Mark 4, verse 35, on that day, on that day when evening had come, he said to them, let us go across to the other side and leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat just as he was, and other boats were with him, and a great windstorm arose and the waves were breaking into the boat so that the boat was already filling, but he 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, and he woke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, peace be still, and the wind ceased, and there was a great call. He said to them, why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith, and they were filled with great fear and said to one another, who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him? This is the word of the Lord. Lord Jesus, if it was up to us to see the power of what you did in this very miracle, we could never see it, but you have left us with your spirit to open our eyes to see. We've already prayed that you would do so, so again, now we ask Holy Spirit that you would help us to think right, feel right, express our joy appropriately for you or the one who has called us to worship, and God, we must see you for all your worth. Only you can show us. Would you do that now? We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, as I just mentioned, we're going to spend the next few months looking at the miracles of Jesus Christ. Before I introduce this specific miracle, which we will look at today and next week, I want to say a few things about my sabbatical, if I might first. Number one is this. I just simply want to express my gratitude. I want to express first of all my gratitude to the elders of this church, who lead this church, who listen to God, and in listening to God, they seek to obey and understand the significance of what it means for people. All of us, not just pastors, people, to retreat, to be still, to practice Sabbath, rest, to know that he is God. And men on our session, I am deeply grateful that you gave me this gift. It was a gift. It was one of the greatest gifts of my life. I'm thankful that you gave me this time to be still and to rest and to know that he is God. I'm also thankful to the pastors of this church and the staff of this church who serve their God, our God, with great joy. Who, like all of us, fall short, but they know of his grace and want to honor and please him. I'm so thankful, Sunday after Sunday, as I prayed for the worship that was taken place here, I'm so thankful that I never worried once whether men were preaching from this book, the Holy Scriptures, and with great skill and study and prayer. I'm so thankful for the staff that helped support this church in so many ways, with incredible work and a desire to bring God glory. And I'm thankful for you, the members of this church. I'm so thankful and missed you so much in terms of this type of worship being together. I'm grateful that I see in you a deep desire to know the Lord. And when it's not there, I see the desire to desire to know the Lord and walk with him. And it brings great encouragement to my soul to see you battling against sin and the power of the Spirit. I'm so thankful for that. And indeed, I couldn't wait to get back to be with you. I'm also thankful for my wife and my children. They're not here in this service. They will be in the next hour. But I'm so thankful that she let me take a sabbatical for four whole months and didn't kick me out. Didn't say go back. Christina also gave me an incredible experience of 10 days of solitude in the mountains of North Carolina. That's a sacrifice. If she had asked for one day of solitude, I would have probably said, well, take God that long to speak to you. She was amazing in that gift. And I'm very thankful. But I'm most thankful to our Lord. He called me to it because he called me to himself. And in the midst of these many months, he reminded me of his delight in me. Not because of what I've done, or what I will do, or what I'm doing, simply because he loves me. I'm his. And over and over and over again during this season, he reminded me of that beautiful truth found in the beginning of Genesis to the end of Revelation, layered in the Psalms and here in these miracles. During my time in North Carolina, he took me to the miracles, not in order to prepare sermons, but in order to fall in love again with the God who performed these miracles. He reminded me that as we grow and mature in our faith, there's a dangerous temptation that we think stories like the miracles so often read and heard. Don't really have the same depth that we need as mature Christians. I want to tell you that's how the Pharisees probably thought as well. Jesus took me to places in these stories that reminded me of why I believe from the beginning. He made me believe. He opened my eyes to see. It's all about his glory. And over the summer as I read through the gospels over and over again, these miracles began to come alive in ways I've never seen. At family camp, four teaching times over a period of two weeks with two different groups I taught on four miracles. And there it began to be revealed to me that this is what he wanted me to preach a series on these miracles. Why? Well, there are a number of reasons. I want to give you four. First is this. The miracles reveal to us, the person of Christ. If you think you know all about the person of Christ, well, just say to yourself right now, I know all about the person of Christ. And here, how absolutely ridiculous that sounds. Really? Maybe you should even say, I know much about the person of Christ. And hear how ridiculous that sounds. You know much, perhaps of what Christ has revealed to you through his word. But any mature believer knows that there is so much more. And