Mark 4:35-41
Real faith goes beyond warm feelings. It’s easy for anyone to say that they believe in Jesus. It’s even easy for someone to say that they love him enough to die for him. But proving such a claim is a different matter entirely, and such proof will never come when we are sitting comfortably in church or when life is quiet and smiling on us warmly.
This is why the trials in our life test us. They prove to us whether real faith exists. Trails not only develop patience and persistence with our faith, they expose its depth. They show us if it is there and how deep it is.
When Jesus awoke and rebuked the storm he wasn’t angry with the storm. The storm was merely behaving as it was supposed to behave. It was churning up waves that were making it difficult for the disciples to cross the lake. It was stirring up the lake that was stirring up the disciple’s fear to test their faith. So when Jesus calmed the storm, he immediately asked his disciples why they were so afraid and asked if it was because they still had no faith.
The disciples believed that they were going to drown. Jesus was with them, but they still panicked. And their panic suggested that they did not fully believe that he was the Messiah. Though they had seen him cast out demons and heal a paralyzed man, they didn’t believe he could help them escape the storm.
Windstorms like the furious squall that Mark describes are not unprecedented on the Sea of Galilee. In 1992, a late winter storm produced 10 foot waves that slammed into the town of Tiberias on the lake’s western shore. A 10 foot wave would have certainly been more than a mild concern for even the heartiest first-century Galilean fisherman, though they were used to being on the water in all kinds of weather. Though we don’t know the true height of the waves we do know that they were more than a match for their vessel - a vessel that was likely not constructed to withstand large waves that crashed over its sides.
Whether or not the storm itself was supernaturally spawned, we do know that Jesus’ response was absolutely supernatural. It’s one thing to make the fantastic claim that Jesus was just a good meteorologist with an impeccable sense of timing a storms’ break, but it’s another thing entirely when you realize that it wasn’t just the winds that stopped at his command. The waves broke as well. According to the laws of physics, this couldn’t have been a natural phenomenon. Winds have been recorded to suddenly die off, though rarely. But waves do not suddenly stop. The wave action should have continued on for several more hours.
The disciples instantly recognized the miracle and were stunned by it: “Who is this that even the wind and waves obey him?” It was obvious who he was now, even as the disciples struggled to grasp the idea that this extraordinary rabbi was far more extraordinary than they first imagined. He was the Godman, who calmed not only a raging sea in northern Israel, but calms the raging heart of sinners and transform them into his people.
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