Matthew chapter eight, starting at verse 23, says, now, when he got into a boat, his disciples followed him. And suddenly, a great tempest arose on the sea, so that the boat was covered with waves, but he was asleep. Then his disciples came to him and awoke him saying, Lord, save us, we are perishing. And he said to them, why are you fearful? Oh, you of little faith. Then he arose and rebuked the winds and the sea and there was a great calm. So the men marveled saying, who can this be that even the winds and the sea obey him? I don't know who gets the job nowadays of writing movie trailers, but they are creative folks. I don't doubt that imagination is a vital component of that job, although honesty is not apparently a vital component of that job. If you have ever seen a 30-second commercial for some comedy and then found out after enduring two hours of bad writing that that was the only 30 seconds in the whole thing that was funny, then you know you can be misled by that sort of thing. I mention this because I am confident that many of the folks who come to this text, many of you who hear this this morning already have a movie trailer version of this text in your mind, and it's potentially going to mislead you about the author's intent in recording this story. Now, what you've got in your mind about Jesus calming the sea, it probably has the visual parts of things right, right? There's thunder, and there's lightning, and there's wind, and there's a little boat that's tossed on the waters, and disciples scared out of their minds, and maybe you even have a Hollywood narrator's voice in the background saying something like, in a world, where cancer and car accidents and other catastrophic events threaten to drown your days and submerge your soul. Remember, God is there to get you through the hard times. Jesus can calm the storms of your life. God can get you through the hard times. Jesus can calm the storms of your life. But that's not the whole story. That's not even the point of this story. If you're gonna get, you're gonna want the whole story when the day comes when you've got some cancer or a car accident or other catastrophic event, and it surges into your life and threatens to submerge your soul for the final time, and Jesus in his wisdom does not calm that storm, but he still has all power and authority in His hands. I'm going to ask you to remember the text that we covered just before this last week. Back in verses 18 through 22, Jesus told His disciples, get in the boat, let's go to the other side. And first a scribe came to him, saying, Master, I will follow you wherever you go. Yet Jesus knew that man was not fully committed and turned him away. Meanwhile, there was another man, actually called a disciple, who should have gotten in the boat, and he hesitated and apparently walked away. And so verse 23 now says, He got in the boats, his disciples followed him. This is a boat with Jesus and his disciples, believers. And so Matthew is telling this story of Jesus, who in this chapter has authority over disease and demons and his own disciples. And we're gonna see in a moment the reason why Jesus wanted to go to the other side of the Sea of Galilee is Down in verses 28 through 34, there's a couple demon-possessed men on that shore he's going to who need his help. By the way, don't you just love the fact that he's willing to leave the scribes and go to sinners? And yet, for some reason, with all of this knowledge and authority of Jesus, we still read this story of them passing through the storm like it was some unexpected event. Right after two would-be disciples walked away from the boat, Jesus and his true disciples get into the boat and he leads them into this storm so that they will witness his power and his authority. And at the end of the text, the disciples are pondering Well, maybe even for the first time, they're asking themselves, what sort of man is this that even the wind and the waves obey him? And the reality is the answer to that is self-evident. It is God in the flesh. Those disciples As we read this, they lived out this story in real time. Obviously, they slowly started to come to a realization about the nature of Jesus. But you and I have all of Scripture, and we know what happens, and as a result, we could reduce this to God is there to get you through the hard times, Jesus can calm the storms of your life, But since we know the whole story and we know the lesson that they've already learned, the lesson for us is probably a little deeper. Do you know who Jesus is? Like, do you really know who Jesus is? Because when you know Jesus is the Lord God in the flesh, then you know Jesus has authority and power over the wind and the waves to calm the storm. Jesus is also one with the authority and power to create the storm. Jesus has authority and power over you to tell you to get in the boat and then aim the boat at the storm that he created And when you experience this and your eyes start to