Our first scripture reading this morning comes from Isaiah chapter 9, beginning at the first verse:
“But there will be no gloom for her who was in anguish. In the former time, he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali; but in the latter time, he has made glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Nations.
The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone. You have multiplied the nation; you have increased its joy. They rejoiced before you as with joy at the harvest, as they are glad when they divide the spoil.
For the yoke of his burden and the staff of his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor you have broken as on the day of Midian. For every boot of the trampling warrior in battle tumult and every garment rolled in blood will be burned as fuel for the fire.
For to us a child is born; to us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.”
From Isaiah, we turn to the Gospel of Luke, chapter 8.
“One day he got into a boat with his disciples, and he said to them, ‘Let us go across to the other side of the lake.’ So they set out, and as they sailed, he fell asleep.
And a windstorm came down on the lake, and they were filling with water and were in danger. And they went and woke him, saying, ‘Master! Master! We’re perishing!’
And he awoke and rebuked the wind and the raging waves, and they ceased, and there was a calm. He said to them, ‘Where is your faith?’ And they were afraid, and they marveled, saying to one another, ‘Who then is this that he commands even winds and water, and they obey him?’
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Let us pray.
Lord, you are the one who calms every storm, just as you are the one who makes the winds and the waters to rage. We ask and pray that you enter our hearts, that you give us your calm and your peace, and that you calm the storms of our hearts, our minds, and in our lives. Give us your peace as we hear your word and receive what you have to say to us.
It’s in Jesus’ name we pray, amen.
The first two titles which Isaiah gives to the Messiah were fairly innocuous, yet nonetheless impressive: Wonderful, implying that he would be a wonder and that he will be surrounded by the miraculous, and that he will be clearly seen to have been touched by divinity.
And Counselor, that he would be a giver of wisdom who will lead us in the good ways of truth, and that his counsel will be entirely reliable and beneficial for those who follow it, instructing us in righteousness and holy living.
But the last three titles become outright controversial, with the potential for the third to be presumed as being absolutely blasphemous to a Jewish mindset. According to the prophet Isaiah, the Messiah, Jesus Christ, would be and is the Mighty God. But the Lord our God is one, and no man can be God.
Now, when we read the gospels, what always causes the Pharisees and religious leaders to take the greatest offense is whenever there is an attribution of Yahweh’s divinity to the man Jesus. Some examples are in the Gospel of Mark when the men lowered their paralyzed friend through a hole in the roof, and when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven.’
Now some of the scribes were sitting there questioning in their hearts, ‘Why does this man speak like that? He is blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?’
Or Luke’s Gospel after Jesus was arrested, and when he was being examined by the Sanhedrin, when day came, the assembly of the elders of the people gathered together, both chief priests and scribes, so they all said, ‘Are you the Son of God then?’
And he said to them, ‘You say that I am.’ They said, ‘What further testimony do we need? We’ve heard it ourselves from his own lips.’
Or when Jesus made his eighth ‘I am’ statement in the Gospel of John, Jesus said to them, ‘Truly, truly I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.’ And they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.
Notice, however, that Jesus never simply states, ‘I am the Son of God,’ nor does he say, ‘I am God the Lord.’ Instead, the offensive application of divinity to the person of Jesus is always made by inference and through the interpretation of his audience.
We know that Jesus Christ is God. I have no doubt about that, and I’m sure that you do not doubt it either. However, in the Gospels, Jesus is always careful about not making a claim to divinity for himself. That would have just been too much for his audience to bear, because he did not want to intentionally cause that kind of offense.
Instead, he left the professing of his deity to others, to those folks who observed him and knew him, and the offense to those who chose to take it.
After bringing in the greatest and biggest catch of his life, but before being called to be a disciple, Peter begged Jesus, ‘Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord,’ pleading with him to remove his divine and holy presence from Peter’s sinful person.
After asking the disciples who the crowds say he is, Jesus asked the disciples themselves the same question, and Simon Peter replied, ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.’
And upon seeing the resurrected Christ, Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!’
Long ago, Isaiah prophesied concerning a child to come who would be called the Mighty God. The child was spoken of in a positive and hopeful manner by this Jewish prophet, something which would not have happened if this were actually a blasphemous thought.
So if he would be called Mighty God and this prophet does not condemn that naming, then it must be true and must therefore mean that this child also is God the Lord.
But how can God become a man? If that were not declared by the prophet, then it would be a theological impossibility and never even suggested or considered. But since it is prophesied, albeit being a technical impossibility and thus requiring a miracle to accomplish, the answer to how could God become a man was a mystery to all the Jews.
