Let's turn to the Lord in prayer. Lord, I thank you that you are the God that calms storms, and that you are the God that is in charge of everything, including the weather. And as we turn into your word now and read the passage from the Gospel of Luke, and also as we hear the message you put on my heart, I pray that your spirit would flow among us here, that we would feel your presence, that you'd give us insight and wisdom into your word. And I pray that your hand would be on me, that I would speak the message you've given me, and that I'd remain faithful to that. In Christ's name, Amen.
All right. So we are getting close to wrapping up our series on Luke. As we get into the fall, we're going to look, I don't know if you noticed the graphic went by there, we're going to look at a series of churchy words, some big sort of Christianese type terms that we often tend to throw around in the church. And there'll be more about that in the coming weeks. And for now, I think we've got a couple of weeks left of the early part of Luke. And we may come back to Luke at some point later on.
And here we are at Luke 8:22-25. So the last thing we saw last week, Pastor Brad preached about the parable of the sower. That was a very long parable, and then this is kind of what comes up later that day. So Jesus said to his disciples, "Let's go over to the other side of the lake." So they got into a boat and set out. As they sailed, he fell asleep. A squall came down on the lake so that the boat was being swamped and they were in great danger. The disciples went to him and woke him, saying, "Master, Master, we're going to drown." He got up and rebuked the wind and the raging waters. The storm subsided and all was calm. "Where is your faith?" he asked his disciples. In fear and amazement, they asked one another, "Who is this? He commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him." This is the word of the Lord.
Right. So the title I've chosen for this week's sermon is "Don't you care?" And we'll see where that comes up here a bit later in the sermon. So we usually kind of divide things up into three parts. The first part, let's talk a bit about the storm.
Now, when I was younger, probably late elementary school, I used to read a lot of Hardy Boys books. I'd sort of collect them. You could go and buy them for five bucks at The Bookmark, and birthdays, Christmas stuff, and eventually I kind of had the whole set. For those that aren't familiar with the Hardy Boys, I don't know if that's the 70s or not, whether any young people have, do you guys read books? We didn't have TikTok when I was a kid, so we read books.
Anyway, Frank and Joe, in grade 11 and 12, two brothers, and they love solving crimes and detecting these. Their dad's a famous detective, and sometimes they piggyback onto one of his cases. Sometimes there's a mystery of their own that comes about. And in one of the early books, their dad gives them a speedboat called the Sleuth. And so this is like their prize thing, and one of their friends has a boat too. But man, every time they take that boat out onto Barmet Bay, so they live on the east coast, every time they take that boat out of Barmet Bay, it's beautiful weather, and within a page suddenly a storm comes up out of nowhere, and usually right before the end of the chapter they're like, they're going to drown. Something bad is happening. And I've read somebody was commenting on the Hardy Boys saying, "Man, this bay must have the most changeable weather on the planet, because it just comes out of nowhere every time they get in that boat." And you can probably see where this makes me think a little bit about this story.
So what's been going on with Jesus and the disciples? Luke actually kind of skips over some of the things. I have this book at home called The Harmony of the Gospels, where it kind of takes all four gospels and kind of lines them up and makes four columns. And you can kind of see sometimes what order things happen in. And each of the authors, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, kind of puts some things that they want to emphasize. But Matthew and Mark, after the parable of the sower, they have a whole bunch of other parables. I counted 10 other parables. Jesus has spent the whole day teaching and talking and telling one parable after another. And he's obviously pretty tired. And at the end of this day, in fact, Mark says like this is later that same day, Jesus says, "Let's go in the boat and go off to the other side."
So they go down and they get in the boat. Now, at least four of these guys are fishermen, and they've spent their lives so far fishing on that lake. It's possible some of the other disciples may have fishing experience too. But at least four out of these 13 people know exactly how to handle a boat on a lake. You can imagine them going down to the shore. It says in scripture that they took a boat. I don't know if there's just boats parked there, you can just grab a boat, or whether James and John said, "We'll just get Zebedee here. Is it okay if we take the boat tonight?" And they pile into a boat and they head out.
But you can imagine the disciples doing the obvious things, especially the fishermen, right? Check the sky. How do the clouds look? How's the wind? Sometimes you can just feel the weather, right? You can just step outside and know there's bad weather coming. Somebody's got a broken bone from the old days. Like, nope, collarbone feels good, I think we're all right, the weather's fine. And so they get into the boat, and it must have been a relatively large boat. I kind of picture like a little rowboat with these things, but there's 13 people in there and they're comfortable. But I'm certainly not picturing like a 40-foot yacht or anything. There doesn't appear to be a down below or anything.
