Focussing on Jesus No.5 Jesus and the Weather

We're glad to have your company this evening as we look into the Word of God, specifically as is found in the Gospel of Mark, but here's one or two verses which are not relative to Mark's Gospel but are relative to the whole of our subject this evening. You'll find that in the Word of God there is reference made on many an occasion to the sea, not that the Jewish people were great seafarers, but nonetheless they recognize that the God of creation was also the God who is in charge of the seas, and they say those that go down to the sea in ships, they know, they see the wonders of God in the deep. Others went out on the sea in ships, they were merchants on the mighty waters, they saw the works of the Lord, His wonderful deeds in the deep.

For He spoke and stirred up a tempest that lifted high the waves. They mounted up to the heavens and went down to the depths, in their peril their courage melted away. They reeled and staggered like drunken men, they were at their wits' end.

Then they cried out to the Lord in their trouble, and He brought them out of their distress. He stilled a storm to a whisper, the waves of the sea were hushed. They were glad when it grew calm.

And now in the Gospel of Mark, you read that our Lord Jesus called a number of disciples and many of them had some experience of the sea, and the Christian Gospel has very often been directed with special emphasis and impetus to seafaring men, thus I make reference in our notes and news to a couple of charities which have actually a religious bias in their constitution of trying to help sailors. We're going to be thinking on the subject of Jesus and the control of the weather, but let's listen to a group of our folk leaders in a song, a hymn, an old hymn that speaks of the sea and the God of creation. We're going to sing Mission Praise 122, we ask that you would join us actually in verses one and four, we'll sing two and three, but if you can join us in verses one and four, that would, it'll then be I think be more of a communal act of worship and of thought.

What I'd like you to do as we sing it, and as you sing it too, is use it as a focus perhaps for our thoughts and prayers about the sea and those who work on it and around it. There's a yacht race starting this afternoon, the Round Europe Yacht Race, and there's a couple of, there's two or three people involved who know all about the power and the strength and the danger of the sea. There's that chap Tony Bullymore who spent four days upturned in a yacht in the Southern Oceans, not knowing whether he'd be rescued or not.

There's that English sailor who turned, broke off from his solo race to rescue the Frenchman who was in difficulties, he heard it over his radios, and they're actually co-crewing those particular two. So perhaps we'll just focus, as we think, think of those men, I don't know if anybody's been out this afternoon, it's blowing a real stinker of a gale. I was up on Highdown this afternoon, I haven't known it so strong for a long time, it is very powerful out there.

I think they must be very aware right now of the power and the strength of the sea. So perhaps if we focus on them as we sing through this, those two or three individuals and the others with them, as we sing this hymn through. And do stand too.

Eternal Father, strong to save, Whose love hath found the restless way, Whom didst the mighty ocean leave, Which, unappointed in its keep, O hear us when we cry to Thee, For those in peril on the sea. O Christ, whose voice the waters heard, And harsh there raging at Thy word, Who walkest on the flowing deep, And cometh with the storm didst leave, O hear us when we cry to Thee, For those in peril on the sea. O Holy Spirit, who didst brood Upon the waters dark and rude, And bid their angry tumult cease, And give all wild confusion peace, O hear us when we cry to Thee, For those in peril on the sea.

O Trinity of love and hope, How reverent shielding dangers now From fog and tempest, fire and foe, Protect them wheresoever they go, For the sun shall rise to thee, And hymns of praise from heaven speak. Let's remain standing and let's pray. Father, as we recognize your power and your handiwork in the realm of nature, so we also appreciate the ministry of many Christians on ships and boats around the world, some of which are dedicated specifically for the proclamation of the good news of the gospel.

And we bring to you the MV Anastasis, and pray for all who sail with her. We bring to you several Korean ships, designated in a similar fashion, and some Swedish ships too. And we think of the Tabs Fond Association with MV Logos, and we bless you for that ship, and as a replacement of Logos 1, recognize in the history of OM the need to pray for ships, with Logos 1 having gone aground some years ago on the rocks of South America.

