Luke 8:22-25

Transcript

00:00:00:25 – 00:00:27:34
Clint Loveall
Hey, friends, thanks for joining us. Happy Tuesday. Appreciate you being with us As we continue our way through the gospel of Luke. Today, we have I think, a story that is probably familiar if if again, if you’ve been in church, if you’ve spent some time with the gospels, I think this is one of those stories that it kind of speaks to people, though again, Luke gives us a relatively condensed version of it.

00:00:27:34 – 00:00:45:07
Clint Loveall
Not. Not anything specifically different necessarily than other gospels, but let’s look at it and then we’ll try to unpack it a little bit. One day he got into a boat with his disciples. He said to them, Let’s go across to the other side of the lake. So they put out and while they were selling sailing, he fell asleep.

00:00:45:12 – 00:01:10:37
Clint Loveall
A windstorm swept down on the lakes and the boat was filling with water and they were in danger. They went to him and woke him up shouting, Master, master, we’re perishing. And he woke up and rebuked the wind and the raging waves. And they ceased. And there was a calm. And he said to them, Where is your faith?

00:01:10:42 – 00:01:40:04
Clint Loveall
They were afraid and amazed and said to one another, Who then is this that he commands? Even the winds and the waves, and they obey him. I think, Michael, I think this is one of those stories that’s memorable because it’s just so it’s kind of visual, maybe even visceral. The idea of it other in other versions, this is at night, but here we don’t get told that.

00:01:40:04 – 00:02:06:36
Clint Loveall
We’re just so. The idea of being in a boat, I mean, this is obviously a serious situation. The boat is filling with water. That’s just not some waves in rough seas. I mean, that’s that’s dangerous. And and the contrast of of the panic that would ensue and Jesus sleeping Jesus, you know, sort of unaware of all of it.

00:02:06:41 – 00:02:16:43
Clint Loveall
I don’t know what it is, but I think this is one of those stories that sticks in people’s memory. I just I think it’s very vivid and probably a lot of people know it.

00:02:16:48 – 00:02:37:58
Michael Gewecke
And I think there’s a number of stories that are very famous and well-remembered stories of Jesus that happened on water. I think we think of this story where Jesus calms the storm. I think we also think of the story where Peter walks on water as another significant story. I think in the gospel of Mark, it’s a very significant story when Jesus walks on water to the boat.

00:02:38:11 – 00:03:19:06
Michael Gewecke
All of these are moments and places where Jesus is proving His Lordship, because in the culture of certainly Galilee, in the fishing region and in anyone who has experience professionally on water, water is a very tumultuous, very uncontrolled place. And so even in the ancient mind, it’s a place where the human is very subject to the wind, the waves, the things happening there and here Jesus, as he is in this boat, in the midst of this storm, though his body is subject to the storm.

00:03:19:06 – 00:03:45:57
Michael Gewecke
He’s in the boat with the rest. As this is happening. He’s not troubled by it. And Luke is, as Luke does so often, doing an incredible job of framing this for us. And we learn the lesson here if we are willing to make it all the way to the end verse. I believe this is 25. The disciples are afraid and amazed, and then they say to one another a question they ask Who then is this that he commands?

00:03:45:57 – 00:04:10:28
Michael Gewecke
Even the winds and the water, and they obey him. That is the question. Who is it that has control over the winds and the waves? Who has that kind of power? There’s almost a sense in which we’ve encountered the miraculous healing power of Jesus. We’ve seen the miraculous feeding power of Jesus. We’ve seen Jesus’s omniscience, his ability to know what other people are thinking and his ability to teach.

00:04:10:33 – 00:04:33:39
Michael Gewecke
But here, even the waves, even the great deep sea, the thing that no one has control over but creator alone, Jesus exercises control over it. And this is going to be followed up by the following story. So make sure to stay tuned for that. But this is increasing our awareness as reader of the extent of Jesus’s power. And as you can tell, it’s extensive.

00:04:33:39 – 00:04:37:19
Michael Gewecke
It’s beyond what we might have initially imagined.