So one of the disciples probably goes back, one of the fishermen grabs the rudder, two guys are getting the sails going and stuff. And we're told that Jesus goes in on a cushion on the back and falls asleep almost immediately. I don't know if you know anybody like that. I know some people like that. I remember reading somewhere that if you can sit down in a comfy chair and fall asleep within five minutes, you're overtired, you haven't been getting the right amount of sleep. Some like, "Yeah, that's me. And yep, I know, I know I'm tired." You know when you do a road trip to Halifax and someone's asleep before you leave the driveway, they wake up when they go by the Mic Mac Mall, "Oh, we're here already." Jesus is obviously pretty tired, and so he falls asleep, and like seriously asleep.
And they're sailing out there, and the Sea of Galilee apparently is a real life Barmet Bay. It has some very changeable weather. If we dig into this for a little bit, some of you might know that the Dead Sea is the lowest part on Earth. It's like 700 feet below sea level. And the Sea of Galilee, I mean, the Jordan River flows from the Sea of Galilee down in through into the Dead Sea. The whole Jordan River Valley and even the Sea of Galilee are quite a bit below sea level. And yet just above the Sea of Galilee is the Golan Heights. I haven't had a chance to visit Israel yet. My parents were there a couple of times and they said it was pretty cool to stand there in the Sea of Galilee. You kind of picture it in your mind, but they looked and said it's really like a bowl. And up in the high points towards Lebanon and Syria, I guess you get cold water coming down, cold air coming out of the mountains, you get warm air kind of rising off the lake, and it tends to provide pretty changeable weather. In the Midwestern US, you often get this feature where you get warm air coming from the Gulf of Mexico, cold air coming down from the Rockies, and you get tornado alley. So the Sea of Galilee, you tend to get storms that can come out of nowhere.
And if you've ever been out on the water and something just pops up, even in around PEI and some of the rivers where I kayak sometimes, it's like, that escalated quickly, like where did this come from? And at first you think, man, the wind's picking up. Okay, let's get the sails down. So two of the fishermen are probably busy getting the sails down. Maybe the other guy's going to help the guy on the rudder clamp on pretty hard. And when the waves start to get big, your number one thing is point the boat into the waves. You don't want to get wallowed, because then the waves hitting and you rocking to the side, you're going to flip. So they're trying to steer as hard as they can. Other guys are shouting, getting the sails going. Reach under the benches, get the buckets, we got to bail.
Scripture tells us the water is pouring into the ship. They don't have the option of drilling a hole in the bottom to let the water out. It's not a good idea. So the boat's filling up, and you can imagine their panic. And I don't know, is this going on for a half an hour, an hour? And you don't really have time to sort of stop and think about anything. Everything's just literally like, I got to do this right now. If you're in a car and the car breaks down, oh, I'm on the side of the road, I better call somebody. If you're on a boat, this could be the end of you. And I think, like most fishermen throughout history, these guys don't know how to swim. I asked some fishermen about that. And anyway, most fishermen don't really know how to swim. So these guys are in big trouble.
And they suddenly realize, wait a sec, what about Jesus? And somebody finally turns and looks, and he's asleep on a cushion in the back. I'm not a very sound sleeper. The least little thing tends to wake me up. Some people will sleep soundly, but this has got to be like S-level sleep. We're told the waves are crashing over the boat. He's probably getting wet. The boat's turning. There's men shouting, and Jesus is able to sleep. And I think that's significant, and we'll come back to that in a bit.
So finally they decide to go wake Jesus up. We're told they say, "Master, Master, we're going to drown." And Jesus wakes up and looks around. And there, you almost get the impression, again, I'm filling some things in here, when they went to Jesus, it wasn't so much like, "You've got to fix this for us," because they seem really surprised when he does. I don't think they're expecting that Jesus is just going to speak and the storm is going to stop. It almost sounds like they're just looking for another hand with a bucket. Like, aren't you going to help us here? Because it feels like we're going down.
