The Ghost on the Sea

6 · The pastor signals the first major division of the sermon: Jesus is not who we think

So, first point today is not who we think.

7 · The pastor provides narrative context: the passage follows the feeding miracle (preached the previous week)

Now, this story happens right after the passage that Vince preached on last week about Jesus feeding this giant crowd of people miraculously, right? And Jesus' popularity obviously skyrockets when people realize he can make, you know, multiple thousand-person meals at the wave of his hand. And so the crowd is pressing in, the crowd's in an uproar, and Jesus knows I mean, this isn't healthy. We need to get away. We need to spend time with the Lord. And so he takes his disciples, they've been ministering all day, and he tells them to go across the water where they can get rest away from the crowd. And so it's late, they're tired, but they trust Jesus.

They trust Jesus enough to get in the boat, even when Jesus says, "Oh, this time I'm not gonna go with you." And they say, "Well, okay." So Jesus stays, he prays alone, he sends his disciples over the lake.

8 · The pastor establishes that Jesus intentionally sent the disciples into the storm—a divine act of discipleship, not neglect

And it's important to remember that the disciples, when they encounter these difficulties, they would remember that Jesus had sent them into the difficulties, right? They would know, they know enough about Jesus to know, he should have known, he probably did. Why is he sending us out into the middle of the lake when a storm is coming? Is Jesus really the kind of person that would send us into a storm? Sometimes we don't have a category for that, and the answer in the passage is yes, Jesus sometimes is the kind of person that sends us into a storm. Here's what I want us to just get in this sub-point here. Jesus' goal for our lives and for the disciples' lives is not that we would have a safe, warm, pain-free life. That is usually our goal for our life, right? Like, what's your main goal in life?

We may have lots of goals, but really our goal is we want to stay safe, warm, and pain-free. Pain-free as much as possible. But that is not Jesus' goal for us. In fact, Jesus, as we're gonna see in this passage, his goal is something else altogether. Jesus is discipling his disciples.

And what he's doing in this passage is revealing their hearts and showing them his glory. Sometimes when we encounter storms in life, we encounter them And we take, well, if there's a storm, then Jesus must not love me. No, maybe Jesus loves us in a better, deeper way than we imagine. Maybe he intends to do something deeper than keep us pain-free and dry.

9 · The pastor unpacks the physical geography and timing of the storm: the disciples are blown off course into deeper water, their short journey becomes an hours-long ordeal, and by 3-6 a

Then we read this. They saw that they were making headway painfully, for the wind was against them. And so what's happening here is the journey across the sea here should have been relatively short. So you imagine like a teardrop-shaped lake here or body of water. They're meant to cut across the short way in a sense, but they get blown south into, like, deeper into the water. So as the water is, I mean, as the storm is pushing them, it's not just pushing them away from the shore, it's pushing them further into deep water.

And so that's why they should have gotten across the lake, but they're still hours later still trying to make it to shore. And about the fourth watch of the night, he came to them walking on the sea. He meant to pass by them, but when they saw him walking on the sea, they thought it was a ghost.

10 · The pastor probes the disciples' misidentification of Jesus as a ghost

Now, my first reaction here is like, come on, guys, who else do you know that walks around on water and does stuff like that? Like, anybody, anybody that you might know that has miraculous abilities that might be out on the water? Immediately, no, they say, no, it's a ghost. Why? Well, remember, they've been out here for hours, they're tired, they're exhausted, and the fourth watch is between 3:00 and 6:00 a.m., right? So 4:00 a.m., 5:00 a.m., like 4:00 a.m., nothing good happens. You're not having any good thoughts at 4:00 a.m. And so they see this person coming and they think the only way this situation could get worse is if we were now gonna be attacked by a ghost, a phantasma in the Greek, a phantom.

They've seen Jesus heal people, they've seen him do miracles, but they don't think, "Oh, this must be Jesus." Why? Why don't they think this must be Jesus? Well, what they really think about Jesus gets revealed. They underestimated Jesus. They thought Jesus was lower than he actually is.

Maybe they thought he could quiet a storm, but could he really so rule over creation that every wave, every drop of water was under his command? Is that really how far his power extends? Or maybe they thought, this might be Jesus, but it can't be Jesus because he would never do something like this. If he truly was that powerful and if he was truly out on the water with us, he would stop this storm immediately, right? This can't be Jesus because the way he's using his power is not the way that I think he would use his power, so it must not be him.