Even now, although we have had it somewhat explained to us in Luke’s Gospel, the how of it truly remains a mystery for us. But we understand that our knowledge and faith in that fact that God did become incarnate, took on flesh, and that the man Jesus also is the Mighty God are what matters most, regardless of the mysterious how.
It surely is a nice and fine thing for Isaiah and for us to say that the Messiah is the Mighty God; however, our simply saying it does not make itself true.
Is a man who wears a baseball uniform a baseball player because he wears a uniform, or does he get to wear a baseball uniform because he is a baseball player? Anyone can buy and wear a uniform, but not everybody can play baseball, much less play baseball well enough to be on a team.
The same principle applies if you add someone who does not possess any athletic talent, skill, or natural ability to the team; being added to the roster cannot miraculously transform somebody into a player.
When I was serving in prison, I was issued a badge to wear, a seven-parted pointed star just like the wardens have. I was instructed to wear it all around the institution, particularly whenever I was around the inmates, because they assumed that the star caused other people to respect them.
However, I did not wear it out on the compound. I refused, explaining that if I needed to wear a star badge in order for me to be respected, then I did not deserve to receive respect without it.
Needless to say, I was accorded more respect by the inmates and by most officers as a Chaplain without wearing a star, because of how I acted, what I did, and how I treated all of the people—more respect than any officer or administrator at the institution.
The point is, no one is something merely because they say that they are, because they claim it, or because they have been given the title. We do not believe that Jesus is God the Son because he said he is; we believe that Jesus is God the Son because he has shown himself to be.
The point being, if a person must say or insist that they are someone or something special in order to be recognized as such, then they probably are not. That’s why Jesus did not walk around Judea wearing a name tag saying, “Jesus Christ, God the Son.”
Instead, it was through his daily walk, by the things he did and the things that he said, that people came to recognize and know that he is the Mighty God. They saw the proof and the evidence that Jesus is God, all without him saying anything about it at all.
So how do we know that the Jesus revealed in scripture is God Almighty? By his miracles, by the things that he did, as interpreted through how the witnesses reacted and responded to his miracles.
A reasonable skeptic would remind us that Jesus’ disciples would be unreliable witnesses, lacking credibility because of their obvious bias. However, the counterpoint remains that first and foremost, the disciples, like Jesus himself, were Jews by faith.
Their knowledge and in their religious understanding were not until after the resurrection. The disciples really began to understand or accept Jesus as being the Divine person, as being Yahweh. The narratives of the Gospel make sure to display their doubt and their lack of comprehension.
Now, the greatest story in the gospels that showcases the divinity of Christ, displayed in the man Jesus, is the story of him calming the sea. It’s one of the few stories that appear in all three of the synoptic gospels: in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
While John also records a similar and probably related story of the disciples during a storm, which he calmed with the additional element of Jesus walking across the stormy Sea of Galilee as if it were dry land.
A miraculous event with such a wonderful result that it is recalled and recorded by the four gospel witnesses many years later—a miraculous event that was recorded and transmitted, describing such a wonderful and amazing thing that, if it is true, then the miracle could only be attributed to the Mighty God, the sovereign creator of the entire universe.
After preaching and teaching through Galilee for a while, Jesus had developed quite a following. He had several women funding his ministry and caring for the needs of him and his disciples. Large crowds gathered everywhere he went. These people were hanging upon every word that he spoke.
Jesus was so busy and so crowded that his mother and brothers could not even get any time to speak with him. So it was then that Jesus decided to take a trip to cross the Sea of Galilee and go over to the land of the Garrison Gentiles.
Now, the Sea of Galilee is a very unusual place, topologically speaking. It’s about eight miles wide, east to west, and about 12 miles long, north to south. The surface of the water sits about 700 feet below sea level, about the length of two NFL football fields, including the end zones—lower than the Florida coastline—with a liquid depth of only 200 feet.
Meanwhile, the sea is immediately surrounded and closely encircled by mountains and hills that rise up 2100 feet above the water’s surface—that’s 1400 feet above sea level, an elevation similar to Pittsburgh or Oklahoma City—with the mountains of the Golan Heights to the Northeast rising up even higher to 2500 feet above sea level.
So picture this: the Sea of Galilee is shaped rather like a bowl—maybe a weird lumpy misshapen clay bowl made in an elementary school art class, but a bowl nonetheless. It is a relatively shallow lake, which means that the water is always quite warm, an average of about 69 to 72 degrees year round.
Now, when the wind blows over the surrounding mountains, particularly when blowing from the east, the cool air of the higher elevations will drop down to interact with the warm air and warm water at the bottom of this basin. This interaction will then generate sudden, violent, severe, and very unpredictable storms without warning.