00:04:37:24 – 00:05:04:10
Clint Loveall
I think maybe another thing that makes this memorable is that Jesus confronts the disciples. You know, Where is your faith? Seems a little harsh. There are times that it seems to us that maybe Jesus is a little hard on the the people who follow him. But where is your faith? Interesting. In the Scripture, wherever there’s fear, faith is pushed out.

00:05:04:19 – 00:05:31:30
Clint Loveall
Fear and faith are kind of mortal enemies. And they they wrestle for control of people. And yet, in that very next sentence, Luke says, they were afraid and amazed. So there are experience of Jesus. You know, they started afraid of the storm, but now they’re unsettled by not knowing who Jesus is, by not understanding who Jesus is, who is this?

00:05:31:35 – 00:06:03:09
Clint Loveall
And and their fear now takes on a little bit more of the sense of awe. They were in awe and they were amazed, but they are equally unsettled, I think is the interesting point here. And this is one of those passages, Michael, I think it lends itself really well to devotional reading because you can talk about the temptation of the disciples is to think Jesus needs to join them in their fear rather than they joining Jesus in his faith.

00:06:03:14 – 00:06:37:32
Clint Loveall
And I think there’s lots of jumping off places here about what are the storms in our life, what are we afraid of? What don’t we think Jesus is concerned enough about the idea of feeling like your boat is being swamped? I mean, there are people who live through those experiences and wrestle with those experiences constantly. And this story is a we want to picture Jesus saying, you know, Oh, I yeah, I understand.

00:06:37:37 – 00:07:08:57
Clint Loveall
And that would be wonderful, except here instead he simply says, you know, What are you afraid of when I’m with you? Why are you afraid when I’m with you? And to make that obvious and evident to them, he stills the storm. And, you know, again, it would be wonderful if that was always the case. It would be wonderful if believing in Jesus meant the storms in our own life would all be taken care of.

00:07:09:01 – 00:07:30:18
Clint Loveall
It doesn’t always mean that, but it does always mean we have an invitation to understand something of the piece of Christ from the midst of them. And we should not forget, or at least we should always be amazed and remember the one who is in the boat with us.

00:07:30:23 – 00:08:13:17
Michael Gewecke
Yeah, who sleeping. And I think that’s part of the challenge that Luke is offering here is from the human eye. Jesus isn’t doing anything. Jesus is letting this happen. And they come to him and they say, Master, master, we’re perishing. We’re dying. They see this as an end of life experience. And Jesus, of course, is making the case as he goes that there is no ultimately, there is no perishing in Jesus, that He is the Lord, He’s the one in control, and some of that challenge of this story in the midst of trouble and tumult is to hear in the silence the Savior is with us.

00:08:13:17 – 00:08:42:54
Michael Gewecke
And I think that’s one of the things that makes this story so compelling to claim is just it. It brings together these things that might appear to be diametrically opposed, loud wind, quiet savior, terrified disciples, calm Jesus. It incorporates the the amazing ability for Jesus to be in control, and yet also for the disciples to see and be surprise.

00:08:42:54 – 00:09:12:41
Michael Gewecke
I just think that there’s this this series honestly, of of opposites that are held in tension in this story. And it’s told in a way that is incredibly graphic and relatable and understandable. You can imagine yourself in the boat. You can then easily imagine when that’s not a boat, but it’s a circumstance in your life and you have felt that out of control and this and you yourself has maybe even prayed, maybe not the word perishing, but you pray, God, I feel alone.

00:09:12:55 – 00:09:30:52
Michael Gewecke
I feel lost. I don’t know where you are and I don’t know what to do. We can, in those moments, directly relate to what those disciples experienced in that boat. And the story itself is leading us to Jesus to remind us, Well, just because he’s not yelled louder than the wind doesn’t mean that he’s not in the boat.

00:09:30:52 – 00:09:53:56
Michael Gewecke
And it doesn’t mean that his authority won’t hold you. That’s good news. But it’s also it’s a strange kind of good news. I mean, I think that Worthing, afraid and amazed is really a description of our own experience of Jesus when when Jesus shows up in those moments. And suddenly all that seemed wrong has been made right. We, too, I think, are afraid.

00:09:53:56 – 00:10:06:43
Michael Gewecke
How can this happen? And amazed at the fact that God can do it. And so so it’s a well-told story which obviously has a very deep and clear purpose, but I think it’s also incredibly relatable to your point claim.

