Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Introduction

When I was a boy I would spend the night with my grandfather, Papa.

Papa and I would stay up late on Friday nights and watch things nourishing for young minds like Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

But we would also get up on Saturday mornings (at least that’s when I think it came on) and watch the old black and white Adventures of Superman TV series starring George Reeves.

In that show (as in all other Superman tales I suppose), mild-mannered reporter, Clark Kent, was Superman but Lois Lane, his coworker and love interest, didn’t know that.

When trouble struck, Lois thought Clark was pretty much useless, but she only thought because she didn’t know Clark’s real identity.

Had she known that Clark was faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, and that he loved her, she wouldn’t have thought Clark so useless.

She would have felt like the safest person in the universe.

His identity and devotion would’ve changed everything about how she felt and acted in troubled times.

Jesus is not a fictional superman; He is someone real, someone much greater than a superhero of human imagination.

But, as we’ll see in our passage this morning, if we understand His true identity and His unending devotion to us, it’ll change everything about how we feel and act in troubled times.

[Reading]

[Prayer]

[Prayer]

[Context] As we’ve been seeing through , there is a great deal of difference between those who hear the message of Jesus and those who hear the message of Jesus with understanding.

Those who just hear, bear no fruit at all or only bear it for a little while before falling away.

This means that those who only take a temporary interest in Jesus will only obey and follow Him temporarily.

Soon, however, persecution or the pleasures of the world will reveal that there was never lasting faith in Jesus such a person’s heart.

On the other hand, those who hear the message of Jesus with understanding hold on to it with an honest and good heart, bearing fruit with patience ().

That kind of person obeys and follows Jesus to the end and, therefore, shines like a light in this dark world ().

That kind of person bears the mark of the family of God, which is hearing the Word of God and doing it ().

[INTER] But what does that look like?

What does it look like to hear the Word of God and do it?

It looks a lot like these winds and waves in .

[CIT] In Jesus calms a storm with a command and in doing so further reveals Himself as the Son of God, God in the flesh.

[PROP] If we are going to hear Jesus’ word and do it, if we are going to obey Him and follow Him as we should, we must understand that Jesus is God.

[TS] Notice...

Major Ideas

First, we see that Jesus is God in His sleeping ().

Jesus, of course, slept because He had a human body as we do.

He grew tired from travel and preaching and teaching and travel and preaching and teaching.

It’s not surprising that in a quite moment away from the crowds on a boat crossing the Lake of Gennesaret (which was also called the Sea of Tiberias or the Sea of Galilee) that Jesus fell asleep.

One day he got into a boat with his disciples, and he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side of the lake.”

So they set out, 23 and as they sailed he fell asleep.

And a windstorm came down on the lake, and they were filling with water and were in danger.

Jesus slept...

As an aside, we should see here an invitation to catch a nap when we can.

We often say about Jesus praying, “If the Lord had to pray, then we should pray.”

Well, the same logic applies here, “If the Lord had to sleep, then we should sleep.”

He got tired.

And we should sleep deeply for the same reason Jesus did.

It appears that at least on this occasion that Jesus wasn’t a light sleeper.

The windstorm came down, the waves grew large, the boat began to take on water, and none of that woke Jesus.

In fact, it was only when His disciples came to Him and said, “Master, Master, we are perishing!”

that He finally woke up ().

Luke 8:23

He was tired.

How could Jesus sleep amidst such clamor?

We might wonder how we are to sleep when anxiety has piled up in our hearts, when our minds won’t stop spinning the same words and scenarios over and over again.

Well, we can sleep even when troubled because Jesus is God.

That’s how Jesus was able to sleep.

No one else on the boat was asleep because no one else knew in full what Jesus knew—that He was God in the flesh.

Had they understood fully, believing fully from the heart that Jesus was God incarnate, they too would have been calm in the face of the wind and waves.

If we believe that Jesus is God, we too will be calm when we face wind and waves.

Jesus is Creator, and all things hold together by the word of His power.

…because He is God.

He was Creator.

He is Creator, and all things hold together by the word of His power.

He was Ruler.

There’s a great note in the MacArthur Commentary on this passage:

Its says that “the earth is twenty-five thousand miles in circumference, eight thousand miles in diameter and weighs approximately six sextillion tons.

It spins on its axis at about one thousand miles per hour, and travels in its approximately one hundred fifty million-mile orbit around the sun at about one thousand miles a minute.

The sun itself makes a vast orbit around the center of the Milky Way galaxy.

At the other end of the size spectrum, a teaspoon full of water contains trillions of atoms … From the vastness of space to the infinitesimally small realm of the atom, God upholds all things by the word of His power ().”

In Jesus of Nazareth, that God was in the boat with those disciples.

John MacArthur, , MacArthur New Testament Commentary (Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers, 2011), 206.

Because He knew who He was, Jesus was able to sleep.

When we know who He is, we are able to rest as well even when trouble comes.

[TS] Notice...

In fact, He is so far removed from fear of his creation, that He can sleep like a baby in the midst of this storm.

[Illus]

[Illus] Something about having no fear of something you’ve made because you made and you know how it was built or what it is constructed of.

Let’s say you have a severe peanut allergy, and you make a desert that typically has peanuts in it.

However, because of your allergy, you leave the peanuts out.

The dessert is made and you’re enjoying a bit of it, when someone comes in who knows about your peanut allergy (perhaps they even have the same allergy themselves), they SLAP the dessert out of your hand and shout at you, “DON’T YOU KNOW THAT STUFF COULD KILL US?!”

But you have no fear of the dessert.

Why?

You made it.

You know it can’t kill you.

But here’s the thing, it could still kill you.

You could choke.

You could’ve accidentally let a peanut slip in there somehow.

You’re not perfect.

You’re no sovereign.

The stuff you make can kill you.

But Jesus is perfect.

He is sovereign.

And the stuff He made couldn’t kill Him unless He allowed it to.

God created man and woman in His image, male and female He created them.

Adam and Eve were the first humans and they sinned against God.

Sin was introduced into the world, and we all have been born into sin.

The penalty for sinning against God is death, but God graciously sent His Son Jesus, the one sleeping in the boat in this passage, to pay our penalty upon the cross.

Jesus never sinned.

He lived perfectly and was the perfect sacrifice in our place upon the cross.

On the cross, He became sin that through faith in Him we might receive His righteousness.

In His resurrection, Jesus triumphed over sin and death and became the trailblazer for all who will be raised to eternal salvation through faith in Him.

In His ascension, He sent the Holy Spirit to fill, seal, and defend us.

He intercedes for us at His Father’s right hand from which He will soon return to take us home where we shall always be with the Lord.

So you see, Jesus could sleep on the boat because He knew He was meant for the cross.