Every summer, we hear about similar meteorological phenomena occurring in the news, don’t we? At least Floridians do, and we tend to pay attention to them. Tropical cyclones will form as the cold air at the jet stream moves over the warm water of the ocean, which causes it to evaporate, transforming it into water vapor and clouds.
However, colder air over even warmer water will cause more and more rapid evaporation, becoming pressure systems that begin to rotate and spin as they move from high-pressure to low-pressure areas. This is why hurricanes form off the west coast of Africa and then travel westward toward the Caribbean.
Now, if we were to stop and remember the most severe hurricanes that have affected the U.S. in recent years, we will remember that, even though the storms often weaken and slow down as they cross over the mountains of Cuba and Hispaniola, it is once they reach the Gulf of Mexico—a relatively shallow and warm basin of water, and the cold air drops down to sea level again—that they speed up and dramatically grow, becoming more violent, effectively turbocharged, and thus transform into monster storms.
The same thing is basically what happens on the Sea of Galilee, only to a lesser degree, because their storms are neither sustainable like those in the Atlantic, nor do they have the time to grow in strength. The violence inherent to Galilean storms is found more in their suddenness and their unpredictableness rather than in their severity or their strength.
So when Luke writes, “and a windstorm came down on the lake, and they were filling with water and were in danger,” he does not over-exaggerate the danger they were in. In fact, I think that the full severity of the storm is being downplayed in his narration.
At least four of the disciples present in the boat—Peter, Andrew, James, and John—were fishermen and sailors who were seasoned upon the Galilean sea. These were the guys whom you would want to have aboard your boat in the middle of a storm, there’s no doubt about it. They should have been the fearless crew without whose courage this Galilean minnow would have been lost.
But instead, they lost it—they freaked out, they panicked—they were absolutely in fear for their lives. Meanwhile, Jesus was lying down taking a nap.
They were out on the water in the middle of the worst storm any of them had ever seen. The wind was howling, the waves were crashing, the boat was rising and falling, threatening to capsize. The boat was beginning to fill up with water.
Now, I do not think we should be too hard on the disciples here. I expect they truly had every ordinary reason in life to fear being in those particular circumstances. And then they did what we all should do, each and every one of us, when we’re caught in the middle of the storms of life.
They remembered that Jesus was in the boat with them. So they turned to him and they woke him up, crying out, “Master! Master!”
They turned to Jesus instead of trusting in themselves or their own strength. It seems as if they had given up all hope. However, before we over-spiritualize their actions, remember that Jesus was their Rabbi, their master, and they his servants.
Jesus was their boss, and he was obviously tired and worn out, so since he was taking a nap, obviously they would not want to disturb him.
Now, I don’t know quite what the disciples were expecting when they woke up Jesus. Were they incredulous or incensed that while they were busy fighting the storm, trying to keep the boat afloat and save their lives, that Jesus was just sleeping down at the bottom of the boat like Jonah when he was fleeing from the Lord?
After all, Mark records the disciples asking Jesus, “Teacher, do you not care that we’re perishing? Do you not care?”
Now, what I think they were really expecting to get when they woke Jesus up was another pair of hands to help bail out the boat and maybe another voice to cry out in prayer to the Lord for their rescue and salvation. I do not think they were expecting to be waking up the Lord himself, nor that he was about to immediately do something about their situation and save them all.
And he, Jesus, awoke and rebuked the wind and the raging waves, and they ceased, and there was a calm. Jesus woke up and rebuked the storm.
Jesus did not get woken up and proceed to yell and scream at the storm like Lieutenant Dan in the movie Forrest Gump, uttering empty curses and threats against the weather. No, Jesus got woken up and rebuked the storm, saying, “Peace! Be still!”
According to Mark, that was when the wind and the waves ceased; everything became still and calm. The Sea of Galilee became a nice peaceful and placid body of water. Jesus spoke; Jesus uttered a single command, and the storm was gone.
Who does that? What kind of man is he?
Then, once things had calmed down, Jesus asked his disciples, “Where is your faith?” Did they not know who he is? Did they not realize or understand what this meant? Did they not yet believe in him?
It’s clear that they did not understand yet. These Jewish men did not yet believe or understand that it was the Son of God who was in the boat with them, that it was God the Son, Emmanuel, with them in the boat.
If they knew that, if they had understood that, if they had actually believed that Jesus was God, then surely there would have been no fear and no worries in that boat. Because why would the Lord God sink himself and drown his friends?
