When I got the assignment that I'll be preaching, I asked Pastor Jeff what to do. And he told me, hey Zach, preach your heart out. And truthfully, what I desire to share with you guys today is the very thing that God has placed on my heart. In my own quiet time, This is a text that the Lord gripped me with, and I want to share that with you guys this evening. And even today, I was texting my brother, Tommy Walls, and he was telling me, hey, Zach, bring the heat. And truthfully, this text is a text that has warmed me. for a couple of weeks and even more so preparing for this, this sermon here. And I pray that your hearts are warmed by it. Please turn with me to Mark chapter four. The title of this sermon is actually a question. It's why, why are you so afraid? I have three points in Baptist fashion. They all rhyme. And the first point is faith articulated. And the second point is faith demonstrated. And then the last point is faith articulated. Sorry, faith punctuated. We will be reading in verse 35 to the end of the chapter. I'll read the passage. It says, on that day when evening had come, he said to them, let us go across to the other side. Now, at this time, on this particular day, Jesus had been teaching all day, and by this time it's evening. So the sun is going down, and Jesus had been particularly teaching on what I would say is faith. He's been teaching various things, yet they've been in parable fashion. It's kind of been a truth that's been concealed, yet to those who actually desire the truth, it was actually revealed to them. Jesus He spoke on things of the seed, a sower sowing seeds, and it goes out and it goes on different terrain. And this, he later describes, is the Word of God. The Word of God had been going out, he says, and he's explaining that some fell on a path which is to understand that later Satan, this is Satan, when the word of God goes out and it lands on a path, Satan, he comes and takes it away. And then a second, I guess, terrain is the rocky ground that he talks about where the word of God goes out. And this is a person who receives the word with joy, but soon they fall away. And then there's a third, terrain, the thorns, where the seed, the Word of God goes out and it falls on thorny terrain. And this is a person who receives the Word of God, yet they end up getting choked out by, really, the world. They desire the things of the world more than they desire the Word of God itself. So it's choked out in the last soil that the Lord speaks of is the good soil. This is the person who they hear the Word of God and they love it. It actually bears more fruit. The harvest continues to grow. Yet the second teaching or another teaching that the Lord explains is the seed that grows. It is sent out, and it starts as a just a little seed, and then it grows and surmounts. He says this is the kingdom of heaven. This is how the kingdom of heaven grows, and it's a progressive development. And then he gets to his last teaching, and it's the kingdom of heaven, yet this is the mustard seed. And truly we can see this as the kingdom of God advancing, yet Jesus Christ is explaining this all day. All day he's been preaching to the crowd, so much so that the crowd has grown, and it's a slew of people on the banks. And Jesus Christ and his disciples have to get into a boat and go into the sea. And in this time, Jesus is sitting down in a boat, because that's how they would teach in that culture at that time. And he's explaining to the people, hey, this is how you may be saved. This is how you get to heaven. This is the way. He says, the Messiah has come, yet what must you do? You must believe, you must be careful to hear. And each time as he's explaining the parables of the seed being sown, the word of God going forth, he's telling all of his disciples, all of those who were listening, he would say, hey, listen. He would say, hear this. Those who have ears, let them hear. This is what Jesus had been teaching all day, and now in our text is evening. And truly, this is a warning, brothers and sisters, because my prayer for us this evening is that we don't go away and the Word of God is sown, but it falls on deaf ears. If I could sum up the teaching of Jesus on that day, it would sound something like this. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing through the word of God. If the kingdom is to grow, If it's to continue and develop and to go forth and spread out, it must be through faith, brothers and sisters. And not just faith, but it must be by Jesus Christ, by the Messiah. You know, I'm not sure if you guys know, but seminary is hard. The thing that happens in seminary is that you learn so many things. There's so much information that is being gathered and is being spewed and taught to you continuously. And we're able to, at the end of a semester, write a couple different papers. But there are some professors who don't just have a paper. but they have a test as well. And they're expecting us to understand and to know all that we've been taught and to bring it to bear on this one test at the end of a semester. And I'm graduating now, so I can say this. If you guys are worried, I'll be honest, a true confession that on some of those tests, I didn't do so hot. on. And the reason why I didn't do so hot was not because I didn't know that the test was coming. It was on a syllabus. I knew that there was a test at the end of the semester. Yet the thing that caused my downfall on that test was that I didn't know what I thought I knew. In other words, I thought I knew a lot of things yet, but when I was tested, the test proved, hey, I didn't learn as much as I thought I did. This is what the disciples had been listening to. Jesus has been saying, hey, listen, I'm preaching to you the kingdom of God. I'm telling you and explaining to you, repent of your sins and come to me. Don't believe in yourself, but come to me. Trust in me, have faith in this message that I proclaim. The disciples, not just the 12, but all of the disciples who are even on the bank heard this. Yet, this leads me to my second point. There's faith that Jesus Christ was articulating all day, yet we get to verse 36. And leaving the crowd, they took him. They took him with them in the boat, just as he was. And there were other boats with him. My second point is this, that faith is demonstrated. This is faith demonstrated. This text is speaking about faith, yet it's not in a systematic type way. It's not in a way that is exhaustive, if you will. Or, hey, this is all of what faith is. This is the essence of faith. That's not what this text is actually doing, but this is explaining, hey, this is a demonstration. If you want to see what faith is, read this passage. Take a look at this passage. And this ought to be an example for us. If we want to understand and to see what faith is, sometimes when we learn it, it's not so much the things that are taught to us, but it's the things that are acted out before us. Yet, let me bring this to bear here. It's not always the theology that we know, yet it's actually the life that we live. Let us slow down even more with the text and actually get a feel for what's happening. When we read scripture, we ought to place ourselves in the text. and to see what is actually going on. When we read the Bible, this is a narrative so we can get ourselves into the story. Verse 37, a great windstorm arose. Jesus had been teaching, they had left the bank, and now the disciples are going to the other side of the Galilean Sea. And all the disciples are in this boat, all 12 of them, plus Jesus Christ. This was a boat that could contain 15 people. So they were not stacked on top of each other, but there was no ship either. Yet a great windstorm arose. Let us picture this. It's nighttime. It's coming to be nighttime. And a great storm arose. It wasn't just a breeze at night, but they started to move and go this way and that way. And there was plenty of people in the boat. And so they were bumping into each other, so they couldn't see. But it was a great windstorm. And it's not just that it happened subtly, but instantly, instantly it happened. It wasn't a progression, but... everything is fine, and now there's a windstorm. But the text continues, it says, the waves were breaking into the boat. It's not just that they had splashes on their face, but they were breaking into the boat. The boat was going sideways, and they were going sideways. The wind was going this way, and they were going that way. Everybody was going this way and that way. And what continues to happen is not just that the waves crashed into the boat, it's that the boat started to fill up, and they were going down. Have you ever been on a boat, brothers and sisters? It is a scary thing to think that you're about to drown. And indeed, this is exactly what the disciples understand. The disciples, let's see what they say. In verse 38, we see there's a action that's developing, yet Jesus, it says, but He was in a stern, asleep on the cushion. on the cushion of the boat, so that the boat, sorry, and they woke him and said to him, Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing? Let us pause. what just happened, what just occurred. As the windstorm is going forth and there's more fierce things happening, people bumping into each other, and they're starting to scream, they're starting to freak out and say, Jesus, do you not care? Do you not care that we're perishing? They're demonstrating their faith here, brothers and sisters. And understand this, Let's see what the disciples are doing. When they see that they're in danger, they're going to perish, they're going to die. Where do they go? They go to Jesus Christ. Brothers and sisters, do you go to Jesus Christ when you begin to fear? Do you go to Jesus Christ when you don't know what will happen to you next? What else do the disciples