get drawn to this, you know, there's this awesome power of the thunder and the lightning and the wind and the waves, all those things going on outside the boat, you need to have the kind of faith that reminds yourself that the real power and authority is inside the boat with you. Maybe the lesson of the text is as simple as wherever he leads, we need to be on the boat with Jesus. I want you to see a few reasons why. We need to be on the boat with Jesus because he is perfectly human. Look at verses 23 and 24. It says, now when he got into the boat, His disciples followed him, and suddenly a great tempest arose on the sea so that the boat was covered with waves, but he was asleep. Maybe the most easily overlooked lesson of this text is the perfect humanity of the Lord Jesus. Matthew's gospel, often as he's recording it, he doesn't always give us the events of Jesus's life in chronological order. He doesn't always give us timestamps because that's really not Matthew's purpose. But this chapter, certainly seems to suggest it is a single busy day in the life of Jesus. to remind you. In chapters five through seven, Jesus preached a three chapter sermon called the Sermon on the Mount. And at the end of that, there were great multitudes following him. And in chapter eight, verse one, the chapter we're in, up in verse one, it says he came down from the mountain and great multitudes followed him. And he's headed to this little city of Capernaum on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee. But verses two through four describe a leper coming to him on the outskirts of the city, begging to be healed, begging to be cleansed, and Jesus heals him. Then in verse five, entering into the city of Capernaum, a Roman army officer, a centurion, appeals to Jesus on the behalf of a little child servant of his, and Jesus heals that child. And in verse 14, Jesus finally makes it to where he was going in Capernaum. Peter lived there, so he gets to Peter's house in verse 14, where he should be able to get some rest and relax, but when he gets to Peter's house, Peter's mother-in-law is there, deadly sick of a fever, and Jesus heals her. Any of those circumstances by itself should be sufficient to qualify as that was a full day. But verse 16 says, when evening had come, so in other words the day is past, it should be quitting time for sure, but there at Peter's house instead there's And people who were demon possessed are being brought to Jesus. People who were sick are being brought to Jesus. And it says that he healed all those who were sick. So apparently this big crowd that followed him down from the mountain and into Capernaum saw that he was staying at Peter's house and left and went back and grabbed every sick person that they knew in their life and started bringing them to Jesus so that all night long, People are coming in and out and Jesus is getting no rest. And so when the morning comes, Jesus is understandably exhausted. Mark's account of this little story in our text of Jesus calming the waters, Mark's account of it begins by saying, Jesus saying, let's go to the other side. And it says, quote, that his disciples, quote, took him even as he was into the ship. Y'all, it is very possible that the exhaustion which has overtaken the Lord Jesus at this point required his disciples to help him, if not literally, carry him into the boat. Like, have you ever read this story and wondered why there is this horrific life-threatening storm and Jesus is soundly asleep in the back of the boat? He's beat. He's exhausted. So here's the Lord Jesus who, this is the same man who up in verse 20 had told that scribe, you know, foxes have holes and birds of the air have a nest and the son of man does not have a place to lay his head. But now briefly, Jesus does have a place to lay his head. He's carried into the ship, he's curled up in the stern of the boat, and it is easy to picture a disciple like maybe John, carefully laying an extra robe over him as a blanket, and the boat leaves the shore, and the rhythm of the rowing of the boats and the gentle rocking of the waves, asleep. Y'all, let's not overlook the opportunity to marvel at this. God, in the flesh, got tired. Y'all, we can't really grasp that. All we can do is believe it because the Bible says it's true. Jesus is fully human and fully God. There's fun theological discussions people have had over the ages and even create great sounding labels that seem really smart. We call this the hypostatic union. What does it mean that Jesus is fully human and fully God at the same time? But when you listen to commentators try to explain it, the more words they use, the more it becomes obvious they can't explain it. It is beyond our comprehension and yet it does not make it untrue. It just makes it incomprehensible. We can look at the biblical evidence and accept it as a fact. When the Gospel writers recount a day like this with the exhausted Messiah King Jesus asleep in the boat, we can