The Storm at Sea — W.F. Anderson

The Gospel Reaches a Fearful Child

My whole family together. I say the whole family, with the exception of our son in the Navy, of course. But having the whole family together, this is a rare thing for a preacher, particularly in the summertime.

So it's been a treat, even though we haven't seen our girls except when they needed money. We've enjoyed being all together here this week. And then particularly because our little Korean girl, who's 12 years old, two nights ago professed faith in Jesus Christ.

I appreciate the work of counselors who very carefully tried to get through the language barrier of her limited English and reached her with the gospel. We've tried, we've talked, and we've run up against trying to explain words that she simply does not understand.

A characteristic we've noted of her since she came to us 10 months ago is a tremendous fear of dying. I attributed that to the fact that, as far as we can tell, she saw her mother commit suicide in Korea.

And any time she becomes ill, she is frantic until we call the doctor. Many times at night, a couple hours after we have put her to bed, we'll go upstairs and she's still awake. And it tells us she can't go to sleep.

Why? Well, finally it comes out she's afraid she's going to die. I haven't noticed this increasing, but Ginny tells me in the last month or so, it's gotten worse. Well, yesterday morning she came to Ginny and said, I'm safe and I'm not afraid anymore.

We're particularly grateful for this week here at Perlman. Now, when we started out, I wanted to look at the humanity of our Lord Jesus and something of his relationship with people. I don't know why I thought I could handle such an ambitious program and discuss both.

I'm going to try to combine the two in one incident out of our Lord's life, and that's in Mark's Gospel, chapter 4. We're back in chapter 4, verse 35. On that day when evening had come, he said to them, Let us go across to the other side.

And leading the crowd, they took him with them just as he was in the boat. And other boats were with him. The great storm of wind arose, and the waves beat into the boat so that the boat was already filling.

But he was in the stern, asleep in the cushion. And they looked at him and said to him, Teacher, do you not care if we perish? And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm.

The Storm as the Climax of Mark 4

He said to them, Why are you afraid? Have you no faith? And they were filled with awe and said to one another, Who then is this that even wind and sea obeys him? This particular miracle comes at the conclusion in chapter 4, the conclusion of the day of teaching that our Lord did to his disciples.

It's a fitting climax to that ministry of our Lord in instructing his disciples through parables. Just to back up and pick up the trend of thought in chapter 4 to see how this forms a climax to this whole chapter, and really to the first four chapters of the book.

These disciples had seen our Lord Jesus Christ performing all his miracles, healing people, had seen his great interest and compassion in people, had watched the crowd grow and grow and grow until he himself could not teach or preach within a village but had to go out into the countryside.

Along with that, there was a rather startling phenomenon that they must have found very, very puzzling. And that is, there were a growing number of people who were opposed to him. And I'm sure it must have been a puzzle to those disciples to figure out why.

In light of all the good that he was doing, there should be men, men taught in the word of God, at least, yes, taught in the word of God, overlaid with the traditions of the elders, of course, but taught in the word of God who were opposed to what this man was doing.

And that opposition became so strong in chapter 3 that an official delegation, scribes, the official interpreters of the law, had been sent up from the capital city in Jerusalem to investigate this man in the northern province of Galilee.

Mark gives us only the ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ in the northern province of Galilee. In Mark's gospel, he does not go into Judea until he goes to die in chapter 10. And you have the beginning of Passion Week in chapter 10.

And the news about this man has spread so far that it has reached religious headquarters down in the city of Jerusalem in the southern province of Judea. And the people in Judea and the religious leaders in Judea looked upon the people in the northern province as Iowa farmers, I mean, looked at them as peasants without any ability to discern truth, you know.

It was that kind of mob of illiterate people that escorted the Lord Jesus Christ into Jerusalem. And of whom the religious leaders in the city could say, well, have any of us religious people believed in him?

It's those ignorant people who don't know the Lord who are his followers. That's the way they looked at these people in Galilee. And so they would not trust any news that came out of Galilee. But at least the word about this man had reached the capital city, and they sent some of their official scribes up into Galilee to investigate and to make an official pronouncement.