We pray for the Dulos too, and for its ministries. We pray for Christian men who sail out from the port of Shoreham, and we pray for those who minister amongst Russians who come in on their ships and spend time in that port. Now bless the occasion as we've come together this evening, and help us as we accent your word and apply it to our circumstances.

In the name of Jesus our Savior, Amen. Remain standing, and even the men at the front could stay. Oh, okay, you can go.

If you haven't got hymns of mission praise, then maybe you'll need to go. Let's go to 770. Would your anchor hold in the storms of life when the clouds unfold their wings of strife? Same sort of theme, but we take this much faster.

We have an anchor that keeps the soul steadfast and sure while the billows roll. 770. We'll receive the offering for the work of God here at the tavern abroad as we sing this hymn.

...of world, crowned eternally in the Savior's love. Same sort of theme, but we take this much faster. We have an anchor that keeps the soul steadfast and sure while the billows roll.

On the Savior's love. We have an anchor that keeps the soul steadfast and sure while the billows roll. ...the Savior's love.

Same sort of theme, but we take this much faster. We have an anchor that keeps the soul steadfast and sure while the billows roll. Fasten to the rock which cannot move.

Crowned eternally in the Savior's love. Do be seated. Now, maintaining that nautical theme, if you go to the last chapter of the book of Acts, you'll find there a very exciting description of a storm at sea.

Actually, I said the last chapter, it's the penultimate chapter, the twenty-seventh of the Acts. If you haven't got a Bible, then just listen. Plug in your concentration to the hearing of God's holy word.

The experience is that of Paul, who is moving to Rome, a prisoner, and he's had a couple of other shipwrecks. So, he's known something of the unpredictability of the weather and of the Mediterranean. Verse 13 of Acts 27, when a gentle south wind began to blow, they, that is the sailors and the men who he was with, the ship was hired by the Roman authority, they thought they had obtained what they wanted, so they weighed anchor and sailed along the shore of Crete.

Before very long, a wind of hurricane force, called the Northeaster, swept down from the island. The ship was caught by the storm and could not head into the wind, so we gave way to it and were driven along. As we passed to the lee of a small island called Coda, we were hardly able to make the lifeboat secure.

When the men had hoisted it aboard, they passed ropes under the ship itself to hold it together. Fearing that they would run aground on the sandbars of Cyrus, they lowered the sea anchor and let the ship be driven along. We took such a violent battering from the storm that the next day they began to throw the cargo overboard.

On the third day, they threw the ship's tackle overboard with their own hands. When neither sun nor stars appeared for many days and the storm continued raging, we finally gave up all hope of being saved. After the men had gone a long time without food, Paul stood up before them and said, Men, you should have taken my advice not to sail from Crete, then you would have spared yourselves this damage and loss, but now I urge you to keep up your courage, because no one of you will be lost, only the ship will be destroyed.

Last night, an angel of a God, whose I am and whom I serve, stood beside me and said, Do not be afraid, Paul. You must stand trial before Caesar, and God has graciously given you the lives of all who sail with you, so keep up your courage, men, for I have faith in God that it will happen just as he told me. Nevertheless, we must run aground on some island.

On the fourteenth night, we were still being driven across the Adriatic Sea, when about midnight the sailors sensed they were approaching land. They took soundings and found that the water was one hundred and twenty feet deep. A short time later, they took soundings again and found it was ninety feet deep.

Fearing that we would be dashed against the rocks, they dropped four anchors from the stern and prayed for daylight. In an attempt to escape from the ship, the sailors let the lifeboat down into the sea, pretending they were going to lower some anchors from the bow. Then Paul said to the centurion and the soldiers, Unless these men stay with the ship, you cannot be saved.

So the soldiers cut the ropes that held the lifeboat and let it fall away. Just before dawn, Paul urged them all to eat. For the last fourteen days, he said, you have been in constant suspense and have gone without food.