know He is fully human. There's a handful of other accounts that teach the same truth. Think of some of the fully and strictly human things that are said about Jesus. In Luke's gospel, Luke tells us that story when Jesus was 12 years old and was in the temple, but then he skips forward to Jesus being about 30, an adult man, and he skips that time simply by saying Jesus increased in wisdom and stature. In other words, simply, he got smarter and he got bigger. You don't talk about God in those terms. Are you gonna describe God as getting smarter and God getting bigger? God is all-knowing. God is omnipresent. And yet Jesus in his humanity can be described this way. John chapter four, it describes Jesus being wearied from his journey, sat wearied at the well. Now, I know he's gonna talk to the Samaritan woman who comes out, you know that, he even knows that, but he's not pretending to be tired, he's tired, he's hot, he's thirsty, so that when that woman comes with the pitcher to draw water, he asks her to give him a drink. Like, can I have some of that water? You know, the water I created? He's human. The humanity of Jesus is a vital portion of biblical truth. It is not to be overlooked. The Apostle Paul. gloriously describes this in Philippians chapter 2 when he says of Jesus that though he was in the form of God, he did not consider that form a thing to be grasped at or a thing to be clung to, but he emptied himself and took upon him the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of man and being found in the form of man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death, even the death of the cross. Never at any point did Jesus cease being God, but he willingly submitted to being human, accepting the limitations of humanity, right? He was born, he grew, he learned. You get this, the holy creator God who spoke this world into existence with nothing more than the sound of his voice submitted to being human so that he had to learn to speak, right? He made the sun, moon and stars. And then as a child sits in Mary and Joseph's lap and has taught the words, sun, moon, stars. This isn't something that we can comprehend fully. Every step of the way is perfectly human. There's no pretense there. It's all real. And so remember that when we come to the end of the gospel story, when they arrest Jesus and they beat him and they nail him to a cross, all of that is real. Every bit of the torture and pain he felt just like you and I would feel. And the reality is if we're believers in him, what we know is that he didn't just feel it the way we would. He felt it for us. He took what we should have experienced. He bore the wrath of God on our sin. He stepped into humanity and took the place of those he came to save. Don't overlook this magnificent man, perfect human, submitting to the work of bringing glory to the Father, even if it required Him pouring Himself out over a full night of healing and teaching to the point of absolute exhaustion. We want to be in the boat with Jesus because there is no other man like Him. He is perfectly human, and just in case you're sitting there thinking, well, but what about the other side of it? Isn't he God? Oh yeah, stick around till this story's done. Second, we need to be on the boat with Jesus because he has sovereign power. I just want you to sort of visualize this day for a minute, to get an idea of the predicament that the disciples find themselves in. This boat is probably a common fishing boat. They would typically be enough to hold about 10 to 15 people if it has all of the nets and tackle in the boat. You know from other stories in the Gospels that a really good catch of fish is enough to threaten to capsize a boat like this. It's probably a row boat. Contrary to whatever really awesome paintings you've seen of this scene, it's highly unlikely this boat had a sail. You know, and you think, well, they're going to the other side of the sea, but this sea is not an ocean. This sea is a big lake. It's the Sea of Galilee. It's about 13 miles long and about eight miles wide. And when Jesus says, let's go to the other side, it doesn't have to mean the exact opposite side. It just means to a different shore. In fact, in the next section, we'll find that they pull up on shore about five miles away from where they left. You can row that. You can row that. I'm not volunteering. The trip, though, is not. Instantaneous, right? It might also help you to picture this to know that the Sea of Galilee is about 700 feet below the level of the Mediterranean Sea. And so there is the Sea of Galilee that's a big lake that's really low down, and there is a large mountain range to one side of it that dominates its weather patterns. Today, just, you know, pull out our iPhone, check the weather app, see what the forecast is. But in their day, they had to keep an eye on those mountain peaks because whatever weather is coming over those mountains, it's going to hit them quick. And so they get