Sermon Tone Analysis

Mark 4:35-41

Introduction:

Good morning and welcome once again to this gathering of Hope Bible Fellowship.

It’s a joy to be with you today.

Go ahead and open your bibles or devices to Mark chapter 4. That’s where we are going to be camped out today.

I want to let you know that I’ll be out of town next weekend spending some time with extended family.

Tim Bivins will be here with you all to share next Sunday.

After that we are going to be celebrating Palm Sunday, Good Friday, and then Easter Sunday.

I hope you will make a decision now to join us then.

I encourage you to invite someone to come with you.

Let me ask you a question about your life.

Have you ever done something because you genuinely believed it was the thing God wanted you to do in a certain situation but then things didn’t end up going the way you thought it would go?

Have you ever faced something frightening or seemingly overwhelming as you follow Jesus?

I have.

We see that happen in our passage today.

Let me also ask you this: How did God’s sovereignty and authority over life and death teach you during that time?

Today we are going to watch the disciples get into a situation that seems scary and overwhelming and in the midst of it we are going to see Jesus’s divinity and humanity displayed, God’s sovereignty, and we will see a Savior who can be trusted.

Let’s read from Mark 4:35-41.

READ

This is the Word of the Lord.

Let’s pray and ask God to help us understand and apply it to our lives.

This passage is one of the most misapplied passages in the entire Bible.

You know that’s a bit of any issue for me.

I want to make sure we are correctly handling the Word of God.

This passage is not about how Jesus calms the storms in your life.

This passage ultimately is about the fact that Jesus is God and therefore has authority and is able to save.

It’s not about you and me.

We are far to quick to try and put ourselves in the story.

The Bible is not about you.

It’s about God.

We have to take the text as the text is and not add any of our preconceived notions to it.

So what is going on here?

Jesus has been teaching and it sure seems like he’s tired.

It was evening so he tells the disciples to go across to the other side with him.

They get in the boat and there are other boats with them.

They get out into the water and a great windstorm arose.

Now, these were not abnormal for the Sea of Galilee.

It was surrounded by mountains and wind would drop down in and circulate violently.

Remember, you have experienced fishermen who were used to being out on the water.

But they were terrified.

The waves are breaking into the boat and it’s starting to fill with water.

At this point, we see the first standout point on display here:

I.

In this passage we see both Jesus’s divinity and humanity on display.

They go to Jesus, who is ASLEEP on a cushion in the stern of the boat which is where the rudder is located.

It’s where the person who steers the boat would have likely sat.

He had been teaching and he was tired.

He was not worried.

He was resting.

Sometimes the most Godly thing you can do is take a nap.

When you’re so sure of your Heavenly Father that you can sleep soundly when the world is flailing around you… Amazing.

Anyway, they wake him up and accuse him of not caring that they’re going to die.

This man who was teaching them and they had left everything to follow, this man who would ultimately die on the cross in the place of them as payment for their sins, and here they were doubting if he even cared that they were dying in this storm.

He wakes up and rebukes the wind and tells the sea, “Peace!

Be still!”

And everything was calm.

He asks them why they are so afraid.

He then says something that just stings.

“Have you still no faith?”

Then the text tells us they were filled with great fear.

Literally, they feared a great fear.

They were in awe of the one who could still the wind and the waves.

All the good little Jewish boys of that day knew that there was exactly one person who had control over the wind and the waves, one person who had authority over nature.

It is written about in Psalm 107.

Let’s look at specifically verses, 23-32.

God has authority over nature because He is the Creator God.

Jesus has authority over nature because He is God.

Now imagine you’re sitting in that boat and you know that only God controls nature and boom, here’s a guy in your boat doing the same thing.

They feared a great fear.

So we see Jesus’s divinity on display.

It reminds me of a story I heard about a missionary over in Africa or some third world country.

He told this story to the people in this more primitive culture.

Now we have americanized it and made it about us.

In America as I mentioned earlier, you tend to hear a devotional, me centered explanation of this story.

But the people in this other country were not struck by that.

There was no talk of oh, Jesus calms the storms in my life, or Jesus goes through the storms of life with me.

No, their comment was “He must have been a very powerful man.”

They got it.

The point was Jesus and His power and authority because He is God.

His humanity on display

He was tired.

He went to sleep.

We see throughout the gospel accounts that Jesus got tired, he got hungry, he got angry, he cried, and he died.

The Christian church has always believed that Jesus was 100 percent God and 100 percent man.

The God man.

The only qualification that is ever put on His humanity is that He had no sin.

He never sinned.

He was perfect.

He lived a perfect human life that none of us could possibly live.

Jesus must have been exhausted from all of the teaching and being around the crowds and so he was sound asleep in the stern of the boat right through a storm.

One commentator notes that this is the only time in the gospels when we read about Jesus sleeping.

But that did not change the fact that He was still God and still in authority over the very water that was carrying them to the other shore.

He could rest with complete trust in the care of his Heavenly Father.

Jesus knew there was still work for him to do so he rested to be energized for the work ahead of Him.

So we see both Jesus’s humanity and divinity on display.

We now need to look at the storm itself and in that we see God’s sovereignty in our circumstances.

II.

We God’s sovereignty in our circumstances.

Many times as we live our lives, we encounter circumstances that surprise us or aren’t what we expected.

Often, as I asked you about earlier, we are doing something that God has commanded us in the scriptures and then it doesn’t end up going the way we planned.