Having faith that Jesus will calm our storms

God is constantly preparing us for ministry.  In the fall I took a Homiletics class.  The sermon that I preached was on "The Remedy for Worry"--Imagine that!  They say a person learns the most about something when they prepare to teach on the subject.  God is certainly using what He taught me during that preparation. 


Jesus calms our storms because he is All Powerful, Almighty, and Always Present. 


 Looking at the text of Mark 4:35-41, Jesus had been teaching all day from a boat on the Sea of Galilee.  At the end of the day, in the evening, He said to the disciples, “Let us go over to the other side.”  Well, Jesus was exhausted.  I imagine the disciples were also. They are sailing across the sea and a huge storm comes up.  The location of the Sea of Galilee makes for perfect conditions for raging violent turmoil in the water.  The Sea is located in a deep basin in Israel surrounded on the east by high mountains, and on the west by hills with gorges through which the wind comes and sweeps across the water and raises the water very quickly. 

Well, the waves were violent, tossing the boat here and there and crashing onto the boat causing it to fill up with water. 

Panic!  There is a storm!  It is dark!  Our boat is filling up with water and is going to sink!  We are going to drown! 

Do you think the disciples WORRIED?  Do you think they had some ANXIETY? 

Well let’s go to Mark 4:38-41 and see what happened, “…The disciples woke (Jesus) and said TEACHER (In the synoptic gospel, Luke 8:24 this is doubled—MASTER MASTER, demonstrating their life and death earnestness), don’t you care if we drown?  (Jesus) got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, ‘Quiet! Be still!’ Then the wind died down and it was completely calm.  He said to His disciples, ‘Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?”

 

For the disciples there was natural apprehension under danger, but there was unbelief in their fear which made the disciples speak this way.  You’ve got to understand this—when Jesus rebuked the wind and spoke to the sea with the two commands “Quiet! Be still!”, He was demonstrating the relationship between Himself, the Master, and the elements.  He is a mighty GOD! 

When Jesus made these commands, note that the bible says “the wind died down and it was completely calm”.  Normally, when the storm conditions cease, the effects of the storm gradually decrease.  But Jesus’ word of command was given to both elements at once, and the conditions were “completely calm”.

It is worth noting here that Jesus did not rebuke the disciples for their lack of faith until after He had removed the danger. Otherwise they would not have been in a state to listen to anything. Jesus provided for their physical needs, thus stopping their worry.

The disciples had faith—after all, it was Jesus that they applied to when they said “don’t you care if we drown?”, but they had fear (or worry), so that shows that they had little faith.  In Matthew 8:26, their level of faith is stated, “Oh you of little faith”. 

You see, faith dispels fear but only in proportion to its strength

Jesus tells us in Matthew 17:20, “…If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘move from here to there,’ and it will move.  Nothing will be impossible for you.”