out onto the water and over the mountains comes this storm like they've never seen before. And the winds rush down the mountains and through the mountain passes and into the sea and it causes this sudden dramatic storm. Now, many of Jesus' disciples were fishermen. They had basically grown up on boats like this, on that sea, seeing those kinds of storms, but nothing like this storm. Matthew depicts this as more than just sudden, it's also incredibly violent. He uses the term great tempest and the Greek word there is seismos. It's what we use for seismic to describe earthquakes nowadays. So there's heavy winds, there's the shaking of waters. Mark's gospel says the waves beat into the ship. Luke, as he wrote this, talks about the boat being filled with water. Matthew says here in our text that the boat was covered with the waves. And so seeing no alternative and no other hope, verse 25 says his disciples came to him and awoke him saying, Lord, save us, we're perishing. And he said to them, why are you fearful, O you of little faith? Then he arose and rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm. Mark's gospel, as he records this, the disciples come to Jesus shouting at him, Master, don't you care that we're perishing? Yes, He cares. That's why He's on the boat. That's why He's come into the world. That's why He's put you on the boat with Him, right? The Son of God, the perfect man has come into the world so that we don't eternally perish, but that we can have everlasting life. These disciples of Jesus, they know Him. They should know that He cares. They should know that He provides. Now, let's just press pause on this for a second, and I want you to rewind in your minds to the last text last week. We saw Jesus's interaction with those two different men, right? As the disciples get loaded into the boat, one man comes to Jesus, he is a scribe, and he says, Master, I will follow you wherever you go. I want in the boat. And Jesus, knowing the man's not really committed, not ready for what lies ahead, turns him away. Meanwhile, there's another man who is a disciple. We don't know his name, but he is proclaimed to be a disciple of Jesus, and yet he doesn't want to get in the boat. He hesitates because, well, I've got some business that I have to attend to back home. I can't help but think that as this storm comes and hits the boat, it's not just so localized that it's not hitting the shore too. I suspect both of those men that morning are looking out at the sea and they're thinking, man, I'm glad I didn't get in the boat. The scribe knew he wasn't really committed. Ultimately, I think the unnamed disciple missed a magnificent opportunity to have his faith in Jesus confirmed in an extraordinary way. But both of those men, I don't know what their ultimate position in Jesus was at the end of their life. I don't know whether this moment they are both in heaven or in hell or ones in each place. I simply don't know. But what I can say with some confidence is that doubtless, if you were to ask them today about that day, their perspective has changed and they would assure you It is better to be on the boat in the raging storm with Jesus than to be on the shore without Him. And so get this, the disciples are convinced they're in the boat. Things could not get any worse than what they are when in reality there is no place that could be any better than to be in the storm with Jesus. You would be hard pressed to convince them of that in the moment, I'm sure. But it's true. Meanwhile, the collective answer, their collective call to Jesus is evidence of their lack of confidence and trust in his word. And this is easy for me to say. For one reason, it's fairly dry up here. You know, the floor is not shaking underneath my feet. So I know to some extent critiquing the disciples on occasions like this is really, you know, criticizing from the cheap seats. But let me try to make the criticism as simple as possible. Up in verse 18, Jesus gave a command to his disciples to get in the boat because we're going to the other side. And when Jesus says he's taking you to the other side, you're not gonna drown halfway. Now, it might seem harsh to try to make it as simple as that and criticize them, but that's the only reasonable implication of Jesus's answer when they come to him pleading, save us, we're perishing. His answer is, why are you fearful, O you of little faith? Think about this. Why are we fearful? Like, man, do you see the storm going on? But when Jesus adds, you of little faith, that is a telling addition. Most frequently, Jesus uses this quote very often, this kind of phrase, and usually he's using it at a time when the disciples are focused on what is immediate instead of being focused on what's eternal. When your worldview gets so obscured by the immediate circumstances around you that you react to those in a way that ignores what you know to be eternally true, Jesus describes that as expressing little faith. Now