And the same day, when the even was come, He saith unto them, Let us pass over unto the other side.
In the storm
I. The influence of danger it caused the disciples to doubt the care of Christ. Why is it we doubt the Lord in seasons of danger?
1. Imperfect knowledge of the Lord.
2. Natural impatience.
3. Satanic temptations.
II. The folly of suspicion. It is groundless. The truth is ratified, that God will not leave us to perish. Were it not stated in such plain terms, we might infer as much from-
1. God’s former dealings with ourselves and others.
2. The known character of the Lord.
3. The relationship in which we stand to Him.
III. The secret of tranquility.
1. Meditation.
2. Prayer.
3. Resignation.
IV. The blessedness of holy confidence.
1. It honours God.
2. It blesses our own souls afterward.
If the record had run thus, “And there arose a great storm, etc., but the disciples, believing their Master would not suffer them to perish, watched Him until He awoke. And when Jesus arose, He said, Great is your faith; and He saved them,” what joy would the memory have brought to their hearts in later years!
3. Hereby we obtain more speedy relief. Unbelief causes God to delay or deny (Matthew 13:58). (R. A. Griffin.)
A great storm and a great calm
I. The first aspect of Christ’s life presented to us in this wonderful passage of Scripture is His weariness.
1. It arose from incessant labour.
2. It arose from laborious work.
II. The second aspect of Christ’s life brought before us is his rest. We regard this sleeping of Christ-
1. As an evidence of His humanity.
2. As an evidence of His trustfulness. He cast Himself upon His Father’s care, and was not afraid of Galilee’s stormy lake.
3. As an evidence of His goodness. He slept like one who had a good conscience.
III. But all too soon was the best of Christ disturbed. “And they awoke Him.” How often was Christ’s repose disturbed! Three things led to the disturbance of Christ’s rest:
1. A sudden and violent storm.
2. The danger of the disciples.
3. The fears of the disciples.
IV. Then followed a glorious manifestation of the power of Christ.
1. It was manifested in His authority over nature.
2. It was manifested in His rebuke of the disciples.
3. It was manifested in His evident superiority of character.
“What manner of man is this?” He is the God-Man, who stands equal with God on the high level of Deity, and equal with man on the low level of humanity. “He that hath seen Me, hath seen the Father.” (Joseph Hughes.)
A picture of the Christian life
This narrative is a touching picture of the Christian life. Following its leadings; we contemplate the Christian life in its beginning, in its progress, in its issue.
I. The beginning of the Christian life. We go out on the waves of life and have Christ for our leader in the days of our childhood; that is, where we have the blessing of Christian parents and teachers, etc. Oh happy years of childlike faith! How merciless they who could rob us of this faith. What have they to offer in its place? No; we will not be robbed of it. In its nature and essence this childlike faith is true and unchangeable; but the garment by which it is covered, the veil it carries over it, must be torn off. The childlike faith receives the Saviour in the only vessel in which the child can receive the Divine-in the vessel of the feelings. In manhood we have another vessel in which we can receive Him-the vessel of the understanding. Not that we should loose Him from the vessel of the feelings as we become men, but that our manhood should receive Him into the understanding as well as into the heart. Our childlike faith has seen the Saviour as the little ship of life glided over the smooth waters; it has not yet learnt to know Him in the storm and the tempest. It has known Him in His kindness and love; He is not yet revealed in His wisdom and power.
II. The beginning of life passes by, and in the progress of life Christ slumbers in the soul, and is awakened by the storm. That beautiful childlike sense of faith slumbers-not universally, for there have been favoured souls in whom Christ has never slumbered, who have retained their childish faith to their ripe manhood. It is otherwise in times of conflict like these. It seems that in these troubled times, this childlike faith must apparently die, i.e., must throw off its veil when the storm rages, and rises in a new form. Even on the sacred floor of the church the young Christian finds doubt, strife, and disunion, and he doubts. The Lord awakes, and says, “…Canst thou believe?” and we answer, “…Lord, I believe; help Thou mine unbelief.” There is faith still, though doubt may be ever so strong; there is still an anchor firmly fastened in the sanctuary of the breast. Faith slumbers, but is not dead.
III. That will be the issue if, instead of yielding, you wrestle. As you have known the Saviour earlier in His kindness and love, you will come to know Him in His wisdom and power. Life is a conflict. Some trifle with life; with them it is like playing with soap bubbles. They have never looked the doubt earnestly in the face, to say nothing of the truth. God will not send the noblest of His gifts to laggards: the door of truth closed against those who would willingly enter is a solemn thought (Matthew 25:10-11). (Dr. Tholuch.)
The disciples in the storm
I. In the storm while prosecuting the Saviour’s command-teaching.
1. Implicit obedience does not exempt from trials. Joseph, David, Daniel, St. Paul, etc.
2. Trials are not always punitive, but always disciplinary. This trial was a test both in respect to faith and works.
(a) Will they believe that they will be saved?
