He meets.
We get outside the Gospel of Mark on
that occasion.
And I'm going a little further in the
Gospel of Mark this year.
On Sunday morning, we looked at John Mark
himself, the servant of God who failed, writing
the story of the perfect servant of God.
And then we looked at something of our
Lord's teaching ministry in the parables in chapter
4, and now I want to pick up
one of the miracles he performed at the
close of chapter 4.
So, Mark's Gospel, chapter 4, verse 35.
And the same day when the evening was
come, he saith unto them, Let us pass
over unto the other side.
And when they had sent away the multitude,
they took him even as he was in
the boat.
And there were also with him other little
boats.
And there arose a great storm of wind,
and the waves beat into the boat, so
that it was now full.
And he was in the stern of the
boat, asleep on a pillow.
And they awaked him, and said unto him,
Master, tear us down, that we perish.
And he arose, and rebuked the wind, and
said unto the sea, Peace, be still.
And the wind ceased, and there was a
great calm.
And he said unto them, Why are ye
so fearful?
How is it that ye have no faith?
And they feared exceedingly, and said one to
another, What manner of man is this, that
even the wind and the sea obey him?
In good weather every ship has a good
captain.
In good circumstances every Christian can be a
good Christian.
The real test of whether or not a
man is a good captain of a ship
comes in the storm.
And I don't want to say it dogmatically.
I would want to throw all kinds of
qualifications around it.
But the kind of Christians we are comes
out in the storms of life.
Sometimes our hold on theology, the truth of
God, is very feeble.
Do you find that in your life?
I find myself not in the same doctrine,
not in the same way, but similar to
King Herod who beheaded John the Baptist.
Herod, theologically, was a Sadducee.
A Sadducee did not believe in resurrection.
He did not believe in spirits.
He did not believe in angels.
But when Herod heard about the ministry of
our Jesus Christ, his battered conscience made him
say, It is John the Baptist come back
from the dead.
And under the pressure of his own guilty
conscience, his theology deserted him.
I find myself sometimes like that under the
pressure of circumstances.
The things that I can speak about so
glibly from the platform desert me.
Not that they have deserted me.
I discover that my hold on them is
not as firm as it seems to be
when I'm preaching about it.
In a meeting like this tonight, with all
you fine people here, it's very easy to
talk about the peace of God and the
love of God, because it's going on right
here and now, isn't it?
But when you get into the real difficulties
of life, your words come back to mock
you, and all the peace you bubbled about
from the platform has vanished.
Oh, you know the same verses.
You know what Peter said about casting all
your care upon him for he cares for
you.
You know what Paul wrote to the Philippians.
Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by
prayer and supplication, you know all of them.
And you repeat them to yourselves.
At least I do.
And I still have no peace.
I'm a dispensationalist.
I thought I would impress you by using
that term.
It'll be more impressive if some of you
here don't even know what it means.
That'll show how educated I am.
But a dispensationalist sees different stages in God's
revelation, and that God does different things at
different times in his self-revelation to people.
And holding that, I believe that the age
of miracles, for instance, the direct act of
God, is past.
And I'm not saying God can't or God
won't do it again, but just looking at
what I understand from scripture, that the age
of miracles is past.
I suppose most of you here tonight believe
that same thing, don't you?
Did you ever get into a very, very,
very difficult situation and get mad at God
because he didn't perform a miracle?
Now, your theology told you, no, he doesn't
do that now.
He's working in other ways.
But your practical needs drove you to abandon
your theology.
And my hold on the truth of God
is not quite as firm as I think
it is or as I preach that it
is.
And it's the storms of life that very
often show what I really am and where
I really am as a Christian.
And I still think sometimes God ought to
perform a miracle for me.
Oh, I know we talk about miracles, but
I think we have really debased the term.
We talk about things that happen to us
as miracles, but that is not the way
the Bible uses the term.
And I understand what we're saying.
We talk about a person being saved and
that's a miracle, and I understand what we're
saying, but that's not how the Scripture uses
the term.
And so we've changed the coinage.
But in the biblical sense of the miracle,
I sometimes think God ought to go ahead
and perform a miracle for me.
