Atheist in a Foxhole

All right, we're back. Okay, so we've been in the gospel mark 14 weeks and we'll be done. We're going to take a little break for Christmas. As I mentioned, if you saw this in the weekly email, we're going to be looking at just this idea that Jesus arrives. We're going to be looking at him in history. There are a lot of questions that surround the historical Jesus. Why did he go to Bethlehem and what's with this census? And do we have any proof that Rome was doing this? And so we're going to be looking at that. And we're looking at in reality of that he actually physically came, was born as a baby and then finally in glory. And so looking forward to that, that series as we look at Christmas. Then we'll take a couple of weeks, kind of do just vision, looking at Hope lowertown and those kinds of things. Then we'll jump back into Mark. So here we are in Mark 1, in the beginning, the good news about Jesus, that this is the good news. This is the gospel about Jesus, the Messiah that he is the good news, that he is the one who has come to save us, the promised, anointed one. And so Mark is telling us then through the lens, through Peter as his interpreter, the stories, not the stories, but the real things, the tangible that Jesus did. And we get to benefit from reading about it. So today's sermon, an atheist in a Foxhole. We're going to be looking at Mark 4, 36, 41 that Sean just read. There might be some of you in here who might be an atheist, right? And so you go, oh, he's attacking me. And that's not what I'm trying to do. Just want to maybe say maybe there's. I just want to maybe open up the idea of plausibility in something when it comes to Christ. There might be some of you who are just skeptical of just say, yeah, no, I believe in God. But this whole idea that, I don't know, Jesus died for my sins and that I hope that today we might be just again might become a little bit more tangible. And I know there are some of you, you might not consider yourself a skeptic, but you would consider yourself skeptical, if that makes sense. If we can make a little delineation on that of saying, oh, I believe in Jesus. I believe that he died for my sins. But man, some of these stories, I don't know. I just don't know if I can take them as true. I don't know if I can believe this stuff. And so I'm hoping that we will all see Jesus more clearly and tangibly. And then finally, if you're just like, man, I'm on fire. I've never loved Jesus more in my life. Then I hope that we would see Jes. Jesus in a new light and appreciate who he is more. And, and maybe especially as Christmas season is upon us and as we are meeting with friends and family who might be skeptics, who might totally reject this, that we might be able to just have a little bit more that we can, we can talk with them about.

