our Old Testament reading. Please turn in your Bibles to the book of Psalms, Psalm 89. And the reading will be verses one through nine. Psalm 89, one through nine. Listen to this. This is the very word of God. Emaskel of Ethan, the Ezraite. I will sing of the steadfast love of the Lord forever. With my mouth, I will make known your faithfulness to all generations. For I said, steadfast love will be built up forever. In the heavens, you will establish your faithfulness. You have said, I have made a covenant with my chosen one. I have sworn to David, my servant.
I will establish your offspring forever and build your throne for all generations. Let the heavens praise your wonders, O Lord, your faithfulness in the assembly of the Holy Ones. For who in the skies can be compared to the Lord? Who among the heavenly beings is like the Lord, a God greatly to be feared in the council of the Holy Ones and awesome above all who are around him? O Lord God of hosts, Who is mighty as you are, O Lord, with your faithfulness all around you. You rule the raging of the sea. When its waves rise, you still them.
And then for our New Testament reading, we go back to the gospel according to Luke chapter eight, where we’ll read verses 22 to 25. Luke 8, 22 through 25. One day, Jesus 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 are perishing. And he awoke and rebuked the wind and the raging waves, and they ceased. And there was a calm. And 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 the winds and water, and they obey Him.
That’s the reading of God’s Word. Let’s pray that He’ll bless it to us now. Father, we thank You for the Holy Scriptures. We thank You for our Savior, Jesus, and the things that this passage teaches us about Him. Bless Your Word to us. We pray for the ministry and the help of your Holy Spirit. And we pray it in Jesus’ name, amen.
And in the US Army, one of the regular activities of soldiers, whether reservists or active duty, there are always classes to attend. Certain classes have to be taken as refreshers year after year. And then there’s always training, different types of training, depending on what your particular job in the Army might be. what particular unit you’re assigned to, and so forth. And one of the characteristics in a sort of classroom setting, well, even beyond, even if it’s a field setting, but when someone has been tasked to give instruction to a unit of soldiers, What will often happen, and the Army teaches this, is that they’ll pause at various points in the course of instruction, and they’ll conduct what the Army calls a check on learning. It means we’re gonna stop here and see if you were paying attention. We’re gonna stop here and see if you understand what’s being taught, whatever’s being trained, whatever task it might be, whatever concepts, and so on. We have these checks on learning. And so the instructor will ask a few questions, just to make sure everybody’s tracking with him. And I titled this sermon Faith Check, because in a way, what happened to the disciples on that boat, on the Sea of Galilee that day, was something like a check on learning.
It’s Jesus asking his disciples, in a sense, have you been paying attention? Have you seen the things that I’ve done? Have you heard the things that I’ve taught? And on the basis of what you’ve seen and heard, on the basis of the things that I’ve done and taught, who do you suppose that I am? The lesson of Discipleship 101 is, who is Jesus? And that’s the question that the disciples end up asking at the end of this passage. And that’s exactly the question they should be asking. It’s exactly the question we ought to ask, too. And how we answer the question is crucial, isn’t it?
From these verses in Luke, starting at this point, where we read this morning, and then going forward, Luke is going to relate for us a series of mighty works done by Jesus. In the next passage, we’re going to see that familiar incident, that familiar history where Jesus casts not just one demon, or not just seven demons, but a whole legion of demons out of this poor man. Then we’re going to see him cure an otherwise incurably sick woman. We’re going to see him raise a little girl from death to life. And all this series of mighty works begins with what we see here in the passage before us.
Jesus on the water in the midst of a terrible storm. And with a word of command, he calms that storm. Through the experience of a violent storm, Jesus revealed himself to his disciples as the God-Man. That’s the message of this passage. Through the experience of a violent storm, Jesus revealed himself to his disciples as the God-Man.
I don’t know if you’ve heard that expression before, the God-Man. It’s just shorthand for who Jesus was, because he was truly God. From eternity past, he was and is the second person of the Godhead. But in space and time, he took on flesh. He became like one of us. He was incarnate, dwelt among us. you know, all that he did. So, he is not just God, he’s not just man, he’s the God-man. And he reveals himself to his disciples as such in this passage.
And we’ll look at this under three headings, three points. The first will be to see that Jesus is the Lord of the circumstances, Lord of circumstances. That’s point number one. Point number two, two natures in one person, Point number three, a test of faith, or we could say a check on learning. The Lord of circumstances, two natures in one person, a test of faith. So first of all, Jesus is God, and as God, he’s Lord of our circumstances.