(b) Will they go on in their line of duty?
II. In the story while Jesus was with them.
1. Jesus was exposed to the same fury of the tempest, and to the same upheavals of the angry waves.
(a) Was there ever a storm in which Jesus was absent from His disciples?
2. Though with His disciples, He was fast asleep.
(a) A symbol of what frequently occurs. Let every disciple remember that a sleeping Christ is not a dead Christ.
(b) Though asleep, He has not forgotten His disciples.
III. In the storm while Jesus was with them and yet they had to cry to Him for deliverance.
1. Prayer is the disciples’ privilege and duty at all times, especially in times of trial and peril.
2. The prayer that arises from a believing heart can never go unanswered.
IV. Is the storm delivered from the storm in answer to prayer.
1. Christ’s Divine power was not affected by physical fatigue.
2. Jesus, touched by the cry of His disciples, wields a power before which nothing can stand.
V. Deliverance from the storm a grand moral power.
1. It exercised a moral power, awakening deeper reverence for Christ as Messiah.
2. Awakening greater awe for Christ as the Son of God. (D. G. Hughes, M. A.)
God’s storms
They only measure Christ aright, who are forced to carry to Him some great grief, and find by experience He is great enough to save them. It is when men have weighed Him in the balances of some great necessity, and found Him not wanting, that they believe in Him. So the disciples are sent to school. Storm and danger are for the night to be their schoolmasters, bringing them to Christ, not with wonder or service merely, but with suppliant prayers. So starting, they get on their journey a little way, hoping, I suppose, that an hour and a half will see them comfortably across; when lo! this gale breaks on them with the fury of a wild beast. They are stunned with its suddenness. Doubtless in an instant the sail is lowered, oars are shipped, and carefully keeping head to wind or giving way before it, they seek to avoid getting broadside on to the waves in the dangerous trough of the sea. It is touching to see how they shrink from waking Him. Pitiful for His weariness, reverent to His dignity, they run every risk they dare before presuming to disturb Him. Yet how confused they must have felt. A sleeping Christ seems a contradiction. If Saviour of men, why does He not rise to save Himself and them? If He is ignorant of the storm, and about to be drowned, how came His mighty works? Such is life! The sea calm-gleam of setting sun or rising stars reflected on the limpid surface; no occasion of solicitude disturbs the heart, and you are making good progress to some haven of rest, when suddenly a storm of cares overwhelms the soul, and so batters and agitates it that it is like to be drowned beneath their weight; or a storm of grief rises from some bereavement, and threatens to overwhelm all faith or hope in God; or a storm of temptation assails and seems to make goodness impossible, and ruin inevitable. And still Christ seems asleep. It seems as if He must be either ignorant or indifferent, and you do not know which of the two conclusions is sadder to come to. Murmur not. Others have been in storms, and thought the Saviour listless; but He is never beyond the call of faith. (R. Glover.)
Christ in the storm
It is, then, no freak of fancy to see in this narrative an acted parable, if you will, an acted prophecy. Again and again the Church of Christ has been all but engulfed, as men might have deemed, in the billows; again and again the storm has been calmed by the Master, who had seemed for awhile to sleep.
I. Often has Christianity passed through the troubled waters of political opposition. During the first three centuries, and finally under Julian, the heathen State made repeated and desperate attempts to suppress it by force. Statesmen and philosophers undertook the task of eradicating it, not passionately, but in the same temper of calm resolution with which they would have approached any other well-considered social problem. More than once they drove it from the army, from the professions, from the public thoroughfares, into secrecy; they pursued it into the vaults beneath the palaces of Rome, into the catacombs, into the deserts. It seemed as if the faith would be trodden out with the life of so many of the faithful: but he who would persecute with effect must leave none alive. The Church passed through these fearful storms into the calm of an ascertained supremacy; but she had scarcely done so, when the vast political and social system which had so long oppressed her, and which by her persistent suffering she had at length made in some sense her own, itself began to break up beneath and around her. The barbarian invasions followed one upon another with merciless rapidity; and St. Augustine’s lamentations upon the sack of Rome express the feelings with which the higher minds in the Church must have beheld the completed humiliation of the Empire. Christianity had now to face, not merely a change of civil rulers, but a fundamental reconstruction of society. It might have been predicted with great appearance of probability that a religious system which had suited the enervated provincials of the decaying empire would never make its way among the free and strong races that, amid scenes of fire and blood, were laying the foundations of feudalism. In the event it was otherwise. The hordes which shattered the work of the Caesars learnt to repeat the Catholic Creed, and a new order of things had formed itself, when the tempest of Mahomedanism broke upon Christendom. Politically speaking, this was perhaps the most threatening storm through which the Christian Church has passed. There was a time when the soldiers of that stunted and immoral caricature of the Revelation of the One True God, which was set forth by the false prophet, had already expelled the very Name of Christ from the country of Cyprian and Augustine; they were masters of the Mediterranean; they had desolated Spain, were encamped in the heart of France, were ravaging the seaboard of Italy. It was as if the knell of Christendom had sounded. But Christ, “if asleep on a pillow in the hinder part of the ship,” was not insensible to the terrors of His servants. He rose to rebuke those winds and waves, as by Charles Martel in one age, and by Sobieski in another; it is now more than two centuries since Islam inspired its ancient dread. The last like trial of the Church was the first French Revolution. In that vast convulsion Christianity had to encounter forces which for awhile seemed to threaten its total suppression. Yet the men of the Terror have passed, as the Caesars had passed before them; and like the Caesars, they have only proved to the world that the Church carries within her One who rules the fierce tempests in which human institutions are wont to perish.
