04 Why Are You so Afraid? (Mark 4:35-41)

SPEAKER_01: We are in Mark chapter 4, verses 35 through 41. And if you're new or you or um haven't been here in a while, we are going through the Gospel of Mark, stopping at the places where Jesus asked a question. And it's just another way he taught, in addition to the sermons or the didactic passages, the parables. One of the f the forms he had to teach was asking a question to try to get people to think. Usually he knows the answer to the question. And asking questions as a teaching tool became really interesting to me when my kids reached adolescence because suddenly the rules of parenting changed and nobody gave me the new rule book. So I was at a loss. And one of the things I've quickly learned with a teenager is that a lecture, particularly if it had a complete sentence in it, didn't work, you know, where they used to give me that wide-eyed, kind of eager look of childhood. Now I got the rolling, you know, eye-glazed. Kind of that was the response. So I learned that, hmm, asking questions was a better way to do things, and that got me thinking, maybe Jesus what did how did Jesus teach with questions? So it's uh in some ways it's better than a lecture, except not here. I get to I still get to lecture you here. SPEAKER_02: Libby's rolling her eyes. Everybody rolls. I don't know. SPEAKER_01: That was um a lot. SPEAKER_02: Not a teenager order. SPEAKER_01: We really need a teenager to really get that eye roll down. All right, so we actually have two questions in our passage today, and we're gonna look at both of them. One the disciples asked Jesus, and one Jesus asked the disciples. And um well, let me read it and then we'll I'll give you the context. So this is Mark chapter 4, verse 35. That day when evening came, he said to the disciples, Let us go over to the other side. Leaving the crowd behind, they took him along just as he was in the boat. There were also other boats with him. A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat so that it was nearly swamped. Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke him and said to him, Teacher, don't you care if we drown? He got up, rebuked the wind, and said to the waves, Quiet, be still. The wind died down and it was completely calm. He said to the disciples, Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith? They were terrified and asked each other, Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him. So the first question the disciples asked Jesus, and they say, Teacher, don't you care if we drown? And the interesting thing to me about that question is, what do they expect him to say? Exactly what answer do they want from him? And and um then he turns around and asks the question back, Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith? I guess you could call that two questions or one question with two parts. Now, this story is an actual event. It was real people in a real historical setting on a real lake in a real storm. But I have to tell you that the temptation as a teacher to analogize it is just overwhelming. So I'm gonna give in. Because there's this picture of I'm in a storm and it looks like my savior is asleep that I think a lot of people can relate to. Um I don't know about you, but uh I frequently hit those times when life is overwhelming and it just seems treacherous, and whatever the circumstances are, you know, it gets I get anxious, I get overwhelmed, depressed, threatened, or whether it's pain or or worry or anxiety of some kind, and you have those times where you petition God and you seek him out and it just seems like he's not listening. Like no matter what you do, he's asleep or he's not paying attention. So this this picture of Jesus napping while we face a storm, I think, is something we can relate to. It's how life um seems to us. Now, my husband's an elder here, and one of the privileges of being an elder and an elder's wife is you get included in prayer requests you might otherwise not be included in. And what I've learned through that is I used to think normal for the Christian was like happy, tranquil, and maybe even boring. That's not the case. What I've learned through being included in all these prayer requests is normal and tranquil and boring is the exception. Everybody uh has is facing a real deep struggle of some kind. And I would bet in this room, if I I'm not going to, but if I asked for a show of hands, everyone would raise their hand that there's something going on with the family member or finances or health or a marriage or a job or a lost friend or or something that everybody is facing some incredible struggle that that drags them down every day. And we often don't share them. We often wait and talk about them when the struggle is over. Um but I'd encourage you to have those close friends where you can share that because we meet each other in those stormed uh stormy moments of our lives. Um there was a few years ago where um my we had three people in our family who had cancer. My mother had breast cancer, my husband's mother had lung cancer, and his grandmother had um also had lung cancer, and all three of them were sick at once, and we went through this time of you know, racing from doctor appointment to doctor appointment, and who was in the emergency room uh at any given time or who was just getting more bad news about their treatments, and then we ended up losing them within eleven months of each other. And when I think about a storm tossed life, that's the period in my