One of my favorite all time shows. And I know that as soon as I talk about this, my boys, like, I want to watch it. You're not watching it. It's called Band of Brothers, right? It's been out forever now and it's still just one of the greatest shows, especially about World War II ever made. It's way. You're way too young, that's why. Pipe down. Okay, so there's, there's this scene, there's this one episode, it's called Bastogne, I think is the name of it. But it's the, it's the Battle of the Bulge and it's Christmas time and they are in these foxholes and the Germans are just shelling them like crazy. And if they were ever caught outside of a foxhole, they were dead. So but you can imagine these soldiers as they're. And this was just life. This is what happened during the war, that as they were pinned down in these foxholes, just screaming out to anything and everything they believed in, save me, and I don't want to die. And if there was by chance a shell would happen to land directly in a foxhole, then that was it, they're dead. And so I want to look at this idea of an atheist and a foxhole. And I'm going to get into that a little bit more. But before we get back to that, let's just jump into this. A greater sign. So in Mark chapter four, starting off in verse 35, on that day when evening had come. So again, Jesus is out, he's on that boat and he's teaching. And they say, hey, let's go across to the other side. And leaving the crowd, they took him in with them in the boat just as he was. And the other boats were there with him. And other boats, we don't know anything about these other boats. We don't know if there were other disciples, maybe other followers of Jesus that were, you know, kind of put me part of that 70 as. As we learned that he had this 12. It was Jesus in the 12. There were other people. Were they following along? Kind of seems like maybe that's the case. They actually discovered in the 80s, a boat in the Sea of Galilee that was dated back to even 1000 or 100 BC in that time of time of Christ. And. And that they seat approximately about 15 people. So it doesn't. It makes sense that all of the disciples and Jesus would have been in the same boat. And there's place for storage and benches to lay down on and all the things of fits. Says in a great windstorm arose and the waves were breaking into the boat. So the boat was already filling, but he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. And they woke him and said, teacher, do you not care that we're perishing? Just one thing I wanted to highlight here is that Jesus is asleep on the cushion. And as we get ready for Advent season, we see that Jesus, God takes on flesh. He's human. He is a human being. He gets sleepy, he gets tired. St. Augustine has this quote, and I'm just kind of not. Yeah, a little bit of a paraphrase, but kind of whatever. He says that man's maker was made a man, that the bread of life had hunger, the fountain had thirst, the light of the world slept and the way became tired on a journey. That he is human. He has human responses to things that when we get tired, we go to sleep and we're about to see him calm the storm. Right. Just that juxtaposition of human and God in one. So what's going on? Well, as you maybe if you read, if you're super familiar with your Bible, maybe this would have reminded you of Jonah, maybe not. And it's okay if it didn't. It didn't necessarily jump off the page to me at first either. But as I was reading the commentary, it was like, wow, this is in some ways a retelling of the story of Jonah, of a prophet of Israel. So I'm going to read these first few verses just for a little bit of context, in case you're not super familiar with. Jonah says, now the word of the Lord came to Jonah, the son of Mittai, saying, arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the Eve, their evil that has come upon before me. But Jonah rose and fled to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord. And he went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish. So he paid a fare and went down into it. To go to them with Tarshish, away from the presence of the Lord. So now here, listen to the similarities of what I just read in Mark. Now to Jonah. But the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea, and there was a mighty tempest in the sea. So the ship threatened to break up. Then the mariners were afraid and each cried out to his God, and they hurled the cargo that was in the ship into the sea to lighten it for them. But Jonah had gone down to the inner part of the ship and had laid down and was fast asleep. So the captain came to him and said, what do you mean, you, sleeper, arise, call out to your God. Perhaps the God will give thought to us that we may not perish. Or, you've got two prophets. You've got them on a boat in a storm, asleep. And yet when they wake up, their. Their responses are vastly different. That Jesus wants to, or Jonah wants to continue to run and hide and has to give himself to the wind and the waves for what he considers certain and imminent death. But Jesus is going to wake up and do something drastically different. Jesus talks about this in Matthew chapter 12. He says some of the scribes and Pharisees, or these religious leaders come to Jesus and they answer him, saying, teacher, we wish to see a sign from you, right? You're claiming to be the Messiah, but can you show us? Prove it right, do something in front of us. And even though he's been doing miracle after miracle, he's saying, we want to see a sign from you. But he answered them, an evil and adulterous nation seeks for a sign. But no sign will be given to you except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh, these are Gentiles, will rise up at judgment with this generation and condemn it. For they repented at the preaching of Jonah and behold something greater. Then Jonah is here. Jesus saying, I'm preaching the same message of repentance, but even more so because it's not just repent to God. I'm telling you, you can repent because of who I am. I'm the Messiah. I'm the one Jonah was pointing to. Jonah was in the belly of the. Of the fish. I'm was. I will be in the belly of the earth that I am greater. Something greater than Jonah is here. A psalm that will also reflect what Jesus is about to do is Psalm 107, starting in verse 23, it says, Some went down to the sea in ships doing business on the great waters. They saw the deeds of the Lord, his wondrous works of the deep. For he commanded and raised the stormy wind which lifted up the waves of the sea. They mounted up to the heavens and they went down to the depths. Their courage melted away in their evil plight. They reeled and staggered like drunken men and were all at their wits end. 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. Then they were glad that the waters were quiet, and he brought them to their desired haven. Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love, for his wondrous works to the children of man. Let them extol him in the congregation. The people praise him in the assembly of the elders. So the question I kind of want to look at this morning is, did this actually happen?