II. Political dangers, however, do but touch the Church of Christ outwardly; but she rests upon the intelligent assent of her children, and she has passed again and again through the storms of intellectual opposition or revolt. Scarcely had she steered forth from the comparatively still waters of Galilean and Hellenistic devotion than she had to encounter the pitiless dialectic, the subtle solvents, of the Alexandrian philosophy. It was as if in anticipation of this danger that St. John had already baptized the Alexandrian modification of the Platonic Loges, moulding it so as to express the sublimest and most central truth of the Christian Creed; while, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, Alexandrian methods of interpretation had been adopted in vindication of the gospel. But to many a timid believer it may well have seemed that Alexandrianism would prove the grave of Christianity, when, combining the Platonic dialectics with an Eclectic Philosophy, it endeavoured in the form of Arianism to break up the Unity of the Godhead by making Christ a separate and inferior Deity. There was a day when Arianism seemed to be triumphant; but even Arianism was a less formidable foe than the subtle strain of infidel speculation which penetrated the Christian intellect in the very heart of the Middle Ages, that is to say, at a time when the sense of the supernatural had diffused itself throughout the whole atmosphere of human thought. This unbelief was the product sometimes of a rude sensuality rebelling against the precepts of the gospel; sometimes of the culture divorced from faith which made its appearance in the twelfth century; sometimes, specifically, of the influence of the Arabian philosophy from Spain; sometimes of the vast and penetrating activity of the Jewish teachers. It revealed itself constantly under the most unexpected circumstances. We need not suppose that the great Order of the Templars was guilty of the infidelity that along with crimes of the gravest character, was laid to their charge; a study of their processes is their best acquittal, while it is the condemnation of their persecutors. But unbelief must; have been widespread in days when a prominent soldier, John of Soissons, could declare that “all that was preached concerning Christ’s Passion and Resurrection was a mere farce;” when a pious bishop of Paris left it on record that he “died believing in the Resurrection, with the hope that some of his educated but sceptical friends would reconsider their doubts;” when that keen observer, as Neander terms him, Hugh of St. Victor, remarks the existence of a large class of men whose faith consisted in nothing else than merely taking care not to contradict the faith-“quibus credere est solum fidei non contradicere, qui consuetudine vivendi magis, quam virtute credendi fideles nominantur.” The prevalence of such unbelief is attested at once by the fundamental nature of many of the questions discussed at the greatest length by the Schoolmen, and by the unconcealed anxieties of the great spiritual leaders of the time. After the Middle Ages came the Renaissance. This is not the time or place to deny the services which the Renaissance has rendered to the cause of human education, and indirectly, it may be, to that of Christianity. But the Renaissance was at first, as it appeared in Italy, a pure enthusiasm for Paganism, for Pagan thought, as well as for Pagan art and Pagan literature. And the Reformation, viewed on its positive and devotional side, was, at least in the South of Europe, a reaction against the spirit of the Renaissance: it was the Paganism, even more than the indulgences of Leo X, which alienated the Germans. The reaction against this Paganism was not less vigorous within the Church of Rome than without it; Ranke has told us the story of its disappearance. Lastly, there was the rise of Deism in England, and of the Encyclopedist School in France, followed by the pure Atheism which preceded the Revolution. It might well have seemed to fearful men of that day that Christ was indeed asleep to wake no more, that the surging waters of an infidel philosophy had well-nigh filled the ship, and that the Church had only to sink with dignity.