00:10:06:54 – 00:10:33:46
Clint Loveall
Yeah, I just think this is one of those stories where there’s a lot here that speaks to our life. You know, again, it is. It’s a wonderful, beautiful gift when we face a storm of life and we find that it gets calmed, that the tests are negative and the person makes it through whatever it was. And we address the issues and those things go away.

00:10:33:46 – 00:11:00:36
Clint Loveall
And that’s those are amazing moments and we should be very grateful for them. I think what what this text invites us to is even a step beyond that to say that there is a calm for our spirits, even in the midst of storms, to see Jesus asleep, the disciples take in the other gospels. This is more clear. They say, Don’t you care that we’re perishing?

00:11:00:41 – 00:11:35:03
Clint Loveall
You know, here they just say we are perishing. But we take that. Sometimes we take the silence of Jesus as Jesus being unconcerned, as if Jesus didn’t care about our circumstances rather than an invitation to join Jesus in calmness, unsettledness. And that, you know, obviously friends, that’s much easier said than done. But I do think that’s one of the beautiful pictures of this passage.

00:11:35:07 – 00:11:57:40
Clint Loveall
Jesus isn’t always out there yelling at wind and waves. Sometimes Jesus is inviting the disciples to be calm. Internally, though we always hope for the former, we are invited to the latter as well. And I think Luke does a nice job of painting that picture.

00:11:57:45 – 00:12:20:57
Michael Gewecke
It’s a fascinating turn in the story because just yesterday in our previous study we were talking about who are the who are Jesus’s family and that it’s anyone who hears and does his work. And now we come to the story about the storm, this miraculous calming, this idea that you’re describing, Clint, of being able to have peace even in the midst of that adversity.

00:12:21:01 – 00:12:50:51
Michael Gewecke
And it’s fascinating. This final question, who then is this is what the disciples are asking. It’s going to move on. And as we continue the study, we’re going to come to Jesus casting the demon and there’s going to be another critical question asked, is that in this case, it’s going to be from this man. And I think that Luke is doing this beautiful thing he is giving us as he compiles this story and as he lays it out in this way, Jesus is now moving on.

00:12:50:56 – 00:13:14:27
Michael Gewecke
He’s answered the question, Who’s my family? Anyone who follows me. So he goes with those followers. They encounter this dangerous, nature driven saying a thing outside of their control. Jesus steals it. Then Jesus is going to meet the forces of evil themselves. He’s going to encounter a demon. And in that Jesus is going to exercise authority and I need to stop there before I run right into it.

00:13:14:27 – 00:13:38:49
Michael Gewecke
But I just think it’s worth noting here, Clint, there’s a kind of building that’s begun that Luke is building up our understanding of how great Jesus is. What is the extent of his authority, and how far is he able to take that authority and that it’s doing this incredible thing in the Book of Luke because Jesus is greater great or greater great or greater, more powerful than we imagined.

00:13:39:00 – 00:14:06:32
Michael Gewecke
Amazing is beyond our ability to consider. And that’s the same Jesus who’s going to choose death ultimately on the cross for us. And that’s that’s this kind of building relationship that happens in the gospel. And it all serves that final purpose of making it clear to us that when Jesus dies, he does so not by weakness, not by mistake, not by accident, but by the virtue of his own choice and desire for salvation.

00:14:06:32 – 00:14:27:58
Michael Gewecke
And it’s stories like this, which are the building blocks. They’re the bricks that build us to that point. And so while we’re in the midst of stories like this, it may just seem like one miracle story to the next, but I think it actually is interwoven intentionally, carefully, beautifully, to lead us ultimately to the point where Luke is going to deliver us in Jesus’s ultimate story.

00:14:28:03 – 00:15:04:01
Clint Loveall
You know, I wonder, Michael, if because we kind of know the doctrine of the church, we think of the fundamental human struggle as sin. And I think theologically that’s true, particularly in Paul’s writing. I mean, I think there there would be nothing wrong with that idea. But in the Gospels, it seems to me that one of our chief struggles maybe, you know, we don’t have to use superlatives, we don’t have to say the struggle, but one of our major struggles is fear that the human problem is not simply sin, but it’s fear.