So, I missed that part. Many of you know the shortest verse in the Bible. That's actually going to come up later in this sermon. Do you know what the second shortest verse in the Bible is? Some that are really into Bible trivia say, "I also know that one." It would have fit really nicely into this passage here. "Jesus slept." Anyway, it's not actually a verse in this passage, but you can kind of picture this. So, yeah. Oh, I'm way behind on my slides here.
Okay, so we're perishing now. Jesus' response. They wake him up. They're probably expecting, you need to help us with this, like either help that guy with the rudder or grab a bucket or something. Maybe there's oars and they're trying to row themselves to safety. They certainly don't expect what's coming next.
I don't know how many of you have seen the movie Sheep Detectives. I guess it was open in the theaters, now it's streaming. So I watched it a few weeks ago. I thought it was pretty good, actually. Would recommend it. And so, for those that don't know how it goes, these sheep have to, I guess like the Hardy Boys, they have to solve a mystery. They have to solve this murder. And they're sheep, so they're not super smart. But in the middle here, we have this ram, and he kind of roams all over town. And so he's been in town a lot. He listens to humans. The sheep can speak English. Anyway, it's a movie. So he's kind of familiar with the ways of the town and he overhears things, but these other two sheep that are with him, they've never been off the farm. And so they have questions about everything, and they're nervous and they're scared, like sheep.
And so they walk by and one of the sheep says, "What's this?" And the sheep in the middle is like, "Oh, this is a church." "Oh, what's the church for?" And so the middle sheep, with all his learning and intelligence, explains what he's been able to figure out by just eavesdropping. So this is his understanding of church. Like, a church, that's where someone named God lives. "Like, oh, what about this God?" "Well, he's a shepherd." "Oh, really? He's the shepherd. Is he our shepherd?" "No, no, he's also a lamb, and he's also invisible." Sheep are now really confused. "Really? How does that work?" It's like, "Oh, and he's made of bread." "Really?" "Like, yes, they eat him on Sundays." Anyway, it was a pretty good movie. Cute scene. The sheep obviously have no real good understanding of who God is. Every one of those statements, by the way, I guess is kind of correct. But put together, it gives a really misleading impression. The sheep don't really understand who God is. And I think in this story, they're not the only ones.
Jesus stands up and he rebukes the wind. He looks around and rebukes the wind. I find that interesting for a couple of reasons. First of all, he speaks. I mean, Jesus could have gone and just made the wind stop or something. That's probably what I would have done, some kind of thing like this. He could have snapped his fingers. He could have actually said nothing, right? He could have just looked out. He speaks the word, right? So here's the Word of God speaking the word over nature and everything stops.
But I think, if I was writing a gospel, would I have used the word "rebuked"? Jesus rebuked the wind. So I had to dig into that a little bit. And there's the Greek word epitimao. Jesus rebukes the wind. So I looked up, what does it mean? Is there more context on this? Rebuke in Greek kind of means what you'd expect in English. You're correcting or chiding somebody who really should know better. Interestingly, it's always used in speaking to a person. For example, when the parents are bringing their babies to come see Jesus and the disciples rebuked the parents, right? Kind of like, "What are you doing? You know better than this. Stop doing this." So the idea of, you're kind of correcting somebody, you're kind of annoyed, somebody who should know better.
It also makes me think, okay, so kids, kids that didn't go down to nursery, I don't know if you ever have a feeling sometimes when you go to bed like there might be something in your closet. Or maybe you just tell your parents you think there might be something in your closet, because if you can put off bedtime by 45 seconds, somehow that's an accomplishment. One more glass of water. Anyway, maybe you told your parents, or maybe you actually felt like, I think maybe there's a monster in my closet. Now, 97% of parents will sit down with you and do the obvious thing. "No, there's no monster in your closet. There's no monsters. No, this house is safe. Don't worry. Yep, everything's okay. Listen, if you're still worried, just pray, and God is bigger than the boogeyman, and don't worry about the monsters." 2% of parents take it to the next level. It's like, "Monster! There better not be a monster in the closet." We'll be like, "What are you doing in here? I told you." Take the monster by the ear. "Get back to the furnace room. Okay, look, the monsters are gone. Everything's okay." Rebuke the monster.
Jesus rebukes the wind like a parent might rebuke a monster. Anyway, Jesus rebukes the wind. It's like the wind has been misbehaving, and he speaks to it and just everything stops. And I don't know if you've ever been to the North Shore in a day after a storm. Sometimes that's where the best waves are, if you like surfing or just even body surfing, whatever. When the wind stops, it takes a long time for the water to calm down. There's more evidence of how much of a miracle this is. Jesus speaks, the wind stops, and everything's calm. Just all the waves have just stopped.
