Wednesday, September 23, 2020

Bowing Before the Lord of All Creation (Luke 8:22-25)

by Pastor Tim Miller 

First Baptist Church of Roxana
Preached September 20, 2020

Like many kids, I was afraid of storms. Growing up in Kansas, summers meant that I was always on edge. Clouds would black out the sky. The wind would blow up to a hundred miles an hour. Lightning would strike, illuminating everything. Thunder would quickly follow, shaking the house. Rain would fall in an opaque sheet. Once or twice a month, the tornado sirens would scream that it was time to seek shelter. Tree limbs would fall. The power would go out. Even worse than all of this, my dad would listen to the police scanner at full blast, urgent voices communicating the dangers and calling for assistance.

How we might wish that we had power over nature. We are in one of the busiest hurricane seasons recorded. Hurricane Sally made landfall last Wednesday with 105 mph winds and two feet of rainfall in the first hours. This isn’t the first and maybe isn’t the last hurricane to hit the Gulf this year. Meanwhile, fires have been raging all around the West Coast for the past several weeks. Before that, Southern and Eastern Australia was on fire from September 2019-March 2020. Parts of India are now on fire. Jakarta, Indonesia was devastated by floods in January. The Philippines are still reeling from the eruption of the Taal volcano. 2020 has shaken things up with more than 45 earthquakes of a magnitude of 6 or more. Locust swarms have plagued India and Egypt and East Africa. Bangladesh saw massive destruction from a cyclone in May.

That’s a summary list. Add in the Corona Virus that has swept the globe, and it comes close to apocalyptic.[1]

If 2020 has taught me anything, it is that I really don’t want to be around for the Great Tribulation. I’m sure you agree. Yet it seems to have had little effect on many people. The typical pattern after a disaster of some sort has been that people flooded the churches. Though not a natural disaster, the September 11 bombings 19 years ago brought about a surge in church attendance, however briefly. So also have devastating storms and earthquakes.

Yet during the abundance of crises during this year, churches are fighting just to keep their doors open. Some have been so restricted that they cannot effectively meet together and serve those who need spiritual help. Some churches have permanently closed their doors because the funds have not been coming in due to lack of attendance (whether in-person or online). A Barna poll in May found that more than a third of churchgoers hadn’t attended a single online service since the beginning of the lockdowns in March.[2] Now, many pastors are fearing that much of their congregations will not return once things return to whatever might pass for normal in the future. Instead of embracing churches as essential, churches have been shut down while bars and liquor stores are deemed essential businesses.

Riots have broken out in many places over racial tension. Dozens of murders happen every week in the big cities. The murder of unborn babies continues to be celebrated. The sexualization of children is becoming normalized. Pornography is everywhere.Porn sites receive more regular visitors than Netflix, Amazon, & Twitter combined each month, and Americans pay more than $12 billion per year on pornography.[3]

Just browse the movies available on Netflix and Amazon Prime and the other streaming channels. Many of them are just pornography disguised as TV drama. We are so surrounded by pornographic images that many young people think that porn is a normal part of life. 64% of 13-24 year old males and females admit to watching pornography multiple times per week. Their social media feeds are filled up with it, and they admit to often watching it while they are at school.

Don’t think that this is contained to the realm of imagination. The average number of sexual partners among millennials is 10.[4] In one of the articles I read, it was stated that the IDEAL number of sexual partners is 7. That’s what people consider as just the right amount. We haven’t even started on homosexuality and transgenderism, both of which are becoming more and more pervasive in our culture. But I think that sufficiently makes the point that wickedness marks our society. Evil is called good. Good is called evil. Not even a pandemic or a slew of natural disasters can wake people up to the imminent danger of the wrath of God. One government leader, a Catholic at that, said of all these disasters that “Mother earth is angry and she’s telling us.” Foolishness.[5]

In all of this, they forget the One who does control the weather and who does have power over sickness.

Consider the text in front of us: 22 Now on one of those days Jesus and His disciples got into a boat, and He said to them, “Let us go over to the other side of the lake.” So they launched out. 23 But as they were sailing along He fell asleep; and a fierce gale of wind descended on the lake, and they began to be swamped and to be in danger. 24 They came to Jesus and woke Him up, saying, “Master, Master, we are perishing!” And He got up and rebuked the wind and the surging waves, and they stopped, and it became calm. 25 And He said to them, “Where is your faith?” They were fearful and amazed, saying to one another, “Who then is this, that He commands even the winds and the water, and they obey Him?”

This is one of three accounts at the end of Luke 8 that demonstrate for us once again the power of our Lord.

Previously, we have been shown Jesus’ power over nature, demons, sickness, and death. Luke shows us these things once again, so that our fear and amazement toward the Lord Jesus would increase, leading us to fearless trust of Him in the midst of our circumstances.

