Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Sermon Notes: February 3, 2013

Sermon Text: Luke 8:22-25; Mark 4:35-41
Sermon Title: Jesus, The True Jonah
Scripture Reading: Jonah 1:1-17

Read Sermon Text: Luke 8:22-25; Mark 4:35-41

Introduction

Mark includes a very important detail that Luke fails to mention, “On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, ‘Let us go across to the other side’” (Mark 4:35).

What day is Mark referring to? Mark is referring to the same day we have spent the past three weeks discussing. Jesus takes the disciples on a boat the same day He taught the parable of the soils. 

Context and Overview

Therefore, the context is set by the parable. In the parable Jesus was strongly cautioning His listeners to take very special care how they hear the Word of God. Although many people hear the Word of God, few people have the kind of heart Jesus described in Luke 8:15, “As for that in the good soil, they are those who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and good heart, and bear fruit with patience.”

In the boat, Jesus illustrates for the disciples what it means to be good soil hearers.

Faith is the key to a heart of good soil and fruitful hearing (Hebrews 11:6). A more familiar word for faith is trust. Luke records Jesus asking, “Where is your faith/trust?” (Luke 8:25). Mark records Jesus asking, “Have you still no faith/trust?” (Mark 4:40). In both instances Jesus is making a statement: You should be and have to be more trusting.

The faith in view here is not initial faith, but an applied faith that functions in the midst of pressure. It holds fast patiently (Luke 8:15). [1]

It is a faith that has depth of understanding and can be drawn upon in tough times. It is faith that “kicks in” and recognizes that God is in control, even in the face of disaster. It is trust in God’s Word even when circumstances seem contrary to its fulfillment.

This major unit in Luke (8:4-9:17) is broken into two sections: 8:4-21 and 8:22-9:17. The first unit is a call to faith: “Take heed therefore how you hear” (Luke 8:18). Why? “So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God” (Romans 10:17). 

The second unit is designed to display the basis for belief, which is Jesus’ power and authority over all areas of life: He stills a storm (8:22-25), exorcises demons (8:26-39), heals a woman with an issue of blood (8:42b-48), resurrects a dead child (8:40-42a, 49-56), and provides food for the multitude (9:10-17). In summary, Jesus shows His power and authority over nature, demonic spirits, disease, and death.

The point of our passage this morning is simple: Jesus’ power and authority shows that He can be trusted.


What is important to notice here is that Jesus is the Word of God (John 1:1). Therefore, when Jesus said, “Let us go across to the other side of the lake,” He was broadcasting a seed into their hearts. 

Also, we must not picture a small row boat here. A fishing boat that could hold many disciples would’ve been a very large vessel. 


Matthew’s account describes this as so great a storm that the boat was being “swamped” by the waves (Matthew 8:24). The Greek word for “storm” in this text is “seismos,” meaning earthquake.

Truly, the geographical setting in which they were sailing would have been a perfectly conducive environment for an earthquake on the water. Given the Sea of Galilee’s topography, such a storm could descend onto the sea quickly without notice and, at night, could hardly be anticipated. The sea is some seven hundred feet below sea level and is depressed with hills, such as Mount Hermon, which is ninety-two feet high. The cold air from the mountains continually clashed with the warm air coming up from the Sea of Galilee, producing violent storms. [1]

Also, to give proper credit to the magnitude of the storm, it is helpful to be reminded that many of Jesus’ disciples were professional fishermen. The storm must have been an exceptional one for such a large vessel to take on water and experienced sailors to panic with certainty of their impending death.

Notice the contrast: The disciples are at the height of panic and worry while Jesus portrays rest.


Urgency is conveyed by the use of the double vocative (the vocative case is a noun that identifies a specific person) “Master, Master.” In Luke, the double vocative usually signifies great urgency and high emotion.

Mark includes another important detail we need to remember. Mark 4:38 has the disciples complaining that Jesus does not care about the urgency and danger of the matter. 


In this verse we have two questions which lead us to the application of the passage. The first question is asked by Jesus, “Where is your faith.” The second question is asked by the disciples, “Who then is this, that he commands even winds and water, and they obey him?”

This significance of the first question was already discussed earlier in the message. Jesus is making a statement: You should be and have to be more trusting. Trusting in what? Not simply in the fact that Jesus would save them. Sometimes Jesus doesn’t deliver from calamity. However, the trust Jesus expected here was a holding fast to the seed: “Let’s go to the other side.”

The point of our passage this morning is simple: Jesus’ power and authority shows that He can be trusted.

Therefore, what should we do because of what we have learned?

Isn’t it true that we are all guilty of reading the Gospels and quietly mocking the disciples for being so slow to “get it”? Not here though. This story hits home. This story resonates with all of us. 

