God With Us

I couldn't have picked a better song for where we're going this morning. I might make you do it again at the end if we have time. It's so good, your glory. God is what our heart longs for. We're gonna see that very explicitly in the text this morning. So this is Mark. We've been in mark for 20 weeks, believe it or not, now and again, going back, we're gonna see this again very explicitly in this passage. This is the good news. The gospel is about Jesus, who he is, his person, the Messiah, the anointed one, the Son of God. And again, Mark is trying to answer the question, who is this? Who is Jesus? He's constantly pointing us to who Jesus is. Fix your eyes on Jesus. It just says he taught them. Very rarely does Mark even break down. Well, what was he teaching? What did he say? Matthew and Luke and even John will talk a little bit more about the teachings of Jesus. Mark is concerned about the person of Jesus. And we're gonna see that again this morning. And so today's sermon is God with us? And Ryan already read the passage, so let's. Oh, oh, I forgot about the whole point the needle thing. Yeah, this was. These are needles, right? And so I know a lot of you don't have kids, and that's okay. But as a parent, when you take your child to the doctor and they need to get. And this has nothing to do with vaccines or anything like that, don't hear me that this is just about getting shots, okay? But when you take your kid, there's this look they give you, right? This look of, how dare you allow this doctor to put this sharp object into me. It hurts. And you're supposed to be my safety. Why are you letting this doctor do this? And if you're not a parent, you have an animal who looks at you even worse in a lot of ways than that. And if you don't have either of those, you were once a child who got shots, and you probably remember how awful it felt, and just remember thinking, why am I here having to endure this pain when I know that my parents could save me? They could retreat me from this pain and save me from this. But maybe, just maybe, parents know better. And they know that this temporary pain is more important than what could happen if we are left to our own devices. And so let's look at this passage called God with us. And looking at Mark, 6, 45, 56. And this first point here is the storm of life says. And immediately, again, Mark loves that I've Lost count how many times he's already said that. He just likes to keep the story moving immediately. Jesus made his disciples get into the boat. And so remember, context. Last week, we looked at a very, very familiar passage of Jesus feeding the 5,000. He has five loaves and two fish, and he feeds the 5,000. 5,000 men, right? And so there were. There would have been women and children, but probably not as many as there were men. I just heard someone this week, like, hey, there was 5,000 men. So if you, you know, they all have wives, assuming all of them are married and they all have at least, you know, 2.5 children. Jesus is feeding 20,000 people. Okay, it's possible, but not likely based on where they were. These would have been zealots, but hiding out in the. In the mountains, ready to rebel and fight against Rome. And Jesus shows up and he feeds them. And then as we looked in the. At the end of John, John has a parallel passage that feeding the 5,000 is the only story that is in all four Gospels, which is actually really cool and powerful in that sense that it actually did happen. And so then we have then this. This. Oh, yeah. In the end of John, though, it says that they actually. This army of zealots wanted to crown Jesus as king. All right? And I think that what happened here is that the disciples get caught up in the fervor. Like Jesus, we think you are the Messiah. You are the one who's gonna set our people free. And you can do that. You're powerful. You're the leader. Look at. Everyone adores you. You can make food out of nothing, just like Moses and manna in the wilderness. You're the guy. Let's make you king. Let's kick the Romans out. And then this is what happens. Immediately, he made his disciples and get into the boat. All right, so something's going on in the fervor. We can maybe read between the lines, which I think we'll see is the right reading of this text. And he just says, get in the boat and go to the other side. And I'm going to dismiss the crowd by himself. And it says, and after he had taken leave of them, his disciples, he went up the mountain to pray. And if we've been following along with Mark, and as we'll see in the future, Mark, that when Jesus prays alone, it is incredibly significant. Something is happening. Jesus is feeling tormented in some way. We already saw this back in chapter one, I believe, maybe three, where I think it's chapter whatever, where he prays and it's when he goes to alone to pray, and then he starts choosing his disciples, and it just