I do want to dispel some bad ideas about that statement. This phrase, you of little faith, is not suggesting that their position as disciples hinges on whether or not they have enough faith in Jesus. Let's not forget, they're disciples. They are in the boat, right? Your salvation, your position as a disciple of Jesus is not about whether or not your faith is big enough or your faith is good enough. You're saved because your faith is in Jesus and he's good enough. Even a little faith aimed at the right source gets you the whole Jesus. And so if our eternal hopes are in the quality or the quantity of our faith, we don't have any hope because we're all too fickle, we're too fragile, we're too unstable. But our eternal hope is in the object of our faith, Jesus Christ, God's son. The question in the boat that day is whether they were going to live as an expression of that faith. What this display of little faith on their part does is hamper the disciples' ability to live confidently in the power and authority of Jesus to accomplish his good purposes. Jesus gives them a subtle scolding here. And then, after giving them that scolding, he mercifully reaffirms that he is the only worthwhile object of faith by putting his sovereign power and authority on display. Matthew says, he arose and rebuked the winds and the sea and there was great calm. Mark's gospel gives the most well-known record of this moment. We just sang about it a minute ago. Jesus stands up in the boat and says, peace, be still, literally, be silent, be muzzled, zip it. And like an angry dog rendered powerless and reduced to a whimper at the voice of its master, the raging storm obeys the voice of Jesus. Y'all, that is divine power. I want you to feel free to try this sometime. The next time a thunderstorm rolls in, step out on your porch, look up, try telling it to shut up. Go ahead and do that and see how puny you feel as a result. But not only does Jesus have the boldness that it takes to speak to the storm and the power to silence its strength, the miracle here is even more than I think what we tend to look at as obvious. The sea and the storm answer at the end of verse 26 with a great calm. I looked this up in Greek so I can tell you what it really means. Are you ready? Great calm. But let's just take a moment to think about the oddness of putting those two words together. Right? Calm. Stillness. Serenity. Tranquility. But great is the Hebrew word megos. It just sounds big, right? It means huge, massive, tremendous. And so Jesus spoke to the storm and instantly there was this enormous nothingness. No churning leftovers of storm, no like ripples on the sea slowly dying out. There is unnatural calm. Matthew's not saying everything went back to normal. He's saying as much as the storm was not normal, when Jesus spoke, there was calm that was not normal. The Lord of the wind and the waves can make serenity extraordinary. So we wanna be on the boat with Jesus because He's the perfect man. We wanna be on the boat with Jesus because He has sovereign power. Third, we wanna be on the boat with Jesus because He is the creator God. If you could have been there, If you could have seen the severe storm switch to supernatural serenity, what would you have been thinking? Well, verse 27 says, the men marveled saying, who can this be that even the winds and the sea obey him? Now they already know, they believe they're disciples. Jesus is the promised Messiah. They believe he is their hope of salvation. They believe he has the authority to command them to get into the boat and to go into the storm. But it seems like it's just starting to dawn on them that there is even more to Jesus than meets the eye. Now, let that be a comfort to you, whether you are a believer or just a potential believer. Being a disciple of Jesus does not mean that you've got everything all figured out. Part of the reason I used that fun term, hypostatic union, earlier is in order to try to make this point, you don't have to know that term. You don't have to grasp all the implications of that concept in order to be a disciple of Jesus, right? If you, I mean, the sea's calm now, so if you could be there and give the guys on the boat a number two pencil and a theological exam and even permission to cheat by talking to each other, they're not gonna get all the answers right. and yet they're still his disciples. You don't have to know everything to be a disciple of Jesus. You can almost see this in the way that they react, right? We don't know everything. We're puzzled by this. What kind of man is this? I'm glad you don't have to know everything to be a disciple of Jesus because none of us know everything. Now, every disciple should be learning and growing through experience, through the guidance of the Holy Spirit, through the looking into God's word. This whole section of Matthew's gospel is here to teach the reader about the power and authority of Jesus. And he's doing it now in a way to