Consider the Lord Jesus, His humanity on full display in the exhaustion He was feeling from a full day of teaching in the middle of His preaching tour through Galilee. Preaching is an exhausting activity. Jesus had preached for days on end while moving through the countryside. He didn’t have a microphone, so He had to exert even more energy to be heard by the massive crowds. Mark tells us in his account of this incident that Jesus had just finished the parable of the sower and several others. So, consider Him, totally exhausted from the exertion of preaching to large crowds and teaching His disciples in private. The only time for Him to rest is on this short trip across the Sea of Galilee. They were in a rather large sailboat, and as they were sailing across the water, Jesus fell asleep.

That rather intrigues me. This is the only time that we are told that Jesus slept. We know He slept. We don’t need this passage to tell us that. He was human. He got hungry and thirsty and tired. He was so tired, in fact, that He did something I’m not sure I would ever be able to do. He fell asleep on the boat. Now, we are talking about Jesus, who, although is fully human, is also God the Son. He knew that storm was coming. The disciples, many of them avid sailors, were surprised by this storm. Such squalls come up on this body of water, even today, that take sailors by surprise. They’re dangerous storms. Yet, Jesus showed no fear concerning the storm. He lay down and slept, knowing that His Father would not allow Him to come to harm before His time and knowing what He was about to do as a demonstration of His awesome power for His disciples. He could have said, along with the Psalmist, “I lay down and slept; I awoke, for the LORD sustains me” (Psa 3:5). He was in complete control.

The fierce storm put the boat in danger of being swamped. Amazingly, not even the water swamping the boat or the wind and waves woke Jesus up.  I wonder how long it took for His disciples to think to wake Him. Did they try to bail out the water? Did they try to weather the storm for awhile? I also wonder what they thought Jesus was going to do. Obviously, they didn’t expect this. They probably didn’t know what He was going to do. They just knew that He could save them.

How about you? In the midst of everything we are facing today, are you crying out to Him? Having ascended to His Father’s throne, He never sleeps. He’s not confined to the human body that He still inhabits. I admit that it is mysterious that He can dwell bodily in Heaven yet be present everywhere. The problem is, of course, with my ignorance and creatureliness. I take great comfort that my Christ is bigger than my understanding. How comforting would a Christ of human comprehension be? I think the disciples on that day were glad for a bigger Christ than they could comprehend.

As we will continue to find in this chapter, Jesus is greater than nature. He is greater than the demonic realm. He is greater than sickness and death. He wouldn’t be much of a savior if He wasn’t greater than any one of these, would He? Were He too weak to control nature, how could He cleanse the world with fire and transform it back into paradise? Were He too weak to control the demonic realm, how could He destroy the works of the devil? Were He too weak to control sickness and death, how could He reverse the curse? Do you see how interdependent each of these things are? If you take away just one of these, it all falls apart. If He could not control the demonic realm, then He could restore the earth and end the curse, but Satan and his demons would still be running around. If He could not end the curse, then for what purpose did He defeat Satan and restore the earth? If He could not restore the earth, then for what purpose did He defeat the devil and what good is lifting the curse if we are still living in this world and these bodies that have been damaged by the curse? Do you see how crucial each of these accounts are? These aren’t just some cool things that Jesus did! Each one of these miracles demonstrate that Jesus has total power over each of these things.

Since that is true, then what do we have to worry about in this life? Don’t mishear me, I’m not telling you to throw caution to the wind. We know the cautions we must take in the world and at this time. Lock your doors. Social distance. But we don’t live in fear. In fact, we can live with such extraordinary joy because of His greatness, even as we sorrow for the unbelieving world.

Listen to the urgency with which Jesus’ disciples woke Him. They were crying out, “Master, Master, we are perishing!” Maybe someone listening to this hasn’t heard much about Jesus. Perhaps you’ve heard that Jesus will forgive your sins but you don’t know the fine points of theology. The first thing that you need to know is that He is able and willing to forgive you and grant you eternal life. All you must do is believe and cry out to Him, “Lord, I am perishing!” He will save you. But it can’t end there. That’s just the beginning. Next comes a lifetime of discipleship where you do learn the fine points of theology and worship Him with greater passion each day.

Look at His willingness to come to the help of those who trust in Him: Jesus got up and rebuked the wind and waves, and it was all instantly calm. All at once the wind stopped. The rain stopped. The waves dissipated. We might call this an eerie quiet. The sudden silence would be disquieting. But that’s not what drew their attention. In the sudden stillness, the disciples were riveted on one thing: Jesus. Just by speaking, He had stopped a storm and saved their lives.

I’ve said before that we have a tendency to read these accounts without pausing to consider the magnitude of these things. Forget all the Sunday school lessons and sermons you have heard on this passage. Hear it with fresh ears as if for the first time. Jesus spoke and the storm stopped. When was the last time you saw that happen? Not even an army of modern-day meteorologists can do that. There are those televangelists who claim to command the weather. If they could, they would be in high demand during every hurricane and fire and drought. People do not control the weather!