life that I remember because it was just overwhelming to to face all this. And as the situation dragged on and it seemed like, you know, we'd pray for healing or we'd pray for good news and somebody would have a checkup and we'd get more bad moo news, it just seemed like, has God forgotten us? Is he not paying attention? And I think those storms raised that question. It's how can God let this happen to me? How can he let this anxiety go on? Or um how can he allow all this personal tragedy? You know, and it may be we we often make it personal, but it could be, you know, how many times does something like the tragedies at Virginia Tech have to happen? Or how many times will we see this genocide and struggling in Africa or persecution and and we face this and we think, what is going on? And that's what the disciples I think are asking. When they say, Teacher, don't you care if we drown? They're looking at the situation and saying, This is hard. How can you let this happen to me? How can you sleep while I'm in the storm? Now, I'm not going to answer that all the way, so don't get your hopes up. But we are going to try to make an attempt. Because I think Jesus' response to their question is particularly helpful because he points back to them and he says, Have you no faith? And in the long run, I think the problem of human suffering is a problem of faith. That we have to reach the point where we say, Lord, I don't understand, but I know enough about you to know I can trust you. That I don't know why this is so hard, or I don't know why this situation is persisting, or I don't know why this person is lost to me. But based on what I know of you, I will trust you no matter what. And and I think that's what Jesus is pointing to when he says, Do you still have no faith? So that's essentially the lecture in a nut zone, but I'm going to give you a lot more details. All right, so let's look particularly at the story. Verse 35 says, When evening came, so that raises the question, what day is this? What's been going on? And if you read back through the chapter, you'll find the first verse of this chapter is the beginning of this day. And this day is a long day of public ministry for Jesus. He's teaching the crowds, then he's alone with the disciples, and they're asking him questions, and then he's teaching again publicly, and this has been going on all day, presumably 10 or 12 hours, and he's exhausted. So he said to the disciples, let's go over to the other side. And where they are is they're leaving, they're going across the northern tip of the Sea of Galilee. So they're leaving a region where the Jews predominated, and they're crossing over to an area that was mostly Gentile, the Decopolis area, and that's the story we're going to pick up next week. So then it says, leaving the crowd behind, they took him along just as he was in the boat. And the the just as he was is he was exhausted, and they didn't stop to eat, they didn't stop to minister to him in any way, there was no fuss, they they just got in the boat and they left just as he was, and he's so tired he falls asleep immediately. Now that's an interesting picture because we have seen Jesus claim to be the Son of God, and now we see him very human. He is so tired he can't uh keep his eyes open. And this is just one of the many clues in the gospel that Jesus was not only God, he was fully human. He's taught all day, he's exhausted, he gets in the boat, he can't keep his eyes open. And I don't know about you, but how many don't you have days like that where you get to the end and you think, I just can't stay on my feet another minute? And you know, just making it through the day isn't a major accomplishment. Well, here we see Jesus in that same position, and that's I think encouraging because it points to the fact that yes, he was also fully human, and he was our high pre, as Hebrews said, our high priest who is able to sympathize with us in our weaknesses. He's been there, he knows what it's like. We know what it's like to be weary from a hard day's work. So I think that explains a little bit of the disciples' reaction because they've just been impressed with how human he is. He's exhausted. And how does the Messiah get tired? I mean, isn't he like a superhero or Spider-Man or something like that where he has super strength? I mean, how do you how do you have this juxtaposition of a man who's so tired he can't keep his eyes open and then he stops the storm? I mean, it's kind of this amazing contrast. So they've just been impressed with Jesus' humanity, but note at this point they have enough information to know who Jesus is. He's been confirmed to be the Son of God at his baptism, he's picked the twelve, he's made bold claims like the kingdom of God is at hand and that the passages about Daniel's vision being the Son of Man refer to him. He's taught in the synagogues with authority. Demons have acknowledged he's the Holy One of God, he's healed Peter's mother-in-law, the man with the withered hand, the paralytic, a leper, and he's challenged the Pharisees. So they have enough evidence by this point. It's still early in his ministry, but they have enough evidence to testify to the fact that Jesus is in fact the Messiah. Now, the other thing to note is the storm is dangerous, but it's not overwhelming, I think. Mark describes it as a furious squall, probably from Peter's telling. And the question is, why do they panic? I mean, is this like hurricane force winds that you know are are threatening to