But he doesn't do it.
And I have to do some thinking about
the miracles in the Scripture, and I want
to say a couple of things about them
before we come to this miracle that our
Lord performed for the disciples at the close
of Mark 4.
Miracles, I think most of us would be
willing to say, are primarily evidential.
They show who Jesus Christ is, and they
authenticate his message and his messengers.
One of the ways that we know that
the apostles were the authentic representatives of Jesus
Christ is they were given the power to
perform miracles.
Paul, writing to the Corinthians, talks about the
signs of an apostle, and he's talking about
the miracles that he performed among the Corinthians.
They are primarily evidential.
That is not to say that they are
not also compassionate works meeting the needs of
people.
But that isn't all they are.
If that is all they are, or even
primarily what they are, then I would have
to say God is spasmodically compassionate.
I would have to say that God plays
favorites in his compassion, because there are only
certain periods in the biblical revelation when God
was performing miracles.
Does that mean that he was not compassionate
during the years people were suffering and were
not relieved by a miracle?
No, I cannot say that primarily they were
given his works of compassion.
They are that, but primarily they are works
of evidence.
They are demonstrating something, and you'll find that
specifically in the book of Acts.
To authenticate the message of the apostles, God
gave them the power to perform miracles.
And so, I have to say about miracles,
they are first evidential.
They show who Jesus is.
They authenticate his messengers, the apostles.
And no one stands in the place of
an apostle today.
The apostle was our Lord's authorized representative on
earth.
They spoke with the authority of Jesus Christ,
and what they said, God said.
So that when I read the writings of
the apostles, I am reading God's word.
The second thing I would have to say
about miracles, is that they were secondary to
the preaching ministry of our Lord Jesus.
To me that comes out very clearly in
Mark's gospel chapter 1.
He went out very early in the morning,
before daybreak, before anybody was up, because the
crowds were pressing him so much.
When anybody knew he was stirring, a crowd
gathered, and he had no privacy.
So very early in the morning, before anybody
was up, he went out into an uninhabited
place to pray.
And Peter and the others hunted for him
and found him.
And then Peter said to the Lord, everybody's
living for you.
Early in the morning, the crowds were already
starting to gather, knowing the house where he
was staying, there they were, where is he?
And Peter, feeling some necessity to placate the
crowd, went out to find Jesus.
And then Jesus said words something like these,
let us go into the next towns that
I may preach there.
This is why I came forth.
Faced with crowds who were drawn by his
miracles, his response was, let's move on to
other towns.
To do what?
To perform miracles?
No.
To preach.
And in our Lord's scale of values, in
his priority, proclaiming the Word of God took
precedence over the performing of miracles.
That was his own choice.
That, to me, is the explanation why he
bade people to be quiet, not tell anybody
when he had performed a miracle.
As in the healing of the leper, for
instance.
Very strong language of, of, of, very deep
anger is the word that's used by Mark
of our Lord.
Our Lord, with very deep anger, told that
leper, don't tell anybody, go show yourself to
the people.
The leper went out and told everybody.
And what happened?
Crowds became so great that our Lord couldn't
preach in the city.
He had to go out into the countryside.
Why were people coming to him?
For miracles!
What did he want to give them?
The Word of God.
So I come to this miracle that our
Lord performed in chapter 4, and you'll see
some other things about it.
But as Mark develops the evidence, as we
looked at it on Sunday night, as to
who Jesus Christ is in this book, you
discover that he uses these miracles of what
our Lord did to lead us to discover
who he is.
Again, the idea of the evidential values of
miracles.
And when you look at what our Lord
did, then you have to come up with
some sort of an explanation for this man.
If he really did these things, what kind
of a man is he?
And Mark wants to bring us to the
conclusion that this man, Jesus, is the Christ,
the Son of God.
He has a whole series of miracles in
chapter 1, and now he starts another series
of miracles at the close of chapter 4
and going on into chapter 5.
And you'll notice the similarity and yet the
contrast between the two sets of miracles.
You find our Lord in his temptations in
chapter 1, and Mark is the only one
who notes it, that he was with the
wild beasts.
