Luke 8:19-25

When our driving thoughts come against us, and the winds of our emotions blow us away, we can trust the Lord. There is peace when we remind ourselves that He is always with us.

You guys. It is, you don’t want to travel with me.
It is always exciting to travel with me because I kid you not, they pulled the plane up.
I’m supposed to get to East Coast.
They pull the jet up at Ontario Airport to our gate and this is so common.
I don’t even flinch anymore. I kid you not watch this.
I’m sitting there, here comes the plane, they tow it with the tug up to the gate and they’re moving the jetway out to the door and they open the door and the jet and the jet and the door fell off the jet and hit the ground.
Everyone goes, I’m not getting on that plane.
I can’t tell you how many weird things have happened to me when it comes to flying and things like that.
Strangest things when the pilot gets on and says this is the worst turbulence I’ve ever been in.
Oh, that’s just great. That stuff happens to me.
You go with me, you pray whatever can go wrong will go wrong.
Your bags might arrive, but my bags will be in Bangkok even though we’re going to Sacramento.
It’s ridiculous. They probably thought this is ok.
We, we’re in the boat, it’s gonna be fine but listen to this, we not only realize and listen, we need to trust him for.
He said, let’s go to the other side.
We need to put the Lord right back in the middle of the boat ride. We’re on in this life.
Jesus said, we’re going to the other side. Christian, you’re gonna get to the other side. You’re gonna make.
Well, what, what other side? Well, what I know for sure. I don’t know about across the street.
There’s a lot of crazies out there, but I know heaven.
He’ll get us to the other side. That’s what he does. He loves it.
He says, get in the boat. We’re going to go to the other side, let us cross over.
We need to trust him when he promises, trust him to do as he’s promised, verse 23 as they sailed, he fell asleep.
You guys, they are leaving Capper and they’re going to Tiberius. It’s not very far.
First of all, the sea of Galilee is only 14 miles long and about seven miles wide at its widest, they’re gonna go diagonally across the lake up in the northern section.
It’s not far, but he falls asleep. He’s tired.
We know this and a windstorm came down on the lake and they were filling with water and they were in jeopardy.
Remember this has been a very long day, Jesus is exhausted. What a great picture I believe of Christian service.
You guys, he is, he’s tired, he’s, he worked hard and now he’s resting and he’s sleeping.
The Bible tells us in John chapter eight verse 29 Jesus said he who sent me is with me always and the father has not left me alone for.
I always do those things that please him. That was the ministry of Jesus.
So we can absolutely understand that whatever his ministry was all that day, he was pleasing to the father.
Can somebody say amen to that right man. He was pleasing to the father because he obeyed the father completely.
At the end of the day, he gets in the boat, he’s going to lay down.
You would think you and I would order up do not disturb on the boat, just hang it on the sail, do not disturb, it’s time to rest and I probably would have done that or you know, hang the little thing on the door, be quiet, he’s gonna rest.
But something happens in the midst of all that goes on.
We need to remember this that we need to trust what the Lord has said.
He said, let’s get in the boat. Let’s go to the other side.
When Jesus Christ says to you, I am with you always even to the end of the world.
Do you believe it or do you not believe it?
When Jesus said that, whosoever believes in him would not perish but have everlasting life. Do you believe that?
Or do you not believe that when the Bible says that I have loved you with an everlasting love?
Therefore, with loving kindness, have I drawn you to me? Do you believe that? Or do you not believe that?
Usually when things are calm and peaceful, we give an intellectual assent to it.
Of course, I believe it, but we don’t know if it’s true. Are you a Christian this morning?
What really is true? That is what is active in your life regarding your faith.
You and I will not know unless we’re in a storm.
It’s the storm that takes the truth down from our head and it shakes it about 18″ into our heart.
And when it’s in our heart, it becomes our life and we get on the other side of the shore and then we can tell people, you know what, imagine, imagine CNN pulling up in Fox News, man.
That was an incredible storm. We saw you guys out there. We thought you were gonna die.
They could now report, we thought we were gonna die also.
But you know what Jesus remind us about halfway across about where our faith was and we forgot what he had said.
He said, get in the boat and go to the other side. Yeah. But weren’t you scared? I was scared.
But then I remembered when the doctor says we’re gonna, we gotta cut you.
Oh We’re gonna cut you this way and we’re gonna cut you that way.
We’re gonna go this way and this way, we’re gonna pull this out and swing it around and put it back in lo I am with you.
Always, Jesus said that will come to us in time or something like it, but he’ll be with us.
We need to trust him and trust what he says. And so Jesus is sleeping.
Verse 23 says a windstorm. The word in Greek is awesome. Windstorm. Matthew records it this way.
Windstorm as Seismo, I’m gonna ask you guys to hold that picture for a moment. Seismo.