do? Well, we see that they understand the severity, the severity of their state. They see that they are going to die, that they can't help themselves. They're not trying to to make something happen, but they go to Jesus Christ and tell, and they say, Jesus Christ, teacher, help us. Do you not care that we're perishing? They see that they're perishing. Yet for us, when we see that everything is on fire around us, do we acknowledge it? Do we try to ignore it? Do we try to, I need to get this done because nobody else is going to do this. Is that our mentality? The disciples, they understood that they were perishing and they went to Jesus Christ. This is faith, brothers. They did the right thing. But understand this. They went to Jesus Christ. They went to Jesus Christ. They went to the Savior of the world, the only one that could save them, but they did it with no faith. They did the right thing. They went to Jesus Christ, but it was without faith. Reading this text, it grips me because how often do we go to Jesus Christ? We pray. How often do I pray? That grips me. Yet I actually don't believe what Jesus says. I don't believe that Jesus Christ will actually do the very thing that I'm asking him to do. Brothers and sisters, if we are to go to Christ, we must believe that he is who he says he is. Hebrews 11, six, it fleshes this out. It says, and without faith, And without faith, it is impossible to please Him, to please God. It's impossible. For whoever would draw near to Him, whoever would draw near to God must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who seek Him. Do you believe that? Do you go to the Lord in faith and trusting that, Lord, I believe that you would provide a godly spouse for me. Lord, I believe that you would save my worldly children. Lord, I believe that you would save my marriage. Lord, I believe that you will come again. Lord, I believe that you exist. You can help me out of addiction. Lord, I believe this. I believe that. Do you believe, brothers and sisters? Do you believe Jesus Christ? Do you go to Him in faith? This is all we have. There's no other hope that we have except Jesus Christ. How can we go to Him, yet not believe that He would do the only thing that He can do? Only He can. This is the fault of the disciples, and we see their faith, yet it's a false faith. And the text in 38, it turns and shifts to Jesus Christ. And it shows us more. So the disciples, they go to Jesus without faith. And more so, they believe a lie. They ask Jesus, do you even care? We can see that in the text. Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing? This is so precious, so precious. Jesus' response to the disciples. in contrast to the wild winds, to the waves that are going up and down, everything that's shifting, everything is in chaos. The emotions of the disciples are torn and ripped to pieces. They don't know what to do. They don't know what's up and what's down. They don't know where to go. So they go to Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ, he doesn't say, you stupid, stupid disciples. You've been with me all day and you still don't believe? But this is two years into the Lord's ministry, and the disciples have been with Jesus Christ for about a year now. Day in, day out, they've been seeing miracles. This person healed, that person has sight now, this lame person is up and walking, this person is healed of their diseases. Every single day they've been seeing them, but now they come to Jesus Christ and say, do you even care? And Jesus, he wakes up and he acts graciously. He turns to his disciples and say, well, he doesn't say anything at first, because he turns to the situation that he sees them in. He rebukes the storm. The text, it says in 39, And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, peace, be still. The question that I had looking at this text was, well, first, Where is Jesus? Like Jesus, he responds differently from the disciples, but where is he? He's in the boat. He's with the disciples. The disciple says, we're perishing. Jesus says, I'm right here. What do we do, brothers and sisters, when we don't know what to do? When our mind starts to doubt, it starts to go into chaos, where do we go? Well, you can't go anywhere. Yet, this is the truth that we ought to believe and ought to know and understand. Jesus Christ is there with us. He's right there with us. There's no need There's no need for us to spin out of control. There's no need for us to reject the faith. Yet there is still another question that I had in 38, where there's chaos and everything's going haywire. How? How in the world? How in the world could Jesus Christ be asleep? the waves, the boat is going up and down, there's wind everywhere and water splashing into the boat. How could Jesus Christ be asleep? This is crazy. This is crazy that Jesus Christ is still asleep in the midst of such things. I guess an answer, we could say, well, Jesus has