He was out in a wilderness area tempted
by Satan.
Now, if he were with the wild beasts,
that tells us immediately civilization has not pressed
that far.
As people move into an area, the wild
animals move out.
If our Lord was with the wild beasts,
there weren't any people around.
And I think one of the things Mark
is telling us is that he was isolated
from all human contact in his temptation.
By the way, I'm sure I have talked
about that before, but that's when temptation is
the strongest.
When you're alone.
If you've got your brothers and sisters in
the Lord gathered around you to support and
help you, temptation loses a great deal of
its power.
By the way, one of the needs for
our Christian fellowship with each other, and for
building small groups of very strong Christian friends
who, in our moments of temptation, and we
have the kind of friends to whom we
are not ashamed to reveal that we are
tempted, and that we are weak, and that
we are liable to fall, in that moment
they can be our deliverance.
Our Lord had no such support, and I
think Mark deliberately notes that.
He faced that temptation alone, without the support
of his disciples, who to some degree understood
him, and could be a help to him.
Be careful that Satan doesn't get you in
that position.
You're not the Lord.
Be careful Satan doesn't get you in the
position where you're alone when he hits you.
But I think Mark is telling us something
else.
Wild beasts.
Man and wild beasts are incompatible.
When man moves in, wild beasts move out.
God, in one of his judgmental decrees against
the people of Israel, said he would afflict
them with wild beasts.
The animal world, after the fall, responded in
fear to man.
And now here is the last Adam, the
second man, the Lord from heaven, and he
is with the wild beasts.
He is no enemy to creation, nor is
creation an enemy to him.
He is its creator.
And even wild beasts are under his control.
When he performs his miracles in chapter 1,
you find a whole series of them, the
first of which is the demon-possessed man
in a synagogue.
And our Lord casts out that demon.
He goes into the house of Simon Peter,
and Peter's mother-in-law is ill with
a fever.
And he takes her by the hand and
raises her up, and she ministers to them.
Now it's one thing for the fever to
disappear, isn't it?
It's another thing for strength to return.
You've been ill with a high fever?
Even when that fever is gone, you're as
weak as dishwater.
But when our Lord rebuked that illness and
the fever disappeared, he not only cleaned out
the illness and brought down the fever, he
gave her immediately her strength back.
And she got up and ministered to them.
A leprous man came to our Lord, and
he touched him and healed him.
In all kinds of areas our Lord's authority
and power are shunned.
He has authority in the whole realm of
nature, in the area of disease, in the
area of demons.
The whole of the created universe is under
his control.
Fallen or unfallen, makes no difference.
He is Lord.
And Mark is giving us that series to
show us who Jesus is.
Absolute Master.
And now when you come to chapter 4
and on into chapter 5, you have a
similar series.
You find his power over nature instilling this
storm at the close of chapter 4.
You find his power in the demon world
at the beginning of chapter 5, when that
demoniac lushes down from the tombs across the
sands of the lake.
And our Lord casts those demons out of
you.
You find his power in the area of
disease when he heals a woman who had
that hemorrhage for 12 years.
And you find him finally raising that little
girl, Jairus's daughter, from the dead.
I'm assuming that she was dead, but that's
a debated point.
Raising her from the dead.
The series is similar.
That leper was in a living death in
chapter 1.
This little girl was in physical death in
chapter 5.
But you know the contrast.
In that second series of miracles in chapters
4 and 5, the need is greater than
it was in chapter 1.
For example, the man in the synagogue in
chapter 1 had one demon.
The man in chapter 5 had a legion
of demons.
A Roman legion at full strength was 6
,000.
This man was inhabited by a legion of
demons.
The man in chapter 1 by one demon.
Wild beasts in chapter 1, when our Lord
was tempted.
You have a wild storm in chapter 4,
the like of which these disciples had never
faced.
And added to all that is death.
In every one of those areas, regardless of
the opposing force, regardless of the amount of
need, he stands as Lord.
Absoluteness.
The disciples one day could try to cast
a demon out of a boy and find
themselves powerless.