Later, after Pentecost, the apostles perform amazing miracles in the name of the Lord Jesus. They healed the sick. They raised the dead. They cast out demons. But they never controlled the weather. It’s not like they didn’t have opportunity. Paul was caught in a large storm and shipwrecked on Malta. But he didn’t presume to command the storm. There’s no one like the Lord! This is extraordinary! The closest we can come to a parallel is Elijah who prayed seven times that the Lord would send rain at the end of a three-year drought sent upon Israel for their idolatry. But that’s a far shot away from commanding the rain to happen. Jesus spoke and it happened. According to Mark’s account, Jesus told the storm, “Hush, be still.” And it became perfectly calm.

The disciples were very fearful and amazed. They were terrified. They didn’t go high-five Jesus. They didn’t make some smart-aleck remark. They didn’t say, “I’m sure glad that’s over. Nice one Jesus.” They were shocked and incredulous. After months of ministering alongside Jesus, they were constantly driven to their knees in fear before Him. Once they got their voices back, all they could do was ponder Jesus’ being.

How often do you ponder these things? I emphasize thinking about these things so much, because (1) theological meditation has been so downplayed in the last century and (2) we are so distracted and busy. Do you ponder the being of Jesus? What do I mean by that? Do you contemplate the mystery that He was God in the form of man? That as a man, He could speak with all of the creative authority of God in Genesis 1? That He possessed more power than a great storm? Why do we spend our time thinking about lesser things? 60 years after Jesus ascended, the apostle John wrote that the apostles had studied Jesus while He was on the earth. They watched Him. They tried to figure Him out. 60 years later, John was still contemplating the nature of the Incarnate Son of God. When you read the Scriptures, do they fill you up with wonder about these things?

It is amazing that Jesus speaks and creation obeys. His word is authoritative and creative. Hebrews 1:3 says that He upholds all things by the word of His power. Col 1:17 says that in Him all things are held together. Those are fantastic statements. What keeps atoms from flying apart? The command of the Lord. What oversees the laws of nature? The command of the Lord. It is amazing to think that Mary rocked the Maker and Sustainer of all things to sleep.

He is all-powerful. Omnipotent. Jesus doesn’t draw out of some reserve of power that He has at His command. His power is not outside of Himself.  It’s not something that He gained. It’s not something that will fizzle out one day. He Himself is eternally powerful, in and of Himself. He asserts His will, always in perfect unison with the Father and Spirit, on all creation so that it holds together and works according to His command.

Jesus spoke, interrupting the normal processes of nature that would have obliterated the boat, and He input His command, effectively ending the destructive process of the storm. What power! What authority! Who could doubt His ability transform the earth, defeat the forces of the devil, and lift the curse? Who would oppose His eternal reign from the throne of His ancestor, David? Who would not trust this Savior with their eternal destiny? If we have trusted Him with our eternal destiny, surely we can trust Him with the rest of our time on earth. Fear Him, and you have no need to fear anyone or anything else.

CONCLUSION –

Jesus’ power is unequaled. It is unrivaled. It is unopposable. Yet, Psalm 2 tells us of those who would oppose the Father and the Son. They grapple futilely against the sovereignty of God. God merely laughs, and He declares that He has set His Son as King upon the great Mount Zion, to one day rule over the earth forever. If they stopped to consider the magnitude of power that they are grappling against, they would stop their rebellion and bow to Him. In fact, the psalm closes with a call for the nations to repent. It is a call that is timely for our day.

Now therefore, O kings, show discernment; Take warning, O judges of the earth. 11  Worship the Lord with reverence And rejoice with trembling. 12 Do homage to the Son, that He not become angry, and you perish in the way, For His wrath may soon be kindled. How blessed are all who take refuge in Him!

Those who oppose Him will be swept away in the day of His great wrath when He is (1 Thess 1:7) “revealed from heaven with His mighty angels in flaming fire, 8 dealing out retribution to those who do not know God and to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. 9 These will pay the penalty of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power.”

But all of those who put their trust in Him will be saved.


[2] “The New Sunday Morning (Part 2),” Barna, https://www.barna.com/research/new-sunday-morning-part-2/ (accessed September 16, 2020).

[3] “20 Mind-Blowing Stats About the Porn Industry and Its Underage Consumers,” Fight the New Drug, https://fightthenewdrug.org/10-porn-stats-that-will-blow-your-mind/ (accessed September 16, 2020).

[4] “Honest Stats on the Average Number of Sexual Partners,” https://2date4love.com/average-number-of-sexual-partners/  (accessed September 16, 2020).

[5] Ian Schwartz, “Pelosi: Mother Earth is Angry and She’s Telling Us,” Real Clear Politics, September 11, 2020, https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2020/09/11/pelosi_mother_earth_is_angry_and_shes_telling_us.html (accessed September 16, 2020).

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