“Bible prayers: the disciples pray”
Matthew 8:25
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus.
Looking for a small, a little bit different, out-of-the-way place to go for a mini-vacation? How about Paradise? Paradise, Michigan, that is!
Located on the eastern edge of the UP, (that’s the Upper Peninsula for those of you who aren’t from here), it’s a little town that sits off the beaten path and along the coast of the largest of the five Great Lakes--Lake Superior.
And among the handful of things to do there even in the winter, like hiking, fishing, bird watching, and feeding the bears, there’s a museum, what’s called the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum.
What’s that, you ask? Well, let me tell you!
It all started not quite thirty years ago, when the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society, the Michigan Audubon Society, and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service all got together to, as they said, “promote and augment an understanding and appreciation of maritime history.”
And if you’d ever want to study Great Lakes maritime history, that is the place to go, for it’s there that you can find the fully restored Lightkeepers Quarters from 1861, a surfboat fully equipped for launch with the words, “You have to go out, but you don’t have to come back,” and tools they once used to predict the weather.
But at the heart of it all is a bell, a two hundred pound bronze bell recovered from the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, a ship that went down with her crew of twenty-nine men on November 10, 1975. The last words they sent were, “We’re holding our own, going along like an old shoe.”
Over the past ten years, close to a thousand ships have gone down around the world, including, most recently, a fishing trawler back in February that claimed the lives of sixteen, and in August, a nuclear submarine that took the lives of fifty-five.
As Gordon Lightfoot once sang in his song, “And all that remains is the faces and the names of the wives and the sons and the daughters.”
The book of Matthew chapter 8 tells of what would most certainly have been a shipwreck, had it not been for one of those on board--the Lord Jesus. I’ll start at verse 23: “And when He got into the boat, His disciples followed Him. And behold, there arose a great storm on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by the waves; but He was asleep. And they went and woke Him, saying, ‘Save us, Lord; we are perishing.’ And He said to them, ‘Why are you afraid, O you of little faith?’” (Matthew 8:23-26).
It had been a busy day in the life of Jesus. That very day, He had preached His Sermon on the Mount. When He was done, the Bible says, “The crowds were astonished at His teaching, for He was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes” (Matthew 7:29).
Then chapter 8 begins as He came down from that mountain, with huge crowds following after Him. And that’s when a leper came and knelt down before Him, saying, “Lord, if You will, You can make me clean” (Matthew 8:2). And as Jesus stretched out His hand and touched him, He said, “I will; be clean” (Matthew 8:3).
Then in verse 6, when a Roman centurion came to say, “Lord, my servant is lying paralyzed at home suffering terribly,” with a word, Jesus healed him. In verse 14, when He came to Peter’s house and saw his mother-in-law sick in bed with a fever, He healed her. And in verse 16, the Bible says He cast out demons and healed all who were sick.
So it’s no wonder then, that just as soon as He climbed into a boat with His disciples in verse 23, He laid down and fell asleep.
It’s a beautiful picture, if you think about it. The One who created the sky, the One who created the water, the One who created the wood of the boat in the water, and the One who created sleep--fully Man, yet fully God--completely exhausted, fell asleep.
Now to better understand what’s about to happen, let me explain a little about the Sea of Galilee. Over time, it’s been known by quite a lot of different names. In Old Testament times, many called it the Sea of Kinnereth. Later, they called it the Lake of Gennesaret. When the Romans took control, they called it the Sea of Tiberias. But since it sat in a region called “Galilee,” a name that means “rolling” or “revolving,” or simply,”out in the country,” most people called it the Sea of Galilee.
But to call it a “sea” is a bit of a stretch. It’s really more like a really big lake, some thirteen miles long and eight miles wide. To put it another way, take Shell Lake and multiply it by right about sixteen, then you’ve got the Sea of Galilee.
But what makes it different from any other lake in all the world is that not only is it the lowest freshwater lake in the world, (sitting nearly seven hundred feet below sea level), it’s surrounded by mountains, reaching as high as three thousand feet.
Put it together, and you don’t have just a lake. You have a really big bowl of water that’s subject to its own very special kind of weather. All of a sudden, without warning, a cold wind can roar down off the Golan Heights, hit the warm air that sits in that bowl, and whip it up into a boiling caldron. Pity anyone who’s out on that water in the wrong place and at the wrong time.
And sure enough, as Matthew records, on one cool, dark, ordinary night, that’s exactly what happened. Verse 24: “And behold, there arose a great storm on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by the waves.”
“A great storm,” it says. In the original language, it’s a “seismos mega.” Another way to translate it would be “a huge earthquake.” It was that bad.
