Does Life Ever Feel Like You’re Rowing Against the Wind?

The Lord of the Wind and Sea

As we’ve been working the gospel of Mark, over the last several months – we’ve seen clear evidence that Jesus Christ is unique. This part of the Bible was written explicitly to give us an accurate account of Jesus’s life, so that we’d have a right idea of who Jesus is, and what he came to accomplish. And we’ve been reading about Jesus, doing all kinds of extraordinary things. Right? He’s been curing medical conditions that 21^st century medicine still can’t figure out. He’s been unilaterally declaring that peoples’ sins are forgiven. He’s been controlling the wind, he’s brought back a 12-year-old girl from the dead. He has a pretty impressive resumé.

And as you might remember from last week, Jesus was teaching a crowd of 5,000 men, plus women and children – and even though all he had was 5 little loaves of bread and two fish to work with, Jesus multiplied it. And he miraculously fed the whole crowd, with more than enough. Over and over, Mark has been showing us Jesus’s strength, and his sufficiency, and his saving power. Mark doesn’t want us to miss the point. And in our text this morning, Mark continues to build his case, that Jesus is the long-awaited Savior of God’s people – he’s the Christ. And Jesus is the Son of God.

So if you haven’t turn with me to the end of Mark, Chapter 6. (If you’re using one of our church Bibles, you can find our text on pg. 791). And we’ll be reading verses 45 through 56 this morning. But before I read our text, we need God to help us – so let’s pray and ask for his assistance:

[Pray and Read Text]

Workplace Training

In a number of schools and workplaces these days, it’s common for employers to have a portable defibrillator on hand. Kids – have you heard of a defibrillator before? It’s a medical device that can give a small electrical shock to restart someone’s heart if it has stopped beating for some reason. So kids, you learned a new word: defibrillator.

Well, in any case – usually once every one or two years, employees are required to take some workplace training classes, to keep them up-to-date on company policies and procedures. And one of things people get trained in, on a regular basis, is how to use a defibrillator properly. And, of course, there are a couple reasons why this training is important. For one thing, people are prone to forget things. We need reminders and refreshers, in order to keep things in clear in our minds. But then, of course, it’s also important because using a defibrillator the right way is important for saving lives. If you set up the defibrillator wrong, and you’re delivering an electrical shock to yourself, instead of the person on the floor, then you’re going to end up doing more harm than good. Being trained, and retrained, in how to use a medical device like this matters, because it’s ultimately a matter of life or death.

And in our text today, Mark trains us – and he continues to retrain us – by reaffirming basic points about Jesus’s person and power. He wants to make sure that we don’t just have vague notions about Jesus, and how he might come in handy – but he wants to make sure that we’re actively trusting in Jesus ourselves, and that we’re trained in how to bring Jesus to others, in a life-saving way. Specifically, in our text, Mark wants us to consider and benefit from three basic realities concerning Jesus. And even though some of these basic realities may not sound new to many of us, we’ll especially spend some time thinking through how we ought to personally embrace and benefit from these things. So three basic realities concerning Jesus: first we’ll give attention to, the true dependency of Jesus. Second, we’ll give attention to the true divinity of Jesus. And then third, we’ll turn our attention to the true deliverance from Jesus. These will be the three main points we encounter as we work through our text.

The True Dependency of Jesus (Prayer)

So the first thing we see here is the true dependency of Jesus. We see this in verses 45 and 46. As soon as the crowds are satisfied from the miraculous meal of bread and fish, Mark tells us, “Immediately, he made his disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side, to Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd. And after he had taken leave of them, he went up on the mountain to pray.”

You may remember from last week, when Jesus came to this region originally, where he fed the crowd of 5,000, he was seeking a desolate place for his disciples to rest. And yet, it turns out that Jesus’s disciples weren’t the only ones who could use some rest. Jesus himself here ends up setting aside time for spiritual refreshment – to be with God the Father one-on-one. As evening falls, Jesus sends his disciples across the sea in their boat. He dismisses the crowds. And he goes up to a rather secluded place – up on one of the small mountains next to the Sea of Galilee. And he spends some extended time praying.