How do we know that Mark or Peter speaking to Mark and sharing his life events? How do we know that Peter didn't take what he believed to be true about Jesus and force and tell a story, a fabrication, so that it would fit Old Testament prophecies about Jesus? They say, yeah, we believe Jesus is the Messiah, but let's just take some of these Old Testament things and then I'll tell a story that would make it seem like Jesus was the fulfillment of these things. How do we know that he isn't committing the crime of eisegesis, of taking his context and forcing it into an Old Testament thing? How do we know that that's not happening? That they're not making it up or adding aspects to make it sound like Jesus fit the bill of the Messiah? One thing, and I know that this is. Well, I. Whatever, I already did it. This is nerdy and I get it. But we're just going to do it anyways because I'm a nerd. So here we go. Coherence. There's. There's. There's eight different criteria for finding out if something is historically accurate or not. Okay, That's a fun fact. One of them, though, is coherence. Let me explain it just. It's pretty obvious, pretty simple. Does it cohere? Right. Does it gel with the other readings and teachings of specifically of Mark or all the New Testament? This story does fit with the New Testament. Actually. John attests to a different story of Jesus walking in the water and calming a storm, but that's a different story, right? But coherence here, specifically in the Gospel of Mark, it completely fits right in with what Mark is trying to do. And that is Mark is trying to highlight the authority that Jesus has in multiple different ways. It completely fits as he demonstrates the authority that Jesus has. We go back to Mark, chapter one. We've already spent some time here. And it says. And they were all amazed, so that when they questioned among themselves, he just cast out a demon. That's what's going on. He cast some demon out and he says, what is this? And we're gonna see it this week, too. Who is this? What is this? A new teaching with authority. He even commands the unclean spirits and they obey him. Already up to this point. Now in Mark, chapter four, we've seen Jesus authority over exorcisms or spiritual chaos, if you will. We've seen his authority over healings and physical chaos that's in the world. We've seen him teach on the kingdom as he looks at social and religious chaos. And then finally, in our passage today, it says he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. And here we see his authority over nature, or original chaos, if you will, that Jesus produces order out of a spoken word. This is one of the few times where Jesus doesn't pray to the Father when he performs a miracle. A lot of times it will say that he turns and he prays, then he performs a miracle. Not in this case, he just speaks it with authority over nature and takes chaos and makes order from that chaos. And just reading this, going back to Genesis chapter one, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and the earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Well, hang on. Waters don't come until day. What was it, three? Sure. Right. Where does the water. Why are there waters there? There's nothing even there. Why is there water there? The water is synonymous, especially in the Old Testament. Well, all throughout the Bible in a lot of ways, of just chaos. Then when you get to the end of Revelation, it says, there will no longer be any sea. Right? The chaos, the evil is gone. And here at the beginning, it's just chaos. And God shows up and he says, let there be. And he speaks it and it obeys. Jesus is doing the exact same thing. The thing that Jesus does is the thing that only God can do. And the disciples recognize that.

I love this. This is From Edwards here, the Greek word for be still, peo, carries the the sense of muzzled. It occurs in the second person singular as though Jesus were addressing a personal being. I love that it's unusual. Perfect passive imperative form indicates that the conditions shall persist. That is be still and stay still. Right? I asked the question, what makes a good dog? Right? What's the best dog? You've. I don't think any of you were like this one dog. It was the best dog. It used to just jump up on the dinner table and eat everything and it would lick my face and it would vomit everywhere. It was the best dog. No, of course that doesn't make a good dog. What makes a good dog, an obedient dog is what makes a good dog. A good dog is when the Master has control over it. And Jesus looks at the storm and says, sit down, knock it off. And it obeys. Why? Because he's the master. I mean, think about this. Jesus treats the sea and the wind like a dog and not necessarily a bad dog. Is the storm doing a bad thing? No, the storm is doing what storms do. The wind is doing what wind does. It was like, I remember when we had our dog Daisy and we had family living with us for a while. And it's a golden retriever for crying out loud, right? Is the most gentle, calm dog. And that dog never barked. The only time that dog barked was when someone knocked on the front door and that. And someone would knock on the front door and my dog would start barking. And I remember my brother in law, he won't ever listen to this, so I can say it. He said, man, your dog's always barking when someone knocks at the door. I'm like, yeah, that's kind of its job. You know what I mean? Like, there's not too many other things I want this dog to do other than bark. Because if they come in the door, it's going to run away. It's not going to do anything. So it can at least alert me, you know, it's doing what dogs. So the storm's not doing anything bad or evil here. But yet he says, stop, be still.