say, look, here's how the disciples started to really grasp the power and authority of Jesus. It's like there is a collective light bulb going on over this boat full of disciples. They're asking the question, who can this be? Or what kind of man is this that the wind and sea obey him? There is only one reasonable and biblical answer to that question, and they know it. The Lord alone has ultimate authority over the wind and the waves. This morning in the first service, we looked at Psalm 107. It is written to encourage thankful praise to God, and one of the sections of that psalm almost seems written as a description of the disciples' situation. It describes God raising a storm, the terror of the people who were enduring that storm on the sea, and God's merciful power to calm the storm. This is part of a song that all the disciples would have sung many times in their life. Here's what it says, Psalm 107, 23 through 30. Those who go down to the ships on the sea, who do business on the great waters, they see the works of the Lord and his wonders in the deep. For he commands and raises the stormy wind, which lifts the waves out of the sea. They mount up to the heavens. They go down again to the depths. Their souls melt because of the trouble. They reel to and fro and stagger like drunken men. They're at their wits end. And they cry out to the Lord in their trouble. And He brings them out of their distresses. He calms the sea so that its waves are still. And they are glad when they're quiet. And so He guides them to their desired harbor. Though they had seen Jesus as a man laying down for a nap in the back of the boat when the storm was stilled, the disciples are filled with faith and fear because they begin to understand that they are looking at God standing up in the back of the boat to address the storm. And the beauty of this scene is really more than, is something that we can relay. The very moment that they came to understand the nature of Jesus, they are at that moment surrounded by this perfect, supernatural, disquieting calm. What do you make of that? He is completely and fully human. He is completely and fully God. He has all power and authority. Now the disciples should have already learned that lesson already having, you know, witnessed the work of Jesus and heard his teaching and seen his behavior, right? They'd heard him speak with the authority of God in the Sermon on the Mount. They saw him work the power of God and healing miracles. Right, they heard him state his intention to take them to the other side. They've seen his ability and authority. They've witnessed his compassion and his mercy. The lesson here from this text, it's not just simply, you know, Jesus can calm the storms of your life. The lesson is if you really know who Jesus is, if you really love him and trust him, that storm is nothing compared to him. You'll get in the boat headed into the storm because you know the storm was created by Jesus and to be with Him in the storm is to be better than on the shore without Him. This text isn't even about the big storm. It's not about the wind and the waves. It's all about Jesus who is the creator of the wind and the waves. He's the one who should grab our attention. He's the one who deserves our affection. He is God made human. And we've witnessed His compassion in healing the sick and the diseased. We've seen His ability and authority in all the things that He says and does. When we keep reading, we find His intention to save sinners by taking their place, absorbing the wrath of God on their sin. One perfect man in all of human history shed His blood and died on the cross. And then Jesus, still perfectly human, rises from the dead, ascends to heaven, so that right now the perfect man, the Son of God, is sitting at the right hand of the Heavenly Father. And that man is coming back. He's going to return to earth. And when he does, you know what his character is going to be? Fully human, fully God. His feet are gonna touch down at the top of the Mount of Olives. That mountain is gonna obey Him as it splits in two. The winds will obey Him. The sea is still gonna obey Him. Every facet of creation will obey His voice because He is the very Creator who spoke them into existence with that voice. The whole world will obey Him. So will you obey Him today? living your life by faith, by confidence and trust in Him alone. This is His command to you. God commands all men everywhere to repent of their sins and trust Jesus to commit their life to follow Him, to metaphorically get in the boat with Him so that you're never separated from Him. You're going to be with Him forever. Knowing that He alone can save you from the wrath of God, you deserve for your sin. That's what you should do today. Turn from your sin. Believe Jesus. Live by faith that He is perfectly and fully human. He is perfectly and fully God. All power and authority belong to Him. If even the winds and the waves obey Him, who are you to disobey?