00:15:04:01 – 00:15:47:08
Clint Loveall
And Luke is use this story and then tomorrow’s story. There’ll be some fear as well. And this idea that that faith and fear are incompatible, that that faith is really the antidote, the cure to fear. And that Jesus having no fear, is sleeping soundly when everyone else is afraid, which ultimately then gets to the point of the story that the disciples, many of whom know boats, they know water, they know storms, they know themselves to be in trouble.

00:15:47:13 – 00:16:10:55
Clint Loveall
What they don’t know is a man who wakes up from a sound sleep in a storm and tells the water and the waves and the wind to be calm as well as that being a message for them that that’s the true mystery to them. Who is this and who is this Is the question we ought to keep in our mind consistently as we read the Gospels.

00:16:11:00 – 00:16:38:39
Clint Loveall
Who is this? Who is this man that heals the flame? Who is this man that helps blind people see who is this man that fights with religious people? And who is this man that raises the dead and does all of these things? Who is this? That should be the guiding question of our faith and should be the the primary question we seek to answer when we when we take a journey through the scriptures and Luke helps us a great deal there.

00:16:38:43 – 00:17:11:12
Michael Gewecke
Now, because it’s easy to get fixated on the idea of Jesus that we have. And those ideas hopefully are good ones. Hopefully they are positive images, but they’re just human images and they’re just locked in our own experience. And so I think one of the encouragements of a text like this is to to pause as best as we can to imagine ourselves, not metaphorically in that boat, but but really, truly in a circumstance in which we are afraid for our life.

00:17:11:16 – 00:17:45:05
Michael Gewecke
And then to see Jesus with a word, be able to call on us saying that no human has control over, and then to allow ourselves to do that, saying that will happen every time that we have an experience like that. And it will be to ask who is this? Who are you, who can do that and allow our spirit to open enough for there to be enough space there that we could actually begin to encounter the God who took on flesh and yet is beyond that flesh in a mysterious way.

00:17:45:10 – 00:18:14:20
Michael Gewecke
That’s yes, it’s theological, but when you encounter it in the way that Luke has told it, you could dissect this into theological propositions or you can see how it, at the end of the day, can’t be dissolved into those things. It is by definition the mysterious encounter of God and creation and God as Savior. And the invitation is for us to allow that to work on us and change us and transform our imaginations.

00:18:14:20 – 00:18:32:40
Clint Loveall
There’s something remarkably human here, Michael, and we went through the Book of Exodus, and you see the people who see God part, the see and they see God send the plagues and they see God give them bread and water. And yet every time they have a struggle, they lose their faith. And a similar thing is happening here to the disciples.

00:18:32:45 – 00:18:58:05
Clint Loveall
They’ve seen Jesus do unimaginable things. And yet when they’re in the boat, when it when it’s not someone else who needs that the work of Jesus, but when they stand in need, they are afraid, they doubt, they have fear. And, you know, that’s again, that’s one of the very human struggles of our life. We proclaim faith and we see Jesus at work and we believe Jesus to be at work in the lives of others.

00:18:58:10 – 00:19:19:06
Clint Loveall
But sometimes we have a hard time personalizing that when it comes to our own needs. And our own stuff and our own baggage. It’s harder to see Jesus at work in those moments and easier to be afraid. And, you know, this is just one of those passages, and I don’t want to keep saying the same thing, but Luke has this way of spending what here for verses.

00:19:19:06 – 00:19:25:36
Clint Loveall
And you could preach ten sermons from this passage. It’s remarkable how much he gets in there.

00:19:25:41 – 00:19:58:50
Michael Gewecke
And hopefully there’s been a word of encouragement for you in this, especially if you’re one who finds yourself in the midst of that boat right now. And we certainly hope that you can walk away from this conversation being reminded that sometimes the circumstances outside are louder than the one who’s stronger inside. And so hope that, you know, that quiet power of Jesus Christ alive network in you and that you might trust in him and be amazed as all who have seen Jesus at work are.

00:19:58:55 – 00:20:06:18
Clint Loveall
Yeah. Thanks for joining us today. Have a great rest of your day. Hope you can be with us tomorrow. Another very interesting story. I hope all is well and thanks.