He’s Lord of all circumstances. Verse 22 shows us Jesus and he’s in a boat. He’s with his disciples. And the fact that they’re going to cross over the lake, the fact that they’re going to go out into the water and their destination, all that was determined by Jesus. He dictated it. And that’s important. Because it was Jesus who said, let’s go across to the other side. And we have to keep that in mind because when the disciples then encountered the storm, they were in the process, they were in the very act of doing what Jesus had told them to do.
It’s very important for us to remember. Because when we encounter hardships, aren’t we sometimes tempted to wonder? When we go through trials, aren’t we tempted to wonder whether it’s because somehow we’ve missed God’s will? And we must be going down the wrong path. Otherwise, this wouldn’t be happening. Do you ever have those thoughts? We all have. And we’re easily susceptible to such thoughts.
So keep in mind, the disciples did what Jesus said, they obeyed Jesus’ words, and a storm came. And that busts any myth that we may be entertaining, any myth that if we just walk with Jesus, life is always gonna be pleasant. If we walk with Jesus and do everything he says, life’s gonna be problem-free.
No, this passage shows us that’s not the case. Your experience shows you that. But this passage of Scripture clearly demonstrates it as well. Jesus set the course, and Jesus ordained the storm. So, an early takeaway for us, a point of application, doctrinal application, is that God is sovereign over all the circumstances of your life.
We could put little air quotes around that word circumstances, because He ordained them all. When we use the word circumstance, what we sometimes are suggesting, maybe we’re thinking, is that they’re just sort of random things that God has nothing to do with. But there’s no such thing. No such thing.
God is sovereign over all the circumstances of your life, all the details, the minutia. He’s sovereign over them. He’s sovereign over the disappointments that we experience. He’s sovereign over the difficulties that we encounter. Did you hear what I’m saying to you? And do you believe it? Do you believe God is sovereign over the difficulties that you’re undergoing or have undergone? Is He sovereign even in your disappointments? Do you believe it?
Hillary and I had a good friend years ago. We haven’t been in contact with him much, but he was an army chaplain. And back in the days when I was an enlisted soldier, We met this brother, faithful, very faithful, godly PCA chaplain, and he was stationed at the base where we were stationed. He ended up leading a Bible study in our home. And we became friends with him and his wife.
One of his favorite expressions was that God is the God of the circumstances. In other words, what we are prone to think of as as random circumstances, what we sometimes even though we might not, as good Presbyterians use the word, we might tend to think of certain things just as dumb luck, right? We don’t believe the concept, but sometimes we, we, we get into it.
Those things in reality are ordered and ordained by God, and they’re part of his all-inclusive plan. He’s the Lord of Circumstances. He’s no less in control, no less in control of the details of your life now in 2026 than he was of the details of the lives of his disciples 2,000 years ago. Oh, and by the way, He loves you, and He’s ordering all of those circumstances for His glory and for your good. He’s Lord of the circumstances. Well, secondly, this passage shows us that Jesus has two natures in one person.
And I want to stress that because that’s very precise theological language, and it’s the language that we all ought to embrace. When you get engaged in conversation with a non-Christian, and you start talking about Jesus, and don’t you Christians believe that Jesus is God? Yes, that’s what we believe. Oh, but what about, was he human too? Yeah, we believe that he’s fully man and fully God.
You have language available to you, language that has been hammered out and settled on by theologians and teachers in the church over centuries, and it’s very precise language, so use it. Don’t reinvent the wheel. And here’s how we describe Jesus. He has two natures, but he’s one person. Two natures in one person. That’s Christian theology.
So, as to his divinity, he’s eternally existent in his divine person. Before there was anything, before God created the heavens and the earth, he was one God in three persons, and Christ is the second person of the Godhead, and he existed eternally together with the Father and with the Holy Spirit.
He never had a beginning. He never needed to be created because he’s always been. And in the fullness of time, he took on flesh, he became man. And since that time, he is truly and fully human in every respect that you and I are human, except for the fact that he had no sin.
And here’s another thing that sometimes slips off of our radar, or that maybe a lot of Christians tend not to think of, but he still is man. and will be forever. He’ll never cease to be man. He is in a glorified body. He’s ascended to the Father. He’s seated at the right hand of God, the Father Almighty.