been working. Something that we all can understand is when we're exerting ourselves in gospel ministry, it is depleting. We've gotten to share the gospel with this person and tell of the glories of Christ with our friends, and man, this is just glorious, yet our bodies are tired. Maybe Jesus is just so tired. Maybe He's just so tired. He's dog tired, so He's asleep. Maybe, maybe. Yet, maybe in the midst of chaos, Jesus Christ, his mind was fixed on something. You know, there's a verse in Isaiah 26, verse three. You keep him in perfect peace, whose mind has stayed on you. Why? because he trusts in you. Jesus Christ was able to sleep peacefully in the midst of a storm because his only desire in the world was fixed on the Father's will, to do the will of the Father. Now, is that to say, okay, so Jesus did that so I can do that. I wake up and I feel scared and everything is going haywire, I just rebuke it. That's not what this text is saying. Jesus, he has the power and he has the authority. We go to him, but we go to him in faith. We believe what he says. This is faith that has been articulated. That's where our faith rests. That's where it begins. But we see in this narrative that this is faith demonstrated. This is how we continue. This is an example that we can reject or we can accept. Yet we get to the pinnacle of this narrative in verse 39, and it's towards the end. Jesus rebukes the storm. He rebukes the wind and said to the sea, peace be still, and the wind ceased. And there was a great calm in contrast to the great windstorm that arose Jesus Christ speaks, and he has a great peace, a great calm. The height of our faith finds itself, just like this narrative, it finds itself in the work of Jesus Christ. Brothers and sisters, our faith, it finds itself in the work of Jesus Christ. My last point is faith punctuated. This is to say, this is the pinnacle, this is the apex of our faith, where our faith actually is residing, it stays here. Not that we just work, I work hard, I read my Bible, I'm trying to pray, I'm trying to be a good Christian. That's not where our faith lies. Man, I just want to be a good person and, you know, I try to help people and I always help them move. I know there's plenty of people that are coming. I know I need to read good books, so I try to study theology and I try to talk to people. It doesn't rest there. Our faith. Our believing rests in the work of Jesus Christ. And the work that Jesus Christ does is a work that says, peace. It's a work that says, no, no, no. You must believe me. You must believe in what I've done. Jesus Christ has come to save and to set free the captives. One of the things that Mark does in his book, in his gospel, is he's constantly trying to help the reader understand Christ's authority. The height of our faith is found in the power of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ has the power to say to nature, do this and do that, and nature responds. Nature bows down and says, okay. Jesus Christ, it's as if he speaks and the world is held together by his words. That is where our faith rests, in his power, in his work, in his doing. And what does he command? What has he been commanding the disciples to do, those who are on the seashore to do? He said, believe, trust this, rest in this, in what I tell you, in my words. Why? I'm gonna tell you guys a secret if you didn't know. Jesus Christ is God. Did you know that? If you didn't know where I come from, it's very controversial to say such truth. Those are fighting words. They say, no, no, He's just, He's just the Son of God. Brothers and sisters, Jesus Christ is God, and because He is God, everything, nature bows down. Nature bows down before Him. Yet understand this, who are you to disobey him, to not trust in him. Who are we to say, nah, I'm good. Jesus, I know you're a good person, but I just can't get down with that. Who are we? How dare we? Reading this and studying for this has been crazy because I've been crying so much. Lord, forgive us for when we say, I'm not gonna do that. Jesus, I know you command me to stop doing this. I know you command me to start doing this. Yet we're passive. Or are we lazy or we're just simply rebellious? Who are we? to tell the king of glory, no. Yet this is something beautiful. Jesus Christ, he not only does all the work, he not only has all the power, yet in our insufficiencies, Jesus Christ, ask this question. It's a rebuke to the disciples, yet it's a penetrating question. In verse 40, after a great calm, after addressing the situation of his disciples, Jesus asked them, why are you so afraid? It's interesting, it's not just why are you afraid, but why are you so afraid? Why are you acting like this? Why are you responding like this? The disciples. They were seeing what was around them, but they were forgetting what was actually real. They were responding incompatible to what was actually reality. What was reality was that God