overwhelm him, or is this a storm like many other storms they might have faced on the same lake in the same region? And I think it's the latter. And the reading I did um it said one of the books described that on the Sea of Galilee it's kind of there's this corridor where the winds rush down, let's see make sure I get the geography right, um, it's in a valley, and then there's these hills surrounding the lake that kind of form a corridor for the winds to rush down through that corridor, and then they pick up the water on the Sea of Galilee and they create a storm. And that this was not a supernatural event, that this kind of thing happens frequently on this storm. Now, I think it was serious, and it was at night, which would have made it even more dangerous, and so I think they they have reason to be concerned, but the question is, is this, you know, the extreme circumstances that they're facing? Were they at their wits' end so that they had reason to panic? Remember, many of them were fishermen. They spent their life on this lake, they would have spent their days in and out dealing with this lake. So Simon Peter, Andrew, James, and John were all fishermen who regularly fished in this region of Galilee. I I find it hard to believe that this was the first time they faced this kind of a storm. So it was this are they justifiably panicked or are they overreacting? I think part of the reason we can tell they're overreacting is for one thing, Jesus can sleep through it. I mean, if this was a hurricane, you know, hurricane force winds or some kind of torrential overwhelming storm, there's no way he could have stayed asleep in the boat. And then when he wakes up, he doesn't respond to the storm as if it were overwhelming. He responds to it as if it were, you know, a an overzealous puppy that's yapping at him. He just kind of says, Quiet, calm down. And his attitude is more one of let's calm down the commotion so we can talk to the disciples. So if I'm right about that, that this was not a hurricane, but this was just a serious storm, why do they panic? Why don't they wake him up and say, you know, here's a bucket, start bailing? Or you need to wake up because we need all hands on deck. This is serious, it's nothing to trifle with, it's just safer for you to be awake and alert. I mean, those would have been kind of calm, reasonable reactions. Instead, they react with this, like almost shaking him. Don't you care if we drown? They're panic. So why do they panic? I think there's one of two possibilities. The first is they are afraid Jesus no longer loves them, and they give way to panic. So that's the situation I was describing in the middle, where you're facing a trial or a tribulation or some set of circumstances, God doesn't answer the way you expect or seem to be answering at all, and you start thinking, well, he's given up on me. He's abandoned me, he no longer loves me. So if I can speculate a little bit, their thinking might go something like this you know, Lord, what's the matter with you? This is this is hard. This is a really hard circumstance, and I don't deserve this. I mean, I've done everything you ask. These as the disciples, I left my job, my home, my family. I've stayed by your side through these early days. I've followed you, I didn't ask to be here, I didn't ask to be in this storm. I'm I'm tired too. I've been with you all day. I didn't know the storm was coming, and here you are, you're supposed to be my rabbi, my lord, my messiah. You've solved everybody else's problems, you've healed all these other people, so when are you gonna bail me out of my troubles? I mean, you're letting all this calamity fall on me, so maybe you don't love me anymore. Maybe don't you care if I drown? And that's I think the force behind the question of God, if you love me, you get me out of this mess. And particularly I think young Christians have this notion that the coming uh that coming to belief means the end of all your troubles, you know, that from did you ever think that? I know I did as a new believer. Um, that, you know, doors would open at just the right moment and the sun would come out at just the right time when the clouds were gathering, and and God would find me a parking space, and you know, make sure I got up on time and all that stuff, and of course give me the job I want and marry the perfect man and we'd live happily ever after. Well, it doesn't work out that way usually. Then the storms strike, then people get sick, or then people have fights, or then that you lose the job, and you think, God, this isn't what I signed up for. I signed up for the the pearls and roses life, and this is this is the hard and uh and trial life full of trials and tribulations. And I think what we're supposed to learn from that is maturity comes from trusting God even when it's life is unexpected, when there's no evidence of his presence or when storms strike us, because those storms are the schools where we learn faith. That it's in those precise moments of trials and tribulations where our faith is strengthened and we learned that God is God and I am not, and I can trust him no matter what. And I think reacting with the panic the disciples reacted to just means we have a lot left to learn. So the sleeping savor who performed miracles for others but was unresponsive to their plight raises all these doubts of don't you love me anymore? How could you let this happen to me? Don't you care if I drown? So I don't think it's the physical danger they feel most, so