Sermon Tone Analysis
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Intro:
Illustration:
Golf Stories- golf cart and pick up truck.
Transition:
We all find ourselves in these situations.
The difficulties are rising, or the stakes are high and stress is growing.
We are struggling with something in school or a relationship, or our personal life.
Whatever it is- we feel our minds just closing in to where we can only see, hear, think about or imagine everything that is going WRONG!
We can only feel our stress, our anxiety, our struggle.
We can only see the failure, the sin, the brokenness.
And we can’t find our way out of it because we are so caught up in the mess we are in.
It’s in these moments where we always have two choices, even if we don’t feel like it.
We can either focus on what is falling apart, or we can look at how things can come back together.
We are either completely consumed by our struggle, or we can see the other side, the possibility of getting through it.
Now, to be clear, I am NOT talking about just simply thinking positively or trying to be an optimist.
That isn’t terrible but it doesn’t actually help you when your life is falling apart right?
No, I believe the way we face these dark times, or terribly difficult situations is completely dependent upon how we see Jesus.
Your view of Jesus will determine how you go through the struggles of life.
How you view Jesus will completely change how you go through the hardest struggles of your life.
Context:
Turn with me to Mark 4 tonight.
We will be in the tail end of the chapter that we started last week.
As you turn there, there are a few things you need to know about what is going on since where we left off.
Jesus, if you remember is spending a day teaching the crowd through parables.
Specifically, what Mark mentions are parables all about the Kingdom of God.
Jesus is teaching them about the arrival and impact of the Kingdom of God for all the earth!
And where Mark will go next, as we will see, is to show 4 miracles that happen immediately following these parables.
So, Jesus teaches all this stuff to them about who He is and what the Kingdom of God is like and then takes them into the world where they see the power of the Kingdom of God on full display 4 times in a row.
It’s like Jesus is giving them the chance to test their faith in Him and see if they understand what he has been saying!
It’s an encouragement to believe all that He has taught them by now seeing the things he does!
And we won’t likely get into all 4 of the miracles here, but we are going to dig into the first one tonight and see how it helps us think about those difficult times in life.
Last week we heard that if you aren’t rooted in JEsus and abiding in him you will fall away when the hard times and persecution come.
Here the disciples will go through a very hard situation and we will see where their faith is at.
It challenges us to have the proper view of Jesus in the midst of life’s hardest moments!
Let’s dig into the passage together.
Mark 4:35-41
“On that day, when evening had come, he told them, “Let’s cross over to the other side of the sea.”
So they left the crowd and took him along since he was in the boat.
And other boats were with him.
A great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking over the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped.
He was in the stern, sleeping on the cushion.
So they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher!
Don’t you care that we’re going to die?”
He got up, rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Silence!
Be still!”
The wind ceased, and there was a great calm.
Then he said to them, “Why are you afraid?
Do you still have no faith?”
And they were terrified and asked one another, “Who then is this?
Even the wind and the sea obey him!””
Now, this is a story that we are likely very familiar with.
Jesus calms the storm.
And that is usually what is focused on by people talking about this passage.
Hey life will bring you storms, Jesus can calm them!
And that is one hundred percent true, and I do hope you know that, and we will even talk about that tonight.
But what if I told you that’s not the focus of this passage.
The point of this passage is not about the storm, but about how the disciples view Jesus.
Let’s go back through the story with an open mind and see what’s going on here.
So, This is an incredible moment for the disciples to be with Jesus.
They are loaded up in a boat with him and he has been teaching all day, the crowd has been locked in.
And, It’s now getting into the evening and they are all wiped out!
Jesus tells them to cross the sea.
Maybe this was to get away from the crowd, maybe it was for rest, but all we know is Jesus has plans on the other side of the sea and tells the disciples to cross the sea in their boat with Him.
This is an important detail for Mark to include here.
Why?
Because it means that the disciples weren’t about to go through this storm because they were disobedient or sinful.
Many of you should be familiar with the Story of Jonah in the old testament right?
He was disobedient to God, he runs from him even, gets on a boat, and God does allow a storm to rise up and threaten the safety of the boat and everyone on board.
However, in this case, the disciples are not going into a storm because of their disobedience but because of their obedience to Jesus.
This is tough for us because many times we want to think, or we believe even if we know it isn’t true, that following Jesus makes life easy and perfect and all our problems should go away.
But that’s hardly the case.
If you have followed Jesus for any amount of time you know that hard times still come, trials and pain are still a reality.
In fact, persecution and suffering are even promised to followers of Jesus.
So, why follow Jesus obediently if it can possibly lead to storms like this?
Because Jesus doesn’t just want to deliver us out from storms, he wants to deliver us THROUGH storms.
Jesus will use storms in our life to grow our faith and reveal more of Himself to us.
We don’t follow a Savior who just delivers us FROM the hard times, He doesn’t just take us out of our struggle, or remove us from the painful situation.
Jesus saves us in them, and he grows us through them.
He will give healing and power in the midst of the storm, not just take us out of it.
And ultimately, it leads to our faith growing as we know more about the Jesus we follow.
So obedience, not sin or disobedience, leads the disciples into the storm.
But what is this storm like?
Well, this sea that they are on, the sea of Galilee, is actually still infamous for unpredictable storms.
People to this day, talk about the bad storms that you can get caught in on the sea of Galilee.
And you can see from even this brief story that this storm is really bad.
It has massive waves crashing across their boat, water is flooding into where they are riding in the boat.
They are struggling to push through.
Story of Canoe with Harrison… we were in out of our league as teenage kids with little experience.
But these were legitimate fishermen who practically lived at sea!
And REMEMBER there are multiple experienced fishermen with them.
They practically live on the water and they are freaking out in this storm- that means it was seriously bad out there!
It’s in this moment we see their fear, their panic, their feeling of weakness and insufficiency.
Which is good because it led them to go get Jesus.
But let’s look at how they address Jesus and see where their attitudes were at.
Read verse 38 with me.
Mark 4:38 (CSB)
He was in the stern, sleeping on the cushion.
So they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher!
Don’t you care that we’re going to die?”
So, where is Jesus in the midst of this crazy storm?
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