And that human body in which he walked on the earth, in which he suffered, that human body that died and was laid in the grave and it was raised on the third day, he still has that body and always will. That is non-negotiable Christian truth. And anyone who professes to be a Christian but does not believe those things is a heretic. Or at least they’re believing heretical doctrine and they need correction. And Christ’s humanity, the fact that he really truly was man, is on display in this text.
Because Jesus had a human body, like ours, and because his body was no different than ours, his body could get tired, and did. on more than one occasion that we read about in Scripture. When he met that woman at the well in Samaria, why was he even there? He was sitting down because he was tired from the journey. That’s what Scripture says. He could grow weary and he needed sleep, just like I do, just like you do. And in Luke 8, 23, Jesus not only became tired, he became so tired that he could sleep through a storm. Some of us sleep more soundly than others, but he must have been awfully weary if he could be in that boat that was beginning to be tossed on the Sea of Galilee by this violent storm and just sleep through it. He was wiped out. Unless we think this is fanciful, there was at least one other person in Scripture that did the same thing, wasn’t there?
Remember Jonah? Jonah slept through a storm till people came and roused him and said, wake up, you sleeper. What are you doing? Call out to your God. We’re about to die here. Well, many, many years later, Jesus also slept through a storm. And so I say his humanity is on display in this text. And throughout Scripture, we read about Jesus being hungry. We read about Jesus thirsting. We read about his emotions, and how at times he could rejoice, other times he could be grieved or even be angry. Christ is genuinely human.
He didn’t just appear to be human. He wasn’t a human body animated by the Holy Spirit. No, he was a man. He had a human soul. All the same traits that we have. So his humanity is on display in this text, but his divine nature is also on display in the text, very obviously, isn’t it?
Because he rebuked the forces of nature. He gave a command to the wind and to the waters. Now, we’re only eight chapters into Luke’s gospel. We’ve already seen accounts of Jesus doing many amazing miracles. But of all the things that he did, this excelled them all. He’s beyond belief that he had the power to heal sicknesses, diseases.
And not just a few. Every Lord’s Day when we gather together, whoever’s leading in prayer will pray for the congregation, pray for the people in the congregation who are sick. And there are a variety of afflictions affecting members of this church. And we pray, and often God has answered prayers for healing, for recovery. But when Jesus went about ministering, he healed everybody. everybody.
There was never a point where he had to say, Well, that’s, that’s enough. I don’t have any more strength to do this today. I don’t have any more remaining power to heal anybody else. I’ve, I’ve done my quota. He healed them all. And that was amazing. It’s beyond belief. But he can even raise the dead.
We’ve seen in one instance of it already, with the son of that widow in Nain. But here, He exercises authority over the atmosphere, over the sky, the wind, even the water. And when he got up and rebuked the wind and the waters, and they were muzzled, they got quiet, and there was a calm, what must his disciples have been thinking? I can’t help wondering whether these faithful Jewish men who had attended synagogue all their lives might have been thinking about Psalm 89, the passage we read for our Old Testament reading, because they’re in this boat in which moments ago, they were fearful for their lives. Now, it’s floating on a calm sea.
And I wonder if Psalm 89.9 came to their minds, you rule the raging of the sea when its waves rise, you still them. That’s from the Psalms talking about the Lord God Almighty, but there’s this, this man standing in the boat with them.
He did that. So Jesus is fully God, but he’s also now fully human. This is a fundamental doctrine of the Christian faith. Without it, there’s no salvation. It’s that simple. Unless Jesus is fully 100% God and fully 100% man, we cannot be saved. Remember that. Well, then finally, third point is this test of faith. check on learning for the disciples as they near the completion of discipleship 101, the test of faith.
Why the storm? Why did Jesus ordain this storm? He’s the one that directed them to sail to the other side of the lake, because he had an appointment. He’s going to go over there, and he’s going to meet a man who’s living in the tombs, who runs around all night screaming and gashing himself with stones. He’s so fierce that no one can subdue him. Jesus is gonna go meet that man and deliver him. So that’s why they’re in the boat, and that’s why they’re gonna cross over. But how does this violent storm fit into the Lord’s plans?
It was a test on the disciples’ faith. It was a check on learning. And they asked the question. in verse 25, who then is this? They asked the question, but have they figured out the answer yet? What have they learned so far about Jesus? What have they seen? Consider the evidence that the disciples had. Consider the data.
Some of them had probably been present at Jesus’ baptism, and if they were, They saw the heavens opened up. They saw the Holy Spirit descend and rest upon Jesus in the form of a dove. And they heard a voice from heaven saying, this is my beloved son in whom I’m well pleased. They had seen him cast out demons with a word. He gives the command that demons have to scram.