You haven't eaten anything. Now I urge you to take some food. You need it to survive.

None of you will lose a single hair from his head. And he said this. After he said this, he took some bread and gave thanks to God in front of them all.

Then he broke it and began to eat. They were all encouraged and ate some food themselves. Altogether there were two hundred and seventy-six of us on board.

When they had eaten as much as they wanted, they lightened the ship by throwing the grain into the sea. When the daylight came, they did not recognize the land, but they saw a bay with a sandy beach, where they decided to run the ship aground if they could. Cutting loose the anchors, they left them in the sea and at the same time untied the ropes that held the rudders.

Then they hoisted the foresail to the wind and made for the beach. But the ship struck a sandbar and ran aground. The bow stuck fast and would not move, and the stern was broken to pieces by the pounding of the surf.

The soldiers planned to kill the prisoners to prevent any of them from swimming away and escaping, but the centurion wanted to spare Paul's life and kept them from carrying out their plan. He ordered those who could swim to jump overboard first and get to land. The rest were to get there on planks or on pieces of the ship.

In this way, everyone reached land in safety." Well, that's a gripping story, isn't it? I guess some of you didn't even know that that was in the Bible, but it's there. And obviously, the person who wrote it, Dr. Luke, was a member of the party who was sailing because, well, it's written with such graphic detail. And of course, he uses the personal pronouns as he goes through the story and identifies himself as being part of the action.

Now, here is our Lord in Mark's gospel, and we've seen him. In a variety of situations, and we focused in on the topic of the situation rather than spending our time fully on the context, on the story as we read it. But let's go to Mark's gospel.

Here is Jesus, and it's at the end of a busy day. What's the best thing to do when you've had a busy day? Well, go to Littlehampton and hire a boat and go up the Arran and enjoy yourself there or go out in one of the speedboats or get yourself to Shoreham and see if you can get on a trawler and go out for a night's fishing. I've never done it myself, but I'm sure it's an excellent thing to do.

It's just occurred to me at the moment, and perhaps at nine o'clock I'll be down there seeing if I can get a boat out of Worthing, at least a boat out of Shoreham. It's been a heavy day, and Jesus, well, he gets his disciples to take him a trip on the sea. That day, this is Mark 4.35, that day when evening came, Jesus said to his disciples, let us go over to the other side.

Leaving the crowd behind, they took him along just as he was in the boat. There were also other boats with him. A furious squall came up and the waves broke over the boat so that it was nearly swamped.

Jesus was in the stern sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke him and said to him, teacher, don't you care if we drown? He 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? They were terrified. And the context is, they were even more terrified as a result of the salvation that Jesus brought to them by his getting involved at that stage than what they were about the storm. He said to his disciples, why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith? They were terrified and asked each other, who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him.

You remember those super people who I told you have got such a tremendous story to tell who were with us just a couple of weeks ago from Calcutta, the Pavamanis? Well I took them a little trip around Sussex and one or two others had the pleasure of doing a similar sort of thing on the other two days when they were with us just before they left for India. I wanted to take them up to Basam. I mean, there allegedly King Cnut decided that he would try out his powers and send the waves back and turn around the oncoming tide.

But if there's any vestige of truth in the story, he was left looking like an idiot. You cannot control the winds and the waves. I guess the most powerful army in the world is that of the United States of America.

And they really have some tonnage in terms of weaponry and so on and so forth. And it's remarkable how quickly they can move from place to place and how they got their people and some of our Brits out of Sierra Leone from Fremantle just in the last 48 hours. But you know, I sometimes think when contemplating America and that army, how mediocre the power really is when contrasted with the power of nature.

I mean, when a hurricane hits the West Coast or the East Coast of America, when it hits Florida, there really is nothing that can be done. The hurricane just comes in and it will rip out a whole community in terms of demolishing its buildings and so on and so forth. There is tremendous power, power in the bowels of the earth, power in the stratosphere.