III. Worse than the storms of political violence or of intellectual rebellion, have been the tempests of insurgent immorality through which the Church has passed. In the ages of persecution there was less risk of this, although even then there were scandals. The Epistles to the Corinthians reveal beneath the very eyes of the Apostle a state of moral corruption, which, in one respect at least, he himself tells us, had fallen below the Pagan standard. But when entire populations pressed within the fold, and social or political motives for conformity took the place of serious and strong conviction in the minds of multitudes, these dangers became formidable. What must have been the agony of devout Christians in the tenth century, when appointments to the Roman Chair itself were in the hands of three unprincipled and licentious women; and when the life of the first Christian bishop was accounted such that a pilgrimage to Rome involved a loss of character. Well might the austere Bruno exclaim of that age that “Simon Magus lorded it over a Church in which bishops and priests were given to luxury and fornication:” well might Cardinal Baronius suspend the generally laudatory or apologetic tone of his Annals, to observe that Christ must have in this age been asleep in the ship of the Church to permit such enormities. It was a dark time in the moral life of Christendom: but there have been dark times since. Such was that when St. Bernard could allow himself to describe the Roman Curia as he does in addressing Pope Eugenius III; such again was the epoch which provoked the work of Nicholas de Cleargis, “On the Ruin of the Church.” The passions, the ambitions, the worldly and political interests which surged around the Papal throne, had at length issued in the schism of Avignon; and the writer passionately exclaims that the Church had fallen proportionately to her corruptions, which he enumerates with an unsparing precision. During the century which preceded the Reformation, the state of clerical discipline in London was such as to explain the vehemence of popular reaction; and if in the last century there was an absence of grossness, such as had prevailed in previous ages, there was a greater absence of spirituality. Says Bishop Butler, charging the clergy of the Diocese of Durham in 1751-“As different ages have been distinguished by different sorts of particular errors and vices, the deplorable distinction of ours is an avowed scorn of religion in some, and a growing disregard to it in the generality.” That disregard, being in its essence moral, would hardly have been arrested by the cultivated reasoners, who were obliged to content themselves with deistic premises in their defenses of Christianity: it did yield to the fervid appeals of Whitefield and of Wesley. With an imperfect idea of the real contents and genius of the Christian Creed, and with almost no idea at all of its majestic relations to history and to thought, these men struck a chord for which we may well be grateful. They awoke Christ, sleeping in the conscience of England; they were the real harbingers of a day brighter than their own.
IV. For if the question be asked, how the Church of Christ has surmounted these successive dangers, the answer is, by the appeal of prayer. She has cried to her Master, who is ever in the ship, though, as it may seem, asleep upon a pillow. The appeal has often been made impatiently, even violently, as on the waves of Gennesaret, but it has not been made in vain. It has not been by policy, or good sense, or considerations of worldly prudence, but by a renewal in very various ways of the first fresh Christian enthusiasm which flows from the felt presence of Christ, that political enemies have been baffled, and intellectual difficulties reduced to their true dimensions, and moral sores extirpated or healed. Christianity does thus contain within itself the secret of its perpetual youth, the certificate of its indestructible vitality; because it centres in, it is inseparable from, devotion to a living Person. No ideal lacking a counterpart in fact could have guided the Chinch across the centuries. Imagination may do much in quiet and prosperous times; but amid the storms of hostile prejudice and passion, in presence of political vicissitudes or of intellectual onslaughts, or of moral rebellion or decay, an unreal Saviour must be found out. A Christ upon paper, though it were the sacred pages of the gospel, would have been as powerless to save Christendom as a Christ in fresco; not less feeble than the Countenance which, in the last stages of its decay, may be traced on the wall of the Refectory at Milan. A living Christ is the key to the phenomenon of Christian history. The subject suggests, among others, two reflections in particular. And, first, it is a duty to be on our guard against, panics. Panics are the last infirmity of believing souls. But panics are to be deprecated, not because they imply a keen interest in the fortunes of religion, but because they betray a certain distrust of the power and living presence of our Lord. Science may for the moment be hostile; in the long run it cannot but befriend us. And He who is with us in the storm is most assuredly beyond the reach of harm: to be panic stricken is to dishonour Him. A second reflection is this: a time of trouble and danger is the natural season for generous devotion. To generous minds a time of trouble has its own attractions. It enables a man to hope, with less risk of presumption, that his motives are sincere; it fortifies courage; it suggests self-distrust; it enriches character; it invigorates faith. (Canon Liddon.)
The Ruler of the waves
I. That following Christ will not prevent our having earthly sorrows and troubles.
II. That the Lord Jesus Christ is truly and really man.
III. That there may be much weakness and infirmity in a true Christian. “Master, carest Thou not that we perish?”
1. There was impatience.
2. There was distrust.
3. There was unbelief. Many of God’s children go on very well so long as they have no trials.
IV. The power of the Lord Jesus Christ.
1. His power in creation.
2. In the works of providence.
3. In His miracles. Christ is “able to save to the uttermost” (Hebrews 7:25).
V. How tenderly and patiently the Lord Jesus deals with weak believers. The Lord Jesus is of tender mercy. He will not cast away His believing people because of shortcomings. (J. C. Ryle, M. A.)