turns everything topsy turvy. Look at who you're choosing. You're choosing tax collectors, you're choosing traders. You're choosing these lay men who have never studied under a rabbi. They don't know anything. And Jesus does this. And now we're gonna see this again, that Jesus gets alone to pray. And then we're gonna see it again on the night that he is betrayed. Each time he is alone, he's by himself. And his disciples fail to understand his mission. His disciples fail to understand his mission. Every time that Jesus goes alone to pray, it says, when evening came and the boat was out in the sea, as to the Sea of Galilee, he was alone on the land and he saw that they were making headway painfully, for the wind was against them. Again, whenever Mark likes to highlight that whenever the disciples are apart from Jesus, something bad and calamitous happens to the disciples. All right, I think that's a good clue that Mark is trying to show the readers. Be with Jesus, just stay with Jesus. But when you walk away, when you take your eyes off of Jesus, things happen. But I don't. I want to go back because I don't want to gloss over this because I think it's really important. And that is. He saw them, verse 48, and he saw that they were making headway painfully. We had recently just, in the previous chapter, looked at how Jesus calmed the storm. So we know, and the disciples know that Jesus has the ability and the authority over nature. Jesus, just picture this. He sends his disciples out in the sea to cross the sea. He's walking on the shore and he sees a storm rising up and then thinks, oh, my buddies are out there. Hey, storm, knock it off. Go away. Let's give him. It's the middle of the night. Let him. He doesn't do that. Why doesn't he do that? Just. Jesus, you calm storms. It's like your thing. How come you don't calm this storm? You're supposed to remove the pain, not be a partner at the doctor's office. Holding me still while I get knocked around by the waves of life, right? I think we can look at Jesus like that. Jesus, if you really loved me, you would remove this thing from me. Jesus, I know what's best for me. So I need you to do what I want. I need you to fix this. Or maybe like a loving parent, he knows what he's doing and he's comforting and loving us through the pain in the midst of whatever storm we might find ourselves in at any given moment. Second point is that he meant to pass by, says this about the fourth watch of the night. He came to them walking on the sea. Some people think the miracle here is that Jesus walks on water. The real miracle is that someone in their 30s pulled an all nighter. That's what I think the miracle is. The fourth watch of the night is anywhere between three and six. The nerd in me is going to tell you that that's a Greek phrase that Mark is getting to his Greek and Roman readers rather than a Jewish reader. It doesn't really matter, but just interesting, fun fact. But he walks on the sea, right? We're so used to this. But it's such a common thing, right, that when we think or we hear someone, oh, he walked on water. Yeah, of course he did. He walked on water and he meant to pass by them. But when they saw him walk in the sea, they thought he was a ghost and cried out for. They all saw him and were terrified. And I think we would also be terrified. Miracles happen. And I'm not gonna get into all the history and all the things, but back in the late 1800s, I'm not gonna get into it, but in the late 1800s and the early 1900s, there was what was called. And you can. If you want more information on this, I can get it to you. It was called the Quest for Jesus. We're currently in the third quest, but that's a different story. But in the first quest, this guy named Albert Schweitzer, he kind of puts a kibosh on this. But basically modernism was coming in from Germany and saying, no, no, no, no, we can't believe anything in the New Testament, we. Other than just it's a biography about this guy Jesus that was a historical figure. But all this other stuff, all this religious stuff was added later or was invented by the disciples that were recording this to paint Jesus in this better light. And so they would dismiss this. They say that Jesus was walking on a sandbar or there was something that would have explained naturally why the disciples thought. Thought he was walking on water. Ironically enough, Mythbusters attempted this. This was season 10, episode 3. They were reaching here for myths, apparently, at this point, because I'm not sure why you even need to have an old episode on. Can you walk on water? Guess what? No, it's not even plausible, okay? You cannot walk on water. You can make it look like you're walking on water. And I think that's what these people are saying. But that's not what happens here. These are fishermen in the sea that they know very well. And we know that they were terrified. Why would they be