And however great men and women are in the way that we've advanced in technology and so on and so forth in the 20th century, and the advances have been remarkable, unbelievable. My granddad could not in any way have envisioned the sort of thing that we're capable of in the latter part of the 20th century. But when you put it all together, we really are so fragile as we live perched on the edge of what could on many an occasion be the disasters that nature can bring about.

There's a little ditty, isn't there, that says about the weather, red sky at night, shepherds delight. Now, finish it. Red in the morning.

Yeah, you just about got it. Wake up this evening and enjoy yourself here at the tower. Red at night, shepherds delight.

Red in the morning, shepherds are mourning. They that go down to the sea in ships, says the book of Psalms that I read you from earlier, they know of the wonders of God. And it was our beloved Lord who tells us that there are these elements in nature which sometimes are anticipated by the colors in the sky.

When you look into the Old Testament and into the New Testament, you don't go far in either part of the Bible before you are brought face to face with the tremendous authority and the power of God over the realm of nature. I mean, there was no rain to start with. The earth was watered from within, and there's lots and lots of water that is buried, that is contained within the ground.

And by the time you get to the eighth chapter of the book of Genesis, you've got the deludes coming down, you've got the flood, and you're into the story of Noah. And then when you move into Exodus, well, by the time you get to the third or fourth chapter, it's the Red Sea which is opening up as God sends a great wind and allows His people to go dry shod into the wilderness and ultimately back to the promised land. When you get halfway through the Bible, you find a man by the name of Elijah who's trying to teach the king a thing or two about spirituality, trying to bring correctives to his nation at that time, and he prays that there will be no rain and for several years there's no rain.

And then when he's achieved his objective, when he's made his point, he prays that the heavens will cause rain to fall, and his prayer is answered. And when, of course, you come into the mine of prophets, you're face to face with a man called Jonah, who has the most incredible university place given to him, fathoms down in the valley of a great fish, which God conveniently prepares to swallow him. And when he's done enough theology, the fish hiccups, and Jonah is catapulted onto the land of the shore of Palestine, my interpretation of the book of Jonah at that particular point.

You move into the New Testament, and what do you find? Well, I tell you, here is our beloved Lord, and He's calling a group of men, and He comes from the north, they come from the north, and the majority of them are seafaring men. Not in terms of traveling the oceans, the Jews rarely did that, but they do have one landlocked lake. You try saying that.

I should have called it the Sea of Galilee, and then I would have kept my teeth. And here is our Lord, and He brings these disciples from being fishers of men, from being fishers of fish to being fishers of men. You remember, we dealt with this a few weeks ago.

And now you find Him at the end of, I say, of a very, very busy day, and He wants to have a break. Let's go over to the other side, and He's going to teach His disciples something. You see, whenever you read Mark's Gospel, you've got to remember that in the company of Jesus are His students.

At times, Jesus will be faced with crowds of hundreds of people, thousands of people, but the important teaching unit, as far as Jesus is concerned, priority number one are the disciples. And most of these disciples, as I say, have had some fishing experience. And they've been to church with Him, church understood in terms of synagogue, almost within 48 hours of being called.

And when they were in church, there was a disruption. There was a demonic man, a demonized individual who cries out. And Jesus stops the interruption by using a very strong word.

He tells them to be quiet. He uses a nautical term to dull the words of a man who was disturbing His congregation. Why do I say that? Because you will find our Lord Jesus engaging in exactly the same vocabulary in this story.

Here's Jesus, and He sails into the coolness of the evening, and He's asleep. Here is the humanity of Jesus. Jesus is asleep.

Do you ever think of Jesus asleep? He can put His head on the pillow, and in these very strange circumstances, at least in terms of what is going to happen, He slumbers. He's a man at peace with Himself, at peace with God. And at the end of a day when He has preached a lot, and being the man that He was, He feels fatigued, He goes to sleep.