And these verses draw attention to the true humanity of Jesus in a really important way. It’d be easy to think – Jesus has all this supernatural power to heal people, he’s an amazing teacher, he can overpower demons – certainly if anyone could get by without prayer, Jesus would be the guy. And yet Mark tells us that Jesus very intentionally gives time to prayer. We saw the same thing several months ago, in Mark 1, verse 35. Jesus had a practice of giving time for prayer. We’re supposed to see by now – this was an important part of his life and ministry.

Yet why does Jesus make prayer such a priority? Of course, there isn’t just one reason. We could rightly say that Jesus valued prayer because of how much he valued his relationship with the Father. He prayed because he loved to – he wanted to. We could also say that Jesus prayed as an expression of his perfect submission toward God – an expression of perfect human obedience. And when Jesus prioritized prayer, certainly he was also setting a good example for his followers – how we should be regular in prayer.

But without minimizing the significance of each of these reasons, we should also appreciate that Jesus likely had another reason for praying. And that’s because, with respect to his human nature, he genuinely depended on God the Father throughout the scope of his whole earthly life and ministry. Jesus’s wisdom, and his supernatural power, his capacity to resist temptation, and all his other abilities – none of these things originated from Jesus’s personal human skillset. Instead, with respect to his human creatureliness, he needed God, as we do. That’s why, in all that he did, he did it with a true dependency on the Spirit of God.

And if even Jesus was dependent on God like this, despite his supernatural birth, and despite the sinlessness of his human nature – if even Jesus was needy for God, our neediness is exponentially greater! Because we aren’t just needy for God as creatures. But we’re needy for him as corrupt sinners. Every person, naturally descended from Adam and Eve, is infected with sin. And the poisonous influence of sin has been even more devastating than most people realize. Sin makes it so that the default condition of humanity is spiritually deadness – being dead toward God in our thinking, our desiring, our affections, our attitudes – dead toward Him, and deserving of death from him.

And without God’s intervention, that’s where we’d still be. Even our most eloquent confessions and apologies wouldn’t be able to take our sin away. Our best attempts at morality and community service would fail to put us on right standing with God. Earnest performances of religious duty would be utterly unable to fix the condition of our soul. Both as creatures, and even more as corrupt sinners, we’re utterly dependent on God to make things right.

When we see our failings and weaknesses, it’s tempting to try to deal with these deficiencies ourselves We might try to blame our wrongs on other people, or our tiredness, or our hard day of work. We might try to downplay the seriousness of the errors we’ve made. We might try to cover up our guilt, and hide it from our people. But none of these things truly help. It’s just a way of treating the symptoms without curing the disease. It’s like trying to put a Band-Aid over a gaping, infected wound. God is the only one who can make us well.

And so it makes sense, in our dependency and need, that we’d be just as earnest in prayer as Jesus was – if not moreso. Certainly, we depend on God for good health, and for our material needs to be met. It’s right that we would pray for those things. And yet we’re needy for God in so many more ways. In order for any human being to have new birth, and new life, by His Spirit – we can’t cause that to happen. We need God. We need his provision of a sacrifice to put away our sins. We need his forgiveness. We need His power to work in us, to uphold our faith in the face of temptation, and fear, and danger. We need his assurance, his guidance, his loving discipline – no matter how mature or complete you and I may think we are, we won’t ever reach a point where we stop depending on God for everything.

And if you have a hard time believing that – just remember that even Jesus, as a true man, depended on God like this. That’s reflected here in his commitment to prayer. And if it was a necessary means of receiving God’s strength and renewal for him, how much more should humble, earnest prayer be a priority for us?

The True Divinity of Jesus

But, of course, the dependency and true humanity of Jesus is just a small part of the text. From here, Mark quickly transfers our attention to the true divinity of Jesus, in verses 47 through 52. Even though Jesus is truly human – he speaks and takes action with a direct authority that’s clearly transcendent – supernatural. Mark points out Jesus’s divinity in two ways.