And their official pronouncement in chapter 3 was that this man is controlled by the devil. Now, this must have been very shocking to the disciples. How do you explain this? That with all the good that he's doing, there are people who can reject him, people who can be indifferent to him, and people who will even say he's controlled by the devil.

The Parables Explain Varied Responses to Jesus

So in chapter 4, our Lord begins to teach his disciples in a series of parables. And the first parable is really a parable of explanation. It's the parable of the sower and the seed. And the thrust, as you farmers know, the thrust of the sower itself is that the kind of soil determines the harvest.

You can have good seeds, but if the soil is no good, it's not going to produce a harvest. And that's the thrust of the sower. The spiritual side of this thing is that the harvest, as far as the ministry of the word of God is concerned, depends upon the heart of the individual who hears it.

And what our Lord is teaching his disciples is, here is the explanation why his ministry has had such a very refined. People who have flaunt to him, but only for miracles. People like the disciples themselves, with the exception of Judas, who have reached through to the man.

And people who have opposed him. The explanation lies not in the Lord Jesus, but in the hearts of the people who listen to him. And so he's teaching them why his ministry has had such a varied response.

And at the same time he is preparing them for the same kind of reception when he sends them out to preach. And he is laying the groundwork so that they will not be surprised that they'll get this kind of a mixed reaction to the ministry of the word of God.

In this same chapter he gives them a series of parables of warning to them. He talks about a lamp being brought in, not to be covered over with a basket and put out, but to be put up on the table so that it gives light to the whole house.

And he warns them to take heed how they hear. That what has been given to them, they are responsible to pass on as light. And at the same time I think what he's saying is that the parables of our Lord were not designed to darken, but to enlighten.

He's not the kind of man that brings truth into the world and then covers it over with a bushel. And at the same time he is telling them whatever light has been given to them, they are not to hide. They are responsible to carry into the darkness for light in the whole house.

And he warns them about their responsibility as hearers of his word. Going back to the parable of the sower, that very response does not excuse the hearer. They are responsible for what they do with the word of God as he preaches it.

And so his disciples are responsible for the truth that he is teaching them, to carry that truth and to display it as light. Really, this is what we believe, but I'm not sure we always practice. That is, we see the local church not as a mission station in itself, but as a feeding station for the people of God.

And this is my picture of the local church in the New Testament. The idea being that it's a coming together of God's people for mutual edification and strengthening and fellowship, so that from that we move out into the non-Christian world with the good news of Jesus Christ.

And this is what our Lord is telling his disciples. What you are learning here from me, I am teaching you so that you in turn can carry that light to others. And then he gives them a word of encouragement, parables of encouragement.

He talks about the automatic growth, that a man goes out and sows the seed, and he can't figure out how it grows. And all he can do, he can do two things in that parable. He can sow the seed, and the seed grows, and he doesn't understand how it grows, and it's none of his business.

He is responsible to sow the seed and reap the harvest. And I tell you it's a word of encouragement to those disciples. You go out and sow the seed of the word of God, as he would send them out two by two later on.

That's your responsibility. Your second responsibility and privilege is to gather the harvest. How that seed will grow, you cannot tell, nor can you make it grow. You are responsible to sow the seed and to reap the harvest.

And I take it that would be a word of encouragement. And this is the trust of the chapter in light of our Lord's ministry up to this point. And then you've got the climax of that chapter with this event of crossing the Sea of Galilee.

Testing Faith Through Obedience

Our Lord is an excellent teacher, an excellent teacher. And those of us who may have tried to follow him in training. He always tests his students. He always does that. Not on paper, fortunately. Not on paper.

But in life. And so we have learned something. And now our Lord says, all right, we're going to have the opportunity to put this into practice. He has been teaching all along about his word in chapter four in this series of parables.

The word that he brings. And now he's going to give the disciples an opportunity to test their own response to it. Or he's going to give them that opportunity. He's going to test their response to his word as he does here at the close.

Now I say, his examinations are not on paper that you can answer with paper and pencil. They are in everyday living situations to see how we put the word of God into practice. I don't think we work at this sufficiently.