Jesus asleep. Jesus unconscious. Jesus apparently unrelated to what is going on in the experience of the disciples.

Do you ever think that of God, that sometimes He seems to be asleep on a pillow in the middle of circumstances that are affecting you, and He doesn't seem to register any interest at all? Or, as said the preacher Carlyle, I can cope with anything apart from the silences of God. And when thousands of people are taken to a watery grave in Bangladesh, the flooding of the Ganges to which I made reference this morning, sometimes it seems that God is asleep. There have been more martyrs in the latter part of this century than the whole of Christian history put together, and sometimes you ask, where is God? And He seems to be asleep.

Why doesn't God stop these disasters, especially these natural disasters, the upheaval caused by the storm and the unpredictable flooding? You see why I'm saying this? Because it's a topic that's occupying us this evening, and here you have it encapsuled. Here you have it in a little bit of narrative in terms of Jesus and the disciples. In principle, it's buried there.

Jesus asleep, and a squall comes down the Syrian mountains. The wind whips out that calm sea, and it can become the most treacherous sea in the whole of the world, the most treacherous inland stretch of water. Now remember, these are seafaring disciples.

They're not some wimpish people who the first time their canoe or their rowing boat starts to just heave a little bit, and they get sickly and they want to come in. This is not just your ordinary tourist getting on a ship and going across to Calais or what have you. These are seasoned men, and the wind comes, and it comes with a ferocity that demands the narrator to use a special word to describe it.

A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat so that it was nearly swamped. And here's Jesus, and he's got the prime position, the position left for a guest taken on board a boat, and the stern of the ship, his head on a cushion, asleep. Isn't it interesting that as soon as the disciples touch him, he wakes up? Have you ever watched a mother and her child? It's quite interesting, even in the Christ.

I don't know if these mothers even appreciate that they've got this talent, but as far as I'm concerned, there are lots of children crying, and I can't tell one cry from another, but a mother can. The noise of traffic, her child starts to cry, her ear is tuned to the need of the child. And the interesting thing here is that Jesus, in effect, has a father-son relationship to these disciples, and they come along, and they touch him, and they speak to him, teacher, don't you care if we drown? And he gets up, and he rebukes the wind, and he says to the waves, using the same terminology as they'd heard him use in the synagogue, the incident to which I made reference a few moments ago, he says, be muzzled, quiet yourself, be still.

And that sea instantly died and became a calm, and as far as the disciples were concerned, the greater of the two shocks occurred then. It wasn't so much the wind and the waves that had terrified them, it had, but by comparison that sunk into secondary place. What mesmerized them was this man.

I mean, he gets up, and he speaks, he speaks to the wind, and he speaks to the waves. In the Talmud, you will discover, that's sort of Jewish scriptures, you will discover a reference made to the spirits of the sea. And although some liberal commentators will dismiss this, I think the Bible does give warrant to believe that there are times when Satan can use his demonic powers within the natural realm, and it seems that here you had not just a storm, not just a natural storm.

I can't really think of Jesus being angry, speaking to the wind naturally blowing, or the sea naturally being lifted up to being less than a calm sea. After all, he is the Lord of creation. I can't see him being mad at his own creation, can you? But here the indication is he is annoyed.

He speaks this very strong language, be muzzled, be quiet. You see, what he's hearing is an echo of what has happened in the disturbance at the synagogue in Capernaum. Here is someone who is directing an attack against him, against his disciples.

Let me break off. If you look into church history, the history of church art, you will sometimes find the church depicted in terms of a group of men in a boat with one who is obviously their leader. And you don't need to be good at crossword puzzles to be able to work out what the depiction is, what it's trying to convey.

It is none other than the disciples, the church, and our Lord Jesus afloat on the sea of life. The sea of life will have many ups and downs. There will be many, many winds that will come.

Sometimes it will be calm. Sometimes there will be upheaval. But Christian art recognized the reason why John wrote this particular narrative into his gospel.