terrified of someone walking around in shallow water? It's not what happens. They're terrified of what is happening. Someone is walking out to them. And not just that someone's walking out to them, but these are our Jews who know their scriptures. And in the Old Testament, the only references to someone walking on water is God. It's God. This is something again, only God can do. And Mark is trying to answer the question, who is this guy? Well, let me demonstrate who he is. He's God. He walks out to them in water. He already claimed to forgive sins, but anyone can do that, right? I can look at anyone and say, oh, I forgive you. Your sins are forgiven. Do you believe me? I just forgave you of your sins. Why don't you believe me? Well, anyone can say that. But then he demonstrates that he's God by walking on water. We read this in beautiful poetry form in Job, chapter nine. I'm reading verse eight and verse 11. Just because those two verses pertain to this. Who alone stretched out the heavens and trampled the waves of the sea. Verse 11. Behold, here's this word. He passes by me and I see him not. He moves on, but I do not perceive him. This is the same chapter in which Job is saying, I wish I had an arbiter. I wish I had someone that could stand next to me, put their hand on me, and reach out and put their hand on God Almighty. Because I've got some beef with them that I need to take care of. I'm in the midst of a storm and I don't like it. It's unjust, it's not fair. If only I had a lawyer, an arbiter who could put stand between me. And here he says, I feel alone. God is capable of walking on the waves, but he passes by and he moves on. And I've got no say in this because he's God. It's Job's posture again. Going back to this, we see this phrase, while God tramples on the waves, when he walks on the sea, he meant to pass by them. There's two ways that I think we could think about this passing by. One is in the mind of the disciple. Hey, Jesus, me and my friends are about to die. We're about to die and you're passing by. You're just moving on. Jesus was about to pass by and I would imagine the disciples would have thought, and anytime you are in the midst of turbulence, thinking, maybe not physically I'm about to die, but my world is crumbling around me. Got it. It feels like you're just about to move on. Just the way that Job felt. Or maybe Mark is doing something else here. That this passing by can also demonstrate or reiterate again that Jesus is God in his glory, power on full display. He's saying he's God, and now he's physically demonstrating his God. And even in the language that Mark uses to pass by, going Back to Exodus 33, we read this about God says God. He said you to Moses, Moses at the burning bush. That's not true. Moses is up on top of Mount Sinai and he says, you cannot see my face. Moses says, God, I wanna see you. God says, you cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live. And the Lord said, behold, there is a place by me where you shall go, where you shall stand on the rock. And while my glory passes by, I will put you in the cleft of the rock and I will cover you with my hand until you have passed by. And then I will take away my hand and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen. Now, some of you nerds like me might be going, well, this was written in Hebrew. The New Testament's written in Greek. Yes, you're correct. The thing is, there was what was called the Septuagint. What was the Greek translation of the New. Sorry, the Greek translation of the Old Testament into Greek. Okay, Old Testament into Greek. There we go. And this is the language that is used in the Septuagint. And so when Jesus speaks or when the authors, Mark, for example, will quote Jesus, Jesus is most likely speaking in Aramaic. So when he. When. And so when he quotes scripture in Aramaic or Hebrew, the authors of the New Testament write it in Greek and they use the Septuagint. So Mark here is specifically using a word and a language to describe God passing by in this passage. We see this again in First Kings 19, where we see Elijah, this powerful prophet, performing miracles unlike the world has ever seen until Jesus. He's raising people from the dead. People thought that Jesus was Elijah raised from the dead because of the miracles that he performed. Listen to what happens here. Elijah is in a deep depression. Deep depression. But he's considering ending it all. And he said this angel talking to him says, go out and stand on the mount before the Lord. He's in a cave. He's in another cleft of the rock. And he says, behold, the Lord passed by. And a great strong wind rose and tore the mountains and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord. But the Lord was not in the wind. And after the wind, an earthquake. But the Lord was not in the earthquake. And after the earthquake, a fire. But