He says, Seismo, I recognize that Greek word seismology. Seismic. Yeah, the word means earthquake.
Matthew covers this event and says there was a Seismo on the sea. It’s very unusual word usage.
Why you of all people living in Southern California? We understand this more than most people in the world.
That’s Mount Herman. You thought that was like Mount Baldy, didn’t you? This is not Chino hills and Mount Baldy.
This is, that’s Mato. Tell me the top where the trees are at. That’s Mount Herman.
That’s northern Israel in the mountains that separate Israel from Lebanon and Syria.
Snow capped most of the year nearly 10,000 ft high but not very far away. That’s key.
This mimics by the way in topography, Mount Whitney to death Valley, 14,000 plus feet above sea level.
292 ft below sea level. Death Valley. Very unique.
No other place like it on earth except the Sea of Galilee and Mount Herman.
You’re blessed to live in California. We, uh, it’s much like Israel. That’s the view from my window.
No, I’m kidding. Doesn’t it look like home here? You guys?
This is on the way down to Matto. You see that valley?
That’s Armageddon, the valley of Mato Haron, that’s Mount Herman.
You see those rifts in the snow cap, the, the lines, those are deep valleys.
By the way, you ski down that mountain. Uh Those are valleys there.
And when there is a weather change, uh you’ll see or you’ll experience the cold winds rushing down, finding searching as cold air does.
It’s the lowest point. Next slide, same thing. That’s the Golan Heights. And then of course, Mount Herman.
Next picture. Ok. This is great. This is perfect. You see the Sea of Galilee down there.
You see the dill weed growing right here, just like here in California, the eucalyptus tree on the left.
That’s Mount Herman. Golan Heights is the darker hills there. Then there’s the lake check this out.
Why do they have such radical storms there? Windstorms on a clear day, windstorms like Santa Ana winds.
It’s the same science. The cold air that is atop begins to fall.
The sea of Galilee is almost 700 ft below sea level. It gets very warm.
That’s why you can grow bananas there 12 months out of the year and papaya there when the hot air rises up off the lake.
Watch my hands. Here’s the Mount Herman. Here’s the sea of Galilee. Hot air rises off the lake.
Cold air descends from the mountain.
The cold air falls into the vacancy of the hot air rising and you have what’s called a cyclotron.
It is a horrific winds, storm of killer proportions and it happens normally in the winter seasons in Israel.
When do we get our winds in the winter seasons? Why over the Great Basin of Utah?
In Nevada, the cold air begins to be brought in by the north.
We here have warm air evaporating upward and that cold air over that region of Nevada and Utah rushed down through our mountains and fills the void.
Thus, we’ll get a Santa Ana wind, exact same technology taking place here. That’s what’s going on. Look how beautiful.
Uh That’s from Mount Arbel. We hiked up there last year.
A bunch of us on the tour and uh anyway, beautiful place.
Now, that’s the topography of it and that’s the science of it.
When we look at this, this is what’s happening, this great storm is going to be created, but something’s going to be different about this storm.
It’s almost as though Satan takes advantage of the moment. Remember that he does, you know, he loves that.
So this word, this Seismo on the sea, the sea had become impossible to them.
It’s interesting to note you guys, uh Please forgive me for this.
But I used to love listening to Gordon Lightfoot.
I just loved that guy’s music back in 1892 or whatever that was.
But I remember the events and I remember the song of the Edmund Fitzgerald, that ballad that he sang of the sinking of that ship.
And Gordon Lightfoot wrote something in his song.
I looked the words up this weekend and it’s exactly what these guys must have felt in the boat.
Does anyone know where the love of God goes? When the waves turn the minutes into hours?
Isn’t that a great word?
Have you noticed that you can be sick during the day time?
But when you’re sick at night, it’s 10 times worse. Have you noticed that when you’re sick?
The day seems to just drag on? But when you’re sick at night, it morning never seems to come.
Have you been to the hospital? Isn’t it interesting how one day is a day?
But a night seems to be two when you’re suffering, time stands still.
Where is the love of God?
When the waves turn the minutes into hours as that entire crew of the Fitzgerald was lost at sea and the Lake Superior.
Well, we realize this mark it down number two verses 24-25.
When it looks like God doesn’t care. My friend, we need to take our eyes off the storms.
You ever see those storm chaser guys? They crack me up. You ever watch those channels?
Like Weather Channel? Um, I love that channel because I’m, I’m as sick as those guys.
If there’s a storm going on, we need to get underneath it and feel it and it’s kind of fun and feel the wind.
Look at that lightning. Those guys, they have this incredible sense that they’re safe all the time.
Get to the vehicle, get to the vehicle and they’re in there and the hurricane comes by and they’re all happy and they’re goofing off and look at that.
And I thought about that these guys are in the midst of a storm and they’re panicking and I look, I understand that I’m here on dry land right now.
