Matthew 8:23-27: Save us, Lord; We are Perishing

Matthew 8:23–27 ESV

23 And when he got into the boat, his disciples followed him. 24 And behold, there arose a great storm on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by the waves; but he was asleep. 25 And they went and woke him, saying, “Save us, Lord; we are perishing.” 26 And he said to them, “Why are you afraid, O you of little faith?” Then he rose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm. 27 And the men marveled, saying, “What sort of man is this, that even winds and sea obey him?”

This story is told in all three of the synoptic gospels. If you’ve never heard that word “synoptic” it simply means the three gospel accounts that run basically side by side: Matthew, Mark, and Luke. John is still an inspired gospel account, but it is told in a very different way from the other three. Those three tell the overarching story in basically the same way, but with different emphases and main themes. Sometimes only one tells a story that the other two leave out, sometimes all of them tell the same story.

This story is one of the ones that is told in all three synoptics. That usually means its pretty important. What is particularly interesting is the way that all three synoptics tell the story in slightly different ways. We are focusing specifically on the Matthew passage, but I encourage you to look at the story in Mark 4:35 and Luke 8:22 and read all three in one sitting and take the time to mark the differences.

Again, if you want to write those down to study them this week, Mark’s account is found starting at Mark 4:35, and Luke’s account is found starting at Luke 8:22/

If you remember from last week, Jesus had told his disciples to get ready to cross the Sea of Galilee in a boat.

Now, if we just took a group of random church members on a boat to cross a sea, we might do alright cause most of us have some outdoor experience, but we would pale in comparison to these disciples because four of them were fishermen by trade. And these weren’t fishermen who had motorized boats on lakes, these men sailed boats on a sea that was notorious for sudden intense storms. The sea of Galilee “was six hundred feet below sea level and ringed with mountains to the east, so that the air would surge through the mountains and kick up huge waves sometimes eight to nine feet high”.

Grant R. Osborne, Matthew, vol. 1, Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2010), 313.

This was not just a group of students who have never sailed or worked with their hands. They knew the implications of sailing on this sea and they followed Jesus into the boat the boat and out onto the sea.

Jesus, who had just ended a long day of ministry, healing diseases, casting out demons and telling people that they need to let the dead bury the dead, Mark 4 tells us that he laid down on a cushion at the stern and allowed his tired body to be rocked to sleep by the waves.

The only problem? One of those terrible storms rose up and was threatening to sink the boat! The waves were coming up over the edges of the boat and so it was filling with water! And where was Jesus? Asleep!

Now, this isn’t to say that Jesus is being negligent to the needs of the disciples. Rather, in the OT sleep in difficult situations symbolized a deep trust in God (Job 11:18–19; Ps 3:5–6; Prov. 3:24–26); and here Jesus’ peace and calm is a stark contrast to the anxiety of the disciples and the chaos of the storm around them.

Grant R. Osborne, Matthew, vol. 1, Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2010), 313.

These terrified disciples cry out to the teacher who they knew, from experience even earlier that day, had power over sickness and even demons! They cry out to Him saying, “Save us Lord, we are perishing!” Now, to be completely honest, this cry strikes me as being a cry of faith that Jesus can save them, but Jesus says something interesting. He responded “Why are you afraid, O you of little faith?”

Jesus scolded them for being afraid and for having little faith! To my flesh, this statement is more frustrating than the harsh statement from the section before this one where he says, “Leave the dead to bury their own dead”. I can understand the call to forsake everything and follow Jesus alone. I struggled with this scolding though! Why would he scold them for crying out to Him in their time of need? Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do?

To be honest I wrestled with this all week as I tried to piece this together because, honestly, that cry “Save us Lord, We are Perishing!” has been my cry for this church! The number of churches who have closed their doors in the past couple of years weighs heavy upon my heart and I don’t want that to happen here and all I can think of praying is “Save us Lord, we are perishing!” If we want to see life, I know we must rely on the Holy Spirit to bring it, so I cry out “save us Lord, we are perishing!”

So you have to understand, to see Jesus rebuke his disciples after such a cry was astonishing to me! It was a kick in the gut!

But I studied and meditated and prayed on this all week. I sought counsel from pastors wiser than I am because I was struggling to understand how this could be! Was I too being scolded for my little faith?

But as I sought answers it finally was made clear to me that Jesus’ scolding wasn’t because of their cry to Him.

It was because of their fear.

Jesus said, “Why are you afraid? Oh, you of little faith.” He didn’t say “why are you yelling?!” He said, “Why are you afraid?”

It’s as if He said, “Haven’t you seen my great power? You’ve seen that illness and demons bow down before me. Do you really think that the very elements of nature will not do so as well?” And then He shows them that it’s true. He rebukes the storm and it calms.

Matthew records the men’s reaction as “marveling” at Jesus, but Mark says something different. Mark says that after the storm was calmed, the disciples were filled with fear, they were terrified, saying “What kind of man is this, that even the winds and sea obey him?”

What led to such strong emotions for the disciples? What led them from fear of the waves to marveling or being terrified at Jesus? The question they ask provides the answer. “What kind of man is this? That even nature obeys his word?”