the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire, the sound of a low whisper. I think there's something at least that I think about when I read this and read Exodus and read Mark of God, all powerful, passing by. Where do we look for God in the midst of the storm? Right? Because I think we want him to show up in the earthquake. We want him to show up in a fire. We want him to show up in the wind and the tornado. We want something big. I want something I can see. I want something tangible. Can you perform a miracle? Can you do this healing? Can you deliver me? Can you do this? Or do we seek his presence? Do we seek Jesus like we just sang about? Do we seek his presence? We cry out and we say, God, life would be so much easier. It'd be so much better. I could do so much more for you, even if you would just take this thing away. The point of this passage, I think, is that he sees you. He sees you in your struggle. The Bible tells us that Jesus is well acquainted with grief. Do we listen for that still, small voice that says, I'm here with you. I'm beside you. I'm holding you. I know what you're going through really hurts. I'm not diminishing that pain. But at this time, I'm not going to remove that pain. But I will tell you the same way I told Paul, that my grace is sufficient for you, just like getting a shot. Maybe there's pain in your life for a little while, as Peter tells us, but that little while might be the rest of your life. There might be pain in our life to get you to a place where you can see Jesus in the midst of your storm. And he calls out in a still, small voice, this is the beauty of Jesus. This is it. Because he's not far off. He's not passing by the way that he did with Job. He is the arbiter. He shows up. He is God in the flesh. He is God with us. Emmanuel, what used to be unapproachable and avoidable and you had to be hid in a rock. Jesus says, no, no, I'm here. Come to me, all who are weary, and I will give you rest. And then says, it is I. And immediately he spoke to them and said, take heart. This is positive. Take courage, be of good cheer. It is I. Do not be afraid. When he got into the boat with them and the wind ceased, and they were utterly astounded. There's two ways. Not again. To get super nerdy here. There's two ways you can translate the word. It is I, emi, which is it is I or I am. And the other way, which is egoemi, which is I am, which is the covenant name that God gives his people. We see this in Exodus, chapter three. And Moses said to God, this is before he goes back into Egypt to set the Hebrews free from slavery. And Moses said to God, if I come to the people of Israel and say to them, the God of your fathers has sent me to you and asked me, well, what is his name? What shall I say to them? And God said to Moses, I am who I am. E go ami. I am who I am. And he said, say to the people of Israel, I am has sent me to you. This is the covenant name, Yahweh of God. I am. This is no typo here. And it's no typo in Mark. Take a wild guess which way Jesus said, I am. Jesus claims to forgive sins. He rebukes nature like a disobedient dog. And now he walks on water, something that only God can do. And here he claims that ancient name for God by saying, I am. Here's the point. For thousands of years, no one could approach God, no one could approach the I am as creatures without endangering their lives. And here Jesus shows up not as an idea of God or some figment of their imagination, or even an ideal, but shows up real, tangibly in the flesh, God with us. This is the good news. This is what Mark wants us to see. He wants us to see Jesus with us in the midst of our storms. Point 4. They did not understand. Did a Mark study class? And as you're walking through the Gospel of Mark, we would always do this. It says, and they were utterly astounded, for they did not understand. Blank. And the question would be asked, well, what didn't they understand? How would you fill that in? How would you answer that? We already so spoiler alert, you kind of already know. But what is it that they didn't understand? Mark says they didn't understand about the loaves. What? What did they not understand about the loaves? It says their hearts were hardened. Why? Again, I think this is going back to they wanted a king. They wanted someone that could put a crown on who was going to rebel and kick the Romans out and reestablish this nation physically, this kingdom on earth. But their hearts are hardened because Jesus isn't here for an earthly kingdom to fix all of our earthly problems. He's here to establish his kingdom, the kingdom of God. Is that what we want? That's what the whole point of last week was. We want to say, God, do more. Kick the bad guys out, remove the pain. Maybe we need to just stay quiet and quiet our hearts so we can listen to God and see Jesus. Stop trying to force an earthly crown on his head. Stop trying to force him into a genie bottle