Not our Lord.
He had never faced a need and been
powerless.
The only time he was powerless was voluntary.
And that's when he died in weakness on
the cross, as Paul tells the Corinthians.
He was crucified through weakness, but that was
voluntary.
But now I want to look at this
miracle for a few moments, anyhow.
I think what we need to do sometimes
is, I've said this before, I know, I'm
sure I've said it here, is to read
our Bibles with imagination.
Now I really didn't read that story with
imagination tonight.
I'm a little bit afraid to.
But we need to read it with imagination.
We read it so humdrum.
Oh yes, this happened.
Have you ever been in a storm at
sea?
Yeah.
Uh-huh.
Was that humdrum?
No.
Was it peaceful?
Was everything nice and quiet?
Everything crashing around you sounded like this ship
was going to come apart.
Tables and chairs flying.
And you were praying like mad, if you're
like me, right?
Sure.
This was a storm.
They were just talking to each other.
Wind howling, waves beating into the boat, as
Mark describes it, so the boat was already
filling.
What do you do in an open boat
when the waves are beating into the boat
that's filling?
Any of you been out in an open
boat at sea or in a lake when
the storm came up and it's filling?
What do you do?
If it's not south bailing, what do you
do?
Or you start bailing like mad.
And of course they were doing that.
And they were holding polite conversation with each
other.
You know how noisy a storm is at
sea?
You have to yell to be heard.
The wind grabs your words and blows them
away.
And someone can be standing right next to
you.
You have to yell into his ear to
be heard.
And that's what was going on all these
two miles.
And experienced sailors frightened to death.
They'd sailed this Sea of Galilee many times.
They were fishermen.
Well, they were frightened to death.
They were sure they were going down to
the bottom.
Then what's back there at the stern of
the boat?
There's the one that got them into all
this.
He's the one that told them, let's get
into the boat and go across.
He did it.
And what's he doing about it?
He's sound asleep.
Now, knowing yourself, how would you feel about
them?
About him sleeping back there while you're fighting
for your life?
What's he doing?
Nothing.
He's just sleeping back there.
Did you pick up what they said to
him?
Master, carest thou not?
You ever said that to him?
When it seemed like he was asleep?
Don't you care?
Sure.
And then in all that majesty and simplicity,
he rises and reduces the wind and says
to the sea, peace be still.
You have to do both, of course, because
the sea will keep pitching and tossing long
after the wind has died down.
You have to do both.
You have to talk to the wind.
You have to talk to the sea.
And he did both.
The wind stopped, and the sea was calm.
Those of us who have been at sea,
if we had ever seen anything like that,
we would have been just like those disciples.
They feared exceeding.
Anybody who stood up in a tossing boat
and did something like that in the middle
of a storm that I was sure was
going to take us to the bottom of
the sea, yes, I would fear exceeding.
And that's what they did.
What manner of man is this, that even
the wind and the sea obey you?
Don't you care?
Now, I get several lessons out of that.
What Mark is really doing is showing us
who Jesus is.
Every one of these situations at the close
of chapter 4 and on into chapter 5
were impossible situations from the human point of
view.
Experienced sailors could not handle that boat in
that storm.
I don't know who had said it, but
it's a rather humorous thing that experienced seamen
go back and wake up a carpenter to
help them get out of this storm.
What does a carpenter know about handling a
boat?
But here were men experienced in sailing the
sea, and it was beyond them.
The demon-possessed man of chapter 5, bound
by chains, tried to restrain him beyond any
human help.
A woman with that hemorrhage for 12 years,
spent everything she had on many doctors, and
didn't get any better, got worse.
It's interesting to read Luke's account of it.
He's much easier on the medical profession than
Mark is.
Spent everything she had on doctors, only got
worse.
Beyond any medical help.
And a little girl who was beyond the
power and care of a father's love.
In every case, it was beyond any human
help.
And then Jesus came, and there was nothing
beyond his help.
But I don't want to leave you there,
because sometimes he doesn't do what we think
is the necessary miracle.
And I have to face that.
So I want to come back to this
story and share with you some of the
lessons that I get out of it, just
from my own life.