The more obvious of the two, is that as Jesus sees his disciples in their boat, struggling against the wind, he walks on water – not on frozen water. Anybody can walk on ice if it’s thick enough, and it’s not very impressive. No Jesus walked on the rushing waves of a windy sea. And this is remarkable – not just because he did something humanly impossible. But it’s noteworthy because the Old Testament specifically describes walking on the waters as something that the LORD of heaven does. In Job 9(:8), for example, God is spoken of as the one who stretched out the heavens, and the one who has “trampled the waves of the sea.” And in another place – Psalm 77:19 declares that God’s “way was through the sea, your path through the great waters.” And there’s even that interesting phrase back in Genesis 1, which describes how the Spirit of God hovered over the surface of the waters.” For Jesus to have this sort of mastery, in himself, to tread over the chaotic waters of the sea, is recognized as an ability that’s distinctly divine.

As a quick side note, you may recall that Matthew 14 describes this same event with some more detail. And in Matthew’s account, Jesus temporarily enables one of disciples, Peter, to walk on water. Of course, this doesn’t mean that Peter is God in any sense. Instead, even in Matthew 14, it’s clear that Jesus is the one who uniquely has divine authority in himself, as the Son of God, whereas Peter has no special abilities apart from Christ.

And here in Mark, by not mentioning Peter, the same point is being made. Peter has no special abilities without Jesus. And the spotlight is focused on Jesus, as the unique master over wind and waves. Jesus is the one who governs all the ebbs and flows, all that seems chaotic and uncontrollable in this life. Jesus has come as the LORD of heaven who stands over the deep waters, and who hushes the wind.

And yet Jesus’s divine identity is emphasized here in a second way. Mark makes it clear that Jesus is one and the same as the LORD God who led the people of Israel out of their slavery in Egypt. In the second book of the Old Testament – the book of Exodus, the history of how God rescued his people is recorded. And Mark makes a number of clear connections between Jesus’s actions here, and the acts of the LORD in Exodus.

For one thing, as Jesus looked down from the mountain, we’re told that Jesus “saw that they were making headway painfully.” Or a more literal translation would be that Jesus saw “they were being tormented in their striving” because the wind was against them. As Jesus looks on these twelve disciples – one man for each of the twelve tribes of Israel – he sees that they are being tormented. He notices them in their affliction (rowing against the wind), just as the LORD notices the afflictions of Israel in their slavery, back in Exodus 2:25.

In addition to this, as Jesus comes out to his disciples on the sea – we’re told that Jesus came out on the 4^th watch of the night. The night was often divided into four, three-hour shifts – and this was the shift from 3 AM until sunrise, at 6. It might seem like a strange, rather irrelevant detail for Mark to include. And yet it seems likely that this is intended to be another connection with the book of Exodus. The LORD stirs up the wind and opens a path through the Red Sea for the people of Israel to escape from the Egyptian army. And he does this in the morning watch – the forth watch of the night. That’s when the LORD takes action against his people’s tormentors, just as Jesus takes action here.

At the end of verse 48, Mark makes another unusual comment. He tells us that Jesus meant to pass by or pass before his disciples. The word here is the same word that’s used in the Greek text of Exodus 12:23, which talks about the LORD passing by the Egyptians, to show the glory of his judgment by striking down their firstborn sons. But it also appears again in Exodus 33 and 34, as God makes his glory pass by Moses – again, to make his divine glory known. There seems to be a connection in Mark, here. Jesus intends to let his glory pass before his disciples – but instead of simply passing by, Jesus actually comes with his glory directly into the midst of his people – directly into the boat with them – and he brings peace.

But of course, before Jesus comes into the boat, Jesus’s disciples are terrified by this dark figure walking on the water. They’re convinced that he must be some sort of phantom. But Jesus calls to them in verse 50, saying “Take heart!” And as it turns out, God’s servant Moses says the same thing in Exodus 14, right before leading Israel through the Red Sea, through the waters, to escape from the Egyptian army.

