all storms for us, for us. That’s what He promises. 

Well, how can He do that? Here’s how He can do that. He can only do that because when He was on the cross, He was thrown into the ultimate storm. He was thrown into the ultimate waves, the waves of sin and death. Jesus Christ was thrown into the only storm that can actually sink you and me. 

You know, we’re talking about this problem or that problem. There’s only one storm that can really sink you, and that is what you owe because of your wrongdoing. Jesus Christ turned His prow, as it were, into the ultimate storm of eternal justice, and He bowed His head and He went right into it for our sake. He didn’t flinch, and He was demolished, and He paid for our sins on the cross. 

And if you—and to the degree that seeing Him do that, seeing Him bow His head into the ultimate storm for you and for me, to the degree that that’s burned into the center of your being, to that degree you will know He cares. You’ll never say, “Oh Lord, don’t you care?” because you’ll know He does. 

If you know that He did not abandon you in that storm, that ultimate storm, what makes you think He would ever abandon you in these little storms, these infinitely smaller storms we’re going through right now? To the degree you see that He was the true Jonah, that He was thrown into the ultimate storm for you and me, to that degree you can sing those lines of John Newton: 

[!quote] [[John Newton]] His love in time past forbids me to think.   He’ll leave me at last in troubles to sink.   By prayer let me wrestle, then He will perform   With Christ in the vessel, I smile at the storm.

You know what Jesus is saying here? You and I tend to go to Him and say, “Teacher, don’t you know that we’re dying? You’ve fallen asleep in our hour of greatest need.” You know what Jesus is saying? Look, you only think I’ve fallen asleep, but let me tell you, you fell asleep on me in the Garden of Gethsemane, my disciples, the human race—that’s where you fell asleep on me in the hour of my greatest need. 

You’ve been asleep on me all your life. He could say that to every single one of us in this room. You really have gone to sleep on me, but I’ve loved you anyway. My power is infinite; my power is unmanageable, but it’s completely, completely at your service. It cost me infinitely to exercise my power in such a way that someday I’m going to be able to still all storms and give you a new heavens and new earth. 

If you see that and you bring that into the very center of your being, you will know He loves you; you will know He cares; and then you will have the calm, no matter what it looks like outside, to handle anything in life. 

Practical Points

Just a couple of very, very, very practical points. You know where Jesus says, “Why do you still have no faith?” There is actually another way to translate that. You could translate that, “Where is your faith?” I love that way of thinking about it. Most of us tend to think faith is something you just get or you just have. I’ve had people say, “I wish I had your faith.” 

Here’s Jesus saying, you know what He’s saying? He says, “Where is your faith?” He says, “I’ve been giving you enough evidence of my love and my power that you didn’t have to freak out. Where is your faith? Get it out. It ought to be here. Get out the knowledge you’ve got. Exercise it. Think, think,” He’s saying. You don’t have to panic. You never have to panic if you think. 

See, faith isn’t this mysterious thing that just happens to you. He says, “I’ve given you plenty of evidence.” And of course, at this point, the disciples don’t have anything like the knowledge that we have. What He’s saying is, “Get out what you’ve got, and you can handle, with my help, the storms of life.” 

If you do, you’ll be able to sing what we often sing at Redeemer, not particularly tonight, but we will again: 

When through the deep waters I call thee to go,   The rivers of woe shall not thee overflow.   For I will be with you, your troubles to bless,   And sanctify to you your deepest distress.  

That soul that on Jesus has leaned for repose,   I will not desert to its foes.   That soul that all hell should endeavor to shake,   I’ll never, no never, no never forsake.

Closing Prayer

Let’s pray. 

Thank you, Father, for providing us a vision of Jesus’ power. But thank you for also showing us that He’s the true Jonah, that the power that we really needed for Him to exercise was the power to be weak on the cross, to die for us. 

We ask now that you would enable us to see Him doing that for us so that we could have His power in our lives to face the storms that are in front of us. I thank you that we have this available, and I ask that you would take and comfort and empower us with this knowledge, asking it through Jesus. In His name, we pray. Amen.