Everyone who has ever tried to live a life of faith in this world has experienced this same scenario. Circumstances pounce unexpectedly like an earthquake and God seems to be absent. Everything is going wrong, you’re sinking, and God seems to be asleep, unaware, or indifferent. “If you loved me,” you think, “you would get involved while I am drowning.”

Now, before addressing the disciples’ question, let’s address the reason for their fear. The fear mentioned in Luke 8:25 has nothing to do with the storm itself. We can be certain of this fact because in verse 24 Luke tells us that there was a perfect calm after Jesus rebuked the wind and waves. So what were the disciples afraid of? 

Why were they more terrified in the calm than they were in the storm? Because Jesus was as unmanageable as the storm itself. The storm has immense power – they couldn’t control it. Jesus had infinitely more power, so they had even less control over him. [2]

For those of you who understand what I am talking about, the train of thought goes something like this: Yes, I understand I have no control over the most difficult circumstances in my life. However, I have less control over the God who is sovereign over them and because God is sovereign over all things, my inability to manage him makes me afraid. “He lets things happen that I don’t understand. He doesn’t do things according to my plan, or in a way that makes sense to me.”

What could have caused the disciples to rest as Jesus rested? What could have stilled the raging storm in the disciples’ hearts in the same way Jesus calmed the sea? 

If the disciples had understood that Jesus’ love and wisdom were as unbound as His power, they wouldn’t have been afraid. If you have a God great enough and powerful enough to be mad at because He doesn’t stop your suffering, you also have a God who’s great enough and powerful enough to have good and loving reasons that you can’t understand. You can’t have it both ways. Elizabeth Elliot put it beautifully in two brief sentences: “God is God, and since He is God, He is worthy of my worship and my service. I will find rest nowhere else but in His will, and that will is necessarily, infinitely, immeasurably, unspeakably beyond my largest notions of what He is up to.” [2]

Be careful lest you think I am moralizing the stories application. You moralize a passage when you make it primarily about you. This story isn’t first about you. This story is about Jesus.

What makes us so certain that this unmanageable, unsafe God can be trusted?

This brings us to the sermon title, “Jesus: The True Jonah.”

Keller on Jonah and Jesus
Tim Keller, King’s Cross: The Story of the World in the Life of Jesus, pp. 57-58:
Mark has deliberately laid out this account using language that is parallel, almost identical, to the language of the famous Old Testament account of Jonah.
Both Jesus and Jonah were in a boat, and both boats were overtaken by a storm—the descriptions of the storm are almost identical.
Both Jesus and Jonah were asleep.
In both stories the sailors woke up the sleeper and said, “We’re going to die.”
And in both cases there was a miraculous divine intervention and the sea was calmed.
Further, in both stories the sailors then become even more terrified than they were before the storm was calmed.
Two almost identical stories—with just one difference.
In the midst of the storm, Jonah said to the sailors, in effect: “There’s only one thing to do. If I perish, you survive. If I die, you will live” (Jonah 1:12). And they threw him into the sea.
Which doesn’t happen in Mark’s story.
Or does it?
I think Mark is showing that the stories aren’t actually different when you stand back a bit and look at it with the rest of the story of Jesus in view.
In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus says, “One greater than Jonah is here,” and he’s referring to himself: I’m the true Jonah. He meant this:
Someday I’m going to calm all storms, still all waves.
I’m going to destroy destruction, break brokenness, kill death.
How can he do that?
He can only do it because when he was on the cross he was thrown—willingly, like Jonah—into the ultimate storm, under the ultimate waves, the waves of sin and death.
Jesus was thrown into the only storm that can actually sink us—the storm of eternal justice, of what we owe for our wrongdoing. That storm wasn’t calmed—not until it swept him away.
If the sight of Jesus bowing his head into that ultimate storm is burned into the core of your being, you will never say, “God, don’t you care?”
And if you know that he did not abandon you in that ultimate storm, what make you think he would abandon you in much smaller storms you’re experiencing right now?
And, someday, of course, he will return and still all storms for eternity.
If you let that penetrate to the very center of your being, you will know he loves you. You will know he cares. And then you will have the power to handle anything in life with poise.
God is not safe. God is not manageable. God is not predictable. God is good. – my statement, not Keller’s
When through the deep waters I call you to go,
The rivers of woe shall not overflow;
For I will be with you, your troubles to bless,
And sanctify to you in your deepest distress.
The soul that on Jesus has leaned for repose,
I will not, I will not desert to its foes;
That soul, though all hell should endeavor to shake,
I’ll never, no never, no never forsake.

Sources

  1. Brock, Darrell. Luke 1:1-9:50. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 1994.
  2. Keller, Timothy. The King’s Cross. New York, New York: Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2011.

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