3/29/2012 9:15:47 AM
Jesus Calms the Storm
Mark 4:35-41
This will be the last post from the fourth chapter of the book of Mark. My goal is to study a chapter every month until I am done with the book of Mark. I listen to the chapter every day that I am studying for that month and also listen to messages on that chapter throughout the month in order to be prepared to write the different posts. I also use the commentary written by Warren Wiersbe, which as always, is very helpful and informative, helping me to understand the truths of the Word of God. His style makes understand the Bible as I have written many times that Warren Wiersbe puts the cookies on the shelf where you can reach them and I like cookies.
While listening to a message from this section by John MacArthur I learned some very interesting facts about the “Sea of Galilee that I wish to pass on because it will make these verses more alive and more understandable, but first we need to do a short review on what we have covered on this forth chapter of Mark. I suppose that the word parable is the prominent theme in this chapter as we see some teaching done by our Lord using parables throughout most of chapter four. I wanted to mention before that chapter four and chapter thirteen are probably the most instructive chapters in the book of Mark as far as Jesus’ teaching. Mark does not include things like the “Sermon on the Mount” in his writings for his writing is like a newspaper article where there is a lot of fast moving facts. We have seen that his favorite word is immediately and he uses that word to speed up his writings.
We remember that at the end of chapter three that the Scribes and the Pharisees accused Jesus of doing His miracles through the power of Satan and then Jesus told them that they had just committed the unpardonable sin with that statement. This is a turning point in His Galilean ministry and so He began to hide the truth by using parables to teach the crowds and would then explain the meaning to his disciples and His apostles that He had just appointed. At the end of His day of teaching these parables to the people and explaining them to His own He instructed them to take Him across the lake and Jesus falls asleep in the boat on a cushion. It is at this point that I wish to speak of His tiredness and why teaching and preaching is so tiring. We can certainly see the humanness of Jesus in this section because of His being so tired and that is another important point we see in this section, but Jesus was so tired from preaching and teaching. In his message on this section John MacArthur tells of preaching for eight hours a day while in Russia and this caused so much exhaustion that he slept from Moscow to New York on the plane and then from New York to L. A. I am reading the autobiography of Billy Graham and during some of his long crusades he writes of being so tired that he can hardly speak. He also writes about losing a lot of weight during these long crusades. Jesus had the burden of telling people the truth and many people rejected it, and this was a great burden on Him, the same with those who teach and preach the truth today. This reminds me a bit about a couple of passages in the Bible, one from the OT and one from the NT about someone eating the Word of God, and it was sweet in their mouths and sour in their stomachs. The reason that this reminds me of being so tired is because of how the Word of God, the truth of the Word of God affects those who have the burden to teach it for it can be sweet in their mouths, but when others don’t understand it and then will be judged for not understanding it the one who tells the truth is actually getting them so upset that they can become ill (the sourness in their stomachs).
John MacArthur writes the following about the Sea of Galilee: It is the lowest fresh water lake on the planet. It is 682 feet below sea level. It isn’t as low as the Dead Sea but the Dead Sea is not fresh water, it is highly mineralized content and the salt in Dead Sea is so thck that you can float on the top of it rather easily. But this is the lowest fresh water lake in the world. And as a result of that, it has been much studied for its unique properties. It has a stratification of water. There literally three stratifications of water that go down a hundred and fifty feet and those stratifications have a lot to do with the surface of the lake at various times of the year. They have a lot to do with the content of algae which has a lot to do with the content of fish. In 1896, one fishing boat alone brought in 92 hundred pounds of fish. It is a prolific lake for the production of fish and having that kind of water and that kind of resource in Galilee was a great blessing to the people who live there.
“It is surrounded by mountains, essentially on the west and northwest, the mountains rise to 1,500 feet. On the northeast and east, they rise to three thousand feet, to the Golan Heights which runs 42 miles in length and the lake is only thirteen miles. So it goes far pass the lake. The lake is 13 by 8. So it sits in a bowl and the water that comes into the lake comes partly from some hot springs but primarily from the Jordan River which flows out of Mount Herman. Mount Herman is up in the north on the Lebanon border at 9,200 feet. So the water flows about ten thousand feet down to fill this lake in this bowl. It is such pristine fresh water that it provides even today about fifty percent of the water for the nation Israel. So it was a tremendous resource to them for water, as well as for fish.
“…What particularly makes it unique is the fact that it is subject to very, very severe winds. And both in the summer and the warm part of the year and in the winter in the cold part of the year, it experiences these kinds of winds. The winds that come in the summer are the Sirocco winds from the east. They’d be like our Santa Ana winds, only they typically come every day from noon to six o’clock. They’re pretty predictable. The winds come down hard off the Golan Heights and little north of that and it comes down it turns the lake into a boiling caldron and it’s pretty much the routine every day during the summer. These make it a very treacherous place to be in a boat at the wrong time.
“The winter is even worse because the winter winds are cold winds that come from the north and northwest. And when the cold air comes down and it hits the warm air that naturally sits in the bowl, it creates turmoil. The cold air goes through the warm air and causes tremendous turmoil on the lake.”
Now that we have the background of this lake we can proceed to talk about the spiritual aspect of this section of Scripture. John MacArthur in his message on this section breaks up this section of Scripture with four points.