Or even sometimes in the right way. Let me throw out a couple of suggestions here. So I'm getting way ahead of myself, but that's all right. It doesn't make any difference. I may catch up with myself.

You had trouble catching up with me yesterday. I may have trouble catching up with myself this morning, but that's okay. What I have to do is see where I am in my relationship to responsibilities in daily living.

I have to look at my relationship to my wife. I have to look at my relationship to my children. I have to look at my relationship to my work at Emmaus, my teaching responsibility, my interaction with faculty members and students.

I have to look at my relationship with the local church. And I have to look at what I characteristically do. And then I have to look at what the word of God says in every one of my relationships and responsibilities.

What does the word of God say to me as a husband? What does it say to me as a father? What does it say to me as a Christian who is trying to teach the word of God to young people? What does it say to me as a member of a local church?

What does the word of God say to me? Let's isolate one of them, because the whole thing is too much at one time. But we isolate one of them. Let's say, I'd rather not isolate this one, but let's isolate it anyhow.

Husband. What does the word of God say to me as a husband? And how am I characteristically acting as a husband? And I have to look at those two things. And then I have to say, all right, I can see in this area and this area and this area of my relationship to my wife, I am not being the kind of husband the word of God says I should be.

All right, now what course of action must I take to move toward the biblical norm? It's not going to happen automatically. I can't sit back and expect all of this is going to happen automatically because I prayed.

Look, prayer is not the transfer of responsibility. In praying, there's no way in the world I can take responsibility God has given me and give it back to God and say, that's your responsibility, you work it out.

No, indeed. No, indeed. In prayer, I get God's grace to fulfill my responsibility. But He will never take back the responsibility He has given me. It's my responsibility to be the kind of husband I am supposed to be.

And I have to face that. And you better believe it takes the grace of God to face the demands of the word of God when your characteristic behavior pattern is so far removed from what Scripture says. Then you say, okay, what kind of a husband am I supposed to be?

And then you think of the specific steps you can take. What can I do specifically to begin to move toward the biblical norm of what a husband should be? And then, all right, Lord, here we're up against it right now.

This is where I have to get the grace of God into daily living. You know, Lord, for years my characteristic behavior pattern has been this. It's the thing I naturally do without thinking about it. And now I want to start thinking about it.

And I need your help to follow the course of action that I see would put me closer to the biblical norm of husband. Same thing with father. Same thing with teacher. As I was suggesting to you last night, there are things you're always looking at, evaluating what you're doing as a teacher.

Not just because I happen to be in a Bible school. If I were a teacher in a secular school, because I'm a Christian, I'd have to do the same thing. You look at what you're doing. Is that in line with the principles of Scripture about the kind of person you ought to be in the classroom, and the things you're always working on to change, to change about the way you teach, about your attitude toward your students, about your actions toward them.

Things you're always working on to bring the kind of teaching you're doing, the way you teach, your interaction with the students, with fellow faculty members, to try to bring that closer and closer to the standards of the Word of God.

It's always what you have to do. And let me urge you to do this. That's the kind of thing God is after in our lives. This is where we come down to the hard tests of daily living, where we have to get the principles of the Word of God into practice.

And in my judgment, that's the kind of thing we're going to have to answer to the judgment seat of Christ. For example, I doubt very seriously, when I stand at the judgment seat of Christ, that I'm going to be asked if I can draw a dispensational chart of future events.

But I'll guarantee you one thing, when I stand at the judgment seat of Christ, I'm going to be asked, how did the truth of Christ's coming affect the way you live? And if it didn't affect the way I live, all my proper scheme will amount to nothing at the judgment seat of Christ.

So he tests us. You've learned something? You're faced with living situations, day in and day out. We have to put that into practice. So our Lord is going to test us this way, providing that opportunity for testing.

The Miracles of Mark 4–5

We'll look at that in a moment. At the same time, this first miracle, this last paragraph in chapter 4, is the first of a series of miracles that go through chapter 5. And here is one of the places, for example, where the chapter division in our English Bible is very unfortunate.