What is he trying to show? That Jesus is master of ocean, of sea, and tide. But don't be too literalistic. He's not only talking about those that go down to the sea in ships who know the wonders of God.

He's talking about young men and women in Worthing Tabernacle Gallery. He's talking about middle-aged people. He's talking about my beloved friend Paula who's battling with her sickness at this moment and with Edwina and with a variety of folk whose names would chip off my tongue if I honed in on this point longer.

You see, what this story, this incident, is telling us is that Jesus has mastery of every situation. That does not mean to say that in every situation He will respond as we would have Him respond. His ways are not always our ways.

His thoughts are not our thoughts. He is the Lord of creation. He has a mind that makes your mind so fragile and so weak it doesn't bear comparison.

And sometimes this Lord of creation will allow to happen in your life, will allow to happen in the history of the world. Sometimes to people individually, sometimes to communities as a whole, sometimes to nations. Great disasters which we in our puny intelligence cannot understand and we ask why.

And I for one do not think that asking the question why is dishonorable. But when there is no immediate answer to the question why, Jesus asks with logic and persuasion for you to trust in Him because He has everything in control. You see, these disciples, they disturb Jesus and Jesus awake becomes more of a puzzle to them than Jesus asleep.

He is able to calm the sea. He is able to walk through their lives. He is able to cuddle them.

He is able to be to them as Nick Turnbull is to his young son Joshua. But if Nick is to his young son Joshua at a couple of weeks of age in 20 years' time exactly the same and Joshua hasn't grown and there's no intellectual development and there is nothing of the traits of mom and dad that have been harnessed by that young child, then they have not done the job of parenting properly. And don't you see that's the same with Jesus? He has these disciples and He has them in a most unfortunate situation and when He eventually starts to teach them, the lesson that they learn is this, that He wants to trust them when He seems to be asleep.

He wants them to trust Him when He seems to be entirely uncommitted and uninvolved with their circumstances. And that goes for our persecuted brothers and sisters, whether in China or whether in Muslim lands. Why God in His grace does not send an angel to release them, I do not know.

He could do so. But this one thing we are taught from this story and that is that it is an impudence to say that God has not got them in mind. They are safe in the sovereignty of God.

They are safe in the presence of Jesus. And some of these tremendous ecological disasters to which I have made reference, they may be a puzzle to us from our narrow framework. We mortals hang on to life with a grimness and with a tenacity that seems to suggest that this is all that there is.

And God says, no, there's a wider perspective. There's a wider panorama and I see that. And in reaction to that, I allow things to happen.

Now trust me. Look, in a moment too, we go to the communion table. A blood-stained, bedraggled man hangs on a cross and we extol that day as though it was the greatest day in history.

The head that once was crowned with thorns is crowned with glory now. We even dare to suggest that the day that he died is Good Friday. Put that into your computer logic.

Put that into your Microsoft window. Absorb that if you can in human logic. And without the wider framework, it is an obscenity.

But seen from the vantage of eternity and having your hand on the hand of God and feeling his pulse beat, you know that the death of that man was the greatest thing that ever happened and his resurrection vindicated the reason for his death. Judge not the Lord with feeble sense, says old Isaac Watts. No.

With the frailty of the human mind, you can go so far that you allow your mind to surrender itself to the greater wisdom and revelation of God in Scripture. The church is safe with Jesus in the boat, physically, or not out of the boat. God is working his purposes out.

God knows what he is doing. And in a moment or two, we celebrate that not only does our Lord Jesus have control over the elements, the natural elements, he also has control over spiritual life and death. And those who have trusted him as the disciples came to trust him, as their Lord and their Savior, even though not fully understanding, they can come and take bread and wine and say, yes, Lord Jesus, you are the captain of my salvation.

I am clinging on to the anchor which you offer me, which will hold me fast in time and prepare me for eternity. Let's raise the worship to a crescendo now.