“Now it came to pass on a certain day, that he went into a ship with his disciples: and he said unto them, Let us go over unto the other side of the lake. And they launched forth. But as they sailed he fell asleep: and there came down a storm of wind on the lake; and they were filled with water, and were in jeopardy. And they came to him, and awoke him, saying, Master, master, we perish. Then he arose, and rebuked the wind and the raging of the water: and they ceased, and there was a calm. And he said unto them, Where is your faith? And they being afraid wondered, saying one to another, What manner of man is this! for he commandeth even the winds and water, and they obey him,” Luke 8:22-25.
These verses were part of my New Testament Bible reading for today (22/2/24). The Bible is a living BOOK and our reading of it entails a two-way conversation. It speaks to us and we within our soul answer and oftentimes are prompted to speak out in prayer to the Lord in response to what we read.
My own heart was stirred as I read this passage, not for the first time by any means, but it came with fresh power and blessedness to my heart this morning.
It is to be noticed that this incident took place as the disciples of the Lord Jesus were obeying His command. “Now it came to pass on a certain day, that he went into a ship with his disciples: and he said unto them, Let us go over unto the other side of the lake. And they launched forth,” verse 22.
As I pondered the short passage it occurred to me that:
I. EVEN WHEN WALKING IN OBEDIENCE TO THE LORD WE MAY FIND OURSELVES IN A STORM!
It has ever been a source of perplexity for Christians that when they seek to obey the Lord they find themselves in the midst of trouble.
1. In truth, this should not surprise us. Obedience to God makes us a target of the devil and all his minions. It is stated of him that he is “the prince of the power of the air,” Ephesians 2:2. He is permitted of God to use his powers to create storms of wind like that which occurred on this occasion. It was the devil who created the troubles and woes of Job though he was unaware of this fact and sadly felt that the Lord had failed him.
Was there not an element of this blaming of the Lord on this occasion also? Mark’s account of this event has this statement: “Master, carest thou not that we perish?” (Mark 4:38). Those words imply an accusation of the gravest neglect on the Saviour’s part. It was shameful that the disciples should think such a thing and even more that they should direct such words at the Lord!
And yet, dear Christian, have we not all been guilty, at least to some measure, of thinking and maybe even expressing a like accusation against the Lord when we find ourselves in a storm of personal difficulties?
The disciples were very wrong, as have we been if we have acted with the same folly and unbelief.
2. Such storms are chiefly directed against the Lord Jesus. Christians are but ‘secondary victims’ in the ongoing war of the devil against the Lord Jesus.The Saviour is the chief target of the devil! This was an event of the same character as Herod’s slaughter of the babes of Bethlehem. It was an attack upon the Saviour with the intention of frustrating the redemptive purpose of God which the Saviour had come to this world to accomplish by His death and resurrection. Right up to the Calvary and aye, even through Calvary itself, the devil sought to stop the Saviour’s plan to redeem a people.
The devil will attack the people of God in order through them if he can, to bring dishonour and shame upon the name and cause of Christ. The complaint of the disciples on this occasion was a most dishonouring aspersion upon the love and care of the Saviour toward His people. How often our voices and our actions are used of the devil to try and besmirch the glorious name of Christ. That was the chief outcome of poor David’s sin! “Howbeit, because by this deed thou hast given great occasion to the enemies of the LORD to blaspheme, the child also that is born unto thee shall surely die,” 2 Samuel 12:14.
May it please the Lord to keep us back from speaking foolishly as did the disciples in this instance!
3. It is part of the Christian’s ‘lot’ to share in the reproach heaped upon Christ by the devil. Indeed, if we do not find ourselves so targeted we have no part with Him or His kingdom! The apostles spoke of this to the disciples at Lystra, Iconium, and Antioch:.“Confirming the souls of the disciples, and exhorting them to continue in the faith, and that we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God,” Acts 14:22. Reproach and future glory are indissolubly linked. “If we suffer, we shall also reign with him: if we deny him, he also will deny us,” 2 Timothy 2:12.
II. PLEASE NOTE WHAT OUR RESPONSE SHOULD BE IN SUCH STORMS
“Master, master, we perish. Then he arose, and rebuked the wind and the raging of the water: and they ceased, and there was a calm. And he said unto them, Where is your faith?”
1. The Lord expects us to react in faith to such events. By that I mean we echo the words of Job: “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him,” Job 13:15. We may not understand WHY the Lord has permitted troublesome circumstances to arise around us but in the midst of such we should still believe that His love toward us is unchanged and unfailing and that in His infinite wisdom He is working out that which is best for us and for the advancement of His cause. Let us “boldly say, The Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto me,” Hebrews 13:6. Such was the thinking of the martyrs as they perished in the most cruel manner at the hands of men propelled in their wickedness by the devil.
2. True faith never doubts the Lord. Faith believes that which the Lord has outlined as His eternal purpose in the Bible, He will never deviate from that.
I hear the words of love;
I gaze upon the blood;
I see the mighty sacrifice,
And I have peace with God.
’Tis everlasting peace,
Sure as Jehovah’s name;
’Tis stable as His steadfast throne,
Forevermore the same.
The clouds may go and come,
And storms may sweep my sky,
This blood-brought friendship changes not;
The cross is ever nigh.