Because if you stop at the end of chapter 4, you fail to see the connection of this miracle of chapter 4, the final paragraph, as the first in a series that goes on in chapter 5. And they are all interrelated as you go through them.

And our Lord takes his disciples across the Sea of Galilee at the close of chapter 4. They come through this terrible, terrible storm, evidently from the language, the worst storm that these experienced fishermen had ever sailed in on that Sea of Galilee.

And they come through that harrowing experience. And I don't know whether you've ever been in that kind of a storm on a large body of water or not, but it's a very, very harrowing experience. And when you come out of it, once you got through, you're still shaking.

And then you come to chapter 5. And if I'd been these disciples and got to chapter 5, I'd have quit right then. I'd have resigned. Because they just got through that terrific storm. They get safely ashore, and I can see them.

As for me, I'm down kissing the ground, man. I'm glad to feel this under my feet after that experience. But they no sooner get out of this boat than this raving maniac comes charging across the sand, screaming at the top of his voice.

That's enough for me. Why? I'm getting out of here. But the second incident is this demon-possessed individual of Gadara. Now, they had been in a storm that experienced fishermen. And I think I am using some of the terminology of Harold Stinson in his analysis of the Gospel of Mark.

They had come out of a storm that even an experienced seaman could not handle. And now they come to a man, demon-possessed, whom no man could tame. They could not control him. And when he is healed, our Lord meets Jairus, whose daughter is at the point of death.

And that miracle is interrupted by the woman with the hemorrhage who had suffered for twelve years. And our Lord heals her. And he's faced with a need in a woman that not the most skilled physician could help.

By the time that's over, the word comes from the house of Jairus that his little girl has died. And here is a situation in that home that not even a father's love could correct. And in every situation, it's our Lord Jesus Christ that meets the need.

He's equal to the storm that no seaman could handle. He's equal to the need in the man who no one could control. He's equal to the need that no physician could cure. And he's equal to the need that not even a father's love could correct.

And he calms the storm. He drives out the demon. He heals the hemorrhage. And he raises the little girl. And you can see in the flow of the miracle a connection. Plus the fact, if you take that series and you come back to chapter one, you find by and large the same areas that he is dealing with, with the exception of death.

And my assumption is that Jairus' daughter had died. But in chapter one, our Lord handles nature. He's out with the wild beast, as Mark notes it. In chapter one, he casts out a demon. There were the demons of that man in the synagogue.

In chapter one, he heals Simon Peter's mother-in-law of a fever. He's dealing with the same areas. But you'll notice the difference. The need in chapters four and five is intensified. Wild beast, that's one thing.

But a wild storm that in the thinking of experienced fishermen is about to drown them is another. A man in the synagogue with one demon is one thing. A man with a legion of demons is another. Peter's mother-in-law, sick of a fever, is one thing.

A woman who has had this hemorrhage for twelve years is another. And then finally, the whole issue of death, which he meets in the case of Jairus' daughter. And in chapters four and five, there is a more intense need in the same areas that he has handled in chapter one.

So there's a connection in these miracles, beginning at the close of chapter four. But I want to look at this particular one at the close of chapter four, to look at our Lord's genuine humanity and his relationship to these disciples.

Christ's Humanity and the Acceptance of Human Limitations

Now, after teaching them, he says, let's go across to the other side. I want to pull out of this story, without professing to say that this is what the story is teaching. I want to take certain deductions from it, draw certain conclusions out of it.

The first of which is, our Lord accepted his own human limitations. After teaching all day in this fourth chapter, when they get into the boat to cross the sea, he drops down on the steersman's cushion in the stern of the boat and falls asleep.

Simply because he needed rest, he accepted his own human limitations. There were limits to what he could do, as he had voluntarily confined himself to our humanity. And so he dropped off the steers. It's a difficult thing for us to do, isn't it, to accept our own limitations?

But he did, without guilt, without being ashamed of them. In his book, The Church Under the Cross, J .B. Phillips has a chapter on, I think themselves. They're too light. They refuse to identify themselves with the reproach of our Lord Jesus Christ.