much as uh something including Jesus. So that's one possibility of maybe Jesus doesn't love me anymore, or God doesn't love me. The other possibility is maybe they're afraid Jesus isn't who he says he is. I mean, maybe this is all a sham and he's not who he claims to be. I mean, they've placed their ultimate hope in him, they'd seen him release people from the power of demons, they'd seen him tell truths no one ever spoke, and um challenge the leaders, they put everything in him, and now life gets hard and he doesn't seem to be helping, so maybe he's not really the Messiah. Maybe he can't help. Maybe he wants to help, but he can't. And I think that's the other real fear they're facing, and that's the other thing storms do for us. We either doubt God loves us or we doubt maybe he's not really God, maybe he's not really trustworthy, maybe I can't trust all those promises. So they panic. And I think their panic is not the physical fear of drowning so much as the possibility that Jesus would put them in this extreme circumstance and then ignore their plight, that he either he doesn't love them anymore or he's not who he claimed to be. And I think that's the real issue. You know, that's the problem of suffering. We we we panic when life gets hard, not so much because it's hard, but because we fear we're all all alone, that God has somehow abandoned us, that um he who promised to love and protect us would sleep through our hour of need. And that fear, I think, is evidence that our faith is still immature. Because that's what Jesus responds to. So now we get to the good side. Um that notice when they wake Jesus up and they ask him this question, the first thing he does after calming the storm is address their faith. He says, Why are you so afraid? Why did the storm terrify you? How is it that you have no faith? I mean, the the kind of the logic behind what he's saying is, look, you've been with me, you've seen me heal, you've heard me teach, you've seen the demons obey, you've seen lives changed and hearts opened and the blind see and the lame walk. How is it after all of that you have no faith? You know the scriptures, you know the promises, you've seen the character of God as He's acted through history. Why now do you think that we would throw that all away? Why are you so afraid? How is it that you have no faith? That's the that's the issue. And that's I think the the lesson we need to learn is um when life gets hard, the thing the place we want to turn to is trusting Jesus, not doubting him. So re go back and review what has God done for me? How do I know who he is? What and that's why I know I've said this before in Wednesday in the Word, but I think there's great value in keeping a journal, if nothing else a journal of the the things that God has taught you in your life. So I look back on that time when we were dealing with all the people with cancer in our family, and I s because I forget, I can go back and look and see the things God taught me through that, see how even in the midst of it, He was very gentle in the details and and in the little things that kept us going. Um and if you write those things down, you have a chance to remember them. You have a way to to when you face the next big trial to go back and go, I made it through that. God got me through that, he is gonna get me through this too. And if you can't remember your own history, that's where we've also got the scriptures to go back to and look how did God get through the great heroes of the faith? You know, how did he get Joseph through or Gideon or um any of the women of the Bible or uh the Exodus, the great stories of history, because all of that testifies that we have a loving God, a merciful God, one we can trust. He got all those people through all those horrible times. He will not stop now. I won't be the first person in history that he abandons. So notice the disciples end with one more question. They say, Who is this man? And now they're more terrified of Jesus than they were of the storm. So they ask each other, who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him. And because they see with but a with but a word he's he stops this um the wind and the waves. And I think that's something we that's a lesson we can learn, to be more impressed with who Christ is than to be afraid of our circumstances. That when we can get our eyes off the circumstances and get them onto who is Jesus and what did he do for me, um, what evidence do I have about him, then the circumstances will stop looking so overwhelming and we start being more in awe and impressed with who God is. And that I think is the conclusion Mark wants us to draw from this. Who is this man? Who is he, and can we trust him? And the answer, of course, he wants us to draw is this is Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the Son of the Living God. I want to give you one example of this. This is from uh World Magazine. This was a few years ago. This was the cover. I brought it just so you know I wasn't making it up. And it's about Mark Beamer, who is this man, and he was one of the people who was on United Flight 93 on 9-11. This was the plane that that didn't hit its target but went down. Uh what, near Philadelphia? I can't remember the the place. Right. And this story was in World Magazine. It's this is his wife, Lisa. And in here he's talking to the uh 911 operator that answered his call. And her name is also Lisa, so that it's a little confusing as I read this. But here he's talking to Lisa Jefferson, who's the operator. And this was what was recorded. He said, We're going to do something. I don't think we're going to get out of this thing, Todd said. I'm going to have to go out on faith. He told me they were talking about jumping the the guy with the bomb. Are you sure that's what you want to do, Todd? Lisa, that's Lisa Jefferson, the operator asked. It's what we have to do, Todd told her. After reciting the Lord's Prayer, Todd recited the 23rd Psalm. