Story 87: Jesus Calms the Storm
Jesus Calms a Storm on the Sea
Jesus spent another remarkable day teaching and healing the broken. By the time evening had come, the Lord was tired. That might seem surprising since Jesus was God. Can God get tired? Well, the truth is that Jesus was and is fully God, but during His time on earth, He willingly laid aside the privileges of His divine powers. He took on the form of a man when He came to save humanity (Phil. 2:5-11). That included taking on our human frailties. Throughout His life here, He depended on the empowerment of the Holy Spirit to obey the will of God the Father. And He did it perfectly. At all times He lived a completely holy and pure life, uncontaminated by any form of sin or evil. The wonderful thing is that Jesus made the way for us to have the Holy Spirit, too, so that we can have the same empowerment to honor God.Jesus truly became one of us and is our example. On this particular day, He was exhausted. Yet the massive crowds continued to press around Jesus. There was no escaping them in Capernaum. So the Lord told His disciples, “‘Let’s go to the other side of the lake.’” The disciples left the crowds and they all got into a boat. There were other boats that came along, too, full of His faithful band of friends.Jesus went to the stern of the boat and laid His head down on a cushion. But then a wind started to blow. It rose and rose into a fierce gale, and soon, a tremendous storm was upon them. Large waves hit the boat and shook it, filling it with water. It was getting dangerous.When the disciples looked to see what Jesus was doing, they saw that He was fast asleep! Why wasn’t He trying to help them? So they woke Him and said, “‘Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?’”Jesus woke up to the terrified faces of His disciples, the wild screaming of the wind, and the waves battering and rocking the boat. He rose to His feet, looked out upon the waters, and rebuked the wind and the waves saying, “‘Hush, be still.’” Instantly, the wind slowed to a calm and the rushing waves laid back down in the deep waters. The thundering storm came to perfect rest.Can you imagine the magnificence of that moment? Can you imagine the surging mastery and authority behind that confident command of Christ? He was completely certain of His power over nature as the Son of the Living God.For a moment, the Man that the disciples walked with every day was revealed in a new way. They saw Him for the mighty Lord that He is, far above the powers of this world, and perfectly able to wield complete control with a simple command.He turned to His disciples and said quite simply, “‘Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?’”The disciples were in awe. What would you do if your teacher stood up in front of you and showed mastery over the forces of nature? The disciples looked at each other in wonder, and a kind of deep, reverent fear. There was power in this Man that they had not imagined. “‘What kind of Man is this?’” they asked each other, “‘Even the winds and the waves obey Him!’”The disciples had shown faith in the Lord already. They were already demonstrating their devotion. They had chosen to get in the boat with Christ just as it was becoming certain that the most powerful religious leaders of their nation were going to come against Him with a vengeance. They stood with Jesus even though these men were out to kill Him.But the way Jesus taught, the way He healed, meant more to His followers than the fear of death itself. He was bringing something so deep and true that resonated with His followers. He was revealing the corruption and brokenness of the religious leaders and calling them to something higher, giving them hope for something more. Not only that, but Jesus had called His followers His family. He said they were His brothers and sisters. They belonged to Him because of their response of faith.As a result, much had been given to the disciples. The Spirit gave them eyes to see and ears to hear the glory of what was happening in Jesus. And because they followed that leading, they witnessed something that day on the Sea that nobody else was allowed to see. They got to watch Christ wield breathtaking power over nature.It is interesting to think about what other choices the disciples could have made at this point in the story. They could have walked away from Jesus when the powerful religious leaders from Jerusalem came against Him. They could have been offended that Jesus didn’t go with His family. They could have questioned Jesus about why He was leaving the crowd when there were still people in need. Instead, they obeyed. They got into the boat and headed for the other side of the Galilean Sea.Jesus was also making interesting choices. Jesus had traveled all over Galilee, but this time He headed for the region of the Gerasenes. The Jews rejected it because it was an area where a lot of Gentiles lived. These people were not a part of the nation of Israel, they did not live to honor their God, and the Jews considered them unclean. They wouldn’t even sit down with them to eat.In the Old Testament, the Lord had commanded the nation of Israel to keep separate from the surrounding nations. God wanted His people to be pure from the idolatry and wickedness that polluted the daily lives of other people groups. The cultures that prayed to false gods and sacrificed their children to them, that allowed abuse of their children by adults that should have been protecting them...these and many more evils were accepted. The Lord wanted His nation to show the world how wrong that evil is and how much better life could be if a community honored His ways.God also spoke to His people about how they should treat foreigners in their own country. Foreigners are usually vulnerable in a land where a different language is spoken and where prejudice and bigotry can be oppressively cruel. But according to the Old Testament, foreigners in Israel had the protection of God.From the very beginning of the first covenant that God made with Abraham, Israel was supposed to be a blessing to all the nations of the world. They were to act as the priests of the earth, teaching and training the cursed and burdened human race about the ways of the Most High God through their own holy lives. Throughout their long history, they had often stumbled and failed, but now they had met their ultimate failure. They had rejected their Messiah. Now the Lord was going to begin to take salvation to the Gentiles Himself. The nation of Israel had rejected their opportunity to honor the Messiah, but God would not allow that to stop His plans to bring redemption to humanity.As Jesus and His disciples got in the boat, they sailed away from the Jewish shore and moved towards the region of the Gentiles. Christ was taking his message out to the lost, crossing out from God’s covenant with the nation of Israel through Moses and into a new era…a new covenant. As they went, a fierce and raging storm came against them, but it held no real power. All He had to do was speak, and by His absolute authority, the storm was over.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nz3_6QPl6VM