If I was in a boat, I’d probably be freaking out panicking.
But do you know what Jesus would say to us? Did I not say it to you?
Let’s go to the side. He didn’t say let’s go under. He said we’re gonna go over.
That’s what he said.
But see, I’ll look at the storm and I’ll say, man, that, oh, look at that. Oh my goodness.
That’s, I’ll get impressed.
And you and I will look at things and it’s like, oh, you know, ok.
And then it, then it rears its ugly head by way of some sort of a monster in our lives and we get so overwhelmed by it that we can scarcely even pray.
It’s bigger than our God. It’s bigger than His word.
We panic because we have our eyes on the storm.
Remember when Peter was walking on the water to Jesus and then it says, he looked at the boisterous waves and began to sink.
God says to us, his word. It’s for the reading the Bible.
We will either spend more time looking at the storms of life or looking at His word.
Whichever one we spend more time with is what dictates the way we live our lives and how we make it.
We need to get our eyes off the storms. And this is one of the reasons why.
Verse 24 teaches us because our driving thoughts can come against us, get our eyes off the storm, the storms of life because our thoughts will come against us.
Verse 24 they came to Jesus and they woke him up saying master master, we are perishing, we are perishing.
Master master. We are perishing. Basically, they’re saying Jesus, you’re in control, you’re in control. That’s what master means.
Jesus, you’re in control, you’re in control, but we’re gonna die. Lord, Lord, let us tell you something.
We’re about to perish God God. But let me instruct you on how it’s gonna come down.
Master master. We are perishing.
Mark 4 38 says that he was asleep in the stern on a pillow and they woke him and said to him, teacher, listen, do you not care that we are perishing?
Listen, scholars have written regarding that verse that this is none other than blasphemy against Jesus Christ because the disciples accused Jesus of not caring for them.
It’s equal to what happened outside of Egypt when the Children of Israel accused God of bringing them out into the wilderness for their destruction.
Have you brought us into the wilderness? Wish we were back in Egypt.
Oh, we’re going to die out here. That’s exactly what these disciples did, don’t you care, Jesus?
That we’re gonna die? And by the way, they use the word. We are perishing.
You’re gonna die to Jesus. That’s how freaked out. They were. This boat sinking, Peter is gonna die.
James is gonna die. The old gang is gonna die and Jesus, you’re gonna die. We’re going down.
That’s, that’s how convincing this storm was to these guys. You and I look, we’re not sailors.
We would have been freaking out. They waited till then to wake him up.
I don’t think I would have let him go to sleep, driving thoughts, pressing, driving thoughts.
What do they do to us?
Well, listen, for one thing, when we get our eyes on these kind of thoughts, they drive the peace of God away from us completely.
When thoughts are driving upon us, what do they do to us?
They push us in a direction and on a course that we ought not to be going.
Have you ever grabbed somebody and said, stop it.
You gotta start thinking straight, how do they come to that point?
Because all the storm that’s around them and you get your eyes off of Jesus and his promised to us listen church.
I know that many of you.
I’ve got notes from you guys and you guys have said I don’t watch the news, but I’m glad you do because you can tell us what’s going on.
I don’t know what your thinking is all about.
But some people have said I don’t watch the news because it’s scary.
Listen, I don’t know that either. Our God is God. The world’s gone nuts.
But you know what, the more nutty the world goes, the more closer and the more now I want to be with the Lord in heaven.
The Bible says in second Corinthians 10 5 bring, listen, take captive every thought and make it obedient to make it obedient to Christ.
That is a great thing. A thought comes into your head. Watch this. Here it comes.
Wow, what is this? What does this start doing to me? It’s causing me to freak.
I am going to and the word bring captive, it means to put it in the cage, Jesus as it were has a cage.
And it says crazy nutty thoughts. You’re supposed to bring them to Jesus and say, Lord, here’s that thought.
I don’t want anything to do with it. Hey, listen, men, women. Are you tempted?
Take the temptation that first happens on the porch of your head of your thinking and give it to the Lord.
Don’t sit there and play with it.
I wonder if that’s from the Lord or from Satan.
Put it in the cage.
Thoughts bring every thought under kept these guys are being tempted to jump ship.
Jesus said, get in the boat. We’re going to the other side. Tomorrow is Monday.
You’re gonna go to work And uh look, I spent 13 years at one corporation and some years at another.
But you know, and I had to, I had to wear a tie.
I had to look my best, which was weird because I had to show up looking good and then I had to take everything off to go inside of a laboratory.
But that’s, that was the rules.
But you know what you quickly realize and those some of you need to hear this.
You need to bring every thought under captivity man because if you don’t, Satan’s gonna mess you up and sew your flesh and here’s how it happens.
You get up in the morning, you put on your suit and tie, you got on your dress and you got your perfume on, your hair is perfect.