The hurricane
I. That when you are going to take a voyage of any kind you ought to have Christ in the ship. These boats would all have gone to the bottom if Christ had not been there. You are about to voyage out into some new enterprise; you are bound to do the best you can for yourself; be sure to take Christ in the ship. Here are men largely prospered. They are not puffed up. They acknowledge God who gives them their prosperity. When disaster comes that destroys others, they are only helped into higher experiences. Christ is in the ship. Here are other men, the prey of uncertainties. In the storm of sickness you will want Christ.
II. That people who follow Christ must not always expect smooth sailing. If there are any people who you would think ought to have a good time in getting out of this world, the apostles of Jesus Christ ought to have been the men. Have you ever noticed how they got out of the world? St. James lost his head. St. Philip was hung to death against a pillar. Matthew was struck to death by a halberd. Mark was dragged to death through the streets. St. James the Less had his brains dashed out with a fuller’s club. St. Matthias was stoned to death. St. Thomas was struck through with a spear. John Huss in the fire, the Albigenses, the Waldenses, the Scotch Covenanters-did they always find smooth sailing? Why go so far? There is a young man in a store in New York who has a hard time to maintain his Christian character. All the clerks laugh at him, the employers in that store laugh at him, and when he loses his patience they say: “You are a pretty Christian.” Not so easy is it for that young man to follow Christ. If the Lord did not help him hour by hour he would fail.
III. That good people sometimes get very much frightened. And so it is now that you often find good people wildly agitated. “Oh!” says some Christian man, “the infidel magazines, the bad newspapers, the spiritualistic societies, the importation of so many foreign errors, the Church of God is going to be lost, the ship is going to founder! The ship is going down!” What are you frightened about? An old lion goes into his cavern to take a sleep, and he lies down until his shaggy mane covers his paws. Meanwhile, the spiders outside begin to spin webs over the mouth of his cavern, and say, “That lion cannot break out through this web,” and they keep on spinning the gossamer threads until they get the mouth of the cavern covered over. “Now,” they say, “the lion’s done, the lion’s done.” After awhile the lion awakes and shakes himself, and he walks out from the cavern, never knowing there were any spiders’ webs, and with his voice he shakes the mountain. Let the infidels and the sceptics of this day go on spinning their webs, spinning their infidel gossamer theories, spinning them all over the place where Christ seems to be sleeping. They say: “Christ can never again come out; the work is done; He can never get through this logical web we have been spinning.” The day will come when the Lion of Judah’s tribe will rouse Himself and come forth and shake mightily the nations. What then all your gossamer threads? What is a spider’s web to an aroused lion? Do not fret, then, about the world’s going backward. It is going forward.
IV. That Christ can hush the tempest. Christ can hush the tempest of bereavement, loss and death. (Dr. Talmage.)
The toiling Christ
I. Point out some of the significant hints which the gospel records give us of the toilsomeness of Christ’s service. In St. Matthews Gospel the idea of the king is prominent; in St. Mark’s, Christ as a servant. Notice the traits of His service which it brings out.
1. How distinctly it gives the impression of swift, strenuous work. Mark’s favourite word is “straightway,” “immediately,” “forthwith,” “anon.” His whole story is a picture of rapid acts of mercy and love.
2. We see in Christ’s service, toil prolonged to the point of actual physical exhaustion. So in this story. He had had a long wearying day of work. He had spoken the whole of the parables concerning the kingdom of God. No wonder He slept.
3. We see in Christ toil that puts aside the claims of physical wants. “The multitude cometh together again so that they could not so much as eat bread.”
4. We see in Christ’s service a love which is at every man’s beck and call, a toil cheerfully rendered at the most unreasonable and unseasonable times.
II. The springs of this wonderful activity. There are three points which come out in the Gospels as His motives for such unresting toil. The first is conveyed in such words as these: “I must work the works of Him that sent Me.” This motive made the service homogeneous-in all the variety of service one spirit was expressed, and therefore the service was one. The second motive of His toil is expressed in such words as these: “While I am in the world I am the light of the world.” There is a final motive expressed in such words as these: “And Jesus, moved with compassion,” etc. The constant pity of that beating heart moved the diligent hand.
III. The worth of this toil for us. How precious a proof it is of Christ’s humanity. Labour is a curse till made a blessing by communion with God in it.
1. Task all your capacity and use every minute in doing the thing that is plainly set before you.
2. The possible harmony of communion and service. The labour did not break His fellowship with God.
3. The cheerful, constant postponement of our own ease, wishes, or pleasure, to the call of the Father’s voice.
4. It is an appeal to our grateful hearts. (Dr. McLaren.)
The great calm
“He maketh the storm a calm.” The “calm” then is the voice of God.
1. Of power.
2. Of love.
3. Of peace.
4. Of warning. No earthly calm lasts.
I. The inner calm. In every soul there has been storm. It rages through the whole being. But Jesus is the stiller of this storm in man.