11 · The pastor unlocks the phrase 'he meant to pass by them' by connecting it to theophanic passages in Exodus 33 (Moses) and 1 Kings 19 (Elijah), where God 'passes by' to reveal his glory

Now, for us to find the answer to this dilemma, we got to dig into a weird part of the text in verse 48. Maybe you caught this and you thought, "This is a little odd," because it says, "He meant to pass by them." Does that strike anybody else as being a little weird? Like, he meant to what? It doesn't say he meant to go to them or he meant to help them. It says he meant to pass by them, and you're thinking, "That doesn't make any sense." And in fact, some of the commentators try to help the text out here and say, well, you know, it could possibly, if you stretch it, mean he was passing by.

But the actual language, the Greek, is in a statement of intent. He intended, he purposed to pass them by. So why would Jesus do that? Well, actually, that phrase, passing by them or pass them by, is actually a quotation, a near quotation of the Greek Old Testament. So if you compared those two, they'd be almost exactly parallel.

And here's the first place that phrase occurs. Exodus 33, Moses said, "Let me, please, let me see your glory." But God said, "You cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live." And the Lord said, "Behold, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock." And while my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back, though my face shall not be seen. And then again in 1 Kings 19:11, where God tells Elijah, go out and stand on the mountain in the Lord's presence. And it says, "And at that moment, the Lord passed by." That parallel is intentional because, remember, Mark's Gospel is based on the Apostle Peter's recollections.

So Peter, retelling this story to Mark, probably realizes or grasps what he did not grasp when it was occurring in the moment. Peter now sees that similar to God's glory being revealed to Moses, And God's glory being revealed to Elijah, Jesus intended to reveal his glory to the disciples. Jesus knew that the disciples did not get who he was yet. So he intended to pass by them to give them a glimpse of the glory of God. Jesus is revealing himself, not just as a good teacher, not just as a miracle worker, but something utterly greater and stranger and more impossible at first to understand.

12 · The pastor traces the Old Testament theme of God as the wave-walker, citing Job 9:8 (God 'trampled the waves of the sea') and Job 38:16 (only God has 'walked the recesses of the deep')

What is he revealing his glory in? Well, Jesus knows that the disciples, they are familiar with the Old Testament. And there's a theme in the Old Testament that God's power is pictured in multiple places as being a God who walks the waves. That's how God describes himself. In fact, in Job chapter 9, 9, as he who alone stretched out the heavens and trampled the waves of the sea.

In that chapter, there's all this creation stuff going on, and God is pictured as creating, as throwing out the stars as he walks the waves, because only God can do that. Only God can do that. Later, when God responds to Job, when he says, you know, "Dress for action like a man. I will respond to you." and Job is essentially put in his place as he beholds the glory of God, God asks Job this question, "Have you entered into the springs of the sea or walked the recesses of the deep?" What Jesus is doing is showing his disciples, I'm not just a teacher, I'm not just a miracle worker, I am God himself, the God of Job 9, the God of Job 28, the God of the Old Testament. I walk the waves.

I am God himself.

13 · The pastor unpacks Jesus' self-identification as 'I am' (ego eimi), connecting it to the divine name revealed to Moses in Exodus 3 and the prophesied self-disclosure in Isaiah 52

And this is all made even more explicit when Jesus does something strange before he calms the storm. So imagine Jesus is there, he's approaching, and what does he say to the disciples as he gets into the boat? He immediately says this. He says, "Take heart, it is I." "do not be afraid." He says, "Don't be afraid." Why don't be afraid?

"It is I." The phrase is literally, "I am," ego eimi. He's saying, "This is who I am. I am the great I am of Exodus 3." When Moses encounters the Lord in the burning bush, what name does the Lord give him? "I am." The name I Am means that there's nothing, I'm not like anything. I'm not kind of similar to anything.

I'm not, I don't need anything from creation. I rule over creation. There is no parallel. There is no substitute. There is no similar.

I Am, that is what he says in Exodus. And in fact, in Isaiah 52, in a section about the coming Messiah and the last days being inaugurated, It says this, "Therefore my people shall know my name. Therefore in that day they shall know that it is I who speak, 'Here I am.'" What is Jesus doing in this moment, passing by the disciples, saying what he's saying, doing what he's doing? All of it is meant to reveal the glory of the incarnate Son of God as the great I Am. Not a rabbi, not a teacher, not a social justice activist, not a political revolutionary, but something far greater, the great I Am, the wave walker, the sea ruler.

This is what the disciples are missing in this moment. This God is transcendent and over and above all creation, and yet he walks to them in the flesh, in the person of Jesus. Transcendence and immanence Together in the person of Jesus.