They had seen him heal all manner of sicknesses and diseases, which brings to mind maybe Psalm 103. They’d even seen him cleanse lepers. He had claimed authority to forgive sins, which also brings to mind Psalm 103. He even claims authority over the Sabbath. Amazing. He raises the dead, and now they’ve seen him actually take control of and rule and command the forces of nature.
And on the basis of this evidence, what should they conclude? William Hendrickson, commenting on this passage, said the disciples began to realize Jesus is even greater than they had previously imagined. But have they figured it out yet? Have they connected all the dots?
It’s interesting, and it’s worth our taking notice of the fact that they were in this fearful panic during the storm. Look at verse 23 again. The text leaves no doubt. It’s not that they were just overreacting. It says they were in danger. Their lives were in danger.
And consider that at least some of them were experienced fishermen. Peter, And Andrew, James, and John, at least those four, had spent their lives and spent their careers on the water. They were familiar with it, and they’d seen a few storms in their day.
This storm in our text today must have been exceptionally bad, maybe the worst they’d ever seen. Why else would these experienced fishermen be so frightened? As I reflected on the passage today, It occurred to me that maybe in past experiences, when the disciples had been on the sea, been on the Sea of Galilee, and a storm sprang up, maybe the standard operating procedure is, all right, here comes a storm, let’s go back to shore.
I don’t know. I’m sure the storm was very severe, probably the most severe they’d ever seen. But the additional problem is, they’re on the water, and Jesus had said, go to the other side. So do they turn back or do they stick to the course? This was a check on learning, a test of their faith. Jesus even asked them, verse 25, where is it? Where’s your faith?
Now, to get a fuller picture of this event, it’s helpful to compare the accounts recorded by Matthew and by Mark. Let me just mention a couple of things that those two gospel writers add to the equation and add to the narrative. I’ve always thought it was interesting that in Matthew’s account, they go to Jesus, they wake him up, say, Master, we’re perishing. Don’t you care that we’re about to die? And the sequence of events as Matthew records it, hope I’m not making too much of it, but it says, he said, why are you afraid?
Then he rose and rebuked the wind and the sea. I can almost imagine Jesus so tired that as they come to wake him up, he hadn’t even opened his eyes yet. But he says, why are you so afraid? Just let me sleep. But then he gets up and he rebukes the storm. In Mark’s account, Mark uses these very specific words.
It says, after Jesus calmed the storm, it said they were greatly afraid. The storm’s gone. What are they afraid of? I mean, they were terrified during the storm, but now they’re even more afraid. Now the storm has gone away. but a man who can command the storm. The storm was frightening, but a man who can command that storm, that defies their comprehension.
That explodes all of their categories. That’s something otherworldly. That’s why they’re so afraid. And Jesus is all of those things. Jesus is beyond our comprehension. Jesus explodes all the categories we have. And he’s certainly otherworldly. The disciples asked the question that Luke wants you and me to ask too. Who then is this? This is the most important question in the world. Who is Jesus? And each one of you must answer that question. And your eternal destiny rides on how you respond to that question. Well, as we get ready now to come to the Lord’s Supper, The most amazing thing that Jesus ever did, the most amazing thing, what do you think it would be? What would you say?
The most amazing thing that Jesus ever did was not healing diseases, even though I so wish that I could just go out among you and lay hands on every single one of you and all of your afflictions would be gone. I wish I could, I can’t. If I could heal just one of you, wouldn’t that be amazing? Jesus healed many. He healed multitudes. But that’s not the most amazing thing He ever did. It wasn’t casting out demons. Raising people to life from the dead was not the most amazing thing He ever did. Not even commanding the winds and the waters.
The most amazing thing that Jesus ever did was that He bore our sins in His body on the cross. He One man bore the wrath of God against all the sins of all of his elect. He suffered in himself to bear the sins of many. He bore our griefs. He carried our sorrows. He was pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities. The most amazing thing Jesus ever did was to become the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
And that’s what we remember as we come to the table now. Let’s pray and ask the Lord’s blessing. Father in heaven, we need you at times to do a check on learning for us, to do a faith check. We pray you’d strengthen our faith. Lord, we believe. Help our unbelief. And Lord, as we come to the table now, we pray that you would make it an effectual means of grace to each one of us as we seek to feed upon Christ by faith, as we seek to honor him by observing this ordinance that he gave to his church. We pray all this in Jesus’ name. Amen.