1. In his conscience.
2. In his heart.
3. In his intellect.
II. The future calm for earth. In every aspect ours is a stormy world. But its day of calm is coming. Jesus will say to it, Peace, be still.
1. As a Prophet.
2. As a Priest.
3. As a King, to give the calm of heaven. (H. Sonar, D. D.)
“Peace, be still!”
No words can exaggerate the value and importance of a calm mind. It is the basis of almost everything which is good. Well-ordered reflections, meditation, influence, wise speech-all embosom themselves in a calm mind. Yet a state of agitation is with many the rule of life. Consider Jesus as the stiller of the heart. He was most eminently a still character. The greatest force of energy and the largest activity of mind and body are not only compatible with stillness, but they go to make it. The persons of the largest power and the most telling action are generally the quietest. They may owe it to discipline and drill-and perhaps Christ Himself did-but they show themselves reined in and well-ordered. Just as it was in the lake: the wind and the waves went before, and, so to speak, subdued and made the calm. The placidity of a fiery and passionate nature is the best of foundations for all quietness. And this may be a thought of strength and encouragement to some. The more resolute the will, and the more violent the passion, the more complete may be the victory, and the more imperturbable the temper, if only grace do its proper work. Want of religious peace lies at the root of all that is trouble to the mind. A man at peace with God will be at peace with his own conscience, with the world; he will not have his feelings greatly aggravated by external things. You won’t be much disturbed by anything if you feel and when you feel-“My Father! My Father! Jesus is mine, and I am His!” Next, if you will be calm, make pictures to yourself of all calm things-in nature, in history, in people you know, and above all, in Christ. Take care that yon do this at the moment when you begin to feel the temptation to disturbance. But still more realize at such times Christ’s presence. Is not He with you?-is not He in you?-and can restless, miserable, burning feelings dare to live in such a tenement? Let the fiercest thought touch Him, and by a strange fascination, it will clothe itself, and lie at His feet. And, fourthly, recognize it as the very office and prerogative of Christ to give quietness. And if He gives this, who then can make trouble! The disciples were more amazed at this triumph of Christ over the elements, with which they were so familiar in their sea life, than at all His other miracles. And it is not too much for me to say that you will never know what Jesus is, or what that word Saviour means, until you have felt in that heart of yours-which was once so troubled, so heaving, so tossed, and so ill at ease-all the depth and the calm, and all the beauty and the hush which He has given you. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)
Consult the chart in fine as well as in stormy weather
Let us not be like that captain of whom we lately heard, who having a true and correct chart in his cabin, failed to consult it while the weather was calm, but went below to look for it only when the wind and tide had drifted his barque upon the bar, and so, with his eyes upon the course he should have steered, felt the shock which in a few moments sent them down into the abyss. Our souls are like a ship upon the deep, and as we sail over the waves of life, we must, like wary mariners, take the hints given us in our nature. If we see on the horizon a cloud of some possible temptation no bigger than a man’s hand, though all else be bright and clear-if we hear but the first blast of some probable sin hurtling in the farthest caverns of our life-we must beware, for in that speck, in that distant howl may couch a tempest ready to spring up and leap down upon our souls. Above all we should always have Christ aboard with us; we should have Him formed within us as our hope of glory; under His ensign we should sail, as our only hope of reaching that haven for which we are making. (W. B. Philpot, M. A.)
Utilizing Christ’s presence
Too many Christians-nay, almost all of us at too many times, though we have Christ with us, do not profit by His presence nor enjoy Him as we ought. We should not only have Christ, but, having Him, ah why have we not that faith, that assurance of faith, that full assurance of faith, which can realize and utilize His presence? (W. B. Philpot, M. A.)
Christ and His disciples in the storm
I. The apostles were not exempted from danger because they were the attendants of Christ. Believers, look for storms!
II. While the apostles were exposed to the storm, they had Christ along with them in the vessel.
III. The conduct of Christ during the storm was remarkable and instructive. He was asleep.
IV. The feelings and conduct of the disciples during the storm are strongly illustrative of human character. Their faith was tried. They were afraid. They apply to Christ. Prayer not always the language of faith.
V. The effect of this application of the disciples to Christ. He answered their prayer, though their faith was weak. He thus revealed His Divine power. He unveiled His ordinary agency.
VI. Christ, with the blessing, administers a rebuke. Mark your conduct under trials. VII. The disciples came out of the trial with increased admiration of Christ. (Expository Discourses.)
Christ asleep in the vessel
I. The apparent indifference of the Lord to His people.
II. It is only apparent.
III. He has a real care for them at times when He seems indifferent.
IV. They shall see this to be the case by and by. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Trust in God often the last extremity
While a small steam packet was crossing a stormy bay, the engine suddenly stopped, and for a few minutes the situation was one of real peril. One old lady rushed to the captain with the anxious inquiry whether there was any danger. “Madam,” was the uncompromising reply, “we must trust in God.” “O sir!” wailed the inquirer, “has it come to that?” A good many Christians feel like that in times of peril; they are willing to trust in everything-except God. There are some children, who are afraid that a thunderstorm is about to burst over them every time a cloud gathers in the sky; and if the sky is cloudless, they are certain that it is only the calm before the storm. They can always see the coming storms, but cannot trust the goodness that sends them.