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil evil. Other men apparently joined in with him or recited the psalm themselves. Lisa recalls, after that, he had a sigh in his voice and he took a deep breath. He was still holding the phone and was talking to someone else, and he said, Are you ready? Okay, let's roll. And then this is how Todd's wife, uh Lisa Beamer, summarizes his actions. She says, It's true that Todd and the other heroes aboard Flight 93 gave their lives that others might be saved. But if somehow they had known what was awaiting them and they had been given a chance or given a choice early that September morning, I doubt that many of them would have boarded the flight. Even in the midst of the hijacking, right down to the moment when Todd uttered his now famous phrase, let's roll, the true desire of his heart, and that of Jeremy Glick, Tom Burnett, Mark Bingham, and all the others aboard Flight 93, was to somehow get home to their loved ones. They didn't want to die. I don't think Todd chose to die, but he did choose for God's will to be done in his life. Knowing that, he stepped into the aisle of the plane, trusting by faith that regardless of what happened, God would be true to his word. Before he took that first step, Todd knew where he was going, even if he should die. He had built a life on a firm foundation. Todd was not a Hollywood hunk or a comic book superhero. He was an ordinary guy with ordinary faith and a great God. And that, I think, that's what caught me. An ordinary guy with an ordinary faith and a great God. He had no evidence that he was going to get out of that alive. That's a storm. And yet he faced it trusting God. And I think that's the lesson we ought to learn from that. That maturity comes from trusting God even when there's no evidence, even when it's that perilous. And we don't need to be superheroes or uh Hollywood hunks. We just need to be ordinary people with an ordinary faith and a great God. Now, just to close this, um Ray Steadman, who is the pastor of the church I attended in college, preached a sermon on this passage that actually became kind of famous around the church. And he summarized it this way He said, The boat won't sink and the storm won't last forever. And that's, I think, a great way to remember it. The boat won't sink and the storm won't last forever. The boat is the gospel. The gospel will not sink. You may die, but the gospel will not sink. It will bear all the weight you put on it, all the hopes you have of the gospel do not dim over time. They won't fail under pressure. They won't uh God won't renege on his promises. Everything the gospel promises will in fact come true, and you can trust it. It will bear all the weight you put on it, all the storms that you face, the gospel will survive. Um the Lord will supply our needs, not necessarily what we want tomorrow, but ultimately what we need is salvation and faith, and he will not let us go. So that's the first thing to remember. The boat won't sink. That is, the gospel will not fail you. But the second phrase I think is important too: the storm won't last forever. It's um being a Christian does not mean that um you're consigned to suffer forever and ever. The end of the story is not more suffering, the end of the story is joy and glory and the approval of God and being reconciled with Him and fellowship with other people who believe, and the day when God will ultimately wipe away every tear and right every wrong. That's the end of the story. Now, we may face a storm for months and months or years and years, and it it might not be relieved this side of heaven, but it's not the end of the story. It will not last forever. Um, God may be teaching us many, many things through it, and well, not maybe, he will teach us many things through it. But the end of the story is not suffering, the end of the story is joy and glory and hope. And for Todd Beamer, who was on that plane, he is in glory now. He may he faced that trial, but he is now freed entirely from sin and death and the sufferings of this world. So when you face those storms and you're tempted to think, God doesn't love me anymore, or maybe he's not who he says he is, the thing to remember is why are you so afraid? The boat won't sink, the storm won't last forever. The gospel is trustworthy, the message of Jesus and God and salvation is true and reliable, and you will get through the storm. I don't know how long it'll take, but you will get through it. All right, let me stop there and give you time to respond. Lord, we just thank you that you are a great God, and we ask that you make us people who just have an ordinary faith in our ordinary lives who but but follow you day in and day out. Um we ask that you would take the words of this passage and write them into our hearts so that we become people who can face whatever storms come our way with faith and confidence and maturity. And that you will be using us not only to um get through those times ourselves, but to see other kinds of storms and the other.