Yet they were starting to realize that there is something really strange and wonderful about Jesus. Not only could he heal the sick, restore sight to the blind, exercise demons—not only could he sleep through a severe storm while his friends were panicking and in fear—but he could also be awakened, unperturbed, calm, cool, and collected, completely unconcerned about the dangers that his disciples were worried about, then doing the most amazing thing which they had yet seen.
Jesus stood and spoke to the storm, telling it to be quiet, to simmer down, telling it to relax, to chill out.
Okay, Jesus telling the storm to calm down might not be such a big deal, except that the storm listened and did exactly what he told it to do. A lucky coincidence? I think not.
Knowing that storms appear and disappear suddenly on the sea, a skeptic might suggest that this was only fortuitous timing, that Jesus spoke and the storm broke up naturally on its own without any need for divine intervention— that it only appeared as if the storm obeyed Jesus.
And I’ll admit their argument could seem reasonable. After all, it was only Jesus and the disciples who were present, so that there were not any other witnesses to the event who others might consider to be reliable.
This could only have been a story that they made up as they sailed across the sea, intending to increase Jesus’s popularity with stories of even bigger and greater miracles.
Also, the gospels never say that Jesus again repeated this same particular miracle, as he often did with his healing and exorcisms and such, even though all four evangelists recorded the story.
Those skeptical excuses are actually kind of reasonable on their face, and they might even generate a lot of doubt about Jesus’s credibility—except for the final line which proves for us that Jesus truly is the Mighty God.
This line shows us that these Jewish men, who could not yet believe that Jesus is the Lord God, Yahweh in the flesh, were already recognizing and understanding that he was more than a mere man, more than a mere human.
They wondered who he is because of what they had just witnessed, because they saw the wind and sea obey him—something which was said of no prophet in the whole history of Israel or ever having been done, except perhaps for Moses at the parting of the Red Sea.
Moses said to the people, “Fear not; stand firm and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again. The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent.”
And the Lord said to Moses, “Why do you cry to me? Tell the people of Israel to go forward. Lift up your staff and stretch out your hand over the sea, and divide it, that the people of Israel may go through the sea on dry ground.”
And then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided. The people of Israel went into the midst of the sea on dry ground, the waters being a wall to them on their right hand and on their left.
Moses gave all the credit to the Lord before the miracle happened. The Lord commanded Moses on just what he should do, so afterward all the people of Israel knew who had done what.
Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the Lord drove the sea back. Nobody ever thought or stopped and wondered who Moses was on account of this miracle. Nobody ever thought that it was the man Moses who parted the sea.
They understood that Moses was only a mediator before the people, a conduit whereby the Lord’s power was shown—a prophet pointing to the work of the Lord on behalf of his chosen people.
The disciples in the boat, who heard Jesus speak, they knew that Jesus was not Moses; they knew that Jesus was not like Moses. They recognized that Jesus was different and far greater than Moses ever was.
They heard Jesus speak, and being the good Jewish men that they were, they knew of only one person in all history who spoke and commanded the waters—only one person within, below, or above creation who might speak and expect the waters to obey: the Almighty Lord God alone, the Mighty God.
“And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. And God said, ‘Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.’ And God said, ‘Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear,’ and it was so.
And God said, ‘Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth,’ and it was so.
And God said, ‘Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons for days and years.’ And let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth, and it was so.
And God said, ‘Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.’ And God said, ‘Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds, livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds,’ and it was so.
Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’
So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him; male and female he created them. Man, created in God’s own image, was given dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.
Man was given authority over, man was given the right to command and be obeyed by the fish of the sea, birds of the heaven, livestock, over all the earth and over every creeping thing.
However, man was not given dominion or authority over the sea itself. Man was not given the right or ability to command the waves, the sea, or the storm. Only God himself possessed that authority and power of dominion because he alone is the creator of the waves, the sea, and the storm.
And he, Jesus, awoke and rebuked the sea and said to the sea, ‘Peace! Be still!’ And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. Jesus commanded the wind and the sea, and he was obeyed.
Jesus displayed his authority over creation when he exercised his right of dominion and sovereignty over the storm. Those who were with him—the disciples—they saw this and they became afraid because they witnessed the holiness and power of the Mighty God on display before them for just the briefest of moments.
They knew then at that time that Jesus was more than a man. The disciples knew, and so we know that Jesus is the Mighty God. Amen.
Let us stand and say what we believe using the words of the Apostles’ Creed.
I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who is conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried. He descended to Hell; the third day he rose again from the dead; he ascended to heaven and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty. From thence shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Ghost, the holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.
Our closing hymn is number 284, ‘Birthday of a King.’