And it obeys. He is even going back in Mark chapter two and three, that he is the strong man, the stronger man, that even the wind obeys him, that no one can make order out of chaos from a word but God, everything, even the wind obeys the Creator's voice and so he has all authority. Let me get into this idea of a coping mechanism going back. It says when he was in the stern asleep in the cushions. And they awoke him and said to him, teacher, do you not care that we are perishing? Going back to the kind of title of the sermon, atheists and Foxholes, that goes back to 1942, in the middle of World War II. Army Chaplain William T. I can't read my handwriting. It's either Clemens or Cummings. And he coined that phrase, there are no atheists in foxholes. Which, which the point is that when you're in a foxhole and there are bullets whizzing over your head, everyone now believes in something and they're praying out to whatever it is they're praying out to. And he's saying, hey. And he was using it as a proof, right? He's saying everyone, the most staunch atheist, when they're in a foxhole and they're about to die, they think they're about to die, they all of a sudden become theists very quickly. That was his point. He was trying to use it as a proof text. But he actually, in the sense unknowingly, was playing right into philosophy at the time. It had been for hundreds of years and even to this day. Meaning that he's playing right into the philosopher's hands that says that God is a human invention, that God, this idea of God, people have invented God so that in times of calamity or distress or fear that they, it comforts them knowing that there's a God who in some way is in control of this thing. It's a figment of our imagination.

Let me quote several of them here actually, because this isn't just a one one off thing. David Hume in the 18th century, the primary religion of mankind arises chiefly from an anxious fear of future events. Karl Marx well known phrase. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, the soul of the soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people, calms them down to believe that there is a God.

Nishki God is a construct of human weakness. Sigmund Freud Religion is a system of wishful illusions together with a disavowal of reality. The gods are exalted fathers and the longing for the Father is the root of the need for religion, right? He's saying we all got daddy issues, we all got dad problems. And so therefore let's create a God that is the Father who is a good father and meets all my needs, that my actual father could never live up to.

It's out of our weaknesses that we create this illusion.

Bertrand Russell, he was a Brit, I didn't name anyone else's nationality. I don't know why I named his. But religion is based primarily upon fear. Fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. And then finally the one that's he's still alive. Richard Dawkins. God is a delusion born of primitive fear and ignorance. Are they wrong? Is God just a construct of human beings to help us when we're scared? When I don't understand something? Well, it's just faith. God, God can do it. Or is there something more going on here? I think they are wrong. Why? This passage says he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, peace, be still. And the wind ceased and there was a great calm. And he said to them, why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith? And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, who then is this that even the wind and the sea obey him? Again, Jesus just did something that only God could do. They knew that no one can do. This isn't some parlor trick and misdirection, you know. I mean, like, oh, I'm going to hide a coin behind your ear and all this. You can't, you can't fake this one. You can't have other actors that are, oh, I'm sick and I've got to get a lame hand and oh, look at me, I can now you can't fake this one. He calms the storm. The sea listens to it. I love how the King James version puts the disciples. Question of the statement says, what manner of man is this? They just don't even know how to categorize him. Jesus, I thought I'd known you, but who are you? That was some wild stuff you just did. He just talked to the sea in the storm like I do to my pet. They were sorely afraid. They were fearfully afraid. They thought that they were about to die.

And then Jesus calms the storm and saves them. And now the calamity that they once feared pales in comparison to the fear that they now have of Jesus himself. They are more afraid. They have great fear, sorely afraid of Jesus who's standing there in front of them on the boat.

They're on the boat. Jesus, wake up. We're about to die.

We're freaking out, man. And he goes, knock it off. Sit down, get down.

And then they go, ah, Jesus, we're about to die. Right More so. The fact that Jesus does what he does is actually proof this can't be a man made invention. Why in the world would humanity Ever invent a God that is more terrifying than the calamity that was there to begin with? This isn't bullets whizzing over a foxhole. God save me. What? This. This text proves that to come face to face with that God is far more terrifying than death.