And bear in mind, these men weren’t novices. They weren’t swabbies, greenhorns, or pollywogs. In fact, at least four, and as many as seven of them, were fishermen.
So what did they do? What would you do? They came to Jesus, tired as He was, asleep as He was, and cried out, in verse 25: “Save us, Lord; we are perishing.”
As one author wrote, “One moment the disciples are shuffling cards, the next moment they’re gulping buckets of Galilean sea water. One moment it feels like a Galilean dinner cruise, the next moment they’re trying to keep their dinner down. One moment they’re basking in the sun, the next moment they’re holding on with white knuckles for dear, dear, precious life.”
To put it another way, one moment they’re singing “Aye Calypso, the places you’ve been to” with John Denver, the next moment they’re singing “Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip” with Bob Denver.
They were in big trouble and they knew it.
Now all this is kind of funny if you think about it. Here they were, the waves crashing in, the boat filling with water, in the dead of night, far from shore, with no light to guide their way. And the one person that they believed could offer any kind of help seemed completely oblivious to the whole thing.
It’s as if you were driving across country through some barren stretch of desert and your car breaks down, and the one guy who’s an auto mechanic is in the backseat playing video games.
I mean, Jesus, could You at least grab a bucket?!
And why come to Jesus? Because that very day, He had healed the sick, cleansed lepers, and cast out demons. They didn’t know exactly who He was, but if He could do all those other things, just maybe He could pray and God would help Him too.
Besides, maybe they remembered the words of Psalm 65: “You faithfully answer our prayers with awesome deeds, O God our Savior. You are the hope of everyone on earth, even those who sail on distant seas” (Psalm 65:5). Or the words of Psalm 89: “You rule the swelling of the sea; when its waves rise, You still them” (Psalm 89:9). Or the words of Psalm 107: “Some men went down to the sea in ships…they reeled and staggered like drunken men and were at their wits’ end. Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and He delivered them from their distress. He made the storm be still, and the waves of the sea were hushed” (Psalm 107:23, 27-29).
And what did Jesus do? No theatrics. No effort. He simply spoke to the wind and called out to the waves. And in an instant, each obeyed its Master’s voice. The wind lost its breath and the water became as smooth as glass, as placid as a pond. As it says in verse 26: “There was a great calm.”
And what did the disciples do? Verse 27: “And the men marveled.” Or as another translation puts it, “They became very much afraid.”
Why? Because in that awesome, jaw-dropping, nature-defying moment, they realized that the one thing more terrifying than having a storm outside your boat, was to have God, the Creator and the controller of His creation, inside your boat.
No wonder they said: “What sort of man is this, that even winds and sea obey Him?” (Matthew 8:27).
John Carmody was a professor of religion at Santa Clara University in California, and he was dying from bone cancer. That’s when he wrote a book called Psalms for Times of Trouble.
This is what he said: “Trouble is everywhere. You can have completely healthy bones and still suffer severe pain, physical or emotional. You can face huge problems that threaten to plow you under. Though you avoid alcohol and drugs, you can lose your job or suffer a heart attack. Though you do your job conscientiously and say your prayers at night, you can find yourself the victim of gossip or aching loneliness. Teenagers can be desperately unhappy, but so can old people. Women can worry themselves sick, but so do men. Trouble spares no one.”
Just like the disciples, we too can’t help but sometimes cry, “Lord Jesus, don’t You care that my family is hurting and my life is a mess? Don’t You care that I feel so lost and so alone?”
It seems we never question our Lord’s compassion when things are going well. But when winds roar and waters rage, that’s when we cry, “Lord, don’t You care?”
But He does care! He cares just as much when the tempest is raging as He does when the seas are calm.
For just as Jesus once stood with His disciples in the middle of that storm, so He stands with us. That is, after all, what His incarnation is all about.
He took on human flesh, was born of Mary, and lived for a while among us. He entered into this storm--humanity--so that He could be with us. Immanuel--God with us.
So when the storms come, and they will come, know that they’re not a place of fear and terror. Instead, they’re a place where we meet the Lord of the storm.
Back in the late 1800s, Pastor Edward Hopper put it like this: “Jesus, Savior, pilot me over life’s tempestuous sea. Unknown waves before me roll, hiding rock and treacherous shoal. Chart and compass come from Thee. Jesus, Savior, pilot me.”
Sometimes, dear Lord, we wonder and we worry about what the future will bring. Help us to remember that You are with us. And because You are with us, we are safe. Hear us as we pray in Your name. Amen