But he says there are some Christians who make iron crosses for themselves that are far too heavy. They put themselves under unnecessary and non-God-given burdens that God never expected them to carry, and standards that God never put for them to reach.

They are usually man-made. That is, they are imposed on us by the thinking of other people without biblical foundation. And we unthinkingly accept them and put ourselves under a lot of unnecessary burden.

I was at the well of Sychar in John chapter 4. He let the disciples go into the village to make that extra trip. If I remember correctly, reading, the well of Sychar was about a mile out of town. Half mile to a mile out of town.

He stayed at the well and let them walk in the heat of the day into town to get food and walk back out to the well. He sat down and rested. If that had been most of us, we would have been too guilt-ridden to do that.

Tired or not, we would have forced ourselves. No, you stay here. You stay here. You younger fellows, you sit down here. I'll go into town and get it. No, not our Lord. He was tired and sat down. He needed to rest.

He rested and let them do it without any feelings of guilt on his part. He accepted his own human limitations. He did the same thing here in the story. He was sound asleep in the back of the boat. He let them sail the boat.

And when they got into difficulty, he let them bail it out. He didn't jump up to help them. He was sound asleep back there because he needed to rest. And they must have been bailing curiously as that water kept roaring into that boat and filling it.

And they were bailing it out as fast as they could with the sea gaining on them all the time. And he stayed asleep. He accepted his own human limitations. It's a healthy thing for us to do. We are always reading about other people who do certain things as Christians, and then we think, we should be doing those things as well.

Well, I am not that other person. This happens at a million. To me, a certain number of hours to teach is an adequate load. Beyond those hours, I am too burdened to do a decent job. And a guy like John Harku who has an infinite capacity for work, whose brain is three times as effective as mine, and that may be an underestimate, but his brain is about as big as the rest of them.

That guy has a memory of, it's unbelievable. I can talk about an individual trying to remember a book that he wrote, and John will come across with the book, the publisher, the year it was published, and what that guy is doing now.

I can't even remember the title of the book. But John can teach double the load that I teach, and handle it. And I can. And I can look at the load that he can handle and the load I can handle and say, well, I ought to be able to handle what he does.

Not at all. I'm not John Harku. I'm Bill Anderson. With the wife I've got, I'm very, very thankful that I am Bill Anderson. But I'm not John Harku. And I have to work within my limitations. I have limitations in the area of gifts.

One of the things that I admit, I'm not getting at anybody here, but if I ever visit you, I'm getting at you. One of the things, brother, we want a good, solid gospel message. Look, I'm a teacher. Not by any choice of mine.

If you want a good, solid gospel message, get an evangelist. If you want me to explain the gospel, to teach it, I'll try to do that. But if you're looking for what we count as evangelistic message, get somebody else.

I have to work within my limitations. Now, I could accept your demands on me and make the attempt and destroy the whole meeting by trying to fulfill your demands. But I have to work within my limitations.

This shows up in my relationship to students. I work a little bit with students who have their own personal problems. And sometimes, as those kids come to me, I discover this is the kind of problem, it's of such a magnitude that, man, I don't believe I can handle it.

And if I try, I'm afraid I'm only going to hurt this kid. Now, what do you do? Well, you tell the kid, look, I'd love to help, but I think you need more help than I can give you. Why don't you drop down the stairs and see Dan Smith and make some points with him.

Dan's got a master's degree in physical psychology, got his head screwed on straight and looked at things from a physical perspective. He has much more ability by both training and personality than I do.

And I have to work within my limitations. I do not have his training, I do not have his personality, I do not have his outlook. And you have to work within your own limitations. This is why Louis Barry Schaeffer is sometimes my favorite author.

In his book, He That Is Spiritual, he wrote, and it's indelibly engraved on my mind for selfish reasons. He says, sometimes the most spiritual thing that a Christian can do is go to bed. You accept your limitations.

Our Lord did. And he has taken not a physical nature of iron and steel, but of flesh and blood. And when he was tired, he slept. And when he was weary, he rested. Without any guilt feelings that others were still working while he was resting.

Now this is not to excuse our laziness. We're talking about real needs, our limitations. And some people can get along with five hours of sleep a night and function normally. If I were to try that, I'd fall apart by 11 o 'clock in the morning if I lasted that long.