I change – He changes not;
The Christ can never die;
His love, not mine, the resting place;
His truth, not mine, the tie.
My love is oft-times low;
My joy still ebbs and flows;
But peace with Him remains the same;
No change Jehovah knows.
That sums up faith’s abiding view of God! “No change Jehovah knows”!
3. Such faith in the midst of storms is marked by joy.
With Christ in the vessel,
We can smile at the storm;
Smile at the storm,
Smile at the storm.
With Christ in the vessel
We can smile at the storm,
As we go sailing home.
Sailing, sailing home,
Sailing, sailing home.
With Christ in the vessel,
We can smile at the storm;
As we go sailing home.
Such was the spirit of Paul and Silas in the jail at Philippi. “And at midnight Paul and Silas prayed, and sang praises unto God: and the prisoners heard them,” Acts 16:25.
How much we rob ourselves of when we yield to unbelief! The despondency and sorrow of the two on the road to Emmaus was rooted in unbelief, as is evident from the rebuke they received from the Lord. “Then he said unto them, O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken: Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory? And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself,” Luke 24:25-27.
Had the disciples only known and believed the prophets when they wrote of the treatment that Christ would receive at the hands of men when He would come, they would have been spared their cowardice, grief, confusion and misery!
Relevant Words
Never were words more relevant to us all today than those verses in Luke 24. All around us we see the words of the prophets being fulfilled BUT because many Christians are not aware of what the prophets said, as they ought to be, then like the two on the road to Emmaus, alarms and despair grip many hearts.
The prophet said: “For the LORD of hosts hath purposed, and who shall disannul it? and his hand is stretched out, and who shall turn it back?” Isaiah 14:27. Neither ‘united Irelanders’ nor the Putins of this world, or those with their plans for an apostate ‘one world church’ or the devotees of Sodom and their vile ambitions will hinder or alter in the slightest that wonderful purpose!
Jeremiah said: “ . . . every purpose of the LORD shall be performed . . . ” Jeremiah 51:29. Have we not comforted ourselves often with Paul’s words. “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose,” Romans 8:28.
Then when the storm breaks let us lie back upon such truths in confidence!
III. SUCH TIMES ARE OCCASIONS WHEN WE WITNESS THE POWER OF CHRIST AT WORK FOR US!
We might state that here is one of the reasons why the Lord permits such ‘storms’ to break upon us — that He might show us His power and thus banish our fears.
1. By such interventions we learn the extent of Christ’s power and authority. “What manner of man is this! for he commandeth even the winds and water, and they obey him.” The disciples realised that day that the man Christ Jesus was much more than they had ever previously perceived. The question “What manner of man is this!” indicates that the disciples were made to realise by this miracle that they knew very little about the Lord Jesus. Dear Christian, there is a great need for us all to “grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,” 2 Peter 3:18. We are, at best, only babes in understanding. But bless God a day is coming when “he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is,” 1 John 3:2. We will no longer be subject to the limited view of Christ of which Paul spoke. “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known,” 1 Corinthians 13:12. Think of that! “Then shall I know even as also I am known.” As heaven knows me now even so will I enter into an eternal knowledge of Him one day! Gone then will be the limitations that prompt such a question as, “What manner of man is this!”
2. The winds and water obey the Lord Jesus. What a comment this is on the bletherings of the ‘greenhouse gases, climate change’ mob of blinded fools. Atheist and evolutionist, Sir David Attenborough, is the ‘high priest’ of this latter-day religion. He and his devoted ‘acolytes’ seek to evangelise and motivate the world into a crusade of actions, which they would direct, in order to save the planet by man’s own feeble efforts! Man can litter but he cannot find a place to put all the litter he creates never mind turn around the centuries of self-indulgence which have generated the colossal ‘muck-heap’ that the world has become!
At the heart of their ‘religion’ is the stupid notion that there is ’no God’! I cannot employ stronger adjectives than those found in the Bible to describe their stupidity, irrespective of the fact that many of those, like David Attenborough, bear with great pride the name of the universities from which they have graduated. God says of them: “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good,” Psalm 14:1.
3. The Lord Jesus is in control of creation. “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds; Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high,” Hebrews 1:1-3.
In His time He will correct the mess that man has made. “But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men. . . . But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up,” 2 Peter 3:7, 10. Out of that great conflagration will come that which the Attenboroughs of this world cannot accomplish and for which the Christian in faith looks.“Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness,” 2 Peter 3:13. “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away,” Revelation 21:1. Such has long been the hope of God’s redeemed. “For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind,” Isaiah 65:17.
In Matthew’s account of this event we find these words. “And he saith unto them, Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith? Then he arose, and rebuked the winds and the sea; and there was a great calm,” Matthew 8:26. A great stillness came to that which had been shortly before raging and threatening the ship. Our hope is not found in the ‘electrification of vehicles’ or in any of the schemes that the ‘tree-hugging brigade’ is launching in order to ‘save the planet’!
We look for that day when the Lord shall arise to calm the storm that sin brought into being in His creation and bring in the great calm of eternal peace, “The peace of God, which passeth all understanding,” Philippians 4:7.
Christian, laugh at the mounting storms of today and embrace by faith the coming ‘great peace’ of God’s creating.
Rev Ivan Foster (Rtd)
23rd February, 2024