My boy RC says this death reminds us that we are creatures. Yet as fearsome as death is, it is nothing compared with meeting a holy God. When we encounter him, the totality of our creatureliness breaks upon us and shatters the myth that we have believed about ourselves. The myth that we are demigods, junior grade deities who will try to live forever. When you look at all of scripture, anytime someone comes face to face with God or even an angelic creature, that they fall on their face as dead, I. I've been scared a lot in my life. I don't think I've ever been to a point when someone or something has walked into a room and I've fallen on my face and yelled out, please don't kill me. This is what happens every time someone comes face to face with the holy God.

The God is far more terrifying than the events taking place.

If God was an invention of the human psyche, then why make him more terrifying than the thing we are afraid of? Edwards, James Edwards says this. The disciples are better able to handle the possibility of their own death than the possibility of the presence of God among them.

Another criteria of proof in these examples, one of them is embarrassment. Embarrassment means this. If what was reported would have caused embarrassment, but nonetheless is nonetheless recorded, it is unlikely to have been invented. Okay, so if Peter is telling a story and this is like the first pope guy, he's telling a story that makes him look like a fool. He wouldn't have recorded it. It actually adds authenticity when it actually embarrasses the person that's telling the story. Because why would we do that? That doesn't add credibility to me. It doesn't make me look good. It doesn't give me any honor or glory. It actually puts shame upon me and gives glory to who Jesus is. It adds credibility.

How could they be embarrassed? Well, one thing is they're fishermen who are afraid of the sea. That might embarrass somebody, I would imagine. If I'm a lifelong fisherman and I get out in a boat and I'm afraid of the storm, they panic, they accuse Jesus of not caring. They actually confused about who he is. Who is this guy?

It's not flattering to leaders of the early church, I think, especially Peter. And so it's A strong indication this story is not made up just to glorify them. This points everything to who Jesus is. Last thing that I want to get into is just this lack of faith, he said to them. And I kind of skipped over this because I knew I was gonna be coming back. But he says to them, why are you afraid? Have you still no faith? Why does Jesus, in a way, rebuke his disciples? And there's two things here that we can see. Number one is they accuse Jesus of not caring. Do you not care that we're about to die?

Jesus, do you not care?

You can imagine the first readers of Mark, they've been reading this in 64 to 68 A.D. under Nero's reign, who's actively trying to systematically destroy Christians, that I'm sure there was somebody in their little house, church reading this, going, I don't think Jesus does care. Actually, I know he doesn't, because I just watched my brother get brutally murdered in the streets because he wouldn't sacrifice a pig to Caesar. There's no way Jesus cares. This is garbage.

What about our 21st century readers?

Are there times that you have felt that God is indifferent to your suffering?

I know. I've been there.

Let, let, let yourself be known to God. There are entire Psalms, Psalms of Lament. There's an entire book, Lamentations, where it's just a lament. It's just a cry to God. Cry to God. Be honest with him. Because if I know if my theology is good, he already knows how you feel. He already knows what you're thinking. So why not tell him? Get it off your chest. Tell him how you feel. He's gonna listen. Why? Because he does care.

There's nothing wrong with letting your feelings be known to God. He already knows how you feel.

Well, how do I know then? How could I possibly know that God isn't indifferent? Jesus? You think Jesus didn't feel betrayed and hurt when he was nailed to a cross and crucified, dying for our sins? Oh, yeah, he was. He did feel that way. He did feel abandoned.

Jesus, he's all the proof that we need that Jesus and God cares.

And he's more than we deserve. I don't say this lightly. I don't say this.

You know, I don't know what I'm trying to say, what the word is, but Patrick Mishke, just before the service, he came up to me and said that they wanted to hold the Mishkes, wanted to just do a prayer night next Sunday night. There are just some people in our church right now that are going through hell, and you might not be aware of that, and that's okay.

But we want to just spend some time praying. If you need something that you need to be prayed for, we can talk about that. We can pray about that. But just in particular, just for our church, our city, our state.