14 · The pastor applies the disciples' mistake to the congregation: like the disciples, we allow storms to shrink our view of Jesus rather than expand it

So what does that mean for us? Well, we can be just like the disciples so often. Our circumstances have the effect of shrinking our view of Jesus. When we encounter a storm, our first thought is, oh, wow, this storm makes me see the power of God himself. No, our first storm is, well, God, what if God's out of control? What if he can't really control this? What if he's not going to help me?

What if I don't know him like I thought I did? We begin to think, "Oh, Jesus must not be that powerful. He can't be that powerful to control all these things." And yet passages like this help us. They lift our eyes. They see, instead of shrinking our view of Jesus, it actually should expand our view of Jesus.

It should make us see, man, sometimes the Lord calms the storms and sometimes he governs every wave for the revelation of his glory in our lives. We say, "Jesus would never work like this. Jesus would never do that. He'd never send this. He'd never allow this." But that is us putting Jesus in our box of who he is, and he refuses to stay there.

In reality, our hard circumstances are most often where Jesus does the greatest revelation of his glory in our lives. It is when we feel waves and feel the salt in our eyes and our backs are straining at the oars and we catch a glimpse of an undiminished, undeterred, immovable Jesus on the waves that we truly understand who he is.

15 · The pastor names specific contemporary struggles (pandemic, health issues, broken relationships, spiritual dryness, depression) and connects them to the original context of Mark's Gospel—a church facing rising persecution

Look, maybe this year you've struggled with thinking things like, "God wouldn't allow blank in a pandemic. God wouldn't allow this. He wouldn't use this. He wouldn't send this." Whether it's a pandemic or a long-term health issue or a broken relationship or a time of spiritual dryness, or a bout with depression, we think these things must mean that Jesus is not as powerful as I thought. But remember the context of the Gospel of Mark. Remember what Mark and Peter are doing to encourage the church. This is a time of persecution, of rising persecution in the church. They would have been tempted to feel the same things.

Well, if Jesus is really powerful, then we wouldn't be experiencing this persecution. If Jesus is really powerful, we would be getting more popular, not less popular. If Jesus is powerful, our businesses would be booming, not shrinking as people don't want to buy from us. But, as we see in the book of Acts, what if that persecution is actually what God uses to cause the church to spread and flourish in the first century and to take the gospel from one end of the empire to the other? What if he's not just the God of the calm, but the God of the waves, the waves that push us to where he intends for us to go?

16 · The pastor offers a contemporary illustration: a missionary supported by the church (JP in India) who could not break through to an unreachable village until the pandemic created an opening through food distribution

Is so much bigger than we thought. This is where I'm so helped by things in the middle of the pandemic, like our friend JP at this small, out of the way village in India that you think, man, no missionary agency's targeting this village. And it just seemed like impossible for the gospel to break into this village. And through the pandemic, God opens the doors as our church sends money and he distributes food. And all of a sudden, people who would never even talk people who talk to him or look at him on the street are greeting him with Christian greetings, wanting to know more about Jesus?

What if God is not just the God of the calm, but the God of the waves? What if God uses pandemics to open people's hearts to the gospel to save their eternal souls, right? This is the God that we have. What if he is so much greater and bigger? What if he's so much more in control than we imagine?

17 · The pastor returns to Jesus' words from the text and applies them directly to the congregation: when waves come, do not fear—you know the wave-walker, the storm king, the ruler of the waves

This is where we hear Jesus' words, Heart. It is I. I am. Do not be afraid. When the waves come and the winds come, rather than fearing, we should remember we know the wave walker. We know the storm king.

We know the one who rules the waves.

18 · The pastor signals the second major division of the sermon: Jesus is not where we think

Second point, not where we think. He's not what we think, but he's also not where— or not who we think. He's also not where we think.

19 · The pastor addresses the question of Jesus' perceived distance

The other puzzling circumstance of the text is that Jesus doesn't get into the boat with them. He allows them to be distant from him, in a sense. We can ask the same thing in hard circumstances. We can say, "Where is Jesus? Man, if Jesus really cared about us, if he knew this was going to happen, he would be in the boat with us, right? Where is he?" Now, the first thing to notice here is that they're never out of Jesus' sight or out of Jesus' care.

It's not like Jesus is, you know, praying and he's like, "Yeah, whatever happens to them happens." He's mindful of them. He's looking for them. It's not like he happens to see them in the waves. He sees them. He sees them in the waves.