It is with this great show of power that they realize, this is no mere man! They had seen people be delivered from illness before, though not in such a grand way as what Jesus did, and they had seen or heard of deliverance from demons before, though again not in such a grand way as Jesus, but they had never seen nature bow down before someone before! So, the grand emotions are because they realize something: that Jesus cannot be some mere mortal, but that He has to be God Himself! This time their fear is directed rightly! In Matthew 10:28 Jesus says

Matthew 10:28 ESV

28 And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.

The One who can destroy both body and soul in hell is not Satan, it is God! Fear God above the things that will physically kill us! So when the disciples fear the storm their faith is ultimately placed in the storm’s power to destroy them and not in Jesus’ power to save them!

When they finally cry out it is after the boat is threatening to sink!

They lean into Jesus’ power only after they do everything in their power to not sink and Jesus rebukes them for it because their faith was placed more in their abilities and methods that they learned from their trade than it was in the power of God to save them!

So the disciples were not rebuked for crying out, but only that they waited to do so until death was imminent!

They were in the literal Presence of God and they only chose to cry out when they had no hope of saving themselves!

Being in the Presence of God and recognizing what that means will never lead to arrogance or thinking that I can do it on my own! It will never lead us to manmade methods! All the rituals and markers of religious piety, all the measures we want to take to save ourselves or to save our loved ones, they all fall away when we realize we are in the presence of God!

It never leads to feelings of superiority! It should only lead us to recognize how much bigger and more powerful He is than us! It leads us to recognize our sin and our need to be saved! And often that doesn’t always look like what we think it ought to!

We think salvation needs to look like what we find acceptable and comfortable

But that is rarely the case

In our personal lives how often are we praying biblically? What do our prayers look like? Is it simply a list of requests from God for blessing though healing, finances, and comfort? Or are we praying in agreement with the way Jesus taught his disciples to pray “Your kingdom come, Your will be done”?

Do we even know what the will of God is? If we’ve never read the entire Bible and only rely on a once a week church gathering that we’re content to miss if it’s inconvenient to my schedule, how can we be sure of His will?

Throughout the Scriptures, God says that His will is to have a people who honor and glorify Him alone. His will is to make us into the image of Christ so that we can know life abundantly in relationship to Him! His will is for us to trust Him and Him alone! His will is for our community, our nation, and our world to be blessed with the knowledge of the Gospel!

How often do our prayers sound like that though? Do we pray, “God please fix this situation for me, healing this person I care about” or do we pray “God help me to glorify you as I face this difficult situation”? The first prayer is based on my will being done, the second prayer is based on God’s will being done.

Are we even praying at all? Personally, as a young man whose body or mind has rarely failed him, this is where I have to constantly remind myself that prayerlessness is arrogance. I rely on the gifts that God has given me far too often and ignore the fact that, as a Christian who is indwelt by the Holy Spirit, I am constantly in the Presence of God. So I have no room to look at the disciples and say, “Why didn’t they ask Jesus for help sooner?”

Too often, I have relied on my gifts until they fail me and then call out to God for help. I don’t want to do that any more. I don’t want to do that as an individual and I don’t want to do that as a church body. I don’t want us to dream up all these ways to try to grow the church without consulting the Word of God and praying.

I don’t want us to think we can just keep going the way we have been, that nothing has to change, and that everything will be fine now that we got a young preacher, but I also don’t want us to just jump into the first thing that sounds good because it worked to grow numbers for a different church. While we clearly need to grow numerically if we want to survive, we will not be judged by God, on the basis of how many members we have. Don’t get me wrong, we will be judged on our faithfulness to the Word of God and that means evangelism to the lost, but we will not be given more reward in heaven for being able to build a bigger building in our lifetime. We will be given the greatest reward, which is to be in God’s unmitigated glorious presence for eternity, for remaining faithful and courageous in Him alone.

But that does not come from waiting to cry out to Him until we have exhausted all our options. Jesus still honored the little faith of the disciples, but I would rather learn from their mistake.

So to let you in on what I hope to do, Lord willing, I have spent six months observing the church and praying for God’s direction. We have about three months until the new year and I will be meeting with and praying with the members of this church to seek God’s path forward during this time. I don’t know yet what that will look like and that’s okay. My plan, Lord willing, is to give an address to the church outlining the vision for the path forward, either the last Sunday of December or the first Sunday of January. But in the meantime, I am pleading with you as the members of this church to be joining us in fervently praying for God’s will to be done and that He will give us the path forward.

So, we are going to do something different that might feel uncomfortable, but it is past time for me to lead the gathered church into intentional corporate prayer for God’s will to be done in this church. I am going to open us in prayer and then you, particularly members of this church but everyone is invited to join us in prayer, you will have the opportunity to pray out loud for God’s will to be done in this church. The purpose of public prayer is not to be noticed, but to voice our cry to God and to give the church the chance to join us in unity.

A couple of points to pray about, though they are not exhaustive:

that God will be glorified in this church

That He would grant us new life

That we may know him more truly

That we would be faithful, bold, and innovative in evangelism

That our leaders would be led by Him and kept from stumbling

That we as a church would be unified in Him

Now let us pray to the Lord that He would save and continue saving us, for we will perish if he does nothing to save us.