And just individuals in our church that just need to be lifted up before a God who cares, who sees, who loves. We want to spend some time doing that. So thank you, Patrick and Sarah, for hosting that. It'll be in the evening. We'll. We'll. We'll send out information in the weekly email about when and where and all the details in that. But next Sunday, the 14th, we'll. We'll plan on doing that.

Secondly, doubt and fear Jesus doesn't go to them and say, you don't know enough about me. That's not the problem. It's not that they don't know enough about Jesus. It's that they lose heart. They start to fear that and doubt that Jesus is who he said he is. So then how do we do that? Right? Is the point of today's sermon of just like, hold on tight, just have more faith, just grit it and bear it? No, I think the whole point of this is to go back to the rest of chapter four that we just spent three weeks looking at and listen to Jesus say the kingdom of God. This is what the kingdom of God is like. It's like someone who sows some seed and they have no control over it. It's like complete and utter abandonment and faith and trust, and things might not grow and they might not work out the way we want. But guess what? God is going to win. God's going to win.

And Jesus is all the proof we need and more than we deserve.

All right, an application here. Maybe you've never considered that Jesus was real and therefore the consequences if he's real, just like the disciples. And as I read that quote from Edwards, are you better able to handle the possibility of your own death? I'm okay with it. I'm just going to turn into nothingness, and it'll be fine. I'll be like I never existed. Are you okay with that?

But you can't even begin to imagine the possibility that God is real and that he dwelt among us.

And then secondly, maybe you've accused Jesus of not caring. He does. We do this thing every once in a while as pastors and elders, where we have the talk. My boss, Steve Tricher, loves to do this. Well, randomly. He Will call you after a hard day and say, give me the talk.

And we gotta say, yeah, this sucks. Life is hard. But Jesus. Jesus is worth it. Every once in a while, we just need a little bit of a pep talk. And so maybe today you just need to hear me going, yeah, maybe we. Maybe, maybe you have been accusing God of not caring. And Jesus. I'm not caring. I'm giving you the talk. He does. He sees you. He hears you. He knows you by name. You're not just the number. It's one thing I just heard recently.

That a good shepherd doesn't count his sheep. He knows them by name. He knows you. He knows exactly what you're going through. This week, in the discussion things for our small groups, one of the questions is, what would it look like to trust Jesus when he seems asleep? It's not an easy question to answer. That's a. That's a real question. I go for a walk. No, you don't. Maybe if that works for you, keep doing that, that's great. But maybe you need to hear from Jesus. Why so little faith?

I've done this for you. I've lived for you. I've died for you. The kingdom of God is if a man scattered seed on the ground and he sleeps and it grows and he knows not how. Dependence on God. We're going to have communion like we do every week. And so we can take these crackers that represent the body of Christ that's broken for us, the juice that represents his blood that is shed, that is poured out for us. How do I know that Jesus cares? You're about to taste it. That's how. How do I know? Because he's suffered and died for our sins. No, Jesus doesn't care. He's asleep. It might feel like that for sure. But he sees you. He knows. He knows.

You don't need to be a member of this church or any church, but if you're a follower of Jesus, I would love for you to take these elements with us. The worship team's gonna come back up and they're gonna sing two songs. As we reflect on that finished good work of Jesus on the cross for us. These aren't just stories. These aren't just things that sound good about Jesus. These are real, tangible things that we can look at and see historically. Let me pray. Father, we thank you just for our time again together this morning as we look at this text.

That I think can fly in the face of so much of philosophy that says you're fake, you're made up, that we made you up, because it makes me feel good about myself. That's not the God that I read about in the Bible. But you are holy. You're unapproachable, ineffable light. And the only reason I can pray to you now that you hear my voice is because of the finished work on the Cross by Jesus Christ.

How do I know that you care? Because you sent your only son into this world.

Born of a virgin in a manger in Bethlehem, so that he would live a perfect life. That we can't live and die a death that I cannot die for my sins. So that you might receive all the honor and glory and power and praise forever and ever. And it's the name of Jesus we pray. Amen.