Help in answer to prayer
A fishing boat was struggling for life out on the sea, and the skipper had lost all knowledge of where the land was, and whither his boat was driving. In his despair, the strong man cried to God for help. Just then a little beam from a window light shone over the waters; the boat’s prow was turned, and after a little more manful fighting, she reached the haven. Was not that gleam of light God’s answer to the skipper’s prayer? A missionary was returning home, and just as he was nearing the coasts of his country, a terrible storm came on, and threatened to break the ship in pieces. The missionary went below, and prayed to God earnestly for the safety of the ship. Presently he came up and told the captain with quiet confidence that the ship would live through the storm. Captain and crew jeered at him; they did not believe it. Yet the ship came safely to port. Was the missionary wrong when he saw in this an instance of God’s readiness to give the help His children ask?
Distrust rebuked by God’s constant care
Every miracle of God’s grace is a standing rebuke of distrust. What if your child, whom you had fed and clothed and housed for years, should begin to be anxious as to where his next meal or his next suit of clothes was to come from, and whether he could be sure of having a roof over his head for another night? What if he still persisted in his distrust, although you told him that you would take care of all these things? If you can imagine your child acting in so foolish a way, you have a picture of how most of us, day after day, treat the God who cares for us, and who has promised to supply us with all things.
“Other little ships”
Those “other little ships” gained a great deal that day from Christ’s saying, “Peace be still!” which we do not discover that anybody was candid enough to acknowledge. The whole sea became tranquil, and they were saved. The world receives many unappreciated benefits from Jesus Christ’s presence in the Church. Men are just so many little ships, taking entire benefit of the miracle brought from God’s great love for His own. Start with the commonest gain that comes to the world through the Church.
1. See how property values are lifted by every kind of Christian effort.
2. See what the gospel does towards lifting a low and depraved neighbourhood into respectability.
3. See how it enriches education.
4. See how it elevates woman.
5. See how it alleviates sickness. There is no need of pursuing the illustration any farther.
But there are just three lessons which will take force from the figure, perhaps;. and these might as well be stated.
1. Why do not men of the world recognize what the Church of Christ is doing daily and yearly for them, their wives, and their children?
2. Why do not men of the world see that the men in the “other little ships” were the safer from the storm the nearer their boats were to that Jesus was in?
3. Why do not men of the world perceive that the disciples were better off than anybody else during that awful night upon Gennesareth? Oh, that is the safest place in the universe for any troubled soul to be in-among the chosen friends of Jesus Christ the Lord, and keeping the very closest to His side! (C. S. Robinson, D. D.)
Christ the Lord of nature
Nature, in the sense in which we now use it, means the world of matter, and the laws of its working. If Holy Scripture be listened to, He is so of right. “All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.” “God created all things by Jesus Christ.” There is no lordship like that of creation. Christ in the days of His flesh actually gave proof of His lordship on earth.
1. There is a class of miracles which had their place in what we may call productive nature; in those processes which have to do with the supply of food for man’s life. Wine made at Cana; feeding of the five thousand; feeding of the four thousand.
2. There is a class of miracles proving the dominion of Christ over animated nature. The draught of fishes on the sea of Tiberias; the piece of money in the fish’s mouth.
3. We have examples of the sovereignty of Christ over elemental nature, air, and sea.
4. We have an example of Christ’s sovereignty in the domain of morbid nature, disease and decay-“the fig tree dried up from the roots.”
Christ the Lord of nature.
1. It was necessary that the Son of God coming down from heaven for the redemption of men should prove Himself to be very God by many infallible and irresistible signs. It was in mercy as well as in wisdom that He gave this demonstration.
2. It could scarcely be but that He should as Son of God assert below His dominion over God’s creation, and over the processes of God’s providence.
3. Let us be careful how we speak of miracles, such as these, as if they were contradictions of God’s natural laws, or contradictions of God’s providential operations. When Christ wrought a miracle upon nature it was to give a glimpse of some good thing lost, of some perfect thing deteriorated, of some joyous thing spoilt, by reason of the Fall, and to be given back to man by virtue of redemption.
4. In these miracles which attest the sovereignty of Christ over nature we have one of the surest grounds of comfort for Christian souls.
(1) In their literal sense, to regard Him as sovereign of the universe in which they dwell.
(2) In their parabolic significance as stilling the inward storm.
5. There is also warning for the careless and sinful. Upon His blessing or curse depends all that makes existence a happiness or misery. The agencies of nature as of grace are in the hands of Christ. (C. J. Vaughan, D. D.)