But there’s something else in verse 50 of our text – there’s an even clearer connection to the Exodus account, here. Because right after Jesus says, “Take heart!” He then tells his disciples “It is I.” At least, that’s how it’s often translated in our English Bibles. But more literally, what Jesus says here is “I AM.” And if you’re familiar with Exodus 3, that’s when Moses asks God what his divine name is – what he should be called. And the LORD God responds with those same words. The LORD God says, “I AM.”

As the disciples are trembling in the boat, tormented by the waves, tossed to and fro by their anxieties and emotions – Jesus calls out to them from where he stands over the waters. And he urges them: take heart! Do not fear! Why? Because, Jesus says, I AM! I am the LORD who sees your affliction! I’m the LORD who rescues you through the worries and waters of this world! I’m the LORD who reveals my glory to you. I AM! Jesus wanted his disciples to trust in him, and to be comforted by him – and he wants this for us, too.

And when Jesus gets into the boat, there’s further evidence of Jesus’s divinity, here. The wind that was blowing against the boat – it stops. The LORD God governed the wind that parted the Red Sea back in Exodus. And Jesus shows that same power over the wind, here.

Of course, I want to quickly point out – Mark’s point isn’t that life instantly becomes a calm sea with smooth sailing once Jesus gets in your boat. There isn’t a promise in the text, that Jesus’ll immediately calm all your waves. But there is comfort here that Jesus is the one who controls all the waves, by his divine power. And Mark doesn’t just want us to nod our heads, and to agree that this sounds nice. But he wants us to be convinced that Jesus truly is a refuge and rescuer for us – that we would be personally, practically resting in the saving power of Jesus. Mark’s goal here isn’t just to give us someone’s opinion, but to give us solid evidence that you and I should know and trust Jesus personally, as the true Son of God.

By now you’d probably think that his disciples would have this all figured out – that they’d have a right understanding of Jesus’s identity and his abilities. But as Jesus climbs into the boat with his disciples, and the wind ceases, we’re told at the end of verse 51 that his disciples were utterly astounded. They haven’t figured out who he is. Verse 52 makes this clear. “For they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened.”

When Mark refers to the loaves here – he’s talking about the text we looked at last week – how Jesus miraculously fed the crowd of 5,000 with a few loaves of bread and two fish. And Mark is making the point that the disciples should have already understood something about Jesus, after the miracle with bread a few hours before. Specifically, they should have known that Jesus was their God, in human flesh. Because back in Exodus, the LORD God fed his people with bread from heaven. And just recently, Jesus had done the same thing. They should have recognized him. They should have revered him. But instead verse 52 tells us that their hearts were hardened.

And interestingly, even this lines up with Exodus. Because after the LORD showed up to rescue his people back at that time – the people of Israel had hearts hardened with unbelief, too. Even though God had saved them from the slavery of Egypt, the people of Israel needed rescue from their slavery to sin.

Over the years, the hard-heartedness of Israel took two different forms. Some of them rejected God by turning to wickedness – by embracing lives of idolatry, and worldly pleasure-seeking, and selfish ambition. But others rejected God by turning to religion – by relying on themselves, on their own efforts and moral activities. But all along they should have understood – only God can rescue. God is the great Savior, who sets the slaves free. God is the Savior who gives bread from heaven for the life of his people. God is the Savior who preserves his people through the raging seas of this world. And Mark is helping us to see that this God has come down, in human flesh, in the person of Jesus Christ. And because the Son of God has come, he’s brought salvation closer to us than ever before – to dissolve our hardened hearts, to dispel our unbelief, and to deliver us from death.

The True Deliverance from Jesus (Not Just from the Wind!)

And this brings us to my third and final point this morning, concerning the true deliverance we receive from Jesus – the true deliverance from Jesus.

There are two parts of our text, in particular, that help us to really see and appreciate the salvation that’s brought to us by Jesus.

First, we see Jesus’s saving work in the way that he effortlessly calms the sea for his toiling disciples. Keep in mind, here, the disciples had been rowing against the wind all night long – from early evening, all the way until 4 o’clock in the morning or so. That’s what the text means when it says that the disciples were making headway painfully. And because the wind rushing forcefully against them, all their attempts to row or drive the boat against the wind were torturous. They couldn’t let up, or else they’d be blown backwards. Despite all their exertion, they were making about as much progress as someone walking up an escalator that’s going down.