we're not going to get to heaven and go, yep, that's what I thought. We're going to be in awe and wonder amazed at the things that God reveals to us. Brothers and sisters, like me, you have much to learn about the person of Christ. In this miracle alone that we have just had read, the person of Christ has revealed in his nature of his human nature. Do you see? Here Jesus is. A man, 100%, which means he eats, he drinks, he sweats, and he gets tired. And on this boat going across the sea, he's so tired that he decides it's time to sleep. He's not sleeping simply because he wants to prove a point. He's tired. And so he finds a cushion to sleep on. You see, I want you to look at the details of these stories recorded in the Gospels. Why did Mark say there was a cushion? Does it really matter? Yeah, it matters. You know why a cushion feels good to a human body. Jesus had a human body and he found a cushion and he rested. But we also see not just the human nature of the person of Christ, we see the divine nature. This man, 100% man was also 100% God. And when he was awoken, he stood up and said, be still. And it was. The miracles revealed to us, the person of Christ. Secondly, the miracles also revealed to us the purpose of Christ. We can get so caught up in what is the purpose of anything. But we must understand, bitically, the purpose of Christ. And the miracles reveal it to us. The miracles reveal that Christ Himself is revelation. He is the word. He is seeking to reveal to us through His presence on earth. God's plan for redemption from the beginning to the end. The purpose of Christ's revelation in these miracles. You'll see it time and time again. It's not just revelation, though. His miracles also were given to restore time and time again. Jesus healed someone in order to restore their body or their mind. He cast out demons. He calmed storms in order to restore. And the greatest of restorations was His redemption. The purpose of Christ coming was to redeem. We say it this way. He came to rescue. That's what redemption is. It's rescue. It is a group of men crying out in the midst of a storm. Save us. Jesus came to reveal, to restore and to redeem. The miracles also revealed to us something else. And that is the power of Christ. That is why I said what I said during the children's sermon. You see downstairs, Sunday after Sunday, our children are learning the gospel stories. One of the ways in which our children learn is through pictures and flannel boards. Don't remember flannel boards. When children see the flannel boards of the flannel graph, they don't look at it and say that's exactly the size of Jesus. Their imagination is at work and they are hearing the stories and they're believing with childlike faith that they're true. You see that Jesus on a flannel graph is this big. This is the one we use downstairs. Actually taken from the folder of this chapter of Mark IV. This is Jesus. For some of us, as we've gotten older, Jesus has gotten smaller than this. We have become so consumed with religion. Now, we have forgotten that our Savior actually did the very things that we have just read about. Do you understand what I'm saying? The miracles, so many that could not even be recorded in all of the books in all of the world, these things that Christ did actually happened. They actually happened on a spot of earth that Christ Himself created, a particular patch of ground or a patch of water on a boat, a specific boat, made with wood. Jesus was there actually asleep and these men actually went to Him and said, get up. Don't you care that we're parishing and He did. He did care. He did get up and He actually said, be calm. Be still. How much thought did you give to that this morning when you came to church? How much thought did you give to the reality that I'm worshiping this God who is so powerful, who did these things that are beyond our imagination? If that's not occupying your mind, what is? Maybe the storms. We'll talk more about that next week. But is it possible that your Jesus is simply a little caricature on a flannel board? Oh my God, spirit, move through our church, how our eyes lifted so high that we gaze at a God, that it's far more powerful, much greater and bigger than anything we could ever imagine. The miracles don't just reveal to us though the person, purpose and power of Christ. They also reveal to us the peace of Christ. Requires singing it as well with my soul. For those who are in Christ, this is the peace that He brings. It is a peace that's beyond understanding. It is a peace that we can experience even when the storm around us seems so overwhelming, so out of control, we can know that peace. Many of us do. And some here today, perhaps today for the first time, you will know that peace. So brothers and sisters, the miracles of Christ, they reveal to us the person of Christ. They reveal to us his purpose of restoration, of redemption, of rescue, of revelation. They reveal to us his power and they reveal to us his peace.