so he will grant your wishes for whatever's pressing on your heart. And I'm not saying don't pray. We're commanded to pray. We're commanded to give our petitions before the Lord. But in your prayers and your petitions, do we miss seeing Jesus in it all? Do we miss seeing that maybe he is working things out for his good? And then he says, I'm going to climb into the mess with you. I'm going to get into the boat. I'm going to be there with you. I might not fix it the way you think I'm going to. I might not fix the way you want me to fix it, but I'm here with you. I am God. With us, I am Emmanuel. Then we see business as usual. Looks at the disciples, and he says, you may not see or understand what my kingdom is and what I'm all about. So let me show you again. They did not understand. Their hearts were hardened. And then it says, and they crossed over. And they came to the land of Gennesaret. And they moored to the shore. And when they got out of the boat, the people immediately recognized Him. I can imagine stories about Jesus are spreading all over the place, this crowd. And what does he do? He does the same thing. Let me demonstrate what the kingdom of God is like. And he ran and ran about the whole region and began to bring the sick people on their beds. And wherever. Wherever they heard he was and wherever he came, in villages and cities and countryside, they laid the sick in the marketplace and implored him that they might touch even the fringe of his garment. And as many touched it, were made well. No crown, no armies, just care for those who are in need. He's a God who is near. He is God with us. Jesus. So in application, in what ways do we look for God? Where do we see Him? Do we want him to show up in a miracle? Do we want to show up in an Answered prayer. Answered prayers are amazing. One of the best things that have bolstered my faith over my life. But there are times where God doesn't answer the prayers the way that we want them to be answered. And do we still see God in the midst of the storm? Do we hear that small voice? Can we sit in our storm? The one that he knows about, that he could have the power to be on the shore and see us in our struggle and say, knock it off. And sometimes he does, sometimes he doesn't. And let him comfort us because he knows what's best for his children, practically. Do we. Do we just want God to fix it? Or do we want to be fixed? Do we want him to fix us? Job 9 11. I read this before. It says, behold, he passes by me. I see him not. He moves on, but I do not perceive him. Some of you might feel like that. And this is where the beauty of communion comes into play. Because you might be sitting here and you might think, how do I know he's here? Well, you can physically grab a little wafer and you can break it to remember his body that's broken for you. You say, I just don't. I don't see Him. I think that he's moved on. He doesn't care about me. Then look to the table and drink viscerally. Taste and see that he is good. And he loves you so much that he gives his life for you. And in the midst of pain and suffering and your own storm, he's near. And we get to. And he commanded us to physically remember that when we gathered together. What a beautiful thing that we get to see and experience God with us this morning. If you're a follower of Jesus, partake, taste, see that he's good. Remember that even in the midst of pain and suffering and grief and sorrow, he's right there. He is not far off. He died, he was buried. And he rose again. Someday he's gonna make it all right, but we're not there yet. In the meantime, he's working on you. He wants you to become more like him. He wants you to trust his father. He wants you to trust him. Let's pray. Worship team. I'll just have you do those last two songs you were working on and I'll be back up to dismiss us. Let's pray. Father, thank you again just for our time together to look at this passage in Mark. To look and see that you are not a God who's far off. There are so many moments in our lives that we lament that we cry out just like Job and it feels like you've abandoned us. We can read the Psalms and read King David, who just feels like you are far off and cries out, how long, O Lord, will you hide your face? Jesus is the proof that you've heard Jesus is the proof that you are near. So I pray that as we take these elements, would we just rest in that. Those of us who maybe aren't in the midst of a storm or aren't in the midst of a struggle, maybe on a mountaintop, would we still see you? Would we still be calm enough to hear you and listen to you? And we've encouraged those who are in pain and suffering around us to just be still, to listen, to see that you are there. That is who you have revealed yourself in the Gospels to us. The good news. The good news about Jesus. The good news is Jesus. Thank you for that. We love you. It's in Christ's name I pray. Amen.