And the disciples, we just sang a song about having fear. Jesus, after he stops the storm, turns to them and says, "Where is your faith?" First he rebukes the weather, then he rebukes the disciples. And I've always read that and thought, that must kind of sting a little bit. Where is your faith? Like, sorry, Jesus, yeah, we should be trusting you more. I think about now, I don't think they even heard that. I don't think they even heard Jesus say, "Where is your faith?" Because it says they reacted in fear and amazement. And I get the impression they're all standing there in a now calm boat looking at Jesus with jaws just hanging down. What did we just see? And they're terrified. They're not terrified of the wind anymore. You almost get the impression they're more scared now, looking at their first real view of the living God. This is Jesus, God, who has control of everything.
And this just keeps happening, right? Way back at the beginning of Luke, Jesus heals Peter's mother-in-law and everyone says, "Wow, we've seen amazing things today." And then a bit later on, four friends lower a guy down through the roof, and Jesus forgives his sins and heals him, and the crowd is amazed. What did we just see today? And then later on, Jesus does something, he drives out some demons, and at every step people are just amazed and they still don't get it. Kind of like the sheep. They don't really understand at this point who Jesus is. Peter's confession, Thomas saying, "My Lord and my God," that's way off in the future yet. They don't really understand who Jesus is, and they are terrified.
Now, we've actually seen a story a little bit about this before. I don't know if this sounds familiar. Think back to your Old Testament. There's a guy on a boat and there's a big storm, but this guy's asleep in the boat. And even though the storm is raging and everyone's panicking, he's sound asleep. And they eventually have to wake him up and say, "I don't know if you noticed, there's a really big storm." Anybody getting a buzz off that? Who was that guy? That was Jonah, right? Now, on the one hand, you don't want to say Jesus is like Jonah, in the sense of Jesus is not running away from something and the storm is not his fault, that kind of stuff. And yet Jesus ties himself to Jonah, right? Jesus says, just like the sign of Jonah. Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three nights. So it's a neat little link here, a little bit of a foreshadowing, already seeing here's Jesus in a boat and he's sleeping in the back and they have to wake him up. It's kind of cool how scripture does that.
So, make sure I didn't miss something. Okay. Right. Now, how is it that Jesus is sleeping? The sheep don't really understand God in that movie. The disciples obviously did not understand Jesus. But Jesus fully understands his Father. He knows exactly who God is. He knows that they're in no danger. He can sleep, and sleep amazingly well obviously, because he knows that they're not in danger. He knows he's got a date with the cross, and this is not it. Nothing can touch them while he's there, while the Father's looking over them. Nothing can touch them. And so that confidence, that reassurance, he's so confident he can actually sleep. You know, sometimes you worry about stuff and it just seems like your mind is turning, you can't sleep. You can only really sleep when you're kind of calmed. And Jesus is so calm he's actually able to sleep. We'll come back to that one too.
And then they're asking, there's another thing I found really cool. They ask Jesus, you know, "Wake up, we're going to drown." And as I said, it kind of seems like they're asking just because they need help with a bucket or something. And yet Jesus' answer is not at all what they're expecting. They didn't say, "Jesus, wake up, calm the storm." They're looking for one small kind of thing. Can you help us bail the boat? Jesus answers their prayer on a completely different level than what they're expecting. He's so much more amazing than what we expect. Sometimes we put little boxes on Jesus. We think he might be able to do this, and he just bursts those, which is what he does here for the disciples.
So, okay, so part three. What does all this mean for us then? Well, we often get in storms. Sometimes literally, like you're on the road on Friday and it feels like a pretty bad storm and you've got to pull over. But more metaphorically, in life we get into some storms. Bad things happen. It was a sunny day and now out of nowhere something's come on us. And our normal reaction is, well, we try to fix it ourselves. Let's get the sails down. Let's see if we can start bailing. Like, I don't know how long it took before the disciples figured we better go get Jesus. I think one of our goals as Christians is see if we can shorten that time as much as possible before we immediately just cry out and say, "You know what? I need Jesus here. I need you to save me." We often try to do it ourselves.