Mark is also the only one who notes
here that they took him into the boat
just as he was, when he said, let
us pass over unto the other side.
In verse 36, they took him even as
he was in the boat.
I'm not sure what Mark means by that.
Our Lord had been very, very busy.
And now, at the end of this tremendous
day of teaching, miracles, he gets into the
boat, plops down on that pillow on the
stern and goes fast asleep.
They took him just as he was.
I like the expression.
By the way, for any of you who
may not be Christians, or you have not
committed yourself to Jesus Christ, that's the way
you have to take him.
You have to take him as he is,
not as you want him to be.
You have to take him as he is.
What he is.
You can't take him just as a prophet,
nor as a good teacher, nor as a
religious leader.
You can't take him that way, because that
isn't what he is.
You have to take him as he is.
And what he is, is the eternal son
of God.
And you have to take him that way.
We don't take him at all.
You just have to take him as he
is.
But that tells me something else.
That's the way we took him, isn't it?
And that's the way he took us.
Isn't that right?
Didn't he take us just as I am
without one flea, but that thy blood was
shed for me?
Isn't that the way he took us, just
as we were?
That's the way we have to take each
other, just as we are.
I have refused to perform wedding ceremonies because
I felt that the couple were not taking
each other just as they were.
I've had situations where I was absolutely certain,
I knew beyond question, that they were taking
each other in the expectation they would change
the other person.
And I have refused to be party to
it.
You take that person as he or she
is, or you don't take them at all.
Period.
And if we are going to help each
other, we must accept each other as we
are.
Not as we would like the other person
to be, but as they are.
If we begin to set up conditions under
which we will accept a fellow Christian as
a fellow Christian, we are on dangerous ground.
We accept each other as we are.
That's the only hope we have.
Children growing up in a home where acceptance
by their parents is conditional, turn into neurotics
if not psychotic, and fill our prisons.
Where children feel that to please their father
they must be an outstanding sports figure when
they have no natural ability for sport, whatever
the demands put upon the child so that
he feels he must perform in order to
be accepted, we destroy the child.
And we destroy each other as Christians when
we do the same thing.
What changes us as Christians?
The realization of the unconditional acceptance we have
in Jesus Christ.
That he takes us as we are.
Our overflowing gratitude, our sense of security, makes
change possible.
But where we are insecure in our relationship,
change is impossible.
Only as we become genuine friends to each
other are we going to enable each other
to change as God wants us to change.
They took him as he was because that's
the way he took them, just as they
were.
And the changing process the Spirit of God
works in us is possible only because we
have been accepted as we are.
Second lesson I get out of this, don't
act on your emotions.
In our King James Bible the word luck
is used very often when nowadays, in our
20th century, the word emotion would be much
better, because our word luck now has an
evil connotation.
But it is translating a word that simply
means emotion.
We are warned by the apostles in the
New Testament not to live according, in the
King James translation, not to live according to
our lusts as the Gentiles did.
And we imagine that what we are being
warned against is living according to evil desires.
No.
What the apostles are telling us is not
to live by our emotions at all, good,
bad, or indifferent.
Now, he's not saying don't have emotions.
If you have ever read C.S. Lewis's
Pilgrim's Regress, you remember the pale men of
the north, bloodless individuals with no emotions.
Who in the world wants to be like
them?
No, he didn't say don't have emotions.
He is saying don't live by them, don't
act on the emotions.
What am I supposed to act on?
An intelligent appraisal of the situation in light
of a standard of values derived from the
Scripture.
What I should do in any given situation
is based upon the standard of values derived
from the Word of God and my intelligent
evaluation of that given situation.
Don't live according to your emotions.
Now, what did the disciples...
Now, that's easy for me to preach right
here, you understand that.
That's one of those things that deserts me,
or that I desert in a stressful situation.
Just ask my kids.
But what did these disciples do when they
went back to Jesus and said, don't you
care?
That's what they were feeling.
They knew better, but that's what they were
feeling, and they acted on their emotions.
Now, I'm not saying I wouldn't have done
the same thing, but they were wrong in
doing it.