There are many people who try to deal with their guilt and sin in the same sort of way. They rely on their own human effort, their own personal performance, to get themselves to a good spot with God. And yet human effort isn’t able to take away our sin. It doesn’t get us anywhere. It’s like rowing against the wind. Despite all our best attempts at good deeds and self-improvement – human effort can’t get us back on solid ground with God.

And it’s possible some of you – you know what it feels like, to live a life where you’re constantly trying to prove yourself to God, trying to check all the boxes, trying to earn his approval. But no matter how hard you work – no matter how much you row that boat – you’re never able to find rest. There’s no calm – because you’re constantly wondering, how do I know that my work is enough? What if all my strivings aren’t pure enough, or consistent enough, or numerous enough? When we try to save our own souls by relying on the things we’ve done, or the things we’re doing – there’s a constant toiling and torment, but there’s no rest. Relying on our own human abilities isn’t ever going to get us to the other side of the sea.

But even though the disciples are powerless against the wind, for Jesus, it’s no problem. As soon as he gets in the boat, the wind ceases. The disciples are delivered from the futility of their rowing – from the bankruptcy of their self-reliance – from their chasing after the wind.

And this same idea shows up a second way – in the last section of our text, in verses 53 through 56. As Jesus and his disciples reach the opposite shore, the people there recognize Jesus. And because they’ve heard of Jesus’s supernatural power – crowds of people gather around him, bringing all the people they know who are crippled or blind or diseased. And they’re doing this because, of course, they crowds know that they can’t heal these people, themselves.  It’s clear to them – they’re powerless to heal the sick. They’re unable to open the eyes of the blind. It’s impossible for them to do things like this, and they know it.

But Jesus is able to do in a moment, what the crowds would never be able to – even if they toiled and tried and for a hundred years. Jesus makes the sick well. He takes these deformed, diseased, and dying people – and his ability to help and heal is so abundant – verse 56 tells us that even the people who barely touched the fringe of his garment – even they’re made well. That’s how expansive and effective Jesus’s ability is to save. The same work that’s impossible for us, is something that Jesus can do promptly and perfectly.

I think I’ve mentioned this in a previous sermon – but when the end of verse 56 says that as many as touched the fringe of Jesus’s garments were made well – the Greek word for being made well – it’s not one of the specific Greek words that relates directly to healing or treating someone. But instead it’s the same word that’s used to refer to God’s activity to save. The wellness that Jesus brings, by his power is more than just biological or material. But Jesus is the one who can cure a corrupt heart. He’s the one who’s able to revive dead souls, and give eternal life.

No matter how hard we row the boat – no matter how much we might try to cure our own diseases – we can’t make ourselves well. We can’t erase our crimes against God and make peace. We can’t cure ourselves of our greedy desires, our polluted thoughts, or our lack of self-control. But the same LORD who delivered his people long ago from their slavery in Egypt, has taken on human flesh, to deliver us from our slavery to sin and self-righteousness.

Jesus came to do the work we couldn’t do. On behalf of his people, he lived a life of perfect obedience. He suffered the penalty for their sins, until no more penalty was left. And he acquired every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places for them. And because of Jesus’s work – not because of our work, but because of his – sinners like us are made well.

Anyone who reaches out, relying on Jesus – if you reach out, not with your fingers, but with faith – anyone who receives and rests upon the work of Jesus is made well. His power is what you need – in him is everything you need – to be saved.

And so as you behold the mighty works of Christ, don’t harden your hearts like the Israelites in the wilderness. Don’t have hard hearts like the disciples who didn’t understand the loaves, or the calming of the wind. But humble your hearts, and acknowledge the saving power of Jesus – because he – and he alone – is the one who can make us well.

Fellowship Reformed Church is a Bible-believing Presbyterian Church in Mt Pleasant, MI.