Sermon for Sunday
And behold, there arose a great tempest in the sea, insomuch that the ship was covered with the waves, but He was asleep. Matthew 8:24
Do you know anyone who sleepwalks? Such people can perform complicated activities while asleep or in a semi-conscious condition. But afterward, these people will have no recollection of what they have done. What happened during their sleep – including their sleepwalking episode – is completely meaningless and pointless. How different the sleep into which the Lord Jesus entered as He lay to rest in the Galilean fishing boat. Although He was so soundly asleep that not even the sound of the storm woke Him up, He was fully in charge of the entire situation at every moment. In fact, He was entirely in charge of the whole universe! This account of the crossing of Galilee reveals to us both the deity and the humanity of the Lord Jesus in a very dramatic way.
No one has yet come up with an easily understood explanation of the incarnation. How did the Almighty stoop to humanity? How did the Great I Am lay aside Heaven’s glory to don swaddling clothes and lie in a barn stable’s feedbox? How did the Creator and Sustainer of all take up carpenter’s tools in a Jewish backwater town? We can’t explain the process that drew Him from His heavenly throne and angel’s worship to rejection, spitting, and crucifixion. But when we consider Him in that storm-tossed boat, we are amazed that He would take up residence among us.
Looking back on that scene from our perspective, we wonder that the disciples woke Him, because He was to die on the cross, not in a shipwreck. It is true that they cried out to Him to save them; they knew He could do that. But they should have known that He would sustain them in the storm whether awake or asleep. When he faced the great storm of Almighty wrath at Golgotha, he proved His power to save and sustain us.
It is precious today to know that our cry to the Lord Jesus to save us was answered. It is also precious to us to know that he passed through the storm for us, and has brought us into a great calm. -Jim MacIntosh