holds all things, all things in his hands. One of the most fearful verses in the Bible to me, he says in Revelation 21, eight, the one who conquers will have this heritage. This is a promise. And I will be his God and he will be my son. But in contrast, as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable as for murderers, the sexual immorals, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars. Their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death." Brothers and sisters, let me bring this to bear. Why don't you shed a gospel more? Why? Why don't you enjoy spending time with God? Why don't you read your Bible? Why? Why don't you cherish Christ as much as you cherish these other things? You spend time, spend money, spend resources towards these other things, but does Christ have your heart? Are you devoted? everything to him. He deserves nothing less. The faithless. Man, that's, I had to double take when I read that. Like, did that really say, Lord, the cowardly? I'm afraid of what this person will think of me. Lord, I just don't have the oomph to love this person. Lord, I know this person, they annoy me all the time, but I just can't believe what you say. You tell me to love my neighbor as myself. Lord, I can't love that person. I have faith, brothers and sisters. The apex of our faith is found in the work of Christ, and this is my last point, and we'll go into a, Conclusion. The disciples, or Jesus in verse 40, 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 is this that even the wind and the sea obey him? When you fear God, There's nothing else, nothing else to fear. Our fear of God or convictions of what's true must, must be superior to our fears of anything else, to our circumstances or to any other deed. Our fear of Christ, Jesus says this, our conviction of what he says, faith articulated, that must have superiority over how we feel in a certain or given moment. That is what moves us. Lord, I'm so afraid, but you tell me to, Lord, I just really hate this person, but you tell me to, Don't shrink back from sharing the gospel when the opportunity presents itself. If Jesus Christ has done wondrous deeds, tell of them. Do you see what he's done in your life? Has he done anything for you? If He hadn't done anything for you, did He do anything for your family? Has He done anything to your church members, your church family? The Lord has. He's done a mighty work. Speak, speak on it. Tell of His wondrous deeds because they are glorious. They are magnificent. They are awesome. But I rest here and we'll close and I'll pray. If we are to believe, then believe on the basis of what Jesus Christ has said. Those who look to him and him alone shall be saved. That's what he said. That's what the promise that we have, that's what we hold and cling to. If we are to believe, then believe on the basis of what he's done. Jesus Christ has brought peace into the world of darkness and hostility. There's sin everywhere, if you haven't noticed. Yet there's danger. Yet, brothers and sisters, there's light. There's joy and peace. There's rest in Jesus Christ. There's forgiveness of sins in Jesus Christ. That's what He's done. That's His work. But if You, if we are to believe, then believe on the basis of who he is. The one with all authority. in heaven and on earth, over all of our situations, over all of our fears, He is God. He is our Lord. He's our Savior. He's our joy. He's our peace. He's our everything. Is He? Is He? Is He somebody? Is He? No. Is He? Yes, He's our everything. Everything. Brothers and sisters, let us pray. Let us pray. Dear Heavenly Father, there's no place we can go apart from your presence, apart from you, Lord. You have all power. You have all dominion and authority, Lord. Thank you so much for sending Jesus Christ into the world to save sinners. Lord, we are sinners in need, in need of your forgiveness, Lord. Jesus Christ, Please, would you help us to continue to put our hands to the plow? Lord, we have hearts that are full of fear, but help us not to believe our hearts, but to believe you, what you've done, your word, your hold clean, hold and to cling to your precious promises, Lord. Lord, I pray as we interact this evening that you would help us that you would help us to treasure what you've said, that we will fellowship around your word, that we would enjoy each other's company and spur one another on towards loving good deeds. Please, Lord, cause us to grow, cause us to cherish you more. God, there's nothing in this world that is worth having. Lord, if we don't have you, if we don't have you, Lord, We just won't be satisfied because there's no self, there's no satisfaction apart from you, please. Through your word, by your spirit, Lord, would you cause us to continue in you. Thank you so much for those who have brought food. Thank you for your truth that holds us. Lord, may you be glorified in it all. We pray in your son Jesus' name. Amen.