And you have to learn your limitations and work within them and thank God that he's willing to work with you in those limitations. So the first thing I get out of this story is that our Lord accepted his own limitations.

Faith Must Govern Fearful Reactions

The second thing I get out of this story is don't act on your feelings. I didn't say don't have feelings. You'd be a zombie, a robot, if you didn't. I didn't say don't have feelings. I said don't act on them.

The disciples acted on their feelings. And I'm not criticizing them. I've been in some of those storms at sea. I don't know what it's like on the Sea of Galilee, but I don't know what it's like on the Atlantic Ocean.

And I don't know whether I've been as scared as they were, but I've been scared. And I'm not putting these fellas down. I'd have been back there to wake the Lord long before they got back there. But maybe some of you in Iowa people have never seen anything bigger than Lake Coronas.

I don't know. But these fellas were in a storm, the like of which they had never seen. And Mark tells us these waves were beating into the boats and the boat was filling. And experienced fishermen who had sailed this sea for years looked at that situation and panicked.

And they had worked with that vessel in that storm trying to bring it through. And their conclusion was there's no way in the world to save this boat nor ourselves. Now let's put ourselves in their place.

They were not exactly kindly when they went back and shook the Lord awake. Their response was don't you care? Now you can see exactly what's been going on. They're up there in that screaming wind and water, the howling of that wind, the beating of that water, the rush of it through the boat.

And by the way, he must have been soaked in the stern of that boat because that water came rushing right through that boat and out the stern. And he'd be soaking wet back there and he still slept. He was tired.

But you can see them trying to bail that thing out and fight the boat through that storm. They're yelling at each other. No, they weren't standing there talking with that wind howling and the waves crashing.

They were yelling at the top of their voices and holding on with one hand and trying to work the boat with the other and get that water out. And as they're bailing that water out, they keep grunting back to the stern.

What's going on? He's sleeping. And we're working our foreheads off and he's back there sleeping. And finally they couldn't stand it anymore and the pressure of the whole situation got them and went back there and they shook them.

Don't you care that we're perishing? And they acted on their feelings. The point of high emotion is no time to make a decision. Don't act on your emotions. And it was on the basis of their emotions that they went back there and shook him away.

Faith, the Word of Christ, and Deliverance

So what should they have done? Well, the third thing I get out of this is that a miracle may be due to a lack of faith. Not because of faith. I didn't say it always is. Obviously in the scripture it counts.

That would not be true. What I'm saying is a miracle may be due to a lack of faith as it was in this case. Our Lord performed a miracle. But then he turned to his disciples and said, why were you afraid?

Don't you have any faith? I take it if they had really believed they wouldn't have wakened him to do something about the storm. Well, what should they have done? Fought that ship through the storm. That's what they should have done.

Why? Well, he had just taken all those pains to teach them about his word. And then he says to them, let's go over to the other side. What they thought he said in the middle of this storm was, let's go down to the bottom of the lake.

But that isn't what he said. He said, let's go over to the other side. That was his word. And on the strength of that word, they should have fought that ship through the storm. And they could have done it.

They could have done it. Not because of their skill at semen, which they would have to use, of course. He was not going to go around their skill at semen. He would have used their skill at semen. But they could have got through on the basis of what he said.

And he performed a miracle because they didn't get hold of his word. I'm suggesting it may be a miracle is due to a lack of faith. I think, again, as C. F. Lewis, who in one of his books indicates, that sometimes we make our greatest progress when we are down in the trough of the waves.

And we cannot see our perspective is gone. All the supporting circumstances that make us rejoice, that enable us to praise God so often, that help us to make our life easier, all these are gone. God has withdrawn them all.

We're down in the trough. And what do you go on then? Naked faith. You've got his word. And the only thing you have to trust is not your circumstances that are pleasant and good and helpful. You're down in the trough of the waves.

And you keep on going because of his word. Now he may miraculously deliver us, and it may be due to the fact we were not able to trust him. Now, it's not totally devoid of faith. They did come back and wake him.