And Jesus rebuked two things, the storm and
the disciples.
His response to them once he had calmed
the storm was, why were you afraid?
Now, what do you mean why were we
afraid?
Why were you afraid?
Don't you have any faith?
They had acted on their emotions, and we
do that in all kinds of situations.
We do that in personal quarrels, don't we?
We make emotional responses, and the fire builds,
and there's a blazing inferno going, simply because
we responded emotionally.
Instead of using our heads and thinking, what
do I know from the book of Proverbs?
A soft answer, turneth away wrath.
I know that.
What do I do in personal conflict?
Do I obey Proverbs 15?
Well, no.
No, I respond to my emotions.
I am not responding to the Word of
God.
I am responding to my emotions.
Let me suggest to you the disciples were
not responding to the Word of God, either.
They were responding to their emotions.
Oh, sure, they had the Word of God.
Do you remember as we looked at one
of the parables of our Lord Sunday night?
Be sure to listen when you hear, or
they heard, but they hadn't listened.
They jumped in the boat and took off,
because he had said something.
What did he say?
What had he said that they heard but
didn't listen to?
He had said to them, let us go
over to the other side.
They heard it, but they didn't listen to
it, because they got out in the middle
of the lake, and they thought he had
said, let us go to the bottom.
But that isn't what he had said.
He had said, let us go to the
other side, and that's what they should have
acted on.
Lose their feelings on what he'd said.
So, in a personal conflict, I should act
on Proverbs 15, 1, the soft answer turns
away your ass.
That's what I should act on, not on
my personal feelings.
Don't live by your emotions.
That's what the writer says in this passage.
The final lesson, and all the other lessons
that I've got to quit this thing, either
the tape runs out or you do.
A miracle may come from lack of faith.
And this is one of those instances.
Our Lord performed an unnecessary miracle.
And I shouldn't put those two terms together,
because one of the things I say over
and over again is, God never performs an
unnecessary miracle.
In one sense of the word, this was
unnecessary.
He should never have been put in the
position that he was here in this storm.
And the miracle he performed was an answer
to their lack of faith, not an answer
to their faith.
We talk about having great faith and having
miracles.
Well, they had one of the greatest miracles
in the history of the Word of God,
and it was the result of no faith.
That's what he said to them.
How is it that you have no faith?
Now how do you explain that?
They got a miracle with no faith.
Because they really didn't need it.
What had he said to them?
Let's go to the other side.
That's all they needed to know.
You mean they could have sailed that boat
through the storm?
Yes, of course.
That's what he said.
Let's go to the other side.
And there wasn't any reason, except their own
fears, there wasn't any reason to wake him
up.
He wasn't worried about it.
He was sound asleep.
Maybe he thought, why should I worry when
they're worrying?
I don't know, but he was sound asleep.
And it was to meet their lack of
faith that he performed this.
It would have been better for them, trusting
what he had said, to battle out the
storm.
That would have been better than the miracle.
So if God is not performing those miracles
of deliverance for you, perhaps he is allowing
you a better way.
Perhaps he is allowing you to trust him
without the deliverance.
Maybe it boils down to this.
Do I trust him and his care for
me, or do I trust him to do
something?
And there's a difference.
Do you trust him to do something, or
do you trust him?
And if we learn to trust him in
the storm, when he does not perform the
miracle, when he does not deliver, we may
discover that we are far better disciples than
we would have been if he had delivered
us.
Oh yes.
For one reason or another, God seems to
feel that endurance is a very important virtue
to build into our lives.
And you don't develop endurance by getting deliverance.
You develop endurance by remaining under, and that's
the meaning of the term.
And he will give you everything you need
to remain under any storm that he does
not lift.
And we trust him.
Let's pray.
Our Father, as we look at the cross,
we have to say, how can I not
trust him who has forever demonstrated the depth
of his love and compassion for us?
And in our moments of weakness in the
midst of a storm, bring us back to
the cross.
Remind us again of how much you really
care and help us to trust the one
whom no miracle delivers from the agony of
the cross.
We pray in his name.
Amen.