You smell good mister. You got your, your old spice on or whatever you wear and you head out and you get to work and there she is, she’s batting her long eyelashes at you.
Can, you, can you help me carry my cup back to my desk?
It’s so full of water.
And you’re thinking, well, she’s so nice and she’s pretty and oh, she smells so good too.
Of course she does. Of course she’s pretty. You not, she’s just starting her day.
You have your tie on, you look all nice.
Your, your, your breath is ok because you’re just starting your day at work. It’s messed up at work.
You’re giving everybody your absolute best. By the time you get home, there’s nothing left, man.
You stink, your tie is crooked, you know your breath, your hair is whacked out.
You’ve had a rough day and then you come home and it’s like, man, my wife doesn’t think I’m cute.
The world’s messed up. Go to work looking like a bum.
But on the way home freshen up, you’re going to go see your wife, man.
You’re gonna come home to your husband, you know, put some lipstick on before you put her on the driveway or whatever.
Look your best when you get home, who cares what people think you look like at the office?
Well, you know, he’s look how strong he is when he reaches over with his big arms to sharpen his pencil.
That’s not real. But you know what? Because you got your eyes off of Jesus.
You start thinking about, oh wow. Bring that thought under the captivity.
Put it in the cage where it belongs.
It’s nuts and homes get ruined this way because you don’t bring your thoughts under the captivity.
Some temptation comes on your head, grab and say, Jesus, open the cage. Here it comes.
I will not think that thought and fight it. I’m dead serious. I’m not kidding.
I’m not kidding. Thoughts, driving thoughts. They’ll drive us crazy. They’ll rip us off.
Another thing are the winds of emotion. They’ll blow us away the winds of emotion in a storm.
Jesus rose up and rebuked the wind in the raging of the water and they ceased and there was a calm, it says, it says all the sea had ears.
What do I say that? Because this is very unusual.
Did you remember the scene of the weather pattern that how that comes down through Mount Herman onto the lake?
That that normally happens? Jesus didn’t say uh a normal word that would have meant, you know, when just stop Jesus, you, he personified it.
Jesus used the word uh that is be muzzled, be muzzled.
Now it was the exact, it’s the same exact command that Jesus gave when he told demons to be quiet.
Same word, same Greek word today in a, in a colloquialism of our day, modern day language of our street.
It would be this back off. You don’t tell a storm to back off.
You don’t walk up to a fire hydrant and say back off. It’s a fire hydrant. It’s that it’s nothing.
Unless you’re talking to something you see, Jesus personified it. He said back off. Peace.
Be still and instantly. Not, not quick. Not soon. The Greek means instantaneously.
The wind stopped and the wave, the waves were over. It was calm more on that in a moment.
But Philippians chapter four verse six tells us, be anxious for nothing. Have we not read?
Who has not read that verse? I mean, you can get a fortune cookie.
I think it’s even in fortune cookies, It’s everywhere. Be anxious for nothing.
Don’t worry, be happy based upon Philippians four sex, be anxious for nothing.
That means we’re not supposed to worry about anything.
When we worry, we are assuming a responsibility that was not intended to be ours. It’s God’s business.
My kids when they were little did not worry about the mortgage, not, they didn’t walk by three years old.
Oh my gosh, the mortgage is coming. How are we gonna make the car payment? Dad?
It’s exactly like that for a Christian.
We’re not going to be walking around worrying about stuff that God never intended us to worry about.
So be anxious for nothing. That should be the end of it.
But he goes on, he says, but in everything by prayer, supplication with thanksgiving, let your request be made known to God.
So I don’t know, but it seems to me unless you have perfect kids.
Perfect husband, perfect wife. Seems to me you should be praying all the time.
Pastor and Bible teacher Jack Hibbs here on real life radio with his message called when it looks like God doesn’t care.
We’re glad you took the time to be with us today here on real life radio.
You know, this message today is just part of Pastor Jack’s series called The Gospel of Luke.
It’s a series on the book of Luke and the unveiling of Jesus Christ to this world.
And we’ll continue on the next edition of Real Life Radio.
You know, we don’t always understand what God’s doing, but the Bible tells us that one day we will.
The question is, do we know God personally?
Many believe there’s a God and that He’s powerful, but having faith in God is to know and understand that He cares about you immensely, God’s power could force obedience.
But instead he gives us the freedom to choose to come to Him through our own free will.
So if you’re wondering what that means to have a personal relationship with God, why don’t you let us help?
Simply go to our website Jack Hibbs dot com. Click on that tab that’s labeled no God spelled out.
That’s K N O W God.
Now, once you’re there, you’ll learn about things like how our sin is separating us from God and how God has made a way through his son, Jesus Christ to get right with him again.
It’s that tab labeled. No God. And it’s there at our.