They haven't escaped his notice. You, Christian, have not escaped his notice today. Now, you might say, "Well, if Jesus really wanted to help the disciples, why didn't he just calm the storm from up on the mountain and then walk over?" Remember, he intends to show them his glory in this powerful, unique way. Right? That is a divine kindness.

What Jesus knows is this: what are these disciples going to need in a decade or two decades as persecution is bearing down on them? When the waves are not just, you know, water, but swords and persecution and hardship, what do they need? They need to see a God who rules the waves. So he intends to show them that God.

Now, he knows that. He comes near to them. He draws near to bring this lesson to him. He draws near that they might see him and find courage, right? Sometimes when we're in the middle of, you know, floundering in the winds and waves, sometimes it is God's kindness that he comes near to us and we have this sense of, oh, he's right there.

He hasn't left. We haven't escaped his care. He's right there with us.

20 · The pastor unpacks the climactic moment: despite the disciples' terror and lack of faith, Jesus gets into the boat with them

But here's how they respond, verse 50, "For they all saw him and were terrified. But immediately he spoke to them and said, 'Take heart, it is I. Do not be afraid.'" And then verse 51 is, I think, the most surprising part of the text, "And he got into the boat with them." Right? These guys, man, What else could Jesus do to display his glory to these disciples to get them to trust him? I mean, he's calmed storms in an instant, he's fed crowds, he's cast out demons, he's taken on a legion of demons single-handedly, he's brought people back from the dead. I mean, this is just, this is insane. And they respond to Jesus with terror, not with faith.

But how does Jesus respond to them, and he got into the boat with them.

Oh, church, Jesus draws near even to the doubters, even to the faithless, even to the people too thick to get the lesson right in front of them. This is who Jesus is, the Savior who seeks and the Savior who approaches doubters and sinners and gets into the boat with them, right? This truly is the deity and character of Jesus on full display, his transcendence and his imminence fully meeting, the God high above all things, and yet the God also getting into the boat with them, fully God and yet fully human, fully Mary's son with his calloused hands, with his carpenter hands climbing into the boat, putting his hand on their shoulder.

21 · The pastor lifts the moment to a biblical-theological climax: Jesus getting into the boat is a picture of the entire biblical narrative

In this moment, we see a picture of all of Jesus' ministry. This is, in a sense, an encapsulation of the whole story of the Bible. The story of humanity is the story of God revealing his glory to humanity, and yet humanity turning away. And yet, instead of abandoning these people, instead of abandoning humanity altogether, God draws near to his people. He draws near to them in a flaming bush, in a pillar of fire on Mount Sinai. He draws near in a tabernacle. He dwells in the midst of them.

In a temple, he dwells in the midst of them. And yet, what do God's people do? They still turn away. They still run from him. So God draws even nearer.

What is the incarnation of the Son of God but God getting into the boat with us? Rather than turning away from us, he climbs in. And on the cross, on the cross, he goes even further. See, often in Scripture, storms are a metaphor for the wrath or judgment of God.

And yet this picture is that when Jesus comes near to us, the judgment of God ceases. Now, how does that happen? It happens because as Jesus hangs on the cross, what's the weather around him? It's dark. It is stormy.

It is full of wrath and justice that he is bearing in the place of sinners and doubters and people like you and me. And yet he drains the wrath of God He drains the angry sea, as it were, to its last drop to bring calm and peace to all who will come and believe in him.

22 · The pastor applies the truth of Jesus' nearness: when we feel distant from God in storms, the opposite is true—God often draws nearest in the storm

But just like the disciples, when the waves and winds come, we can begin to think, "Oh, God is distant. God is far away." But this text shows us, no, the opposite is true. It is often through those times that God draws the nearest to us. It is often through the winds and waves that God comes to us. It is in the midst of the sea salt air biting our faces that we look to find Jesus and look to see a God who knows every pitch of the boat, every blast of the air, every wave of the sea, and who truly does understand.

And it is through the winds and the waves that we see the cross, see that this storm of our own making "Could be endless, and yet in Christ it is but a moment and then calm forever."

23 · The pastor illustrates God's nearness in suffering through Tim Keller's experience with pancreatic cancer during quarantine

Listen, I was listening recently to an interview with a pastor named Tim Keller who, you guys may be familiar with some of his books. He's got some good stuff. Don't agree with everything, but seems like a guy that really loves the Lord. And I was listening to an interview with him where he was diagnosed last year with pancreatic cancer. And so if you know anything about pancreatic cancer, that's one of the ones that you don't come back from very often, if at all.