Christ asleep
There is a very great spiritual importance in the fact that Jesus sleeps. In this sleep of Jesus, a very great mistake into which we are apt to fall is corrected or prevented; the mistake, I mean, of silently assuming that Christ, being Divine, takes nothing as we do, and is really not under our human conditions far enough to suffer exhaustions of nature by work or by feeling, by hunger, the want of sleep, dejections or recoils of wounded sensibility. Able to do even miracles-to heal the sick, or cure the blind, or raise the dead, or still the sea-we fall into the impression that His works really cost Him nothing, and that while His lot appears to be outwardly dejected, He has, in fact, an easy time of it. Exactly contrary to this, He feels it, even when virtue goes out only from the hem of His garment. And when He gives the word of healing, it is a draft, we know not how great, upon His powers. In the same way every sympathy requires all expenditure of strength proportioned to the measure of that sympathy. Every sort of tension, or attention, every argument, teaching, restraint of patience, concern of charity, is a putting forth with cost to Him, as it is to us. Notice also more particularly the conditions or bestowments of the sleep of Jesus and especially their correspondence with His redemptive undertaking. Saying nothing of infants, who in a certain proper sense are called innocent, there have been two examples of full-grown innocent sleep in our world: that of Adam in the garden, and that of Christ the second Adam, whose nights overtook Him with no place where to bestow Himself. And the sleep of both, different as far as possible in the manner, is yet more exactly appropriate, in each, to his peculiar work and office. One is laid to sleep in a paradise of beauty, lulled by the music of birds and running brooks, shaded and sheltered by the over-hanging trees, shortly to wake and look upon a kindred nature standing by, offered him to be the partner and second life of his life. The other, as pure and spotless as he, and ripe, as he is not, in the unassailable righteousness of character, tears Himself away from clamorous multitudes that crowd upon Him suing piteously for His care, and drops, even out of miracle itself, on the hard plank deck, or bottom, of a fisherman’s boat, and there, in lightning and thunder and tempest, sheeted as it were in the general wrath of the waters and the air, He sleeps-only to wake at the supplicating touch of fear and distress. One is the sleep of the world’s Father; the other that of the world’s Redeemer. One has never known as yet the way of sin, the other has come into the tainted blood and ruin of it, to bear and suffer under it, and drink the cup it mixes; so to still the storm and be a reconciling peace. Both sleep in character. Were the question raised which of the two will be crucified, we should have no doubt. Visibly, the toil-worn Jesus, He that takes the storm, curtained in it as by the curse-He is the Redeemer. His sleep agrees with His manger birth, His poverty, His agony, His cross; and what is more, as the cross that is maddening in His enemies is the retributive disorder of God’s just penalty following their sin, so the fury of that night shadows it all the more fitly, that what He encounters in it is the wrathful cast of Providence. (Dr. Bushnell.)
The ship of the world
In one of the prophets we have the picture of a stately ship which is a type of the world. She is all splendour and magnificence; she walks the waters like a thing of life. The fir trees of Senir and the cedars of Lebanon have contributed to her beauty; her oars are wrought from the oaks of Bashan, her sails are of fine linen and broidered work. She has a gay and gallant crew; the multitudes who throng her decks are full of joy and thoughtless of danger. Out they sail into the great waters; her rowers bring her into the midst of the sea; and when the east wind rises she is broken in the midst, and lies a helpless wreck upon the great ocean of eternity. There was no Christ in the ship to say, “Peace, be still;” no pitying Jesus to answer the bitter cry of “Lord, save us, we perish.” But not so was it with the little fisher boat. It had no pomp and vanities of which to boast, no tinselled splendour; but it carried Jesus and His fortunes-One who could rebuke the waves of sin. The world, wanting Christ, wanted all things else and was lost; the Church, with Christ in the ship, had nothing more to ask; it was sure to be saved with His “Peace, be still.” (G. F. Cushman, D. D.)
The strange inquiry concerning fear
What we could understand well enough was a mystery to Christ. In our glibness we could have explained their fear clearly. The lake was sixty fathoms deep; stoutest swimmer could not have saved his life in such a sea; some were married men; life is sweet; a storm is more terrible by night than day; and so on. But what is all plain to everyone was a mystery Christ could not solve. How a doubt of the love of God could enter a soul passed His comprehension. Why men should be afraid of the Divine ordinance called death, He could not understand. What fear was, He knew not. What a proof of Divine sanctity lies in the fact that all fear and doubt were mysteries to Him! (R. Glover.)
From one fear to another
I. They escaped one fear, only to get into another; losing the fear of the tempest, they get a greater fear, that of the Lord of the tempest.
II. They lose a bad fear to get a good one-a fear which is reverent, and one which has as much trust as awe in it. Such fear is the beginning of faith in Christ’s Godhead. (R. Glover.).