1. “The Calm Before the Storm”
2. “The Calm During the Storm”
3. “The Calm After the Strom”
4. “The Storm After the Calm”
The Calm Before the Storm
Mark 4:35 ¶ On that day, when evening came, He *said to them, "Let us go over to the other side.’” 36 Leaving the crowd, they *took Him along with them in the boat, just as He was; and other boats were with Him.”
In these two verses we see that after Jesus finished teaching all day that He wanted to go to the other side of the lake and so He got into a boat to cross over to the other side of the lake and some of His followers were in the other boats so that there were a number of boats going with Him. Luke tells us what happened when Jesus got into the boat: “23 But as they were sailing along He fell asleep.” Luke tells us that Jesus fell asleep and he also tells us that the boats were sailing, which means that the disciples did not have to row the boat, but used the sail and the wind blew them across the lake. (Little did the know)
The Calm During the Storm
37 And there *arose a fierce gale of wind, and the waves were breaking over the boat so much that the boat was already filling up. 38 Jesus Himself was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they *woke Him and *said to Him, "Teacher, do You not care that we are perishing?" 39 And He got up and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, "Hush, be still." And the wind died down and it became perfectly calm.”
This whole section that we are looking at has a great deal of meaning to me. I have mentioned in earlier SD’s that there was a time in my life when someone stole a great deal of money from me, money we were going to use to help out during our retirement. The very month this happened a Missionary friend of mine was preaching a sermon in which he entitle it “Blessings in the Storms of Life” and part of the text he used was this section from Mark. We will see in these three verses that the disciples and apostles of Jesus were actually being blessed in this great God ordained storm, and it was part of the teaching that Jesus was giving to these men whom He had chosen just a few days ago. These were the men whom was entrusted the message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ that they may begin to fulfill the Great Commission. This was a test in the being given to them by the Master Teacher. I was given a similar test, and part of the blessings I received was leading or helping to lead eighteen people to a saving knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. These men would lead thousands of people to the Lord.
The divine wind that came down onto that lake was hurricane strength for that is what the word “gale” means here from the Greek. Many of the apostles who were with Jesus were season fishermen and they had seen many storms on this lake for it was where they made their living and so this storm was larger than any other they had seen. Here we see season fishermen calling on a Carpenter to save them for they had seen the power that was in Jesus and knew that He was their only hope. Now I want to quote some verses from the OT to help us understand some of the things that perhaps these men knew: “5 By awesome deeds You answer us in righteousness, O God of our salvation, You who are the trust of all the ends of the earth and of the farthest sea; 6 Who establishes the mountains by His strength, Being girded with might; 7 Who stills the roaring of the seas, The roaring of their waves, And the tumult of the peoples.” (Psalm 65:5-7) “You rule the swelling of the sea; When its waves rise, You still them.” (Psalm 89:9) “23 ¶ Those who go down to the sea in ships, Who do business on great waters; 24 They have seen the works of the LORD, And His wonders in the deep. 25 For He spoke and raised up a stormy wind, Which lifted up the waves of the sea. 26 They rose up to the heavens, they went down to the depths; Their soul melted away in their misery. 27 They reeled and staggered like a drunken man, And were at their wits’ end. 28 Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble, And He brought them out of their distresses. 29 He caused the storm to be still, So that the waves of the sea were hushed.” (Psalm 107:23-29) (WOW) We now see in verse 38 that they woke Jesus up! Jesus then calms the wind and the sea as seen in verse 39. Let’s look at Psalm 10:1 “Why do You stand afar off, O LORD? Why do You hide Yourself in times of trouble?” Then Psalm 44: 23 Arouse Yourself, why do You sleep, O Lord? Awake, do not reject us forever.”
The Calm After the Storm
“39 And He got up and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, "Hush, be still." And the wind died down and it became perfectly calm.” We saw the humanity of Jesus when He was tired and so much asleep that a great storm did not awake Him and now we see the Divine Jesus who speaks and the winds and the waves are calm. Now I want to go back to Mark 1:1 The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” It was through this gospel that Mark wrote and also the other three gospels that shows that Jesus Christ is truly the Son of God and also that He is God the Son. This section helps demonstrate this truth.
The Storm After the Calm
40 And He said to them, "Why are you afraid? Do you still have no faith?" 41 They became very much afraid and said to one another, "Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey Him?’”
We see that Jesus speaks to them about their lack of faith, for as long as they had been with them they were not demonstrating a lot of faith. These men should have known by this time that nothing was going to happen to Jesus or to them unless it was ordained by the Lord.
Now we see these men who had just been in a great storm which caused them to have great fear having more fear over having God in their boat than that storm outside the boat.
I want to look at a few Scriptures that speak of men who had a great fear of the Lord. Before we do this we need to realize why it was that these men had this great fear and so we will look at Isaiah 6:5 “Then I said, "Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I live among a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.’” Isaiah was in the presence of God and even though he was a believer at this time when He saw the Lord he saw his sin and when he saw his sin he knew he was sinful and wanted to get out of the presence of the Lord. Peter went through this experience when Jesus told him, while in the boat, to drop his nets on the other side of the boat and there were so many fish in them he could not bring them up. Peter told Jesus to leave him because he was a sinful man. Abraham, Daniel, John also went through this experience.
What can we learn from this section? The Holy Spirit can teach us what he desires to teach us from this and yours may be different than mine. King Solomon wrote that the fear of the Lord was the beginning of wisdom. The men who followed Jesus were beginning to learn wisdom and I hope that I am too.
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