And so for the last year, he's been in quarantine, and not just been in quarantine, he's been in chemo quarantine. So his life is going to chemotherapy and going and sitting by himself, unable to see his family, with only his wife. And the interviewer asked him, "What is your biggest fear right now?" And I think the interviewer was intending to help humanize Keller and say, like, he has fears like everybody else. What are you afraid of? And Keller responded in this way that I just thought, man, that is so interesting.

He says this, my biggest fear is that if God heals me, that I would go back to having the same relationship with God I had before I was diagnosed. And the interviewer's like pushing on him, like, what do you mean? And he said, and you could feel almost like the The tears in his chest and his eyes when he said, "God feels so near to me." And he described how he cries, he and his wife cry probably every day, but in it they feel and know the presence of God in a way that they never have before.

24 · The pastor offers the sermon's second major theological synthesis: God sometimes calms storms, but sometimes he uses the waves themselves to draw us near to him

Sometimes, church, God calms the storm And sometimes he uses the waves to bring us to him. Charles Spurgeon once said, "I have learned to kiss the wave that throws me on the Rock of Ages."

25 · The pastor returns to the opening minivan illustration and draws the conclusion: the storm revealed what he truly trusted

So what do we say in conclusion? Where does this leave us? Well, here's where it leaves us. I trust my minivan much less today than I did yesterday. I trust the Subaru far more today than I did yesterday. And in the storms of life, what God means for us to do is to begin to trust him more today than we did before the waves began.

26 · The pastor gives the first concrete application: stay on your knees in prayer

The two quick applications here we see modeled in the text, we are to do two things faced with this reality. First, we are to stay on our knees. If the Lord means to reveal his glory and his care and his nearness to us, how do we draw near to him as he draws near to us? We stay on our knees, right? Jesus models this.

Jesus, the incarnate Son of God, what do we find him doing in this text? He is on his knees before the Father in communion. That is the— he's modeling for the disciples the posture that they should should have had in the storm, leaning into dependence on God, not self-reliance. Kent Hughes, a scholar and commentator, says this, and he shares the following story. He says, a famous Old Testament scholar of past years named George Adam Smith once climbed the Weisshorn above the Surmet Valley in Switzerland with his guide on a stormy day.

They made the ascent on the sheltered side, and when they reached the top, exhilarated by the thought of the view before him and the triumph of having attained the summit. But forgetting about the gale, Smith sprang to the top of the peak and was almost blown over the edge by the wind. His guide grabbed him and pulled him down and said, "On your knees. You are only safe here on your knees." Church, when the storms of life come, the safest place for us to be is on our knees, just like Jesus modeled, pressing in fellowship to him.

27 · The pastor gives the second concrete application: row and trust

And the second thing we should be doing is rowing and trusting. These disciples had to row and trust, row and trust. Jesus didn't stop the storm, and so while he chooses not to stop the storm, we continue to row and and trust. And again, Kent Hughes ends— I'll end with this from him. He says, Jesus calls all of us who are in the boat to follow his course. Today, with eyes wide open, will you commit yourself to sailing where he directs?

Will you commit yourself to following him when the inevitable storms come? Those who keep their lives pointed in the direction that Christ dictates will encounter contrary winds. But, and I love this, they will also experience the wind of the Holy Spirit in their sails bearing them on in power, healing, and blessing to a needy world. In the storm, we see that Jesus is so much higher than we ever thought, so much more exalted and glorious than we ever thought. But also so much nearer.

Let's trust him. Amen.

28 · The pastor closes in prayer, asking God to make his nearness tangible to those in storms and praying that the congregation would behold Christ's glory and stability more clearly through the chaos around them

All right, let's, let's pray. Father, we thank you today that as we encounter the storms of life, you are not distant from us. You are not removed and uncaring in your posture toward us. You climb into the boat with us. So I pray for anybody today going through the storms of life, God, that right now, whether they're on their couch or in this room, that they would feel in a tangible way through the Spirit's work, you climbing into the boat with them. If they have felt like storm-tossed on the seas of life all alone, not knowing what will happen, I pray that today they would sense your nearness with them. And I also pray, God, that in the storms of life we would behold what we're meant to behold, we would behold our glory, that as we see the instability of the world around us, we begin to love and rejoice all the more in the stability of Christ our Savior. As we see the storms around us, the chaos around us, we would learn to love and behold all the more the sure and steady Savior walking toward us.

Would you do this in your name, we pray. Amen.

Church, let's stand and sing about