And they also teach us many things. The miracles are deep. Some of you might be thinking, what can I really learn from the miracles of Christ? If that thought has entered your mind, repent, repent from believing that you were deep. You're not deep. This is God's Word. God's Word does not come to us in chapters where we advance to the next level, having completed one and moving on. Great minds in the Christian world, minds like Francis Shafers and others came to places in their faith where they said, I've got to retreat from this and even see if I believe it's true anymore. And where did they go? They went to the person of Jesus, to the work of Christ. And through God's spirit, they saw again what they couldn't see before. The miracles are deep. They will take you places that you've never gone spiritually because they are full of God's truth. Doctrine of the Christian faith reveal. The miracles are deep. The miracles teach us about faith or a lack of it. They teach us to pray. You want your prayer life to change? Take each miracle. We look out over the next several weeks and pray as the people in the miracle prayed and your prayer life will change. The miracles offer us hope. They point to the great rescue and miracles lead us to worship. They lead us to a place of heavenly awe and wonder as we see what God did and trust in what He has promised to do. This morning I simply want to look at this one miracle which we're also going to look at next week. But I only want to look at the first three words. I wonder in studying this miracle and hearing this miracle of Jesus calling this storm. How many times you have really paused each word and considered what's there? And if you did, I wonder if you stopped at this phrase on that day. I wonder if you went quickly by that moving on in your daily Bible reading or something else and didn't even think about that phrase on that day. Let me tell you, those three words are very powerful. Do you know why? Because Mark didn't say at this point in his gospel once upon a time, the introduction to some magical story or some fantasy fiction. Mark didn't say once upon a time, didn't this in each story? He said on that day, on that day, on a particular patch of water. At a specific time, God revealed his glory. On that day, Jesus said to them, let us get in the boat and go to the other side. On that day, these 12 men got in the boat in Jesus with them. Did you notice, however, in Mark's account that there were other boats with them? So there is Jesus on this boat on that day with other boats around them. On that day, Jesus was tired. On that day, Jesus went into the stern of this boat, found a cushion and slept. On that day, a storm developed. One that perhaps they could see beginning to develop when suddenly these men, many of whom were experienced sailors, began to feel as if their life was soon to be over. They believed they were perishing. On that day, I assure you, they picked up buckets or whatever they had and began to thrust water out of the boat. On that day, they went to a man who in the midst of the storm wasn't bothered. He was sound asleep. On that day, Jesus was sleeping while others thought they were perishing. On that day, they said to Jesus, wake up, wake up, do you not care that we are perishing? On that day, verse 39, Jesus awoke. When he woke up, he looked at the wind and he spoke to the wind and he spoke to the sea. It says he rebuked them. Peace be still and it was. You want to get deep? Picture it. Consider what it looked like for the disciples to be in that boat. Picture what it looked like for Jesus to be standing there in that boat. Consider how fast the water went calm and the winds went calm. Consider maybe for the first time in your life that there were other people and other boats in the midst of that same storm that didn't know Jesus was asleep in the storm. They hadn't seen him stand up and do what he did. We don't know what they saw, but they saw the storm. They too felt the storm. They too were in the midst of perishing when all of a sudden it went calm. On that day, Jesus did what only Jesus could do. It really happened. On that day, Jesus then turned to the disciples and asked this question, why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith? And on that day, the disciples having just experienced this piece of God outside of them, the storm going completely calm had a different kind of storm brewing inside them. And the storm was manifest to us in a question, who is this man? Who is this man that even the wind and the sea obey him? On another day, Jesus would ask them this question, who do you say I am? They would give their response. On another day, Jesus would begin to forecast another storm. And the storm he was forecasting would take place on a hill called Golgotha. And on another day, this man who was asleep in the stern of a boat on a cushion, the one who woke up and said, be calm, be still, would then be staked on a cross with nails in his feet and in his wrist. And for hours he would struggle for life until he finally cried out, it is finished. And on that day, the storm the He had forecast would come to be. Storms looked like things are out of control. What must the disciples have thought? What must have been going on in Peter's mind as he just soon before had denied the even new him? On that day, Jesus would die. On another day, his body would be gone. He would have risen. Conquering death. This God, our mighty fortress. Why? So that for eternity, those who were in Christ could experience the calmness of being in the presence of Christ. Jesus came. Perform these miracles to reveal to us his power and to give to us his peace. Not peace for a moment that would help us on a bad day, but peace for eternity, that all who trusted in Christ would know that forever they are in Christ. And for those who reject Christ, who refuse to trust who he is, the truth is they will spend eternity separated from God and a storm beyond what they could ever imagine, with no hope that it would ever end. Jesus came. Miracles teach us these deep truths. Miracles are deep. They call us to consider the questions that Jesus asked. So today, on this day, on this day, how would you answer the question? Who is this man? Father in heaven, we all must pause and consider that question. Use your holy word. Use what you have revealed to us through your spirit and help us see and know the power of our Savior Christ. And whose name we pray? Amen.