Now, I find this interesting too. So this is in Mark's version of the same story. The disciples went to him. So in Luke they just say, "Master, we're drowning, we're perishing." And Mark says, "Don't you care if we drown?" And that one really kind of hit me. Don't you care if we drown? In their panic, the disciples are actually wondering, do you care? Like, do you even care about us? Do you care about us?
I think sometimes in kind of a dark spot we let ourselves think that too. I've been praying and there's been no answer coming. Do you even care, Jesus? Do you care? There's a bunch of things that we might wonder if Jesus cares about, so you can run through a few. Do you care? Jesus, do you care that I can't find a job? Jesus, do you care about my health? Don't you care? Do you care that my finances are a mess? Do you care about my marriage? Don't you care about my kids? Do you care that my friends all seem to be deserting me? And whatever it is, right? Do you care about me? You seem to care about everybody else. Don't you care? It's not a thought that hopefully we have out front most of the time, but sometimes when the storms hit, that can kind of pop in there. Don't you care?
And this story is a really good reminder. There's some other good reminders from scripture here too. Of course he cares. So let's go to John 11. The shortest verse in the Bible is in here. Jesus is coming and Lazarus is dead. And he knows he's just about to raise Lazarus from the dead. And he looks at all of his friends and their friends, and they're all weeping and they're all crying. And Jesus is deeply moved. And he's so moved that he wept. Now, he knows that in 15 seconds Lazarus is going to be standing in front of him here and he's going to be saying, "Take the grave clothes off." So you think he wouldn't need to weep. And yet he's obviously so moved by seeing his people in pain and hurt, because he cares so much. He actually weeps along with us when we're praying and thinking, "Lord, I'm in a mess. Are you going to stop this storm?" I don't know if we picture Jesus weeping at our situation, feeling so much empathy for us that it's actually physically making him sad when we're in a bad situation. That's the kind of God that we have.
First Peter 5 tells us, "Cast all our cares on him, because he cares for you." Don't you care? It's a panicky kind of question, but we look at scripture, we look at Jesus, the answer is obviously yes, of course he cares. And sometimes it's real big things that we're stressed about. Sometimes it's just kind of small things. You know, we lost something, or we hurt ourselves, or whatever else. Of course he cares, and he wants us to go to him about everything.
So what does it mean if we're praying and it feels like Jesus is sleeping? Because sometimes you kind of get that impression. Where is the answer to that thing I've been praying about? If Jesus is sleeping, it's because you're not in danger. If you're praying and Jesus' answer is basically just wait, not yet, it's coming, hang on, it's because he knows there is no danger. You're not in danger if Jesus is sleeping.
And Jesus asked the disciples, "Where is your faith?" And it feels like a bit of a rebuke. And I feel like that's asking us the same question too. Where is your faith? Yeah, well, our faith, where is our faith? Actually, we know where our faith is. I don't think Jesus is saying, "Where is your faith?" like, where did it go? Don't you have any faith? What is your faith placed in? Is your faith in your bucket? You can bail out of the boat. Where is our faith? Well, our faith, beautifully, is in Jesus. And if we put our faith in Jesus, we need to remember, we get to remember, that nothing is going to harm us. Whether it looks like he's sleeping or not, he is right there.
And Jesus never promises that he's going to stop the storm every single time. Jesus never promises. I'd love to be able to reassure us here, like every time you pray Jesus just answers right away. He never promises he answers every single prayer right away, the way we wanted, all the time. What he does promise, though, is he's right there with us. If you're feeling like you're in a boat and the boat's feeling pretty small and the water's filling up in the bottom and the waves are crashing over and you don't know what's going on, the best thing to remember is you're in a boat with Jesus. Whether he's awake or asleep, whether he's standing up and about to open his mouth and change the whole situation, whether he's patiently waiting, you are in a boat with Jesus. I think that's kind of the key message of this passage here. Remember, if Jesus is sleeping, you're not in danger. And the best place in the world to be is if you're in a boat, you're in a boat with Jesus.
Let's pray. Lord, it's really tempting to wish that we didn't have to have storms, that it was smooth sailing all the time and nice weather. Lord, when storms come on us, thank you for reassuring us that you are right there with us, that nothing can touch us because you are there and you care. And Lord, those times that we feel like we're not sure and we're wondering how much you care about us, that we have your promise, your reassurance, and your example, that of course you care. And Lord, give us more faith. Give us more strength and trust when the storms come, to turn to you and know that whether we see you moving or not, that you're right there with us. In Christ's name, Amen.